No. I accused Israel of attacking Saddam first. I specifically refered to "him".
You make no sense. Saddam Hussein was not targeted by Israel personally. Their attack was far away from Baghdad. They targeted Iraq — an aggressor in the war since 1948.
Your use of the word "oppressed" makes this whole discussion irrelevant as it's an acknowledgment, from your side, of the US bully strategy.
Wrong. "US bully strategy" has little to do with the sorry state of those, who hate our freedoms (including the economical ones). The oppressed are suffering from their own regimes' tyranny and/or misgovernment. The meaning of my post could not possibly have been construed in the manner you have — I suspect, you are not arguing in good faith — I'm unlikely to respond to you again. You confirm my suspicion by revealing, you understood it perfectly later:
While your argument might holds true for the impressionable minority who doesn't need much to get all worked up, it is clearly fallacious when applied to educated people.
Unfortunately, that is not true — not even among the educated people, of whom, BTW, there is severe shortage world-wide.
The whole pre-war justification legal build-up was extremely absurd and just went to show the irrelevance of the UN. Interestingly, courts have been looking in the matter and ruled the attack unlawful
LOL, I shrugged off your earlier attempt to bring up Chomsky as a sad aberration, but you came back with the "World Socialist Web-Site". You better stop that crap — I truely hate Commie-sympathizers, for they are adherents of the deadliest ideology known to civilization...
Back to the subject of "illegal war" — sorry, in our imperfect world UN Security Council is the only body, that can call a war illegal... I do agree on the "irrelevance" bit, though — the body should've called on all to destroy Saddam long ago.
And, of course, you lied in your reference to that German Court's decision — all they did was accept the officer's reasoning that he objected on the "freedom of conciense" grounds... Why am not surprised about your lying, and about your Socialist friends pretending, the officer's treatment reminded them of Kafka and "Stalinist regimes" — under which no such soldier would ever have survived?
Surely the discussion was centered around Saddam Hussein.
... who was the dictator of Iraq. You accused Israel of attacking Iraq "first" — that was not true — Iraq was the aggressor (since 1948), and I simply pointed that out.
You'll have to live a couple of decades in one of these countries to understand.
Thank you, conspiracy-theories are abundant in any place on Earth.
Out of curiosity, did you ever start thinking why the world's crushing majority doesn't share your opinion? Do they all "hate you for your freedoms"?
They would love to have these freedoms ("Yanki go home! But take me with you..."), but those, who can't, hate them — out of envy. It is a long-known phenomenon — the opressed, who can't do anything about their disadvantages, begin to accept them as normal and fair, blaming those, who don't have them, for "perversion" and violating "natural order" or "God's will" or whatever. This, for example, is the major ingredient in the disapproval, that "normal" married women have towards feminists.
I had a very educational experience on the subject myself — years ago, when I was 12 or so. My family was renting a cabin and a boat in the country — and we frequently oared up and down the river. Once we came to another recreation camp, and my parents left to visit the local shop. Soon after they left, the local kids — my age — discovered me, and got infuriated, that I was allowed to be in the boat (and take off to the river, whenever I pleased), because their camp's policy prohibited anyone under 16 to do that... Before long they began to pelt me with wet sand and I had to retreat from the shore...
If this cause is so noble and just, why did Bush&co resort to deceit (WMDs) to justify it?
It was not deceit — Saddam Hussein kept a balancing act for 10 years. He had to imply he has the weapons — to keep his neighbors afraid and his army brave (they were expecting delivery of secret "super weapons" as Americans were advancing). We had reasons to believe, he still had them, and we weren't entirely incorrect either (some "deteriorated" stuff was actually found)... Also, in violation of the terms of the said cease-fire, Saddam has patently not destroyed the know-how to rebuild WMDs immediately after the sanctions were lifted — American web-site displaying the captured documents was taken down last night after someone realized, the documents are too detailed for world-view...
if you can't say anything good about Bush then you have no choice but to lie about his opposition.
Two years ago, Kerry's supporters were potraing their party and candidate as the smart and well-educated bunch — contrasting Kerry's unknown-but-presumed-excellent academic achievements with the publicized mediocre ones by Bush. Kerry would not release his own records...
Several months later — in the summer of 2005 — Kerry's records were released and turned out to be worse than Bush's. Kerry's overall average was one-point less, and he got D's in Geology, two History courses, and in Political Science... Bush's only D was in Astronomy...
We don't need to lie about Kerry. He — a 20-year US Senator with nothing to talk about during a presidential campaing except his 4-months stint in Vietnam — is a disgrace on his own. Waffles.
Israel attacked first by bombing him in the early 80's.
