"So every person in a country is responsible for everything that government does?"
That's the theory of democracy, yes. The question you have to ask yourself is: do I live in a democracy? If the answer is "yes", then you ARE responsible for everything your government does. That's how it works.
"I have one that will not eat noodles of any kind..."
Smart kid. That's to be encouraged: refined carbohydrates will shorten life, and make (at least) the last couple of decades much worse than they should be.
Dr Malcolm Kendrick (see all his books) has a theory that the leisurely and cultured French attitude to meals may help to account for the "French paradox" - that they eat lots of meat and fats*, washed down with wine**, but have very low rates of heart and circulatory disease. What if the root cause isn't anything to do with WHAT you eat - but with HOW you eat it? Imagine a typical Western person's lunch - perhaps a sandwich or other snack, probably crammed down at a desk while trying to go on working under pressure. Now contrast that with a traditional French lunch: two or three courses, in a proper restaurant - if possible, out of doors and in pleasant surroundings - taking at least 45 minutes and perhaps as much as 90 minutes. Accompanied by a sensible amount of alcoholic drink - maybe an aperitif and a glass or two of wine - and interesting, relaxing conversation. After forty or fifty years, which is more likely to lead to a heart attack?
* Yes, I know that eating plenty of healthy meat and natural animal fat is actually good for you. But the people who labelled it a paradox didn't. ** Likewise a reasonable amount of alcohol, especially wine.
"To do that, you just eat your vegetable first, before any of the other food is there..."
As the French (to name but one nation) have been doing for centuries. But God forbid Americans would ever admit they had something to learn from the French.
"More than 4 billion people don't have a voice online."
Translation: "More than 4 billion people are currently ineligible to give me their personal data, so I can sell it and become even more immensely rich". (Why???) "I would like governments (or anyone) to pay for those people to be connected to the Internet, so that I can start making money out of them".
After all, that's what governments are for - making the immensely rich even immensely richer. Isn't it?
Not exactly a case of falsifying physical evidence, but very analogous. The FBI placed four law-abiding US citizens (who happened to be Muslim) on the "No Fly List", preventing them from travelling outside the USA to visit family and friends, and making it seriously inconvenient to travel inside the USA. This action was taken in 2010, after all four men had refused repeated requests by the FBI to act as spies or provocateurs against fellow Muslims. This year, after five years of being banned from flying, the FBI took them off the list shortly before the lawsuit they had brought was due to be heard. The court then ruled that the FBI agents had done nothing illegal.
'"Commander Turner, would you show Mr Ramsey the gadget your boys found?" The lieutenant-commander pushed a black cylinder about the size of a lead pencil down the table... With an ostentatious gesture, Ramsey put his black box on the table. He placed the cylinder beside it, managing to convey the impression that he had plumbed the mysteries of the device and found them, somehow, inferior. "What the devil is that thing?" he wondered. "You've probably recognized that as a tight-beam broadcaster", said Belland. Ramsey glanced at the featureless surface of the black cylinder. "What would those people do if I claimed X-ray vision?" he asked himself. "Obe must have hypnotized them"'. Frank Herbert, "The Dragon in the Sea" (aka "Under Pressure"), published 1956
It's quite impressive that, nearly 170 years ago, there were people who saw exactly where the nanny state would lead.
"When under the pretext of fraternity, the legal code imposes mutual sacrifices on the citizens, human nature is not thereby abrogated. Everyone will then direct his efforts toward contributing little to, and taking much from, the common fund of sacrifices. Now, is it the most unfortunate who gains from this struggle? Certainly not, but rather the most influential and calculating". - Frédéric Bastiat (“Justice and fraternity”, in Journal des Économistes, 15 June 1848, page 324)
"I think it's a good idea that everyone should pay some form of tax (even the most meager of incomes should still incur some non-zero tax) simply because it makes everyone have a little skin in the game and therefor more likely to participate in government, but there are people who pay far less into the system than they receive".
This sounds as if you think government is a benefit. But just because you are forced to pay for something, it doesn't follow that you'll gain from it.
"Be happy you don't get all the government you're paying for". - Will Rogers
"Now, the government is elected by the people - really, it is!"
