That actually is not true at all. Many, if no most successful revolutions at least have the backing of the middle class. The middle class wields incredible power both in terms of finding intellectual justification for rebellion as well as financial support. Money and education do a lot to drive a revolution forward.
If you want some close to home examples, Europe's slide out of monarchy all came at the hands of a well fed middle class. The American revolution was led by wealthy land owners. Hell, Mao, the leader of the Chinese communist revolution came from a well to do family and was formally educated.
I will agree that the language of the law could use some work. It does indeed force you to 'prove innocence' if the authorities believe you to be suspicious. That said, while the law might be shit, it doesn't mean that the charge is undeserving. Granted, it doesn't mean that the charge is deserving either, but I would probably wait to see if she is just a poor curious women or someone who was apart of a terrorist cell that was intending real harm.
I think people are jumping to conclusions. It sounds to me like she has more on her then simply having the material that she had. The police say that she was connected with the terrorist cell that was busted up earlier. If she is just an innocent bystander with some sketchy reading material she got out of curiosity (not malicious intent), then I imagine nothing is going to come of this. On the other hand, if she is connected to a terrorist cell and has more then just some questionable reading material, let her burn. I personally will reserve judgment about whether or not this is a violation of her rights until after the charges have been made clear. The little blurb in TFA really doesn't give enough information to judge if this is an over reaction or not.
Don't question research just because the conclusion rattles some deeply held beliefs. Researches don't defend morality, they practice science.
Lets say that tomorrow we found Jews were on average smarter then everyone else, blacks were on average less intelligent, Asians were on average better at math, Whites were on average more competitive, and that women were on average worse at math and science then men. Further lets say that we found out that all of these things were genetic in nature and not a result of societal conditioning or what not. Would that such discoveries make racism suddenly justified?
Hell no!
We value equality of opportunity not because science has shown us that everyone is a perfect clone of one another that varies only by superficial traits; but because it is morally right. We should hold this as an unshakable belief regardless of what science and broad averages show us. It is crystal clear that not every Asian is better then every single Black at math. One group might be better on average, but that says absolutely nothing about each individual. We value equality of opportunity because we believe each person has the right to have their actions and abilities judge as an individual, not as part of some "average population" that clearly has wild deviations.
My point is simple; don't reject prejudice and believe that people deserve to be judged as individuals because you have faith that science will prove that every race/gender/whatever is the same. If you hold those values because you believe that science will not contradict you, you might find your faith was unfounded at that the foundation of your beliefs crumble under mounting evidence to the contrary. Hold those values because those are good and humane values to have.
Personally, I don't know what the science of genetics is going to show us about human nature. It might very show that some populations have certain average traits that result in a slightly different average ability in some things. Who cares? That won't change my beliefs that people should be judged as individuals because my beliefs are rooted in morality, not faith that a theory about human genetics will turn out to be true. If it turns out that science shows us that we are all roughly genetically equal, great. If not, I won't lose any sleep or see my values change any.
Good luck. We can't get Japan to stop harpooning whales, and you think that we could get the entire world to stop fishing? Ha! You might as well tell all the pacific ocean nations to go fuck off and die.
To make matters worse, you can't actually farm many fish. One day we might have the technology, but currently there are many fish that we simply can't farm. Even the one's that we do farm we tend to feed with fish caught in the wild.
I am not saying that we shouldn't do anything, just that the political will to grand sweeping changes just isn't there.
So the next question is... is it better to have a politician in power who understands technology and so can merrily and effectively have the government muck technology up, or is it better to have a technological idiot try in futility to put technology under the control of the government but risk breaking things by accident?
Or, to put it another way:
Would you rather be robbed by a guy armed with a gun that knows how to use it and expertly aim it, or an idiot with a gun who doesn't realize that pulling the trigger is going to cause the gun to fire and has no idea if the safety is on or off?
If Bush refuses to leave office when his time is up, guess what happens? The secret service and police throw his ass to the street just like they throw any other person who over stays their welcome. WTF exactly is Bush going to do? Order the military to fire on the police and watch as the military laughs and does nothing to stop it? You might not realize it, but Bush doesn't "own" the military and control it with a magical remote control. It is made up of American Joe's that would merrily gun down a president trying to perform a coup. It is made up of officers that would tell any commander to go fuck themselves if given an order to fire upon police enforcing the law of the land. It is made up of leaders that worship the constitution and would personally drag the president out by his hair if they were told to order the men under them to keep a president in power past his constitutional welcome.
I can only imagine the delusional picture of Bush you have in your head. Does it look something like a guy sitting on a throne of skulls laughing evilly as blood boils from the floor?
Grow the fuck up. People like you are the reason why political discourse in America is at a rock bottom low.
So that basically is my point...from everything I can see anyway, Bush has set himself up as the contemporary, real world answer to Sauron. We're all screwed.
That is easily the stupidest comment I have ever read in my entire life.
explain to me how the ability to have anyone (either domestic or foreign) arbitrarily declared an enemy combatant and water-boarded at will fits within a democractic framework, especially given how such an ability would stand legally in relation to the Geneva Conventions.
Sure. It has no effect. The Geneva Convention is crystal clear on the subject. If you are not a uniformed member of a nation state or a civilian, you are fucked. The Soviet's caught American spies all the time during the Cold War and did horrible things to them. We never raised a peep about them violating the Geneva Convention because they weren't. You can "legally" do whatever horrible things you can imagine to people who fail to identify themselves as military but who are not innocent civilians on a battlefield. The Geneva Convention is a code for how to conduct warfare. When you leave the bounds of conventional warfare you leave the realm of the Geneva Convention. Could the world use a Geneva Convention for this new style of warfare? Sure. Does it exist now? Absolutely not.
As to the larger question of the executive branch declaring people enemy combatants and putting them in legal limbo, this is being worked out. You might recall Bush had his tribunals shot down by the Supreme Court just recently and congress is now in the process of drafting a framework for dealing with these people. These are legal questions that are *gasp* being worked out via a legal process. Now, you and I might not like the conclusions that the judicial, executive, and legislative branches come to, but they are very much democratic. I should also go further and point out that American legal balancing has been down right pussy-footed compared to what some European nations can do. In many European nations they don't offer even basic protections against unlawful search and seizure, don't require the police to have a charge when they arrest you, and let you detain you for weeks without charge. I would hardly call these nations non-democratic.
Explain to me how side-stepping the FISA court for surveillance warrants is above-board, democratic behaviour.
It is crap that is again being pushed through the courts. This is the American system. When in doubt, go to the courts. There are no military coups, no rogue police forces, no political militias. When there is a dispute, it makes its merry way to the courts. Look, I am not arguing that Bush is a good guy or that his policies kick ass, just that this is all being handled democratically and that you need to be a frothing at the mount lunatic to think that DICTATOR BUSH is coming to burn the orphanage and eat the babies.
