Ultimate efficiency in global productivity would dictate
Number one -- all these things you listed are for the society and its government (kernel) to do. Not for the private companies (user space processes), I was talking about. But, not that you mentioned it.
Number two, is this things tend they generate more problems (inefficiencies) than they solve. Euthanizing the elderly, for example, removes the motivation of the young. Lower IQ people can still do some work, freeing the smarter ones to do the other (not to mention the difficulties of reliably measuring the IQ). Generally, people don't like, what they deem unethical and tend to become less efficient. But -- back to my point -- a private company should always be welcome to try.
Strong eugenics program? Might be nice, but we don't really know how.
Hitler was all about efficiency and we don't like him too much.
I don't think, Hitler's desire for efficiency is the primary (or even the tertiary) reason for us not liking him.
No, that's not true. Whoever brings the highest production per spent dollar wins.
Is not this simply another way of saying "efficient" (for the purposes of this discussion)?
You're mistaken if you think the fight is between a US worker and an Indian worker. It's between workers and companies.
Whatever. All I'm saying, is that the companies don't owe their workers squat (beyond the salaries and whatever else they promised). Who they hire and why should not be anyone's business.
No. Whoever is the most efficient wins. Newspapers tend to report on efficient bastards disproportionally, though -- while some of the inefficient bastards try to bribe lawmakers to make the efficiency illegal...
It's
immoral to lay off a head of household to hire someone outside the country just to increase profits.
So long as you don't try to make it illegal I don't really care, but I'll say something anyway...
It is MY business. It does not belong to YOU nor to the employees I am planning to fire. It belongs to ME. So I can do, what I please with it -- fire everyone and close, relocate to Antarctica, India, or Madagascar, give it away to charity, or burn it (as long as I don't hurt neighbor's buildings and don't file insurance claims). If you don't like it -- you are welcome to start your own company and hire whoever you please.
"As it stands, regardless of the side you are on, the Hamas bombings are war-crimes -- because of their choice of targets -- whereas the Israeli attacks are not. "
1. Not all of them. In fact, most attacks by Hamas are against soldiers.
"Most"? Do you have a breakdown? How many do you need, anyway?
2. Let's just take a quick look at the Geneva conventions, shall we?
You are painfully imprecise. All your quotes are from Protocol 1, circa 1977. Israel (among others) did not sign this additions. Sorry, this biggest part of your posting is thus especially useless. See this analysis for more information.
Wrong, the most he [Ariel Sharon] was *convicted* of was failing to stop the militia; he was accused of far worse.
Sorry, you are right. He was, of course, and still is accused of baby raping, and using Muslim blood for not just Passover, but everyday matzos.
[...]
Every Six Months.
This, to you, is justified?
Yes. This is the path Palestinians chose for themselves. Israel's reaction can not be much milder if they want to survive -- their enemy fights them with everything the enemy has, constrains itself with no rules whatsoever, and is criticized for breaking no rules whatsoever.
If anything, Israel's restraint is admireable, to the point of being foolish -- as pointed out recently by some american military experts (that's a disgusting bunch of neocon shitheads for you). The Geneva conventions, which Israel did sign, only require protection of civilians as militarily permissible -- there is no requirement to risk lives of the soldiers. Yet they don't, for example, use artillery against the scumbags firing mortars at Israeli civilians, but send infantry to detain them...
Completely blind to the obvious war crimes committed regularly by various Palestinian factions, peace with who is not even possible according to their very charters, you demand perfect behavior from Israel. You put a homicide bomber boarding a packed bus, with the bomb "enhanced" by chopped nails on equal footing with a delayed ambulance, or with an accidental shooting of a Palestinian civilian, who wonders onto an active battlefield. You are a lost cause...
By this logic, it is illegal to target enemy's high command -- anyone not directly on the battlefield.
Exactly.
This may be your feeling, but it is not the letter, nor the spirit of the Geneva Conventions. Targeting the enemy commanders -- wherever they are -- is a "fair game" in any war.
You don't approve of Saddam's bunker busting... What about Osama bin Laden -- how many lives are you willing to spend to capture him alive, so he can stand trial, as opposite to killing him?
Had the Convention you quoted been signed prior to WW2, would you object to Allies' attempts to kill Hitler in his bunker? Or to the successful attempt on Yamamoto? Where is the line in your mind, beyond which an enemy officer is untouchable? Does he have to be a major or colonel -- or is it the distance from the battlefield (if there is any!)? What about the helpless Japanese soldiers, who sunk in transports on their way to reinforce harrisons (sp?) on the islands -- should US have waited for them to dig into trenches or tried to detain them?
Sorry, your interpretation is not sensible... And if you read the rest of the text you quoted, you may just be able to see, where you are wrong. But after the "bit" fiasco, I'm not hopeful...
