A good conspiracy theorist never lets the facts get in the way of a good conspiracy.
I've watched the video, too, and I have to say that the "experts" that they trot out are just hilarious. It also seems odd to me that news reporting of 9/11 stopped in September - oh wait, those pesky facts again.
I never give up on these guys - it's like watching a dog chase its tail - they go 'round and 'round in circles and put on a hilarious show. More power to 'em!
Hey, if nothing else: DDT was directly responsible for roof collapses in Borneo.
Actually, DDT was indirectly responsible for the roof collapses. The IUCN link that you provided suggests that poor preparation of the thatch, leading to vulnerability to parasites was the direct cause of the roof collapses. DDT was just the catalyst.
I think that the report also draws the conclusion that the unintended consequences of the spraying were relatively minor compared to the benefits. Of course, if it was my roof sitting on my floor, I might think differently.
I do have to say, though, that the cat drop thing really paints a funny picture in my mind. I know that they were dropped in containers, but I can't help but think of a million little kitties, each with his own parachute, gently drifting to the ground to land gently on (of course) all four feet.
Here's some things that can blast your smugness damn fast:
* Divorce. Say goodbye to your reserves with your first visit to an attorney. My case - $30,000 + down the tube.
* Catastrophic illness while unemployed, no health insurance. Thousands of bucks.
* Long term unemployment. Welcome to tech reality. It takes a long time to find a job. Six months is optimistic. I've had friends waiting eighteen months.
And it's really easy to buy a cheap home after prices have gone up 9-10% per year for the last decade. Average price of a home is well over 200k across the country. Where should you live, a cardboard box? Don't say rent - in many areas you can't find a good home to rent. don't h Things are messed up, my friend. Your planning is at risk to economic fate. Don't judge everyone so quickly.
So is your answer to not structure your finances to anticipate an emergency? True, you could end up divorced, ill and unemployed. So? The OP had a good, if impersonal, point to make. If you're living paycheck to paycheck, you're asking for trouble. On the other hand, if that's the way you want to live, fine with me.
I've got 10 months' pay socked away and my house is paid for. It's not because I'm lucky, it's because I made a plan and stuck to it. I was unemployed for a while, too, but I also recognized that if I really wanted a job, I could find one. It meant moving away for ten years and, at one point, it meant a career change, but, in the end, it was worth it.
Back in the late 80s or early 90s, I lived in Newport, RI. Now, that's an expensive place to live. I had a lot of friends who were unemployed and had been for months because the economy there was (and may still be, for all I know) completely in the crapper. 30 miles (as the crow flies) away, in Providence, there were plenty of jobs. Of course, at the time (and maybe now, haven't been back for a while), that 30 miles was about 50 miles of really bad road, so commuting wasn't really feasible. When I pointed out to my buddies that there was work in Providence, their answer, to a one, was that they couldn't leave "the island". Good jobs were there, but they wouldn't move even 30 miles to get one.
All I'm saying is that success takes work and along the way, things can go bad. It happened to me - I went through a divorce, I was unemployed. Fortunately I didn't get sick. But you deal with each setback, go through the anger and the disappointment for a reasonable time, then figure out how to get back on track.
On the other hand, if you'd rather just decide that it's not worth the trouble, that's OK, too. It's no skin off my back. My plan for success is my own and I wouldn't dream of imposing it on anybody else.
I'm not picking nits - you said (and I'm paraphrasing you much better than you did me) that there is little difference between the US and China.
If you truly believe that, then I'm not going to change your mind, so I guess the debate ends - you're letting hyperbole and FUD take the place of facts.
However, I will point out that I did not say that we should expect harsh consequences for exercising our rights. Read what I said again.
In the US, you have the freedom to say what you wish. You do not necessarily have the freedom to say what you wish anywhere you wish to say it. And that's nothing new, nor is it some sort of repression of your rights. As the saying goes, there is a time and a place for everything. In this case, it would appear that Dr. Wang was tremendously out of place. Does Dr. Wang deserve to be deported? I don't know - but common sense would tell her that she was certainly risking it.
Now, if her case actually goes to court, you'll see a very significant difference between the US and China. The court will be open and she will be well represented. But I suspect that it will not even come to that. I suspect that the charges will be dropped and this will pass on.
As I've mentioned, I'm not going to change your mind, so I'm not going to waste my time and yours explaining why your reply is filled with inaccurate conjecture and pretzel logic.
And, as I've been saying all along, you really haven't made the point that somehow, in America, we're all encouraged to turn each other in. Before you took this detour, I think that was what you were trying to prove.