You poor deluded person.
"I don't care who does the electing as long as I get to do the nominating". - William M. Tweed (“Boss Tweed”) as quoted in Understanding American Government (2003) by Susan Welch, p. 224
Assuming that the Chinese DID do it. For which we have the unsupported word of the US government, whose unbelievable incompetence and/or negligence allowed the theft to take place. What better - indeed, what more irresistible knee-jerk - reaction than to blame the horrid foreigners?
"Sanction them. Exclude them from the world market".
Assuming much? We have already seen how sanctions on Russia have stimulated its economy while seriously damaging Europe's. I seriously wonder which of those (or both) the US government finds more rewarding.
The important question, however, is why the US government thinks that it can "exclude" other countries "from the world market". Given that the USA has less than 5 percent of the world's population, and has been spectacularly successful in lining up dozens of other nations against its policies - including several of the world's largest. They started by placing sanctions on Russia (see the link below). Now they want to sanction China. Maybe India and Brazil might follow - four out of the five BRICS nations. But at some point, when less than 5 percent of the world's population starts sanctioning and excluding others, one wonders just who is excluding and who is being excluded. Or maybe someone is contriving to exclude themselves?
"You are confusing the F-22 Raptor with the F-35 JSF".
Easily done. Not everyone has completed the Advanced Turkey Discrimination Course.
"The F-22 has recently been deployed to Europe because of the russian attack on the Ukraine".
There has been no "Russian attack on the Ukraine". Two important things happened last year:
1. After the illegal coup d'etat in Kiev, in which the elected President was chased out of the country in fear of his life, the junta of oligarchs that illegally assumed power revealed its murderous hostility to the Russian population of the East and South. The inhabitants of Crimea held a referendum (approved by all the usual international monitoring bodies) which resulted in a 96.77 percent vote for integration of the region into the Russian Federation with an 83.1 percent voter turnout. Crimea then asked Russia to accept it back as a part of Russia (as it was from 1783 to 1991) and Russia agreed.
2. The Kiev junta then sent its armed forces to conquer the Donbas area (Donetsk and Lugansk). The local inhabitants fought back, first of all with weapons seized from armouries and then with increasing quantities of heavy weapons captured from the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF). ("Please send us more armoured columns. The last ones were delicious!") The UAF and numerous neo-Nazi and other Fascist units helping them shelled, bombed and rocketed civilian areas including schools, hospitals, homes and places of work; but they were unable to capture territory and, indeed, lost many troops and much equipment. To date over 1 million civilian refugees have fled to Russia - which they would hardly have done if Russia had been the aggressor.
If Russia had attacked Ukraine it would have conquered it in about 48 hours.
"Smart bombs turned bomb dropping into a precision weapon that had pinpoint accuracy".
Hahahahahaha... advocates of bombing have been saying that kind of thing since the WW2 Norden bomb sight. That was supposed to attain an accuracy of about 20 metres... but under real conditions, many bombs fell miles away from their targets.
The introduction of clever electronics has admittedly allowed "pinpoint accuracy" - meaning that you hit exactly what you aim at. Now all that remains is to make sure you aim at the right target - rather than, say, the Chinese embassy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U...
"Why is the BBC (a corporation with a royal charter) paying the Met Office (a government entity) for weather forecasting?"
Because political correctness requires everything to be paid for. If neoliberals had their way, children would have to pay their parents for board and lodging.
"All forecasters get it wrong sometimes. It's an art as much as it's a science".
Well, the BBC (which uses Met Office data) gets it wrongly consistently, week after week. And if it's an art as much as a science, it must be the only art that requires the use of £97 million supercomputers.
Slashdot Mirror
"So every person in a country is responsible for everything that government does?"
That's the theory of democracy, yes. The question you have to ask yourself is: do I live in a democracy? If the answer is "yes", then you ARE responsible for everything your government does. That's how it works.
Or slather the vegetables with butter. Remember butter? That delicious, creamy, tasty, treat that's just stuffed with nutritional goodness?
(If you think that's funny or wrong, pick up a book on nutrition written by someone competent in the past five years).
"I have one that will not eat noodles of any kind..."