Once the invasion [of Iraq into Kuwait] had occurred, we used that as a pretext to put our soldiers on the ground.
And all this to what -- to help Israel? How? Sorry, it seems like some of those rays got through your tinfoil hat...
But "Because Israel says so" isn't good enough for me.
Yassin himself saying it in public as a Hamas official is not enough for you? With other Hamas officials corroborating it and promising more? It is for me... The blindest truly are those, who wouldn't see...
In all circumstances, the accused persons shall benefit by safeguards of proper trial and defence, which shall not be less favourable than those provided by Article 105 and those following of the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War of 12 August 1949. Art. 147.
Even war has rules.
You are misreading it. By this logic, it is illegal to target enemy's high command -- anyone not directly on the battlefield. If we accept your interpretation, US shouldn't have targeted Saddam in his bunker, for example.
In any case, we hadn't deployed troops in Arabia then.
Exactly my point -- we upset him by deploying in Arabia, which we did to protect Kuwait -- a Muslim nation, BTW. Not because of Israel (however hard Saddam tried to bring Israel into war).
Do you have any doubts? As for the legalities, consider killing him an act of war. Nobody expects one side in a war to try each officer/soldier of the other side, prior to killing him/her.
Israel is claiming the moral high ground. You can not do that when you're killing unarmed people without trials.
Unable to hold a weapon personally, he was still armed -- by several personal (well armed) bodyguards and the Hamas organization in general. In a war you don't put enemies on trial. You kill them before they kill you. Israel's moral ground is much higher because they didn't start the war neither the current one, nor any of the previous ones, and because they don't target civilians -- I think, I mentioned that... In any case, I'm glad you moved from complaining about cowardly murder to discussing the relative highness of the moral ground... I may be inclined to leave things at this.
Your use of the word Infidel tells much. As translated from Arabic an Infidel is more than an unbeliever. To be an infidel, as opposed to simply an unbeliever, you must be seen as hostile towards Islam. It is the nature of the US's relationship with Israel that makes that difference
That did not bother Osama until 1991 when American soldiers were deployed in Middle East in vast numbers to restore Kuwait.
Anyway, my objections to allowing terrorists influence American policies in their favor still stand.
A crippled Arab is apparently less deserving than Nazi war criminals.
The crippled Arab was already in Israeli jail once, and was released in a prisoner exchange. Since the release, he encouraged, organized or helped organized over 400 bombings...
From legal perspective, those Nazi criminals were living in sovereign countries. Even kidnapping them was legally dubious, justified mostly by the countries' internal instabilities at the time. Finally, the trials were needed to ensure (and prove to the world), the persons were not victims of mistaken identity and to expose their crimes. None of this was needed in case of Yassin. No one doubts, he (or those killed by Israel after the Munich bombings) were guilty of the things alleged. The only objections are of the "yes, but..." kind.
Until Pearl Harbor, it wasn't out fight.
Pearl Harbor put us into war against Japan. American sailors, drowing in convoys torpedoed by German U-boats, did not have to "die for Britain". For example, USSR -- busy with Hitler -- did not attack Japan until 1945. Yet we did attack German interests and continued to supply Britain with food and materiel -- and that was the Right Thing to do.
They [WTC/Pentagon victims] died because of my country's affiliation with Israel.
Mmm, no. Osama bin Laden's grudge was the presence of the infidel American soldiers in the holy areas of Saudi Arabia -- the result of our action to defend Kuwait.
Whatever our reasons for supporting (or not supporting) Israel, we should not allow a foreign power (such as Al' Qaeda) to affect our policy by force -- especially terrorism (as, sadly, they seem to have successfully done in Spain). That's nothing, but giving up sovereignity...
There have been Muslims for over 1400 years,
Many aggressive wars were launched during those 1400 hundred years in the name of Islam -- some by the Prophet himself.
they've been blowing things up for less than a century. What's changed?
Better explosives -- mostly. But also the failure of the "conventional" methods. Be that Algerian rebels fighting their colonial power (France) in the fifties with civilian-targetting bombings, or the modern Palestinian menace, they all followed the failure of regular forces. PLO organized in 1964 (three years before the "occupation") and was figthing Israel in conventional ways. The were completely defeated and Israel routed them from Lebanon, so now they use suicide bombs.
So, if there is a young girl near Sharon, then Sharon is using her as a human shield - right?
Depending on why she is there. There are plenty of reason to believe, the children around Rantissi are there to protect him, even if they don't realize it themselves.
If a suicide bomber with a really big bomb blew up Sharon's entire neighborhood to kill him in his house, would the neighbors just be "collateral damage"
Yes, and then we'd be discussing the reasons for the war itself. As it stands, regardless of the side you are on, the Hamas bombings are war-crimes -- because of their choice of targets -- whereas the Israeli attacks are not.
