But can't you see that GPL code is not free as in freedom?
No, I can't. In every open society there are legal clauses prohibiting you from exercising your freedom by taking away liberties from other people. The GPL does this in software society. Someone who takes a piece of open code and closes it, removes the freedom for all others to view/use the code; the GPL wants to prevent this loss of freedom.
Say I work for a human rights orginization and I don't want to advertise I use crypto. I can't use GPL software then.
Huh? Since when does the GPL require you to advertise publicly you use GPLed software?
But also having huge companies use it is not a bad idea.
Right, but then the GPL doesn't prohibit huge companies (like IBM or HP) from using GPLed software, nor from distributing or modifying it. The only requirement is that distributions and modifications remain as free as the original is.
Wouldn't it be more like: the bar owner found pictures of a naked person in his bar on the net. The bar owner didn't want to get sued for allowing public nudity in his bar, so he filed a complaint.
Also, you seem to forget that the naked person in question is getting most of the attention and will very likely more then double her income on this. She's on the CNN frontpage, not many local pornstar wannabees can claim that. If I were here, I'd send my manager over to my lawyer and let them work out how much publicity there is in this and how much it will probably cost in the end.
The preponderance of evidence is what the intelligence community operates on, though. So that's why their prevailing opinion is a linkage.
I know, but (indirect) linkage to Al Queda doesn't automatically imply involvement in (or even knowledge of) the 9/11 plans. Even if there is evidence that the actual 9/11 attackers were trained at Salman Pak, that still doesn't prove Saddam knew about 9/11.
(I know I'm nitpicking, but that's nothing compared to what a lot of Arabs are going to do. I'm only trying to show how hard it is to prove Saddam was knowingly involved.)
I didn't say it would work. I said that is why we attacked. Those are two different topics.
Then let me take us back to the original topic: do you think that any of a) warning Arab nations by invading one of them, and b) invading counties with differing moral values, are justifiable in an international sense? Let's put up an imaginary scenario: what would happen if the US would have serious issues with Germany and France in the future? Wouldn't you argue it's justifiable to invade the Netherlands (where I live) and wipe out the "evil" of the ICC in one sweep, just "because you can"?
As for the casulty numbers, whatever. Most Americans are not as risk-averse as Europeans. We do not see the number of soldiers being killed as some great bloodbath.
My point was that if you're over there to teach Arab radicals respect, they shouldn't be killing you if the strategy is working. Killing a person is not a great sign of respect towards him or what he stands for.
Financial ties in Iraq?
Interests, not ties. Financial and political interests.
If you're denying that, there's no hope for you.
I'm not denying it. I'm only saying that if the US is investing 80 billion in Iraq, Iraq somehow must be very important to the US. That's an amount of money to invest in under a year to make the Russian and French investments look like peanuts. (And yes I know most of it goes to the military, but you're still paying it.)
If you think Russia and France and China opposed the war against Iraq because they cared a tiny bit even for the people of Iraq, you are foolish. Those nations wouldn't put a strain on their relations with the United States unless they saw it as being in *their* interests. And *their* interests are financial and political.
I'm not being foolish, it's not me who's bringing up liberation of the Iraqi people as a motive for invasion. Of course everyone and his grandma has financial interests in oil-rich countries, but that's not enough reason for them to risk losing all influence on the US via the UN security council. There are real concerns about the world order (see my speculative scenario above), they wouldn't be doing it if they didn't fear to lose their influence anyway.
You have been socially trained that nationalism, patriotism, and such lead to conflicts such as WWII.
No, we learned that from centuries of experience. Those are the two most controlable emotions in a people, it's very easy for a state to create patriots and nationalists, and modern media have made it even easier.
You devolve more and more control over your allegedly sovereign nations to inter-national governing and regulating bodies, creating those ties that bind.
Yep, it's a process called civilization. Regulating society by laws and establishing a monopoly on violence to uphold those laws is what makes our civilization work. This process works on all scales, from the local up to the global.
But, you then translate your political structural changes in the last century as being the right and proper way to do things for everybody. You collectively denigrate the U.S. because we do not buy into your mindset, which you have decided is the *right* mindset.
Slow down. Up until a few years ago, the US was very much like the Europeans in this respect. We didn't found the UN and dragged you in by the hair later. Then there was this relatively new political movement in the US that called itself neo-conservative, which had thinktanks that produced plans to wage war in the middle east, cripple the UN, etc. After 9/11 they got more power than they could dream of and things started to change quite rapidly (and not for the better).
That's because if they released the numbers, if even 1 person died in the past 6 months, the democrats and the other opponents of the war would jump all over it saying that we shot an "innocent civilian", and that because we're there, that person will never grow up or have kids or whatever.
No, they would (rightly) say that it's a little strange to kill the people you're supposed to be liberating. The best estimate of Iraqi civilian casualties is found here, a list of the casualties accounted for by various sources. Even if we take the current minimum estimate the US has caused the death of 7935 Iraqi civilians in the process of liberating them.
I do find it greatly disturbing that you'd rather trust Saddam Hussein, a man who stayed in power for over 30 years thanks to the reign of terror in his country, than George Bush, who was elected by the people of this country, 3 years ago
Here you go all black and white again. I don't trust Saddam and I don't trust Bush either. See, I don't have to make a choice between them, as you all seem to believe. I don't trust anyone who goes to war on false pretexts, I don't care if they're called Hussein or Bush.
It occurs to me that you truly believe that Iraq is worse off today than it was when Saddam has his secret police throwing people off buildings if they said "Saddam sucks", or beheading them in public squares, or torturing their children to death while they watched.
Read this carefuly, because it seems almost impossible for you to understand:
I very much condemn the way Saddam treated his people, but that doesn't mean I applaude the invasion of Iraq. Two wrongs don't make a right.
I think a person must be either brainwashed or just plain stupid to think starting a war against a country is the best way of helping the people of that country.
Iraq has on the whole cooperated rather well so far with UNMOVIC in this field. The most important point to make is that access has been provided to all sites we have wanted to inspect and with one exception it has been prompt. We have further had great help in building up the infrastructure of our office in Baghdad and the field office in Mosul. Arrangements and services for our plane and our helicopters have been good. The environment has been workable.
or that there weren't any terrorists in Iraq
It doesn't work that way. If you want to invade a country because you claim it harbors terrorists, the burden of proof lays with you.
or that there are more people dead in the last 6 months than the previous 6 months.
Sorry, can't do that as long as the US keeps the Iraqi casualty numbers secret.
Why did we attack Iraq? As an object lesson. Read Friedman: http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/06/04/nyt.friedman/ Smart guy.
If the objective was to hit some (any) Arab nation to show the Arabs the US means business, the US has utterly failed to reach its goal. As I've said before, your casualty numbers adequately show how much respect you've tought them. Friedman can argue all he wants, you're getting killed over there. If the goal was building a stable nation in the Arab heartland, the US has failed so miserably it almost becomes laughable.
