Hey, you (as in the Castrist apologist) do not get to play the innocent and claim that the USG is the root of all evil and that the embargo is thus all the USG's fault.
Opposing some oppression and not others is wrong. The solution isn't to stop giving a crap about anyone, but rather to be consistently anti-oppression.
I believe that this is where you came in with your one liner castrist excuse. Shall we go another round or do you recognize that the premise of my initial post is not rebutted by the USG's support of bad rulers in a sea of bad choices?
Tell me tapecutter, how long do us usually continue to miss the point before the lightbulb comes on inside your head? 3 posts? 5? More?
Saddam wasn't obligated in the cease-fire to prove to you personally that he had destroyed his WMD, he wasn't obligated to prove that god exists, he was obligated to allow inspectors designated by the UN who he agreed to give unfettered access to any & all Iraqi military sites to document the destruction of his WMD. The US & its allies also agreed to abide by the conclusions of the inspectors.
First sadaam starts playing games by declaring hundreds of new "presidential palaces" that he unilaterally declares are off limits to the inspectors, then he hides as much information on his WMD as he can. Shortly thereafter when the inspectors still find much of the WMD he has hidden, he destroys some of it & tries again to hide what's left. After a few cycles of this, he concludes that he cannot fool the inspectors so he throws them out.
This act following his games while the inspectors had partial access & his refusal to let them back in until it was much to late was the thing that made a second war inevitable unless the US chose to ignore it. It doesn't matter that two years after his fall that the inspectors were finally able to determine that he had destroyed them.
Cook judged that the west needed more accurate documentation on the continued existence of WMD before going back to war. Fine, very upstandingly chamberlainly of him. Bush & Blair chose to note that the cease-fire preconditioned the cessation of hostilities on sadaam's acceptation of the inspectors. No inspectors, no cessation of hostilities. For months, Bush/Blair said let the inspectors back in or pay the consequences as absent the inspectors, not even the most favorable estimates by counties like France who wanted to let Iraq off judged that Saddam had destroyed the last of his WMD.
Tapecutter, pay more attention to the people you argue with, Je n'habite pas aux USA et j'ai acces aux sources d'information beaucoup plus larges que tu ne le pense. It's not like its impossible for you to click on my name to discover that I live in a country that was overwhelmingly against the second war (All those oil contracts with Total & the juicy arms contracts sadaam was promising to finally pay for had nothing to do with it, ohhh nooo, Chiraq was being noble...). I had more than enough one-sided press to read, yet the press in France & the UK, like you, usually missed the point: "Let the arms inspectors in to document your destruction of your WMD and the war is over" versus "Make it impossible to independently verify that you have destroyed your WMD and you will be destroyed.".
Strawman: A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position.[1] To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting a superficially similar proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.
Yup, means what I thought, and you were indeed using one. Maybe if you repeat to yourself that it doesn't, it'll change, but just for you... Are you now to question the definition of the word "is" as your next trick? Maybe you will acknowledge that you are unable to sway me with mere emotions & use what looks to be another favorite of yours: Call me a nutter/extremist & spit on me every time I employ an argument that includes facts. That wouldn't surprise me from what you have displayed so far.
Funny that you object when I interpret someone using the one line, age old justification for all Castrist abuses as being a castrist. Then, in this post you use the other typical castrist line: "Before the US can criticize Cuba, they have to apologize for all their support of X Y Z", the key word being Before which gives Castro all the lattitude he needs to continue oppressing Cuba. You don't appear to realize this, but in many situations the US is forced to chose not between good & evil but between between two evils. Adults recognize this and leaven their condemnation of the US for it's bad choices while recognizing that these same bad choices do not give US adversaries like Castro a free pass to do whatever they want.
You may not be a noob from your/.ID but you're certainly playing one at present. I wasn't insightful from inferring information from your posts, but was modded so by someone with mod points who judged that the information in my posts (Castro is in part responsible for the embargo as he oppresses his own people, has participated in the massacre of thousands of Angolans, etc) is insightful.
