Of course it's been said before, but investing in all these whiz-bang anti-terrorism devices is missing the point. You can't fight a social phenomenon such as terrorism with technology. You have to address its root cause(s). Right now, the root cause of terrorism is overwhelmingly the massive injustices thrust upon the people of the Middle East in the name of grabbing their oil. It would be a lot cheaper for the US to forget this bullshit 'war on terrorism' and relocate all the Israelis to Washington. After all, the US is Israel's closest ally. Why shouldn't such friends live so close together.
As hard as it may be to accept the majority of britsh, indeed the world are not against the war in Iraq/Afghanistan. No you won't hear about them in the news because they are the SILENT majority who either just don't give a shit or are in support.
That's not the case at all. In every single country in the world, the majority of people now agree that the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were wrong, and sold to us by lies and deception. In addition, a majority of people in a majority of countries want to see an immediate end to the occupations of these 2 countries ( amongst others ). Sure, the US, UK and Australia lag behind on this count - instead of a clear majority, we are in a large minority.
The problem for those in the coalition of the killing is that we don't live in a democracy, so what the majority of people want dosn't matter. Quite literally, our views on these issues were not counted. There are opinion polls, sure... and they all confirm what I've just said. But in a democracy, there are valid method for taking such opinion polls and achieving a materialisation of people's wishes. However our ruling class has no interest in such bullshit, and are far more interested in waging illegal wars and shoving lies, racism, intollerence and extreme right-wing propoganda down our throats via the media moguls.
With this in mind, it's no surprise to me that people are confused over the facts regarding so-called 'popular' support of the occupations of Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, etc, etc.
Wages will remain under attack for precisely the same amount of time as ordinary workers attack the wages of people in other countries.
The old 'but if we raise wages, all our jobs will go overseas' arguement breaks down when the working class, as a whole, stands up and says "We will not buy from countries until they raise their minimum wage to the same level as ours".
Of course at this point, items in Walmart will cease to become astonishingly cheap. But I think society should be able to easily offset this by extracting some money from the highest 'earners' ( I use that term very loosely in this context ) and redistributing it amongst everybody else. I'm not necessarily saying everyone should earn exactly the same amount. But there's a point where ordinary people agree that enough is maybe more than enough, and past that point, perhaps these people aren't 'earning', but stealing from their fellow humans.
My my, you are quite full of yourself, aren't you?
On the one hand, you claim to be clairvoyant ( which I seriously doubt ), and on the other hand, you assert with full force that there is no such thing as telepathy. You can't have it both ways. Well, clearly you think you can, but only because you have no idea what you're talking about. You're American, aren't you?
No you didn't. I am clairvoyant and I was there and you did not.
When I said 'we', I wasn't referring to you - I was referring to Fantastic Lad. As for the rest of your post, I don't really find your attitude very... friendly... so I'll simply refrain from responding to the rest of it. I will, however, say that I can see you have unresolved issues relating to telepathy, as evidenced by the acidic response you have when people claim they have experienced it. While it's your right to take whatever view on the topic that you choose, you are only closing yourself off to information and relationship with people holding said information, as well as getting yourself worked up into a state for no reason. It's not hurting me. When I get this response now, I simply shake my head and turn around.
They have a number of downloadable PDF booklets for sale that go to incredible detail in explaining how to make fuel cell systems. I bought one about a year ago. Admittedly I haven't built anything yet ( procrastinating ), but I've sourced all the parts, and it looks like you can built cells for around $40 ( Australian ) per cell... which gives you about 0.5V. Of course you need to built a lot to do anything useful. Anyway, even without building anything, it's worth it just for the reading.
Wow dude. You've completely missed our points. We have both experienced telepathy first-hand. We require no further proof. What we're discussing is whether telepathy is able to be proved. Your attitude is the exact one I was referring to when I said that proof carries an assumption of a negative result. Until you can drop this attitude, your own personal proof will never materialise, and you will always be a sceptic, insisting that the 'believers' proove something to you. As my original post argued ( and Fantastic Lad's concurred ), it doesn't work like that. It's not testable. You will have to accept that there is an area - a very large area in fact - of mystic and psychadelic experience that is beyond scientific inquiry. It's a hard situation to accept for someone who has never experienced what we're talking about, but trust us, this is how it works.
Telepathy happens spontaneously, and only when the people involved are in a very particular state of mind - one in which they are open to the experience. Many and varied experiments have led me to believe that any attempt at 'proving', in the scientific sense, the existence of telepathy is doomed to failure. I haven't quite come to a stable conclusion as to why this is so, but here is my best shot so far: the act of 'proving' injects the assumption that a negative result is possible. To be more precise, you are actually working from the state where telepathy is not recognised, and trying to prove that it does exist. This state of mind precludes the experience of telepathy.
I will note that there are numerous warnings in the bible and other religious texts not to try to put God 'to the test'.
Perhaps we are hitting a similar barrier to what early quantum mechanics researchers discovered in the uncertainty principle.
Anyway, I salute those who are trying to prove the existence of telepathy. However I fear they won't be getting any positive results. I've seen shared telepathic experiences that others will agree on later, but I've never seen anything that would hold up to a scientist. Everything is wrapped in context a mile thick, and only really takes on meaning to people personally involved in the event. I haven't seen anything a scientist would like, such as transferring data around. I've seen thoughts, feelings, reactios, points of view, and reactions, etc merged into a nice big mess. It sure as hell impresses those who experience it, but it wouldn't 'prove' anything. Perhaps someone has a different experience?
ATI's track record of Linux support is appauling, the most recent example being their pulling support for all pre-R300 cards. They also flatly refuse to assist DRI developers working on the R300, claiming that their own driver 'supports' the R300 and above line. But in all honesty, that 'support' is patchy at best, and the writing is on the wall for R300 support as well - pretty soon only the new X1xx cards will be supported.
Locking when switching between X and a console are NOT FIXED despite what the article says - ATI simply marked the bug page in bugzilla as 'fixed'. There are lockups with XGL. The XPRESS chipset is very badly supported and very slow - my friend's Turion-based laptop with an XPRESS chipset plays UT2004 slower than my Athlon XP 1600 with an original Radeon 7200 with DRI drivers! 2D performance is pathetic. There is no XRENDER acceleration. Suspending / hibernating doesn't work. XCOMPOSITE support is non-existant. The list goes on and on.