"hiding in his house thinking, 'Palestinians wouldn't dare do what Israelis wouldn't think twice of doing'"
Sharon -- the elected leader of a modern democracy -- does not need to rely on the enemy following the rules, that he himself doesn't follow.
Evidence the fact that Yassin was actively involved in planning bombings. Because I can gladly show Sharon's involvement in things such as taking out apartment blocks to kill one person
As I keep pointing out, it is the choice of targets, that makes one of them a terrorist, not the fact, that they both participated in planning/encouraging the actions.
assisting a militia in going on a civilian-slaughtering massacre.
The most, he was accused of was failure to stop the militia. Actual assisting was never alleged.
Can you document a single case of a child-thrown rock killing a single Israeli?
In any country such rocks can be considered "deadly weapon". And they are. Sometimes the merely hit a soldier wearing some body armor. Sometimes these kids attack cars on highways leading to accidents -- some of them deadly. Usually the soldiers respond to this rocks with rubber-bullets and pebble guns. But I notice, you had nothing to say to defend the Molotov-cocktail throwers. Good...
So, if a woman tries to stop the illegal demolition of a doctor's house [...] she should be crushed to death with a bulldozer.
Not "should be," but "might be" -- at her own risk. Yes. Who was she to judge the illegality anyway? A judge? An elected official?
Last I checked, the IDF had only two claims, and never produced any evidence to document either one of them.
This page alone documents three cases, when the perpetrators were caught. Here is another -- a fresher one. How many do you need to start searching them? And if one refuses to stop for a search, of course you should force it -- with force, if neccessary.
Bother to learn the details of the story? Yes, I suggest that you do that. Have you ever even spoken to a single person who's been to Palestine? Let me take a wild guess on that one....
Make your best shot at the guess. Not only was I there twice in person (speaking to locals -- rest assured), I've also attended a wedding of a Palestinian classmate of my significant other here in Brooklyn (the only wedding I've attended so far with no alcohol, BTW). Does not exactly fit your stereotype, does it?
We expect China to be oppressive and applaud every change in a positive direction.
Which particular "change" were the French applauding, when they changed the color of the Eiffel Tower to red? This is when ordinary Americans are sometimes refused service in Paris restaurants. Or when, indeed, France helped China intimidate Taiwan with military maneuvers?
Stating that we ignore China's atrocities just because you don't like being criticized is just plain wrong.
I stated it, because that is my impression, which you failed to break. I know about the US problems, and they should be criticized, but calling Americans "murderers", as -- according to an earlier anonymous posting
-- the French do, while laying the carpet out for the Chinese, can not be explained by your reasoning.
By your reasoning, a bit can have a value that takes more than a bit to store.
Who is talking about storage? Sorry, to ask a question, one needs to know half of the answer. You only know about 10%. I'd be willing to explain "bit" to anyone in person, but this is the wrong forum. Ask someone else -- and be sure, not to call them "jackass" first.
No reasonable person is going to dispute Israel's right to exist.
One -- every single one of Hamas members rejects this right -- says so in the organization's charter. I'm glad, we agree, that Sheikh Yassin was not a reasonable person. Two, if Israel has the right to exist, it must also have the right to defend its existance and its citizens. Hamas is one of her most active enemies, and fights her with arms and bombs (not a "Cold War"). I don't understand your problem with Israel fighting back...
Most of the statements in the link you provided are worded with the skill of PR professional and provide not background nor details. For example:
Q: Which country in the Middle East seized the sovereign territory of other nations by military force and continues to occupy it in defiance of United Nations Security Council resolutions? A: Israel.
Should be "by military force applied in defending itself against aggression" -- in the 1967 war Israel was attacked by 5 neighbors.
Also, I'm not sure, which territory this is about. Gaza and West Bank? They were not "sovereign" territory, but merely ruled by Egypt and Jordan respectively from 1948 to 1967... Golan Heights? That's Syria, with which the war is still not over.
The UN resolution alluded to is, most probably, the 242, under which Israel is entitled to hold all the territory acquired in 1967 until a durable and fair peace is achieved. Resolution 338 is in similar terms. Israel gave Sinai (several times bigger than the Israel itself) back to Egypt upon signing the peace agreement with Nasser. Neither Egypt, nor Jordan have any more territorial claims to Israel.
Q: Which country in the Middle East routinely violates the international borders of another sovereign state with arplanes and artillery and naval gunfire? A: Israel.
The poor violated country is, probably, Lebanon. Ronald Hilton (the author of the page) is certainly aware of the constant across the border attacks from the Lebanon side by the nice people calling themselves Hezbollah (part of God). Yes, a friend of mine served in Israeli artillery, every once in a while they tried to hit Hezbollah's rocket launchers, which have just fired on the Israeli villages or towns... Lebanon -- after 20 years of brutal civil war is not capable of reigning in Hezbollah. Blaming Israel for such "violations" can only be done by someone, who rejects Israel's right to exist...
