So what are you saying? That we should fund charities by the generosity of the rich?
Didn't that used to be the US policy -- let the Red Cross and other charities handle all welfare for the poor? The system was so ineffective (be it for bureaucracy, not enough donations, or whatever) that the people demanded the gov't step in and develop what we now know as our welfare system.
Addressing the needs of the poor via various gov't-mandated welfare systems is a standard worldwide tactic (no matter how much the ruling elites of the US want to dismantle such systems).
But advocating, as you seem to be doing, that we instead address charities by allowing huge corporations to reapeatedly break the law (as Microsoft has done and which has helped make these new millionaires to be millionaires), establish monopolies, and then admire and rely on the generosity of their new millionaire stockholders is an appalling idea.
My point was to contrast the above idea to what free software authors are doing: they are breaking no laws; they are not extracting money from any person; they are contributing to the good of society with software which is worth millions -- they are giving back to the common community simply by their own labor and highly specialized skills (in addition to whatever charitable contributions they might make).
Which is to be desired more?
* A corporate lawbreaker and the people who benefitted by breaking those laws, who then publicly spend some their cash and throwing some money to charity
Or
* Someone who breaks no laws, exploits no people, and who seeks enjoyment by working for the public good by quietly giving the public millions of dollars of a product from their highly specialized labor?
I wonder where Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman will put their millions of dollars?
Oh wait!
Rather than Linus and Richard taking money out of your and my pockets to become millionaires, they instead worked hard, earned true respect, and gave back to the common community. And they did it all without forming a monopoly, engaging in illegal practices, and lobbying governments to enact repressive laws to bolster their ability to take money out of our pockets.
Who are the real people that are helping both themselves and humanity: the "Microsoft millionaires" or people like RMS and Linus?
When will the public revolt about issues like this
on
GPS-tracked Clothing
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· Score: 0
When will the public revolt about issues like this and demand either:
(A) Real privacy laws with shark's teeth to enforce them.
or (B) A completely transparent society where everything is public -- including our corporate master's finance books and the data of the wealthy elites?
Naaww. My favorite to register on misc. sites is the e-mail address of "Bill.Gates@microsoft.com".
Now, before you complain, think of it this way: those Borg admins have to have something to do to break the constant monotony of installing buggy patches to Exchange.:-)
In passing the Iraq War Supplemental yesterday, the Senate also gave the Secretary of Homeland Security the power to waive any and all law in the course of building roads and barriers along the U.S. borders -- without limit and with no checks and balances. The measure is part of the "REAL ID Act of 2005," the controversial immigration bill attached by the House as a rider to the Iraq war supplemental.
The consequence of this decision is that Congress has given one man a license to waive any law, for any reason or for no reason at all. Michael Chertoff, the Secretary of Homeland Security, now has the power to simply waive away laws that protect the environment, safeguard public health, ensure consumer and workplace safety, prevent unfair business practices, and ban discrimination -- at his sole and unreviewable discretion.
There is too much at stake to grant any government officials the power to waive all law. Immediately at stake, of course, are current environmental protections in the vicinity of the borders, but even more is at stake. These fences and roads will not build themselves-- they must be put in place by workers, who could lose all their workplace safety protections as well as their rights to collective bargaining or even overtime pay. This new power comes completely without limit; every law, from child labor to ethical contracting, can now be waived.
Congressional supporters of this measure would like us to believe that this measure means only that DHS can speed up completion of one small stretch of fence in the "Smuggler's Gulch" area near San Diego. Nothing could be further from the truth. This measure is written so that Michael Chertoff will have unlimited authority to waive all law in the course of building roads and barriers and removing obstacles to the detection of illegal immigrants, and it applies anywhere in the vicinity of the borders. Earlier versions of this provision would have limited its scope just to environmental laws and just to Smuggler's Gulch, but the version now passed by both houses of Congress applies everywhere along the borders and applies to all laws on the books.
We expect government officials to execute the law. No government agency should be above the laws that preserve America's democracy. Congress has granted the Secretary of Homeland Security unbridled authority to act however he sees fit, without consequence, accountability, and any opportunity for judicial review.
[Robert Shull is Director of Regulatory Policy at OMB Watch.]
Because many news sites frequently change the links to their stories. There's no guarantee that those links will still work in an hour, let alone in a few days or weeks.