If you're talking about moralistic goals, you're walking on very thin ice. The US is calling Arab fundamentalists "Evil" while the Arab opinion is that the us is "Evil". This moralism is inherently dangerous to world peace, especially when it attracts religious nutcases (like moralism always does). If it wasn't so irresponsably dangerous, I'd be laughing at the demagogues argueing it's their exclusive right to determine what is good and evil for the rest of the world. Morally speaking, personally I think everybody who tries to force his ideas about right and wrong on me is evil.
Russia and France armed Iraq, and are owed billions and billions.
Get real. The US armed Iraq to fight Iran (and it armed Iran to fight Iraq). Sure the Russians sold them arms in the early seventies and France helped them build a reactor, but it's definitely the US and the other Arab nations that have the biggest financial and political interests in Iraq.
PS: I'm getting utterly bored with replying to this retoric. We've decended from WMD, terrorism and despotism as reasons to attack Iraq to "simply because we can", and you're argueing this is morally right. Yet again, no cognitive dissonance at all on behalf of the people who claim this, just business as usual. If you all think you're right just because you are Americans, you're beyond hope and you will be bombed and shot at for centuries to come.
Yes there is. Look at the "Regime change" that Japan forced the US to visit upon it in WW2. Besides, the IRaq regime change was in Iraq's interest (to stop Saddam's mass executions) and in global interest (to remove the threat of a global terrorist/imperialist leader). Not just the U.S. interest.
The difference was Japan was an agressor, Iraq was not. What's in the interest of the Iraqi people is for them to decide, not for the US; to safeguard the global interests we've founded this thing called UN.
No, he was refusing to disarm, balking inspectors at every chance. The fact that he had anything at all to disarm was a blatant violation of previous promises by Saddam, and the cease-fire.
Well, the weapons inspectors who carried out the last round of inspections don't agree with you. Sadam was quite desperate to cooperate because he knew he was in big trouble if he didn't, with the massive coalition forces buildup just outside of the Iraqi borders. Blix was convinced that Saddam was willing to make fargoing concessions to stay in power. If Saddam was willing to play nice, why topple him, bomb a country back into the stone age a second time in merely a decade and get yourself and a lot of innocent people killed in the process?
Please, quit the "global terrorist" propaganda until you give me hard evidence, because I'm not willing to take anyones word for it, I want proof.
But you have yet to make a valid argument to support your "Saddam should have stayed in office" argument.
Sigh. I don't like Saddam, but Saddam was not waging war but minding his own business. As much as I hate the dictators and autocrats of this world, no other government has the right to just topple them without being attacked first, or the world will end in chaos.
If you aren't part of the solution, you are part of the problem.
Yeah, just keep repeating the slogans. It really makes you look like someone who thinks for himself.
No, it is telling the truth about Iraq, and it is killing terrorists who refuse to submit to arrest or who attack people. You made two lies in that sentence alone.
This is getting redicilous. You all swallow the shit you're fed without ever tasting it, do you. No cognitive dissonance, everything business as usual. Just one question: how many terrorist attacks were there in Iraq prior to the occupation? It's more like 1) there is resistance against the occupation, 2) in the power vacuum existing now some questionable organisations are extending their field of operations into Iraq, and 3) maybe even the Iraqi rulers-to-be have interests in keeping up the chaos a little longer, until the people demand a strong government (Saddam-style).
Unilateral US decision" is another common lie told about the situation (a lie you just used). A decision involving more than 50 countries is not "unilateral". Words mean things. Look up this one before using it again. Next time, tell the truth about things.
Unilateral in this context means not backed up by the UN; the US made its proposals, but they were rejected (look up that word). The US still carried on without the support of the UN so that's not a multilateral decision, IOW it's a unilateral decision.
Condemnation coming from places like France (who proppsed up Saddam and profitied from it) or despitic regimes like mainland China are a badge of honor. If you do something good, they condemn it
Let me tell you no one profited from Iraq like the US and the other Arab nations. It was the US who sold Saddam the weapons to fight Iran, while Olli North was secretly selling to Iran. The US kept a war, fought with bearly armed Iranian "human waves" against Saddams modern weapons, going on for years. The Arab nations did very little to support Saddam while they had everything to lose if Saddam lost and the Ayahtollahs exanded their powerbase. Iraq lost one sixth of its male population in this war, and Saddam wanted compensation from the US
That's the point. It was taking him too long to disarm. The original resolution in 1991 gave him something like 2 WEEKS to disarm, AND prove how he disarmed. Obviously, he never did that.
And obviously, both the UN and the US didn't deem that an offence big enough to restart the hostilities back then. Political pressure was increased, and it had its effects.
What the US has shown the world is that it does not matter for a "rogue state" to obey UN restrictions because the US will attack anyway, it might be even better for them to speed up their weapons programs to have a nuclear defence ready for when their time comes. North Korea refusing further UN inspections was a direct effect of the US decision to invade Iraq.
If, by that statement, you're referring to the State of the Union, you are incorrect.
No, I'm referring to the link I posted in this thread earlier. It's where Bush publicly admits there is no evidence whatsoever that Saddam had anything to do with 9/11, while a poll showed 70% of the American population believed Saddam was directly or indirectly responsible.
That tells me that you're not beyond hope, and maybe you're simply not getting the pertinent information regarding Saddam and Iraq.
I'm asking people in this thread to link to all the "pertinent" information I'm missing. By the way, that means hard evidence to me, so I'm discarding word of mouth, especially by "undisclosed sources" (and so should you).
but there is more than enough circumstantial evidence to convict him in financing terrorism against the US.
Show me evidence that Saddam supported or organised terrorism against the US. Even if there is circumstancial evidence, there is hard evidence that Saudi Arabia massively funds Al-Queda, but still the US isn't mentioning it as part of the "axis of evil", let alone invading it. My question to you is: why not?
Third, even if he was disarming while the inspections were going on, why would he kick them out after 7 or 8 years?
The point is he allowed them back in, and he was atually showing he was willing to cooperate for the first time. So the pressure was working, and then the US had a most definite urge to start shooting anyway.
Fourth, Iraq is, fundamentally, exactly like Afghanistan. They are both harboring terrorists and need to be "cleaned".