We can also look at Bush's use of signing statements when enacting laws, basically clarifying which parts of said laws he will or will not abide by.
"Signing statements" has absolutely ZERO legal meaning. He can draw unicorns on the laws if he wants. The only thing signing does is clarify his thoughts on the law. If that doesn't sit well enough for you, then realize that (like pretty much everything you think DICTATOR BUSH is doing) it is being legally challenged right now and working its merry way up the court system. Don't worry son, he won't use the military or corporate ninjas to stop this one from making its way through the courts.
You might be right that there is no way that Bush could orchestrate a coup...I can accept that...but I am interested in knowing whether or not you are able to deny that Bush and his administration have worked tirelessly to dismantle the American political system since practically the moment he arrived in office. Hence, while he might not actually be able to get an outright coup, he arguably *will* have been able to get everything short of one.
What exactly is he "getting". At best you can argue that he has expanded the powers of the executive branch. That is all well and good except for one small problem - the executive branch changes hands a bare minimum of every 8 years. Wi
This is still a stupid scenario. The US runs by rule of law. Even fucking Mexico can have a peaceful hand over of power despite having a disputed election. The US is no different. If there is an election dispute like what happened in 2000, it will go to the courts. The courts will make a ruling, and that will be that. Ignoring for the moment that Bush is NOT a contender in the upcoming elections and that it would be a Republican or Democrat "stiffed", if by some act of insanity the White House refused to accept the ruling they would be gracefully thrown to the curb by the secret service and police.
You are right in saying the military would not be involved because it wouldn't need to be involved. Police would merrily follow the orders of the judiciary. There is not a military commander in the world that would step in the way of a police offers following the legal orders of the judicial branch of government to keep a president in office past his constituently appointed time.
You make it sound like there has never been a voting dispute in the US before. There has. It always ends the same way. It goes to the courts, the court rule, and that is the end of it.
What I would advocate anyone and everyone in the US to start doing from this point on is to become as friendly with people in the military as they can...because when it comes down to the wire, your life is going to literally depend on whose side the military are on...
My sister (navy) and her husband (marine) are both in the military. You are an absolute moron if you think they are going to revolt for Bush. Hell, you are a blazing idiot if you think Bush is even going to ask for a revolt, much less get one. You are so fucking stupid that you make dirt look college capable if you think the US military could control the US. They can't control Iraq. You think they could possibly control the US? Ha! Even if by some magical voodoo you could get the military revolt (hint: you couldn't), you ASSUREDLY would have a massive portion of them defect. Even more would defect when they are told to shell New York. You might not realize it, but the military is drawn from the population, and are not exactly itching to slaughter their own family members. Further, the military would have zero popular support. If you think your government is really that powerful, well, pass me what you are smoking because it must be the good shit.
Seriously, the military can't occupy the tiny nation of Iraq even without mass defections. You think the military could occupy the US WITH the mass defections that would happen almost instantly? Grow up kid.
I'm not advocating doing nothing, at all...but the longer people keep pretending that the current system still works, the closer you go to a situation where Bush's dictatorship will become entrenched beyond your ability to remove it. You need to stop pretending once and for all that you are still living in a democracy...you are not. It is a delusion which, if you persist in it for much longer, could very well end up costing many of you your lives.
*yawn*
"Dictator" Bush is going to leave once his term is up. "Dictator" Bush is just as easily tossed to the curb by the secret service, police, and military as any other idiot who runs around on the White House lawn uninvited. You live in a sad and delusional world if you think the men and women of every other branch of government are going to leave a guy in power who has over stayed his constitutional welcome. You are even more delusional if you think that the government, even if by magic could convince the military and police to overthrow its own constitution, that they would stand a slime chance in hell of holding onto power in the US.
I could easily think of a catchy name if that is all it took. How about HumanTrade? Eh, the copyright police might go after that, but thinking of a catchy way of advertising is not the roadblock. There are really two roadblocks. First, there is indeed a shortage of stable nations with cheap labor that have a human form of government. Eastern Europe is about as close as we can get right now. Africa has cheap labor, but most of the governments are no kinder then China's.
The bigger issue is that it takes people actually caring. If people really cared for the humanitarian situation in China as much as they did for the rain forest or the labor conditions used to get coffee, you might see change. For better or for worse though, people don't see China as being "that bad". Some also argue that a better way of helping China to join the world and be more humane to its people is through rising their standard of living and encouraging trade.
Honestly, the idea that some sort of sanctions (either through boycott or political action) against China producing any sort of change is just a theory. It might indeed lead to a better China, or it might lead to clamp down on China. We really don't know the answer. Would a China that we try and strangle with sanction look more like the USSR and eventually fold, or would it look more like a North Korea that becomes wildly dangerous and a threat to global security?
I simply don't have an answer. I personally would like to see people at least selectively boycott companies that deal in China. I might not hold it against Google for following the law and self censoring or for Anheuser-Bush for brewing beer there (though, I do boycott Anheuser-Bush for brewing shitty beer), but I might hold it against Cisco for helping China build their Great Fire Wall and taking an active role in oppression.
It could be stopped, and pressure applied, if people voted for representatives to create laws to apply some sort of penalty for buying from such regimes. No such laws have been created. Says a lot about the representatives and the people voting for them, doesn't it?
You don't even need to be so extreme as to be a single issue voter. A simple consumer boycott would do wonders. True, you can't possibly hit EVERY company, but you could hit enough to make a difference. The idea isn't so much knock out every single company that works in China, but instead is to make it enough of an issue that other large companies see it as a marketing point. Case in point; we now have "FairTrade" coffee that grew from concern over how labor was treated in other nations. We also now have companies like HomeDepot that refuse to by anything with wood that isn't certified as being rain forest trees free. Whole Foods now buys only renewable sources of electricity. Are these all PR stunts? Hell yes. Do they all make a large impact on the problem? You better believe that they do. Companies really don't take much pressure before they cave, they simply need to feel like their actions matter enough that consumers actually notice and the few cents less they make is made up in good will and a few more product purchases.
Of course, the first damn near impossible step is to get consumers to actually care.
How many natives of this continent has the US government killed? How about imported slaves?
If you look back far enough into any nations history, I can almost promise you that one group of people was beating the piss out of another group of people. The point of looking into the past isn't to remove all moral authority from everyone. I am Jesus, the fucking Norwegians who are easily one of the most peaceful people in this world sent Viking raiders against England, that doesn't make Norwegians blood thirsty savages. The Germans committed horrible acts of genocide a scant 65 years ago, and they too qualify as one of the most peaceful nations on this world. Everyone has done something "bad", get over it.