My point is that American citizens are being encouraged to inform on each other also. There is no need to single China out. The U.S. and Europe are rapidly heading in that direction(not informant related, but the idea is the same). Don't even try to deny it. The details that seperate us are very few and quite minor indeed.
Not at all the same and if that was your point, you haven't even come close to making it. A provision to allow intelligence agencies to conduct investigations without revealing the reason for the investigation was proposed two years ago and deep sixed. That has nothing to do with encouraging American citizens to inform upon each other - now maybe you're thinking of the DOJ plan a few years ago that encouraged Americans to report suspicious activity via a toll-free hotline. Now, I'll agree that was a pretty poorly conceived and executed plan that never should have seen the light of day. It was gone very quickly - the spectre of Senator McCarthy is still rather uncomfortable to a lot of Americans.
And the link regarding Dr. Wang - it has nothing at all to do with your point. In fact, she misused her press credentials. It doesn't mean that the reason for her protest is not valid, but, like many forms of non-violent protest, there are consequences to actions. While she claims that she was only committing civil disobedience, not a crime, she seems to not realize that the one can lead to the other. Freedom of speech does not imply that you can say anything you want anywhere you want. That's certainly nothing new in the US.
So, yes, I deny that the differences between the US and China are are few and minor. The differences are extraordinary.
And, for the record, if what Dr. Wang (and others) say is true, then I agree with what she says. But not with the venue that she chose.
...Defense officials recently slipped a provision into a bill before Congress...
Yeah, those defense officials yelled, "LOBBYIST!", and when Congress looked the other way, they slipped the provision in the bill.
Man, if somebody posted a comment like Isikoff's here (which, incidentally, is almost two years old!),/.ers would be on him like stink on shit demanding details. What provision? What bill? What was the vote in the committee? What about the corresponding bill in the House?
BTW, the provision (Section 502) that was "slipped into" the Senate bill (S.2386/HR.4548) was eliminated in the conference committee.
In the news recently: Samsung, Hynix, Infineon, Qwest, Worldcom: big-ass fines. Merck, Philip Morris: civil damages. Five companies with an absolute boatload of cash.
Secondly, to say that the United States didn't overthrow their government is retarded. They did. In the exact same way Castro did.
Exactly! The revolutionaries sailed from the colonies to Britain in a yacht filled with explosives and weapons. Their initial attempt to depose George III failed, but with a guerilla campaign staged from the mountains in the north, they were able to force George III to flee the country, along with the accumulated wealth of the treasury. George Washington marched into London in triumph and was declared the premier. Britain eventually became a workers' paradise. Just like Cuba!...my country (Canada) gained our independence without armed conflict.
If you can't figure out why non-US citizens should care about the policies of the largest importer of goods, Of course we do! We are financing your consumerism and Iraq war.
I think that you have it backwards - the US imports goods and "exports" money. If "you" were financing US consumerism and the Iraq war, the flow of money would be going the other way. In fact, you could make a better case that the US was financing your opposition of the war (assuming that you're posting from a country that does not support the war and one from which the US imports more than it exports).
the largest economy, You sure got the largest debt.
Read Milton Friedman and other economists of his ilk. You'll find it enlightening.
the largest provider of foreign aid, You mean weapons?
No, actually Russia exports more weapons than any other country - at least according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The US is the largest provider of non-military foreign aid in the world.
the largest IMF contributor To protect the interests of companies like Enron.
You mean companies like Enron, whose executives are being aggressively prosecuted by the US government? There is quite a list of companies whose executives are looking down the business end of a long prison sentence these days.
a permenant member of the UN security council, Yo got that one right. If you only paid your fees to UN.
The US does, for the most part, with the exception of its peacekeeping assessment which is still being negotiated. If you're talking about the withheld dues from the 1990's, put your mind at ease. The $620 million was paid several years ago.
and the largest military power Yes, it's obscene in it's size.
You're entitled to your opinion, of course. Clearly the US spends more in actual dollars than any other country. Of course, even without Iraq, the US has more responsibilities to other countries than any other country. And yet, as a percentage of GDP, the US is right in the middle of the pack, spending a little over 3% of its GDP on defense.
You don't like the US, I think, and that's OK. But if you're not going to like the US, don't like the US for the right reasons. Don't just make things up. Let me give you some reasons:
As the world's largest economy, the US should increase its amount of non-military foreign aid. It's not enough to be number one, the number should be a larger amount of GDP.
The US should work to reduce or eliminate the debt owed by developing countries, particularly that which was incurred by previous regimes.
The US should do more to encourage repressive governments to stop human rights abuses. Giving MFN status to China is a real head-scratcher.
Financial power is not a baseball bat.
There you go, some reasons to not like the US.