If people want a gaming card, buy an nVidia, or you will be sorry. If gaming isn't so important, buy a something with an Intel chipset - they have excellent open-source drivers, and are only getting better. I installed XGL on a laptop with an Intel i945G card last weekend, and I was shocked by it's impressive performance - XGL in particular was as smooth as I've ever seen it...
The economy is all of us - not just 'business'. When you hurt business the ocmmunity suffers.
That's the defense that capitalists always turn to, yes. But the simply fact is that businesses will only ever pay workers as little as they can possibly get away with. When the economy is going strongly, they take all the profits - wages do not rise - and they certainly won't rise now with Work Choices ( Business Choices ). But when the economy is going badly, businesses us this as an excuse to decimate wages and sack workers, while they still take profits... just slightly lower profits.
The most telling of statistics is the distibution of wealth. 1% of the population own 99% of the wealth. It's about time some serious redistribution happened, along with some serious discussion about how things got so out of whack to start with. Your bleeding heart story about how the royal economy is working in my best interest doesn't help the average worker who has been taking home less in real wages each year since Howard was voted in, while paying more in rent, interest, food costs, GST, petrol, etc, etc. The economy is working in someone's interests, that's for sure. But not mine, and not most people's.
Considering Bob Brown's starve-in-the-dark economic policy
That's an assisine comment. There's a world of difference between a sensible, substainable economy, and one that consumes all resources as fast as possible for the biggest short-term profits. The Greens argue for a sustainable economy. There's no sane person left on the planet who claims that our current resource usage is sustainable. It's just that mainstream political parties have no interest in doing anything about it.
Mark Latham's post-election meltdown
It was hardly a meltdown. He let of some steam, that's for sure. If I were him, I would have felt the same way. Labor castritates his policies and threw the election to the Liberals so they could continue to play to the conservative factions ( inside and out ) Latham would have actually been a leader, whereas Howard is simply following the US ruling class all the way to hell. But on the topic of meltdowns, I seem to remember a certain prominent Liberal politician attempting suicide ( and failing ). Now that was a meltdown. Latham was just venting.
There may very well be, however it won't last long. ATI have a new policy of pulling support for their products even while they're still selling new in the stores. They recently dropped support of the R200 ( see http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33856 854 ).
This may be marked as a troll, and maybe this wouldn't be out of line, but I still warn you:
Do not buy ATI products if you use or intend to use Linux. Otherwise you will be sorry.
Seeing as the Kyoto protocol excludes China and India, signing it would just make us export more pollution-causing industry over there. (Not In My Backyard) I'm sure those countries will care deeply about the environment... yeah right.
Both these countries have taken concrete steps to reduce their emmisions. Even if they hadn't the old "nah, but everyone else is doing it" arguement is immature and will get us nowhere.
With reprocessing, we have lots of good fuel.
I just responded to another comment along the same lines. People seem to think that uranium is some kind of perpetual motion device, that they can put into a 'reprocessing' plant, and extract ever more energy. You can't. You have to inject huge amounts of energy each time you reprocess the fuel. It's a net energy sink. Reprocessing is only useful for making weapons, where you need 99% pure uranium. Apart from being a net energy sink, and it's only use being in making nuclear weapons, it also irradiates yet more matter. People who argue for alternatives to fossil fuel on the basis of protecting the environment, and in the same breath argue for nuclear technology, are either deluded or extremely dishonest.
We invent new technology, expect to use it, and expect that costs won't rise. Huh? We're expecting to get more for less.
That's because the research is private research towards private property ( patents ). Make all research public - ie open-source medical research, and this problem will disappear. This arguement also smacks of the 'user-pays' notion. User-pays is great for luxury goods, but for necessities such as health and education, access should be universal, which means free ( as there are always some people who are unable to pay ). So this means we need a combination of open-source medical knowledge, with large subsidies from the government to keep the system going. The altervative is the sitation where only the rich can afford medical care, which is patently absurd, and outright evil.
The attitude is "I'll pay anything to save my dying children!". We then act all offended that the hospital bill heads toward infinity.
Well people are saying the wrong thing. Sure - parents would pay anything to save their dying children if they had to. But they shouldn't have to. This is what society is about - people working together to smooth out the irregularities of life, so that everyone achieves a better life. Some people will suffer bad luck and will be subsided. Some people will enjoy good luck. But society flattens this out - that's what it's about. The common misconception is that to make this work, everyone has to suffer a decreased standard of living. The reality is that we ALL suffer a decreased standard of living, as we are ALL paying dearly for the excessive standard of living of the ruling class ( the top 1% who own 99% of the wealth ). Tax the Christ out of them, and there will be plenty of health care to go around.
Over in India, patients have a very limited ability to sue for malpractice and pain and suffering and... Medicine is cheap there. Over here, some doctors must pay millions of dollars per year for malpractice insurance.
That's the fault of your legal system and 'me first' society. Stop suing everyone, who don't you?
With health care ( as with everything ) society must decide:
- how much of the product is produced - how it is to be distributed
So. Decide to produce enough health care for population, and then decide to distribute it fairly. In my books, 'fairly' means that whoever needs health care gets it, no matter how much money they or their parents have. As for who's going to pay for it, similary, those who can afford to pay, should pay. Clearly those who can't afford to pay, can't. If you want to investigate these issues further, you must start asking the question: why is it that some people have so much, while others have so little?
Do you not know we can use nuclear waste as fuel, or are you opposed to the technology?
Well, firstly I'd say that the technology doesn't really exist as most people claim that it does. You can't magically 'reprocess' radioactive waste and expect to get a net gain. It's not a perpetual motion device. Sure you can take waste that isn't quite up to the standard of nuclear fuel, and 'reprocess' it to your heart's content, irradiating more and more matter as you go, pumping more and more energy into it, but this isn't going to achieve your goal of squeezing more energy out of it. Far from it. It's a net energy sink. The main motivating factor for these 'reprocessing' plants is not to turn waste into fuel and water into wine, but to turn low-grade uranium into eith 99% pure uranium or plutonium, for use in nuclear weapons. But that use isn't something that politicians like to talk about so much, so instead we're fed the BS that they're 'reprocessing' fuel for reuse. Why doesn't the oil industry 'reprocess' exhaust from cars? It's a joke.
the long lived stuff is relatively harmless
That's a pretty arbitrary statement, and not one that's going to convince me. The fact is that all radioactivity is dangerous - it's just a matter of how dangerous. We have evolved to live in an environment with a certain amount of background radiation. If you add to that level, you're rolling the dice for all of us. You don't have the right to do that. No-one does. One of the basic, inalienable rights of life is to enjoy our planet in it's natural state, not polluted by smog, acid rain, and so-called 'safe' radioactivity.