The point is that you can try and prevent such horrible mistakes from happening again. Yes, the US used to import slaves and slaughter its natives. The US now actively seeks to shut down the remaining slave trade in this world and was one of the many nations instrumental in helping the racist South African out of power. That is a *good* thing. If anything, the US with its sullied past on racial equality was a shinning example of how you can reverse the tied in a relativity short period of time.
This whole historical relativism crap is the bane of peace in this world. Every group in the world points to some historical injustice that explains why it is okay for them to commit atrocities they now seek to commit. The Israelis and Palestinians will probably both cease to exist as nations with their fingers still securely wrapped around each other's throats, all the while screaming that the other one started it.
Fuck the past.
I'll happily trust Germans to broker peace deals and safe guard the peace even though they were once raced armies around the world dishing out genocide. I'll merrily trust that a Japanese navy has only peaceful intentions, despite the fact that Japanese ships used to once terrorized the entire pacific. I will also happily trust the Americans to not use their pile of nukes as they did throughout the entire Cold War, even though they once nuked another nation at the height of a genocidal war over 60 years ago. North Korea on the other hand I do not trust with a fucking pocket knife, much less a nuke. I don't have a lack of trust in North Korea because of some ancient wrong they did, but because RIGHT NOW, they are a brutal totalitarian dictatorship that visits unimaginable suffering upon its own people. This is a nation that tests fucking chemical weapons on its own people. This is a nation that steals food from its own starving populace to maintain a massive military. This is nation that, regardless of past deeds or misdeeds, is completely unworthy of our trust RIGHT NOW.
So cram all your historical finger pointing. The simple fact of the matter is that RIGHT NOW, North Korea is roughly the last nation in the world that should be playing with nukes, and it is a damn fine thing that the rest of the world is trying to keep them from doing so.
The Olympics will not change anything in China. China will simply do what it has always done. Western access points will have unrestricted access as they currently do (for the most part). Rural access points will remain restricted. Places where Westerners might mingle with the locals and check the Internet will have their access temporarily restored, but it will be quickly taken away again as soon as the Olympics are over. This is exactly what happened last time Rice visited China. They opened up access to CNN and some other choice sites while she was there, t hen shut them off the second she was over the border.
I think you are confusing the fucked up US lawsuit system with Internet governance. If the UN "owned" the Internet in the same way the US "owns" it, you still would have been sued. Don't get me wrong, I think that the US system of lawsuits is fucked up, but handing over control to t he US isn't going to make the US lawsuit system get any better. They will still merrily (and stupidly) sue across the Internet.
This is a no functional suggestion. Even if you declared that you couldn't spend a cent on campaign ads, you would still have the airways filled with ads and politicians would be doing the whatever they damn well could to get that money. So long as it is legal for a third party to broadcast an advertisement for a politician, political position, or party, they are going to do it. The only way you could possibly prevent this from happening is if you literally repeal the 1st amendment. The chances of anyone proposing the repeal of the 1st amendment in the US hover somewhere around zero.
The simple fact of the matter is that money can amplify speech. In some (most) forms of media limiting the amount of money you can spend limits your speech. Even in something as benign as a political blog needs to pay the bandwidth bills. You can't take out all the money. You can't set limits on what an organization is spending without trampling on free speech. As soon as you leave an organization untouched by regulation, they suddenly become the campaign power houses as we saw with the last round of "campaign finance reform" where money didn't vanish, it simply moved.
The closest thing there is to a "solution" is one that is not political, but technological. The Internet has allowed people to reach a massive audience without spending piles of money. It still takes money, but it takes much less money. If the 'voices' that people listen to continue to decentralize and the importance of add campaigns begins to shrink, you will see money become less of an issue. That said, even in my most idealist utopian fantasies I fully expect big media and big money to play large roles in campaigns if for no other reason then to reach the masses that will not read a political blog to save their life, but watch Sunday night football every week.
In the end, it is the people, not the campaigns that are broken. The campaigns are just playing by whatever rules are set for them in an effort to influence the masses. The masses are made up of many politically uneducated people with little or no curiosity in the workings of their government. Even within the minority that make up people with interest in the workings of the government, many of them hold views that are closer to faith (both on the left and right) then they are to any real intellectual thinking. So long as the masses are the ones that pick the government, campaigns will try and appeal to them in whatever way they can. So long as the masses are swayed by shallow ads and sound bites, we are going to live in a world where the guy with the most advertising has a distinct (though certainly not insurmountable) advantage.
The people are the broken cogs in the machine. All this campaign finance reform is doing is just trying to find a way to work around them.
I think it is pointless to argue if the US is the "best" country in the world to live in. I am sure by some standards it is the best and by others it is not. A lot of it is simply taste. If you want to be an artist, you might find France with public funding of the arts to be a nicer place. If are into the highest tech gadgets and food in a pretty package, cost be damned, Japan might seem like a paradise.
You also need to realize that simply by living a place you taint your ability to enjoy other places. It is found that some traditional tribal folks living in a stone age culture in the middle of nowhere tend rate themselves as happier then your average cosmopolitan Joe. That might be true, but I can promise you that your average cosmopolitan Joe would be murderous to get back to his "hellish" city after spending a couple of weeks without toilet paper, Starbucks, and dentist. So, maybe the people of Norway are happy being in Norway, but that doesn't mean that you would be.
I think the larger point is this; if you live in the US, you live in a damn good place. Maybe it is or is not the best for you, but chance are if I closed my eyes and pointed to another spot and sent you there, you would be miserable. Further, a lot of human misery comes from a loss of perspective. Nothing sends me into a murderous rage more then someone wallowing in their own self pity over the trite challenges that they face in their life. Yeah, your six grade girlfriend dumping you was traumatic and all, but get a grip and stop listening to whinny music reminding you of that black day. Better one girl in 3 billion dump you then living your life in what Americans would consider a glorified sewer, suffering war, experiencing violent cultural and political oppression, or any of the other horrors regularly visited upon many people in this world.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to change the place you live in for the better and looking to other cultures for examples of how to do this, but don't lose perspective. If you are reading this post, chances are you are living in some place that isn't so bad. The challenges and the trails that you face are unlikely to kill you, and even if they are (who knows, maybe you have cancer) you are probably in one of the better places of this world to face them.
Make the world a better place, but remember that the place you currently have is well worth appreciating despite whatever faults it might have.
If a bill is too big to read, it should be voted against. There is absolutely no excuse for voting for this shit. Either read the entire bill or vote against it. Period. Only a fucking idiot would sign their name adding new laws to the land without bothering to actually read it. Sadly, I think fucking idiots make up the vast majority of the legislative branch of the government. I am pointing my finger at the democrats too, not just the republicans. There are some assholes with a (D) next to their name that signed off on this bill.
If the government really wanted to seize power, it damn well should worry about the armed population. Even more then the armed population, they should worry about their own military and national guard. All the tanks in the world are worthless against a population that supports rebels and a military that harbors many insurgent sympathizers. Imagine what sort of mess Iraq would be (like it isn't bad enough) if a large portion of the US military there actively was revolting against the military occupation... and you get an idea of the sort of mess that US fighting itself would run it.
