If they could see a way to make more money by working with Linux, they'd do that. I disagree. The GPL and free software is a threat to Microsoft and their core business.
MS could easily "make money" by integrating Windows with GNU/Linux, by working on Windows/Linux interoperability, or by selling Linux services to their larger corporate accounts.
Why don't they do that and merely "make money"? Because GNU/Linux represents a different business model and a threat to MS' closed source code business model.
I would argue that MS has a much stronger interest in even losing money -- if it means eliminating the viral threat and outside-the-box software model that GNU represents.
...the FTC defended its actions saying that their decision was not a give-in to the big telecom and cable companies....the FTC's decision appears to be thought out... Given that the overwhelming majority of the public is for net neutrality, of course the decision has to have the appearance of being well thought out. Like duh!
But make no mistake about it, this is the FCC -- once again -- caving into the large corporations that fund politicians and who more-or-less run the US gov't.
There is kind of no point distributing to stores if it is being given away for free. IMHO, that's a weak argument. Music is "given away" every day for free over the radio, isn't it? Don't stores sell tons of DVDs of old TV shows that you could record for nothing on TVLAND or some cable station, right?
I think the decision is simply what the industry guy said: to punish Prince.
Let's be serious; his actions to protect his music and his innovative move to change his name surely generated hostility in the corporate music world towards him...
I recently gave a camera to a friend... should the local camera shop be angry? I dinged their sales! I know your comment is funny, but let's get serious for a sec -- the above already has a Supreme Court precedent to support it.
After all, in the medical marijuana case, the Supreme Court ruled that two terminally ill Californian medical marijuana users could not use marijuana.
It made no difference that the majority of voters of California voted to legalize medical marijuana.
It made no difference that the two ill patients were growing pot and using pot only in California.
The corrupt court had the gall to rule that the two patients' use of medical marijuana would interfere with "interstate commerce" and thus was a violation of the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution.
The court was clearly concerned about the impact of medical marijuana on big pharmaceutical companies and those companies' commerce.
Isn't that basically the same thing as your camera idea? We need to be careful about joking about such things, because some fools might think we're serious.
Given Bush's wanton violations of the law (e.g. 800+ "signing statements", the tapping of our phones, etc.), the Supreme Court's ruling that Bush violated the Geneva Conventions (making him a de facto war criminal), and the many thoroughly warped claims and positions taken by Ashcroft and Gonzalez, when are we going to face the fact that these people are merely wannabe tyrants and are coming closer and closer to shedding their "wannabe" status?
And when are we going to decide that their actions are "high crimes" and act to remove these tyrants from office?
From the article theorizing that home electronic power usage seems to be getting worse:
We could probably save the Earth a little more if we didn't do one to two loads of dishes a day, and if we didn't wash a dozen loads of laundry a week, but hey, that's modern life with small children. These are luxuries of modern living that I'm going to clutch onto until the ocean is lapping at the door.
I wonder if his kids and grandkids will feel similarly about Dad's attitude?!
Don't get me wrong, the guy seems to be doing more than most people. My point is that we are not "entitled" to lives of such "luxuries" (his word) as we kill off species and, indeed, the entire planet.
We have a helluva lot of change to do -- either willingly or it'll be forced on us -- and most of that change needs to occur between our ears.
Personally, I would be surprised if the MiGs that Russia sells to China and other countries are as kick ass as some of the stuff their own air force uses.
All countries that export high tech weapons produce "export versions" with modified or slightly lessened capabilities. In terms of aircraft, it's usually changes in the avionics. Russia designs these export versions right alongside their main versions; the US often tends to make export sales of only older models, saving the latest/greatest models only for themselves.
What?! The US gov't do something underhanded and dastardly? Naaaw, never (as long as you don't ask the torture victims of Gitmo or Abu Ghraib or any of the CIA's other secret prisons).
It seems the "special relationship" is only "special" as long as Britain remains on its knees.
Exactly. We're not satisfied with "only" 57 varieties of hamburger condiments, but for political parties we're supposed to be satisfied with laws which wildly tilt the playing field forcing us to choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
To the folks that flagged my post as flamebait, one thought. Sure, you could see that post as flamebait I suppose, so I'm not arguing that.
