I agree with you, but I don't think this was what noted idiot, elite toady and NYT columnist (redundant, I know) Thomas Friedman had in mind. (Honestly, WTF? Why is that jackass' garbled, moronic gibberish showing up on Slashdot?)
Since you are much smarter and better educated than Friedman, you will of course realize that a man may be a "noted idiot, elite toady and NYT columnist" and still be correct in some of his opinions. Perhaps it is sufficient reason for his " garbled, moronic gibberish" to show up on Slashdot that it reveals your own weakness - apparently you believe that levelling a stream of personal abuse at the speaker renders his views self-evidently wrong.
But actually, it's fairly obvious that if one approach isn't working you should look for an alternative approach - not keep banging your head against the wall. (Unless you enjoy that...)
I had terrible trouble with wireless, although my house is quite small and the distances involved were usually less than 30-40 feet. Did some research and found out that most mass-market wireless won't go through a decent brick or concrete wall, is stopped pretty much dead by metal, and doesn't even like double glazing much. So you need to consider what materials your house is made of before you go shopping. If it's wood or some other lightweight material, fine. But if it's built with lots of brick and concrete and steel - maybe not.
Power line networking to the rescue! I happened to choose Devolo because it looked good quality (although relatively expensive). My problems evaporated within 24 hours, and network speeds have actually increased. I hardly ever use even Ethernet cable any more. Every mains socket is also an Ethernet socket, so I sit down with my laptop, plug in the mains cable, and plug a short length of Ethernet cable into the same socket - and I'm wired.
Of course, you can do this with a wireless acces point instead of a laptop - so pick the power point that is most convenient for where you want reception, and plug in your access point there - that lets you use your equipment in the garden.
Iran is a pariah in a way no country in the EU is.
What - if anything - does that mean in plain English? My OECD tells me:
pariah n noun 1 an outcast. 2 historical a member of a low caste or of no caste in southern India.
ORIGIN
C17: from Tamil paraiyar (plural) '(hereditary) drummers', from parai 'a drum'.
So I suppose you mean to assert that Iran is an outcast of some kind. Cast out from what, and by whom? As far as I can see, all its people and its government have done is to take their religion seriously - unlike the leaders of most "Western" countries who profess an obligatory "faith" whose most basic tenets they utterly ignore every single day.
Now you may or may not be religious. But if you say you are, shouldn't you follow through?
As for the specific reasons why Iran is supposed to be a "pariah", doesn't it boil down to the fact that the US government doesn't like it? And when the silverback takes against a smaller and weaker animal, everyone must follow suit on pain of the silverback's forceful displeasure.
Iran has taken up some of its rights under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Pact, such as the pursuit of peaceful nuclear energy. There is absolutely no evidence that it is in the least interested in seeking nuclear weaponry, in spite of very strong provocation to do so. (Certainly no more than Germany, say. Or Japan). Yet Iran is a "pariah".
Israel (to take a random example of a nation that is very much not a "pariah") has completely ignored the NNPT. By failing to sign the treaty and then arming itself with a large nuclear arsenal, it has given the finger to the treaty, the IAEA, and the "international community" - including the USA. Yet the silverback's favourite son can do no wrong.
And before you ask, I have no conceivable links with Iran. I just dislike hypocrisy, injustice, and fallacious reasoning. As everyone who reads Slashdot should.
Fwiw I was actively engaged in the computer industry at the time of those events, and then I earned a decent living writing about them for another 20 years or so. So I do know the facts reasonably well.
IBM contracted Microsoft to help build OS/2.
Wrong. IBM first contracted Microsoft to provide the original operating system for the IBM PC - which turned out to be MS-DOS. OS/2 came later; as its name suggests, it was meant to be the second (and much better) PC operating system.
From there Gates did his thing and used the tech from the OS/2 project to build NT.
