How on Earth are you going to get citizens to vote up/down on hundreds of thousands of employees?
Don't forget the postal service. They employ nearly a million people all by themselves. Also, Joe might take offense at not getting that mail carrier office and, ahem, go postal on you. (Sorry, I had to say it).
I have DSL through Fairpoint where I'm at, and I've got to say I'm pretty lucky compared to you. While my speeds are modest (~320KB/s down and ~80KB/s up), they're constant (as expected from DSL) - I don't have to worry about peak usage times or any other kind of slowdown. There's never a complaint about using too much bandwidth - I've run my connection at max both ways for entire months before (seriously, 24/7 for a whole month) without issue.
The customer service used to suck, but - and I hate to say this - since they declared bankruptcy in order to dump the union, it's improved considerably. My final complaint - that I couldn't pay my internet provider online - has been resolved, and I'm pretty content with the situation.
The only other ISP in the area is Time Warner, and from what I've heard they're more expensive and less reliable, although you can get faster speeds (if you're online at 3 am).
The whole problem is the private ownership of the infrastructure. Move the infrastructure to public ownership on a state, county, or city/town basis (my preference is for the latter), and lease access to ISPs, and you not only have a new avenue for competition but a means for local communities to collect a little revenue on the side.
Yes. Public infrastructure leased by private ISPs is really the way to go. But you're right, I can't even imagine the screaming and crying that would result if this were ever proposed in Congress.
ROFL! Ahh, what a riot! Yep, that pretty much sums up all the libertarian arguments I've heard on/.
Just as an aside, what ever happened to the real libertarians? You know, the ones that were just to the right of the anarchists, but hated money just as much as government? Where did they go? Did they all die out in the 80's, or something?
I am a company and I filter internet access for my employees. Is that unfair to the sites I'm filtering?
Yes. But it's your business, you censor free speech all you'd like. Your employees are free to access their favorite sites at home.
I am a company and I have some slight performance issues out to the internet for employees, to speed things along I prioritize traffic to and from business related websites we commonly use. Is that unfair to the sites that aren't being prioritized?
Yes. But it's your business, you censor free speech all you'd like. Your employees are free to access their favorite sites at home.
What if instead of me as the company doing it for my own employees I am an ISP that provides this to business customers. Is that unfair to anybody?
Yes. Only now, you're censoring the free speech of the public, which is a violation of the Constitution, at least in spirit.
What if I sell it to consumers, is that unfair to the sites?
No, not really. What you do or do not charge for your service has no relation to individual websites, so long as it's the same for everyone.
What if this is the only option I provide, is that unfair to the sites?
Yes. You are selectively enabling certain sites while crippling others at your whim. What kind of messed up mind doesn't find this unfair?
No. The people who make the laws generally have MBAs. The people who word the laws almost always have law degrees. And so most of the people who vote the laws into existence (different people entirely from those who word the laws, however).
if this is the solution to piracy, then why aren't more people electing to eschew their copyrights, and go down this route?
It's called the Creative Commons (CC) license, and many artists are marketing their works under it.
And why, if it helps obscure artists get recognition, aren't more obscure artists using this technique?
They are. Getting your stuff online is pretty much essential for any artists these days. I've even found a few obscure artists that I never would have discovered otherwise via torrenting. The reasons you aren't noticing this are probably because:
You probably aren't filesharing that much.
Obscure != Good
You probably aren't looking very hard (see #1).
And if they are, why aren't they getting the recognition they're being promised?
Mainsteam media has a vested interest in only promoting commercial artists (i.e., that pay them something)
See #2 above
And what about people who don't want to be stuck reading off dead trees, or having to watch movies in overpriced cinemas, or having to listen to music at designated times and places, for a lot of money?
Why these people get their music and movies for free! Yay! Honestly, this question seems more directed at asking what's wrong with copyright, rather than free sharing
Where is the incentive to produce quality musical recordings, or release movies for home use?
Don't worry, the users will fill in this gap in no time - in fact, they already are. There doesn't need to be incentive on the artists part, the fans will quickly convert their works into some form of distributable media
Not to mention, there seems to be this incorrect assumption that you can halve the income of artists, and we'll be none the worse for wear.
Actually, the grandparent said half an order of magnitude, which is a 5x reduction. That's actually not true, in any case: artists see very little of the money made from the cds and dvds of their work - the greater part of income earned from those sales feeds the production company's advertising costs, salaries, and legal fees. So, actually it would mean a reduction in advertising, unnecessary corporate management, and lawyers. Not a great loss.
