I guess I'm just not sold on the concept of a group that would take pains to ensure no casualties being classified as "terrorist".
It certainly may be, because it has a threat of violence in it, i.e.: next time, it may be you. But the group began to struggle to avoid hurting people (although, not property) only later, after some of their own got blown up, and they realized the public's hostility towards such methods. Before that, "kill the rich people" was the first part of the (already quoted) slogan.
Also, to be fair, an army target could be viewed as a legitimate target.
Even if it is a dance hall, and when the army is that of your own country? Whatever... But see below:
WTC was solidly terrorism, but the Pentagon attack was not.
Whether something is terrorism is determined not by the target, but by the intent (unlike many other crimes, unfortunately). Pentagon bombing on 9/11 and Weatherman's attack of America's military (they bombed Pentagon too, BTW) had no military purpose — they were done to terrorize — threaten civilians with more and more violence to achieve "goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature".
You could argue, that they aren't especially hideous terrorists — better than Osama bin Laden, for example — but they were still terrorists.
But we are way too far off-topic... You don't deny, the man was a criminal, and that's what matters to this discussion — despite being a criminal, he avoided punishment, because law enforcement broke rules while gathering evidence against him. The rules which, once again, were put in place to protect the innocent...
The noun terrorism has 1 sense (no senses from tagged texts)
1. terrorism, act of terrorism, terrorist act -- (the calculated use of violence (or the threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimidation or coercion or instilling fear)
Belonging to a terrorist organization makes one a terrorist too, even if one is not (unlike Ayers) directly involved in any actual terrorism — take Hassan Nasrallah, for example.
Although per the definition above, simply threatening violence to attain certain goals is terrorism, Ayers' organization were planning to blow up an Army NCO club next. Fortunately for most concerned, they blew themselves up instead — the organization changed strategy to try to avoid casualties after this incident... But were also armed robberies (with fatalities) — a revolution always needs cash... (Interestingly, Joseph Stalin's first job in the Communist Party was to "rob the robbers" — what do the owners of "Democracy Now!" have in store for us?).
Just take Ayers' own words, spoken not during an interrogation, and not decades ago, but to the media this year: "I don't regret setting bombs, I feel we didn't do enough."
Whether he actually killed anyone is not relevant to his being a terrorist — only to an additional charge of murder, which, according to his "memoir" he may also have committed, but nobody knows for sure: "''Is this, then, the truth?,'' he writes. ''Not exactly. Although it feels entirely honest to me.''"
But his organization's ideology, as summarized by him back then was: "Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that's where it's really at."
Back to my original point — although the scumbag's guilt is undeniable (and, indeed, not denied), he avoided any punishment, because of government misconduct in collecting evidence against them...
So, yes, Ayers was a member of a terrorist and otherwise criminal organization, and a terrorist himself — committed to this day to terrorism...
This is simply an illustration — the privacy we fight for for ourselves is also very handy for crooks. Be they the "traditional" criminals, whose conviction is thrown out, because the cops did not jump through all of the hoops authorizing their surveillance and other privacy-busting aspects of investigation... Or be they spammers, whose identities are hidden by the same means, intended (or purporting) to keep private identities of honest domain owners.
So, if a terrorist can escape prosecution due to "prosecutorial misconduct" and become a professor of an otherwise reputable University (and a chance of counting a President among his friends), is it any wonder, a spammer can reappear under a different name every week with impunity?
I'm not saying, we demolish the privacy protections or stop punishing overzealous prosecutors. Just reminding of the flip side of it...
Their right... What the government should be doing is foster competition instead of handing over a (near) monopoly to anybody in exchange for a dubious promise to "be nice". It was silly with AT&T, who were made a monopoly. A lesson was, kinda, learned, and now there is usually a duopoly — cable vs. DSL for Internet, cable vs. satellite for TV... Rarely — only in dense markets like major metropolitan areas — are there more than one cable-provider...
That is what the government should be looking at instead of micro-managing a single service-provider's operations.