Wrong. Iraq was one of the aggressors atacking Israel in 1948. That war never ended (except with Jordan and Egypt) — Israel was perfectly justified in its attack (and, of course, in its desire to stay military superior in the face of hostility). But let's not get distracted by Israel — you don't seem to be seriously disputing the justness of our war in 1991.
As I reminded already, that war ended in cease-fire, which Saddam Hussein violated many times — years before Bush's all-out resumption of hostilities, Clinton and Blair have found it neccessary to attack Iraq's forces on several occasions.
[...] would the country [Iraq] not have been subjected to economic strangulation for so long, his days were surely counted.
Wrong. There were no sanctions before Saddam's attack on Kuwait — and yet he ruled personally for over a decade before then, and his Baath party for much longer. It is sheer naivette (if not stupidity) to claim, he could've been overthrown — look at his fellow Baath ruler in Syria, for example.
That said, I'm glad, we agree, that the sanctions were not working...
Our cause was and remains just, and our mission noble. Thank you very much.
That you firmly believe that shit with the overwhelming evidence leaves me breathless.
There is no "evidence". There are allusions — most of them groundless or outright faulty (as the most common fallacy of "War for Oil" is).
I agree -- the world should've acted pre-emptively back then [Against Nazi Germany] too...
Put the economic factor into the picture and you might see the reason for the inaction.
Whatever the reasons for inaction were back then, I'm glad, that by 2003 US administration found the interests of Democracy (as per the neo-Conservative argument) to be more compelling.
The only wars I believe have moral justification were nations coming to the defense of another nation being invaded.
Saddam's regime invaded Kuwait, threatened Saudia Arabia, and attacked Israel (with which it was at war for decades). We intervened and stopped them — agreeing to a cease-fire on certain conditions. Saddam has violated these conditions numerous times, and we resumed hostilities in 2003 (should've done it much earlier). Our cause was and remains just, and our mission noble. Thank you very much.
Example, liberating France during WWII. If only we'd started earlier before they got to France, but that's another matter.
I agree — the world should've acted pre-emptively back then too...
My point is that I have no evidence, and you haven't provided any evidence. So at the beginning of this discussion there is no evidence.
You — advocating a change — need to present evidence, that the change is needed. I don't. It is called "burden of proof". Look it up...
You took my comment out of context [...]
I could not do that, even if I tried (I did not) — because you did not provide any context. You are doing it now — kinda...
Most of the information I have surrounding the reasons for this are sketchy and I made a point to say that why the EU wants this is unclear, except that the US acts like the school yard bully and doesn't like to share it's toys, and the EU is worried one day they will stop sharing.
Why are you so patient with EU's unreasonable (you admit, their reasons are "unclear") wants, and so angry at US, who is apprehensive about others (unreasonably) wanting to codify the sharing of the toys, which US has so far volunteerly shared anyway? You call US a "school yard bully" — what does that make EU? A "school yard loser"? Your whole "bully" analogy would've made sense, if we robed someone (EU?) of the toys, but we did not — Internet is our toy to begin with.
You know this, but still defend EU's requests, which they make for reasons unclear — and criticize America over its reluctance to give up its own "toys". Would one be correct calling you a Euro-phile anti-American?
I did NOT say give control to China/Russia, which is what your emotional plea is saying. I said UN body, which is a different animal all together, and it's what the EU has been calling for.
Directly to China/Russia (which nobody is talking about, fortunately) or to UN is irrelevant. What matters, is that China/Russia (along with France and Germany) will have more control and say over Internet, than they do now. That is what I don't want to see happening — not by iota. That is what my original subject-line said, BTW...
Your FUD is the emotional plea that if this happened, somehow Russia and China would subvert the internet would collapse or something [sic].
The increase in their control over it — and the increase will happen — is a bad thing in itself. One does not need to be "emotional" to understand this...
Also, being in the US, I have no knowledge of the problems other companies run into.
In other words, you have no evidence, there are any difficulties... Maybe, you should take my word for it? Someone's who can read Ukrainian and Russian, and converses regularly with friends abroad?
Because I can't seem to find a good article describing the issues other countries have with the way the US runs the internet, I can't make a judgement here, but neither can someone spreading Russia and China FUD.
What FUD? That Russia kills overly critical reporters, and sues overly outspoken businesmen into bancruptcy? Or that China has political prisoners and blocks access to certain political sites? Or that they both threaten neighbors with military force?
In a truly marxist system, the leaders are in no way above the common man.
Yes, yes... The true Marxists were all killed by Stalin, weren't they?
Believe it or not, some exhiled Nazis also hated Hitler, and strongly criticized him for perverting the wonderful ideology. No kidding.