Worse, some news sites like to go back and re-edit their news stories for various reasons. For example, CNN.com has caught a bit of heat about its article on the Israeli spy ring that is operating in the US. After the initial story, CNN's editors completely eviscerated the story in an Orwellian fashion (to their credit, Fox News didn't re-edit their story, they just deleted it entirely from their site!).
I'll ignore the fact that this law blatantly violates the 10th Amendment, and will instead cite this CNet article by someone who knows far more about the law than I do:
President Bush is expected to sign an $82 billion military spending bill soon that will, in part, create electronically readable, federally approved ID cards for Americans. The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved the package--which includes the Real ID Act--on Thursday.
What does that mean for me?
Starting three years from now, if you live or work in the United States, you'll need a federally approved ID card to travel on an airplane, open a bank account, collect Social Security payments, or take advantage of nearly any government service. Practically speaking, your driver's license likely will have to be reissued to meet federal standards. News.context
What's new:
The House of Representatives has approved an $82 billion military spending bill with an attachment that would mandate electronically readable ID cards for Americans. President Bush is expected to sign the bill.
Bottom line:
The Real ID Act would establish what amounts to a national identity card. State drivers' licenses and other such documents would have to meet federal ID standards established by the Department of Homeland Security.
More stories on this topic
The Real ID Act hands the Department of Homeland Security the power to set these standards and determine whether state drivers' licenses and other ID cards pass muster. Only ID cards approved by Homeland Security can be accepted "for any official purpose" by the feds.
How will I get one of these new ID cards?
You'll still get one through your state motor vehicle agency, and it will likely take the place of your drivers' license. But the identification process will be more rigorous.
For instance, you'll need to bring a "photo identity document," document your birth date and address, and show that your Social Security number is what you had claimed it to be. U.S. citizens will have to prove that status, and foreigners will have to show a valid visa.
State DMVs will have to verify that these identity documents are legitimate, digitize them and store them permanently. In addition, Social Security numbers must be verified with the Social Security Administration.
What's going to be stored on this ID card?
At a minimum: name, birth date, sex, ID number, a digital photograph, address, and a "common machine-readable technology" that Homeland Security will decide on. The card must also sport "physical security features designed to prevent tampering, counterfeiting, or duplication of the document for fraudulent purposes."
Homeland Security is permitted to add additional requirements--such as a fingerprint or retinal scan--on top of those. We won't know for a while what these additional requirements will be.
Why did these ID requirements get attached to an "emergency" military spending bill? Because it's difficult for politicians to vote against money that will go to the troops in Iraq and tsunami relief. The funds cover ammunition, weapons, tracked combat vehicles, aircraft, troop housing, death benefits, and so on.
The House already approved a standalone version of the Real ID Act in February, but by a relatively close margin of 261-161. It was expected to run into some trouble in the Senate. Now that it's part of an Iraq spending bill, senators won't want to vote against it.
What's the justification for this legislation anyway?
Its supporters say that the Real ID Act is necessary to hinder terrorists, and to follow the ID card recommendations that the 9/11 Commission made last year.
It will "hamper the ability of terrorist and criminal aliens to move freely throughout our socie
Pseudoscience of Intelligent Design? I'm guessing the insanely biased headline is a sign for all the slashdotters out there that this is simply a topic for attacking Christians?
You miss the point. I'm a Christian. I do not see an attack on "intelligent design" or the public funding of intelligent design as an attack on Christianity nor on Christians.
Intelligent design is simply a refined version of what used to be called "creationism". Many people were repulsed by creationism trying to push itself into public secular schools and voila! -- now we have a new label and ideas that are not quite as strident and obvious. But the goal remains the same.
Intelligent design is simply a method to push a narrow, militant faction of the Christian spectrum into the our public educational system. Intelligent design is a political movement to do away with the traditional US separation of church and state and to get the state to teach someone's "version" of Christianity in public schools.
Rejecting intelligent design is no different than rejecting that, for example, the Mormon's version of Christianity be taught in some Methodist's Sunday school. Even worse, the difference here is that the proponents of intelligent design are trying to pass it off as "science" and use tax dollars to indoctrinate people into their beliefs.
You get an A for not falling for the populist rhetoric that is swallowed up by most people (I bet you could also confirm that Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was invented by a Chicago department store as a way to generate more Christmas sales, can't you?!)