For the same reason you get a ticket if you don't wear your seat-belt? Wear a helmet when riding your motorcycle?
Serious infringements on the freedoms, I say... A freedom to be a fool, in this case, but a freedom nonetheless. "Oh, but if you crash, we'll have to treat you!" — none of your business, that's between me and my health insurance...
Failing to follow building codes in your own home should be something that must be revealed to any potential buyers of your home.
Building code is another beast — an unlicensed contractor may be able to follow it just as well (or better) than a licensed one. In any case, it is (our ought to be) between the buyer and me... The licensing requirements are way out of hand, and it costs us greatly.
Because if you screw up the wiring in your house and it catches fire, you could end up destroying your neighbors' homes as well.
And if I have a heart-attack (from all that bacon) while driving, I'm likely to injure someone else in the same accident too.
Your reason may have some relevance to the requirement to license electricians, but not to, say, plumbers... And yet, in the State of New Jersey, for example, plumbers must be licensed. The supposed reason is to protect me from shoddy work — a typical mommy-State reasoning. Eeeww... The only plausible excuse to infringe upon Free Market with regulation, is when the consumer may not be able to "try again" — if the first bad choice kills him or leaves him prison. This means, it may be alright to regulate lawyers and doctors, but New Jersey regulates plumbers and "Home Renovators" must be licensed too...
The whole thing really is out of hand — in this country. It is too bad, the Founding Father have not thought of this, when drafting a Constitution... Licenses are handed out by the Executive Government, which can withdraw them on a whim — without having to prove anything in court, thus leaving us without the protection of the Judiciary Branch. Voila — an excellent way for the Executive to "work around" the "separation of powers" and to be rid of the infamous "burden of proof".
The shape of the skulls has led us to believe that Eva and the others have more of an affinity with people from South Asia than North Asia
Crossing from South to North Asia is no more difficult, than crossing from North to South America or, indeed, from Asia to Europe — where even the recent Romans had to battle "endless" Eastern tribes.
So, the theory, that people crossed Bering's Straits into Northern America (Alaska) and then populated both continents, already assumes migrations far more distant, than a travel from Southern Asia to Norther would require...
And finally, next time you are in Cancun, ask a Yucatani Mexican, where the Mayas are from, and he'll tell you, they are related to Mongols (and by the looks of them, he may be right)... Mongolia is neither the Southern nor Northern Asia, but smack in the middle...
It's the National Fire Protection Association who writes things like the national electrical code. It's all about avoiding things that have caused fires.
Fortunately, the same principle is not, yet, applied to people themselves — or else smoking, red meat, alcohol and other things, that have caused illnesses, would've been illegal already. Because, as Sandra Bullock explains in "Demolition Man", "What's not good for you is bad for you."
So, why do we allow this principle to override our own, desires of what can and can not be done to our houses and other properties? Because the Constitution does not explicitly protect them against the whims of the government (the local townhall, in this case)... The Constitution only protects our persons, but good luck recovering wrongfully-confiscated monies or equipment or insisting on your right to build your house on your property the way you want...
No a "fair wage" SHOULD be based on normal supply and demand.
Why not, exactly? What is "wage" other than price of a service? Why should a neighborhood's plumber have a legal advantage over a Mexican one in my considerations of whom to hire? I may be persuaded to hire a local by other arguments, but to compel me to do so at gun-point is to cause me to either revolt openly or to break the stupid, racket-encouraging, law covertly.
Taxed without being represented? What? They're not ENTITLED to be represented.
There is no contradiction above — they are not entitled to be represented, and they are not, indeed, represented. They still pay (some) income taxes — so they do end up being taxed without being represented. Most, of course, would love to get legit and pay all of the taxes.
They're not supposed to BE HERE. They are here ILLEGALLY...
Oh, yes, "illegally". I thought, I addressed this "illegally" accusation already. Let me rephrase it:
Which part of "ILLEGAL" don't you understand?
Uhm, I don't understand, which law they break...
