If they 'want' theocracy, they shouldn't have to worry about Democracy. Democracy doesn't rule out any form of popular government. The US and Europe are perfect examples of this. You have some European nations that are practically communist in how socialized they are. You have the US which sits on the other end of the spectrum. You have Democracies like Turkey that are religious in nature, while democracies like France are extremely atheist. That is the beauty of a democracy. If the people truly want a theocracy, they can certainly vote to have one.
"If you are in the U.S., you just said something very dangerous."
Are you fucking joking me? No he didn't. The secret police are not on their way. For fucks sake, go take a walk to washinting D.C. some time and see the hordes of people walking around with "Bush is a murdering facist pig" signs that are completely and utterly ignored by the police. Only the extremely ignorant and stupid person would think that saying that they agree with Iraq insurgants could get them in trouble in the US.
Honestly, the entire idea that the war was fought over Iraq's oil is so inane that I can't help but be shocked each time I see someone write it. Let me state this very clearly for you. Saddam was more then happy to give the US oil. If oil is all the US wanted, then it didn't need to invade. It could have gotten all the oil it wanted just by sending Saddam a few bucks.
What the US wants IS a democracy. If you think the US has any other goal then that, you are fooling yourself. The US wants a democracy in the middle east, and there was no other country it had an excuse to invade other then Iraq. If it was simply a matter of oil then the US would have merrily kept buying it from Saddam.
If you want to 'give up ownership', why the hell not? Personally, I like my caffeine. I don't want any government 'help' to keep me away from it. If I want to stop I'll just have to find my own will power, m'kay?
People need to take responsibility for themselves. If someone wants a cup of coffee in the morning or wants to pump shit into their vains via a needle, let them. Personally, I am fucking sick of Republicans trying to save my soul from me and Democrats trying to save me from myself. They could all do a me a favor and fuck off. If I wanted help I would ask for it. But wait! I am fucking the rest of you with my health bills aren't I? How about this... I stop paying taxes for my 'safety net' and the government agrees to stay the fuck out of my life. That way I am only harming myself and no one else has to pay.
Honestly, I don't care what the fuck happened in Vietnam. If either of them tried to get out of it GOOD FOR THEM. I would have done the same. If anything, you get bonus points in my book for trying like hell to dodge getting shot at in the piss hole that was Vietnam. Further, even if I did care, there is the point that both of these men were boys. If you are in college, chances are you are older then Kerry or Bush were when they did their tours in the armed services.
The real issue is that both of them are lying about what happened. Kerry trouts his tour in Vietnam, when the truth was he tried everything possible to get out of it. As for Bush, while he doesn't even bother to trout his time in the armed services, he can't just admit that he tried like hell to keep from getting shipped off. Honestly, I think if either one of them had just said from the beginning that they had made an attempt to dodge the war because getting shot at in a war that we were not going to win is stupid, I think they would have been fine.
For the last fucking time, I don't care what you did when you were a BOY. Just tell the truth about what happened and watch how quickly the story dies.
The simple fact of the matter is that this is the right direction for the US to be taking. The true power of the US has never been the stuff it can do with its civil servants. I am not saying that the government has not done great things, but the crowning achievements really came through the efforts of individuals and yes, corporations. Like it or not, that is how the US gets things done. Not to bring up the -1 flamebait, but Iraq is exactly how the US operates. The US didn't send over a horde of civil servants to fix schools, repair oil wells, and other assorted non-combat stuff. They just throw over a wad of cash and watched as corporations scrambled over each other to get it (well, plus or minus an insurgency... but that is another topic altogether).
The US is just good at using its corporations and entrepreneurs to get things done. Small US corporations and entrepreneurs in particular are extremely skilled at doing a lot with a little. For better or for worse, it is just the way the US operates. The X-Prize is a perfect example of what happens when you use this resource instead of funneling public money into that massive sinkhole that is NASA. The fact that the X-Prize was a private prize and not a government sponsored prize is just hits the point home.
If the US government wanted to do three things to be the first to get into space they would be:
1) Don't get in the way of launches. So long as the spacecraft exploding doesn't pose a public threat, don't stop it. If someone is willing to risk their life flying a less then safe spacecraft in the name of exploration and profit, let them. The only time the FAA should step in is if it poses a serious public danger (IE, launching your nuclear powered spacecraft over LA).
2) Take money away from NASA, pump it into the private sector, and break NASA's monopoly. If the government really wants to spend private funds on space exploration, give it to the private sector in the from of X-Prize like rewards. Further, if NASA is able to do something cheaper then private companies because of subsidies, take the subsidies away. NASA holding a monopoly on space flight can only hurt private endeavors.
3) Encourage other nations to launch their private spacecraft from the US. Give them tax breaks, fewer regulations, lift restrictions on immigration, and whatever else it takes. The strength of the US has never ever been in isolationism. Many of the greatest minds in US history were not from the US. This new centaury will not be any different in that regard. Great minds can appear anywhere. The trick is convincing them that the US is the best place to explore their full potential.
If your point is that global warming is bad, you are using at terrible analogy. If an astroid was going to hit the earth in 500 years, the best thing to do would be to not worry about it. Sure, we might be able to send a manned mission to set up a bunch of massive thrusters and terrible expense and try and deal with it right away at the expense of the world economy... or we could wait and let technology sort it out.
If in the 1600 everyone suddenly panicked in Japan because they were afraid overpopulation was going to destroy Japan, they would have been fools. They could a whole lot of nothing or potentially something that would end of being destructive (like limiting the population). Instead, no one panicked and 400 years latter Japan has a population that their ancestors could not even dream of, but it is a population that is living in relative comfort, harmony, and with more then enough food.
My point is not that we should ignore problems that are creeping up, just that we need to keep our fears in check. We need to realize that the future might very well be far more better equipped to deal with such problems then we are, and that by wasting resources on fixing problems we are not equipped the fix, then perhaps we harming future generations.
The best example of this is the industrial revolution. The industrial revolution was a messy business. The things I have now came through the terrible sacrifices that were made during the industrial revolution. If during the industrial revolution they had suddenly called a halt to it because they didn't want to burden the future with the destruction they were creating at the time, you wouldn't be reading this post on that your computer of yours. At the time people were predicting the end of the world would be brought about due to the industrial revolution. Instead, what followed the industrial revolution turned into a golden age for the nations that had entered the industrial revolution first.
First, the USS Cole wasn't carrying nuclear material, so shooting at some dumb smuck getting close to the boat was not a top priority. They say the boat come in, they had their guns trained on the boat, they just didn't want to fire and potentially kill some foolish civilians trying to get a photo. I imagine that the people guarding the tanker will be far more liberal in their use of force.
Second, the Cole didn't sink, and you can bet that what they are transporting in nuclear material on has a double haul and probably would take a much longer time to sink.
Third, even if the ship did sink, even if they didn't simply remove the plutonium before the ship sank, that still doesn't change the fact that it is a safe bet that the plutonium is in a casing that isn't going to burst open.