Sorry, but I shall judge the ideas by implementation. Unlike software, however, trying to reimplement a "Marxist system" is just way too costly (as in millions of dead people) to try again.
Your posting contained NO NAMES — only the pro-noun "he"... As you grow up and go to school, pay some attention to the writing classes — even if public debating will never be your thing.
And he certainly TRIED to get that to happen. So he's not only a god damned piece of crap pedophile, he's an inept one if he tried and failed. Just like ALL GOPers I know.
Considering that he (Gerry Studds) is a Democrat, I agree with you — slime, indeed. Not sure, which GOPers you are talking about...
Studds fucked a page of the legal age of consent. That doesn't make him a pedophile.
And Foley has not fucked ANY pages... By your logic, he is even less of a pedophile. By mine -- he is exactly the same. 16 vs. 17 years old is the same thing — notice, that Studds took care to only do his fucking ABROAD, where the age of consent is lower.
Their reps buy wares to test as regular customers, without announcing themselves as representatives of the organization.
Getting free stuff is always going to be inducing conflict of interest for the reviewer. The maker of the product will also always be inclined to send them a better version of the product.
It is not a simple task for any of us to meet adequately the obligations of either public or private life, let alone both, but these challenges are made substantially more complex when one is, as I am, both an elected public official and gay.
GOP has demanded the author of the above-quoted words be expelled from Congress (which he was not)...
You own the rights to skem, specifically, the copyright. You do not own the code in the same sense that you own, say, your trousers.
And not in the same sense, in which I (would have) owned slaves. Which is what this is about — that there is a difference between my freedom to own skem and somebody else's freedom to own slaves.
An earlier poster tried to link the two freedoms together — illiberally (and bombastically) justifying erosion of my rights to skem by the justness of revoking someone else's rights to own slaves.
But what about something like Star Trek? Or (theoretically, for example) Lord of the Rings?
Either they'll think of something, or we'll see less of such entertainment: "Khmm, this is a good script you've got here, but there is just no way to place any product in here, so we can't film it".
Will TV fiction be restricted to present-day Earth, just so real products can be integrated into the shows?
They still drink Coke and Pepsi in the future, don't they?
As the technology like this improves, expect more and more product placements. I don't blame anyone, who wants to skip the commercials. But I don't blame the creators of entertainment for wanting to get paid either.
We refuse to watch the commercials, that would sponsor them. And we refuse to pay them directly by sharing their works with everyone, who can connect to our computer.
Can't do anything about product placements, so the phenomenon is here to stay and grow.
Why aren't the pranksters ever prosecuted by the Law?
Should they be? I think so... City of New York is cracking down on graffiti big time, for example, because it is ugly and costs them a lot of money to repair.
Wiki-vandalism is not cheap either — in fact, it appears from the article, that it threatens Wikipedia's growth and, perhaps, even its very survival as more and more of their resources go to fighting it, while the would-be contributors get put off by the vandalism and decide to not contribute at all.
I don't even think, new laws are needed — just legal advice on how to use the existing ones...
?? Of course, it can. Microsoft owns Windows... Semantec owns Norton Utilities. I ownskem. You can buy the ownership of software (if the current owner is willing to sell), although people usually prefer to license it instead — they get a lot fewer rights, but pay a lot less money.
Probably, this difference between buying and licensing is what got you so confused...
All right then "complaining that developers should be "free" to use DRM is analogous to saying that people should be "free" to to put sugar in the gas of other's people's car."
Better, but still false. Unlike sugar in gas, license-restrictions are not hidden — and if/where they are, complaints are justified.
Slashdot Mirror
You make no sense. Saddam Hussein was not targeted by Israel personally. Their attack was far away from Baghdad. They targeted Iraq — an aggressor in the war since 1948.
Wrong. "US bully strategy" has little to do with the sorry state of those, who hate our freedoms (including the economical ones). The oppressed are suffering from their own regimes' tyranny and/or misgovernment. The meaning of my post could not possibly have been construed in the manner you have — I suspect, you are not arguing in good faith — I'm unlikely to respond to you again. You confirm my suspicion by revealing, you understood it perfectly later:
Unfortunately, that is not true — not even among the educated people, of whom, BTW, there is severe shortage world-wide.
LOL, I shrugged off your earlier attempt to bring up Chomsky as a sad aberration, but you came back with the "World Socialist Web-Site". You better stop that crap — I truely hate Commie-sympathizers, for they are adherents of the deadliest ideology known to civilization...
Back to the subject of "illegal war" — sorry, in our imperfect world UN Security Council is the only body, that can call a war illegal... I do agree on the "irrelevance" bit, though — the body should've called on all to destroy Saddam long ago.