The laws, that say, they should not be here, you dimwit!!
Mmm, and why do we have such laws?
Because we don't want them here!!
Why don't we?
Because they are bad people!
They are? Why?
Go back to item 1.
they pay NO income taxes, their kids go to our schools free of charge, they get free medical care...
By this logic and the crime statistics we ought to be deporting (or just shooting) Blacks — far more of them (percentage-wise) are on welfare, free medical care, or in prison (or a combination of the three). It is, of course, not right — but neither is your argument... That we've saddled ourselves with the stupid promises of free medical and other care to the poor — no matter how abusive, really does not give us the right to kick out the people, who came not to abuse the free care system, but to work. And work is exactly what the vast majority of them come here for, or else you wouldn't be complaining about "cheap labour".
Oh BS. What about all the people trying to come here LEGALLY who have to wait for years? Why should a group of people be able to jump the line?
There should not be a line. Ellis Island used to take 2-3 days to process a new arrival and almost everybody was allowed in. That it now takes years is a shame...
While we are arguing about the imperfections of our implementation, the very principle should be:
Everybody shall be able to live, wherever they can afford to live, and work for whoever would hire them.
I hold this truth to be self-evident... Do you agree?
Because we have to actually pay for our fucking taxes and social services, asshole.
And they'd be happy to do so too, sweetheart. More, when an illegal gets a job with a fake SS-card, the SS-taxes are deducted from their pay-check, but they are not going to get the SS-benefits. They are taxed without being represented, and yet, these people are happy to work on these conditions — why aren't the Americans willing to work for the same money, while still getting the SS-benefits, and the representation?
On top of that, we have a minimum wage laws and a bunch of safety laws that we actually follow, unlike the scum hiring truckloads of cheap Mexicans.
The "minimum wage laws" are a misnomer, that we inflicted upon ourselves. But I digress — what's wrong with "cheap Mexicans", exactly? Oh, I know, it goes like this:
They break laws!
Which laws?
The ones intended to keep them out of this country!
When you've got companies that are allowed to take their business overseas to use what amounts to slave labor without fear of tariffs.
Different countries have distinctly different standards of living, but there is no pattern of people working for any American firm involuntarily. If you can't offer evidence to justify your accusation of "slave labor", than your entire "insightful" posting is, indeed, bullshit...
These are not jobs that American's won't take. These are jobs that Americans expect a fair wage to be set.
What exactly is "fair"? Go ahead, try to justify, why an American is entitled to a wage higher, than a Mexican, who — upon coming to this country (legally or otherwise) not only manages to earn a living for himself, but to also support extended family back home? Oh, I know, must be an American's birthright — that same right, with which British monarchs justified their rule over the colonies...
By saying, "in the event of a dispute, we'll limit our payout to X", a company can factor the potential for X payouts into the price
There is no reason, the same clause can't be respected by a real court — in fact, a lot of non-arbitration contracts and service agreements talk about any compensation being limited to the amounts actually paid by the customer at some point.
And if a court finds it unenforceable and/or unfair, then either the court is wrong (and needs fixing), or so it should be. This, in itself, is not an argument for arbitration...
Oh, if only you, assholes, would restrict yourself to "free speech". But speech is not enough for you, attention-deprived cretins.
You must also break glass, spray-paint other people's property, disrupt traffic and other aspects of life.
Your pitiful causes would've been a joke to anyone familiar with what real oppression is, if it was not for your sociopathic behavior.
Go ahead, type "FUCK POLICE" 1000 times, as if ordered by the school principal. Just don't put any graffiti on my wall, and you will not be "oppressed".
I strongly disagree - that might be your view but it is by no means universal. However, being captured in Afghanistan is not, of itself, a crime.
You are confusing two groups of people:
Those captured in Afghanistan.
Those, who were waterboarded on Bush administration's orders.
Even if there are people belonging to both of the groups, neither of the groups is even a complete subset of the other — Khaled Mohammed, a "victim" of waterboarding, for example, was captured in Pakistan.