What I wonder is whether you believe that this is a political issue or not. Science has been "fighting" with religion for centuries. Do you think that fight is over?
In an age where some stem cell research is banned for religious reasons, managing only to drive the research overseas, is it wise to ignore the battle between science and religion?
In an age where religious zealots hold positions of power in the US gov't and advocate that Israel occupy all of the lands they did in the Bible because that will help speed Christ's second coming (read: religion as US foreign policy), or where gov't scientists are forbidden from speaking about their reseach in a number of areas -- solely for political and/or religious grounds, or where the so-called "Plan B" pill was held up for years not due to medical or scientific or legal reasons -- but instead because of someone's religious views, I have a blunt question: Is your strategy to oppose such religious extremism, or is your strategy simply to surrender the battle between science and religion?
Just imagine, winning a Nobel prize for the "big bang" theory.
Why everyone knows that the world was created in 7 days, not with a big bang -- the "big bang" theory is just scientific hokum. Just ask our president or the millions of Christian fundamentalists who know the truth.:-/
The traditional political science term for this is "voter suppression". It has a long history in the US.
The vote of blacks were suppressed in many ways, for many decades. One can say that black votes are still being suppressed, albeit in more subtle ways.
If one reads the book "Why Americans Don't Vote" the academic researchers/authors of that book note that the entire system of voter registration was enacted not to stop multiple votes and voter fraud, but instead to suppress the vote of Pennsylvania farmers. The farmers were a potent and somewhat radical voting block in the 1800s, so voter registration was enacted. This required the farmers to make yet another distant trip to town, which worked to lower the numbers of farmers who voted.
This tactic is still used today to suppress the vote, though the "motor voter" law allowing the public to register to vote when registering a vehicle has softened the impact.
Why hack the election when you can just steal it the old fashioned way?
* Give poor voting precincts ancient machines and very few of them so that people have to wait hours and hours in line to vote. Isn't that what we saw in 2004?
* Dream up a system of "provisional ballots" to placate voters when a voter is "challenged" -- and then never count those provisional ballots.
These tactics are the way the past 2 elections were stolen, and they're profusely documented. Even the huge exit poll discrepancies of the 2004 elections were ignored by the US corporate mass media.
And don't forget the way BBC reporter Greg Palast clearly documented that Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris eliminated more than 90,000 Florida voters in 2000 as "suspected felons" -- with over 90% of those voters being Democrats. But you're read about that scandal in the US corporate mass media, right?! (Not!)
Sorry, the elections are already being "hacked" and it doesn't take an electronic voting machine to do it.
And you would trust the soviets to get rid of all their nukes? Could they have gotten rid of them?
Sure they could've gotten rid of them! Several US presidents and Congresses approved arms agreements with the USSR (though these weren't complete elimination of nukes) and they worked fairly well.
As to the claim that the USSR never did propose complete nuclear disarmament, they did. Offers were made in the 50s and the US -- which held a large advantage in nukes then -- used the excuse that a regime of inspections needed to be developed before the US would agree. The USSR, given the US aggression, spying, funding of dissidents (etc.), was leery of any inspection system.
But Gorbachev reversed the USSR's position on inspections. On "Jan 15, 1986 In an address to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Premier Gorbachev announces a plan for total nuclear disarmament of the superpowers by the year 2000." (Source) Like other Soviet proposals, the US found another excuse to kill that move toward nuclear disarmament.
And how exactly would eliminating _all_ nuclear weapons help things?
This seems to imply that the world is safer with nuclear weapons that without.
The US gov't signed and Congress approved a treaty whose goal is to rid the world of nuclear weapons. They, and many others, obviously disagree.
If now every nation would get rid of nuclear weapons do you know what would happen? They'd all stard building them right back and the first to finish would win. Only they'd probably have to use them to make the point.
Ludicrous. It would take many nuclear weapons and a massive building program to "win". But this ignores the critical point.
Nuclear inspections work. They worked to enforce the US and USSR's treaties, and they've worked to prevent other countries from building nukes (e.g. Iraq, Iran). The only countries that have built nuclear weapons have done so outside of the non-proliferation treaty's inspection system.