Q: Which country in the Middle East is in defiance of 69 United Nations Security Council resolutions and has been protected from 29 more by U.S.vetoes? A: Israel.
Q: What country is the United States threatening to bomb because "U.N.Security Council resolutions must be obeyed?" A: Iraq
UN charter defines different levels of resolutions. The ones condemning Iraq are of the most grave nature -- "threats to the peace, breaches of the peace, and acts of aggression". Israel was never called anything like that by UN...
Q: In what country in the Middle East did the man who ordered the assassination of a high-ranking U.N. diplomat become prime minister? A: Israel.
I don't know, which U.N. diplomat Ronald has in mind here. (Neither do you, I suspect). But what Ronald is not telling us, is that Israel is the only democracy in the region. And that all prime ministers took office through true democratic process.
I could go on, but this is not the forum and the post is already big enough...
My problem lies in the fact that their behavior and our relationship with them paints a big
WTC/Pentagon planebombing happened 9 months after Bush took office, after 8 years of Clinton's presidency. From what we already know about this attack, preparing it took much longer than 9 month.
You accused "BushCo" of manufacturing the attacks. I asked for evidence, and this is all you can come up with? The "mountain of evidence" is in your mind only, once you try to convey it, it turns into a mole-hill. One can hardly get more partisan than you, that's for sure...
How bad? Do you even realize the differences in magnitude, coward?
Not like you have to "budget the money"
on
CSS for the LDP?
·
· Score: 1
I'm sure, there are people, who will only work on one of the aspects, because the other is not fun for them. So, just don't reject the cosmetic modifications and make sure, the "content providers" are not yelled at for breaking the form on occasion.
Unlike a commercial project, which has to think on how to split the money, you can "afford" to have both.
Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats (Clinton) fed Saddam nor bin Laden in order to appease them. Whatever their reasons were, appeasement was not one of them. So your counterargument is wrong and without merit.
Wow! What energy! I can just see your saliva hitting your monitor...
I don't "hate" democracy -- I merely suggested, it needs "the checks and balances," as, for example, the US model provided since US' very inception.
And I never called Americans "folks" (not that there is anything wrong with it, IMO) -- your vision must be impaired -- pull whatever it is out and relax. "Mad as hell" has been out of fashion for well over a month now:-)
And when you cool down a little (assuming it happens within a few days), please, describe a single terrorist event, that did not really happen, but was "manufactured by BushCo". Put up, or shut up?
... how the same people tend to curse at US for being oppressive, aggressive, and otherwise evil, and yet completely ignore China's record on the same issues.
For example, the French -- among the noisiest critics of US nowadays lit/painted the Eiffel tower red to greet the Chinese leader and to comfort him with support for his hostility towards Taiwan.
Italians, protesting every one of the executions in US, seem to completely ignore the public executions in China, which sometimes take place in stadiums and are often caused merely by alleged economic crimes.
Now this (as if we did not know about the Great Chinese Firewall before)... Where are the condemnations from the people, accusing the US for "suffocating the independent media" -- because Howard Stern was kicked off by his employer?
that government hijacks the backlash to attack a preferred enemy instead
Aznar did not do that. With what little was known then, ETA may well have been behind the attack. He promised a thorough investigation. Contrast that with Putin's reaction to explosions in Moscow subway: "We know, it is the Chechens," -- he said -- "There is nothing to investigate." He got 72% of the vote soon afterwards...
Spanish folks take back their government to ensure security.
The reaction of Spanish electorate to the carefully timed attack in Madrid has reminded the world, how dangerous the "government by referendum" is. Without the "checks and balances" of some sort, a democracy is just as prone to the irrational greed, stupidity, cowardice, and other human flaws as, say, a monarchy.
The first well known example of this is Socrate's conviction in the democratic Athens...
In November, American folks will do the same.
I just hope, Al'Qaeda will not succeed in bombing US right before the elections, the way they succeeded in Madrid...
So, your ignorance of Informatics exposed, you are switching to my personality flaws and -- of all things -- the Israeli-Arab conflict?
You asked for someone to define, bit; I and several others did just that.
No, you did not. Despite you (and several others) repeating it, "binary digit" is not the definition of bit. A bit may be (and often is) represented by a binary digit, but colors (black/red, for instance), or materials (wood/glass) can be used just as well. But, I'm sorry, this is, evidently too deep for you, and makes me look even more arrogant:-)
At best, you "and several others" only knew, what the word itself is derived from. I did not ask for "my definition" -- in fact, I acknowledged someone else's as different from what I knew, but equivalent...
Being called a "jackass" by your kind is hardly insulting:-), but I'll explain myself -- again. Because, who knows, someone else may still be following this thread. The question of "bit" is particularly sensitive to me, who have seen a few too many DB tables, where CHAR(15) was allocated for IPv4 addresses and/or CHAR(32) for md5-checksums. I find such things revolting and they are a consequence of the designer's ignorance of the definition of bit...