None of the people in the second group is believed to be innocent by even the harshest critics of the Bush Administration. Just as I said.
As for the rest of your argument, it goes out of scope of even the original anti-Bush posting, which was, in itself, largely off-topic, so I'll skip responding to it.
The assumption of innocence is one of the foundations of due process.
Only in formally convicting the accused. In extracting intelligence information out of them, you go with the probabilities and their weights (see Mathematical Expectation). One one hand is the waterboarding's unpleasantries (u) with the probability of 1.0, and on the other — certain number of lives (N) with a probability of P.
If the unpleasantry of losing each life is U, you've got the simple formula for when to order waterboarding: u*1.0 < N*U*P. You seem to think, the formula is never true, but that's simply stupid... Even if P (the probability, that the extracted information can save N lives) is low, the U ought to be quite a bit higher than u... So when you are holding a "high-value" detainee, who, you believe, knows something about an imminent attack, the P shoots up, and waterboarding is morally justified.
Now, there is also a need for legal justification — you can't legally torture POWs no matter what (otherwise someone somewhere will always justify it with skillfully picked values for the above variables). However, none of the people, who waterboarding was applied to by the US, qualify as a POW.
Every arbitrator I know has extensive legal experience
In the field of financial arbitrage, at least one of the "judges" is a financial expert, not a legal one... Subject-matter experts are needed in courts often, but they don't decide there...
Let me rephrase the question. Do we want multiple justice systems? A resounding "No". But, if we don't, we must get rid of the "arbitration" (at least, of the "binding" kind) least it competes with the main judiciary, that ought to be the one and only...
Do you still feel, requiring government license for very simple activities:
investigating (cough, MediaSentry, cough)
plumbing
serving liquor
driving
is a good idea? The licenses for all these pursuits, which are considered a "privilege, not a right," can be taken away — by the Executive Government (such as FCC) — on a whim, without any court-decision. At best, you may be able to get a court-order of your own to get the license restored — but you will be the plaintiff with the "burden of proof" on your hands, and you will have to convince the court you are right, rather than simply poke a few holes in the other side's argument...
The basic premise is that choosing ADR should be preserved as an option
What's so good about arbitration at all? I know, they seem like a better implementation of a court-system, which is quite bloated and awfully expensive. But the arbiters are not judges, usually have little legal experience, and aren't from the Judiciary.
What's wrong with courts needs to be fixed, instead of simply deciding cases outside of them.
Before some comes in blasting "corporate greed" or some such, let's remind, that the Government is an even worse offender in this area. To argue with IRS in real court, for example, you have to pay what they want you to pay first. Taking your traffic citation to a real judge is impossible in some locales — in NYC your only redress is "traffic court", which is part of the city government — the Executive, rather than Judiciary.
Anywhere, where the Executive branch is empowered to license certain activities (be that driving, or plumbing, or serving liquor), they are also empowered to take the license away, because somehow we've swallowed the line, that these activities are a privilege, not a right (inalienable)... And a privilege can be revoked without bothering with courts — leaving you with the "burden of proof", if you can file a court-case at all. And, as the above example shows, the Executive may even decide to set up its own court system for certain types of cases.
I wish, all of these special arrangements got stricken out for good along with binding arbitrages between private parties...
And that is the problem. If you now believe that, as a nation, it is entirely normal to torture people
It is not "normal". But waterboarding (a procedure, that leaves no long-lasting damage to the body) a few people is permissible — and always has been throughout history. The only real moral argument against it, is that you may be applying it to the wrong (innocent) guy — the same sole argument against death penalty, BTW.
That's not the case with Bush's administration — not even the harshest of their critics doubts the guilt of the "victims", nor that they did know something important, that they would not reveal unless pressured.
There are practical arguments against it — can you really trust something uttered by a torture-broken person? So, yes, you will have to verify their words, and keep in mind, who said them and under what circumstances — something you always have to do, BTW, even when dealing with an enthusiastically collaborating ally.