And, of course, you lied in your reference to that German Court's decision — all they did was accept the officer's reasoning that he objected on the "freedom of conciense" grounds... Why am not surprised about your lying, and about your Socialist friends pretending, the officer's treatment reminded them of Kafka and "Stalinist regimes" — under which no such soldier would ever have survived?
... who was the dictator of Iraq. You accused Israel of attacking Iraq "first" — that was not true — Iraq was the aggressor (since 1948), and I simply pointed that out.
Thank you, conspiracy-theories are abundant in any place on Earth.
They would love to have these freedoms ("Yanki go home! But take me with you..."), but those, who can't, hate them — out of envy. It is a long-known phenomenon — the opressed, who can't do anything about their disadvantages, begin to accept them as normal and fair, blaming those, who don't have them, for "perversion" and violating "natural order" or "God's will" or whatever. This, for example, is the major ingredient in the disapproval, that "normal" married women have towards feminists.
I had a very educational experience on the subject myself — years ago, when I was 12 or so. My family was renting a cabin and a boat in the country — and we frequently oared up and down the river. Once we came to another recreation camp, and my parents left to visit the local shop. Soon after they left, the local kids — my age — discovered me, and got infuriated, that I was allowed to be in the boat (and take off to the river, whenever I pleased), because their camp's policy prohibited anyone under 16 to do that... Before long they began to pelt me with wet sand and I had to retreat from the shore...
It was not deceit — Saddam Hussein kept a balancing act for 10 years. He had to imply he has the weapons — to keep his neighbors afraid and his army brave (they were expecting delivery of secret "super weapons" as Americans were advancing). We had reasons to believe, he still had them, and we weren't entirely incorrect either (some "deteriorated" stuff was actually found)... Also, in violation of the terms of the said cease-fire, Saddam has patently not destroyed the know-how to rebuild WMDs immediately after the sanctions were lifted — American web-site displaying the captured documents was taken down last night after someone realized, the documents are too detailed for world-view...
Two years ago, Kerry's supporters were potraing their party and candidate as the smart and well-educated bunch — contrasting Kerry's unknown-but-presumed-excellent academic achievements with the publicized mediocre ones by Bush. Kerry would not release his own records...
Several months later — in the summer of 2005 — Kerry's records were released and turned out to be worse than Bush's. Kerry's overall average was one-point less, and he got D's in Geology, two History courses, and in Political Science... Bush's only D was in Astronomy...
We don't need to lie about Kerry. He — a 20-year US Senator with nothing to talk about during a presidential campaing except his 4-months stint in Vietnam — is a disgrace on his own. Waffles.
Wrong. Iraq was one of the aggressors atacking Israel in 1948. That war never ended (except with Jordan and Egypt) — Israel was perfectly justified in its attack (and, of course, in its desire to stay military superior in the face of hostility). But let's not get distracted by Israel — you don't seem to be seriously disputing the justness of our war in 1991.
As I reminded already, that war ended in cease-fire, which Saddam Hussein violated many times — years before Bush's all-out resumption of hostilities, Clinton and Blair have found it neccessary to attack Iraq's forces on several occasions.
Wrong. There were no sanctions before Saddam's attack on Kuwait — and yet he ruled personally for over a decade before then, and his Baath party for much longer. It is sheer naivette (if not stupidity) to claim, he could've been overthrown — look at his fellow Baath ruler in Syria, for example.
That said, I'm glad, we agree, that the sanctions were not working...
There is no "evidence". There are allusions — most of them groundless or outright faulty (as the most common fallacy of "War for Oil" is).
Whatever the reasons for inaction were back then, I'm glad, that by 2003 US administration found the interests of Democracy (as per the neo-Conservative argument) to be more compelling.
Someone forgot to explain, why such a partnership is a bad thing... Or is that simply on of the Slashdot's of axioms?
The ample reasons are listed in the link. Why invent your own strawmen?
Saddam's regime invaded Kuwait, threatened Saudia Arabia, and attacked Israel (with which it was at war for decades). We intervened and stopped them — agreeing to a cease-fire on certain conditions. Saddam has violated these conditions numerous times, and we resumed hostilities in 2003 (should've done it much earlier). Our cause was and remains just, and our mission noble. Thank you very much.
I agree — the world should've acted pre-emptively back then too...
You — advocating a change — need to present evidence, that the change is needed. I don't. It is called "burden of proof". Look it up...
I could not do that, even if I tried (I did not) — because you did not provide any context. You are doing it now — kinda...