With that said, some have proposed that any global nuclear disarmament treaty have "teeth". Things suggested have included unlimited unannounced inspections of any facility on earth, with an automatic, pre-approved UN mandate for the use of force and economic sanctions on any country refusing the inspections.
But it's all a moot point -- the globe's most militarily aggressive and most heavily armed nuclear power even refuses to discuss nuclear disarmament.
But you've got to acknowledge the psychological effect that a horde of nuclear weapons has as a deterrent against military attacks against the U.S.,
Did that prevent 9/11?
The reality is that without nuclear weapons, no country has the ability to launch an attack on the US. No Navy of any nation could launch any significant attack -- and that's assuming that the US Navy would fail to detect the enemy's approach. Ditto for any nation's air force.
The 700+ overseas military bases that the US maintains could be subject to attack, sure, but that would raise 2 points: (1) are they needed for "defense"? and (2) even nukes don't prevent attacks on overseas US military bases (e.g. base attacks in Saudi Arabia or Lebanon).
and as leverage in negotiating conventions with other nations.
That's a valid point. The US does use those nukes to threaten other countries. No wonder why the US is so hated around the world.
But did our recently disclosed threats to bomb Pakistan back to the stone age actually result in the US winning a real friend and ally? You create enemies by threatening, and with some in the US accusing Pakistan of aiding the Afghani resistance, we've proven the point.
Since this is an obvious no-brainer: why aren't we getting rid of nukes?
Consider a few facts:
* The USSR, when it existed, several times suggested getting rid of all nuclear weapons. The US rejected their proposals.
* The nuclear non-proliferation treaty requires that nuclear powers work towards nuclear disarmament. The US rejects all proposals calling for nuclear disarmament.
* Presently, 4 of the Central Asian *stan countries are organizing to declare themselves a "nuclear free zone" forbidding all nuclear weapons from their territory. What country is working diplomatically and is pressuring them to scuttle the nuclear free zone idea? The US.
Considering the US has the most nuclear weapons, engages in the most wars, threatens non-nuclear countries with nuclear weapons, other countries have an incentive to develop nukes. The ironic thing is that only the US has hundreds of thousands of Marines that can be deployed and a strong worldwide military deployment capability -- eliminating nukes will not weaken that capability.
But eliminating nukes does not fit into the US Pentagon's publicly stated goal of complete, worldwide military superiority.
Nukes won't be eliminated until the US foreign policy and militarism is changed in a substantial way -- and that is not happening. Until it does, we can expect more "close calls".
Re:But healthcare doesn't make value.....
on
The Engine of US Jobs
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Your disagreement stems from your arbitrary belief the GDP wasn't bullshit in the first place.
Many people think the GDP or GNP is a bogus, crude measure of economic health. There are a number of other measures which address the G?P's shortcomings. (The UN's "Human Development Index" (HDI) is probably the best known.)
As Robert Kennedy said in 1968:
Our gross national product -- if we should judge America by that -- counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.
I think Canada will be surprised to learn that they gave up their sovereignty when they joined NAFTA.
I doubt they would be surprised. Many treaties chip away at a country's sovereignty -- joining the UN or joining NATO or the WTO, for example.
But NAFTA surely impacts a nation's sovereignty. How else can you describe a treaty where unelected bureaucrats can veto the people's laws which were enacted democratically, simply by those bureaucrats determining that those laws are a barrier to "free" trade?
You may consider that reasonable or unreasonable, but it surely is giving up some sovereignty.
Additionally, Canada's NAFTA treaty has provisions which guarantee US access to Canada's oil wealth -- a huge chunk of Canadian sovereignty out the window! In contrast, the Mexicans flat out rejected an identical oil resource clause, but nonetheless, Canada was foolish enough to agree to it.
The US health care system is inefficient and massively expensive. The fact that it creates some jobs is largely irrelevant.
The people working in those health care jobs could be creating wealth -- producing widgets or creating Microsoft anti-virus software, anything that creates value, and maybe even help address the huge US trade deficit.