And then, of course, there is the "slippery slope" argument — sorry, I don't really buy it here. Hundreds of lives now vs. the hypothetical hundreds torture victims in the future? The answer is very simple...
May you choke on your beloved waterboarding, spying, illegally kidnapping, profiteering, lying administration.
I don't love the waterboarding, but I don't think, it is a big deal. Spying, taking prisoners, and occasionally even lying is what all administrations do... Profiteering? What profiteering? According to the definition:
Political figures taking bribes and favors from corporations involved with war production have been called war profiteers. Abraham Lincoln's first Secretary of War, Simon Cameron, was forced to resign in early 1862 after charges of corruption relating to war contracts. In 1947, Kentucky congressman Andrew J. May, Chairman of the powerful Committee on Military Affairs, was convicted for taking bribes in exchange for war contracts.
Once you have any evidence of this administration's "taking bribes or favors" in the above-described manner, be sure to send that evidence to Senator Reed, Congresswoman Pelosi, and other leading opposition figures... Until then — shut up. Or, indeed, choke on your own bile.
However, there was no evidence that said individuals were actually going to carry out an attack other than the fact that they said something in an online chat room.
Actually, that's plenty... Getting a hint like that is likely to allow prevention of an attack and even of catching the terrorist.
Why would you pay for that?
Although you may discount their government customers as directed by the evil Bushitler, the non-governmental agencies, like magazines, clearly, pay them on their own free will...
Slashdot Mirror
It certainly may be, because it has a threat of violence in it, i.e.: next time, it may be you. But the group began to struggle to avoid hurting people (although, not property) only later, after some of their own got blown up, and they realized the public's hostility towards such methods. Before that, "kill the rich people" was the first part of the (already quoted) slogan.
Even if it is a dance hall, and when the army is that of your own country? Whatever... But see below:
Whether something is terrorism is determined not by the target, but by the intent (unlike many other crimes, unfortunately). Pentagon bombing on 9/11 and Weatherman's attack of America's military (they bombed Pentagon too, BTW) had no military purpose — they were done to terrorize — threaten civilians with more and more violence to achieve "goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature".
You could argue, that they aren't especially hideous terrorists — better than Osama bin Laden, for example — but they were still terrorists.
But we are way too far off-topic... You don't deny, the man was a criminal, and that's what matters to this discussion — despite being a criminal, he avoided punishment, because law enforcement broke rules while gathering evidence against him. The rules which, once again, were put in place to protect the innocent...
Petition the penitentiary to allow him to use a computer — and an Internet access — for very good behavior...
WordNet defines "terrorism" as (emphasis mine::
Belonging to a terrorist organization makes one a terrorist too, even if one is not (unlike Ayers) directly involved in any actual terrorism — take Hassan Nasrallah, for example.
Although per the definition above, simply threatening violence to attain certain goals is terrorism, Ayers' organization were planning to blow up an Army NCO club next. Fortunately for most concerned, they blew themselves up instead — the organization changed strategy to try to avoid casualties after this incident... But were also armed robberies (with fatalities) — a revolution always needs cash... (Interestingly, Joseph Stalin's first job in the Communist Party was to "rob the robbers" — what do the owners of "Democracy Now!" have in store for us?).
Just take Ayers' own words, spoken not during an interrogation, and not decades ago, but to the media this year: "I don't regret setting bombs, I feel we didn't do enough."
Whether he actually killed anyone is not relevant to his being a terrorist — only to an additional charge of murder, which, according to his "memoir" he may also have committed, but nobody knows for sure: "''Is this, then, the truth?,'' he writes. ''Not exactly. Although it feels entirely honest to me.''"
But his organization's ideology, as summarized by him back then was: "Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that's where it's really at."
Back to my original point — although the scumbag's guilt is undeniable (and, indeed, not denied), he avoided any punishment, because of government misconduct in collecting evidence against them...