No terrorist are going to steal the plutonium. At worst, they can sink the ship. Honestly, I would be much more worried about naval ships sinking and making a mess with their nuclear reactors then a few well contained and protected hunks plutonium. If terrorist really are so stupid as to go after such a dumb target, more power to them. Better they die doing something worthless the find a real target.
Yeah! Especially those janators. The family of five that went to go see the top level - also evil fuckers that eat third world nation's children.
It would almost be nice if the US simply ceased to exist for a year. For those not versed in economics, that would mean 1/4 of the world economy would suddenly vanish. After a year you could tell me if things are better or worse. Even better, make the US not exist after say 1941. The only question is who do you want to put your money on, the facist or the communist?
Emusic's call to fame was unlimited downloads at a flat rate. For me, it was a simple service. All the music I want, don't ponder if a band is good or not, get it and listen to it. They would have continued to get my dollar every month just like netflicks does. Then Emusic put a low cap on the number of bands you can buy. Basically, they decided to charge $0.25 a song... which made the way I enjoyed listening to music worthless.
Look, I am not a music fanatic. I don't ponder laboriously over which CDs to buy. I don't read reviews, and for the most part I put absolutely zero effort into sifting the shit away from the worthwhile stuff. I treat music exactly like TV. I don't have favorite TV shows, I simply sit down on occasion and watch whatever happens to be on. I never sit down for a regular show. The only regular shows that I sit down for are the ones I get from Netflicks.com that I watch at my own leisure. To put it bluntly, there is more then enough entertainment out there that I don't want to waste my busy day having to look for it or sift out the shit from the worthwhile stuff.
If the Internet used the stupid pricing schemes that the music industry uses, that is to say that you have to pay open a webpage instead of a flat rate regardless of how many webpages you open, I wouldn't use the Internet.
Until someone uses a less asinine pricing scheme, I have all but given up on music. At best I go on the occasional downloading spree in a P2P. I am more then happy to shell out a pile of money each month for a service that simply gives me a massive bank of music to brows at my leisure. Until someone responds to what the market obviously wants, I will just spend my money on other media. There is a reason why Netflicks gets my dollar and Blockbuster doesn't any more.
Ahh, the fantasies of someone who clearly hopes for more in an MMORPG then Everquest with new skin. I hate to burst your bubble, but MO is not going to be a cool world with intrigue. It is going to be a world where you and your buddies go over to the crack house and camp out thugs. You will kill a few thousand thugs, then level up. Rinse and repeat, replacing thugs with some other generic NPC you will get to kill over and over again.
It takes a vast amount of stupidity to blame Clinton for the great years in the 90's and Bush for the slow years opening the new decade. I hate to burst bubbles (haha, pun) but the reason why the Clinton years were so great was because the Internet came into full force on his watch. He had absolutely nothing to do with it. At the very best you can credit him for not taking on protectionist policies that might have thrown water on the fire. Other then staying pretty much out of the way, Clinton just so happened to be president during the world's most significant technological boom to date. If you worked in industry in the 80's and still work in it now, you know the impact e-mail and personal computers has made, and it isn't a little one.
Bush happened to catch the tail end of the boom. More specifically, he caught the boom that a bursting tech bubble makes. The technology bubble burst, and neither Clinton nor Bush had anything to do with it. Worst still, Bush then got to be on watch as 9/11 happened. Unless you believe Bush had the ability to stop it (and that takes some pretty creative hindsight argue), he wasn't responsible for subsequent crash that resulted from both 9/11 and the burst bubble. Giving him credit or blame for what happened is down right stupid.
If another terrorist attack occurs and it has a financial impact, say terrorist blow up Wall Street or nuke or a US city, then you would be completely justified in pointing the figure squarely at Bush and the US congress for ruining the economy.
The president of the US controls only two (arguably three) things when it comes to the economy. The first is that a US president needs to not go overboard with protectionism. I am not saying they can't use a little of it now and then against other nations doing the same, but so long as they keep their protectionist impulses in check, they are doing close to all they can. Second, a US president needs to keep control of large macroscopic problems. In other words, the president needs to keep good trade relations up with all nations that matter and keep other nations/entities from blowing up things in the US. Arguably the third piece is that the president needs to keep debt in check. I say arguably because economists have recently begun to question how important the debt figures really are. Some are arguing that government debt doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things for a nation like the US.
Bush's score is about as good as any other president's score. In other words, he hasn't done anything blatantly stupid to the economy and has kept trade relations solid. From a purely economic standpoint, the only thing Bush has done that is arguably bad is his anti-terrorism policies. It could be argued that he has increased the likelihood of a finically crippling terrorist attack.
I am not saying Bush is the cat's meow, but I am saying that giving Bush credit for a poor economy and Clinton credit for a good economy is utterly stupid. If the two had switch presidencies the economic world be about the same. Bush would have had an economic boom and Clinton would have had a recession. There might have been a difference in the intensity of these cycles, but nothing more.
If it's so goddamn far from everything else, it's not going to make for a very efficient means of getting stuff from "civilization" to space, now is it?
One minor point because I am too tired to answer the rest. Out in the middle of the see is by far the best place to put something if you want 'stuff from civilization' to get there. There is absolutely no cheaper and quicker way to ship large quantities of stuff other then by ship. For industrial applications, some place with sea access is absolutely the best place to put a space elevator.
As far as civilians, I think they will be able to live with taking a couple hour boat ride to get into space.
First of, you DO get something when you gamble. You get the thrill of gambling. Anyone who walks into a Casino knows that chances are they are going to walk out with less money then they started. It is the fact that you might beat the odds and the thrill that brings that adds value. Saying that they are not giving you anything in return is like saying TV doesn't give you anything in return... sure it does. It gives you entertainment.
As to bots, they are not going to cause a Casino to loose money in any other way in that they might simply stop allowing certain games to be played online. If the game is a game where a strong pattern rec software can 'beat the odds' then they will simply get rid of the game, have their own bots play, or adjust winnings such that they still win in terms of dollar amount in the end. The only people who are going to come out loosers are people who who want to play online without a bot.
Re:The debates could be very good for Kerry
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Presidential Debates Set
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I tend to almost entirely disagree with you. First, I think the debates have the potential to be horrible for both sides. The real question is how hard will the questions be. For Kerry, hard policy questions that focus on what he said in the past compared to what he is saying now are going to hurt him badly. Kerry has some very stupid things and latter done 180's on them. His waffling support of the Iraq war is probably the most notable of these issues. Even if the questions are not hard, you can pretty much assume that on certain key questions Bush is going to unleash a broadside on Kerry for the way he has voted for in the past. I think there is a real chance for it to be ugly for Kerry in this regard. Kerry also has to worry about not answering directly enough. As stupid as Bush sounds a lot of the time, it often makes Kerry look like an elitist who can't answer a question straight. The way Bush throws his arm over the podium, leans into the microphone, and bobs his head up and down while saying something bluntly and without elegance into the microphone might actually help him against Kerry. That said, if Kerry has any brains in his camp (and he does), they will likely be drilling him to answer questions directly. Kerry can't afford to look like he is dodging questions, and if his advisers have anything to say about it, I imagine he won't.