This is all so naive. Firstly, you (the US) did not recognize Afghanistan as a sovereign state, while you do recognize Iraq as one. Therefore, by your own standards invading Iraq was very much more a questionable act than invading Afghanistan was. Secondly, while you might argue that you have clensed the "terrorists", you're now facing "insurgents" and "rebels" using "guerilla tactics" and are bogged down in what your leaders call "quagmires". The net change is a lot of dead people and both countries being more unstable now than they were before the invasions; if they were breeding grounds of violence and terrorism before, they're much more so now. How much respect you've tought them is adequately shown by your casualty numbers.
he only reasons Iraq is being protested, is because certain nations have been proven to have a financial stake in Saddam's regime staying in power
Didn't you even read what I posted in this thread? There are valid reasons to question Iraq without any financial agenda (I have none, and I come from the Netherlands so formally I'm part of the coalition). Also it's all so black vs. white with you. The US and Saddam had a love-hate relationship spanning more than 25 years, but that had nothing to do with it, right? It was just honest Americans fighting Evil(tm) and some greedy Europeans at the sideline. You should either wake up or grow up.
if you have all the facts and you don't agree that removing Saddam from power is a Good Thing,
Hey, you forgot the (tm)!
then you have some interest in seeing the terrorists succeed,
OK, here's a challenge for you, since you're obviously so intelligent when it comes to international law and foreign relations, especially concerning third-world countries that consistently lie and murder. Find me ONE United Nations report that says Iraq does not, and has not, since 1991, had WMD's.
Sigh. There are no reports that say that, and you know it. However, there are reports that state in very certain terms that Saddam was disarming prior to the US invasion. And don't start again about the lying and murdering, because that is exactly what the US is doing today about and in Iraq. There is so much disinformation being spread that opinion polls show 70% of the American people believe things about Iraq and Saddam which Bush himself (when forced) stated to be untrue.
If Bush thinks Gaddaffi poses enough of a threat to the US, or its interests around the world (most people that agree with you forget this minor part), I'm sure he'll do something about it.
And I'm sure he will be internationally condemned for it again. There is no such thing as a legal regime change to protect your interests. The whole f*cking UN debate is about the US trying to legalize its regime changes, while in the past the US itself co-founded the UN to avoid exactly this kind of unilateral descisions to topple foreign governments.
More relavent question, would your preferred presidential candidate TRY to look for Bin Laden or Saddam?
My favorite would be looking for Bin Laden but would not be looking for Saddam, since it is very clear (by presidential statement) that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11, and the (weapons) experts say he was not stocking up WMD either, but rather was disarming. Get it into your head that Iraq is nothing like Afghanistan. There were valid reasons to invade Afghanistan, but what the coalition is doing in Iraq is simply wrong.
I'm not some kind of hippy condemning every military act indiscriminately; I just try to get my facts straight and be reasonable. In my view the big problem with the world today is that there are two opposing parties of hotheads both claiming it's their (God-given) right not to be reasonable and kill everyone they don't like. The way I see it, it's two groups of fundamentalists holding the world hostage. I'm one of the hostages (because if I'm not with you, I'm against you), and I don't like it.
To say that there is no evidence WMD ever existed because they cannot find them now is like saying that there is no evidence that Saddam Hussein ever existed because they cannot find them now.
Wrong analogy. There were weapons inspections when Saddam was in power. Mr. Blix, who lead the last round of inspections resigned as soon as he found that even though it was specifically stated in his report to the UN that it was the opinion of the inspectors that Saddam had drastically reduced his stocks and cut down on his projects, these findings were no reason not to attack; even worse, because the inspectors didn't find anything, they had to be incompetent.
No, but there was plenty of proof that Iraq's government was engaged in terrorism and was gearing up for more of it.
The Iraqi government had contacts do Anser al Islaam, a group operating in the northern Iraqi and Iranian mountains which is said to have ties to al-Queda. They mainly fight the Kurds, which Saddam saw as his enemies also, and one of the Anser leaders personally shot and killed a US diplomat. These are the facts, the rest is just speculation. There is no evidence of Saddam being involved in the planning or execution of terrorist attacks, unlike Colonel Gaddaffi of Libya for instance. Strangely enough, Gaddaffi is still very much in power today.
Sure production capacity is moving to cheap labor countries, that's capitalism, but there is a lot of government involvement too; argiculture/the food industry is a nice example. High wages in the rich industrialized nations make the production of food very costly; so costly that there wouldn't be a farmer left if they were not protected by a) import tariffs, b) export subsidies, and c) guaranteed minimum prices. I think that if/when the economical impact of the industry's flight to cheap labor countries becomes to big, governments will protect their markets and jobs, just like they've been doing with agriculture for ages.
Yeah, and I wouldn't have agreed to it 60 years ago either, just like I wouldn't have agreed to the League of Nations (wonderful idea there too). The problem with the UN is that they assume everyone wants the world to be a peaceful, wonderful place, and as 9/11 proved, some people just want to KILL YOU.
That is completely besides the issue. I've posted this before in this thread, but here goes once more: Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and there are no WMD over there. So don't complain about the UN being unwilling to invade Iraq, because the UN was right: there was no evidence of Iraq's involvement in 9/11; and there was no evidence of WMD. When there is evidence (like in Afghanistan or Serbia), the UN will call for and authorize military action.
Also, because some people don't want a peaceful world, should we give them what they wish and escalate each and every conflict? I find it very hard to believe that the US didn't want to invade but were "seduced" to it by the Iraqis themselves.
Since we're discussing the reasoning for ousting him, it's relavent to note that not even 3,000 people have died since the beginning of May... 6 months. So, by my math, we're still 7,000 people ahead.
Is this some medieval religious argument about which of the sinners has sinned least? To put it in other words: two wrongs don't make a right; just because the US is killing less Iraqis than Saddam did, doesn't make it right for the US to kill Iraqis.
I think you might want to amend your thinking of the whole "sovereign nation" thing to say that a sovereign nation is only sovereign until the UN decides that it's unhealthy for them to do what they want to in their own territory.
Exactly. Because you can't trust another nations government to do the right thing when it comes to liberating a foreign nation (remember how Hitler "liberated" Austria and the Sudeten in Czechia, or how Saddam "liberated" Kuwait), there has to be an international law to regulate this, and an international organisation with enough authority to uphold those laws.
About Kyoto: I know it's a funny treaty, the rich industrialized nations were able to set their own quota within certain limits and the poorer industrialized countries were being exempted. It's very much a "something is better than nothing" agreement that intended to seduce exactly those nations that were being exempted into signing, so once they unleash their full industrial potential they'll be accountable and not make the earth into venus II. Sure they'll scream, but they'll be just as able to reduce emissions without killing their populations as we are now by then.
About Iraq: (don't take this personally) what exactly was the reason for the US to invade Iraq? 1) violations of UN treaties regarding WMD -> no evidence. 2) Iraq was involved in 9/11 -> no evidence. 3) Saddam is a dictator who kills his own people, let's topple him -> under international law it is strictly forbidden to directly influence the governmental affairs or change governmental structure of foreign sovereign nations. 4) Iraq did not uphold the armistice -> so after the war, you tell us it was because Saddam was shooting at jets over the no-fly zone?