So, yes, Ayers was a member of a terrorist and otherwise criminal organization, and a terrorist himself — committed to this day to terrorism...
This is simply an illustration — the privacy we fight for for ourselves is also very handy for crooks. Be they the "traditional" criminals, whose conviction is thrown out, because the cops did not jump through all of the hoops authorizing their surveillance and other privacy-busting aspects of investigation... Or be they spammers, whose identities are hidden by the same means, intended (or purporting) to keep private identities of honest domain owners.
So, if a terrorist can escape prosecution due to "prosecutorial misconduct" and become a professor of an otherwise reputable University (and a chance of counting a President among his friends), is it any wonder, a spammer can reappear under a different name every week with impunity?
I'm not saying, we demolish the privacy protections or stop punishing overzealous prosecutors. Just reminding of the flip side of it...
Their right... What the government should be doing is foster competition instead of handing over a (near) monopoly to anybody in exchange for a dubious promise to "be nice". It was silly with AT&T, who were made a monopoly. A lesson was, kinda, learned, and now there is usually a duopoly — cable vs. DSL for Internet, cable vs. satellite for TV... Rarely — only in dense markets like major metropolitan areas — are there more than one cable-provider...
That is what the government should be looking at instead of micro-managing a single service-provider's operations.
Serious infringements on the freedoms, I say... A freedom to be a fool, in this case, but a freedom nonetheless. "Oh, but if you crash, we'll have to treat you!" — none of your business, that's between me and my health insurance...
Building code is another beast — an unlicensed contractor may be able to follow it just as well (or better) than a licensed one. In any case, it is (our ought to be) between the buyer and me... The licensing requirements are way out of hand, and it costs us greatly.
And if I have a heart-attack (from all that bacon) while driving, I'm likely to injure someone else in the same accident too.
Your reason may have some relevance to the requirement to license electricians, but not to, say, plumbers... And yet, in the State of New Jersey, for example, plumbers must be licensed. The supposed reason is to protect me from shoddy work — a typical mommy-State reasoning. Eeeww... The only plausible excuse to infringe upon Free Market with regulation, is when the consumer may not be able to "try again" — if the first bad choice kills him or leaves him prison. This means, it may be alright to regulate lawyers and doctors, but New Jersey regulates plumbers and "Home Renovators" must be licensed too...
The whole thing really is out of hand — in this country. It is too bad, the Founding Father have not thought of this, when drafting a Constitution... Licenses are handed out by the Executive Government, which can withdraw them on a whim — without having to prove anything in court, thus leaving us without the protection of the Judiciary Branch. Voila — an excellent way for the Executive to "work around" the "separation of powers" and to be rid of the infamous "burden of proof".
Crossing from South to North Asia is no more difficult, than crossing from North to South America or, indeed, from Asia to Europe — where even the recent Romans had to battle "endless" Eastern tribes.
So, the theory, that people crossed Bering's Straits into Northern America (Alaska) and then populated both continents, already assumes migrations far more distant, than a travel from Southern Asia to Norther would require...
And finally, next time you are in Cancun, ask a Yucatani Mexican, where the Mayas are from, and he'll tell you, they are related to Mongols (and by the looks of them, he may be right)... Mongolia is neither the Southern nor Northern Asia, but smack in the middle...
Fortunately, the same principle is not, yet, applied to people themselves — or else smoking, red meat, alcohol and other things, that have caused illnesses, would've been illegal already. Because, as Sandra Bullock explains in "Demolition Man", "What's not good for you is bad for you."
So, why do we allow this principle to override our own, desires of what can and can not be done to our houses and other properties? Because the Constitution does not explicitly protect them against the whims of the government (the local townhall, in this case)... The Constitution only protects our persons, but good luck recovering wrongfully-confiscated monies or equipment or insisting on your right to build your house on your property the way you want...
Enhance your calm...