Smart kid. That's to be encouraged: refined carbohydrates will shorten life, and make (at least) the last couple of decades much worse than they should be.
Dr Malcolm Kendrick (see all his books) has a theory that the leisurely and cultured French attitude to meals may help to account for the "French paradox" - that they eat lots of meat and fats*, washed down with wine**, but have very low rates of heart and circulatory disease. What if the root cause isn't anything to do with WHAT you eat - but with HOW you eat it? Imagine a typical Western person's lunch - perhaps a sandwich or other snack, probably crammed down at a desk while trying to go on working under pressure. Now contrast that with a traditional French lunch: two or three courses, in a proper restaurant - if possible, out of doors and in pleasant surroundings - taking at least 45 minutes and perhaps as much as 90 minutes. Accompanied by a sensible amount of alcoholic drink - maybe an aperitif and a glass or two of wine - and interesting, relaxing conversation. After forty or fifty years, which is more likely to lead to a heart attack?
* Yes, I know that eating plenty of healthy meat and natural animal fat is actually good for you. But the people who labelled it a paradox didn't.
** Likewise a reasonable amount of alcohol, especially wine.
"To do that, you just eat your vegetable first, before any of the other food is there..."
As the French (to name but one nation) have been doing for centuries. But God forbid Americans would ever admit they had something to learn from the French.
Yes.
"More than 4 billion people don't have a voice online."
Translation: "More than 4 billion people are currently ineligible to give me their personal data, so I can sell it and become even more immensely rich". (Why???) "I would like governments (or anyone) to pay for those people to be connected to the Internet, so that I can start making money out of them".
After all, that's what governments are for - making the immensely rich even immensely richer. Isn't it?
Oh, and this:
https://ccrjustice.org/home/pr...
Not exactly a case of falsifying physical evidence, but very analogous. The FBI placed four law-abiding US citizens (who happened to be Muslim) on the "No Fly List", preventing them from travelling outside the USA to visit family and friends, and making it seriously inconvenient to travel inside the USA. This action was taken in 2010, after all four men had refused repeated requests by the FBI to act as spies or provocateurs against fellow Muslims. This year, after five years of being banned from flying, the FBI took them off the list shortly before the lawsuit they had brought was due to be heard. The court then ruled that the FBI agents had done nothing illegal.
The FBI has an awful lot of previous form when it comes to pretending to have scientific evidence that doesn't really exist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
http://www.theatlantic.com/pol...
https://www.wsws.org/en/articl...
etc., etc. ad nauseam.
'"Commander Turner, would you show Mr Ramsey the gadget your boys found?"
The lieutenant-commander pushed a black cylinder about the size of a lead pencil down the table... With an ostentatious gesture, Ramsey put his black box on the table. He placed the cylinder beside it, managing to convey the impression that he had plumbed the mysteries of the device and found them, somehow, inferior.
"What the devil is that thing?" he wondered.
"You've probably recognized that as a tight-beam broadcaster", said Belland.
Ramsey glanced at the featureless surface of the black cylinder. "What would those people do if I claimed X-ray vision?" he asked himself. "Obe must have hypnotized them"'.
Frank Herbert, "The Dragon in the Sea" (aka "Under Pressure"), published 1956
It's quite impressive that, nearly 170 years ago, there were people who saw exactly where the nanny state would lead.
"When under the pretext of fraternity, the legal code imposes mutual sacrifices on the citizens, human nature is not thereby abrogated. Everyone will then direct his efforts toward contributing little to, and taking much from, the common fund of sacrifices. Now, is it the most unfortunate who gains from this struggle? Certainly not, but rather the most influential and calculating".
- Frédéric Bastiat (“Justice and fraternity”, in Journal des Économistes, 15 June 1848, page 324)
"I think it's a good idea that everyone should pay some form of tax (even the most meager of incomes should still incur some non-zero tax) simply because it makes everyone have a little skin in the game and therefor more likely to participate in government, but there are people who pay far less into the system than they receive".
This sounds as if you think government is a benefit. But just because you are forced to pay for something, it doesn't follow that you'll gain from it.
"Be happy you don't get all the government you're paying for".
- Will Rogers
"Now, the government is elected by the people - really, it is!"