Back in the real world, Saddam has not been proven to be a danger to world peace, so it's still very much questionable if this war was nescesary. Still back in the real world, only the US still thinks so, and the UK still pretends a little sometimes.
Hehe, lots of them do. The import tariff is one of the classical ways of protecting your market, except it doesn't work that well for products that have been the cause of several trade wars. After a few trade wars all parties get tired of losing so much money that they regulate the market with treaties. If you break those treaties you'll have a full scale trade war with all the other treaty-signers. Some 25 (don't know exactly, to long ago) years ago cheap US steel forced European countries to restructure their steel industries, causing massive layoffs, so now the cheap European steel is threatening US markets and jobs, and it's time for the US to restructure.
Huh? If Burkina Faso doesn't cause significant pollution, why would they (or you) have a problem with holding them to the same rules as everyone else. What are you arguing here?
Because the Kyoto treaty is about pollution reduction. If you sign the treaty, you basically agree to reduce your CO2 emission by about 6% from 2008 to 2012. Because states like these have almost no industry, most of their CO2 is emitted by motorized transport, cooking fires and stuff like that. So if you want to take one of the ten cars they own over there (hyperbole of couse) off the road, you'll not reduce much pollution, but you hamper the developement of those states significantly.
In any case, the countries with cushy exemptions in Kyoto I'm talking about are China and India. I suppose you're going to tell me that neither pollutes, or that China is not projected to exceed US emissions in a few years? But oh no, they're not as well off as the US, so they should be exempt from the rules, right? Bah.
I suggest you take a trip to India, Mexico or China and really see how common people live there, how their children die of common deseases easily cureable over here, or how disasters like floods or famine kill thousands and thousands because of poor infrastructure. 9/11 Becomes pale in comparison to the number of people and especially young children dying because of poverty in those countries every week.
I know it's easy to rule the world from behind your tv or computer screen, but I can tell you from personal experience that as soon as you witness the suffering of those people from up close, "fairness" gets new a whole new meaning. So while I think it is nescesary to reduce emssions for the future welbeing of all of us, I also know that cutting down the developing industies over there would cause suffering and death for many right now.
Bullshit. All it takes is for us to convince ourselves that they either helped or knew about and failed to hinder those fuckers that flew planes into the WTC, which we've done to my satisfaction (and most others' as well).
What? Did I miss something? Did somebody -anybody- actually prove the Iraqi government knew about 9/11? Show me, please link to the hard evidence (hard evidence is not "undisclosed sources"). All I heard was that Bush publicly admitted there is no evidence Iraq had anything to do with it (and strangely enough I can't find a linkable story in the US media anymore, where it was largely ignored). Please don't try to bullshit me.
Ahh...but, our companies are already moving abroad...to cheaper labor.
Right, this process is called capitalism. When our governments think it has caused enough unemployment and economical damage (which follows from growing unemployment), they'll do the socialist, anti-liberal thing: protect their markets and jobs.
Capitalism doesn't work either for strategicly important industies like steel, food, arms, etc. Governments simply aren't going to allow those to move abroad or close down; they'll disown and make them into government property if it can't be done otherwise.
And why, exactly, does the UN get to state what the USA should and should not do?
Because it was the US itself which (rightly) saw the need for a multigovernmental organisation to avoid (large-scale) wars after WWII; and subsequently co-founded the UN. So the UN has authority over the US because the US gave it that authority; not only by founding it but by signing various treaties also.
There are 10 members in the Security Counsel, right? Why should 7 of them dictate what the other 3 do (for instance)? Because it's a "consensus"? What if a group of 6 countries get together and decide that the world would be better off without the other 4? Are the other 4 supposed to roll over and die, just because it's a "consensus"? Or would you permit them to fight for their survival?
Do you have even the slightest idea about international law? What you are saying here is akin to "What if the US government desides to extradite all colored people?"
The man murdered over a million people in his own country, using chemical weapons. What possible GOOD could come from him staying in power?
1) Those figures are getting higher and higher. Perhaps it would be wise to wait until the dust settles until we make a judgement about how many people he got killed?
2) Iraq is a sovereign nation, just like the US. A nation has no right to mingle in the internal affairs of another sovereign nation. Just as the French can't do a regime change in the US because Bush is a tool, the US can't do regime change in Iraq because Saddam is the devil in person. As long as Saddam and Bush do their stuff on their own territory, another nation can't do anything about it. Simple, isn't it?
It doesn't matter why the exemptions were made, the fact remains that they were, and some people think that makes it stupid and decidedly unfair, despite your claim that it is in the interest of fairness.
What kind of industrial pollution did a nation like Burkina Faso cause in the last centuries? How much pullution does a 3th world nation like that produce today? So why should we treat them the same way like nations that have been polluting for centuries at a much larger scale, and continue to do so?
Since September 11, 2001. Welcome to the next phase. The sleeping giant was awakened again, and as the former emperor of Japan said (I'm paraphrasing): "Are you nuts!? Boy are you in biiiig trouble now..."
Sigh. That still doesn't make it right now, does it? Iraq never directly attacked the US, so until the US comes with some damn hard evidence that Iraq was framing strikes against US territory, they'll stay the agressors in this.
And if this passes, what is to keep larger nations from setting up polluting factories in these developing nations? I think the point is...if they are exempted....then existing polluters will move there...and save the cost of running these businesses in the countries where they'd have to pay to clean up....I've heard nothing in Kyoto that prevents this.
The simple fact that no nation in the world is going to allow a substantial part of its production capacity to move abroad. Even though it's dirty business, heavy industry is vital to the economies of our developed nations. And even if we exported our heavy industry to developing countries, they would develop quicker, meaning they would have to follow stricter norms.
The significant reason was that Iraq had NEVER fully complied with the treaties signed at the end of the first Gulf War. Period.
Well, the funny thing is the UN dictated those treaties, and the UN itself seemed to think Iraq was in compliance enough not to invade.
Kyoto would exempt "developing" nations - so in effect dirty manufacturing would end up moving to those places even faster because it would be cheaper - it would basically make such places (which I have visited in my professional, albiet uneducated life) even more unpleasant to live in - is that what you want to do to those poor countries to make yourself feel like you've "done something"?
Kyoto would not exempt developing nations for the purpose of moving the polluting industries to these developing countries; Kyoto specifically states that pollution is a global problem that needs dealing with on a global scale. The exemption is made because of a) the costs of reducing pollution; developing nations simply can't afford it as long as they're in their developing stages; and b) fairness; the polluters should pay to get their mess cleaned up.The developed nations have mainly caused the problem and have the money to pay for cleaning up their own mess; some of these nations are now trying to deny their responsability in the most redicilous ways.
The ICC has already shown its true colors in attempting to charge various U.S. citizens for "warcrimes" in the U.S.-led action in Iraq - exactly to what advantage of the U.S. citizen is it if the U.S. would need to subjucate itself to such a body before taking actions it feels are necessary for its defense?