Why are you so patient with EU's unreasonable (you admit, their reasons are "unclear") wants, and so angry at US, who is apprehensive about others (unreasonably) wanting to codify the sharing of the toys, which US has so far volunteerly shared anyway? You call US a "school yard bully" — what does that make EU? A "school yard loser"? Your whole "bully" analogy would've made sense, if we robed someone (EU?) of the toys, but we did not — Internet is our toy to begin with.
You know this, but still defend EU's requests, which they make for reasons unclear — and criticize America over its reluctance to give up its own "toys". Would one be correct calling you a Euro-phile anti-American?
Directly to China/Russia (which nobody is talking about, fortunately) or to UN is irrelevant. What matters, is that China/Russia (along with France and Germany) will have more control and say over Internet, than they do now. That is what I don't want to see happening — not by iota. That is what my original subject-line said, BTW...
The increase in their control over it — and the increase will happen — is a bad thing in itself. One does not need to be "emotional" to understand this...
In other words, you have no evidence, there are any difficulties... Maybe, you should take my word for it? Someone's who can read Ukrainian and Russian, and converses regularly with friends abroad?
What FUD? That Russia kills overly critical reporters, and sues overly outspoken businesmen into bancruptcy? Or that China has political prisoners and blocks access to certain political sites? Or that they both threaten neighbors with military force?
Yes, yes... The true Marxists were all killed by Stalin, weren't they?
Believe it or not, some exhiled Nazis also hated Hitler, and strongly criticized him for perverting the wonderful ideology. No kidding.
Sorry, but I shall judge the ideas by implementation. Unlike software, however, trying to reimplement a "Marxist system" is just way too costly (as in millions of dead people) to try again.
For a day... They can also allow certain networks (ones, where any would-be inspectors will be checking) unlimited access.
They are, after all, Communists — don't ever forget that...
Russia, and other similarly "free" regimes... Be careful, what you wish for, Illiberals.
Your posting contained NO NAMES — only the pro-noun "he"... As you grow up and go to school, pay some attention to the writing classes — even if public debating will never be your thing.
Considering that he (Gerry Studds) is a Democrat, I agree with you — slime, indeed. Not sure, which GOPers you are talking about...
And Foley has not fucked ANY pages... By your logic, he is even less of a pedophile. By mine -- he is exactly the same. 16 vs. 17 years old is the same thing — notice, that Studds took care to only do his fucking ABROAD, where the age of consent is lower.
Their reps buy wares to test as regular customers, without announcing themselves as representatives of the organization.
Getting free stuff is always going to be inducing conflict of interest for the reviewer. The maker of the product will also always be inclined to send them a better version of the product.
You mean this one?
GOP has demanded the author of the above-quoted words be expelled from Congress (which he was not)...
And not in the same sense, in which I (would have) owned slaves. Which is what this is about — that there is a difference between my freedom to own skem and somebody else's freedom to own slaves.
An earlier poster tried to link the two freedoms together — illiberally (and bombastically) justifying erosion of my rights to skem by the justness of revoking someone else's rights to own slaves.
Either they'll think of something, or we'll see less of such entertainment: "Khmm, this is a good script you've got here, but there is just no way to place any product in here, so we can't film it".
They still drink Coke and Pepsi in the future, don't they?
As the technology like this improves, expect more and more product placements. I don't blame anyone, who wants to skip the commercials. But I don't blame the creators of entertainment for wanting to get paid either.
We refuse to watch the commercials, that would sponsor them. And we refuse to pay them directly by sharing their works with everyone, who can connect to our computer.
Can't do anything about product placements, so the phenomenon is here to stay and grow.
Why aren't the pranksters ever prosecuted by the Law?
Should they be? I think so... City of New York is cracking down on graffiti big time, for example, because it is ugly and costs them a lot of money to repair.
Wiki-vandalism is not cheap either — in fact, it appears from the article, that it threatens Wikipedia's growth and, perhaps, even its very survival as more and more of their resources go to fighting it, while the would-be contributors get put off by the vandalism and decide to not contribute at all.
I don't even think, new laws are needed — just legal advice on how to use the existing ones...
Until these cameras get equiped with guns (or even pepper spray), there is no danger in a mistake. Human judgement is (and will be) required...
?? Of course, it can. Microsoft owns Windows... Semantec owns Norton Utilities. I own skem. You can buy the ownership of software (if the current owner is willing to sell), although people usually prefer to license it instead — they get a lot fewer rights, but pay a lot less money.
Probably, this difference between buying and licensing is what got you so confused...
Better, but still false. Unlike sugar in gas, license-restrictions are not hidden — and if/where they are, complaints are justified.
False analogy. We are not talking about a person, who has unalienable rights, but about something, that can be owned.