If we artificially restrict the income of artists, then the net result will be less artists.
Yes, that's correct.
I'm sorry, but what you're describing sounds pretty much like a death knell for our culture. We'd be stuck back in the cultural dark ages, when the few artists that existed only created for a commission, and only the rich would have access to a culture.
Quite incorrect. You are assuming artists only create for the sake of fame and fortune, when in fact real artists create works because of passion. The reason that artists were only available to the wealthy back in the day was because it took a great deal of resources to support their art, and they would otherwise be unable to afford such things. This is no longer true today; now anyone can produce content on a tiny budget, and need not spend every waking moment creating, for that matter - they can get real jobs to support themselves and their art. This is the truth of today, this is the truth that the **AA's are trying to hide.
Writing that last paragraph made me realize that the system hasn't actually changed that much - the production companies have merely taken the place of the wealthy patrons of the past. And since art is of no real use to an evil corporation, they simply copy (freely) what they get from the artist and dole it out in measured amounts to the public.
Also, consider this: even if you were correct and utterly free sharing of all artistic works becoming the norm causes all artists to disappear from the face of the earth overnight,
Actually, the sandboxing in javascript is very effective, which has led to all sorts of hacks and add ons to the initial language to escape the sandbox - usually for legitimate reasons
Not saying that XSS isn't a real security issue, but that's not a flaw in javascript (XSS attacks are bound by the sandbox like any other bit of javascript), that's a case of not properly scrubbing user input, same as SQL injection.
Perhaps a CPU/GPU "jail" combined with a locked down language?
Actually, most of the big players are more concerned right now with how to relax restrictions on cross-domain scripting while maintaining some semblance of security. It's needed for more interactive web-apps, you see.
If you want more secure scripting, get a browser that doesn't support json or ajax. Better yet, just use NoScript like the rest of us, and laugh at all the IE fools.
What are these "ads" things that you refer to? Never seen any.
I think ads are these things (images? blocks of text?) that Internet Explorer puts into webpages to annoy and distract their users. I could be wrong, though - I've never seen them either, since I don't use Microsoft products.
Actually, I believe the blue and green alerts have been removed from the scale. I recall reading an article where DHS said they were confusing too many people (that is to say, people thought they were actually going to be used at some point).
So now it's just yellow, orange, and red. Pretty inspiring, huh?
This can only happen with demilitarized police *and* some sort of mechanism in place to stop them from calling for reinforcements from the National Guard. Not sure quite how we get there from here.
The times when a bunch of armed commoners can square off against military forces are over, at least unless ownership of IED-type devices and RPG's becomes common.
I used to subscribe to this theory, but then I started really thinking about it.
Small arms, even automatic small arms, are unbelievably easy to obtain in the U.S. - I once had a 15 year old kid offer to sell me an Uzi. Larger munitions are easily made if you understand the principles - there's tons of information on the web free for anyone interested. Much of it isn't even bunk.
I know how to create large explosives, jury-rig mortars, and take down tanks - and I have exactly 0 military training or inclination to do any of these things. I just read a lot.
The only things that truly separate the armed forces from the civilian populace are training and air superiority. If rebellion is limited to dense urban environments, there's a good chance the latter would be nullified (only a chance though - I wouldn't put anything past our government)
Fear of the government is not the issue - the word I hear from everyone's mouth - from old men to co-workers to my neighbor to random dudes at the bus stop - is 'revolution'. Everyone's sick of our overgrown (and still growing!) government.
Numbers are not the issue. There are approx. 1.1 million personnel in the armed forces - by far the greater majority of that number is overseas messing in some other country's business at any given moment. If you add the police and the national guard, you're still barely over 3 million. An armed revolutionary force consisting of only 1.5% of the U.S. population would outnumber the government thugs.
The only impediment to revolution in this country is complacency. People who are comfortable with what they have (actually a minority), or fear losing what they've managed to build for themselves (the great majority). As long as the bread and circuses continue (aka supermarkets and television), nothing is really going to happen here. The minute these things cease, citizens will take up arms in protest. Don't think for a second that everyone in the government doesn't understand this.
The only way releasing classified information on foreign policy gives aid and comfort to a nation's enemies is if it exposes some egregious wrongdoing on the part of the nation having its information leaked, in which case moral obligation to expose unlawful practices comes into play
I don't think that this is the case (not that I'm implying the U.S. military isn't innocent or anything). I think this is a case of some pissed-off loser wanting to exact some sort of revenge against his superiors for the slights he feels he's been given.