As for Bush, I think there is less chance for something to go wrong, but if things do go wrong, I think there is a great chance for them going VERY wrong. Namely, Bush is a poor public speaker. Generally he gets through it by coming off as a 'down to earth kinda guy'. Every now and then though he gets hit by surprise with a question and he does a deer in the headlights response. I think the right question could cause Bush to freeze on an important issue, and if that happens he could be hurt very badly. So, while I think this scenario is much less likely then Kerry getting pined to a wall for something stupid he has said, I think if it does happen Bush is going to be hurt badly.
As for the VP debates, I hand them to Cheney hands down. Edwards is a likable guy, but Cheney is an excellent and articulate speaker. Cheney doesn't have much in the way of skeleton's in his closet they can bring out, and I doubt anything can blindside him. Cheney, like him or hate him, is a very smart guy who is very convincing. I think the VP debates can only hurt the Democrats. A lot of people have the image of Cheney being a slimy guy who whispers in the president's ears (and you can bet that at that the later is probably very true). However, the VP debates will certainly not show this and instead give the impression that he is just a smart and articulate guy. Cheney has the opportunity to convince people that the general opinion of him is untrue. Edwards on the other hand doesn't have much to gain. People already like him. The Democrats really have nothing to gain in the VP debates. The VP debates can only lead the Democrats down hill, but of course the chances of many people seeing the VP debates are pretty slim.
All of the above said, it is not a done deal by any stretch of the imagine. There are some big ugly landmines sitting out there that either candidate could hit and ruin them. There is also the October surprise (terrorist attack, sudden change in Iraq,sudden change in the economy) that could thoroughly muddy the water. I just don't think the debates offer much promise for the Democrats.
Honestly, I am asking, does anyone really care? It seems utterly hypocritical that the most peace loving hippies are the ones who can get so worked up over the issue. Wasn't everyone and their dog trying to get out of the cluster fuck that was Vietnam? Further, why do we even care what happened in Vietnam? Both of the presidential contenders were BOYS when this all happened. Kerry was smoking a pound of weed at the time while W occasionally got his rocks off snorting a line of crank. Who cares?
Of all the issues that have been dredged up, that fact that both sides are dwelling on this dumb shit is maddening. I don't give a single shit what either of these two did when they were boys. I don't give a fuck if Kerry shouldn't have gotten a purple heart or not, nor the fact that he came back and declared his love for the North Vietnam government. I don't care if Bush, like any sane individual, pulled every string in the book to keep from getting sent into the cluster fuck that was Vietnam.
What I do care about is the here and now and how these men have behaved now that they are men. Even more importantly, I want to know there policy stances NOW, not 30+ years ago. I want to know exactly what Kerry would have done different during the Iraq war and I want to know what Bush is going to do now. I want to know where they plan for the future. This mud slinging contest isn't so much disgusting, it is just annoying. If neither idiot can stop for a few moments to tell me what they want to do, preferably in non-abstract terms, then the choice seems pretty clear. I'll just vote for a third party candidate.
You miss the point that Iraq was not always unstable. In fact, Iraq used to be out right friendly to the US. You have to realize that nations that don't sell oil to the US are not selling it because the US won't buy it. The US could have easily had all the oil in Iraq from Saddam and you can bet that he would never have made a peep. In fact, before the 1990's, this is exactly what happened.
Claiming it is a battle for oil is a silly point of view. Everyone, without exception, wants to sell oil to the US. The US doesn't need to install a proxy government in order to get what it wants. What the US wants out of Iraq is two things.
First, it wants a democracy in Iraq. Don't confuse this as an altruistic act. The US works very well with fellow democracies. It likes have more democracies in the world because it is one less nation to worry about. The US did not fight the USSR tooth and nail because the US wanted anything the USSR had. The US fought the USSR because it just doesn't like non-democracies and wanted to take out the biggest non-democracy there was.
Now, the obvious counter example to this to point out that the US supports plenty of other non-democratic nations, with Saudi Arabia probably being the most obvious one to point out. The US would see Saudi Arabia a democracy tomorrow if it was practical. However, Saudi Arabia right now is more useful for other things then being a democracy. Namely, the US sees Islamic theocracies as the next biggest threat to democracy, and Saudi Arabia is a staunch enemy of such theocracies. In the same way the US propped up Iraq when the communism was the big threat, the US now will merrily prop up other non-democracies if it thinks they are being useful in taking down the larger threat. If tomorrow Islamic fundamentalism was defeat, you would very quickly find nations like Saudi Arabia finding themselves on the wrong side of the US almost overnight.
The second and more important thing that the US wants out of Iraq is to prove to the world that the US is indeed correct in calling for democracy. The fact that Iraq becomes a democracy is more incidental then real goal. The US view is that Iraq could be the next Japan. In the same way Japan influenced the Asian nations around it and served as a model for democratic reform, the US fantasy is that Iraq will do the same thing. Iraq was viewed as the neocons as an ideological battle ground against Islamic theocracies. The big surprise for the neocons was that the Islamic fundamentalists also saw it as a battle ground and were more then ready to fight, both ideologically and militarily. In other words, the US (neo-conservatives more specifically) thought that taking out a secular dictator would result in ideological beachhead to fight Islamic theocracies. WMDs was just the excuse. Think of it like nailing a mobster on tax evasion.
Personally, I believe that if you ever look are trying to divine someone else's motives and the best reasoning you can come up with is that they are basically evil, which is the implication when you assert that Bush just wanted more oil, chances are you are way off base. The assertion that Bush wanted more oil is basically stating that he is willing to trade lives for a small economic boost. I find that to be a very paranoid perspective. I don't make this point against just Democrats, as Republicans do the exact same thing. Even if you violently disagree with someone, I think that if you can not at least see the world from their perspective, you are doing yourself a disservice. Seeing the world from someone else's point of view doesn't mean you have to accept their conclusions, just understand them.
Over population is certainly NOT the problem. Over population is something that is easily solved with technology. The world has no shortage of space. There is plenty of places left to put more humans comfortably. Take a drive in Canada or even through the US and you will see that a lack of space is not the problem. Space might be tight around city centers, but true land to put people is no problem. The US could comfortably fit a billion people. If you are not being nationalistic, you could easily fit half the world population in the US and Canada without bumping elbows. Even if all land area was used up, there is still the simple fact that a full 2/3 of the world is untouched in the form of the oceans, and there is nearly unlimited space to build up and down.
Actual space to put people is not the problem. Food is not a problem. The US could grow all the world's food by itself. Starvation is not a resource problem. The world has more then enough resources to feed every person alive. The problem is politics. The only reason why people starve is because of politics. If people are starving, you can be sure that they are doing so for a political reason. In Somalia it was because control over food supplies is what gave warlords their power. In North Korea it is because the rest of the world reject their political system and the political system they do have is inhumanly inefficient. Whatever the case, it is always politics why people starve in this day and age.
Even if politics were not the issue, technology is more then capable of solving problems of arability. If you think that a new green revolution in terms of food production is not on its way, you are deluding yourself. The capacity to grow food on this planet will always go well beyond our needs for the foreseeable future.