Feh, keep your strawman. If you read the cease fire documents, you can see that Saddam agreed to document his destruction of his WMD as a condition to the cessation of hostilities. Are you trying to say that it was impossible for Saddam to do so? Humiliating? Certainly. Impossible? Certainly not.
One last time: At the time, due to Saddam's deliberate obfuscations, no-one could know whether Saddam had destroyed his WMD, but given his past history every major player including those like France & the Russians, judged that he had breached the ceasefire & stockpiled a kernel sufficient for him to expand later when the heat came off. Much like the plethora of people who claimed to be French resistance members after WWII, "many" who now claim in hindsight to have reservations are lying to themselves & everyone else.
Had you posted this the first time, I would never replied to your bashing. While I do not quite agree with you (Cook's disagreement with the resumption of major hostilities, ignoring the fact that his attempted shoot-downs of allied forces over Iraq would have been sufficient justifications in themselves, was ideological rather than fact based), at least you are now arguing from facts. Cook's position (like that of France & Russia) was that new information was needed to prove that a reopening of hostilities was justified. Bush & Blair's position was that non production of proof that Iraq had destroyed their WMD's ruptured the cease fire agreement that brought desert storm to an end. To a certain extent, given that all parties agreed to the cease fire agreement, that Sadaam clearly breached his obligations & that a resumption of hostilities was authorized in this case, I feel that this position is justified.
Yes, Cook quit, but because he disagreed with the basic premise for resuming hostilities, not because he had proof that sadaam had destroyed his WMDs.
For either to stick, you'd have had to come up with enough facts to invalidate his points detailing how everyone at the time was convinced that Saddam still had his WMD's. While there are legions who have argued in hindsight that we should have known, declarations from any major player at the time are nonexistent.
Too numerous to document here? Why? Because you're too lazy or because you just think it sounds more impressive & might make a few fools believe that the USG has continued to try to assassinate the old buzzard? Given that you were too afraid to post other than as a coward it's almost certainly just because you're lazy teenager without the courage to defend his convictions openly.
As if something that the US did the never actually came to pass almost 50 years ago is justification for the decades of oppression that the Cubans have had to suffer under for over 40 years.
I'm sure that all the Angolans killed over 27 years of Cuban intervention in their once prosperous country are reassured by Cuba's justification that Cuba helped destroy their country to assist the people being oppressed by US supported dictators in the rest of the world.
None of which changes my point: Castro's oppression of his own people is as responsible for the embargo as the USG is. Arrange free elections. Win them. No way could the US justify the continued embargo. Continue to oppress the any cuban who speaks out in favor of free speech and see the embargo continued until the day you die. We can all see how Castro & his apologists like you have chosen: Any sacrifice (preferrably by others) is justified if it serves "The Cause"...
Lets not forget that for decades Cuba/Castro worked to undermine democracy internationally every chance they got while oppressing anyone at home who suggested the slightest criticism of the castrist "nirvana". A unsubstainable nirvana that was bought & paid for by subsidies from the kremlin.
When the URSS collapsed, instead of accepting dissent and moving towards a system where the cubans could freely elect their leaders, Castro chose to crash the cuban economy. After all, that wayn whatever the pain to the population, Castro would still be comfortably in power...
The problem between Cuba & the US not just one-sided, the cuban government actively hates and fears democracy.
Because he backs up his arguments with facts or because he disagrees with you? I assume it's the latter given that you never tried to invalidate anything he said with, but just performed the slashdot equivalent of opening your window & spitting on him as you drove by...
As I've said elsewhere, I, and many like me do not consider it to be a joke but a well considered judgment and reminder of their morally corrupt business practices.
I do not believe that the leopard has changed it's spots & given the fleeting timespan of much of the public, continuing to use pejorative terms for these companies is more important now than it was when you were a teen. That you thought the terms were "ha ha" funny & now think that they are tired is part of the problem.
The people in my experience who consider it childish are part of my parents generation & I'm in my mid 40's. People past their 50's may disregard my points due to the fact that I use belittling terms for microsoft but they are usually so set in their ways that any effort expended is pointless anyway.