Also wrong. The ideas which Microsoft got from OS/2, together with some other GUI ideas from Apple, went into the first versions of Windows in the later 1980s. The first two or three versions of Windows didn't really work at all. Windows 3 was the first one was that was useable. Windows NT was a fairly successful blending of the Windows GUI with underlying operating system software that was remarkably similar to VMS. Unsurprising, because it was managed by David Cutler and his crew whom Microsoft hired when they became discontented at DEC.
But Apple has never been in the same Arena as IBM and has never shown signs that they ever intend to.
Which was precisely the point I made by saying the perceived threat from Apple was an "utterly imaginary" one.
... to read the headline as "...IBM's market cap has once again surpassed Microsoft's..."?
Don't forget that IBM was a $70 billion turnover company (back when that was worth quite a lot) whose chairman regularly appeared at the shareholders' meeting and apologized for any inadvertent growth during the past year? That was because everyone knew if IBM grew any bigger the DoJ was committed to dismembering it as a monopoly.
At that point, there was no Microsoft.
IBM basically created Microsoft as a defence against the mortal strategic threat posed to it by the Apple Lisa. Yes, that's right: to protect itself against an utterly imaginary threat, IBM itself created the only serious competitor it would have for the next 30 years. Hmmm, maybe not as dumb as you might think... at least it got the DoJ off its back and onto Microsoft's...
We don't know how to induce people to have smaller families. Unfortunately, even if we did we would still be in a box: over time, those reasonable people who agreed to have smaller families would be massively outbred by those who ignored the exhortations and went on having 6, 10, or 13 children per family. Result: all those who can be persuaded to practice birth control vanish from the gene pool, and population growth becomes even more rapid. There are other problems, such as the fact that the decay of marriage in more and more societies makes it much harder to limit the number of children born.
The only method of even limiting population growth that I have seen work is the Chinese method. One child per family maximum, and no exceptions. That's harsh, and its enforcement is bound to involve very nasty acts - such as forced abortions and even killing babies who have been born illegally. About the only thing in favour of the policy is that it seems to work - it's so simple that there is little to go wrong with it. OTOH any government that tried to impose such a policy in a democratic nation would probably get slung out of office so violently it would find itself in solar orbit, and replaced by a government that let the people do what they want.
This is another instalment of the long-awaited crunch as the Web's refreshing informality and common sense collides with the institutionalized imbecility of the law. Tim Berners-Lee made his views unmistakably clear nearly 20 years ago: see http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkMyths.html. The basic principle is that, if you don't like the way the Web works, you should just ignore it. No one forces anyone to publish a Web site; but, if they do, it is an implicit invitation to anyone else anywhere to read it - and link to it.
However, it was only a few years later (probably about 1998) that the vast mass of money-grubbing freeloaders (sorry, the "business community") discovered the huge untapped mother-lode represented by the Web. "Hey!" they cried jubilantly, "Just look at this immense opportunity to make stacks of money that some stupid sucker has just given us - completely free of charge, too". Those were the same guys who soon began complaining that the Web's design was not optimized to help them make as much money as possible with no effort.
It was around 1998, too, that I stumbled across a law company's Web site somewhere in the USA that laid down strict legal principles for creating Web sites. One of these rules was that every single hyperlink required a separate legal agreement - negotiated by a reputable law firm, naturally.
The worst of the matter is that the reptiles (sorry, lawyers and politicians) can always change the law in any way they like. It's their game and their ball, and they are apparently absolutely unaccountable to anyone sane or educated.
The best part of it is that the TSA is actually setting up the terrorists' next big target for them: the huge queues waiting to go through "security".
That is assuming there are any terrorists (other than Americans) trying to blow things up in America, which seems extremely doubtful. The whole rationale for TSA's existence reminds me of a joke I heard at school when I was about 6: "Why do elephants have yellow feet?" "So they won't be seen when hiding upside down in bowls of custard". "That's ridiculous, I've never seen an elephant in a bowl of custard". (You can see where this is heading, can't you?). "That shows how well it works!" (boom boom).
"Israel was not formed by wholesale extermination of Palestinians..."