Finally, you have the matter of resources and energy. Again, energy is a political problem, or at worst, a matter for technology to solve. The sun and the earth's core put out more then enough energy for any society we can possibly conceive of. Hell, atomic forces alone put out more then enough energy for everyone. The only problem is that we fail to have the technology to harness these resources. If you think within the next 100 years we don't find a cure to our energy problems, then you must be taking a very grim stance on technological innovation. Other resources are all just a matter of recycling and exploring untapped areas of the earth (like the few thousands miles of stuff below our feet). Humans do very little destruction of atoms. The building blocks to reclaim all that we use is there. It is just a matter of improved technology to reclaim what we have already used.
Humanity, at least in modern times, is not self sustaining with stagnant technology. The industrial revolution was not something humanity could have maintained forever without a complete collapse in society. If it had lasted for a thousand or two thousand years we might very well have wiped out a large hunk of our population. The point is that as destructive as we were during the industrial revolution technology eventually put an end to it. The doomsday that people feared the industrial revolution was going to bring about never came. The same is true for today. Certainly we can't keep doing what we are doing for another thousand years, but then again, I don't think humanity intends to.
I can spare you having to ask this question. The LP party could not be any more against the gay marriage amendment ban. You can safely assume that on this point the entire LP party is united, unlike Democrats and Republicans.
While the US does not value and Iraqi life as much as one of their soldiers lives, they do put some value on an Iraqi life. If the US had fought Iraq with the mentality they used during either World War 2, I imagine uprising would be a thing of the past. During World War II the common tactic when fighting in Germany was to drive a jeep into a German town and tell the mayor that the Americans are coming into town and that he needs to either show where the German soldiers are or get them to leave. If the mayor failed to either get the soldiers to leave and didn't help the American's find them, then the Americans would level the entire town with artillery they got shot at. It was bloody, thoroughly inhuman by modern standards, and very effective.
The problem with Iraq is that the US has only really seen one effective model for an invasion that pacify the population and turns them into democratic allies by using overwhelmingly destructive tactics. The people of Japan were not wooed into liking the US by offering a Democracy. They were thoroughly beaten. Their armies were destroyed, their cities were burned to the ground, and countless civilians died. The end of both Germany and Japan came through complete and total defeat of not just their militaries, but of their people. When it was all said and done, the war had been so bloody and so horrific, normally very spirited people no longer had the will to fight.
The Iraq model is something very different. The US crushed the Iraqi military, but made no attempt to crush the population. In fact, the military was not even crushed in the traditional sense of the word. Generally an army either fights to the death or surrenders. The Iraq army simply deserted under US firepower.
The point is that Iraq is a new way of fighting for the US. To put it bluntly, the US doesn't know what it is doing. They had some theories as to how to fight such a war, and most of those theories have been blown out of the water. They are not trying to kill Iraqis. On the contrary, they are trying very hard not to, and have willingly given up cities they could have easily kept through raw military force simply to spare them the destruction. The reason why there are no US troops in Filuja is not because the US doesn't have the might to take the city, but because they US doesn't know how to take the city without turning it into a heap of rubble.
Personally, I think it is a shitty situation no matter how you look at it. The US fucked up the place and they have an obligation to set thing right. On the other hand, they don't know how to set things right. They know the Afghanistan model where you just let the locals run law and order doesn't work. They know you can't carpet bomb cities any more. I have a feeling that the US will slog it out until January when Iraq holds elections. At that point, I think you can expect the new government to ask the US to leave, and the US to get the fuck out, stopping just long enough to buy souvenirs on the way to the airport. In the end, the Iraq doesn't want the Americans there, and the Americans don't want to be in Iraq.
The reason why they are so nasty to each other is because HardOCP originally ran a piece calling bullshit against Infinuim. That in it of itself is not "having a dick up one's ass". That is just a little journalism. What happened next was that Infinium then said that they were going to sue if HardOCP didn't get rid of the story. Now, it is true the American thing to do is to sue when someone pisses you off. However, it is also very much the American thing to tell someone who is being an ass to go fuck themselves and continue to piss them off just out of spite. Hence you the posting you see today today.
All of that said, I have a great deal of respect for HardOCP. People throw threaten lawsuits over dumb shit like this too often. It is nice to see someone punch these fuckers back.
Whether or not the war was right or wrong is going to be a matter for history books. If 50 years from now Iraq looks like Japan, I doubt anyone will think too long and hard about the war. I recall when the US started to bomb Serbia. At the time the UN did not consent to the action (they consented later, after the bombing began) and there was a large public outcry. Now Serbia is well on the road to democracy and the horrible genocide that was taking place is over. No one questions in hind sight if it was a good or bad thing to go into Serbia.
Iraq is no different from Serbia in this regards. We can argue to death whether or not the justification was correct, but the real test will be when we look about 10 or 20 years from now. If Iraq is a vibrant Democracy smack dab in the middle of the Middle East, it will have been worthwhile. If it looks more like Talaban, then we will remember it with about as much fondess as Somalia.
Personally, I think it was a mistake, but I am completely open to the possibility that it wasn't should 10 years from now Iraq turn out to be a thriving Democracy. If you want a real test that is going to either shut everyone up or throw more flames on the fire, watch the Iraqi elections. I have a feeling we are going to know which way things have swung a in less then six months.
You make it sound like that is a bad thing. The government would have a lot fewer dumb pork barrel programs if people could choose where their money goes. Of course, people having a say in government sounds too much like Democracy. Surely the world would end if we took the decision as to where the money goes out of a politicians hands.
That makes plenty of sense, provided you blatently ignore that they already have the money and can't take it back. Again, if corporations want to dump money into charity in an attempt to improve there image, stop boo-fucking-hooing it and realize that this is one marketing gimmick that is a good thing.
I am utterly blown away by the people who are pissed that Bill gave away 20 million in exchange for having a building named after him. People are pissed because they see it as exchanging money to boost his public image. One question: Are you fucking joking me?
Personally, I have absolutely no problem with corporations giving away money to good causes to boost there image. Would you feel better if they spent the money on TV advertising and pop up ads? If a company can make money, advertise, and do something good in the world all at the same time, why the fuck would you complain? Personally, I would like to see companies do MORE public relation boosting campaigns by giving away big sweaty wads of cash to worthy causes with no strings attached.
I know Slashdot is hung up on the entire corporations are pure evil thing, but you need to get a hold of yourself and get things in perspective. If a big old evil corporation decides it wants to boost its image by saving whales, giving money to educators, and in general throwing money around worthy causes, that is a good thing.
Finally, your points about Gate's evil plot for that science building really being an indoctrination center is down right foolish. He didn't give them 20 mil to teach Windows. In fact, I would say it is pretty damned safe to say that he gave the money away with no strings attached. Once the money is out of his hands it is gone forever. There is no leverage or threat he can use to take it back. They can fill the building up with Macs if they want and Bill can't do anything to stop them.
So, I suggest getting off your high horse and taking a clue that corporations handing out money falls into the 'good thing' category, yes even when Slashdot's arch nemesis Bill Gates of the Evil Micro$oft (-- witty use of the $ sigh) Corporation is the one doing the giving.