But instead, the trade deficit continues to grow and the value of the dollar has gone down about 30% against the Euro in the past 6 years.
To get an idea of just how inefficient the US health care system is, consider this:
Americans used to have a longer life expectancy than Canadians. But now, after adopting a single payer national health system, Canadians have an average life expectancy about 4 years longer than Americans and Canadians pay much, much less for their health care.
That extra money Americans are paying for their wildly expensive and shoddy quality of health care may generate some jobs, but it is not doing the nation any good no matter how Business Week spins it.
Well, if paying for music and movies instead of downloading them for free is the "right" thing to do, then clearly it is "right" to pay for software instead of downloading it for free too.
Are these business models set in stone? Are these busincess models mandated by law? (FYI, there are alternative business models.)
I don't know where music or movies came in, but I do know that many musicians allow their music to be freely downloaded -- they see it not only as a good PR move to build buzz and their fan base, but also a smart business decision. And aren't some movies (e.g. Fahrenheit 911) allowed to be freely downloaded?
Believe it or not, once upon a time (in my lifetime even!) in the US, you could legally swap any media as long as it was not for commercial gain (but then rightist politicians came to power and rewrote the copyright laws for their big business funders).
In terms of software, again, it depends on the business model. I used to be a member of the Debian project and run the help web site noted in the URL above. I know that I've put in far more time and raw money into Debian in the past X years than I would have if I ran some commercial software -- isn't that "paying" for software? Debian's non-profit business model encourages such community participation, and it's been quite successful.
Again, the "pay to play" business model is not the only model. I'd even go so far as to say that it's dying not only for computer software but it's dying for music also.
Slashdot Mirror
MS could easily "make money" by integrating Windows with GNU/Linux, by working on Windows/Linux interoperability, or by selling Linux services to their larger corporate accounts.
Why don't they do that and merely "make money"? Because GNU/Linux represents a different business model and a threat to MS' closed source code business model.
I would argue that MS has a much stronger interest in even losing money -- if it means eliminating the viral threat and outside-the-box software model that GNU represents.
...the FTC defended its actions saying that their decision was not a give-in to the big telecom and cable companies....the FTC's decision appears to be thought out... Given that the overwhelming majority of the public is for net neutrality, of course the decision has to have the appearance of being well thought out. Like duh!But make no mistake about it, this is the FCC -- once again -- caving into the large corporations that fund politicians and who more-or-less run the US gov't.
I think the decision is simply what the industry guy said: to punish Prince.
Let's be serious; his actions to protect his music and his innovative move to change his name surely generated hostility in the corporate music world towards him...
After all, in the medical marijuana case, the Supreme Court ruled that two terminally ill Californian medical marijuana users could not use marijuana.
It made no difference that the majority of voters of California voted to legalize medical marijuana.
It made no difference that the two ill patients were growing pot and using pot only in California.
The corrupt court had the gall to rule that the two patients' use of medical marijuana would interfere with "interstate commerce" and thus was a violation of the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution.
The court was clearly concerned about the impact of medical marijuana on big pharmaceutical companies and those companies' commerce.
Isn't that basically the same thing as your camera idea? We need to be careful about joking about such things, because some fools might think we're serious.
Given Bush's wanton violations of the law (e.g. 800+ "signing statements", the tapping of our phones, etc.), the Supreme Court's ruling that Bush violated the Geneva Conventions (making him a de facto war criminal), and the many thoroughly warped claims and positions taken by Ashcroft and Gonzalez, when are we going to face the fact that these people are merely wannabe tyrants and are coming closer and closer to shedding their "wannabe" status?
And when are we going to decide that their actions are "high crimes" and act to remove these tyrants from office?
From the article theorizing that home electronic power usage seems to be getting worse:
We could probably save the Earth a little more if we didn't do one to two loads of dishes a day, and if we didn't wash a dozen loads of laundry a week, but hey, that's modern life with small children. These are luxuries of modern living that I'm going to clutch onto until the ocean is lapping at the door.
I wonder if his kids and grandkids will feel similarly about Dad's attitude?!