Well, that is a matter of degree. A lot of Palestinians were killed when they refused to leave their homes; and it is reasonable to believe that the Israelis intended for many of the others to die as a result of being ejected from the good agricultural land and sent away into desert regions. But it is true that the present regime in Israel and Palestine more closely resembles South African apartheid.
"Jews were people without a homeland at all..."
That's an interesting remark. It seems to imply that you believe every "people" should have a "homeland" that is uniquely, and permanently, theirs. But how does that fit in with the theory that it is perfectly OK to eject the current people from their "homeland" and take it for yourselves? Moreover, what exactly is "a people"? Surely you do not believe that there are distinct "races", each with its native soil? Apart from being very close to the Nazis' own ideas, that is surely a concept that science left behind decades ago.
It also raises the question of "who is a Jew?" Is a Jew a person who embraces the Jewish religion, or a person of Jewish parentage, or both? If it's a matter of religion, where is the connection with Palestine for someone whose ancestors came from Poland or Spain? Or if it's someone who can prove descent from Jews who left Palestine after the unsuccessful rebellion against Rome, what gives them the right to reclaim the land their ancestors supposedly occupied 60 or 70 generations ago? That is not a precedent I imagine most white Americans would wish to see established.
"Israel came about solely because of the Nazi era - WW2 was over before Israel was created - "
Exactly. So why did the Jews have to flee Europe precisely when the people who had persecuted them were all dead, in prison, or being hunted down like dogs? And why did any of them have to leave the USA, which is such a paradise of racial tolerance?
"...from British-controlled territory..."
Yes. And the British remember that it was accomplished by a sustained campaign of wholesale terrorism against military and civilian targets alike - even if you don't. Clue: try searching for "King David Hotel Bombing".
People do not just stand up and leave their homes and entire possessions, unless you convincingly demonstrate to them that you are willing to slaughter them if they don't leave.
And that is exactly what the Jews forced the Palestinians to do. Having been a victim does not constitute a licence to victimize someone else.
The point is not whether one group of people has ever forcibly conquered or displaced another. Almost all of history consists of that. But all the examples you cite are well in the past - at least before 1900. The point is whether supposedly civilized people should have set out to do such a thing in the 1940s - during and after the Nazi era. We rightly condemn the Nazis for setting out to conquer, displace, and sometimes exterminate indigenous peoples - then acquiesce smilingly when the Jews do the same thing. That's a classic double standard.
By the way, I feel I should mention that:
1. There is no evidence that Iran is seeking to acquire nuclear weapons, and much that it isn't. 2. It is against Iran's interests to have a nuclear weapons program, as that would provide Israel and the USA with a classic casus belli for an aggressive war against it. (Exactly as happened in Iraq). 3. Iran has signed the NPT, and has complied with its rules. The NPT explicitly allows signatories to seek and acquire peaceful nuclear power generation. 4. Israel (like India) has not signed the NPT, yet has not only pursued the acquisition of nuclear weapons; it is said to have over 100 of them, ready for use at any time. This is in flagrant breach of international law, yet no one seems to care. 5. The USA, as revealed by Wikileaks, intends to supply Israel with fissionable material. As Israel has not signed the NPT, that is a violation of both international law and the NPT. 6. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that the state of Israel should be removed from the map. That would be achieved if, for instance, all the immigrant Jews were to go back to Europe, North America, and wherever else they came from, and the Palestinians were given back their homes. He did not call for the killing of anyone, let alone the genocide often falsely attributed to him.
Everything you say is quite reasonable, JSBiff, and I don't dispute it.
Personally I have never found utilitarianism appealing, so I can accept the status quo in our countries. But only because I don't believe that "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one/few".
What puzzles me is the thinking of people who accept both that proposition, and the current state of our nations.
If indeed "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one/few", why do American and British laws permit a few people to own billions of dollars while others lack housing, clothing, education, and even food?
Methinks it depends on which "many" and which "few" one is talking about. It is quite possible to see today's "Western" societies as sophisticated machines for making sure that the needs of a privileged few outweigh those of everyone else. I do not say this from any ideological standpoint - merely as a result of observation and experience.