FWIW, many biblical scholars identify the The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil to be cannabis/marijuana (yes, I'm serious). The biblical term is "fragrant cane". Similarly, if we examine Christ (christ = the annointed one), he was probably annointed with a cannabis-based oil, the "recipe" for which still exists in some holy texts.
The view of cannabis' role in the Bible is not universally accepted, but it does has a great number of scholars -- both inside and outside of various churches -- who subscribe to that translation of the oldest texts we have.
God put them there for a laugh. He's sittin' up in Heaven laughin' his ass off at us all getting all wound up about it.
That's not biblically sound theology! After all, the Bible doesn't say anything about fossils or that God has a sense of humor.
Well, unless you call the Bible's story of Job to be an illustration of His sense of humor. After all, He and the Devil must've had a good laugh as they were tormenting the poor Job just to watch him run about like a worm...:-/
So scratch my humor point -- but the Bible still doesn't say anything about fossils.
>> Guantanomo Bay is a US military base, therefore it is subject to US laws.
> No, in fact it is rented from Cuba (even though they refuse the payment) and the U.S. government's position is that it is therefore foreign soil and not subject to U.S. laws or Constitution.
Wow, the mental gyrations that people will do to justify torture and immorality. Amazing!
The US rents all sorts of military bases -- they're all under US jurisdiction.
As for Cuba not taking the US rent checks, of course not. Cuba has been demanding that the US pull out of this illegally held base for decades but the US refuses!
As to the jurisdiction issue, the US Supreme Court has settled that -- they ruled the US does have jurisdiction and must provide lawyers (for all the good it'll do the torture victims).
> After all, these are terrorists, right? Well, how do we know?
Well, we know that many innocent people were/are being held in the Guantanamo concentration camp and were being tortured even though they were innocent.
The easiest way to reference that statement is to look at what happened to the 4 British citizens that were held and tortured there and are now released. A couple of them have gone public with descriptions of their torture. After the 4 were released, the British gov't did not arrest them or prosecute them because they were innocent.
Let's be serious here. The Italian people have a right to know what went on. The US military murdered one of Italy's spies and wounded an innocent Italian civilian.
The US military has changed their story several times. The journalist who was the target directly contradicts the military's story. Hell, the Pentagon wouldn't even let the Italians inspect the vehicle that the military shot up! Gimme a break, is this the way you treat allies?
Who's more believable: the journalist who has no record of lying, or the Bush administration and the Pentagon?
This is a quote cited in BU History Prof. Howard Zinn's famous book A People's History of the United States. In it, Zinn quotes from a then-secret National Security Council memo of 1952:
Southeast Asia, especially Malaya and Indonesia, is the principal world source of natural rubber and tin, and a producer of petroleum and other strategically important commodities...
Zinn's chapter on Vietnam is enlightening and covers much that 30 years of revision now routinely leaves out of our history texts; not only does it make the case for the US economic aspects for creating the puppet South Vietnamese regime, but also the geopolitical "logic". Definitely worth reading.
I recall MS Windows 3 ran on DR-DOS (the old competitor to Microsoft's MS-DOS).
A Windows beta version was coded to randomly crash on DR-DOS -- just enough to stop first-adopters from using DR-DOS and to generate some bad buzz about it.
But we all know that Microsoft wouldn't do anything like that with GNU/Linux, don't we?:-(
What's that old saying about being leery of horses with a gift in their mouth?:-)
Do you really think Iacocca's salary saved Chrysler Corp. that much money that it made any sort of a difference in the company's bottom line?
As someone above said, this is merely a PR gimmick.
Iacocca's stunt was done to "set the tone" for the thousands and thousands of Chrysler workers.
After Iacocca lowered his own salary to $1 a year -- something only a rich man can afford to do -- he then used that as a big stick to pry wage concessions from the thousands of Chrysler workers (and that did have an impact on the company's bottom line).
Of course they're no threat
on
EZTree Shuts Down
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· Score: 4, Insightful
To answer the question, of course they're no threat.
This is all about power: corporations have it, the people (nor their democratically-oriented institutions) do not.
In a time when air is sold on the streets of Mexico City, where the WTO is pushing the idea of private ownership of water, this is just another symptom of capitalist greed run amok.
and the two gulf wars have shown the superiority of precision weapons over masses of infantry and tanks.