Don't get me wrong, the guy seems to be doing more than most people. My point is that we are not "entitled" to lives of such "luxuries" (his word) as we kill off species and, indeed, the entire planet.
We have a helluva lot of change to do -- either willingly or it'll be forced on us -- and most of that change needs to occur between our ears.
"...as Person of the Year because you control the Information Age."
But the people who "control the Information Age" voted Hugo Chavez as person of the year on Time Magazine's online poll.
Of course, Chavez is a socialist working to empower Venezuela's poor -- a politically incorrect position for AOL-Time Warner's corporate management.
So much for the people of the Internet controlling the Information Age -- corporate America is firmly in control.
Personally, I would be surprised if the MiGs that Russia sells to China and other countries are as kick ass as some of the stuff their own air force uses.
All countries that export high tech weapons produce "export versions" with modified or slightly lessened capabilities. In terms of aircraft, it's usually changes in the avionics. Russia designs these export versions right alongside their main versions; the US often tends to make export sales of only older models, saving the latest/greatest models only for themselves.
What?! The US gov't do something underhanded and dastardly? Naaaw, never (as long as you don't ask the torture victims of Gitmo or Abu Ghraib or any of the CIA's other secret prisons).
It seems the "special relationship" is only "special" as long as Britain remains on its knees.
Does anyone knowledgeable want to contrast IPCop to SmoothWall?
Advantages/Disadvantages? Pros/Cons?
Exactly. We're not satisfied with "only" 57 varieties of hamburger condiments, but for political parties we're supposed to be satisfied with laws which wildly tilt the playing field forcing us to choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
:-/
And they call that "freedom"...
To the folks that flagged my post as flamebait, one thought. Sure, you could see that post as flamebait I suppose, so I'm not arguing that.
What I wonder is whether you believe that this is a political issue or not. Science has been "fighting" with religion for centuries. Do you think that fight is over?
In an age where some stem cell research is banned for religious reasons, managing only to drive the research overseas, is it wise to ignore the battle between science and religion?
In an age where religious zealots hold positions of power in the US gov't and advocate that Israel occupy all of the lands they did in the Bible because that will help speed Christ's second coming (read: religion as US foreign policy), or where gov't scientists are forbidden from speaking about their reseach in a number of areas -- solely for political and/or religious grounds, or where the so-called "Plan B" pill was held up for years not due to medical or scientific or legal reasons -- but instead because of someone's religious views, I have a blunt question: Is your strategy to oppose such religious extremism, or is your strategy simply to surrender the battle between science and religion?
Just imagine, winning a Nobel prize for the "big bang" theory.
:-/
Why everyone knows that the world was created in 7 days, not with a big bang -- the "big bang" theory is just scientific hokum. Just ask our president or the millions of Christian fundamentalists who know the truth.
The traditional political science term for this is "voter suppression". It has a long history in the US.
The vote of blacks were suppressed in many ways, for many decades. One can say that black votes are still being suppressed, albeit in more subtle ways.
If one reads the book "Why Americans Don't Vote" the academic researchers/authors of that book note that the entire system of voter registration was enacted not to stop multiple votes and voter fraud, but instead to suppress the vote of Pennsylvania farmers. The farmers were a potent and somewhat radical voting block in the 1800s, so voter registration was enacted. This required the farmers to make yet another distant trip to town, which worked to lower the numbers of farmers who voted.
This tactic is still used today to suppress the vote, though the "motor voter" law allowing the public to register to vote when registering a vehicle has softened the impact.
20 Amazing Facts About Voting In The USA
/03/03_200.html http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/031004Fitraki s/031004fitrakis.html
/pfindex
by Angry Girl of Nightweed.com
Did you know....
1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S. http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diebold
2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry. http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html
3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers. http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/private_comp any.html http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html
4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/m ain632436.shtml http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1647886
5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines. http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004
6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee. http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=New s&file=article&sid=26 http://www.hillnews.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/000896.ph p
7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential candidates. http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_28/b3689130.ht m http://theindependent.com/stories/052700/new_hagel 27.html
8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes. http://www.essvote.com/HTML/about/about.html http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html
9. Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters. http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm http://www.itworld.com/Tech/2987/041020evotestates
Why hack the election when you can just steal it the old fashioned way?