1. The US flag has no political power either, but I think a lot of Americans are loyal to it and would risk their lives for it.
2. Note the operative word "*rebellious* Scots". Or, for that matter, rebellious anyone. Of course the words reflect the particular time when the anthem was written - just as "The Star-Spangled Banner" refers to "Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes" and continues "Their blood has wash'd out their foul footsteps' pollution. No refuge could save the hireling and slave from the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave..." That's us British - "the foe's haughty host... the hireling and the slave..."
There are about 1.2M active US troops at present, UK has under 200K. Ho hum.
Yes. There are over 300 million Americans, and about 60 million British people, so adjusting for the relative population sizes the discrepancy becomes 1.2 to 1.0 rather than 6 to 1.
Then take into account that the USA's military budget is larger than those of all other nations combined, that it has over 1,000 military bases abroad to staff, that it is currently fighting a complex war in Asia - to which the UK makes a relatively small contribution - and you can see why the US armed forces are so big.
But all that is beside the point. I'm sure that many loyal Americans would die for the President - whoever he or she is - and many loyal British people would die for their monarch - whoever he or she is.
As for Prince Charles - whom I like and admire in equal measure - he has done what no ambitious politician can ever afford to do: have strong opinions and talk about them in public. He is religious, so many atheists and agnostics despise him for that. He is wealthy and influential, so socialists and egalitarians of all kinds hate him for that. He inherited a key role in Britain's constitutional hierarchy, so republicans cannot abide him. His love of traditional architecture places him in direct conflict with those who have interests in throwing up huge modern buildings of dubious appearance. His support for organic farming (which dates back to long before it became popular) has put him squarely in the path of all those who profit from factory farms and industrial food production - including genetically engineered food. And so on, and so on. Oh, and he sounds "posh" so many others (including quite a few whose accents would be just as plummy if they did not take pains to disguise them) affect to dislike him for that too. But I have hardly ever heard of anyone who has met Prince Charles and talked to him for a while who has not come away with a good deal of admiration for his breadth of knowledge, common sense (yes!), and sheer good will.
There's a few generations of powerful people after one person amasses an obscene about of wealth, and there's perpetual hereditary power.
Actually, in Britain nowadays there isn't "perpetual hereditary power". The closest anyone comes to that is perhaps the Murdoch dynasty - but they are originally Australian (although God alone knows what they are now - it tends to change with the latest updates to tax laws in various countries).
The Queen certainly became monarch on the hereditary principle. But she doesn't have any power (other than that conferred by her wealth, which is not exceptional by any means). She does receive exceptional deference, because of her role as sovereign (the "dignified part" of the British constitution). Expressing respect for the Queen in Britain is rather like expressing respect for the flag in the USA - both symbolize the nation. But she cannot influence the making of law or policy, unless the prime minister should choose to ask for her advice and follow it.
The other traditional centre of hereditary power in Britain, the House of Lords, is no longer run on hereditary lines either. Most of its members are political appointees whose claim to be "noble" (in any sense) is tenuous at best. And anyway the House of Lords has virtually no ability to change legislation - and none at all to originate it.
I vote a small prize to Androcles for commencing discussion of TFA. AFAICS from a quick scan, everything up to this point has been self-indulgent (and more or less pointless) chatter about socialism, fascism, and other abstract ideas on which people will never agree even if they learn to argue coherently.
When will Slashdot acquire my most-desired enhancement: a flag to let readers go directly to the point (whether halfway through, three quarters, nine tenths, or whatever) where actual discussion of TFA begins? Just think of the cumulative number of person-hours it would save every day.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with you, but I don't think this was what noted idiot, elite toady and NYT columnist (redundant, I know) Thomas Friedman had in mind. (Honestly, WTF? Why is that jackass' garbled, moronic gibberish showing up on Slashdot?)
Since you are much smarter and better educated than Friedman, you will of course realize that a man may be a "noted idiot, elite toady and NYT columnist" and still be correct in some of his opinions. Perhaps it is sufficient reason for his " garbled, moronic gibberish" to show up on Slashdot that it reveals your own weakness - apparently you believe that levelling a stream of personal abuse at the speaker renders his views self-evidently wrong.