Why not, exactly? What is "wage" other than price of a service? Why should a neighborhood's plumber have a legal advantage over a Mexican one in my considerations of whom to hire? I may be persuaded to hire a local by other arguments, but to compel me to do so at gun-point is to cause me to either revolt openly or to break the stupid, racket-encouraging, law covertly.
There is no contradiction above — they are not entitled to be represented, and they are not, indeed, represented. They still pay (some) income taxes — so they do end up being taxed without being represented. Most, of course, would love to get legit and pay all of the taxes.
Oh, yes, "illegally". I thought, I addressed this "illegally" accusation already. Let me rephrase it:
By this logic and the crime statistics we ought to be deporting (or just shooting) Blacks — far more of them (percentage-wise) are on welfare, free medical care, or in prison (or a combination of the three). It is, of course, not right — but neither is your argument... That we've saddled ourselves with the stupid promises of free medical and other care to the poor — no matter how abusive, really does not give us the right to kick out the people, who came not to abuse the free care system, but to work. And work is exactly what the vast majority of them come here for, or else you wouldn't be complaining about "cheap labour".
There should not be a line. Ellis Island used to take 2-3 days to process a new arrival and almost everybody was allowed in. That it now takes years is a shame...
While we are arguing about the imperfections of our implementation, the very principle should be:
I hold this truth to be self-evident... Do you agree?
To be able to afford a competent editor, /. would have to run Obama-ads, rather than McCain ones.
And they'd be happy to do so too, sweetheart. More, when an illegal gets a job with a fake SS-card, the SS-taxes are deducted from their pay-check, but they are not going to get the SS-benefits. They are taxed without being represented, and yet, these people are happy to work on these conditions — why aren't the Americans willing to work for the same money, while still getting the SS-benefits, and the representation?
The "minimum wage laws" are a misnomer, that we inflicted upon ourselves. But I digress — what's wrong with "cheap Mexicans", exactly? Oh, I know, it goes like this:
Sorry, not convincing...
A bullshit meme — and a false dichotomy.
Different countries have distinctly different standards of living, but there is no pattern of people working for any American firm involuntarily. If you can't offer evidence to justify your accusation of "slave labor", than your entire "insightful" posting is, indeed, bullshit...
What exactly is "fair"? Go ahead, try to justify, why an American is entitled to a wage higher, than a Mexican, who — upon coming to this country (legally or otherwise) not only manages to earn a living for himself, but to also support extended family back home? Oh, I know, must be an American's birthright — that same right, with which British monarchs justified their rule over the colonies...
There is no reason, the same clause can't be respected by a real court — in fact, a lot of non-arbitration contracts and service agreements talk about any compensation being limited to the amounts actually paid by the customer at some point.
And if a court finds it unenforceable and/or unfair, then either the court is wrong (and needs fixing), or so it should be. This, in itself, is not an argument for arbitration...
Start holding your breath now. No cheating... Thank you very much.
Oh, if only you, assholes, would restrict yourself to "free speech". But speech is not enough for you, attention-deprived cretins.
You must also break glass, spray-paint other people's property, disrupt traffic and other aspects of life.
Your pitiful causes would've been a joke to anyone familiar with what real oppression is, if it was not for your sociopathic behavior.
Go ahead, type "FUCK POLICE" 1000 times, as if ordered by the school principal. Just don't put any graffiti on my wall, and you will not be "oppressed".
You are confusing two groups of people:
Even if there are people belonging to both of the groups, neither of the groups is even a complete subset of the other — Khaled Mohammed, a "victim" of waterboarding, for example, was captured in Pakistan.
None of the people in the second group is believed to be innocent by even the harshest critics of the Bush Administration. Just as I said.
As for the rest of your argument, it goes out of scope of even the original anti-Bush posting, which was, in itself, largely off-topic, so I'll skip responding to it.
Only in formally convicting the accused. In extracting intelligence information out of them, you go with the probabilities and their weights (see Mathematical Expectation). One one hand is the waterboarding's unpleasantries (u) with the probability of 1.0, and on the other — certain number of lives (N) with a probability of P.