I, however, like the US a lot. I am, of course, very biased. You, I'm sure are not - right?
FCC rules does not apply to me, so why should I care about those restrictions? This is similar to use of strong encryption and US regulations.
EU rules don't apply to me, but I care about RoHS restrictions because manufacturers tend to design to the most restrictive set of regulations that will apply to a product. Same deal with FCC regulations, in a broad sense.
I wouldn't have considered that extreme when I was running tech support for one of the major computer manufacturers of the dot com day. We didn't use scripts and I would have expected any of the 350 or so techs to be able to solve the problem - and they would have. Now maybe things have changed - I haven't been involved in tech support for about 8 years, but I still don't think that I'd categorize that as an extreme case. Maybe an interesting case.
And, not to be a grammar nazi, it's the "Recycle Bin".
The disastrous effects on the US economy will be felt for decades to come, assuming it actually ever recovers.
Indeed - with the stock market well over 10,000 and unemployment under 5%, it's an absolute disaster.
The number of murders of innocents by this administration in its mindless pursuit of greed and power.
They eat children, too!
And most scarey of all, if it was truly the American electorate, and not just those Diebold machines, which was responsible for the reelection of the most seriously moronic president in history!!!!!
No kidding! That wretched democratic process ought to be done away with. The people can't be trusted with that kind of power!
Slashdot Mirror
I'll bet all the 9/11 conspiracy theorists are ready to join up with the moon landing conspiracy theorists to form the new conspiracy brotherhood.
We should all welcome our new conspiratorial overlords!
-h-
A good conspiracy theorist never lets the facts get in the way of a good conspiracy.
I've watched the video, too, and I have to say that the "experts" that they trot out are just hilarious. It also seems odd to me that news reporting of 9/11 stopped in September - oh wait, those pesky facts again.
I never give up on these guys - it's like watching a dog chase its tail - they go 'round and 'round in circles and put on a hilarious show. More power to 'em!
-h-
Powerful, like the evidence that we never went to the moon. Damn straight, brother!
Holy cow, some of you guys just crack me up!
Hey, I did as much research for my comment as the producers of Loose Change did for their documentary!
Oh yeah...it was a joke. Don't take it personally.
Double oh yeah - the first sentence of this post is a joke, too. Don't take it personally, either.
-h-
It's obviously all B.S., but it does make you think.
It makes me think that there way too many looney toons out there...
-h-
And it's also legal to shoot a half-grizzly, even though shooting grizzlies is illegal?
It's illegal to shoot a grizzly if you have a polar bear tag. Maybe he gets to keep half the bear and pay half the fine.
-h-
Hey, if nothing else: DDT was directly responsible for roof collapses in Borneo.
Actually, DDT was indirectly responsible for the roof collapses. The IUCN link that you provided suggests that poor preparation of the thatch, leading to vulnerability to parasites was the direct cause of the roof collapses. DDT was just the catalyst.
I think that the report also draws the conclusion that the unintended consequences of the spraying were relatively minor compared to the benefits. Of course, if it was my roof sitting on my floor, I might think differently.
I do have to say, though, that the cat drop thing really paints a funny picture in my mind. I know that they were dropped in containers, but I can't help but think of a million little kitties, each with his own parachute, gently drifting to the ground to land gently on (of course) all four feet.
I'm glad it's Friday.
-h-
Power = heat.
AC = cool
Here's some things that can blast your smugness damn fast:
* Divorce. Say goodbye to your reserves with your first visit to an attorney. My case - $30,000 + down the tube.
* Catastrophic illness while unemployed, no health insurance. Thousands of bucks.
* Long term unemployment. Welcome to tech reality. It takes a long time to find a job. Six months is optimistic. I've had friends waiting eighteen months.
And it's really easy to buy a cheap home after prices have gone up 9-10% per year for the last decade. Average price of a home is well over 200k across the country. Where should you live, a cardboard box? Don't say rent - in many areas you can't find a good home to rent.
don't h
Things are messed up, my friend. Your planning is at risk to economic fate. Don't judge everyone so quickly.
So is your answer to not structure your finances to anticipate an emergency? True, you could end up divorced, ill and unemployed. So? The OP had a good, if impersonal, point to make. If you're living paycheck to paycheck, you're asking for trouble. On the other hand, if that's the way you want to live, fine with me.
I've got 10 months' pay socked away and my house is paid for. It's not because I'm lucky, it's because I made a plan and stuck to it. I was unemployed for a while, too, but I also recognized that if I really wanted a job, I could find one. It meant moving away for ten years and, at one point, it meant a career change, but, in the end, it was worth it.