So since when is (offensively) invading a sovereign nation defence? Invasions are not defensive, what ever weaselwording ("pre-emptive strikes") they're wrapped in. If your army attacks a sovereign nation without you being attacked by their army first, you're the agressor.
What you state here comes down to an offender asking himself what good a criminal court does him. The court is there to make you behave, your personal advantage in it is it makes you a more civilized person/state; better fit to positively function in (global) society. The problem with some nations is they can't accept authority that might judge their actions as wrong, just like some offenders can't ("Judge, who are you to tell me what to do, for I'm stronger than you.")
Mother-May-I was a stupid children's game in the fist place - a sovereign nation certainly sholdn't play it.
If you're trying render global consensus meaningless, there will be global consensus in condemning you. There is just to many nukes and other dangerous stuff in the world to throw these moderating diplomatic structures overboard and fight it out.
If it's active on your machine and you don't want it, you don't have to recompile the kernel. Just type sysctl -w kernel.sysrq=0 at the console to deactivate it right now, and put kernel.sysrq = 0 in your/etc/sysctl.conf so magic sysrq will be deactivated automaticly next time you boot.
But if they can only choose one, they'll go with "cheap" every time.
Amen. In discussions like these, people tend to forget that it's generally not your talent that's being rewarded but your raw labor force; meaning your wages depend on how much unemployed there are that can do your job. If you're easy to replace, you're not worth much, it doesn't really matter if your replacement comes from the US or from India. Even if Indian IT workes cost (almost) as much as US IT workers, there still would be a devaluation of IT jobs because of the growing supply on the labor market.
Slashdot Mirror
No, I can't. In every open society there are legal clauses prohibiting you from exercising your freedom by taking away liberties from other people. The GPL does this in software society. Someone who takes a piece of open code and closes it, removes the freedom for all others to view/use the code; the GPL wants to prevent this loss of freedom.
Say I work for a human rights orginization and I don't want to advertise I use crypto. I can't use GPL software then.
Huh? Since when does the GPL require you to advertise publicly you use GPLed software?
But also having huge companies use it is not a bad idea.
Right, but then the GPL doesn't prohibit huge companies (like IBM or HP) from using GPLed software, nor from distributing or modifying it. The only requirement is that distributions and modifications remain as free as the original is.
Also, you seem to forget that the naked person in question is getting most of the attention and will very likely more then double her income on this. She's on the CNN frontpage, not many local pornstar wannabees can claim that. If I were here, I'd send my manager over to my lawyer and let them work out how much publicity there is in this and how much it will probably cost in the end.
I know, but (indirect) linkage to Al Queda doesn't automatically imply involvement in (or even knowledge of) the 9/11 plans. Even if there is evidence that the actual 9/11 attackers were trained at Salman Pak, that still doesn't prove Saddam knew about 9/11.
(I know I'm nitpicking, but that's nothing compared to what a lot of Arabs are going to do. I'm only trying to show how hard it is to prove Saddam was knowingly involved.)
Now go and convince your own president you're right.
Then let me take us back to the original topic: do you think that any of a) warning Arab nations by invading one of them, and b) invading counties with differing moral values, are justifiable in an international sense? Let's put up an imaginary scenario: what would happen if the US would have serious issues with Germany and France in the future? Wouldn't you argue it's justifiable to invade the Netherlands (where I live) and wipe out the "evil" of the ICC in one sweep, just "because you can"?
As for the casulty numbers, whatever. Most Americans are not as risk-averse as Europeans. We do not see the number of soldiers being killed as some great bloodbath.
My point was that if you're over there to teach Arab radicals respect, they shouldn't be killing you if the strategy is working. Killing a person is not a great sign of respect towards him or what he stands for.
Financial ties in Iraq?
Interests, not ties. Financial and political interests.
If you're denying that, there's no hope for you.
I'm not denying it. I'm only saying that if the US is investing 80 billion in Iraq, Iraq somehow must be very important to the US. That's an amount of money to invest in under a year to make the Russian and French investments look like peanuts. (And yes I know most of it goes to the military, but you're still paying it.)
If you think Russia and France and China opposed the war against Iraq because they cared a tiny bit even for the people of Iraq, you are foolish. Those nations wouldn't put a strain on their relations with the United States unless they saw it as being in *their* interests. And *their* interests are financial and political.
I'm not being foolish, it's not me who's bringing up liberation of the Iraqi people as a motive for invasion. Of course everyone and his grandma has financial interests in oil-rich countries, but that's not enough reason for them to risk losing all influence on the US via the UN security council. There are real concerns about the world order (see my speculative scenario above), they wouldn't be doing it if they didn't fear to lose their influence anyway.
You have been socially trained that nationalism, patriotism, and such lead to conflicts such as WWII.
No, we learned that from centuries of experience. Those are the two most controlable emotions in a people, it's very easy for a state to create patriots and nationalists, and modern media have made it even easier.
You devolve more and more control over your allegedly sovereign nations to inter-national governing and regulating bodies, creating those ties that bind.
Yep, it's a process called civilization. Regulating society by laws and establishing a monopoly on violence to uphold those laws is what makes our civilization work. This process works on all scales, from the local up to the global.
But, you then translate your political structural changes in the last century as being the right and proper way to do things for everybody. You collectively denigrate the U.S. because we do not buy into your mindset, which you have decided is the *right* mindset.
Slow down. Up until a few years ago, the US was very much like the Europeans in this respect. We didn't found the UN and dragged you in by the hair later. Then there was this relatively new political movement in the US that called itself neo-conservative, which had thinktanks that produced plans to wage war in the middle east, cripple the UN, etc. After 9/11 they got more power than they could dream of and things started to change quite rapidly (and not for the better).
No, they would (rightly) say that it's a little strange to kill the people you're supposed to be liberating. The best estimate of Iraqi civilian casualties is found here, a list of the casualties accounted for by various sources. Even if we take the current minimum estimate the US has caused the death of 7935 Iraqi civilians in the process of liberating them.
I do find it greatly disturbing that you'd rather trust Saddam Hussein, a man who stayed in power for over 30 years thanks to the reign of terror in his country, than George Bush, who was elected by the people of this country, 3 years ago
Here you go all black and white again. I don't trust Saddam and I don't trust Bush either. See, I don't have to make a choice between them, as you all seem to believe. I don't trust anyone who goes to war on false pretexts, I don't care if they're called Hussein or Bush.
It occurs to me that you truly believe that Iraq is worse off today than it was when Saddam has his secret police throwing people off buildings if they said "Saddam sucks", or beheading them in public squares, or torturing their children to death while they watched.