Further, most weapons are utterly useless. What exactly do you launch a cruise missile at when fighting a civil war that is not based on any geographic boundaries? What the hell good is a tank when you need to role it down a street in New York? What are you going to do, burn your own cities and blast your own buildings?
The idea that the US military could possibly fight its own population is laughable. Consider the following:
- The US is fucking big. It has states bigger then Iraq. No army could ever occupy it without the consent of the people. - A large portion of the population is not only armed, but has military training. - There are no 'geological' boundaries like during the American Civil War between the sides. - The military is drawn from the population and is NOT an elite "class" of people. Therefore, much (all?) of the military would simply revolt against any government that ordered it to fire upon American citizens. If you think that your average military man would shell Chicago or drop a bomb on New York, you are delusional.
The entire prospect of the US occupying itself it's a laugh. There are plenty of ways that I could see the US becoming a place I wouldn't want to live military occupation is not one of them.
No, they would be frantically trying to save their own asses as the world economy plunges into a black hole that makes all the other depressions in the history of this world look like lazy day in the country. Even the prospect of a MIA USA would send the world into a collective tailspin as suddenly every single military and economic pact in the world breaks. Love or hate the US, but it is so deeply entangled with the economies and the politics of the rest of the world that anything that happens to the US ripples across the world. Consider just a few of the consequences:
- A massive hunk of the world's coal supply is gone - A huge portion of the worlds financial systems fail as the US economy is removed from the rest of the world - Most large corporations fail in the face of massive losses as investments in the US fail - The worlds currency exchange market and banking system collapse - China's economy completely fails assuring civil unrest and risking revolution - EU's economy collapses as China and the US both have their economies vanish - EU's entire social system collapses as the economy collapses - The rest of the economies of the world rapidly collapse - Third world nations suffer government failure, first world nations suffer massive hardship and possible government failure - Nearly all military packs in the world are suddenly deeply imbalanced with the absence of the US.
Love or hate the US; it is tied so deeply into the world's economic and political system that its removal is like tearing out the world's heart. A US that descends into civil war takes the rest of the world with it.
That said, I don't really expect the US to descend into civil war any time soon. I am not going to have any lost sleep over this doomsday scenario.
So, why not apply this to humans? We're all going to die sometime, so just ignore welfare and get rid of all the hospitals. In fact, we might as well all jump off a bridge now and save everyone the trouble
I think you miss the point entirely. "Nature" isn't a human. It doesn't have feelings. It doesn't value large mammals over bacteria. Hell, it doesn't even value bacteria over rocks. It doesn't value anything. Humans value things. One of the things that humans value is human life.
So, you can certainly go jump off a bridge if you find as much value in your own life as "nature" does (which is none). I personally deeply value human life, especially my own life. I don't need to believe is some quasi-mystical bullshit about "Mother Nature" to find meaning in my own life.
So, uh, well, we have a game with no levels. No idea on the treadmill bit, but they are at least deviating from the norm in that reguard. That's promising, isn't it?
Not really. Hidden levels are still levels. If the core gameplay consists of going out and killing millions of NPCs and almost all other forms of gameplay are effectively sealed off until you do (think WoW, DAoC, EQ 1 and 2, and every other game except perhaps UO) it is still crap game play. An idiot treadmill where you can't watch the numbers go up is still an idiot treadmill.
Hey, Warhammer could surprise me, but I am not holding my breath. Somewhere in some idiots head there is an idea that before you do any RvR, PvP, or any thing that might fall under some sane definition of fun that you don't need to be OCD to enjoy, you need to go out and kill X number of stupid NPCs in the most mind numbingly boring excuse for gameplay you can imagine. All MMORPGs operate under this delusion. I would love to think that Warhammer doesn't also operate under this insanity, but I am deeply skeptical. I am almost positive that some idiot designer is already setting up the gameplay such that you need to go kill a few tens of thousands before you are not instantly slaughtered in RvR combat.
If I develop obsessive compulsive disorder, I'll play the current crop of MMORPGs. Until then, I think will wait until a designer grows a pair and makes a game that doesn't require the players to be addicts to watching their stats slowly rise.
Not to seem pedantic here and all, but man is the only animal species that actually destroys ecosystems and causes the extincion of other species that are not in his food chain.
That isn't even a little bit true. Plenty of species ravage the land and in doing so destroy species that are not apart of their own food chain. On geological terms, species get driven to extinction all the time. It only takes one species to evolve and advantage that ripples across the environment leaving destruction in its wake. Certainly humans do much more ecological destruction, but your happy fantasy world where only mean old humans upset the balance is nothing but that - fantasy.
We are also the only species that is incapable of existing in an ecological balance.
We exist in ecological 'balance' as much as any species. As you might have noticed, all species go extinct. Generally going extinct is a pretty clear sign of a lack of 'balance'. Generally, if you go extinct it is because a species failed to find the resources to continue existing. It happens all the time (geologically speaking of course) that a species consumes all of its available resources and dies. The constant cycle of extinctions and evolution speaks of a complete LACK of balance in nature. Humans are as "balanced" as any other species.
The larger point is that as far as "Nature" is concerned, humans are just one more species. It is only HUMAN aesthetics that gives a damn that we drive other animals to extinction. Humans could rape and pillage this planet and intentionally try and destroy all life and we would still utterly fail. Plenty of bacteria would merrily evolve to turn whatever toxic stews we can brew up into home. Rats and cockroaches will merrily evolve to live between our feet. We couldn't kill all the life on this planet if we tried. The only thing that would change is that there would be a lot less large animals. If you were a rock or a piece of plastic, you would find such a world to be a utopia. Without all that terrible moss, think of how happy the rocks would be. Only HUMANS would find such a world distasteful.
There are plenty of reasons to protect the environment, but we need to be honest about those reasons, not pretend like there is some environmentalist morality that the universe or nature has. Humans have morals, plants, animals, and rocks don't. The rocks were not pissed when life started to consume it to make more life, and life isn't pissed that we are consuming it to make more humans. Human morality is the guide to good environmentalist policy. Using human morality as a guide and tossing out this quasi-religious Mother Nature bullshit, we quickly find plenty of good reasons to protect the environment. Clean air, stable temperature, predictable weather, and a diverse biosphere enhances human life and THAT is why they are good. A healthy environment lets humans live longer and healthier lives. Diverse environments are less susceptible to devastation that can latter impact human lives. Finally, if nothing else, we appreciate protecting nature because we as humans find it beautiful.
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Rich, well-fed people do not drive revolutions.
That actually is not true at all. Many, if no most successful revolutions at least have the backing of the middle class. The middle class wields incredible power both in terms of finding intellectual justification for rebellion as well as financial support. Money and education do a lot to drive a revolution forward.