That turns out not to be the case.
Thank you!
But actually, it's fairly obvious that if one approach isn't working you should look for an alternative approach - not keep banging your head against the wall. (Unless you enjoy that...)
I had terrible trouble with wireless, although my house is quite small and the distances involved were usually less than 30-40 feet. Did some research and found out that most mass-market wireless won't go through a decent brick or concrete wall, is stopped pretty much dead by metal, and doesn't even like double glazing much. So you need to consider what materials your house is made of before you go shopping. If it's wood or some other lightweight material, fine. But if it's built with lots of brick and concrete and steel - maybe not.
Power line networking to the rescue! I happened to choose Devolo because it looked good quality (although relatively expensive). My problems evaporated within 24 hours, and network speeds have actually increased. I hardly ever use even Ethernet cable any more. Every mains socket is also an Ethernet socket, so I sit down with my laptop, plug in the mains cable, and plug a short length of Ethernet cable into the same socket - and I'm wired.
Of course, you can do this with a wireless acces point instead of a laptop - so pick the power point that is most convenient for where you want reception, and plug in your access point there - that lets you use your equipment in the garden.
Iran is a pariah in a way no country in the EU is.
What - if anything - does that mean in plain English? My OECD tells me:
pariah
n noun
1 an outcast.
2 historical a member of a low caste or of no caste in southern India.
ORIGIN
C17: from Tamil paraiyar (plural) '(hereditary) drummers', from parai 'a drum'.
So I suppose you mean to assert that Iran is an outcast of some kind. Cast out from what, and by whom? As far as I can see, all its people and its government have done is to take their religion seriously - unlike the leaders of most "Western" countries who profess an obligatory "faith" whose most basic tenets they utterly ignore every single day.
Now you may or may not be religious. But if you say you are, shouldn't you follow through?
As for the specific reasons why Iran is supposed to be a "pariah", doesn't it boil down to the fact that the US government doesn't like it? And when the silverback takes against a smaller and weaker animal, everyone must follow suit on pain of the silverback's forceful displeasure.
Iran has taken up some of its rights under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Pact, such as the pursuit of peaceful nuclear energy. There is absolutely no evidence that it is in the least interested in seeking nuclear weaponry, in spite of very strong provocation to do so. (Certainly no more than Germany, say. Or Japan). Yet Iran is a "pariah".
Israel (to take a random example of a nation that is very much not a "pariah") has completely ignored the NNPT. By failing to sign the treaty and then arming itself with a large nuclear arsenal, it has given the finger to the treaty, the IAEA, and the "international community" - including the USA. Yet the silverback's favourite son can do no wrong.
And before you ask, I have no conceivable links with Iran. I just dislike hypocrisy, injustice, and fallacious reasoning. As everyone who reads Slashdot should.
Gee, I took my family to dinner in the restaurant on the top floor. Was I breaking the law?
I didn't know it was illegal to say anything about the Tower, because it was illegal for anyone to tell me it was illegal.
Now THAT's security for you.
You're getting senile. The Apple Lisa was never a threat to IBM or anyone.
Yes, that is what I said. Are you one of those people who don't understand irony?
Fwiw I was actively engaged in the computer industry at the time of those events, and then I earned a decent living writing about them for another 20 years or so. So I do know the facts reasonably well.
IBM contracted Microsoft to help build OS/2.
Wrong. IBM first contracted Microsoft to provide the original operating system for the IBM PC - which turned out to be MS-DOS. OS/2 came later; as its name suggests, it was meant to be the second (and much better) PC operating system.
From there Gates did his thing and used the tech from the OS/2 project to build NT.
Also wrong. The ideas which Microsoft got from OS/2, together with some other GUI ideas from Apple, went into the first versions of Windows in the later 1980s. The first two or three versions of Windows didn't really work at all. Windows 3 was the first one was that was useable. Windows NT was a fairly successful blending of the Windows GUI with underlying operating system software that was remarkably similar to VMS. Unsurprising, because it was managed by David Cutler and his crew whom Microsoft hired when they became discontented at DEC.