Who-hoo -- we beat Iraq. What a triumph! In 2002 we supposedly "beat" a nation which was under economic and military sanctions for a decade and which had its military decimated in 1991.
The lesson we've learned? We've learned that all our costly high-tech war machines don't add up to anything.
The Iraqi resistance is waging an effective war against the US using nothing but patriotism, bravery, and some old artillery shells wired up to a fuse which can be triggered by a cell phone.
"Smart weapons" and even "smart generals" does not equate to victory if you have lying, immoral politicians invoking polices which abhor the world and which torture and create resistance among the people we're supposedly trying to disarm^H^H^H^H^H^H, err, I mean liberate.
(I almost forgot the latest revision of the reason we went to war -- no longer WMD, certainly not oil, but instead freedom and democracy, mom and apple pie, and the human rights of the people that we're not torturing and sodomizing in Saddam's old prisons.)
All the Washington Post's editors are saying is that we should criticize him for the work he does at the World Bank, not for past deeds.
And let's remember that it's not only the Post that's saying that. Liberals and right-wingers alike are saying similar things.
But let's remember the reality here. Wolfowitz has been cheerleading an attack on Iraq since the 1990s. Wolfowitz was a key advocate on the US invasion of Iraq which was planned from the first days of Bush taking power.
There's no debating those points. Wolfowitz's own words and many high-ranking Bush administrations officials have reported the above.
As such, this makes Wolfowitz a war criminal. He -- like Bush and others -- planned and waged/wages an aggressive war on a country in violation of int'l law and the UN Charter. Everyone from the Pope to the UN Secretary General to Tony Blair's closest advisors have said that the US/UK invasion of Iraq was illegal.
Remembering that reality, what the Post (and the others) are saying is, "we should allow war criminals to take the top post at the World Bank, it's no big deal."
IRS spending time playing games -- a good thing?!
on
State-Sponsored Solitaire?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
My favorite bit (especially as April 15th draws ever closer) is where the author notes that fifty percent of the time an IRS employee is on the computer they are playing games, shopping online or gambling.
Isn't that a good thing?!
Considering that the IRS is far more likely to investigate/harass poor or average-income taxpayers as opposed to the rich, I see them wasting their time as a plus.
Now, if we could only spread this idle time-wasting idea to the Pentagon, maybe Iraqis and other people who are under the thumb of the empire could breath a little easier...
Is the objective of GNU/Linux to recreate Windows?
on
NeroLinux vs. K3b
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Am I the only one that is not only not excited but is slightly repulsed by NeroLINUX?
I don't get it. Is the objective of GNU/Linux to simply invent another Windows? A platform where essential utilities (and IMHO, a CD/DVD burner program is essential) are commercial?
Looking at NeroLINUX, there are several points to ponder:
# NeroLINUX is not free as in "free beer". You have to have a registered version of Nero to use the program. # NeroLINUX is not free as in "liberty". The software is closed source code and claims to use some sort of a "NeroAPI". (The term "proprietary APIs" simply should not be in a GNU/Linux user's vocabulary.) # Nero notes on its web site, "Important note: Nero does not provide Technical Support for NeroLINUX."
Sorry, I don't see anything to get excited about. To me, it's just another half-step by a commercial company to brag "yeah, we run on Linux" while not really supporting the platform and another way for Nero to generate registrations from its Windows OEM versions.
Again, is the goal of Linux the porting of the same closed-source, marketing-driven, software gimmickry which is "business as usual" in the Windows world? Or is there another, higher goal which is aimed at providing both developers and end-users a different experience?
Unless we all want to be hostage to the same software gimmicks that permeate the Windows world, I'd strongly suggest joining the mailing lists of your favorite GNU/Linux-based burning program and participating in the community that is working to develop those programs.
Slashdot Mirror
So what are you saying? That we should fund charities by the generosity of the rich?
Didn't that used to be the US policy -- let the Red Cross and other charities handle all welfare for the poor? The system was so ineffective (be it for bureaucracy, not enough donations, or whatever) that the people demanded the gov't step in and develop what we now know as our welfare system.
Addressing the needs of the poor via various gov't-mandated welfare systems is a standard worldwide tactic (no matter how much the ruling elites of the US want to dismantle such systems).