* Give poor voting precincts ancient machines and very few of them so that people have to wait hours and hours in line to vote. Isn't that what we saw in 2004?
* Dream up a system of "provisional ballots" to placate voters when a voter is "challenged" -- and then never count those provisional ballots.
These tactics are the way the past 2 elections were stolen, and they're profusely documented. Even the huge exit poll discrepancies of the 2004 elections were ignored by the US corporate mass media.
And don't forget the way BBC reporter Greg Palast clearly documented that Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris eliminated more than 90,000 Florida voters in 2000 as "suspected felons" -- with over 90% of those voters being Democrats. But you're read about that scandal in the US corporate mass media, right?! (Not!)
Sorry, the elections are already being "hacked" and it doesn't take an electronic voting machine to do it.
And you would trust the soviets to get rid of all their nukes? Could they have gotten rid of them?
Sure they could've gotten rid of them! Several US presidents and Congresses approved arms agreements with the USSR (though these weren't complete elimination of nukes) and they worked fairly well.
As to the claim that the USSR never did propose complete nuclear disarmament, they did. Offers were made in the 50s and the US -- which held a large advantage in nukes then -- used the excuse that a regime of inspections needed to be developed before the US would agree. The USSR, given the US aggression, spying, funding of dissidents (etc.), was leery of any inspection system.
But Gorbachev reversed the USSR's position on inspections. On "Jan 15, 1986 In an address to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Premier Gorbachev announces a plan for total nuclear disarmament of the superpowers by the year 2000." (Source) Like other Soviet proposals, the US found another excuse to kill that move toward nuclear disarmament.
And how exactly would eliminating _all_ nuclear weapons help things?
This seems to imply that the world is safer with nuclear weapons that without.
The US gov't signed and Congress approved a treaty whose goal is to rid the world of nuclear weapons. They, and many others, obviously disagree.
If now every nation would get rid of nuclear weapons do you know what would happen? They'd all stard building them right back and the first to finish would win. Only they'd probably have to use them to make the point.
Ludicrous. It would take many nuclear weapons and a massive building program to "win". But this ignores the critical point.
Nuclear inspections work. They worked to enforce the US and USSR's treaties, and they've worked to prevent other countries from building nukes (e.g. Iraq, Iran). The only countries that have built nuclear weapons have done so outside of the non-proliferation treaty's inspection system.
With that said, some have proposed that any global nuclear disarmament treaty have "teeth". Things suggested have included unlimited unannounced inspections of any facility on earth, with an automatic, pre-approved UN mandate for the use of force and economic sanctions on any country refusing the inspections.
But it's all a moot point -- the globe's most militarily aggressive and most heavily armed nuclear power even refuses to discuss nuclear disarmament.
But you've got to acknowledge the psychological effect that a horde of nuclear weapons has as a deterrent against military attacks against the U.S.,
Did that prevent 9/11?
The reality is that without nuclear weapons, no country has the ability to launch an attack on the US. No Navy of any nation could launch any significant attack -- and that's assuming that the US Navy would fail to detect the enemy's approach. Ditto for any nation's air force.
The 700+ overseas military bases that the US maintains could be subject to attack, sure, but that would raise 2 points: (1) are they needed for "defense"? and (2) even nukes don't prevent attacks on overseas US military bases (e.g. base attacks in Saudi Arabia or Lebanon).
and as leverage in negotiating conventions with other nations.
That's a valid point. The US does use those nukes to threaten other countries. No wonder why the US is so hated around the world.
But did our recently disclosed threats to bomb Pakistan back to the stone age actually result in the US winning a real friend and ally? You create enemies by threatening, and with some in the US accusing Pakistan of aiding the Afghani resistance, we've proven the point.
For sources, all it takes is a Google search; is that too difficult:
USSR's call for disarmament
Non-proliferation treaty's requirement for nuclear powers to disarm
*stan nuclear free zone (and US hypocrisy)
Since this is an obvious no-brainer: why aren't we getting rid of nukes?