But Apple has never been in the same Arena as IBM and has never shown signs that they ever intend to.
Which was precisely the point I made by saying the perceived threat from Apple was an "utterly imaginary" one.
... to read the headline as "...IBM's market cap has once again surpassed Microsoft's..."?
Don't forget that IBM was a $70 billion turnover company (back when that was worth quite a lot) whose chairman regularly appeared at the shareholders' meeting and apologized for any inadvertent growth during the past year? That was because everyone knew if IBM grew any bigger the DoJ was committed to dismembering it as a monopoly.
At that point, there was no Microsoft.
IBM basically created Microsoft as a defence against the mortal strategic threat posed to it by the Apple Lisa. Yes, that's right: to protect itself against an utterly imaginary threat, IBM itself created the only serious competitor it would have for the next 30 years. Hmmm, maybe not as dumb as you might think... at least it got the DoJ off its back and onto Microsoft's...
The "proper" value of a stock is the net present value of its future dividend stream...
... which no one can possibly know, because of the "future" bit.
Come back to me when you're forced into a camp...
And if you fall and break your leg, don't run crying to me.
"The lesser of two evils is still an evil".
- Jerry Garcia
"Titan's moment of inertia can only be explained if it is a solid body that is denser near the surface than it is at its centre".
Maybe it's partially hollow. Pellucidar, anyone? Possibly inhabited by Heinlein's Puppet Masters...
We don't know how to induce people to have smaller families. Unfortunately, even if we did we would still be in a box: over time, those reasonable people who agreed to have smaller families would be massively outbred by those who ignored the exhortations and went on having 6, 10, or 13 children per family. Result: all those who can be persuaded to practice birth control vanish from the gene pool, and population growth becomes even more rapid. There are other problems, such as the fact that the decay of marriage in more and more societies makes it much harder to limit the number of children born.
The only method of even limiting population growth that I have seen work is the Chinese method. One child per family maximum, and no exceptions. That's harsh, and its enforcement is bound to involve very nasty acts - such as forced abortions and even killing babies who have been born illegally. About the only thing in favour of the policy is that it seems to work - it's so simple that there is little to go wrong with it. OTOH any government that tried to impose such a policy in a democratic nation would probably get slung out of office so violently it would find itself in solar orbit, and replaced by a government that let the people do what they want.
This is another instalment of the long-awaited crunch as the Web's refreshing informality and common sense collides with the institutionalized imbecility of the law. Tim Berners-Lee made his views unmistakably clear nearly 20 years ago: see http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkMyths.html. The basic principle is that, if you don't like the way the Web works, you should just ignore it. No one forces anyone to publish a Web site; but, if they do, it is an implicit invitation to anyone else anywhere to read it - and link to it.
However, it was only a few years later (probably about 1998) that the vast mass of money-grubbing freeloaders (sorry, the "business community") discovered the huge untapped mother-lode represented by the Web. "Hey!" they cried jubilantly, "Just look at this immense opportunity to make stacks of money that some stupid sucker has just given us - completely free of charge, too". Those were the same guys who soon began complaining that the Web's design was not optimized to help them make as much money as possible with no effort.
It was around 1998, too, that I stumbled across a law company's Web site somewhere in the USA that laid down strict legal principles for creating Web sites. One of these rules was that every single hyperlink required a separate legal agreement - negotiated by a reputable law firm, naturally.
The worst of the matter is that the reptiles (sorry, lawyers and politicians) can always change the law in any way they like. It's their game and their ball, and they are apparently absolutely unaccountable to anyone sane or educated.
The best part of it is that the TSA is actually setting up the terrorists' next big target for them: the huge queues waiting to go through "security".
That is assuming there are any terrorists (other than Americans) trying to blow things up in America, which seems extremely doubtful. The whole rationale for TSA's existence reminds me of a joke I heard at school when I was about 6: "Why do elephants have yellow feet?" "So they won't be seen when hiding upside down in bowls of custard". "That's ridiculous, I've never seen an elephant in a bowl of custard". (You can see where this is heading, can't you?). "That shows how well it works!" (boom boom).