But advocating, as you seem to be doing, that we instead address charities by allowing huge corporations to reapeatedly break the law (as Microsoft has done and which has helped make these new millionaires to be millionaires), establish monopolies, and then admire and rely on the generosity of their new millionaire stockholders is an appalling idea.
My point was to contrast the above idea to what free software authors are doing: they are breaking no laws; they are not extracting money from any person; they are contributing to the good of society with software which is worth millions -- they are giving back to the common community simply by their own labor and highly specialized skills (in addition to whatever charitable contributions they might make).
Which is to be desired more?
* A corporate lawbreaker and the people who benefitted by breaking those laws, who then publicly spend some their cash and throwing some money to charity
Or
* Someone who breaks no laws, exploits no people, and who seeks enjoyment by working for the public good by quietly giving the public millions of dollars of a product from their highly specialized labor?
I wonder where Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman will put their millions of dollars?
Oh wait!
Rather than Linus and Richard taking money out of your and my pockets to become millionaires, they instead worked hard, earned true respect, and gave back to the common community. And they did it all without forming a monopoly, engaging in illegal practices, and lobbying governments to enact repressive laws to bolster their ability to take money out of our pockets.
Who are the real people that are helping both themselves and humanity: the "Microsoft millionaires" or people like RMS and Linus?
When will the public revolt about issues like this and demand either:
(A) Real privacy laws with shark's teeth to enforce them.
or (B) A completely transparent society where everything is public -- including our corporate master's finance books and the data of the wealthy elites?
Naaww. My favorite to register on misc. sites is the e-mail address of "Bill.Gates@microsoft.com".
:-)
Now, before you complain, think of it this way: those Borg admins have to have something to do to break the constant monotony of installing buggy patches to Exchange.
Agreed; this is celebrity worship combined with raw marketing at its most sickening level.
Isn't the term "Microsoft security gurus" an oxymoron?
/. Q&A from the US military's "human rights and Geneva Conventions gurus"?
What's next, a
(sigh)
Carte Blanche for the Terror Cops
Senate Gives Dept. Homeland Security Power to Waive All Laws
By ROBERT SHULL
In passing the Iraq War Supplemental yesterday, the Senate also gave the Secretary of Homeland Security the power to waive any and all law in the course of building roads and barriers along the U.S. borders -- without limit and with no checks and balances. The measure is part of the "REAL ID Act of 2005," the controversial immigration bill attached by the House as a rider to the Iraq war supplemental.
The consequence of this decision is that Congress has given one man a license to waive any law, for any reason or for no reason at all. Michael Chertoff, the Secretary of Homeland Security, now has the power to simply waive away laws that protect the environment, safeguard public health, ensure consumer and workplace safety, prevent unfair business practices, and ban discrimination -- at his sole and unreviewable discretion.
There is too much at stake to grant any government officials the power to waive all law. Immediately at stake, of course, are current environmental protections in the vicinity of the borders, but even more is at stake. These fences and roads will not build themselves-- they must be put in place by workers, who could lose all their workplace safety protections as well as their rights to collective bargaining or even overtime pay. This new power comes completely without limit; every law, from child labor to ethical contracting, can now be waived.
Congressional supporters of this measure would like us to believe that this measure means only that DHS can speed up completion of one small stretch of fence in the "Smuggler's Gulch" area near San Diego. Nothing could be further from the truth. This measure is written so that Michael Chertoff will have unlimited authority to waive all law in the course of building roads and barriers and removing obstacles to the detection of illegal immigrants, and it applies anywhere in the vicinity of the borders. Earlier versions of this provision would have limited its scope just to environmental laws and just to Smuggler's Gulch, but the version now passed by both houses of Congress applies everywhere along the borders and applies to all laws on the books.
We expect government officials to execute the law. No government agency should be above the laws that preserve America's democracy. Congress has granted the Secretary of Homeland Security unbridled authority to act however he sees fit, without consequence, accountability, and any opportunity for judicial review.
[Robert Shull is Director of Regulatory Policy at OMB Watch.]
Why does everyone copy-and-paste whole articles?
Because many news sites frequently change the links to their stories. There's no guarantee that those links will still work in an hour, let alone in a few days or weeks.