Bury the waste at a geological subduction zone, far beneath the water table, and wait for it to be sucked back into the mantle.
There are always people who say "Oh but we could do this with it, and that with it. In your example, who is to say that the stuff will be sucked back into the mantle. What if, instead of being sucked into the mantle, it gets blasted up into the atmosphere? And who is burying it like this anyway? Over 50% of radioactive waste that comes from reactors gets shoved in 44 gallon drums and chucked into the ocean. On SBS later this week there is a documentary on illegal nuclear waste dumping in a quarry in Germany. I don't trust corporations OR governments to do the right thing. They invariably prove that they cannot. Why keep giving them the befenit of the doubt? That's naive, and exposing thousands of generations to come to radioactive waste that they simply need not be exposed to ( whether you claim it is 'safe' or not ). It's unnecessary. There are also millions of tons of radioactive waste produced in mining uranium that simply gets left to it's own devices. Over half of the radioactivity in uranium gets left in this waste - which isn't categorised as waste. It then gets into the foodstream and water supply, and eventually ends up in the ocean.
We can seperate out the waste that lasts decades and store it in a safe vault, and then take the stuff that lasts thousands of years and use the method described above.
That's just pie-in-the-sky bullshit from the pro-nuclear lobby. Western civilisation has only been around for a couple of hundred years. How the hell are we supposed to guarantee that this so-called magical vault will last thousands of years? That's ridiculous!
Nuclear power is the most dangerous and costly way ever devised to boil water. The only uses for nuclear technology are:
- creating profits for mining and energy companies, who receive massive government subsidies that should be going towards CLEAN renewable technology
Except, of course, for creating the largest public health care segment in decades -- the Medicare prescription plan.
It depends on which way you measure it. It might be the case that the system has the largest absolute budget, but this is spread across a very large number of people. If you look at the expenditure per capita, a very different picture emerges. The US is practically the worst in the Western world for health care. That's why the most common reason why people are put in gaol ( jail for Yanks ) is for non-payment of medical bills. I wouldn't go around scoffing at your health-care system if I were you. The US system is what everyone else in the western world points at, and say "at least we're not that fucked up yet".
Except, of course, that this went down to defeat with even the Republicans in Congress showing moderately strong opposition to it.
Um. I'm not following you here. Are you saying that Republicans actually argued for spending MORE money on social security? I think you're mistaken.
Except, of course, that more money goes into the public education system from the federal government than ever before. Federal spending on pre-university education in terms of percent GDP rose by more than 40% from 2000 to 2006, and up by about two-thirds in 2000 dollars.
That's not what I hear. Admittedly, I'm not 100% up to date on the minor details, but I have read numerous articles over the past 10 years about public school closures, and funds being redirected to private education. I think that even in absolute terms the amount of money in the public education system has been reducing significantly, and I can say with absolute certainty that the amount per-capita has been decreasing at an alarming rate.
I find it hard to fathom that there are people who are actually arguing that the Republicans are supposedly adding to public spending. Even Americans know that is bullshit.
The US has nearly 17,000 generators combining for a total nameplate output of more than a million megawatts, of which almost 11,000 are fossil fueled plants with nameplate capacities of about 825,000 megawatts. Converting that takes time, and at the moment, there isn't enough renewable capacity to even dent that
No kidding. You can't argue that there is little research because there are few solutions. The research is intended to produce solutions. Bush has scaled back research into renewables, just as Howard has done here in Australia, while rejecting the Kyoto Protocol and asserting the rights of the big energy companies to keep on polluting... in the name of jobs of course.
including the Dept of Energy assisting with a non-PV solar plant in Southern California that will have a rated capacity of about 500MW
That's a token effort - a drop in the ocean at best. It really means nothing in the long run. We need to be doing this everywhere.
There has also been significant work done to smooth the process for getting nuclear plants approved, however, so with some luck, we'll be able to take a nice chunk out with that. It's not renewable (not in the conventional sense), but it's a lot more stable than wind and solar.
No it's not. There is enough uranium in the world for about 10 years of total energy consumption, and then you have millions of tons of radioactive waste that will be around for millions of years to come. Which company - or civilisation for that matter - is going to be around in millions of years to safeguard the world from this waste? Who will pay to maintain the containment? Not the companies that profited from it, you can be sure of that. And then there's the issue of the US breaking the non-proliferation treaty. I say that if Iraq and Iran deserve to be invaded to for
Sadly, nothing sparks innovation and technology like war and disasters.
Under the current capitalist regime, I agree. I certainly wouldn't expect Dubya to be forking out money for, say, ordinary Americans who have lost limbs and need replacements. Any suggestion of creating some sort of ( I'd better say this quietly ) public health system is met with absolute horror by the Republicans and the ruling class... and the Democrats too. But of course soldiers are somewhat more useful than ordinary citizens, as they are carrying out the agenda of big business, in particilar big oil and the weapons manufacturers. But don't hold you breath waiting for a worker getting one of these paid for by the state because they lost an arm in an accident at work.
Axe public health? Check. Axe social security? Check. Axe public education? They're most certainly working on it. Ignore urgent need to invest in renewable resources? Check.
There's seriously not much more they can axe to funnel more money into the military, is there?
Exactly how much of this bullshit can Americans handle before they stop bleeting the line that they're 'rulers of the free world'?
The 'free people' bit raised a few chuckles around my workplace. After all the stories of the US government rapidly meeting their aim of converting the country to a fascist state, with universal surveilence of all ( including bank records ), I find it laughable that Americans still consider themselves free. There are also a plethora of countries around the world who have experienced first-hand the flip-side of US imperialist 'freedom'.
By all means - run the ads in New York. But don't show them to the rest of the world. You'll get a different reaction.
Also, why is there mention of Windows and Mac support, but no mention of Linux? Last time I checked, Mac support wasn't nearly as complete as Linux support...
As for socialists burning stuff down... yeah that happens, but not by us. We always seem to attract anarchists to demos, and yes they like destroying things. There has been been tension here in Sydney over that kind of thing too - we call a demo, many thousands turn out and have a peaceful time, and a couple of idiots decide to start breaking things. We obviously discourage it, but there's not much you can do really.
Rich = everyone who's not starving, according to them.