In either case, treason, as defined by the U.S. Constitution, does not apply here.
The standard school "computer" when I was growing up was a slide rule. I adapted to other systems easily enough.:)
Of course you did - computers are much easier to use than slide rules. I was given one by an old friend of the family when I was a kid, and I still can't figure out how the damned thing works.
Really - can you think of anyone you would want to sit down and teach how to use linux to?
Kids.
Really, we're talking computers for educational purposes, right? A Linux laptop would teach these kids how to use a real computer; how to use a command line terminal, how to script (even if only in the most basic sense). If these kids are just going to be using laptops for surfing the internet, using office applications, chatting with one another, and making silly music and video clips, then they're better off wasting their time with computers at home. A single computer lab for when students have to turn in a typewritten paper (for those that don't have computers / word-processors / typewriters at home) should be sufficient.
I can understand the school wanting to save space by not wanting to have a computer lab, but in that case, they should be providing the laptops they want, not the parents.
I went to one of those less fortunate schools. It had a leaky roof, was 300 past fire code, and lost its accreditation the year I graduated. We had 3 volunteer librarians and a decent library, more P.E. than I thought was strictly necessary (although I did love a good game of dodgeball), a choir, a band, and art, sculpture, and photography classes. While parents were responsible for buying their kids musical instruments for the entirely optional band classes, nothing else in that list cost a dime beyond what was supplied by property taxes and state & federal subsidies.
Take a look at the huge national debt, this is at least partly caused by entitlements.
Actually, if this country reduced it's defense budget to something more proportional to other civilized nations, and quit with all the pork, I'm pretty sure we'd be running a surplus every year, with our minimalist entitlements
Clothes have to be provided irrespective of schooling
free or subsidized lunches are available for low-income families
Pens, pencils, and paper are freely available at most high schools (certainly the one I went to), and kids can make due with loose paper in manila folders (also provided in unnecessarily massive quantities).
No external (non-tax related) costs are required for public schooling - this is the way it is most places, and most certainly should be in all. Otherwise, what exactly is the point of public education?
And I ended up buying at least two for each of them because the models they used changed almost every year.
That strikes me as a little silly. I'm still using the TI-85 my parents got me for Calculus, and that was 14 years ago. What does the particular model of a calculator have to do with anything?
Wow, where did you go to school? Wherever it was, consider yourself lucky. While I don't remember much about my early school years (I spent most of the time either sitting in the back reading, or skipping class altogether), I'm pretty sure critical thinking skills weren't a part of it. Where I went to school, you either had critical thinking skills, or you (most likely) didn't. No one taught them (who wants children that can think for themselves?).
Smart governments won't outlaw encryption, it's too much hassle (e.g. protesters), interferes with private business, and solves nothing (people will still use it anyway).
They'll license it.
"Come on in, get your free government background check, take your quick lie detector test, and for a $35 registration fee, you too can have the privilege of encryption for a whole year! Just remember to submit those forms with all your keys on them, in case we need to check up on you."
Licensing is a much more pragmatic solution - nobody can say the government is banning anything, it allows them to keep track of everything, and utterly negates the threat encryption poses to government surveillance. Worse, people become indoctrinated over the years into believing that encryption really is just a privilege and not something anyone can "just do".
Actually, if you had read the article, you'd realize that the DoJ findings pertain to FBI activity between 2003-2007. The report also mentions that towards the end, the FBI began cleaning up its practices a little - probably in anticipation of a new administration.
Of course, now that the new administration has revealed itself as the same old administration with better table manners, they're probably back at it again.
No one can take away an unalienable right. It's not even a feasible scenario. At worst, another can infringe upon an unalienable right.
If I shoot and kill you, I didn't take away your right to life - if I had done that, then no one would care whether or not I had shot you: you wouldn't have the right any more, you see?
Rather what happens is that because I have infringed upon your right to life, my crime is recognized by the society in which I live, and I can reasonably expect retribution.
Neither - parent is merely using a little hyperbole.
China owns the vast majority of our foreign debt. Should they decide to take the financial hit themselves, they could just dump that debt onto the market and devalue the dollar. This would, in all likelihood, result in a flurry of worldwide dollar selling, and in a matter of days we here in the U.S. would be burning our currency to keep warm at night, seeing as it wouldn't be useful for much else.
Of course, they've got their own financial issues, and I doubt they'd do such a thing thing - at least not right now.