Slashdot Mirror
If they 'want' theocracy, they shouldn't have to worry about Democracy. Democracy doesn't rule out any form of popular government. The US and Europe are perfect examples of this. You have some European nations that are practically communist in how socialized they are. You have the US which sits on the other end of the spectrum. You have Democracies like Turkey that are religious in nature, while democracies like France are extremely atheist. That is the beauty of a democracy. If the people truly want a theocracy, they can certainly vote to have one.
Someone modded this crap out?
"If you are in the U.S., you just said something very dangerous."
Are you fucking joking me? No he didn't. The secret police are not on their way. For fucks sake, go take a walk to washinting D.C. some time and see the hordes of people walking around with "Bush is a murdering facist pig" signs that are completely and utterly ignored by the police. Only the extremely ignorant and stupid person would think that saying that they agree with Iraq insurgants could get them in trouble in the US.
Honestly, the entire idea that the war was fought over Iraq's oil is so inane that I can't help but be shocked each time I see someone write it. Let me state this very clearly for you. Saddam was more then happy to give the US oil. If oil is all the US wanted, then it didn't need to invade. It could have gotten all the oil it wanted just by sending Saddam a few bucks.
What the US wants IS a democracy. If you think the US has any other goal then that, you are fooling yourself. The US wants a democracy in the middle east, and there was no other country it had an excuse to invade other then Iraq. If it was simply a matter of oil then the US would have merrily kept buying it from Saddam.
If you want to 'give up ownership', why the hell not? Personally, I like my caffeine. I don't want any government 'help' to keep me away from it. If I want to stop I'll just have to find my own will power, m'kay?
People need to take responsibility for themselves. If someone wants a cup of coffee in the morning or wants to pump shit into their vains via a needle, let them. Personally, I am fucking sick of Republicans trying to save my soul from me and Democrats trying to save me from myself. They could all do a me a favor and fuck off. If I wanted help I would ask for it. But wait! I am fucking the rest of you with my health bills aren't I? How about this... I stop paying taxes for my 'safety net' and the government agrees to stay the fuck out of my life. That way I am only harming myself and no one else has to pay.
Honestly, I don't care what the fuck happened in Vietnam. If either of them tried to get out of it GOOD FOR THEM. I would have done the same. If anything, you get bonus points in my book for trying like hell to dodge getting shot at in the piss hole that was Vietnam. Further, even if I did care, there is the point that both of these men were boys. If you are in college, chances are you are older then Kerry or Bush were when they did their tours in the armed services.
The real issue is that both of them are lying about what happened. Kerry trouts his tour in Vietnam, when the truth was he tried everything possible to get out of it. As for Bush, while he doesn't even bother to trout his time in the armed services, he can't just admit that he tried like hell to keep from getting shipped off. Honestly, I think if either one of them had just said from the beginning that they had made an attempt to dodge the war because getting shot at in a war that we were not going to win is stupid, I think they would have been fine.
For the last fucking time, I don't care what you did when you were a BOY. Just tell the truth about what happened and watch how quickly the story dies.
The simple fact of the matter is that this is the right direction for the US to be taking. The true power of the US has never been the stuff it can do with its civil servants. I am not saying that the government has not done great things, but the crowning achievements really came through the efforts of individuals and yes, corporations. Like it or not, that is how the US gets things done. Not to bring up the -1 flamebait, but Iraq is exactly how the US operates. The US didn't send over a horde of civil servants to fix schools, repair oil wells, and other assorted non-combat stuff. They just throw over a wad of cash and watched as corporations scrambled over each other to get it (well, plus or minus an insurgency... but that is another topic altogether).
The US is just good at using its corporations and entrepreneurs to get things done. Small US corporations and entrepreneurs in particular are extremely skilled at doing a lot with a little. For better or for worse, it is just the way the US operates. The X-Prize is a perfect example of what happens when you use this resource instead of funneling public money into that massive sinkhole that is NASA. The fact that the X-Prize was a private prize and not a government sponsored prize is just hits the point home.
If the US government wanted to do three things to be the first to get into space they would be:
1) Don't get in the way of launches. So long as the spacecraft exploding doesn't pose a public threat, don't stop it. If someone is willing to risk their life flying a less then safe spacecraft in the name of exploration and profit, let them. The only time the FAA should step in is if it poses a serious public danger (IE, launching your nuclear powered spacecraft over LA).
2) Take money away from NASA, pump it into the private sector, and break NASA's monopoly. If the government really wants to spend private funds on space exploration, give it to the private sector in the from of X-Prize like rewards. Further, if NASA is able to do something cheaper then private companies because of subsidies, take the subsidies away. NASA holding a monopoly on space flight can only hurt private endeavors.
3) Encourage other nations to launch their private spacecraft from the US. Give them tax breaks, fewer regulations, lift restrictions on immigration, and whatever else it takes. The strength of the US has never ever been in isolationism. Many of the greatest minds in US history were not from the US. This new centaury will not be any different in that regard. Great minds can appear anywhere. The trick is convincing them that the US is the best place to explore their full potential.
If your point is that global warming is bad, you are using at terrible analogy. If an astroid was going to hit the earth in 500 years, the best thing to do would be to not worry about it. Sure, we might be able to send a manned mission to set up a bunch of massive thrusters and terrible expense and try and deal with it right away at the expense of the world economy... or we could wait and let technology sort it out.
If in the 1600 everyone suddenly panicked in Japan because they were afraid overpopulation was going to destroy Japan, they would have been fools. They could a whole lot of nothing or potentially something that would end of being destructive (like limiting the population). Instead, no one panicked and 400 years latter Japan has a population that their ancestors could not even dream of, but it is a population that is living in relative comfort, harmony, and with more then enough food.
My point is not that we should ignore problems that are creeping up, just that we need to keep our fears in check. We need to realize that the future might very well be far more better equipped to deal with such problems then we are, and that by wasting resources on fixing problems we are not equipped the fix, then perhaps we harming future generations.
The best example of this is the industrial revolution. The industrial revolution was a messy business. The things I have now came through the terrible sacrifices that were made during the industrial revolution. If during the industrial revolution they had suddenly called a halt to it because they didn't want to burden the future with the destruction they were creating at the time, you wouldn't be reading this post on that your computer of yours. At the time people were predicting the end of the world would be brought about due to the industrial revolution. Instead, what followed the industrial revolution turned into a golden age for the nations that had entered the industrial revolution first.
First, the USS Cole wasn't carrying nuclear material, so shooting at some dumb smuck getting close to the boat was not a top priority. They say the boat come in, they had their guns trained on the boat, they just didn't want to fire and potentially kill some foolish civilians trying to get a photo. I imagine that the people guarding the tanker will be far more liberal in their use of force.
Second, the Cole didn't sink, and you can bet that what they are transporting in nuclear material on has a double haul and probably would take a much longer time to sink.
Third, even if the ship did sink, even if they didn't simply remove the plutonium before the ship sank, that still doesn't change the fact that it is a safe bet that the plutonium is in a casing that isn't going to burst open.