Worse, some news sites like to go back and re-edit their news stories for various reasons. For example, CNN.com has caught a bit of heat about its article on the Israeli spy ring that is operating in the US. After the initial story, CNN's editors completely eviscerated the story in an Orwellian fashion (to their credit, Fox News didn't re-edit their story, they just deleted it entirely from their site!).
I'll ignore the fact that this law blatantly violates the 10th Amendment, and will instead cite this CNet article by someone who knows far more about the law than I do:
How Real ID will affect you
By Declan McCullagh
What's all the fuss with the Real ID Act about?
President Bush is expected to sign an $82 billion military spending bill soon that will, in part, create electronically readable, federally approved ID cards for Americans. The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved the package--which includes the Real ID Act--on Thursday.
What does that mean for me?
Starting three years from now, if you live or work in the United States, you'll need a federally approved ID card to travel on an airplane, open a bank account, collect Social Security payments, or take advantage of nearly any government service. Practically speaking, your driver's license likely will have to be reissued to meet federal standards. News.context
What's new:
The House of Representatives has approved an $82 billion military spending bill with an attachment that would mandate electronically readable ID cards for Americans. President Bush is expected to sign the bill.
Bottom line:
The Real ID Act would establish what amounts to a national identity card. State drivers' licenses and other such documents would have to meet federal ID standards established by the Department of Homeland Security.
More stories on this topic
The Real ID Act hands the Department of Homeland Security the power to set these standards and determine whether state drivers' licenses and other ID cards pass muster. Only ID cards approved by Homeland Security can be accepted "for any official purpose" by the feds.
How will I get one of these new ID cards?
You'll still get one through your state motor vehicle agency, and it will likely take the place of your drivers' license. But the identification process will be more rigorous.
For instance, you'll need to bring a "photo identity document," document your birth date and address, and show that your Social Security number is what you had claimed it to be. U.S. citizens will have to prove that status, and foreigners will have to show a valid visa.
State DMVs will have to verify that these identity documents are legitimate, digitize them and store them permanently. In addition, Social Security numbers must be verified with the Social Security Administration.
What's going to be stored on this ID card?
At a minimum: name, birth date, sex, ID number, a digital photograph, address, and a "common machine-readable technology" that Homeland Security will decide on. The card must also sport "physical security features designed to prevent tampering, counterfeiting, or duplication of the document for fraudulent purposes."
Homeland Security is permitted to add additional requirements--such as a fingerprint or retinal scan--on top of those. We won't know for a while what these additional requirements will be.
Why did these ID requirements get attached to an "emergency" military spending bill? Because it's difficult for politicians to vote against money that will go to the troops in Iraq and tsunami relief. The funds cover ammunition, weapons, tracked combat vehicles, aircraft, troop housing, death benefits, and so on.
The House already approved a standalone version of the Real ID Act in February, but by a relatively close margin of 261-161. It was expected to run into some trouble in the Senate. Now that it's part of an Iraq spending bill, senators won't want to vote against it.
What's the justification for this legislation anyway?
Its supporters say that the Real ID Act is necessary to hinder terrorists, and to follow the ID card recommendations that the 9/11 Commission made last year.
It will "hamper the ability of terrorist and criminal aliens to move freely throughout our socie
I am a non-Microsoft guy working at Microsoft.
:-/
It sounds a lot like the position of "Human rights monitor and peaceful resolution mediator" for the Bush administration.
Pseudoscience of Intelligent Design? I'm guessing the insanely biased headline is a sign for all the slashdotters out there that this is simply a topic for attacking Christians?
You miss the point. I'm a Christian. I do not see an attack on "intelligent design" or the public funding of intelligent design as an attack on Christianity nor on Christians.
Intelligent design is simply a refined version of what used to be called "creationism". Many people were repulsed by creationism trying to push itself into public secular schools and voila! -- now we have a new label and ideas that are not quite as strident and obvious. But the goal remains the same.
Intelligent design is simply a method to push a narrow, militant faction of the Christian spectrum into the our public educational system. Intelligent design is a political movement to do away with the traditional US separation of church and state and to get the state to teach someone's "version" of Christianity in public schools.
Rejecting intelligent design is no different than rejecting that, for example, the Mormon's version of Christianity be taught in some Methodist's Sunday school. Even worse, the difference here is that the proponents of intelligent design are trying to pass it off as "science" and use tax dollars to indoctrinate people into their beliefs.