I've seen your posts that amount to very thinly veiled defense of the cowardly murder of a wheelchair bound old man.
Sheikh Yassin (blind 67-year old quadriplegic) was a terrorist. A childhood accident paralyzed him, so he was unable to personally harm anyone (although his 11 children demonstrate, that his spirit was high). Yet he is directly responsible for planning and encouraging hundreds of attacks on civilians. Not, mind you, attacks, that also resulted in civilian casualties, but attacks, in which the civilians were the primary targets. He was already in the Israeli jail once, but was released in a prisoner exchange in 1996 (or '97). This is why Israel is only talking about his actions since then -- merely 425 bombings were claimed by Hamas since 1997...
I could go on a long Off-Topic rant here about how there is only one country on this planet that routinely engages in assassination as a form of diplomacy and question your sanity and principles for supporting that, but I won't.
Good, because you've already made several factual errors. At this rate, a "long rant" would've been impossible to comprehensively respond to:-). Israel does not call these attacks "diplomacy" (you can't negotiate with someone, who simply wants you dead), nor "assassinations". These are acts of war. Most of them are retaliatory, some are preventive. The first shots in the war were fired in 1947-8 by the Arabs (who, en masse, continue to reject Israel's right to exist), and the war continued since then. You have a lot of catching up on History to do (in addition to Informatics) before you can be taken seriously by anyone other than other compassionate ignoramusen.
Here is the crash-course for you. Once you are done, try finding a "left wing" site talking about the subject, and read that for a balanced view.
Slashdot Mirror
Number one -- all these things you listed are for the society and its government (kernel) to do. Not for the private companies (user space processes), I was talking about. But, not that you mentioned it.
Number two, is this things tend they generate more problems (inefficiencies) than they solve. Euthanizing the elderly, for example, removes the motivation of the young. Lower IQ people can still do some work, freeing the smarter ones to do the other (not to mention the difficulties of reliably measuring the IQ). Generally, people don't like, what they deem unethical and tend to become less efficient. But -- back to my point -- a private company should always be welcome to try.
Strong eugenics program? Might be nice, but we don't really know how.
I don't think, Hitler's desire for efficiency is the primary (or even the tertiary) reason for us not liking him.
Is not this simply another way of saying "efficient" (for the purposes of this discussion)?
Whatever. All I'm saying, is that the companies don't owe their workers squat (beyond the salaries and whatever else they promised). Who they hire and why should not be anyone's business.
I agree with your disapproval of attempts to block the flow of cheaper goods into US. Be that electronics, or steel, or cotton.
Such flows should be just as free as the flow of labor.
Why not?
No. Whoever is the most efficient wins. Newspapers tend to report on efficient bastards disproportionally, though -- while some of the inefficient bastards try to bribe lawmakers to make the efficiency illegal...
So long as you don't try to make it illegal I don't really care, but I'll say something anyway...
It is MY business. It does not belong to YOU nor to the employees I am planning to fire. It belongs to ME. So I can do, what I please with it -- fire everyone and close, relocate to Antarctica, India, or Madagascar, give it away to charity, or burn it (as long as I don't hurt neighbor's buildings and don't file insurance claims). If you don't like it -- you are welcome to start your own company and hire whoever you please.
For someone with no money to buy food, unwanted neither unwanted e-mail, nor having to fill out some application is "a horror".
Someone is out of touch...
I've used nothing else on my desktops since, mmm, 1996? Not sure. Since 1.1.5.1 anyhow.
All countries, where any weapons are developed (privately or otherwise) heavily regulate such development.
Rawbl gur erfg bs gur Ncevy 1fg.
You are painfully imprecise. All your quotes are from Protocol 1, circa 1977. Israel (among others) did not sign this additions. Sorry, this biggest part of your posting is thus especially useless. See this analysis for more information.
Sorry, you are right. He was, of course, and still is accused of baby raping, and using Muslim blood for not just Passover, but everyday matzos.
Yes. This is the path Palestinians chose for themselves. Israel's reaction can not be much milder if they want to survive -- their enemy fights them with everything the enemy has, constrains itself with no rules whatsoever, and is criticized for breaking no rules whatsoever.
If anything, Israel's restraint is admireable, to the point of being foolish -- as pointed out recently by some american military experts (that's a disgusting bunch of neocon shitheads for you). The Geneva conventions, which Israel did sign, only require protection of civilians as militarily permissible -- there is no requirement to risk lives of the soldiers. Yet they don't, for example, use artillery against the scumbags firing mortars at Israeli civilians, but send infantry to detain them...