Consider a few facts:
* The USSR, when it existed, several times suggested getting rid of all nuclear weapons. The US rejected their proposals.
* The nuclear non-proliferation treaty requires that nuclear powers work towards nuclear disarmament. The US rejects all proposals calling for nuclear disarmament.
* Presently, 4 of the Central Asian *stan countries are organizing to declare themselves a "nuclear free zone" forbidding all nuclear weapons from their territory. What country is working diplomatically and is pressuring them to scuttle the nuclear free zone idea? The US.
Considering the US has the most nuclear weapons, engages in the most wars, threatens non-nuclear countries with nuclear weapons, other countries have an incentive to develop nukes. The ironic thing is that only the US has hundreds of thousands of Marines that can be deployed and a strong worldwide military deployment capability -- eliminating nukes will not weaken that capability.
But eliminating nukes does not fit into the US Pentagon's publicly stated goal of complete, worldwide military superiority.
Nukes won't be eliminated until the US foreign policy and militarism is changed in a substantial way -- and that is not happening. Until it does, we can expect more "close calls".
Your disagreement stems from your arbitrary belief the GDP wasn't bullshit in the first place.
Many people think the GDP or GNP is a bogus, crude measure of economic health. There are a number of other measures which address the G?P's shortcomings. (The UN's "Human Development Index" (HDI) is probably the best known.)
As Robert Kennedy said in 1968:
Our gross national product -- if we should judge America by that -- counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.
I think Canada will be surprised to learn that they gave up their sovereignty when they joined NAFTA.
I doubt they would be surprised. Many treaties chip away at a country's sovereignty -- joining the UN or joining NATO or the WTO, for example.
But NAFTA surely impacts a nation's sovereignty. How else can you describe a treaty where unelected bureaucrats can veto the people's laws which were enacted democratically, simply by those bureaucrats determining that those laws are a barrier to "free" trade?
You may consider that reasonable or unreasonable, but it surely is giving up some sovereignty.
Additionally, Canada's NAFTA treaty has provisions which guarantee US access to Canada's oil wealth -- a huge chunk of Canadian sovereignty out the window! In contrast, the Mexicans flat out rejected an identical oil resource clause, but nonetheless, Canada was foolish enough to agree to it.
Excellent point!
The US health care system is inefficient and massively expensive. The fact that it creates some jobs is largely irrelevant.
The people working in those health care jobs could be creating wealth -- producing widgets or creating Microsoft anti-virus software, anything that creates value, and maybe even help address the huge US trade deficit.
But instead, the trade deficit continues to grow and the value of the dollar has gone down about 30% against the Euro in the past 6 years.
To get an idea of just how inefficient the US health care system is, consider this:
Americans used to have a longer life expectancy than Canadians. But now, after adopting a single payer national health system, Canadians have an average life expectancy about 4 years longer than Americans and Canadians pay much, much less for their health care.
That extra money Americans are paying for their wildly expensive and shoddy quality of health care may generate some jobs, but it is not doing the nation any good no matter how Business Week spins it.
Well, if paying for music and movies instead of downloading them for free is the "right" thing to do, then clearly it is "right" to pay for software instead of downloading it for free too.
Are these business models set in stone? Are these busincess models mandated by law? (FYI, there are alternative business models.)
I don't know where music or movies came in, but I do know that many musicians allow their music to be freely downloaded -- they see it not only as a good PR move to build buzz and their fan base, but also a smart business decision. And aren't some movies (e.g. Fahrenheit 911) allowed to be freely downloaded?
Believe it or not, once upon a time (in my lifetime even!) in the US, you could legally swap any media as long as it was not for commercial gain (but then rightist politicians came to power and rewrote the copyright laws for their big business funders).
In terms of software, again, it depends on the business model. I used to be a member of the Debian project and run the help web site noted in the URL above. I know that I've put in far more time and raw money into Debian in the past X years than I would have if I ran some commercial software -- isn't that "paying" for software? Debian's non-profit business model encourages such community participation, and it's been quite successful.
Again, the "pay to play" business model is not the only model. I'd even go so far as to say that it's dying not only for computer software but it's dying for music also.