Back in the late 80s or early 90s, I lived in Newport, RI. Now, that's an expensive place to live. I had a lot of friends who were unemployed and had been for months because the economy there was (and may still be, for all I know) completely in the crapper. 30 miles (as the crow flies) away, in Providence, there were plenty of jobs. Of course, at the time (and maybe now, haven't been back for a while), that 30 miles was about 50 miles of really bad road, so commuting wasn't really feasible. When I pointed out to my buddies that there was work in Providence, their answer, to a one, was that they couldn't leave "the island". Good jobs were there, but they wouldn't move even 30 miles to get one.
All I'm saying is that success takes work and along the way, things can go bad. It happened to me - I went through a divorce, I was unemployed. Fortunately I didn't get sick. But you deal with each setback, go through the anger and the disappointment for a reasonable time, then figure out how to get back on track.
On the other hand, if you'd rather just decide that it's not worth the trouble, that's OK, too. It's no skin off my back. My plan for success is my own and I wouldn't dream of imposing it on anybody else.
-h-
I'm not picking nits - you said (and I'm paraphrasing you much better than you did me) that there is little difference between the US and China.
If you truly believe that, then I'm not going to change your mind, so I guess the debate ends - you're letting hyperbole and FUD take the place of facts.
However, I will point out that I did not say that we should expect harsh consequences for exercising our rights. Read what I said again.
In the US, you have the freedom to say what you wish. You do not necessarily have the freedom to say what you wish anywhere you wish to say it. And that's nothing new, nor is it some sort of repression of your rights. As the saying goes, there is a time and a place for everything. In this case, it would appear that Dr. Wang was tremendously out of place. Does Dr. Wang deserve to be deported? I don't know - but common sense would tell her that she was certainly risking it.
Now, if her case actually goes to court, you'll see a very significant difference between the US and China. The court will be open and she will be well represented. But I suspect that it will not even come to that. I suspect that the charges will be dropped and this will pass on.
As I've mentioned, I'm not going to change your mind, so I'm not going to waste my time and yours explaining why your reply is filled with inaccurate conjecture and pretzel logic.
And, as I've been saying all along, you really haven't made the point that somehow, in America, we're all encouraged to turn each other in. Before you took this detour, I think that was what you were trying to prove.
-h-
How dare you pollute this off-topic discussion with FACTS??? Oh, the shame of it all!
A miss is as good as a mile. Or 5 million miles.
My point is that American citizens are being encouraged to inform on each other also. There is no need to single China out. The U.S. and Europe are rapidly heading in that direction(not informant related, but the idea is the same). Don't even try to deny it. The details that seperate us are very few and quite minor indeed.
Not at all the same and if that was your point, you haven't even come close to making it. A provision to allow intelligence agencies to conduct investigations without revealing the reason for the investigation was proposed two years ago and deep sixed. That has nothing to do with encouraging American citizens to inform upon each other - now maybe you're thinking of the DOJ plan a few years ago that encouraged Americans to report suspicious activity via a toll-free hotline. Now, I'll agree that was a pretty poorly conceived and executed plan that never should have seen the light of day. It was gone very quickly - the spectre of Senator McCarthy is still rather uncomfortable to a lot of Americans.
And the link regarding Dr. Wang - it has nothing at all to do with your point. In fact, she misused her press credentials. It doesn't mean that the reason for her protest is not valid, but, like many forms of non-violent protest, there are consequences to actions. While she claims that she was only committing civil disobedience, not a crime, she seems to not realize that the one can lead to the other. Freedom of speech does not imply that you can say anything you want anywhere you want. That's certainly nothing new in the US.
So, yes, I deny that the differences between the US and China are are few and minor. The differences are extraordinary.
And, for the record, if what Dr. Wang (and others) say is true, then I agree with what she says. But not with the venue that she chose.
-h-
...freedom in neighboring HK...
Well, "freedom" in HK versus "freedom" in the rest of China is certainly a relative thing.
A man sleeping in a cardboard box may be the envy of the man sleeping under a newspaper, but I wouldn't want to be in either situation.
-h-
...Defense officials recently slipped a provision into a bill before Congress...
/.ers would be on him like stink on shit demanding details. What provision? What bill? What was the vote in the committee? What about the corresponding bill in the House?
Yeah, those defense officials yelled, "LOBBYIST!", and when Congress looked the other way, they slipped the provision in the bill.
Man, if somebody posted a comment like Isikoff's here (which, incidentally, is almost two years old!),
BTW, the provision (Section 502) that was "slipped into" the Senate bill (S.2386/HR.4548) was eliminated in the conference committee.
-h-
OK, OK, seven companies.