Slashdot Mirror
How on Earth are you going to get citizens to vote up/down on hundreds of thousands of employees?
Don't forget the postal service. They employ nearly a million people all by themselves. Also, Joe might take offense at not getting that mail carrier office and, ahem, go postal on you. (Sorry, I had to say it).
Ugh, that was a horror story!
I have DSL through Fairpoint where I'm at, and I've got to say I'm pretty lucky compared to you. While my speeds are modest (~320KB/s down and ~80KB/s up), they're constant (as expected from DSL) - I don't have to worry about peak usage times or any other kind of slowdown. There's never a complaint about using too much bandwidth - I've run my connection at max both ways for entire months before (seriously, 24/7 for a whole month) without issue.
The customer service used to suck, but - and I hate to say this - since they declared bankruptcy in order to dump the union, it's improved considerably. My final complaint - that I couldn't pay my internet provider online - has been resolved, and I'm pretty content with the situation.
The only other ISP in the area is Time Warner, and from what I've heard they're more expensive and less reliable, although you can get faster speeds (if you're online at 3 am).
The whole problem is the private ownership of the infrastructure. Move the infrastructure to public ownership on a state, county, or city/town basis (my preference is for the latter), and lease access to ISPs, and you not only have a new avenue for competition but a means for local communities to collect a little revenue on the side.
Yes. Public infrastructure leased by private ISPs is really the way to go. But you're right, I can't even imagine the screaming and crying that would result if this were ever proposed in Congress.
ROFL! Ahh, what a riot! Yep, that pretty much sums up all the libertarian arguments I've heard on /.
Just as an aside, what ever happened to the real libertarians? You know, the ones that were just to the right of the anarchists, but hated money just as much as government? Where did they go? Did they all die out in the 80's, or something?
I am a company and I filter internet access for my employees. Is that unfair to the sites I'm filtering?
Yes. But it's your business, you censor free speech all you'd like. Your employees are free to access their favorite sites at home.
I am a company and I have some slight performance issues out to the internet for employees, to speed things along I prioritize traffic to and from business related websites we commonly use. Is that unfair to the sites that aren't being prioritized?
Yes. But it's your business, you censor free speech all you'd like. Your employees are free to access their favorite sites at home.
What if instead of me as the company doing it for my own employees I am an ISP that provides this to business customers. Is that unfair to anybody?
Yes. Only now, you're censoring the free speech of the public, which is a violation of the Constitution, at least in spirit.
What if I sell it to consumers, is that unfair to the sites?
No, not really. What you do or do not charge for your service has no relation to individual websites, so long as it's the same for everyone.
What if this is the only option I provide, is that unfair to the sites?
Yes. You are selectively enabling certain sites while crippling others at your whim. What kind of messed up mind doesn't find this unfair?
No. The people who make the laws generally have MBAs. The people who word the laws almost always have law degrees. And so most of the people who vote the laws into existence (different people entirely from those who word the laws, however).
if this is the solution to piracy, then why aren't more people electing to eschew their copyrights, and go down this route?
It's called the Creative Commons (CC) license, and many artists are marketing their works under it.
And why, if it helps obscure artists get recognition, aren't more obscure artists using this technique?
They are. Getting your stuff online is pretty much essential for any artists these days. I've even found a few obscure artists that I never would have discovered otherwise via torrenting. The reasons you aren't noticing this are probably because:
And if they are, why aren't they getting the recognition they're being promised?
And what about people who don't want to be stuck reading off dead trees, or having to watch movies in overpriced cinemas, or having to listen to music at designated times and places, for a lot of money?
Why these people get their music and movies for free! Yay! Honestly, this question seems more directed at asking what's wrong with copyright, rather than free sharing
Where is the incentive to produce quality musical recordings, or release movies for home use?
Don't worry, the users will fill in this gap in no time - in fact, they already are. There doesn't need to be incentive on the artists part, the fans will quickly convert their works into some form of distributable media
Not to mention, there seems to be this incorrect assumption that you can halve the income of artists, and we'll be none the worse for wear.
Actually, the grandparent said half an order of magnitude, which is a 5x reduction. That's actually not true, in any case: artists see very little of the money made from the cds and dvds of their work - the greater part of income earned from those sales feeds the production company's advertising costs, salaries, and legal fees. So, actually it would mean a reduction in advertising, unnecessary corporate management, and lawyers. Not a great loss.