If the unpleasantry of losing each life is U, you've got the simple formula for when to order waterboarding: u*1.0 < N*U*P. You seem to think, the formula is never true, but that's simply stupid... Even if P (the probability, that the extracted information can save N lives) is low, the U ought to be quite a bit higher than u... So when you are holding a "high-value" detainee, who, you believe, knows something about an imminent attack, the P shoots up, and waterboarding is morally justified.
Now, there is also a need for legal justification — you can't legally torture POWs no matter what (otherwise someone somewhere will always justify it with skillfully picked values for the above variables). However, none of the people, who waterboarding was applied to by the US, qualify as a POW.
In the field of financial arbitrage, at least one of the "judges" is a financial expert, not a legal one... Subject-matter experts are needed in courts often, but they don't decide there...
Let me rephrase the question. Do we want multiple justice systems? A resounding "No". But, if we don't, we must get rid of the "arbitration" (at least, of the "binding" kind) least it competes with the main judiciary, that ought to be the one and only...
Two questions:
is a good idea? The licenses for all these pursuits, which are considered a "privilege, not a right," can be taken away — by the Executive Government (such as FCC) — on a whim, without any court-decision. At best, you may be able to get a court-order of your own to get the license restored — but you will be the plaintiff with the "burden of proof" on your hands, and you will have to convince the court you are right, rather than simply poke a few holes in the other side's argument...
What's so good about arbitration at all? I know, they seem like a better implementation of a court-system, which is quite bloated and awfully expensive. But the arbiters are not judges, usually have little legal experience, and aren't from the Judiciary.
What's wrong with courts needs to be fixed, instead of simply deciding cases outside of them.
Before some comes in blasting "corporate greed" or some such, let's remind, that the Government is an even worse offender in this area. To argue with IRS in real court, for example, you have to pay what they want you to pay first. Taking your traffic citation to a real judge is impossible in some locales — in NYC your only redress is "traffic court", which is part of the city government — the Executive, rather than Judiciary.
Anywhere, where the Executive branch is empowered to license certain activities (be that driving, or plumbing, or serving liquor), they are also empowered to take the license away, because somehow we've swallowed the line, that these activities are a privilege, not a right (inalienable)... And a privilege can be revoked without bothering with courts — leaving you with the "burden of proof", if you can file a court-case at all. And, as the above example shows, the Executive may even decide to set up its own court system for certain types of cases.
I wish, all of these special arrangements got stricken out for good along with binding arbitrages between private parties...
Gratias tibi ago!
It is not "normal". But waterboarding (a procedure, that leaves no long-lasting damage to the body) a few people is permissible — and always has been throughout history. The only real moral argument against it, is that you may be applying it to the wrong (innocent) guy — the same sole argument against death penalty, BTW.
That's not the case with Bush's administration — not even the harshest of their critics doubts the guilt of the "victims", nor that they did know something important, that they would not reveal unless pressured.
There are practical arguments against it — can you really trust something uttered by a torture-broken person? So, yes, you will have to verify their words, and keep in mind, who said them and under what circumstances — something you always have to do, BTW, even when dealing with an enthusiastically collaborating ally.
And then, of course, there is the "slippery slope" argument — sorry, I don't really buy it here. Hundreds of lives now vs. the hypothetical hundreds torture victims in the future? The answer is very simple...
I don't love the waterboarding, but I don't think, it is a big deal. Spying, taking prisoners, and occasionally even lying is what all administrations do... Profiteering? What profiteering? According to the definition:
Once you have any evidence of this administration's "taking bribes or favors" in the above-described manner, be sure to send that evidence to Senator Reed, Congresswoman Pelosi, and other leading opposition figures... Until then — shut up. Or, indeed, choke on your own bile.
Actually, that's plenty... Getting a hint like that is likely to allow prevention of an attack and even of catching the terrorist.
Although you may discount their government customers as directed by the evil Bushitler, the non-governmental agencies, like magazines, clearly, pay them on their own free will...