Completely blind to the obvious war crimes committed regularly by various Palestinian factions, peace with who is not even possible according to their very charters, you demand perfect behavior from Israel. You put a homicide bomber boarding a packed bus, with the bomb "enhanced" by chopped nails on equal footing with a delayed ambulance, or with an accidental shooting of a Palestinian civilian, who wonders onto an active battlefield. You are a lost cause...
This may be your feeling, but it is not the letter, nor the spirit of the Geneva Conventions. Targeting the enemy commanders -- wherever they are -- is a "fair game" in any war.
You don't approve of Saddam's bunker busting... What about Osama bin Laden -- how many lives are you willing to spend to capture him alive, so he can stand trial, as opposite to killing him?
Had the Convention you quoted been signed prior to WW2, would you object to Allies' attempts to kill Hitler in his bunker? Or to the successful attempt on Yamamoto? Where is the line in your mind, beyond which an enemy officer is untouchable? Does he have to be a major or colonel -- or is it the distance from the battlefield (if there is any!)? What about the helpless Japanese soldiers, who sunk in transports on their way to reinforce harrisons (sp?) on the islands -- should US have waited for them to dig into trenches or tried to detain them?
Sorry, your interpretation is not sensible... And if you read the rest of the text you quoted, you may just be able to see, where you are wrong. But after the "bit" fiasco, I'm not hopeful...
And all this to what -- to help Israel? How? Sorry, it seems like some of those rays got through your tinfoil hat...
Yassin himself saying it in public as a Hamas official is not enough for you? With other Hamas officials corroborating it and promising more? It is for me... The blindest truly are those, who wouldn't see...
You are misreading it. By this logic, it is illegal to target enemy's high command -- anyone not directly on the battlefield. If we accept your interpretation, US shouldn't have targeted Saddam in his bunker, for example.
Exactly my point -- we upset him by deploying in Arabia, which we did to protect Kuwait -- a Muslim nation, BTW. Not because of Israel (however hard Saddam tried to bring Israel into war).
Do you have any doubts? As for the legalities, consider killing him an act of war. Nobody expects one side in a war to try each officer/soldier of the other side, prior to killing him/her.
Unable to hold a weapon personally, he was still armed -- by several personal (well armed) bodyguards and the Hamas organization in general. In a war you don't put enemies on trial. You kill them before they kill you. Israel's moral ground is much higher because they didn't start the war neither the current one, nor any of the previous ones, and because they don't target civilians -- I think, I mentioned that... In any case, I'm glad you moved from complaining about cowardly murder to discussing the relative highness of the moral ground... I may be inclined to leave things at this.
That did not bother Osama until 1991 when American soldiers were deployed in Middle East in vast numbers to restore Kuwait.
Anyway, my objections to allowing terrorists influence American policies in their favor still stand.
The crippled Arab was already in Israeli jail once, and was released in a prisoner exchange. Since the release, he encouraged, organized or helped organized over 400 bombings...
From legal perspective, those Nazi criminals were living in sovereign countries. Even kidnapping them was legally dubious, justified mostly by the countries' internal instabilities at the time. Finally, the trials were needed to ensure (and prove to the world), the persons were not victims of mistaken identity and to expose their crimes. None of this was needed in case of Yassin. No one doubts, he (or those killed by Israel after the Munich bombings) were guilty of the things alleged. The only objections are of the "yes, but ..." kind.
Pearl Harbor put us into war against Japan. American sailors, drowing in convoys torpedoed by German U-boats, did not have to "die for Britain". For example, USSR -- busy with Hitler -- did not attack Japan until 1945. Yet we did attack German interests and continued to supply Britain with food and materiel -- and that was the Right Thing to do.
Mmm, no. Osama bin Laden's grudge was the presence of the infidel American soldiers in the holy areas of Saudi Arabia -- the result of our action to defend Kuwait.
Whatever our reasons for supporting (or not supporting) Israel, we should not allow a foreign power (such as Al' Qaeda) to affect our policy by force -- especially terrorism (as, sadly, they seem to have successfully done in Spain). That's nothing, but giving up sovereignity...
Many aggressive wars were launched during those 1400 hundred years in the name of Islam -- some by the Prophet himself.
Better explosives -- mostly. But also the failure of the "conventional" methods. Be that Algerian rebels fighting their colonial power (France) in the fifties with civilian-targetting bombings, or the modern Palestinian menace, they all followed the failure of regular forces. PLO organized in 1964 (three years before the "occupation") and was figthing Israel in conventional ways. The were completely defeated and Israel routed them from Lebanon, so now they use suicide bombs.
Depending on why she is there. There are plenty of reason to believe, the children around Rantissi are there to protect him, even if they don't realize it themselves.
Yes, and then we'd be discussing the reasons for the war itself. As it stands, regardless of the side you are on, the Hamas bombings are war-crimes -- because of their choice of targets -- whereas the Israeli attacks are not.
Sharon -- the elected leader of a modern democracy -- does not need to rely on the enemy following the rules, that he himself doesn't follow.