If you want some close to home examples, Europe's slide out of monarchy all came at the hands of a well fed middle class. The American revolution was led by wealthy land owners. Hell, Mao, the leader of the Chinese communist revolution came from a well to do family and was formally educated.
I will agree that the language of the law could use some work. It does indeed force you to 'prove innocence' if the authorities believe you to be suspicious. That said, while the law might be shit, it doesn't mean that the charge is undeserving. Granted, it doesn't mean that the charge is deserving either, but I would probably wait to see if she is just a poor curious women or someone who was apart of a terrorist cell that was intending real harm.
I think people are jumping to conclusions. It sounds to me like she has more on her then simply having the material that she had. The police say that she was connected with the terrorist cell that was busted up earlier. If she is just an innocent bystander with some sketchy reading material she got out of curiosity (not malicious intent), then I imagine nothing is going to come of this. On the other hand, if she is connected to a terrorist cell and has more then just some questionable reading material, let her burn. I personally will reserve judgment about whether or not this is a violation of her rights until after the charges have been made clear. The little blurb in TFA really doesn't give enough information to judge if this is an over reaction or not.
Don't question research just because the conclusion rattles some deeply held beliefs. Researches don't defend morality, they practice science.
Lets say that tomorrow we found Jews were on average smarter then everyone else, blacks were on average less intelligent, Asians were on average better at math, Whites were on average more competitive, and that women were on average worse at math and science then men. Further lets say that we found out that all of these things were genetic in nature and not a result of societal conditioning or what not. Would that such discoveries make racism suddenly justified?
Hell no!
We value equality of opportunity not because science has shown us that everyone is a perfect clone of one another that varies only by superficial traits; but because it is morally right. We should hold this as an unshakable belief regardless of what science and broad averages show us. It is crystal clear that not every Asian is better then every single Black at math. One group might be better on average, but that says absolutely nothing about each individual. We value equality of opportunity because we believe each person has the right to have their actions and abilities judge as an individual, not as part of some "average population" that clearly has wild deviations.
My point is simple; don't reject prejudice and believe that people deserve to be judged as individuals because you have faith that science will prove that every race/gender/whatever is the same. If you hold those values because you believe that science will not contradict you, you might find your faith was unfounded at that the foundation of your beliefs crumble under mounting evidence to the contrary. Hold those values because those are good and humane values to have.
Personally, I don't know what the science of genetics is going to show us about human nature. It might very show that some populations have certain average traits that result in a slightly different average ability in some things. Who cares? That won't change my beliefs that people should be judged as individuals because my beliefs are rooted in morality, not faith that a theory about human genetics will turn out to be true. If it turns out that science shows us that we are all roughly genetically equal, great. If not, I won't lose any sleep or see my values change any.
Good luck. We can't get Japan to stop harpooning whales, and you think that we could get the entire world to stop fishing? Ha! You might as well tell all the pacific ocean nations to go fuck off and die.
To make matters worse, you can't actually farm many fish. One day we might have the technology, but currently there are many fish that we simply can't farm. Even the one's that we do farm we tend to feed with fish caught in the wild.
I am not saying that we shouldn't do anything, just that the political will to grand sweeping changes just isn't there.
So the next question is... is it better to have a politician in power who understands technology and so can merrily and effectively have the government muck technology up, or is it better to have a technological idiot try in futility to put technology under the control of the government but risk breaking things by accident?
Or, to put it another way:
Would you rather be robbed by a guy armed with a gun that knows how to use it and expertly aim it, or an idiot with a gun who doesn't realize that pulling the trigger is going to cause the gun to fire and has no idea if the safety is on or off?
If Bush refuses to leave office when his time is up, guess what happens? The secret service and police throw his ass to the street just like they throw any other person who over stays their welcome. WTF exactly is Bush going to do? Order the military to fire on the police and watch as the military laughs and does nothing to stop it? You might not realize it, but Bush doesn't "own" the military and control it with a magical remote control. It is made up of American Joe's that would merrily gun down a president trying to perform a coup. It is made up of officers that would tell any commander to go fuck themselves if given an order to fire upon police enforcing the law of the land. It is made up of leaders that worship the constitution and would personally drag the president out by his hair if they were told to order the men under them to keep a president in power past his constitutional welcome.
I can only imagine the delusional picture of Bush you have in your head. Does it look something like a guy sitting on a throne of skulls laughing evilly as blood boils from the floor?
Grow the fuck up. People like you are the reason why political discourse in America is at a rock bottom low.
So that basically is my point...from everything I can see anyway, Bush has set himself up as the contemporary, real world answer to Sauron. We're all screwed.
That is easily the stupidest comment I have ever read in my entire life.
explain to me how the ability to have anyone (either domestic or foreign) arbitrarily declared an enemy combatant and water-boarded at will fits within a democractic framework, especially given how such an ability would stand legally in relation to the Geneva Conventions.
Sure. It has no effect. The Geneva Convention is crystal clear on the subject. If you are not a uniformed member of a nation state or a civilian, you are fucked. The Soviet's caught American spies all the time during the Cold War and did horrible things to them. We never raised a peep about them violating the Geneva Convention because they weren't. You can "legally" do whatever horrible things you can imagine to people who fail to identify themselves as military but who are not innocent civilians on a battlefield. The Geneva Convention is a code for how to conduct warfare. When you leave the bounds of conventional warfare you leave the realm of the Geneva Convention. Could the world use a Geneva Convention for this new style of warfare? Sure. Does it exist now? Absolutely not.
As to the larger question of the executive branch declaring people enemy combatants and putting them in legal limbo, this is being worked out. You might recall Bush had his tribunals shot down by the Supreme Court just recently and congress is now in the process of drafting a framework for dealing with these people. These are legal questions that are *gasp* being worked out via a legal process. Now, you and I might not like the conclusions that the judicial, executive, and legislative branches come to, but they are very much democratic. I should also go further and point out that American legal balancing has been down right pussy-footed compared to what some European nations can do. In many European nations they don't offer even basic protections against unlawful search and seizure, don't require the police to have a charge when they arrest you, and let you detain you for weeks without charge. I would hardly call these nations non-democratic.
Explain to me how side-stepping the FISA court for surveillance warrants is above-board, democratic behaviour.
It is crap that is again being pushed through the courts. This is the American system. When in doubt, go to the courts. There are no military coups, no rogue police forces, no political militias. When there is a dispute, it makes its merry way to the courts. Look, I am not arguing that Bush is a good guy or that his policies kick ass, just that this is all being handled democratically and that you need to be a frothing at the mount lunatic to think that DICTATOR BUSH is coming to burn the orphanage and eat the babies.
We can also look at Bush's use of signing statements when enacting laws, basically clarifying which parts of said laws he will or will not abide by.