In the news recently: Samsung, Hynix, Infineon, Qwest, Worldcom: big-ass fines. Merck, Philip Morris: civil damages. Five companies with an absolute boatload of cash.
Secondly, to say that the United States didn't overthrow their government is retarded. They did. In the exact same way Castro did.
...my country (Canada) gained our independence without armed conflict.
Exactly! The revolutionaries sailed from the colonies to Britain in a yacht filled with explosives and weapons. Their initial attempt to depose George III failed, but with a guerilla campaign staged from the mountains in the north, they were able to force George III to flee the country, along with the accumulated wealth of the treasury. George Washington marched into London in triumph and was declared the premier. Britain eventually became a workers' paradise. Just like Cuba!
God save the Queen!
-h-
If you can't figure out why non-US citizens should care about the policies of the largest importer of goods, Of course we do! We are financing your consumerism and Iraq war.
I think that you have it backwards - the US imports goods and "exports" money. If "you" were financing US consumerism and the Iraq war, the flow of money would be going the other way. In fact, you could make a better case that the US was financing your opposition of the war (assuming that you're posting from a country that does not support the war and one from which the US imports more than it exports).
the largest economy, You sure got the largest debt.
Read Milton Friedman and other economists of his ilk. You'll find it enlightening.
the largest provider of foreign aid, You mean weapons?
No, actually Russia exports more weapons than any other country - at least according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The US is the largest provider of non-military foreign aid in the world.
the largest IMF contributor To protect the interests of companies like Enron.
You mean companies like Enron, whose executives are being aggressively prosecuted by the US government? There is quite a list of companies whose executives are looking down the business end of a long prison sentence these days.
a permenant member of the UN security council, Yo got that one right. If you only paid your fees to UN.
The US does, for the most part, with the exception of its peacekeeping assessment which is still being negotiated. If you're talking about the withheld dues from the 1990's, put your mind at ease. The $620 million was paid several years ago.
and the largest military power Yes, it's obscene in it's size.
You're entitled to your opinion, of course. Clearly the US spends more in actual dollars than any other country. Of course, even without Iraq, the US has more responsibilities to other countries than any other country. And yet, as a percentage of GDP, the US is right in the middle of the pack, spending a little over 3% of its GDP on defense.
You don't like the US, I think, and that's OK. But if you're not going to like the US, don't like the US for the right reasons. Don't just make things up. Let me give you some reasons:
As the world's largest economy, the US should increase its amount of non-military foreign aid. It's not enough to be number one, the number should be a larger amount of GDP.
The US should work to reduce or eliminate the debt owed by developing countries, particularly that which was incurred by previous regimes.
The US should do more to encourage repressive governments to stop human rights abuses. Giving MFN status to China is a real head-scratcher.
Financial power is not a baseball bat.
There you go, some reasons to not like the US.
I, however, like the US a lot. I am, of course, very biased. You, I'm sure are not - right?
-h-
FCC rules does not apply to me, so why should I care about those restrictions? This is similar to use of strong encryption and US regulations.
EU rules don't apply to me, but I care about RoHS restrictions because manufacturers tend to design to the most restrictive set of regulations that will apply to a product. Same deal with FCC regulations, in a broad sense.
-h-
...why should I as an EU citizen care about FCC regulations?
For the same reason that I, as a US citizen, should care about the EU's RoHS regulations.
I wouldn't have considered that extreme when I was running tech support for one of the major computer manufacturers of the dot com day. We didn't use scripts and I would have expected any of the 350 or so techs to be able to solve the problem - and they would have. Now maybe things have changed - I haven't been involved in tech support for about 8 years, but I still don't think that I'd categorize that as an extreme case. Maybe an interesting case.
And, not to be a grammar nazi, it's the "Recycle Bin".
-h-
The difference being that "President" is a title of respect and authority, and from me, Bush has neither.
As we said in the Navy, you salute the rank, not the person.
The disastrous effects on the US economy will be felt for decades to come, assuming it actually ever recovers.
Indeed - with the stock market well over 10,000 and unemployment under 5%, it's an absolute disaster.
The number of murders of innocents by this administration in its mindless pursuit of greed and power.
They eat children, too!
And most scarey of all, if it was truly the American electorate, and not just those Diebold machines, which was responsible for the reelection of the most seriously moronic president in history!!!!!
No kidding! That wretched democratic process ought to be done away with. The people can't be trusted with that kind of power!
-h-
The real suprize is that EA lost, especially in this employee-hostile day & age...
I think that IBM, Microsoft, UPS and Wal-Mart might disagree with you. And those are just the multimillion dollar settlements.
As somebody else pointed out, though, the real shame of it all is that the big payday will be for the attorneys.
-h-