No that's not the case at all. We do think these things through. The key point is that it is easy to demonstrate that most people will be better off under our system. For example, in every developed capitalist economy, over 90% of the wealth is held by 1% of the population. The more entrenched the capitalist system is, the worse the situation gets. I believe the US is the worst in the world on this statistic. With this statistic in mind, it's clear that a very large majority of people will be a HELL of a lot better off under a socialist system. The arguement that YOU will have to pay more tax is 100% wrong if you are in the working class. The working class will receive a MASSIVE windfall in the form of a redistribution of wealth. This will then have massive flow-on effects. For example, instead of every single working class family having to buy a massive home loan to purchase accomodation, they will most likely ALREADY own a home. There are more homes than people already. The problem is that the working class are forced to firstly pay for rent ( paying interest for someone else's loan ) and then pay interest a 2nd time to purchase a house that has a MASSIVELY inflated value because housing is traded as a commodity. So if you own an investment property, then you will probably not be impressed with what we want to do, as we argue that each family should have 1st rights to housing, before other people have a change to get their greedy hands on 2 ( or in > 80% of cases, many hundreds ) of houses.
But then again I think even the richest shouldn't be paying any taxes, just like everyone else (how's that for equality?).
At this point, society will collapse completely. I recently spent a month in Cambodia. They don't pay taxes there. The place is a mess - literally. There's no garbage service, so people throw their rubbish on the street. There's no public health, so people die of preventable diseases. ( Actually, on this point, I believe the No 1 cause of people ending up in gaol in the US is non-payment of medical fees, which is a direct result of you having no public health service - or at least none worth mentioning ). The roads are dirt. The water is not drinkable. Education is a joke - families with money send their children overseas. The list of issues is practically endless... and one of the worst points is that they all lead to delinquency and crime. Advanced societies require funds for public works. It's as simple as that.
HOW can you subsidize the poor if not with the money of the rich? You can reduce waste and all that, do without the army... but still it would be tax-payers' money!
It depends which way you look at it. The rich amongst us will defend their right to keep 'their' money. But where did 'their' money come from? Why do they have so much, while others have so little? The answer is that the rich use money in a different way to the rest of us. They use it as a weapon. If you have enough money, you can use it to continue to make money ( leeching off others ) and not work another day in your life. Take investment properties. Socialists see this as being completely wrong. Even those who don't identify themselves as being socialist will agree that there are particular items which should not be bought and sold as simple commodities on the open market. The reason is that this trading artificially inflates the price
my taxes would skyrocket in order to subsidize the lazy leeches who think everything should be free because they're worth it
What gives you the impression that would happen? Socialism isn't about giving everybody the right to do nothing and 'leech', as you put it. This is a common complaint of people who know that they oppose socialism, but don't know why.
However you also have to keep in mind that while there would obviously be systems in place to make sure that enough work is done to sustain the agreed standard of living, that people will in fact have to work a lot LESS, as our current level of work is only to sustain the fabulously rich leeches amongst us right now - the ruling class. When their wealth is shared more evenly around, there will simply be less work required, and yet more wealth accessible to people.
Those who don't work now wouldn't do it in such a system either, but they would be more than adequately sustained by the workers (me).
Exactly. There will always be people who try their hardest to do nothing. This problem faces capitalist systems to the same degree that it does all other systems. The point is that society decides what to do about it, and then does it. It is no different under a socialist system. The difference is that workers have control over the means of production, and can make decisions that affect how we utilise resources, as opposed to under capitalism, where the ruling class tell us how they're going to utilise the resources, and then tell us how much they'll pay us to work to achieve this goal.
And why would I flee? Because unless I arm myself to the teeth and open fire on everything that moves (and die rather quickly), I will be forced to give up my hard earned money in order to pay for those too stupid to land a job.
That's absurd. You pay taxes already. You're not fleeing. There have been socialist revolutions before and the large majority of people ( ie workers ) had no intention of fleeing, because they have MORE money, not less. What makes you think you'll suddenly have to support the world's leechers on your own? It simply doesn't happen.
The moment you come and say I have to surrender my money in order to pay for those sorry excuses of human beings who gave up a long time ago is the moment my money disappears and appears again in Panama.
I didn't say that. YOU keep saying that. I don't know where you got it from, but it wasn't from our side. I suspect it's capitalist FUD.
Why does it matters? Because as a hard worker and dedicated individual, I provide my society with more value than those who do nothing. If I go away, such value won't be contributed any more.
Sure. But you're not forced to live in a co-operative, democratic society if you don't want to. If you want to flee to a capitalist system where all your hard-earned money is taken from you and handed to the ruling class, then that's your choice.
But I think you're trying to insinuate that socialists are not hard working, aren't you? Let me tell you, you're dead wrong. I've help the same ( programming & network adminsitration ) job for 8 years. I've also started doing freelance contracting on the side ( approx 20 hours per week ). I'm certainly not the odd one out amongst my comrades. The only ones I know of who aren't working are studying. What's more, they're all skilled workers. None of us are concerned that under the system we're fighting for, our hard work will be in vain because of the alleged 'leeches'.
Now please get real and realize that we (you and I and the slackers) are much better off than half of the world population
Now the arguement gets complicated. If you compare our standard of living to the rest of the world, then you have to be fair and admit that the only reason w
I don't see any actual analysis of socialism and why you think it is doomed to fail. You make blanket statements to that effect, sure. I can - and do - make the same blanket statements about capitalism.
You throw in a reference to the gulags again. They were an apparatus of the Stalinist regime, which practically every living socialist will tell you was a State Capitalist system, not a Socialist system. I can similarly make reference to Guantanimo Bay, Camp XRay, Camp Delta, Abu Graib.
You also claim that communism would be fine if we only stayed within our little system of willing participants. We agree - to a point. Firstly, revolutionary socialists believe that they can ONLY bring about a revolution when they have the support of a majority of the population. Right away, that neutralises your criticism of us affecting the 'unwilling'. But also, the International socialists argue that we can't have a successful socialist revolution in just one location, as history teaches us that the capitalist powers will do everything possible to crush a socialist system - otherwise other people would start to questions their own society.
But of course the hard workers and those who want for themselves more than an anonymous mediocrity would flee
Why would they flee? They would be better off. Indeed, after the 1918 revolution in Russia, a large majority of people enjoyed an increased standard of living. The old ruling class, of course, were in a somewhat worse position. But you claim that people would be worse off is absurd. One of the main motivations for people to want a revolution is to take back what is stolen from them by the ruling class. Explain who would be worse off, and why they would flee. Also, explain why it matters if they flee anyway.