"Signing statements" has absolutely ZERO legal meaning. He can draw unicorns on the laws if he wants. The only thing signing does is clarify his thoughts on the law. If that doesn't sit well enough for you, then realize that (like pretty much everything you think DICTATOR BUSH is doing) it is being legally challenged right now and working its merry way up the court system. Don't worry son, he won't use the military or corporate ninjas to stop this one from making its way through the courts.
You might be right that there is no way that Bush could orchestrate a coup...I can accept that...but I am interested in knowing whether or not you are able to deny that Bush and his administration have worked tirelessly to dismantle the American political system since practically the moment he arrived in office. Hence, while he might not actually be able to get an outright coup, he arguably *will* have been able to get everything short of one.
What exactly is he "getting". At best you can argue that he has expanded the powers of the executive branch. That is all well and good except for one small problem - the executive branch changes hands a bare minimum of every 8 years. Wi
This is still a stupid scenario. The US runs by rule of law. Even fucking Mexico can have a peaceful hand over of power despite having a disputed election. The US is no different. If there is an election dispute like what happened in 2000, it will go to the courts. The courts will make a ruling, and that will be that. Ignoring for the moment that Bush is NOT a contender in the upcoming elections and that it would be a Republican or Democrat "stiffed", if by some act of insanity the White House refused to accept the ruling they would be gracefully thrown to the curb by the secret service and police.
You are right in saying the military would not be involved because it wouldn't need to be involved. Police would merrily follow the orders of the judiciary. There is not a military commander in the world that would step in the way of a police offers following the legal orders of the judicial branch of government to keep a president in office past his constituently appointed time.
You make it sound like there has never been a voting dispute in the US before. There has. It always ends the same way. It goes to the courts, the court rule, and that is the end of it.
Libertarians and Greens demand that all Republicans and Democrats drop out of the running and give them a chance.
Seriously, it is like Diebold is trying to shoot themselves in the face.
What I would advocate anyone and everyone in the US to start doing from this point on is to become as friendly with people in the military as they can...because when it comes down to the wire, your life is going to literally depend on whose side the military are on...
My sister (navy) and her husband (marine) are both in the military. You are an absolute moron if you think they are going to revolt for Bush. Hell, you are a blazing idiot if you think Bush is even going to ask for a revolt, much less get one. You are so fucking stupid that you make dirt look college capable if you think the US military could control the US. They can't control Iraq. You think they could possibly control the US? Ha! Even if by some magical voodoo you could get the military revolt (hint: you couldn't), you ASSUREDLY would have a massive portion of them defect. Even more would defect when they are told to shell New York. You might not realize it, but the military is drawn from the population, and are not exactly itching to slaughter their own family members. Further, the military would have zero popular support. If you think your government is really that powerful, well, pass me what you are smoking because it must be the good shit.
Seriously, the military can't occupy the tiny nation of Iraq even without mass defections. You think the military could occupy the US WITH the mass defections that would happen almost instantly? Grow up kid.
I'm not advocating doing nothing, at all...but the longer people keep pretending that the current system still works, the closer you go to a situation where Bush's dictatorship will become entrenched beyond your ability to remove it. You need to stop pretending once and for all that you are still living in a democracy...you are not. It is a delusion which, if you persist in it for much longer, could very well end up costing many of you your lives.
*yawn*
"Dictator" Bush is going to leave once his term is up. "Dictator" Bush is just as easily tossed to the curb by the secret service, police, and military as any other idiot who runs around on the White House lawn uninvited. You live in a sad and delusional world if you think the men and women of every other branch of government are going to leave a guy in power who has over stayed his constitutional welcome. You are even more delusional if you think that the government, even if by magic could convince the military and police to overthrow its own constitution, that they would stand a slime chance in hell of holding onto power in the US.
Go back onto your psyche drugs buddy.
Err, that should be HumaneTrade. HumanTrade... well that doesn't sound like something nice.
I could easily think of a catchy name if that is all it took. How about HumanTrade? Eh, the copyright police might go after that, but thinking of a catchy way of advertising is not the roadblock. There are really two roadblocks. First, there is indeed a shortage of stable nations with cheap labor that have a human form of government. Eastern Europe is about as close as we can get right now. Africa has cheap labor, but most of the governments are no kinder then China's.
The bigger issue is that it takes people actually caring. If people really cared for the humanitarian situation in China as much as they did for the rain forest or the labor conditions used to get coffee, you might see change. For better or for worse though, people don't see China as being "that bad". Some also argue that a better way of helping China to join the world and be more humane to its people is through rising their standard of living and encouraging trade.
Honestly, the idea that some sort of sanctions (either through boycott or political action) against China producing any sort of change is just a theory. It might indeed lead to a better China, or it might lead to clamp down on China. We really don't know the answer. Would a China that we try and strangle with sanction look more like the USSR and eventually fold, or would it look more like a North Korea that becomes wildly dangerous and a threat to global security?
I simply don't have an answer. I personally would like to see people at least selectively boycott companies that deal in China. I might not hold it against Google for following the law and self censoring or for Anheuser-Bush for brewing beer there (though, I do boycott Anheuser-Bush for brewing shitty beer), but I might hold it against Cisco for helping China build their Great Fire Wall and taking an active role in oppression.
It could be stopped, and pressure applied, if people voted for representatives to create laws to apply some sort of penalty for buying from such regimes. No such laws have been created. Says a lot about the representatives and the people voting for them, doesn't it?
You don't even need to be so extreme as to be a single issue voter. A simple consumer boycott would do wonders. True, you can't possibly hit EVERY company, but you could hit enough to make a difference. The idea isn't so much knock out every single company that works in China, but instead is to make it enough of an issue that other large companies see it as a marketing point. Case in point; we now have "FairTrade" coffee that grew from concern over how labor was treated in other nations. We also now have companies like HomeDepot that refuse to by anything with wood that isn't certified as being rain forest trees free. Whole Foods now buys only renewable sources of electricity. Are these all PR stunts? Hell yes. Do they all make a large impact on the problem? You better believe that they do. Companies really don't take much pressure before they cave, they simply need to feel like their actions matter enough that consumers actually notice and the few cents less they make is made up in good will and a few more product purchases.
Of course, the first damn near impossible step is to get consumers to actually care.
How many natives of this continent has the US government killed? How about imported slaves?
If you look back far enough into any nations history, I can almost promise you that one group of people was beating the piss out of another group of people. The point of looking into the past isn't to remove all moral authority from everyone. I am Jesus, the fucking Norwegians who are easily one of the most peaceful people in this world sent Viking raiders against England, that doesn't make Norwegians blood thirsty savages. The Germans committed horrible acts of genocide a scant 65 years ago, and they too qualify as one of the most peaceful nations on this world. Everyone has done something "bad", get over it.