No terrorist are going to steal the plutonium. At worst, they can sink the ship. Honestly, I would be much more worried about naval ships sinking and making a mess with their nuclear reactors then a few well contained and protected hunks plutonium. If terrorist really are so stupid as to go after such a dumb target, more power to them. Better they die doing something worthless the find a real target.
Yeah! Especially those janators. The family of five that went to go see the top level - also evil fuckers that eat third world nation's children.
It would almost be nice if the US simply ceased to exist for a year. For those not versed in economics, that would mean 1/4 of the world economy would suddenly vanish. After a year you could tell me if things are better or worse. Even better, make the US not exist after say 1941. The only question is who do you want to put your money on, the facist or the communist?
Emusic's call to fame was unlimited downloads at a flat rate. For me, it was a simple service. All the music I want, don't ponder if a band is good or not, get it and listen to it. They would have continued to get my dollar every month just like netflicks does. Then Emusic put a low cap on the number of bands you can buy. Basically, they decided to charge $0.25 a song... which made the way I enjoyed listening to music worthless.
Look, I am not a music fanatic. I don't ponder laboriously over which CDs to buy. I don't read reviews, and for the most part I put absolutely zero effort into sifting the shit away from the worthwhile stuff. I treat music exactly like TV. I don't have favorite TV shows, I simply sit down on occasion and watch whatever happens to be on. I never sit down for a regular show. The only regular shows that I sit down for are the ones I get from Netflicks.com that I watch at my own leisure. To put it bluntly, there is more then enough entertainment out there that I don't want to waste my busy day having to look for it or sift out the shit from the worthwhile stuff.
If the Internet used the stupid pricing schemes that the music industry uses, that is to say that you have to pay open a webpage instead of a flat rate regardless of how many webpages you open, I wouldn't use the Internet.
Until someone uses a less asinine pricing scheme, I have all but given up on music. At best I go on the occasional downloading spree in a P2P. I am more then happy to shell out a pile of money each month for a service that simply gives me a massive bank of music to brows at my leisure. Until someone responds to what the market obviously wants, I will just spend my money on other media. There is a reason why Netflicks gets my dollar and Blockbuster doesn't any more.
Ahh, the fantasies of someone who clearly hopes for more in an MMORPG then Everquest with new skin. I hate to burst your bubble, but MO is not going to be a cool world with intrigue. It is going to be a world where you and your buddies go over to the crack house and camp out thugs. You will kill a few thousand thugs, then level up. Rinse and repeat, replacing thugs with some other generic NPC you will get to kill over and over again.
The goal of the game will be to level. w00t.
It takes a vast amount of stupidity to blame Clinton for the great years in the 90's and Bush for the slow years opening the new decade. I hate to burst bubbles (haha, pun) but the reason why the Clinton years were so great was because the Internet came into full force on his watch. He had absolutely nothing to do with it. At the very best you can credit him for not taking on protectionist policies that might have thrown water on the fire. Other then staying pretty much out of the way, Clinton just so happened to be president during the world's most significant technological boom to date. If you worked in industry in the 80's and still work in it now, you know the impact e-mail and personal computers has made, and it isn't a little one.
Bush happened to catch the tail end of the boom. More specifically, he caught the boom that a bursting tech bubble makes. The technology bubble burst, and neither Clinton nor Bush had anything to do with it. Worst still, Bush then got to be on watch as 9/11 happened. Unless you believe Bush had the ability to stop it (and that takes some pretty creative hindsight argue), he wasn't responsible for subsequent crash that resulted from both 9/11 and the burst bubble. Giving him credit or blame for what happened is down right stupid.
If another terrorist attack occurs and it has a financial impact, say terrorist blow up Wall Street or nuke or a US city, then you would be completely justified in pointing the figure squarely at Bush and the US congress for ruining the economy.
The president of the US controls only two (arguably three) things when it comes to the economy. The first is that a US president needs to not go overboard with protectionism. I am not saying they can't use a little of it now and then against other nations doing the same, but so long as they keep their protectionist impulses in check, they are doing close to all they can. Second, a US president needs to keep control of large macroscopic problems. In other words, the president needs to keep good trade relations up with all nations that matter and keep other nations/entities from blowing up things in the US. Arguably the third piece is that the president needs to keep debt in check. I say arguably because economists have recently begun to question how important the debt figures really are. Some are arguing that government debt doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things for a nation like the US.
Bush's score is about as good as any other president's score. In other words, he hasn't done anything blatantly stupid to the economy and has kept trade relations solid. From a purely economic standpoint, the only thing Bush has done that is arguably bad is his anti-terrorism policies. It could be argued that he has increased the likelihood of a finically crippling terrorist attack.
I am not saying Bush is the cat's meow, but I am saying that giving Bush credit for a poor economy and Clinton credit for a good economy is utterly stupid. If the two had switch presidencies the economic world be about the same. Bush would have had an economic boom and Clinton would have had a recession. There might have been a difference in the intensity of these cycles, but nothing more.
If it's so goddamn far from everything else, it's not going to make for a very efficient means of getting stuff from "civilization" to space, now is it?
One minor point because I am too tired to answer the rest. Out in the middle of the see is by far the best place to put something if you want 'stuff from civilization' to get there. There is absolutely no cheaper and quicker way to ship large quantities of stuff other then by ship. For industrial applications, some place with sea access is absolutely the best place to put a space elevator.
As far as civilians, I think they will be able to live with taking a couple hour boat ride to get into space.
First of, you DO get something when you gamble. You get the thrill of gambling. Anyone who walks into a Casino knows that chances are they are going to walk out with less money then they started. It is the fact that you might beat the odds and the thrill that brings that adds value. Saying that they are not giving you anything in return is like saying TV doesn't give you anything in return... sure it does. It gives you entertainment.
As to bots, they are not going to cause a Casino to loose money in any other way in that they might simply stop allowing certain games to be played online. If the game is a game where a strong pattern rec software can 'beat the odds' then they will simply get rid of the game, have their own bots play, or adjust winnings such that they still win in terms of dollar amount in the end. The only people who are going to come out loosers are people who who want to play online without a bot.
I tend to almost entirely disagree with you. First, I think the debates have the potential to be horrible for both sides. The real question is how hard will the questions be. For Kerry, hard policy questions that focus on what he said in the past compared to what he is saying now are going to hurt him badly. Kerry has some very stupid things and latter done 180's on them. His waffling support of the Iraq war is probably the most notable of these issues. Even if the questions are not hard, you can pretty much assume that on certain key questions Bush is going to unleash a broadside on Kerry for the way he has voted for in the past. I think there is a real chance for it to be ugly for Kerry in this regard. Kerry also has to worry about not answering directly enough. As stupid as Bush sounds a lot of the time, it often makes Kerry look like an elitist who can't answer a question straight. The way Bush throws his arm over the podium, leans into the microphone, and bobs his head up and down while saying something bluntly and without elegance into the microphone might actually help him against Kerry. That said, if Kerry has any brains in his camp (and he does), they will likely be drilling him to answer questions directly. Kerry can't afford to look like he is dodging questions, and if his advisers have anything to say about it, I imagine he won't.