Denying the number of deaths is hardly a winning arguement. I wouldn't have used it as a leading arguement. Keep in mind, though, that there were no war-related deaths before the invasion. The invaders MUST take responsibility for them all. In this particular case, they must also take responsibility for the MILLIONS or Iraqis who starved or died of preventable diseases, due to UN santions that prevented Iraq from doing ANYTHING other than giving us their oil for a bit of wheat. Those sanctions, that were supposed to be attacking Saddam, did nothing of the sort. They killed MILLIONS of innocent Iraq civilians, who did nothing other than be born in a country where a CIA-backed dictator had provided the US with an excuse to slap UN sanctions on their country.
After the extreme injustices that the Iraqi people have been forced to suffer for 20 years, because it suited the US at the time, you have the audacity to blame the Iraqi resistance for causing all the deaths! What fucking planet are you living on man? What the fuck?
There is also the issue of black ops - Israeli, US, UK and local forces attacking civilian targets and blaming it on the resistance to create distrust and chaos inside Iraq, and to prove their need to the rest of the world. If it weren't for these attacks on civilian targets, the US would have VERY few arguments for staying in Iraq. They badly need these attacks to continue, because it justifies their occupation. Only a couple of months ago, some UK soldiers were caught by Iraqi security forces, dressed up as civilians, and carrying explosives. They were put in a local gaol. The UK military busted the place up, rescued their 2 guys, and got the fuck out of there. There has been no talk of it since, and I don't expect there to be. This was one case where they got caught. There are many, many, many cases where they don't.
But regardless of these more digusting tactics that the US is now using, the simple fact is that the invaders are responsible for ALL deaths... particularly since the whole fucking mess was their making of the past 20 years. If the Iraqis feel the need to resist the US, I can see where they're coming from.
The term racism need not only apply to discrimination and demonisation of a people for disgusting political purposes. The issue remains the same. The lies are the same. People suffer the same consequences.
The rest of your post seems to meander about, hardly making sense, and often offending my better grammatical senses. It's clear you don't like me or my opinions, and I assure you the feelings are reciprocated. And your cheap shot about sensorship under Stalinist Russia in now way attacks the ideals that Lenin was working towards, in the years before Stalin took power. Do you know that, and are leaving that part out, because it hurts your analysis, or do you not know the difference between what Lenin was fighting for, and what became under Stalin?
And do you really have a Russian friend? My father is Estonian. He has told me a lot about Russia too.
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You make it sounds like the Democrats would do things differently.
Of course it's been said before, but investing in all these whiz-bang anti-terrorism devices is missing the point. You can't fight a social phenomenon such as terrorism with technology. You have to address its root cause(s). Right now, the root cause of terrorism is overwhelmingly the massive injustices thrust upon the people of the Middle East in the name of grabbing their oil. It would be a lot cheaper for the US to forget this bullshit 'war on terrorism' and relocate all the Israelis to Washington. After all, the US is Israel's closest ally. Why shouldn't such friends live so close together.
That's not the case at all. In every single country in the world, the majority of people now agree that the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were wrong, and sold to us by lies and deception. In addition, a majority of people in a majority of countries want to see an immediate end to the occupations of these 2 countries ( amongst others ). Sure, the US, UK and Australia lag behind on this count - instead of a clear majority, we are in a large minority.
The problem for those in the coalition of the killing is that we don't live in a democracy, so what the majority of people want dosn't matter. Quite literally, our views on these issues were not counted. There are opinion polls, sure
With this in mind, it's no surprise to me that people are confused over the facts regarding so-called 'popular' support of the occupations of Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, etc, etc.
Wages will remain under attack for precisely the same amount of time as ordinary workers attack the wages of people in other countries.
The old 'but if we raise wages, all our jobs will go overseas' arguement breaks down when the working class, as a whole, stands up and says "We will not buy from countries until they raise their minimum wage to the same level as ours".
Of course at this point, items in Walmart will cease to become astonishingly cheap. But I think society should be able to easily offset this by extracting some money from the highest 'earners' ( I use that term very loosely in this context ) and redistributing it amongst everybody else. I'm not necessarily saying everyone should earn exactly the same amount. But there's a point where ordinary people agree that enough is maybe more than enough, and past that point, perhaps these people aren't 'earning', but stealing from their fellow humans.
My my, you are quite full of yourself, aren't you?
On the one hand, you claim to be clairvoyant ( which I seriously doubt ), and on the other hand, you assert with full force that there is no such thing as telepathy. You can't have it both ways. Well, clearly you think you can, but only because you have no idea what you're talking about. You're American, aren't you?
When I said 'we', I wasn't referring to you - I was referring to Fantastic Lad. As for the rest of your post, I don't really find your attitude very
Check out: http://www.goodideacreative.com/fuel_cell.html.
... which gives you about 0.5V. Of course you need to built a lot to do anything useful. Anyway, even without building anything, it's worth it just for the reading.
They have a number of downloadable PDF booklets for sale that go to incredible detail in explaining how to make fuel cell systems. I bought one about a year ago. Admittedly I haven't built anything yet ( procrastinating ), but I've sourced all the parts, and it looks like you can built cells for around $40 ( Australian ) per cell
Wow dude. You've completely missed our points. We have both experienced telepathy first-hand. We require no further proof. What we're discussing is whether telepathy is able to be proved. Your attitude is the exact one I was referring to when I said that proof carries an assumption of a negative result. Until you can drop this attitude, your own personal proof will never materialise, and you will always be a sceptic, insisting that the 'believers' proove something to you. As my original post argued ( and Fantastic Lad's concurred ), it doesn't work like that. It's not testable. You will have to accept that there is an area - a very large area in fact - of mystic and psychadelic experience that is beyond scientific inquiry. It's a hard situation to accept for someone who has never experienced what we're talking about, but trust us, this is how it works.
Telepathy happens spontaneously, and only when the people involved are in a very particular state of mind - one in which they are open to the experience. Many and varied experiments have led me to believe that any attempt at 'proving', in the scientific sense, the existence of telepathy is doomed to failure. I haven't quite come to a stable conclusion as to why this is so, but here is my best shot so far: the act of 'proving' injects the assumption that a negative result is possible. To be more precise, you are actually working from the state where telepathy is not recognised, and trying to prove that it does exist. This state of mind precludes the experience of telepathy.
I will note that there are numerous warnings in the bible and other religious texts not to try to put God 'to the test'.
Perhaps we are hitting a similar barrier to what early quantum mechanics researchers discovered in the uncertainty principle.