The point is that you can try and prevent such horrible mistakes from happening again. Yes, the US used to import slaves and slaughter its natives. The US now actively seeks to shut down the remaining slave trade in this world and was one of the many nations instrumental in helping the racist South African out of power. That is a *good* thing. If anything, the US with its sullied past on racial equality was a shinning example of how you can reverse the tied in a relativity short period of time.
This whole historical relativism crap is the bane of peace in this world. Every group in the world points to some historical injustice that explains why it is okay for them to commit atrocities they now seek to commit. The Israelis and Palestinians will probably both cease to exist as nations with their fingers still securely wrapped around each other's throats, all the while screaming that the other one started it.
Fuck the past.
I'll happily trust Germans to broker peace deals and safe guard the peace even though they were once raced armies around the world dishing out genocide. I'll merrily trust that a Japanese navy has only peaceful intentions, despite the fact that Japanese ships used to once terrorized the entire pacific. I will also happily trust the Americans to not use their pile of nukes as they did throughout the entire Cold War, even though they once nuked another nation at the height of a genocidal war over 60 years ago. North Korea on the other hand I do not trust with a fucking pocket knife, much less a nuke. I don't have a lack of trust in North Korea because of some ancient wrong they did, but because RIGHT NOW, they are a brutal totalitarian dictatorship that visits unimaginable suffering upon its own people. This is a nation that tests fucking chemical weapons on its own people. This is a nation that steals food from its own starving populace to maintain a massive military. This is nation that, regardless of past deeds or misdeeds, is completely unworthy of our trust RIGHT NOW.
So cram all your historical finger pointing. The simple fact of the matter is that RIGHT NOW, North Korea is roughly the last nation in the world that should be playing with nukes, and it is a damn fine thing that the rest of the world is trying to keep them from doing so.
The Olympics will not change anything in China. China will simply do what it has always done. Western access points will have unrestricted access as they currently do (for the most part). Rural access points will remain restricted. Places where Westerners might mingle with the locals and check the Internet will have their access temporarily restored, but it will be quickly taken away again as soon as the Olympics are over. This is exactly what happened last time Rice visited China. They opened up access to CNN and some other choice sites while she was there, t hen shut them off the second she was over the border.
I think you are confusing the fucked up US lawsuit system with Internet governance. If the UN "owned" the Internet in the same way the US "owns" it, you still would have been sued. Don't get me wrong, I think that the US system of lawsuits is fucked up, but handing over control to t he US isn't going to make the US lawsuit system get any better. They will still merrily (and stupidly) sue across the Internet.
This is a no functional suggestion. Even if you declared that you couldn't spend a cent on campaign ads, you would still have the airways filled with ads and politicians would be doing the whatever they damn well could to get that money. So long as it is legal for a third party to broadcast an advertisement for a politician, political position, or party, they are going to do it. The only way you could possibly prevent this from happening is if you literally repeal the 1st amendment. The chances of anyone proposing the repeal of the 1st amendment in the US hover somewhere around zero.
The simple fact of the matter is that money can amplify speech. In some (most) forms of media limiting the amount of money you can spend limits your speech. Even in something as benign as a political blog needs to pay the bandwidth bills. You can't take out all the money. You can't set limits on what an organization is spending without trampling on free speech. As soon as you leave an organization untouched by regulation, they suddenly become the campaign power houses as we saw with the last round of "campaign finance reform" where money didn't vanish, it simply moved.
The closest thing there is to a "solution" is one that is not political, but technological. The Internet has allowed people to reach a massive audience without spending piles of money. It still takes money, but it takes much less money. If the 'voices' that people listen to continue to decentralize and the importance of add campaigns begins to shrink, you will see money become less of an issue. That said, even in my most idealist utopian fantasies I fully expect big media and big money to play large roles in campaigns if for no other reason then to reach the masses that will not read a political blog to save their life, but watch Sunday night football every week.
In the end, it is the people, not the campaigns that are broken. The campaigns are just playing by whatever rules are set for them in an effort to influence the masses. The masses are made up of many politically uneducated people with little or no curiosity in the workings of their government. Even within the minority that make up people with interest in the workings of the government, many of them hold views that are closer to faith (both on the left and right) then they are to any real intellectual thinking. So long as the masses are the ones that pick the government, campaigns will try and appeal to them in whatever way they can. So long as the masses are swayed by shallow ads and sound bites, we are going to live in a world where the guy with the most advertising has a distinct (though certainly not insurmountable) advantage.
The people are the broken cogs in the machine. All this campaign finance reform is doing is just trying to find a way to work around them.
I think it is pointless to argue if the US is the "best" country in the world to live in. I am sure by some standards it is the best and by others it is not. A lot of it is simply taste. If you want to be an artist, you might find France with public funding of the arts to be a nicer place. If are into the highest tech gadgets and food in a pretty package, cost be damned, Japan might seem like a paradise.
You also need to realize that simply by living a place you taint your ability to enjoy other places. It is found that some traditional tribal folks living in a stone age culture in the middle of nowhere tend rate themselves as happier then your average cosmopolitan Joe. That might be true, but I can promise you that your average cosmopolitan Joe would be murderous to get back to his "hellish" city after spending a couple of weeks without toilet paper, Starbucks, and dentist. So, maybe the people of Norway are happy being in Norway, but that doesn't mean that you would be.
I think the larger point is this; if you live in the US, you live in a damn good place. Maybe it is or is not the best for you, but chance are if I closed my eyes and pointed to another spot and sent you there, you would be miserable. Further, a lot of human misery comes from a loss of perspective. Nothing sends me into a murderous rage more then someone wallowing in their own self pity over the trite challenges that they face in their life. Yeah, your six grade girlfriend dumping you was traumatic and all, but get a grip and stop listening to whinny music reminding you of that black day. Better one girl in 3 billion dump you then living your life in what Americans would consider a glorified sewer, suffering war, experiencing violent cultural and political oppression, or any of the other horrors regularly visited upon many people in this world.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to change the place you live in for the better and looking to other cultures for examples of how to do this, but don't lose perspective. If you are reading this post, chances are you are living in some place that isn't so bad. The challenges and the trails that you face are unlikely to kill you, and even if they are (who knows, maybe you have cancer) you are probably in one of the better places of this world to face them.
Make the world a better place, but remember that the place you currently have is well worth appreciating despite whatever faults it might have.
If a bill is too big to read, it should be voted against. There is absolutely no excuse for voting for this shit. Either read the entire bill or vote against it. Period. Only a fucking idiot would sign their name adding new laws to the land without bothering to actually read it. Sadly, I think fucking idiots make up the vast majority of the legislative branch of the government. I am pointing my finger at the democrats too, not just the republicans. There are some assholes with a (D) next to their name that signed off on this bill.