,sudden change in the economy) that could thoroughly muddy the water. I just don't think the debates offer much promise for the Democrats.
As for Bush, I think there is less chance for something to go wrong, but if things do go wrong, I think there is a great chance for them going VERY wrong. Namely, Bush is a poor public speaker. Generally he gets through it by coming off as a 'down to earth kinda guy'. Every now and then though he gets hit by surprise with a question and he does a deer in the headlights response. I think the right question could cause Bush to freeze on an important issue, and if that happens he could be hurt very badly. So, while I think this scenario is much less likely then Kerry getting pined to a wall for something stupid he has said, I think if it does happen Bush is going to be hurt badly.
As for the VP debates, I hand them to Cheney hands down. Edwards is a likable guy, but Cheney is an excellent and articulate speaker. Cheney doesn't have much in the way of skeleton's in his closet they can bring out, and I doubt anything can blindside him. Cheney, like him or hate him, is a very smart guy who is very convincing. I think the VP debates can only hurt the Democrats. A lot of people have the image of Cheney being a slimy guy who whispers in the president's ears (and you can bet that at that the later is probably very true). However, the VP debates will certainly not show this and instead give the impression that he is just a smart and articulate guy. Cheney has the opportunity to convince people that the general opinion of him is untrue. Edwards on the other hand doesn't have much to gain. People already like him. The Democrats really have nothing to gain in the VP debates. The VP debates can only lead the Democrats down hill, but of course the chances of many people seeing the VP debates are pretty slim.
All of the above said, it is not a done deal by any stretch of the imagine. There are some big ugly landmines sitting out there that either candidate could hit and ruin them. There is also the October surprise (terrorist attack, sudden change in Iraq
Honestly, I am asking, does anyone really care? It seems utterly hypocritical that the most peace loving hippies are the ones who can get so worked up over the issue. Wasn't everyone and their dog trying to get out of the cluster fuck that was Vietnam? Further, why do we even care what happened in Vietnam? Both of the presidential contenders were BOYS when this all happened. Kerry was smoking a pound of weed at the time while W occasionally got his rocks off snorting a line of crank. Who cares?
Of all the issues that have been dredged up, that fact that both sides are dwelling on this dumb shit is maddening. I don't give a single shit what either of these two did when they were boys. I don't give a fuck if Kerry shouldn't have gotten a purple heart or not, nor the fact that he came back and declared his love for the North Vietnam government. I don't care if Bush, like any sane individual, pulled every string in the book to keep from getting sent into the cluster fuck that was Vietnam.
What I do care about is the here and now and how these men have behaved now that they are men. Even more importantly, I want to know there policy stances NOW, not 30+ years ago. I want to know exactly what Kerry would have done different during the Iraq war and I want to know what Bush is going to do now. I want to know where they plan for the future. This mud slinging contest isn't so much disgusting, it is just annoying. If neither idiot can stop for a few moments to tell me what they want to do, preferably in non-abstract terms, then the choice seems pretty clear. I'll just vote for a third party candidate.
You miss the point that Iraq was not always unstable. In fact, Iraq used to be out right friendly to the US. You have to realize that nations that don't sell oil to the US are not selling it because the US won't buy it. The US could have easily had all the oil in Iraq from Saddam and you can bet that he would never have made a peep. In fact, before the 1990's, this is exactly what happened.
Claiming it is a battle for oil is a silly point of view. Everyone, without exception, wants to sell oil to the US. The US doesn't need to install a proxy government in order to get what it wants. What the US wants out of Iraq is two things.
First, it wants a democracy in Iraq. Don't confuse this as an altruistic act. The US works very well with fellow democracies. It likes have more democracies in the world because it is one less nation to worry about. The US did not fight the USSR tooth and nail because the US wanted anything the USSR had. The US fought the USSR because it just doesn't like non-democracies and wanted to take out the biggest non-democracy there was.
Now, the obvious counter example to this to point out that the US supports plenty of other non-democratic nations, with Saudi Arabia probably being the most obvious one to point out. The US would see Saudi Arabia a democracy tomorrow if it was practical. However, Saudi Arabia right now is more useful for other things then being a democracy. Namely, the US sees Islamic theocracies as the next biggest threat to democracy, and Saudi Arabia is a staunch enemy of such theocracies. In the same way the US propped up Iraq when the communism was the big threat, the US now will merrily prop up other non-democracies if it thinks they are being useful in taking down the larger threat. If tomorrow Islamic fundamentalism was defeat, you would very quickly find nations like Saudi Arabia finding themselves on the wrong side of the US almost overnight.
The second and more important thing that the US wants out of Iraq is to prove to the world that the US is indeed correct in calling for democracy. The fact that Iraq becomes a democracy is more incidental then real goal. The US view is that Iraq could be the next Japan. In the same way Japan influenced the Asian nations around it and served as a model for democratic reform, the US fantasy is that Iraq will do the same thing. Iraq was viewed as the neocons as an ideological battle ground against Islamic theocracies. The big surprise for the neocons was that the Islamic fundamentalists also saw it as a battle ground and were more then ready to fight, both ideologically and militarily. In other words, the US (neo-conservatives more specifically) thought that taking out a secular dictator would result in ideological beachhead to fight Islamic theocracies. WMDs was just the excuse. Think of it like nailing a mobster on tax evasion.
Personally, I believe that if you ever look are trying to divine someone else's motives and the best reasoning you can come up with is that they are basically evil, which is the implication when you assert that Bush just wanted more oil, chances are you are way off base. The assertion that Bush wanted more oil is basically stating that he is willing to trade lives for a small economic boost. I find that to be a very paranoid perspective. I don't make this point against just Democrats, as Republicans do the exact same thing. Even if you violently disagree with someone, I think that if you can not at least see the world from their perspective, you are doing yourself a disservice. Seeing the world from someone else's point of view doesn't mean you have to accept their conclusions, just understand them.
Over population is certainly NOT the problem. Over population is something that is easily solved with technology. The world has no shortage of space. There is plenty of places left to put more humans comfortably. Take a drive in Canada or even through the US and you will see that a lack of space is not the problem. Space might be tight around city centers, but true land to put people is no problem. The US could comfortably fit a billion people. If you are not being nationalistic, you could easily fit half the world population in the US and Canada without bumping elbows. Even if all land area was used up, there is still the simple fact that a full 2/3 of the world is untouched in the form of the oceans, and there is nearly unlimited space to build up and down.
Actual space to put people is not the problem. Food is not a problem. The US could grow all the world's food by itself. Starvation is not a resource problem. The world has more then enough resources to feed every person alive. The problem is politics. The only reason why people starve is because of politics. If people are starving, you can be sure that they are doing so for a political reason. In Somalia it was because control over food supplies is what gave warlords their power. In North Korea it is because the rest of the world reject their political system and the political system they do have is inhumanly inefficient. Whatever the case, it is always politics why people starve in this day and age.
Even if politics were not the issue, technology is more then capable of solving problems of arability. If you think that a new green revolution in terms of food production is not on its way, you are deluding yourself. The capacity to grow food on this planet will always go well beyond our needs for the foreseeable future.