For the record, it wasn't an apple.
You get an A for not falling for the populist rhetoric that is swallowed up by most people (I bet you could also confirm that Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was invented by a Chicago department store as a way to generate more Christmas sales, can't you?!)
FWIW, many biblical scholars identify the The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil to be cannabis/marijuana (yes, I'm serious). The biblical term is "fragrant cane". Similarly, if we examine Christ (christ = the annointed one), he was probably annointed with a cannabis-based oil, the "recipe" for which still exists in some holy texts.
The view of cannabis' role in the Bible is not universally accepted, but it does has a great number of scholars -- both inside and outside of various churches -- who subscribe to that translation of the oldest texts we have.
God put them there for a laugh. He's sittin' up in Heaven laughin' his ass off at us all getting all wound up about it.
:-/
That's not biblically sound theology! After all, the Bible doesn't say anything about fossils or that God has a sense of humor.
Well, unless you call the Bible's story of Job to be an illustration of His sense of humor. After all, He and the Devil must've had a good laugh as they were tormenting the poor Job just to watch him run about like a worm...
So scratch my humor point -- but the Bible still doesn't say anything about fossils.
Honestly, just what is the deal with these fundamentalists? I have two issues with these people.
:-)
Only 2?!
Oh, I forgot. It's Monday. You must be pressed for time.
>> Guantanomo Bay is a US military base, therefore it is subject to US laws.
> No, in fact it is rented from Cuba (even though they refuse the payment) and the U.S. government's position is that it is therefore foreign soil and not subject to U.S. laws or Constitution.
Wow, the mental gyrations that people will do to justify torture and immorality. Amazing!
The US rents all sorts of military bases -- they're all under US jurisdiction.
As for Cuba not taking the US rent checks, of course not. Cuba has been demanding that the US pull out of this illegally held base for decades but the US refuses!
As to the jurisdiction issue, the US Supreme Court has settled that -- they ruled the US does have jurisdiction and must provide lawyers (for all the good it'll do the torture victims).
> After all, these are terrorists, right? Well, how do we know?
Well, we know that many innocent people were/are being held in the Guantanamo concentration camp and were being tortured even though they were innocent.
The easiest way to reference that statement is to look at what happened to the 4 British citizens that were held and tortured there and are now released. A couple of them have gone public with descriptions of their torture. After the 4 were released, the British gov't did not arrest them or prosecute them because they were innocent.
So bring on the censorship.
Spoken like a true tyrant.
Let's be serious here. The Italian people have a right to know what went on. The US military murdered one of Italy's spies and wounded an innocent Italian civilian.
The US military has changed their story several times. The journalist who was the target directly contradicts the military's story. Hell, the Pentagon wouldn't even let the Italians inspect the vehicle that the military shot up! Gimme a break, is this the way you treat allies?
Who's more believable: the journalist who has no record of lying, or the Bush administration and the Pentagon?
Let's get back to reality here...
This is a quote cited in BU History Prof. Howard Zinn's famous book A People's History of the United States. In it, Zinn quotes from a then-secret National Security Council memo of 1952:
Southeast Asia, especially Malaya and Indonesia, is the principal world source of natural rubber and tin, and a producer of petroleum and other strategically important commodities...
Zinn's chapter on Vietnam is enlightening and covers much that 30 years of revision now routinely leaves out of our history texts; not only does it make the case for the US economic aspects for creating the puppet South Vietnamese regime, but also the geopolitical "logic". Definitely worth reading.
A slight correction: it wasn't as much of a "crash" as it was a "lockup" (there's a pedantic difference I guess).
:-)
For info on this, any Google search will turn stuff up. For example, this search has some court papers that were filed in the first few hits.
Happy reading.
I recall MS Windows 3 ran on DR-DOS (the old competitor to Microsoft's MS-DOS).
:-(
:-)
A Windows beta version was coded to randomly crash on DR-DOS -- just enough to stop first-adopters from using DR-DOS and to generate some bad buzz about it.
But we all know that Microsoft wouldn't do anything like that with GNU/Linux, don't we?
What's that old saying about being leery of horses with a gift in their mouth?
Do you really think Iacocca's salary saved Chrysler Corp. that much money that it made any sort of a difference in the company's bottom line?