Anyway, I salute those who are trying to prove the existence of telepathy. However I fear they won't be getting any positive results. I've seen shared telepathic experiences that others will agree on later, but I've never seen anything that would hold up to a scientist. Everything is wrapped in context a mile thick, and only really takes on meaning to people personally involved in the event. I haven't seen anything a scientist would like, such as transferring data around. I've seen thoughts, feelings, reactios, points of view, and reactions, etc merged into a nice big mess. It sure as hell impresses those who experience it, but it wouldn't 'prove' anything. Perhaps someone has a different experience?
ATI's track record of Linux support is appauling, the most recent example being their pulling support for all pre-R300 cards. They also flatly refuse to assist DRI developers working on the R300, claiming that their own driver 'supports' the R300 and above line. But in all honesty, that 'support' is patchy at best, and the writing is on the wall for R300 support as well - pretty soon only the new X1xx cards will be supported.
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Locking when switching between X and a console are NOT FIXED despite what the article says - ATI simply marked the bug page in bugzilla as 'fixed'. There are lockups with XGL. The XPRESS chipset is very badly supported and very slow - my friend's Turion-based laptop with an XPRESS chipset plays UT2004 slower than my Athlon XP 1600 with an original Radeon 7200 with DRI drivers! 2D performance is pathetic. There is no XRENDER acceleration. Suspending / hibernating doesn't work. XCOMPOSITE support is non-existant. The list goes on and on.
If people want a gaming card, buy an nVidia, or you will be sorry. If gaming isn't so important, buy a something with an Intel chipset - they have excellent open-source drivers, and are only getting better. I installed XGL on a laptop with an Intel i945G card last weekend, and I was shocked by it's impressive performance - XGL in particular was as smooth as I've ever seen it
That's the defense that capitalists always turn to, yes. But the simply fact is that businesses will only ever pay workers as little as they can possibly get away with. When the economy is going strongly, they take all the profits - wages do not rise - and they certainly won't rise now with Work Choices ( Business Choices ). But when the economy is going badly, businesses us this as an excuse to decimate wages and sack workers, while they still take profits
The most telling of statistics is the distibution of wealth. 1% of the population own 99% of the wealth. It's about time some serious redistribution happened, along with some serious discussion about how things got so out of whack to start with. Your bleeding heart story about how the royal economy is working in my best interest doesn't help the average worker who has been taking home less in real wages each year since Howard was voted in, while paying more in rent, interest, food costs, GST, petrol, etc, etc. The economy is working in someone's interests, that's for sure. But not mine, and not most people's.
That's an assisine comment. There's a world of difference between a sensible, substainable economy, and one that consumes all resources as fast as possible for the biggest short-term profits. The Greens argue for a sustainable economy. There's no sane person left on the planet who claims that our current resource usage is sustainable. It's just that mainstream political parties have no interest in doing anything about it.
It was hardly a meltdown. He let of some steam, that's for sure. If I were him, I would have felt the same way. Labor castritates his policies and threw the election to the Liberals so they could continue to play to the conservative factions ( inside and out ) Latham would have actually been a leader, whereas Howard is simply following the US ruling class all the way to hell. But on the topic of meltdowns, I seem to remember a certain prominent Liberal politician attempting suicide ( and failing ). Now that was a meltdown. Latham was just venting.
There may very well be, however it won't last long.6 854 ).
ATI have a new policy of pulling support for their products even while they're still selling new in the stores. They recently dropped support of the R200 ( see http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=3385
This may be marked as a troll, and maybe this wouldn't be out of line, but I still warn you:
Do not buy ATI products if you use or intend to use Linux . Otherwise you will be sorry.
You are in a state of denial about the axing of public services and public health in particular. Have a read of:1 .shtml9 .shtml
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/dec2004/medi-d3
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/feb2005/medi-f0
Both these countries have taken concrete steps to reduce their emmisions. Even if they hadn't the old "nah, but everyone else is doing it" arguement is immature and will get us nowhere.
I just responded to another comment along the same lines. People seem to think that uranium is some kind of perpetual motion device, that they can put into a 'reprocessing' plant, and extract ever more energy. You can't. You have to inject huge amounts of energy each time you reprocess the fuel. It's a net energy sink. Reprocessing is only useful for making weapons, where you need 99% pure uranium. Apart from being a net energy sink, and it's only use being in making nuclear weapons, it also irradiates yet more matter. People who argue for alternatives to fossil fuel on the basis of protecting the environment, and in the same breath argue for nuclear technology, are either deluded or extremely dishonest.
That's because the research is private research towards private property ( patents ). Make all research public - ie open-source medical research, and this problem will disappear. This arguement also smacks of the 'user-pays' notion. User-pays is great for luxury goods, but for necessities such as health and education, access should be universal, which means free ( as there are always some people who are unable to pay ). So this means we need a combination of open-source medical knowledge, with large subsidies from the government to keep the system going. The altervative is the sitation where only the rich can afford medical care, which is patently absurd, and outright evil.
Well people are saying the wrong thing. Sure - parents would pay anything to save their dying children if they had to. But they shouldn't have to. This is what society is about - people working together to smooth out the irregularities of life, so that everyone achieves a better life. Some people will suffer bad luck and will be subsided. Some people will enjoy good luck. But society flattens this out - that's what it's about. The common misconception is that to make this work, everyone has to suffer a decreased standard of living. The reality is that we ALL suffer a decreased standard of living, as we are ALL paying dearly for the excessive standard of living of the ruling class ( the top 1% who own 99% of the wealth ). Tax the Christ out of them, and there will be plenty of health care to go around.
That's the fault of your legal system and 'me first' society. Stop suing everyone, who don't you?
With health care ( as with everything ) society must decide:
- how much of the product is produced
- how it is to be distributed
So. Decide to produce enough health care for population, and then decide to distribute it fairly. In my books, 'fairly' means that whoever needs health care gets it, no matter how much money they or their parents have. As for who's going to pay for it, similary, those who can afford to pay, should pay. Clearly those who can't afford to pay, can't. If you want to investigate these issues further, you must start asking the question: why is it that some people have so much, while others have so little?
Well, firstly I'd say that the technology doesn't really exist as most people claim that it does. You can't magically 'reprocess' radioactive waste and expect to get a net gain. It's not a perpetual motion device. Sure you can take waste that isn't quite up to the standard of nuclear fuel, and 'reprocess' it to your heart's content, irradiating more and more matter as you go, pumping more and more energy into it, but this isn't going to achieve your goal of squeezing more energy out of it. Far from it. It's a net energy sink. The main motivating factor for these 'reprocessing' plants is not to turn waste into fuel and water into wine, but to turn low-grade uranium into eith 99% pure uranium or plutonium, for use in nuclear weapons. But that use isn't something that politicians like to talk about so much, so instead we're fed the BS that they're 'reprocessing' fuel for reuse. Why doesn't the oil industry 'reprocess' exhaust from cars? It's a joke.