Finally, you have the matter of resources and energy. Again, energy is a political problem, or at worst, a matter for technology to solve. The sun and the earth's core put out more then enough energy for any society we can possibly conceive of. Hell, atomic forces alone put out more then enough energy for everyone. The only problem is that we fail to have the technology to harness these resources. If you think within the next 100 years we don't find a cure to our energy problems, then you must be taking a very grim stance on technological innovation. Other resources are all just a matter of recycling and exploring untapped areas of the earth (like the few thousands miles of stuff below our feet). Humans do very little destruction of atoms. The building blocks to reclaim all that we use is there. It is just a matter of improved technology to reclaim what we have already used.
Humanity, at least in modern times, is not self sustaining with stagnant technology. The industrial revolution was not something humanity could have maintained forever without a complete collapse in society. If it had lasted for a thousand or two thousand years we might very well have wiped out a large hunk of our population. The point is that as destructive as we were during the industrial revolution technology eventually put an end to it. The doomsday that people feared the industrial revolution was going to bring about never came. The same is true for today. Certainly we can't keep doing what we are doing for another thousand years, but then again, I don't think humanity intends to.
I can spare you having to ask this question. The LP party could not be any more against the gay marriage amendment ban. You can safely assume that on this point the entire LP party is united, unlike Democrats and Republicans.
While the US does not value and Iraqi life as much as one of their soldiers lives, they do put some value on an Iraqi life. If the US had fought Iraq with the mentality they used during either World War 2, I imagine uprising would be a thing of the past. During World War II the common tactic when fighting in Germany was to drive a jeep into a German town and tell the mayor that the Americans are coming into town and that he needs to either show where the German soldiers are or get them to leave. If the mayor failed to either get the soldiers to leave and didn't help the American's find them, then the Americans would level the entire town with artillery they got shot at. It was bloody, thoroughly inhuman by modern standards, and very effective.
The problem with Iraq is that the US has only really seen one effective model for an invasion that pacify the population and turns them into democratic allies by using overwhelmingly destructive tactics. The people of Japan were not wooed into liking the US by offering a Democracy. They were thoroughly beaten. Their armies were destroyed, their cities were burned to the ground, and countless civilians died. The end of both Germany and Japan came through complete and total defeat of not just their militaries, but of their people. When it was all said and done, the war had been so bloody and so horrific, normally very spirited people no longer had the will to fight.
The Iraq model is something very different. The US crushed the Iraqi military, but made no attempt to crush the population. In fact, the military was not even crushed in the traditional sense of the word. Generally an army either fights to the death or surrenders. The Iraq army simply deserted under US firepower.
The point is that Iraq is a new way of fighting for the US. To put it bluntly, the US doesn't know what it is doing. They had some theories as to how to fight such a war, and most of those theories have been blown out of the water. They are not trying to kill Iraqis. On the contrary, they are trying very hard not to, and have willingly given up cities they could have easily kept through raw military force simply to spare them the destruction. The reason why there are no US troops in Filuja is not because the US doesn't have the might to take the city, but because they US doesn't know how to take the city without turning it into a heap of rubble.
Personally, I think it is a shitty situation no matter how you look at it. The US fucked up the place and they have an obligation to set thing right. On the other hand, they don't know how to set things right. They know the Afghanistan model where you just let the locals run law and order doesn't work. They know you can't carpet bomb cities any more. I have a feeling that the US will slog it out until January when Iraq holds elections. At that point, I think you can expect the new government to ask the US to leave, and the US to get the fuck out, stopping just long enough to buy souvenirs on the way to the airport. In the end, the Iraq doesn't want the Americans there, and the Americans don't want to be in Iraq.
The reason why they are so nasty to each other is because HardOCP originally ran a piece calling bullshit against Infinuim. That in it of itself is not "having a dick up one's ass". That is just a little journalism. What happened next was that Infinium then said that they were going to sue if HardOCP didn't get rid of the story. Now, it is true the American thing to do is to sue when someone pisses you off. However, it is also very much the American thing to tell someone who is being an ass to go fuck themselves and continue to piss them off just out of spite. Hence you the posting you see today today.
All of that said, I have a great deal of respect for HardOCP. People throw threaten lawsuits over dumb shit like this too often. It is nice to see someone punch these fuckers back.
Whether or not the war was right or wrong is going to be a matter for history books. If 50 years from now Iraq looks like Japan, I doubt anyone will think too long and hard about the war. I recall when the US started to bomb Serbia. At the time the UN did not consent to the action (they consented later, after the bombing began) and there was a large public outcry. Now Serbia is well on the road to democracy and the horrible genocide that was taking place is over. No one questions in hind sight if it was a good or bad thing to go into Serbia.
Iraq is no different from Serbia in this regards. We can argue to death whether or not the justification was correct, but the real test will be when we look about 10 or 20 years from now. If Iraq is a vibrant Democracy smack dab in the middle of the Middle East, it will have been worthwhile. If it looks more like Talaban, then we will remember it with about as much fondess as Somalia.
Personally, I think it was a mistake, but I am completely open to the possibility that it wasn't should 10 years from now Iraq turn out to be a thriving Democracy. If you want a real test that is going to either shut everyone up or throw more flames on the fire, watch the Iraqi elections. I have a feeling we are going to know which way things have swung a in less then six months.
You make it sound like that is a bad thing. The government would have a lot fewer dumb pork barrel programs if people could choose where their money goes. Of course, people having a say in government sounds too much like Democracy. Surely the world would end if we took the decision as to where the money goes out of a politicians hands.
That makes plenty of sense, provided you blatently ignore that they already have the money and can't take it back. Again, if corporations want to dump money into charity in an attempt to improve there image, stop boo-fucking-hooing it and realize that this is one marketing gimmick that is a good thing.
I am utterly blown away by the people who are pissed that Bill gave away 20 million in exchange for having a building named after him. People are pissed because they see it as exchanging money to boost his public image. One question: Are you fucking joking me?
Personally, I have absolutely no problem with corporations giving away money to good causes to boost there image. Would you feel better if they spent the money on TV advertising and pop up ads? If a company can make money, advertise, and do something good in the world all at the same time, why the fuck would you complain? Personally, I would like to see companies do MORE public relation boosting campaigns by giving away big sweaty wads of cash to worthy causes with no strings attached.
I know Slashdot is hung up on the entire corporations are pure evil thing, but you need to get a hold of yourself and get things in perspective. If a big old evil corporation decides it wants to boost its image by saving whales, giving money to educators, and in general throwing money around worthy causes, that is a good thing.
Finally, your points about Gate's evil plot for that science building really being an indoctrination center is down right foolish. He didn't give them 20 mil to teach Windows. In fact, I would say it is pretty damned safe to say that he gave the money away with no strings attached. Once the money is out of his hands it is gone forever. There is no leverage or threat he can use to take it back. They can fill the building up with Macs if they want and Bill can't do anything to stop them.
So, I suggest getting off your high horse and taking a clue that corporations handing out money falls into the 'good thing' category, yes even when Slashdot's arch nemesis Bill Gates of the Evil Micro$oft (-- witty use of the $ sigh) Corporation is the one doing the giving.