If the government really wanted to seize power, it damn well should worry about the armed population. Even more then the armed population, they should worry about their own military and national guard. All the tanks in the world are worthless against a population that supports rebels and a military that harbors many insurgent sympathizers. Imagine what sort of mess Iraq would be (like it isn't bad enough) if a large portion of the US military there actively was revolting against the military occupation... and you get an idea of the sort of mess that US fighting itself would run it.
Further, most weapons are utterly useless. What exactly do you launch a cruise missile at when fighting a civil war that is not based on any geographic boundaries? What the hell good is a tank when you need to role it down a street in New York? What are you going to do, burn your own cities and blast your own buildings?
The idea that the US military could possibly fight its own population is laughable. Consider the following:
- The US is fucking big. It has states bigger then Iraq. No army could ever occupy it without the consent of the people.
- A large portion of the population is not only armed, but has military training.
- There are no 'geological' boundaries like during the American Civil War between the sides.
- The military is drawn from the population and is NOT an elite "class" of people. Therefore, much (all?) of the military would simply revolt against any government that ordered it to fire upon American citizens. If you think that your average military man would shell Chicago or drop a bomb on New York, you are delusional.
The entire prospect of the US occupying itself it's a laugh. There are plenty of ways that I could see the US becoming a place I wouldn't want to live military occupation is not one of them.
No, they would be frantically trying to save their own asses as the world economy plunges into a black hole that makes all the other depressions in the history of this world look like lazy day in the country. Even the prospect of a MIA USA would send the world into a collective tailspin as suddenly every single military and economic pact in the world breaks. Love or hate the US, but it is so deeply entangled with the economies and the politics of the rest of the world that anything that happens to the US ripples across the world. Consider just a few of the consequences:
- A massive hunk of the world's coal supply is gone
- A huge portion of the worlds financial systems fail as the US economy is removed from the rest of the world
- Most large corporations fail in the face of massive losses as investments in the US fail
- The worlds currency exchange market and banking system collapse
- China's economy completely fails assuring civil unrest and risking revolution
- EU's economy collapses as China and the US both have their economies vanish
- EU's entire social system collapses as the economy collapses
- The rest of the economies of the world rapidly collapse
- Third world nations suffer government failure, first world nations suffer massive hardship and possible government failure
- Nearly all military packs in the world are suddenly deeply imbalanced with the absence of the US.
Love or hate the US; it is tied so deeply into the world's economic and political system that its removal is like tearing out the world's heart. A US that descends into civil war takes the rest of the world with it.
That said, I don't really expect the US to descend into civil war any time soon. I am not going to have any lost sleep over this doomsday scenario.
So, why not apply this to humans? We're all going to die sometime, so just ignore welfare and get rid of all the hospitals. In fact, we might as well all jump off a bridge now and save everyone the trouble
I think you miss the point entirely. "Nature" isn't a human. It doesn't have feelings. It doesn't value large mammals over bacteria. Hell, it doesn't even value bacteria over rocks. It doesn't value anything. Humans value things. One of the things that humans value is human life.
So, you can certainly go jump off a bridge if you find as much value in your own life as "nature" does (which is none). I personally deeply value human life, especially my own life. I don't need to believe is some quasi-mystical bullshit about "Mother Nature" to find meaning in my own life.
So, uh, well, we have a game with no levels. No idea on the treadmill bit, but they are at least deviating from the norm in that reguard. That's promising, isn't it?
Not really. Hidden levels are still levels. If the core gameplay consists of going out and killing millions of NPCs and almost all other forms of gameplay are effectively sealed off until you do (think WoW, DAoC, EQ 1 and 2, and every other game except perhaps UO) it is still crap game play. An idiot treadmill where you can't watch the numbers go up is still an idiot treadmill.
Hey, Warhammer could surprise me, but I am not holding my breath. Somewhere in some idiots head there is an idea that before you do any RvR, PvP, or any thing that might fall under some sane definition of fun that you don't need to be OCD to enjoy, you need to go out and kill X number of stupid NPCs in the most mind numbingly boring excuse for gameplay you can imagine. All MMORPGs operate under this delusion. I would love to think that Warhammer doesn't also operate under this insanity, but I am deeply skeptical. I am almost positive that some idiot designer is already setting up the gameplay such that you need to go kill a few tens of thousands before you are not instantly slaughtered in RvR combat.
If I develop obsessive compulsive disorder, I'll play the current crop of MMORPGs. Until then, I think will wait until a designer grows a pair and makes a game that doesn't require the players to be addicts to watching their stats slowly rise.
Not to seem pedantic here and all, but man is the only animal species that actually destroys ecosystems and causes the extincion of other species that are not in his food chain.
That isn't even a little bit true. Plenty of species ravage the land and in doing so destroy species that are not apart of their own food chain. On geological terms, species get driven to extinction all the time. It only takes one species to evolve and advantage that ripples across the environment leaving destruction in its wake. Certainly humans do much more ecological destruction, but your happy fantasy world where only mean old humans upset the balance is nothing but that - fantasy.
We are also the only species that is incapable of existing in an ecological balance.
We exist in ecological 'balance' as much as any species. As you might have noticed, all species go extinct. Generally going extinct is a pretty clear sign of a lack of 'balance'. Generally, if you go extinct it is because a species failed to find the resources to continue existing. It happens all the time (geologically speaking of course) that a species consumes all of its available resources and dies. The constant cycle of extinctions and evolution speaks of a complete LACK of balance in nature. Humans are as "balanced" as any other species.
The larger point is that as far as "Nature" is concerned, humans are just one more species. It is only HUMAN aesthetics that gives a damn that we drive other animals to extinction. Humans could rape and pillage this planet and intentionally try and destroy all life and we would still utterly fail. Plenty of bacteria would merrily evolve to turn whatever toxic stews we can brew up into home. Rats and cockroaches will merrily evolve to live between our feet. We couldn't kill all the life on this planet if we tried. The only thing that would change is that there would be a lot less large animals. If you were a rock or a piece of plastic, you would find such a world to be a utopia. Without all that terrible moss, think of how happy the rocks would be. Only HUMANS would find such a world distasteful.
There are plenty of reasons to protect the environment, but we need to be honest about those reasons, not pretend like there is some environmentalist morality that the universe or nature has. Humans have morals, plants, animals, and rocks don't. The rocks were not pissed when life started to consume it to make more life, and life isn't pissed that we are consuming it to make more humans. Human morality is the guide to good environmentalist policy. Using human morality as a guide and tossing out this quasi-religious Mother Nature bullshit, we quickly find plenty of good reasons to protect the environment. Clean air, stable temperature, predictable weather, and a diverse biosphere enhances human life and THAT is why they are good. A healthy environment lets humans live longer and healthier lives. Diverse environments are less susceptible to devastation that can latter impact human lives. Finally, if nothing else, we appreciate protecting nature because we as humans find it beautiful.