If we artificially restrict the income of artists, then the net result will be less artists.
Yes, that's correct.
I'm sorry, but what you're describing sounds pretty much like a death knell for our culture. We'd be stuck back in the cultural dark ages, when the few artists that existed only created for a commission, and only the rich would have access to a culture.
Quite incorrect. You are assuming artists only create for the sake of fame and fortune, when in fact real artists create works because of passion. The reason that artists were only available to the wealthy back in the day was because it took a great deal of resources to support their art, and they would otherwise be unable to afford such things. This is no longer true today; now anyone can produce content on a tiny budget, and need not spend every waking moment creating, for that matter - they can get real jobs to support themselves and their art. This is the truth of today, this is the truth that the **AA's are trying to hide.
Writing that last paragraph made me realize that the system hasn't actually changed that much - the production companies have merely taken the place of the wealthy patrons of the past. And since art is of no real use to an evil corporation, they simply copy (freely) what they get from the artist and dole it out in measured amounts to the public.
Also, consider this: even if you were correct and utterly free sharing of all artistic works becoming the norm causes all artists to disappear from the face of the earth overnight,
Actually, the sandboxing in javascript is very effective, which has led to all sorts of hacks and add ons to the initial language to escape the sandbox - usually for legitimate reasons
Not saying that XSS isn't a real security issue, but that's not a flaw in javascript (XSS attacks are bound by the sandbox like any other bit of javascript), that's a case of not properly scrubbing user input, same as SQL injection.
Perhaps a CPU/GPU "jail" combined with a locked down language?
Actually, most of the big players are more concerned right now with how to relax restrictions on cross-domain scripting while maintaining some semblance of security. It's needed for more interactive web-apps, you see.
If you want more secure scripting, get a browser that doesn't support json or ajax. Better yet, just use NoScript like the rest of us, and laugh at all the IE fools.
What are these "ads" things that you refer to? Never seen any.
I think ads are these things (images? blocks of text?) that Internet Explorer puts into webpages to annoy and distract their users. I could be wrong, though - I've never seen them either, since I don't use Microsoft products.
Actually, I believe the blue and green alerts have been removed from the scale. I recall reading an article where DHS said they were confusing too many people (that is to say, people thought they were actually going to be used at some point).
So now it's just yellow, orange, and red. Pretty inspiring, huh?
On the contrary, it goes to prove how corrupt our government has become, that it no longer abides by its own standards.
This can only happen with demilitarized police *and* some sort of mechanism in place to stop them from calling for reinforcements from the National Guard. Not sure quite how we get there from here.
The times when a bunch of armed commoners can square off against military forces are over, at least unless ownership of IED-type devices and RPG's becomes common.
I used to subscribe to this theory, but then I started really thinking about it.
Small arms, even automatic small arms, are unbelievably easy to obtain in the U.S. - I once had a 15 year old kid offer to sell me an Uzi. Larger munitions are easily made if you understand the principles - there's tons of information on the web free for anyone interested. Much of it isn't even bunk.
I know how to create large explosives, jury-rig mortars, and take down tanks - and I have exactly 0 military training or inclination to do any of these things. I just read a lot.
The only things that truly separate the armed forces from the civilian populace are training and air superiority. If rebellion is limited to dense urban environments, there's a good chance the latter would be nullified (only a chance though - I wouldn't put anything past our government)
Fear of the government is not the issue - the word I hear from everyone's mouth - from old men to co-workers to my neighbor to random dudes at the bus stop - is 'revolution'. Everyone's sick of our overgrown (and still growing!) government.
Numbers are not the issue. There are approx. 1.1 million personnel in the armed forces - by far the greater majority of that number is overseas messing in some other country's business at any given moment. If you add the police and the national guard, you're still barely over 3 million. An armed revolutionary force consisting of only 1.5% of the U.S. population would outnumber the government thugs.
The only impediment to revolution in this country is complacency. People who are comfortable with what they have (actually a minority), or fear losing what they've managed to build for themselves (the great majority). As long as the bread and circuses continue (aka supermarkets and television), nothing is really going to happen here. The minute these things cease, citizens will take up arms in protest. Don't think for a second that everyone in the government doesn't understand this.
The only way releasing classified information on foreign policy gives aid and comfort to a nation's enemies is if it exposes some egregious wrongdoing on the part of the nation having its information leaked, in which case moral obligation to expose unlawful practices comes into play
I don't think that this is the case (not that I'm implying the U.S. military isn't innocent or anything). I think this is a case of some pissed-off loser wanting to exact some sort of revenge against his superiors for the slights he feels he's been given.