As I keep pointing out, it is the choice of targets, that makes one of them a terrorist, not the fact, that they both participated in planning/encouraging the actions.
The most, he was accused of was failure to stop the militia. Actual assisting was never alleged.
In any country such rocks can be considered "deadly weapon". And they are. Sometimes the merely hit a soldier wearing some body armor. Sometimes these kids attack cars on highways leading to accidents -- some of them deadly. Usually the soldiers respond to this rocks with rubber-bullets and pebble guns. But I notice, you had nothing to say to defend the Molotov-cocktail throwers. Good...
Not "should be," but "might be" -- at her own risk. Yes. Who was she to judge the illegality anyway? A judge? An elected official?
This page alone documents three cases, when the perpetrators were caught. Here is another -- a fresher one. How many do you need to start searching them? And if one refuses to stop for a search, of course you should force it -- with force, if neccessary.
Make your best shot at the guess. Not only was I there twice in person (speaking to locals -- rest assured), I've also attended a wedding of a Palestinian classmate of my significant other here in Brooklyn (the only wedding I've attended so far with no alcohol, BTW). Does not exactly fit your stereotype, does it?
Which particular "change" were the French applauding, when they changed the color of the Eiffel Tower to red? This is when ordinary Americans are sometimes refused service in Paris restaurants. Or when, indeed, France helped China intimidate Taiwan with military maneuvers?
I stated it, because that is my impression, which you failed to break. I know about the US problems, and they should be criticized, but calling Americans "murderers", as -- according to an earlier anonymous posting -- the French do, while laying the carpet out for the Chinese, can not be explained by your reasoning.
Who is talking about storage? Sorry, to ask a question, one needs to know half of the answer. You only know about 10%. I'd be willing to explain "bit" to anyone in person, but this is the wrong forum. Ask someone else -- and be sure, not to call them "jackass" first.
One -- every single one of Hamas members rejects this right -- says so in the organization's charter. I'm glad, we agree, that Sheikh Yassin was not a reasonable person. Two, if Israel has the right to exist, it must also have the right to defend its existance and its citizens. Hamas is one of her most active enemies, and fights her with arms and bombs (not a "Cold War"). I don't understand your problem with Israel fighting back...
Most of the statements in the link you provided are worded with the skill of PR professional and provide not background nor details. For example:
Q: Which country in the Middle East seized the sovereign territory of other nations by military force and continues to occupy it in defiance of United Nations Security Council resolutions? A: Israel. Should be "by military force applied in defending itself against aggression" -- in the 1967 war Israel was attacked by 5 neighbors.Also, I'm not sure, which territory this is about. Gaza and West Bank? They were not "sovereign" territory, but merely ruled by Egypt and Jordan respectively from 1948 to 1967... Golan Heights? That's Syria, with which the war is still not over.
The UN resolution alluded to is, most probably, the 242, under which Israel is entitled to hold all the territory acquired in 1967 until a durable and fair peace is achieved. Resolution 338 is in similar terms. Israel gave Sinai (several times bigger than the Israel itself) back to Egypt upon signing the peace agreement with Nasser. Neither Egypt, nor Jordan have any more territorial claims to Israel.
Q: Which country in the Middle East routinely violates the international borders of another sovereign state with arplanes and artillery and naval gunfire? A: Israel. The poor violated country is, probably, Lebanon. Ronald Hilton (the author of the page) is certainly aware of the constant across the border attacks from the Lebanon side by the nice people calling themselves Hezbollah (part of God). Yes, a friend of mine served in Israeli artillery, every once in a while they tried to hit Hezbollah's rocket launchers, which have just fired on the Israeli villages or towns... Lebanon -- after 20 years of brutal civil war is not capable of reigning in Hezbollah. Blaming Israel for such "violations" can only be done by someone, who rejects Israel's right to exist... Q: Which country in the Middle East is in defiance of 69 United Nations Security Council resolutions and has been protected from 29 more by U.S.vetoes? A: Israel. Q: What country is the United States threatening to bomb because "U.N.Security Council resolutions must be obeyed?" A: Iraq UN charter defines different levels of resolutions. The ones condemning Iraq are of the most grave nature -- "threats to the peace, breaches of the peace, and acts of aggression". Israel was never called anything like that by UN... Q: In what country in the Middle East did the man who ordered the assassination of a high-ranking U.N. diplomat become prime minister? A: Israel. I don't know, which U.N. diplomat Ronald has in mind here. (Neither do you, I suspect). But what Ronald is not telling us, is that Israel is the only democracy in the region. And that all prime ministers took office through true democratic process.I could go on, but this is not the forum and the post is already big enough...
WTC/Pentagon planebombing happened 9 months after Bush took office, after 8 years of Clinton's presidency. From what we already know about this attack, preparing it took much longer than 9 month.