That's a pretty arbitrary statement, and not one that's going to convince me. The fact is that all radioactivity is dangerous - it's just a matter of how dangerous. We have evolved to live in an environment with a certain amount of background radiation. If you add to that level, you're rolling the dice for all of us. You don't have the right to do that. No-one does. One of the basic, inalienable rights of life is to enjoy our planet in it's natural state, not polluted by smog, acid rain, and so-called 'safe' radioactivity.
There are always people who say "Oh but we could do this with it, and that with it. In your example, who is to say that the stuff will be sucked back into the mantle. What if, instead of being sucked into the mantle, it gets blasted up into the atmosphere? And who is burying it like this anyway? Over 50% of radioactive waste that comes from reactors gets shoved in 44 gallon drums and chucked into the ocean. On SBS later this week there is a documentary on illegal nuclear waste dumping in a quarry in Germany. I don't trust corporations OR governments to do the right thing. They invariably prove that they cannot. Why keep giving them the befenit of the doubt? That's naive, and exposing thousands of generations to come to radioactive waste that they simply need not be exposed to ( whether you claim it is 'safe' or not ). It's unnecessary. There are also millions of tons of radioactive waste produced in mining uranium that simply gets left to it's own devices. Over half of the radioactivity in uranium gets left in this waste - which isn't categorised as waste. It then gets into the foodstream and water supply, and eventually ends up in the ocean.
That's just pie-in-the-sky bullshit from the pro-nuclear lobby. Western civilisation has only been around for a couple of hundred years. How the hell are we supposed to guarantee that this so-called magical vault will last thousands of years? That's ridiculous!
Nuclear power is the most dangerous and costly way ever devised to boil water. The only uses for nuclear technology are:
- creating profits for mining and energy companies, who receive massive government subsidies that should be going towards CLEAN renewable technology
- supporting the nuclear weapons industry
It depends on which way you measure it. It might be the case that the system has the largest absolute budget, but this is spread across a very large number of people. If you look at the expenditure per capita, a very different picture emerges. The US is practically the worst in the Western world for health care. That's why the most common reason why people are put in gaol ( jail for Yanks ) is for non-payment of medical bills. I wouldn't go around scoffing at your health-care system if I were you. The US system is what everyone else in the western world points at, and say "at least we're not that fucked up yet".
Um. I'm not following you here. Are you saying that Republicans actually argued for spending MORE money on social security? I think you're mistaken.
That's not what I hear. Admittedly, I'm not 100% up to date on the minor details, but I have read numerous articles over the past 10 years about public school closures, and funds being redirected to private education. I think that even in absolute terms the amount of money in the public education system has been reducing significantly, and I can say with absolute certainty that the amount per-capita has been decreasing at an alarming rate.
I find it hard to fathom that there are people who are actually arguing that the Republicans are supposedly adding to public spending. Even Americans know that is bullshit.
No kidding. You can't argue that there is little research because there are few solutions. The research is intended to produce solutions. Bush has scaled back research into renewables, just as Howard has done here in Australia, while rejecting the Kyoto Protocol and asserting the rights of the big energy companies to keep on polluting ... in the name of jobs of course.
That's a token effort - a drop in the ocean at best. It really means nothing in the long run. We need to be doing this everywhere.
No it's not. There is enough uranium in the world for about 10 years of total energy consumption, and then you have millions of tons of radioactive waste that will be around for millions of years to come. Which company - or civilisation for that matter - is going to be around in millions of years to safeguard the world from this waste? Who will pay to maintain the containment? Not the companies that profited from it, you can be sure of that. And then there's the issue of the US breaking the non-proliferation treaty. I say that if Iraq and Iran deserve to be invaded to for
Under the current capitalist regime, I agree. I certainly wouldn't expect Dubya to be forking out money for, say, ordinary Americans who have lost limbs and need replacements. Any suggestion of creating some sort of ( I'd better say this quietly ) public health system is met with absolute horror by the Republicans and the ruling class
Axe public health? Check.
Axe social security? Check.
Axe public education? They're most certainly working on it.
Ignore urgent need to invest in renewable resources? Check.
There's seriously not much more they can axe to funnel more money into the military, is there?
Exactly how much of this bullshit can Americans handle before they stop bleeting the line that they're 'rulers of the free world'?
The 'free people' bit raised a few chuckles around my workplace. After all the stories of the US government rapidly meeting their aim of converting the country to a fascist state, with universal surveilence of all ( including bank records ), I find it laughable that Americans still consider themselves free. There are also a plethora of countries around the world who have experienced first-hand the flip-side of US imperialist 'freedom'.
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By all means - run the ads in New York. But don't show them to the rest of the world. You'll get a different reaction.
Also, why is there mention of Windows and Mac support, but no mention of Linux? Last time I checked, Mac support wasn't nearly as complete as Linux support
No that's not the case at all. We do think these things through. The key point is that it is easy to demonstrate that most people will be better off under our system. For example, in every developed capitalist economy, over 90% of the wealth is held by 1% of the population. The more entrenched the capitalist system is, the worse the situation gets. I believe the US is the worst in the world on this statistic. With this statistic in mind, it's clear that a very large majority of people will be a HELL of a lot better off under a socialist system. The arguement that YOU will have to pay more tax is 100% wrong if you are in the working class. The working class will receive a MASSIVE windfall in the form of a redistribution of wealth. This will then have massive flow-on effects. For example, instead of every single working class family having to buy a massive home loan to purchase accomodation, they will most likely ALREADY own a home. There are more homes than people already. The problem is that the working class are forced to firstly pay for rent ( paying interest for someone else's loan ) and then pay interest a 2nd time to purchase a house that has a MASSIVELY inflated value because housing is traded as a commodity. So if you own an investment property, then you will probably not be impressed with what we want to do, as we argue that each family should have 1st rights to housing, before other people have a change to get their greedy hands on 2 ( or in > 80% of cases, many hundreds ) of houses.