You poor deluded person.
"I don't care who does the electing as long as I get to do the nominating".
- William M. Tweed (“Boss Tweed”) as quoted in Understanding American Government (2003) by Susan Welch, p. 224
I'm glad I don't own a Raspberry Pi in that neighbourhood.
And swam the Hellespont.
Assuming that the Chinese DID do it. For which we have the unsupported word of the US government, whose unbelievable incompetence and/or negligence allowed the theft to take place. What better - indeed, what more irresistible knee-jerk - reaction than to blame the horrid foreigners?
"Sanction them. Exclude them from the world market".
Assuming much? We have already seen how sanctions on Russia have stimulated its economy while seriously damaging Europe's. I seriously wonder which of those (or both) the US government finds more rewarding.
The important question, however, is why the US government thinks that it can "exclude" other countries "from the world market". Given that the USA has less than 5 percent of the world's population, and has been spectacularly successful in lining up dozens of other nations against its policies - including several of the world's largest. They started by placing sanctions on Russia (see the link below). Now they want to sanction China. Maybe India and Brazil might follow - four out of the five BRICS nations. But at some point, when less than 5 percent of the world's population starts sanctioning and excluding others, one wonders just who is excluding and who is being excluded. Or maybe someone is contriving to exclude themselves?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/...
"Those are F-22 Raptors".
Which the mudfeet refer to as "Raptors".
"You are confusing the F-22 Raptor with the F-35 JSF".
Easily done. Not everyone has completed the Advanced Turkey Discrimination Course.
"The F-22 has recently been deployed to Europe because of the russian attack on the Ukraine".
There has been no "Russian attack on the Ukraine". Two important things happened last year:
1. After the illegal coup d'etat in Kiev, in which the elected President was chased out of the country in fear of his life, the junta of oligarchs that illegally assumed power revealed its murderous hostility to the Russian population of the East and South. The inhabitants of Crimea held a referendum (approved by all the usual international monitoring bodies) which resulted in a 96.77 percent vote for integration of the region into the Russian Federation with an 83.1 percent voter turnout. Crimea then asked Russia to accept it back as a part of Russia (as it was from 1783 to 1991) and Russia agreed.
2. The Kiev junta then sent its armed forces to conquer the Donbas area (Donetsk and Lugansk). The local inhabitants fought back, first of all with weapons seized from armouries and then with increasing quantities of heavy weapons captured from the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF). ("Please send us more armoured columns. The last ones were delicious!") The UAF and numerous neo-Nazi and other Fascist units helping them shelled, bombed and rocketed civilian areas including schools, hospitals, homes and places of work; but they were unable to capture territory and, indeed, lost many troops and much equipment. To date over 1 million civilian refugees have fled to Russia - which they would hardly have done if Russia had been the aggressor.
If Russia had attacked Ukraine it would have conquered it in about 48 hours.
"Smart bombs turned bomb dropping into a precision weapon that had pinpoint accuracy".
Hahahahahaha... advocates of bombing have been saying that kind of thing since the WW2 Norden bomb sight. That was supposed to attain an accuracy of about 20 metres... but under real conditions, many bombs fell miles away from their targets.
The introduction of clever electronics has admittedly allowed "pinpoint accuracy" - meaning that you hit exactly what you aim at. Now all that remains is to make sure you aim at the right target - rather than, say, the Chinese embassy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U...
"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong".
So, applying elementary logic... it's dangerous to be right.
Makes sense to me.
Love ling ond prapser!
FTFY
"Why is the BBC (a corporation with a royal charter) paying the Met Office (a government entity) for weather forecasting?"
Because political correctness requires everything to be paid for. If neoliberals had their way, children would have to pay their parents for board and lodging.
Sorry, typo. Should read:
"Well, the BBC (which uses Met Office data) gets it wrong consistently, week after week".
"All forecasters get it wrong sometimes. It's an art as much as it's a science".
Well, the BBC (which uses Met Office data) gets it wrongly consistently, week after week. And if it's an art as much as a science, it must be the only art that requires the use of £97 million supercomputers.
"Fact: The Met Office is the most successful weather forecasting organization on the planet".
If so, the others must be pretty God-awful.