"Israel was not formed by wholesale extermination of Palestinians..."
Well, that is a matter of degree. A lot of Palestinians were killed when they refused to leave their homes; and it is reasonable to believe that the Israelis intended for many of the others to die as a result of being ejected from the good agricultural land and sent away into desert regions. But it is true that the present regime in Israel and Palestine more closely resembles South African apartheid.
"Jews were people without a homeland at all..."
That's an interesting remark. It seems to imply that you believe every "people" should have a "homeland" that is uniquely, and permanently, theirs. But how does that fit in with the theory that it is perfectly OK to eject the current people from their "homeland" and take it for yourselves? Moreover, what exactly is "a people"? Surely you do not believe that there are distinct "races", each with its native soil? Apart from being very close to the Nazis' own ideas, that is surely a concept that science left behind decades ago.
It also raises the question of "who is a Jew?" Is a Jew a person who embraces the Jewish religion, or a person of Jewish parentage, or both? If it's a matter of religion, where is the connection with Palestine for someone whose ancestors came from Poland or Spain? Or if it's someone who can prove descent from Jews who left Palestine after the unsuccessful rebellion against Rome, what gives them the right to reclaim the land their ancestors supposedly occupied 60 or 70 generations ago? That is not a precedent I imagine most white Americans would wish to see established.
"Israel came about solely because of the Nazi era - WW2 was over before Israel was created - "
Exactly. So why did the Jews have to flee Europe precisely when the people who had persecuted them were all dead, in prison, or being hunted down like dogs? And why did any of them have to leave the USA, which is such a paradise of racial tolerance?
"...from British-controlled territory..."
Yes. And the British remember that it was accomplished by a sustained campaign of wholesale terrorism against military and civilian targets alike - even if you don't. Clue: try searching for "King David Hotel Bombing".
People do not just stand up and leave their homes and entire possessions, unless you convincingly demonstrate to them that you are willing to slaughter them if they don't leave.
And that is exactly what the Jews forced the Palestinians to do. Having been a victim does not constitute a licence to victimize someone else.
The point is not whether one group of people has ever forcibly conquered or displaced another. Almost all of history consists of that. But all the examples you cite are well in the past - at least before 1900. The point is whether supposedly civilized people should have set out to do such a thing in the 1940s - during and after the Nazi era. We rightly condemn the Nazis for setting out to conquer, displace, and sometimes exterminate indigenous peoples - then acquiesce smilingly when the Jews do the same thing. That's a classic double standard.
By the way, I feel I should mention that:
1. There is no evidence that Iran is seeking to acquire nuclear weapons, and much that it isn't.
2. It is against Iran's interests to have a nuclear weapons program, as that would provide Israel and the USA with a classic casus belli for an aggressive war against it. (Exactly as happened in Iraq).
3. Iran has signed the NPT, and has complied with its rules. The NPT explicitly allows signatories to seek and acquire peaceful nuclear power generation.
4. Israel (like India) has not signed the NPT, yet has not only pursued the acquisition of nuclear weapons; it is said to have over 100 of them, ready for use at any time. This is in flagrant breach of international law, yet no one seems to care.
5. The USA, as revealed by Wikileaks, intends to supply Israel with fissionable material. As Israel has not signed the NPT, that is a violation of both international law and the NPT.
6. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that the state of Israel should be removed from the map. That would be achieved if, for instance, all the immigrant Jews were to go back to Europe, North America, and wherever else they came from, and the Palestinians were given back their homes. He did not call for the killing of anyone, let alone the genocide often falsely attributed to him.
Everything you say is quite reasonable, JSBiff, and I don't dispute it.
Personally I have never found utilitarianism appealing, so I can accept the status quo in our countries. But only because I don't believe that "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one/few".
What puzzles me is the thinking of people who accept both that proposition, and the current state of our nations.