You accused "BushCo" of manufacturing the attacks. I asked for evidence, and this is all you can come up with? The "mountain of evidence" is in your mind only, once you try to convey it, it turns into a mole-hill. One can hardly get more partisan than you, that's for sure...
How bad? Do you even realize the differences in magnitude, coward?
I'm sure, there are people, who will only work on one of the aspects, because the other is not fun for them. So, just don't reject the cosmetic modifications and make sure, the "content providers" are not yelled at for breaking the form on occasion.
Unlike a commercial project, which has to think on how to split the money, you can "afford" to have both.
Does not "and otherwise evil" cover that?
Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats (Clinton) fed Saddam nor bin Laden in order to appease them. Whatever their reasons were, appeasement was not one of them. So your counterargument is wrong and without merit.
Wow! What energy! I can just see your saliva hitting your monitor...
I don't "hate" democracy -- I merely suggested, it needs "the checks and balances," as, for example, the US model provided since US' very inception.
And I never called Americans "folks" (not that there is anything wrong with it, IMO) -- your vision must be impaired -- pull whatever it is out and relax. "Mad as hell" has been out of fashion for well over a month now :-)
And when you cool down a little (assuming it happens within a few days), please, describe a single terrorist event, that did not really happen, but was "manufactured by BushCo". Put up, or shut up?
... how the same people tend to curse at US for being oppressive, aggressive, and otherwise evil, and yet completely ignore China's record on the same issues.
For example, the French -- among the noisiest critics of US nowadays lit/painted the Eiffel tower red to greet the Chinese leader and to comfort him with support for his hostility towards Taiwan.
Italians, protesting every one of the executions in US, seem to completely ignore the public executions in China, which sometimes take place in stadiums and are often caused merely by alleged economic crimes.
Now this (as if we did not know about the Great Chinese Firewall before)... Where are the condemnations from the people, accusing the US for "suffocating the independent media" -- because Howard Stern was kicked off by his employer?
Aznar did not do that. With what little was known then, ETA may well have been behind the attack. He promised a thorough investigation. Contrast that with Putin's reaction to explosions in Moscow subway: "We know, it is the Chechens," -- he said -- "There is nothing to investigate." He got 72% of the vote soon afterwards...
The reaction of Spanish electorate to the carefully timed attack in Madrid has reminded the world, how dangerous the "government by referendum" is. Without the "checks and balances" of some sort, a democracy is just as prone to the irrational greed, stupidity, cowardice, and other human flaws as, say, a monarchy.
The first well known example of this is Socrate's conviction in the democratic Athens...
I just hope, Al'Qaeda will not succeed in bombing US right before the elections, the way they succeeded in Madrid...
So, your ignorance of Informatics exposed, you are switching to my personality flaws and -- of all things -- the Israeli-Arab conflict?
No, you did not. Despite you (and several others) repeating it, "binary digit" is not the definition of bit. A bit may be (and often is) represented by a binary digit, but colors (black/red, for instance), or materials (wood/glass) can be used just as well. But, I'm sorry, this is, evidently too deep for you, and makes me look even more arrogant :-)
At best, you "and several others" only knew, what the word itself is derived from. I did not ask for "my definition" -- in fact, I acknowledged someone else's as different from what I knew, but equivalent...
Being called a "jackass" by your kind is hardly insulting :-), but I'll explain myself -- again. Because, who knows, someone else may still be following this thread. The question of "bit" is particularly sensitive to me, who have seen a few too many DB tables, where CHAR(15) was allocated for IPv4 addresses and/or CHAR(32) for md5-checksums. I find such things revolting and they are a consequence of the designer's ignorance of the definition of bit...
Sheikh Yassin (blind 67-year old quadriplegic) was a terrorist. A childhood accident paralyzed him, so he was unable to personally harm anyone (although his 11 children demonstrate, that his spirit was high). Yet he is directly responsible for planning and encouraging hundreds of attacks on civilians. Not, mind you, attacks, that also resulted in civilian casualties, but attacks, in which the civilians were the primary targets. He was already in the Israeli jail once, but was released in a prisoner exchange in 1996 (or '97). This is why Israel is only talking about his actions since then -- merely 425 bombings were claimed by Hamas since 1997...
Good, because you've already made several factual errors. At this rate, a "long rant" would've been impossible to comprehensively respond to :-). Israel does not call these attacks "diplomacy" (you can't negotiate with someone, who simply wants you dead), nor "assassinations". These are acts of war. Most of them are retaliatory, some are preventive. The first shots in the war were fired in 1947-8 by the Arabs (who, en masse, continue to reject Israel's right to exist), and the war continued since then. You have a lot of catching up on History to do (in addition to Informatics) before you can be taken seriously by anyone other than other compassionate ignoramusen.
Here is the crash-course for you. Once you are done, try finding a "left wing" site talking about the subject, and read that for a balanced view.