In either case, treason, as defined by the U.S. Constitution, does not apply here.
The standard school "computer" when I was growing up was a slide rule. I adapted to other systems easily enough. :)
Of course you did - computers are much easier to use than slide rules. I was given one by an old friend of the family when I was a kid, and I still can't figure out how the damned thing works.
Really - can you think of anyone you would want to sit down and teach how to use linux to?
Kids.
Really, we're talking computers for educational purposes, right? A Linux laptop would teach these kids how to use a real computer; how to use a command line terminal, how to script (even if only in the most basic sense). If these kids are just going to be using laptops for surfing the internet, using office applications, chatting with one another, and making silly music and video clips, then they're better off wasting their time with computers at home. A single computer lab for when students have to turn in a typewritten paper (for those that don't have computers / word-processors / typewriters at home) should be sufficient.
I can understand the school wanting to save space by not wanting to have a computer lab, but in that case, they should be providing the laptops they want, not the parents.
I went to one of those less fortunate schools. It had a leaky roof, was 300 past fire code, and lost its accreditation the year I graduated. We had 3 volunteer librarians and a decent library, more P.E. than I thought was strictly necessary (although I did love a good game of dodgeball), a choir, a band, and art, sculpture, and photography classes. While parents were responsible for buying their kids musical instruments for the entirely optional band classes, nothing else in that list cost a dime beyond what was supplied by property taxes and state & federal subsidies.
Take a look at the huge national debt, this is at least partly caused by entitlements.
Actually, if this country reduced it's defense budget to something more proportional to other civilized nations, and quit with all the pork, I'm pretty sure we'd be running a surplus every year, with our minimalist entitlements
No external (non-tax related) costs are required for public schooling - this is the way it is most places, and most certainly should be in all. Otherwise, what exactly is the point of public education?
(Finally, lists are supported!)
And I ended up buying at least two for each of them because the models they used changed almost every year.
That strikes me as a little silly. I'm still using the TI-85 my parents got me for Calculus, and that was 14 years ago. What does the particular model of a calculator have to do with anything?
I remember being a kid and being thrilled by a 28800 modem.
Ha!. That brings me back. I remember bragging to my friends about upgrading to a 14400 modem, while they were still still stuck with 2400's.
Wow, where did you go to school? Wherever it was, consider yourself lucky. While I don't remember much about my early school years (I spent most of the time either sitting in the back reading, or skipping class altogether), I'm pretty sure critical thinking skills weren't a part of it. Where I went to school, you either had critical thinking skills, or you (most likely) didn't. No one taught them (who wants children that can think for themselves?).
Smart governments won't outlaw encryption, it's too much hassle (e.g. protesters), interferes with private business, and solves nothing (people will still use it anyway).
They'll license it.
"Come on in, get your free government background check, take your quick lie detector test, and for a $35 registration fee, you too can have the privilege of encryption for a whole year! Just remember to submit those forms with all your keys on them, in case we need to check up on you."
Licensing is a much more pragmatic solution - nobody can say the government is banning anything, it allows them to keep track of everything, and utterly negates the threat encryption poses to government surveillance. Worse, people become indoctrinated over the years into believing that encryption really is just a privilege and not something anyone can "just do".
Actually, if you had read the article, you'd realize that the DoJ findings pertain to FBI activity between 2003-2007. The report also mentions that towards the end, the FBI began cleaning up its practices a little - probably in anticipation of a new administration. Of course, now that the new administration has revealed itself as the same old administration with better table manners, they're probably back at it again.
No one can take away an unalienable right. It's not even a feasible scenario. At worst, another can infringe upon an unalienable right.
If I shoot and kill you, I didn't take away your right to life - if I had done that, then no one would care whether or not I had shot you: you wouldn't have the right any more, you see?
Rather what happens is that because I have infringed upon your right to life, my crime is recognized by the society in which I live, and I can reasonably expect retribution.
Neither - parent is merely using a little hyperbole.
China owns the vast majority of our foreign debt. Should they decide to take the financial hit themselves, they could just dump that debt onto the market and devalue the dollar. This would, in all likelihood, result in a flurry of worldwide dollar selling, and in a matter of days we here in the U.S. would be burning our currency to keep warm at night, seeing as it wouldn't be useful for much else.
Of course, they've got their own financial issues, and I doubt they'd do such a thing thing - at least not right now.