If indeed "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one/few", why do American and British laws permit a few people to own billions of dollars while others lack housing, clothing, education, and even food?
Methinks it depends on which "many" and which "few" one is talking about. It is quite possible to see today's "Western" societies as sophisticated machines for making sure that the needs of a privileged few outweigh those of everyone else. I do not say this from any ideological standpoint - merely as a result of observation and experience.
1. The US flag has no political power either, but I think a lot of Americans are loyal to it and would risk their lives for it.
2. Note the operative word "*rebellious* Scots". Or, for that matter, rebellious anyone. Of course the words reflect the particular time when the anthem was written - just as "The Star-Spangled Banner" refers to "Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes" and continues "Their blood has wash'd out their foul footsteps' pollution. No refuge could save the hireling and slave from the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave..." That's us British - "the foe's haughty host... the hireling and the slave..."
There are about 1.2M active US troops at present, UK has under 200K. Ho hum.
Yes. There are over 300 million Americans, and about 60 million British people, so adjusting for the relative population sizes the discrepancy becomes 1.2 to 1.0 rather than 6 to 1.
Then take into account that the USA's military budget is larger than those of all other nations combined, that it has over 1,000 military bases abroad to staff, that it is currently fighting a complex war in Asia - to which the UK makes a relatively small contribution - and you can see why the US armed forces are so big.
But all that is beside the point. I'm sure that many loyal Americans would die for the President - whoever he or she is - and many loyal British people would die for their monarch - whoever he or she is.
As for Prince Charles - whom I like and admire in equal measure - he has done what no ambitious politician can ever afford to do: have strong opinions and talk about them in public. He is religious, so many atheists and agnostics despise him for that. He is wealthy and influential, so socialists and egalitarians of all kinds hate him for that. He inherited a key role in Britain's constitutional hierarchy, so republicans cannot abide him. His love of traditional architecture places him in direct conflict with those who have interests in throwing up huge modern buildings of dubious appearance. His support for organic farming (which dates back to long before it became popular) has put him squarely in the path of all those who profit from factory farms and industrial food production - including genetically engineered food. And so on, and so on. Oh, and he sounds "posh" so many others (including quite a few whose accents would be just as plummy if they did not take pains to disguise them) affect to dislike him for that too. But I have hardly ever heard of anyone who has met Prince Charles and talked to him for a while who has not come away with a good deal of admiration for his breadth of knowledge, common sense (yes!), and sheer good will.
YMMV.
There's a few generations of powerful people after one person amasses an obscene about of wealth, and there's perpetual hereditary power.
Actually, in Britain nowadays there isn't "perpetual hereditary power". The closest anyone comes to that is perhaps the Murdoch dynasty - but they are originally Australian (although God alone knows what they are now - it tends to change with the latest updates to tax laws in various countries).
The Queen certainly became monarch on the hereditary principle. But she doesn't have any power (other than that conferred by her wealth, which is not exceptional by any means). She does receive exceptional deference, because of her role as sovereign (the "dignified part" of the British constitution). Expressing respect for the Queen in Britain is rather like expressing respect for the flag in the USA - both symbolize the nation. But she cannot influence the making of law or policy, unless the prime minister should choose to ask for her advice and follow it.
The other traditional centre of hereditary power in Britain, the House of Lords, is no longer run on hereditary lines either. Most of its members are political appointees whose claim to be "noble" (in any sense) is tenuous at best. And anyway the House of Lords has virtually no ability to change legislation - and none at all to originate it.
Well, it was nice while it lasted. Back to the noise...
I vote a small prize to Androcles for commencing discussion of TFA. AFAICS from a quick scan, everything up to this point has been self-indulgent (and more or less pointless) chatter about socialism, fascism, and other abstract ideas on which people will never agree even if they learn to argue coherently.
When will Slashdot acquire my most-desired enhancement: a flag to let readers go directly to the point (whether halfway through, three quarters, nine tenths, or whatever) where actual discussion of TFA begins? Just think of the cumulative number of person-hours it would save every day.