Read this carefuly, because it seems almost impossible for you to understand:
I very much condemn the way Saddam treated his people, but that doesn't mean I applaude the invasion of Iraq. Two wrongs don't make a right.
I think a person must be either brainwashed or just plain stupid to think starting a war against a country is the best way of helping the people of that country.
Mr. Blix' speech on 1/27 2003:
or that there weren't any terrorists in Iraq
It doesn't work that way. If you want to invade a country because you claim it harbors terrorists, the burden of proof lays with you.
or that there are more people dead in the last 6 months than the previous 6 months.
Sorry, can't do that as long as the US keeps the Iraqi casualty numbers secret.
If the objective was to hit some (any) Arab nation to show the Arabs the US means business, the US has utterly failed to reach its goal. As I've said before, your casualty numbers adequately show how much respect you've tought them. Friedman can argue all he wants, you're getting killed over there. If the goal was building a stable nation in the Arab heartland, the US has failed so miserably it almost becomes laughable.
If you're talking about moralistic goals, you're walking on very thin ice. The US is calling Arab fundamentalists "Evil" while the Arab opinion is that the us is "Evil". This moralism is inherently dangerous to world peace, especially when it attracts religious nutcases (like moralism always does). If it wasn't so irresponsably dangerous, I'd be laughing at the demagogues argueing it's their exclusive right to determine what is good and evil for the rest of the world. Morally speaking, personally I think everybody who tries to force his ideas about right and wrong on me is evil.
Russia and France armed Iraq, and are owed billions and billions.
Get real. The US armed Iraq to fight Iran (and it armed Iran to fight Iraq). Sure the Russians sold them arms in the early seventies and France helped them build a reactor, but it's definitely the US and the other Arab nations that have the biggest financial and political interests in Iraq.
PS: I'm getting utterly bored with replying to this retoric. We've decended from WMD, terrorism and despotism as reasons to attack Iraq to "simply because we can", and you're argueing this is morally right. Yet again, no cognitive dissonance at all on behalf of the people who claim this, just business as usual. If you all think you're right just because you are Americans, you're beyond hope and you will be bombed and shot at for centuries to come.
I'm not playing childish yes/no games, if you want to convince me that I'm lying, please prove it, don't just say so.
The difference was Japan was an agressor, Iraq was not. What's in the interest of the Iraqi people is for them to decide, not for the US; to safeguard the global interests we've founded this thing called UN.
No, he was refusing to disarm, balking inspectors at every chance. The fact that he had anything at all to disarm was a blatant violation of previous promises by Saddam, and the cease-fire.
Well, the weapons inspectors who carried out the last round of inspections don't agree with you. Sadam was quite desperate to cooperate because he knew he was in big trouble if he didn't, with the massive coalition forces buildup just outside of the Iraqi borders. Blix was convinced that Saddam was willing to make fargoing concessions to stay in power. If Saddam was willing to play nice, why topple him, bomb a country back into the stone age a second time in merely a decade and get yourself and a lot of innocent people killed in the process?
Please, quit the "global terrorist" propaganda until you give me hard evidence, because I'm not willing to take anyones word for it, I want proof.
But you have yet to make a valid argument to support your "Saddam should have stayed in office" argument.
Sigh. I don't like Saddam, but Saddam was not waging war but minding his own business. As much as I hate the dictators and autocrats of this world, no other government has the right to just topple them without being attacked first, or the world will end in chaos.
If you aren't part of the solution, you are part of the problem.
Yeah, just keep repeating the slogans. It really makes you look like someone who thinks for himself.
No, it is telling the truth about Iraq, and it is killing terrorists who refuse to submit to arrest or who attack people. You made two lies in that sentence alone.
This is getting redicilous. You all swallow the shit you're fed without ever tasting it, do you. No cognitive dissonance, everything business as usual. Just one question: how many terrorist attacks were there in Iraq prior to the occupation? It's more like 1) there is resistance against the occupation, 2) in the power vacuum existing now some questionable organisations are extending their field of operations into Iraq, and 3) maybe even the Iraqi rulers-to-be have interests in keeping up the chaos a little longer, until the people demand a strong government (Saddam-style).
Unilateral US decision" is another common lie told about the situation (a lie you just used). A decision involving more than 50 countries is not "unilateral". Words mean things. Look up this one before using it again. Next time, tell the truth about things.
Unilateral in this context means not backed up by the UN; the US made its proposals, but they were rejected (look up that word). The US still carried on without the support of the UN so that's not a multilateral decision, IOW it's a unilateral decision.
Condemnation coming from places like France (who proppsed up Saddam and profitied from it) or despitic regimes like mainland China are a badge of honor. If you do something good, they condemn it
Let me tell you no one profited from Iraq like the US and the other Arab nations. It was the US who sold Saddam the weapons to fight Iran, while Olli North was secretly selling to Iran. The US kept a war, fought with bearly armed Iranian "human waves" against Saddams modern weapons, going on for years. The Arab nations did very little to support Saddam while they had everything to lose if Saddam lost and the Ayahtollahs exanded their powerbase. Iraq lost one sixth of its male population in this war, and Saddam wanted compensation from the US
And obviously, both the UN and the US didn't deem that an offence big enough to restart the hostilities back then. Political pressure was increased, and it had its effects.
What the US has shown the world is that it does not matter for a "rogue state" to obey UN restrictions because the US will attack anyway, it might be even better for them to speed up their weapons programs to have a nuclear defence ready for when their time comes. North Korea refusing further UN inspections was a direct effect of the US decision to invade Iraq.
If, by that statement, you're referring to the State of the Union, you are incorrect.
No, I'm referring to the link I posted in this thread earlier. It's where Bush publicly admits there is no evidence whatsoever that Saddam had anything to do with 9/11, while a poll showed 70% of the American population believed Saddam was directly or indirectly responsible.
That tells me that you're not beyond hope, and maybe you're simply not getting the pertinent information regarding Saddam and Iraq.
I'm asking people in this thread to link to all the "pertinent" information I'm missing. By the way, that means hard evidence to me, so I'm discarding word of mouth, especially by "undisclosed sources" (and so should you).
but there is more than enough circumstantial evidence to convict him in financing terrorism against the US.
Show me evidence that Saddam supported or organised terrorism against the US. Even if there is circumstancial evidence, there is hard evidence that Saudi Arabia massively funds Al-Queda, but still the US isn't mentioning it as part of the "axis of evil", let alone invading it. My question to you is: why not?
Third, even if he was disarming while the inspections were going on, why would he kick them out after 7 or 8 years?
The point is he allowed them back in, and he was atually showing he was willing to cooperate for the first time. So the pressure was working, and then the US had a most definite urge to start shooting anyway.
Fourth, Iraq is, fundamentally, exactly like Afghanistan. They are both harboring terrorists and need to be "cleaned".