At this point, society will collapse completely. I recently spent a month in Cambodia. They don't pay taxes there. The place is a mess - literally. There's no garbage service, so people throw their rubbish on the street. There's no public health, so people die of preventable diseases. ( Actually, on this point, I believe the No 1 cause of people ending up in gaol in the US is non-payment of medical fees, which is a direct result of you having no public health service - or at least none worth mentioning ). The roads are dirt. The water is not drinkable. Education is a joke - families with money send their children overseas. The list of issues is practically endless ... and one of the worst points is that they all lead to delinquency and crime. Advanced societies require funds for public works. It's as simple as that.
It depends which way you look at it. The rich amongst us will defend their right to keep 'their' money. But where did 'their' money come from? Why do they have so much, while others have so little? The answer is that the rich use money in a different way to the rest of us. They use it as a weapon. If you have enough money, you can use it to continue to make money ( leeching off others ) and not work another day in your life. Take investment properties. Socialists see this as being completely wrong. Even those who don't identify themselves as being socialist will agree that there are particular items which should not be bought and sold as simple commodities on the open market. The reason is that this trading artificially inflates the price
What gives you the impression that would happen? Socialism isn't about giving everybody the right to do nothing and 'leech', as you put it. This is a common complaint of people who know that they oppose socialism, but don't know why.
However you also have to keep in mind that while there would obviously be systems in place to make sure that enough work is done to sustain the agreed standard of living, that people will in fact have to work a lot LESS, as our current level of work is only to sustain the fabulously rich leeches amongst us right now - the ruling class. When their wealth is shared more evenly around, there will simply be less work required, and yet more wealth accessible to people.
Exactly. There will always be people who try their hardest to do nothing. This problem faces capitalist systems to the same degree that it does all other systems. The point is that society decides what to do about it, and then does it. It is no different under a socialist system. The difference is that workers have control over the means of production, and can make decisions that affect how we utilise resources, as opposed to under capitalism, where the ruling class tell us how they're going to utilise the resources, and then tell us how much they'll pay us to work to achieve this goal.
That's absurd. You pay taxes already. You're not fleeing. There have been socialist revolutions before and the large majority of people ( ie workers ) had no intention of fleeing, because they have MORE money, not less. What makes you think you'll suddenly have to support the world's leechers on your own? It simply doesn't happen.
I didn't say that. YOU keep saying that. I don't know where you got it from, but it wasn't from our side. I suspect it's capitalist FUD.
Sure. But you're not forced to live in a co-operative, democratic society if you don't want to. If you want to flee to a capitalist system where all your hard-earned money is taken from you and handed to the ruling class, then that's your choice.
But I think you're trying to insinuate that socialists are not hard working, aren't you? Let me tell you, you're dead wrong. I've help the same ( programming & network adminsitration ) job for 8 years. I've also started doing freelance contracting on the side ( approx 20 hours per week ). I'm certainly not the odd one out amongst my comrades. The only ones I know of who aren't working are studying. What's more, they're all skilled workers. None of us are concerned that under the system we're fighting for, our hard work will be in vain because of the alleged 'leeches'.
Now the arguement gets complicated. If you compare our standard of living to the rest of the world, then you have to be fair and admit that the only reason w
You throw in a reference to the gulags again. They were an apparatus of the Stalinist regime, which practically every living socialist will tell you was a State Capitalist system, not a Socialist system. I can similarly make reference to Guantanimo Bay, Camp XRay, Camp Delta, Abu Graib.
You also claim that communism would be fine if we only stayed within our little system of willing participants. We agree - to a point. Firstly, revolutionary socialists believe that they can ONLY bring about a revolution when they have the support of a majority of the population. Right away, that neutralises your criticism of us affecting the 'unwilling'. But also, the International socialists argue that we can't have a successful socialist revolution in just one location, as history teaches us that the capitalist powers will do everything possible to crush a socialist system - otherwise other people would start to questions their own society.
Why would they flee? They would be better off. Indeed, after the 1918 revolution in Russia, a large majority of people enjoyed an increased standard of living. The old ruling class, of course, were in a somewhat worse position. But you claim that people would be worse off is absurd. One of the main motivations for people to want a revolution is to take back what is stolen from them by the ruling class. Explain who would be worse off, and why they would flee. Also, explain why it matters if they flee anyway.
Denying the number of deaths is hardly a winning arguement. I wouldn't have used it as a leading arguement. Keep in mind, though, that there were no war-related deaths before the invasion. The invaders MUST take responsibility for them all. In this particular case, they must also take responsibility for the MILLIONS or Iraqis who starved or died of preventable diseases, due to UN santions that prevented Iraq from doing ANYTHING other than giving us their oil for a bit of wheat. Those sanctions, that were supposed to be attacking Saddam, did nothing of the sort. They killed MILLIONS of innocent Iraq civilians, who did nothing other than be born in a country where a CIA-backed dictator had provided the US with an excuse to slap UN sanctions on their country.
... particularly since the whole fucking mess was their making of the past 20 years. If the Iraqis feel the need to resist the US, I can see where they're coming from.
After the extreme injustices that the Iraqi people have been forced to suffer for 20 years, because it suited the US at the time, you have the audacity to blame the Iraqi resistance for causing all the deaths! What fucking planet are you living on man? What the fuck?
There is also the issue of black ops - Israeli, US, UK and local forces attacking civilian targets and blaming it on the resistance to create distrust and chaos inside Iraq, and to prove their need to the rest of the world. If it weren't for these attacks on civilian targets, the US would have VERY few arguments for staying in Iraq. They badly need these attacks to continue, because it justifies their occupation. Only a couple of months ago, some UK soldiers were caught by Iraqi security forces, dressed up as civilians, and carrying explosives. They were put in a local gaol. The UK military busted the place up, rescued their 2 guys, and got the fuck out of there. There has been no talk of it since, and I don't expect there to be. This was one case where they got caught. There are many, many, many cases where they don't.
But regardless of these more digusting tactics that the US is now using, the simple fact is that the invaders are responsible for ALL deaths
The term racism need not only apply to discrimination and demonisation of a people for disgusting political purposes. The issue remains the same. The lies are the same. People suffer the same consequences.
The rest of your post seems to meander about, hardly making sense, and often offending my better grammatical senses. It's clear you don't like me or my opinions, and I assure you the feelings are reciprocated. And your cheap shot about sensorship under Stalinist Russia in now way attacks the ideals that Lenin was working towards, in the years before Stalin took power. Do you know that, and are leaving that part out, because it hurts your analysis, or do you not know the difference between what Lenin was fighting for, and what became under Stalin?
And do you really have a Russian friend? My father is Estonian. He has told me a lot about Russia too.