As someone above said, this is merely a PR gimmick.
Iacocca's stunt was done to "set the tone" for the thousands and thousands of Chrysler workers.
After Iacocca lowered his own salary to $1 a year -- something only a rich man can afford to do -- he then used that as a big stick to pry wage concessions from the thousands of Chrysler workers (and that did have an impact on the company's bottom line).
To answer the question, of course they're no threat.
This is all about power: corporations have it, the people (nor their democratically-oriented institutions) do not.
In a time when air is sold on the streets of Mexico City, where the WTO is pushing the idea of private ownership of water, this is just another symptom of capitalist greed run amok.
and the two gulf wars have shown the superiority of precision weapons over masses of infantry and tanks.
Who-hoo -- we beat Iraq. What a triumph! In 2002 we supposedly "beat" a nation which was under economic and military sanctions for a decade and which had its military decimated in 1991.
The lesson we've learned? We've learned that all our costly high-tech war machines don't add up to anything.
The Iraqi resistance is waging an effective war against the US using nothing but patriotism, bravery, and some old artillery shells wired up to a fuse which can be triggered by a cell phone.
"Smart weapons" and even "smart generals" does not equate to victory if you have lying, immoral politicians invoking polices which abhor the world and which torture and create resistance among the people we're supposedly trying to disarm^H^H^H^H^H^H, err, I mean liberate.
(I almost forgot the latest revision of the reason we went to war -- no longer WMD, certainly not oil, but instead freedom and democracy, mom and apple pie, and the human rights of the people that we're not torturing and sodomizing in Saddam's old prisons.)
All the Washington Post's editors are saying is that we should criticize him for the work he does at the World Bank, not for past deeds.
And let's remember that it's not only the Post that's saying that. Liberals and right-wingers alike are saying similar things.
But let's remember the reality here. Wolfowitz has been cheerleading an attack on Iraq since the 1990s. Wolfowitz was a key advocate on the US invasion of Iraq which was planned from the first days of Bush taking power.
There's no debating those points. Wolfowitz's own words and many high-ranking Bush administrations officials have reported the above.
As such, this makes Wolfowitz a war criminal. He -- like Bush and others -- planned and waged/wages an aggressive war on a country in violation of int'l law and the UN Charter. Everyone from the Pope to the UN Secretary General to Tony Blair's closest advisors have said that the US/UK invasion of Iraq was illegal.
Remembering that reality, what the Post (and the others) are saying is, "we should allow war criminals to take the top post at the World Bank, it's no big deal."
My favorite bit (especially as April 15th draws ever closer) is where the author notes that fifty percent of the time an IRS employee is on the computer they are playing games, shopping online or gambling.
Isn't that a good thing?!
Considering that the IRS is far more likely to investigate/harass poor or average-income taxpayers as opposed to the rich, I see them wasting their time as a plus.
Now, if we could only spread this idle time-wasting idea to the Pentagon, maybe Iraqis and other people who are under the thumb of the empire could breath a little easier...
Am I the only one that is not only not excited but is slightly repulsed by NeroLINUX?
I don't get it. Is the objective of GNU/Linux to simply invent another Windows? A platform where essential utilities (and IMHO, a CD/DVD burner program is essential) are commercial?
Looking at NeroLINUX, there are several points to ponder:
# NeroLINUX is not free as in "free beer". You have to have a registered version of Nero to use the program.
# NeroLINUX is not free as in "liberty". The software is closed source code and claims to use some sort of a "NeroAPI". (The term "proprietary APIs" simply should not be in a GNU/Linux user's vocabulary.)
# Nero notes on its web site, "Important note: Nero does not provide Technical Support for NeroLINUX."
Sorry, I don't see anything to get excited about. To me, it's just another half-step by a commercial company to brag "yeah, we run on Linux" while not really supporting the platform and another way for Nero to generate registrations from its Windows OEM versions.
Again, is the goal of Linux the porting of the same closed-source, marketing-driven, software gimmickry which is "business as usual" in the Windows world? Or is there another, higher goal which is aimed at providing both developers and end-users a different experience?
Unless we all want to be hostage to the same software gimmicks that permeate the Windows world, I'd strongly suggest joining the mailing lists of your favorite GNU/Linux-based burning program and participating in the community that is working to develop those programs.