This is all so naive. Firstly, you (the US) did not recognize Afghanistan as a sovereign state, while you do recognize Iraq as one. Therefore, by your own standards invading Iraq was very much more a questionable act than invading Afghanistan was. Secondly, while you might argue that you have clensed the "terrorists", you're now facing "insurgents" and "rebels" using "guerilla tactics" and are bogged down in what your leaders call "quagmires". The net change is a lot of dead people and both countries being more unstable now than they were before the invasions; if they were breeding grounds of violence and terrorism before, they're much more so now. How much respect you've tought them is adequately shown by your casualty numbers.
he only reasons Iraq is being protested, is because certain nations have been proven to have a financial stake in Saddam's regime staying in power
Didn't you even read what I posted in this thread? There are valid reasons to question Iraq without any financial agenda (I have none, and I come from the Netherlands so formally I'm part of the coalition). Also it's all so black vs. white with you. The US and Saddam had a love-hate relationship spanning more than 25 years, but that had nothing to do with it, right? It was just honest Americans fighting Evil(tm) and some greedy Europeans at the sideline. You should either wake up or grow up.
if you have all the facts and you don't agree that removing Saddam from power is a Good Thing,
Hey, you forgot the (tm)!
then you have some interest in seeing the terrorists succeed,
Sigh. There are no reports that say that, and you know it. However, there are reports that state in very certain terms that Saddam was disarming prior to the US invasion. And don't start again about the lying and murdering, because that is exactly what the US is doing today about and in Iraq. There is so much disinformation being spread that opinion polls show 70% of the American people believe things about Iraq and Saddam which Bush himself (when forced) stated to be untrue.
If Bush thinks Gaddaffi poses enough of a threat to the US, or its interests around the world (most people that agree with you forget this minor part), I'm sure he'll do something about it.
And I'm sure he will be internationally condemned for it again. There is no such thing as a legal regime change to protect your interests. The whole f*cking UN debate is about the US trying to legalize its regime changes, while in the past the US itself co-founded the UN to avoid exactly this kind of unilateral descisions to topple foreign governments.
More relavent question, would your preferred presidential candidate TRY to look for Bin Laden or Saddam?
My favorite would be looking for Bin Laden but would not be looking for Saddam, since it is very clear (by presidential statement) that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11, and the (weapons) experts say he was not stocking up WMD either, but rather was disarming. Get it into your head that Iraq is nothing like Afghanistan. There were valid reasons to invade Afghanistan, but what the coalition is doing in Iraq is simply wrong.
I'm not some kind of hippy condemning every military act indiscriminately; I just try to get my facts straight and be reasonable. In my view the big problem with the world today is that there are two opposing parties of hotheads both claiming it's their (God-given) right not to be reasonable and kill everyone they don't like. The way I see it, it's two groups of fundamentalists holding the world hostage. I'm one of the hostages (because if I'm not with you, I'm against you), and I don't like it.
Wrong analogy. There were weapons inspections when Saddam was in power. Mr. Blix, who lead the last round of inspections resigned as soon as he found that even though it was specifically stated in his report to the UN that it was the opinion of the inspectors that Saddam had drastically reduced his stocks and cut down on his projects, these findings were no reason not to attack; even worse, because the inspectors didn't find anything, they had to be incompetent.
No, but there was plenty of proof that Iraq's government was engaged in terrorism and was gearing up for more of it.
The Iraqi government had contacts do Anser al Islaam, a group operating in the northern Iraqi and Iranian mountains which is said to have ties to al-Queda. They mainly fight the Kurds, which Saddam saw as his enemies also, and one of the Anser leaders personally shot and killed a US diplomat. These are the facts, the rest is just speculation. There is no evidence of Saddam being involved in the planning or execution of terrorist attacks, unlike Colonel Gaddaffi of Libya for instance. Strangely enough, Gaddaffi is still very much in power today.
Sure production capacity is moving to cheap labor countries, that's capitalism, but there is a lot of government involvement too; argiculture/the food industry is a nice example. High wages in the rich industrialized nations make the production of food very costly; so costly that there wouldn't be a farmer left if they were not protected by a) import tariffs, b) export subsidies, and c) guaranteed minimum prices. I think that if/when the economical impact of the industry's flight to cheap labor countries becomes to big, governments will protect their markets and jobs, just like they've been doing with agriculture for ages.
That is completely besides the issue. I've posted this before in this thread, but here goes once more: Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and there are no WMD over there. So don't complain about the UN being unwilling to invade Iraq, because the UN was right: there was no evidence of Iraq's involvement in 9/11; and there was no evidence of WMD. When there is evidence (like in Afghanistan or Serbia), the UN will call for and authorize military action.
Also, because some people don't want a peaceful world, should we give them what they wish and escalate each and every conflict? I find it very hard to believe that the US didn't want to invade but were "seduced" to it by the Iraqis themselves.
Since we're discussing the reasoning for ousting him, it's relavent to note that not even 3,000 people have died since the beginning of May... 6 months. So, by my math, we're still 7,000 people ahead.
Is this some medieval religious argument about which of the sinners has sinned least? To put it in other words: two wrongs don't make a right; just because the US is killing less Iraqis than Saddam did, doesn't make it right for the US to kill Iraqis.
I think you might want to amend your thinking of the whole "sovereign nation" thing to say that a sovereign nation is only sovereign until the UN decides that it's unhealthy for them to do what they want to in their own territory.
Exactly. Because you can't trust another nations government to do the right thing when it comes to liberating a foreign nation (remember how Hitler "liberated" Austria and the Sudeten in Czechia, or how Saddam "liberated" Kuwait), there has to be an international law to regulate this, and an international organisation with enough authority to uphold those laws.
About Iraq: (don't take this personally) what exactly was the reason for the US to invade Iraq? 1) violations of UN treaties regarding WMD -> no evidence. 2) Iraq was involved in 9/11 -> no evidence. 3) Saddam is a dictator who kills his own people, let's topple him -> under international law it is strictly forbidden to directly influence the governmental affairs or change governmental structure of foreign sovereign nations. 4) Iraq did not uphold the armistice -> so after the war, you tell us it was because Saddam was shooting at jets over the no-fly zone?
Back in the real world, Saddam has not been proven to be a danger to world peace, so it's still very much questionable if this war was nescesary. Still back in the real world, only the US still thinks so, and the UK still pretends a little sometimes.
Hehe, lots of them do. The import tariff is one of the classical ways of protecting your market, except it doesn't work that well for products that have been the cause of several trade wars. After a few trade wars all parties get tired of losing so much money that they regulate the market with treaties. If you break those treaties you'll have a full scale trade war with all the other treaty-signers. Some 25 (don't know exactly, to long ago) years ago cheap US steel forced European countries to restructure their steel industries, causing massive layoffs, so now the cheap European steel is threatening US markets and jobs, and it's time for the US to restructure.
Because the Kyoto treaty is about pollution reduction. If you sign the treaty, you basically agree to reduce your CO2 emission by about 6% from 2008 to 2012. Because states like these have almost no industry, most of their CO2 is emitted by motorized transport, cooking fires and stuff like that. So if you want to take one of the ten cars they own over there (hyperbole of couse) off the road, you'll not reduce much pollution, but you hamper the developement of those states significantly.
In any case, the countries with cushy exemptions in Kyoto I'm talking about are China and India. I suppose you're going to tell me that neither pollutes, or that China is not projected to exceed US emissions in a few years? But oh no, they're not as well off as the US, so they should be exempt from the rules, right? Bah.
I suggest you take a trip to India, Mexico or China and really see how common people live there, how their children die of common deseases easily cureable over here, or how disasters like floods or famine kill thousands and thousands because of poor infrastructure. 9/11 Becomes pale in comparison to the number of people and especially young children dying because of poverty in those countries every week.
I know it's easy to rule the world from behind your tv or computer screen, but I can tell you from personal experience that as soon as you witness the suffering of those people from up close, "fairness" gets new a whole new meaning. So while I think it is nescesary to reduce emssions for the future welbeing of all of us, I also know that cutting down the developing industies over there would cause suffering and death for many right now.
Bullshit. All it takes is for us to convince ourselves that they either helped or knew about and failed to hinder those fuckers that flew planes into the WTC, which we've done to my satisfaction (and most others' as well).
What? Did I miss something? Did somebody -anybody- actually prove the Iraqi government knew about 9/11? Show me, please link to the hard evidence (hard evidence is not "undisclosed sources"). All I heard was that Bush publicly admitted there is no evidence Iraq had anything to do with it (and strangely enough I can't find a linkable story in the US media anymore, where it was largely ignored). Please don't try to bullshit me.
Right, this process is called capitalism. When our governments think it has caused enough unemployment and economical damage (which follows from growing unemployment), they'll do the socialist, anti-liberal thing: protect their markets and jobs.
Capitalism doesn't work either for strategicly important industies like steel, food, arms, etc. Governments simply aren't going to allow those to move abroad or close down; they'll disown and make them into government property if it can't be done otherwise.
Because it was the US itself which (rightly) saw the need for a multigovernmental organisation to avoid (large-scale) wars after WWII; and subsequently co-founded the UN. So the UN has authority over the US because the US gave it that authority; not only by founding it but by signing various treaties also.
There are 10 members in the Security Counsel, right? Why should 7 of them dictate what the other 3 do (for instance)? Because it's a "consensus"? What if a group of 6 countries get together and decide that the world would be better off without the other 4? Are the other 4 supposed to roll over and die, just because it's a "consensus"? Or would you permit them to fight for their survival?
Do you have even the slightest idea about international law? What you are saying here is akin to "What if the US government desides to extradite all colored people?"
The man murdered over a million people in his own country, using chemical weapons. What possible GOOD could come from him staying in power?
1) Those figures are getting higher and higher. Perhaps it would be wise to wait until the dust settles until we make a judgement about how many people he got killed?
2) Iraq is a sovereign nation, just like the US. A nation has no right to mingle in the internal affairs of another sovereign nation. Just as the French can't do a regime change in the US because Bush is a tool, the US can't do regime change in Iraq because Saddam is the devil in person. As long as Saddam and Bush do their stuff on their own territory, another nation can't do anything about it. Simple, isn't it?
What kind of industrial pollution did a nation like Burkina Faso cause in the last centuries? How much pullution does a 3th world nation like that produce today? So why should we treat them the same way like nations that have been polluting for centuries at a much larger scale, and continue to do so?
Since September 11, 2001. Welcome to the next phase. The sleeping giant was awakened again, and as the former emperor of Japan said (I'm paraphrasing): "Are you nuts!? Boy are you in biiiig trouble now ..."
Sigh. That still doesn't make it right now, does it? Iraq never directly attacked the US, so until the US comes with some damn hard evidence that Iraq was framing strikes against US territory, they'll stay the agressors in this.
The simple fact that no nation in the world is going to allow a substantial part of its production capacity to move abroad. Even though it's dirty business, heavy industry is vital to the economies of our developed nations. And even if we exported our heavy industry to developing countries, they would develop quicker, meaning they would have to follow stricter norms.
The significant reason was that Iraq had NEVER fully complied with the treaties signed at the end of the first Gulf War. Period.
Well, the funny thing is the UN dictated those treaties, and the UN itself seemed to think Iraq was in compliance enough not to invade.
Kyoto would not exempt developing nations for the purpose of moving the polluting industries to these developing countries; Kyoto specifically states that pollution is a global problem that needs dealing with on a global scale. The exemption is made because of a) the costs of reducing pollution; developing nations simply can't afford it as long as they're in their developing stages; and b) fairness; the polluters should pay to get their mess cleaned up.The developed nations have mainly caused the problem and have the money to pay for cleaning up their own mess; some of these nations are now trying to deny their responsability in the most redicilous ways.
The ICC has already shown its true colors in attempting to charge various U.S. citizens for "warcrimes" in the U.S.-led action in Iraq - exactly to what advantage of the U.S. citizen is it if the U.S. would need to subjucate itself to such a body before taking actions it feels are necessary for its defense?
So since when is (offensively) invading a sovereign nation defence? Invasions are not defensive, what ever weaselwording ("pre-emptive strikes") they're wrapped in. If your army attacks a sovereign nation without you being attacked by their army first, you're the agressor.
What you state here comes down to an offender asking himself what good a criminal court does him. The court is there to make you behave, your personal advantage in it is it makes you a more civilized person/state; better fit to positively function in (global) society. The problem with some nations is they can't accept authority that might judge their actions as wrong, just like some offenders can't ("Judge, who are you to tell me what to do, for I'm stronger than you.")
Mother-May-I was a stupid children's game in the fist place - a sovereign nation certainly sholdn't play it.
If you're trying render global consensus meaningless, there will be global consensus in condemning you. There is just to many nukes and other dangerous stuff in the world to throw these moderating diplomatic structures overboard and fight it out.
If it's active on your machine and you don't want it, you don't have to recompile the kernel. Just type sysctl -w kernel.sysrq=0 at the console to deactivate it right now, and put kernel.sysrq = 0 in your /etc/sysctl.conf so magic sysrq will be deactivated automaticly next time you boot.
Amen. In discussions like these, people tend to forget that it's generally not your talent that's being rewarded but your raw labor force; meaning your wages depend on how much unemployed there are that can do your job. If you're easy to replace, you're not worth much, it doesn't really matter if your replacement comes from the US or from India. Even if Indian IT workes cost (almost) as much as US IT workers, there still would be a devaluation of IT jobs because of the growing supply on the labor market.