Those who are younger and mistake me for a "35 year old with a neckbeard in his mother's basement" because I use belittling terms for these corporate entities are either so far out of touch with reality to make the "idiot" label stick or work for one of the entities in question.
See elsewhere in this thread why I think using belittling terms for these corps is a good idea.
Some people in my experience have been offended. They have generally been working for Microsoft, one of it's partners, or part of the recording industry. However, none of the artists I have met or the other IT workers have been.
You label people who use the belittling terms marginal. Perhaps in your environment. In mine, where most IT workers from their 20's to their mid'40's like me use them, you're the marginal.
I've described elsewhere in this thread why I think using these terms in a general fashion is a good idea.
Consider it as part of the debate. By defining the terms one moves the goalposts.
An example in RL that I have noticed between France & the US is how unauthorized noncitizens are called. In the US they are commonly called "Illegal Aliens". In France they are called "Sans Papiers" or "People without ID". This difference in terminology has really profound effects in my opinion.
The vocabulary used defines the expectations of the people taking part. In the court of popular opinion, companies like M$ & $ony who ride roughshod over individual rights in the interest of making ever more money "because they can" deserve to be renamed in a pejorative fashion.
If you don't want to, hey that's your call & I'm not calling for everyone to do it if they are not comfortable with it. However, if majority or even a sizable minority take to using the belittling terms in general, it will certainly affect their bottom line as trust in their products will fall.
When Microsoft embraced & extended it's way into an abusive monopoly & then Sony betrayed our trust & installed rootkits on people who were buying music they earned the epithets & mockery they are receiving. "M$" & "$ony" are but pale shadows of the abuse they deserve.
Because, unlike what the russians did with Buran, NASA never installed a fully automated landing system on the shuttle, due in large part to the astronaut corps not wanting to be obsoleted.
Ahh, so no-one need worry about any resistance you oppose if we invade you...
I take that back. Given Italy's performance in WW2, resistance will be directly & inversely proportional to the size of the units being deployed. If you are the only one to resist, you will be formidable.
South Vietnamese people did the same. If my country were under an oppressive regime, and fighters from a country the other side of the globe, with whom I share nothing culturally, came to restore democracy, even without the brutality and the economic interests, I'd be pissed because it is still My fscking land.
Like France, Belgium, Norway, etc in 1917 & 1944, Malaysia in the 50's, the Philippines in 1944, Korea in 1950, Kuwait in 1991? Open a history book, there are many other examples where foreign interventions were appreciated by the locals. Should the rest of the world have overlooked the genocide in Rwanda because the oppressors were their neighbors?
Intel could be the first among vendor/OS developers to admit drive fragmentation COULD BE an issue, in certain usage patterns.
Not quite, AFAIK, Anandtech broke the story here and though he did say the Intel was the SSD vendor who was the least affected by the fragmentation bug, he also details that OCZ had already made great progress in resolving it's issues and becoming the SSD price/preformance king.
Slashdot Mirror
Seems like MS has realized that upgrading to Vista was useless as otherwise the upgrade from Vista should have been cheaper...
Hey, you (as in the Castrist apologist) do not get to play the innocent and claim that the USG is the root of all evil and that the embargo is thus all the USG's fault.
Opposing some oppression and not others is wrong. The solution isn't to stop giving a crap about anyone, but rather to be consistently anti-oppression.
I believe that this is where you came in with your one liner castrist excuse. Shall we go another round or do you recognize that the premise of my initial post is not rebutted by the USG's support of bad rulers in a sea of bad choices?
Hehe, well given your .sig, you would say that now wouldn't you...
Does it have force feedback and rumble? Then it's a... eh, never mind, I don't want to go there...
Tell me tapecutter, how long do us usually continue to miss the point before the lightbulb comes on inside your head? 3 posts? 5? More?
Saddam wasn't obligated in the cease-fire to prove to you personally that he had destroyed his WMD, he wasn't obligated to prove that god exists, he was obligated to allow inspectors designated by the UN who he agreed to give unfettered access to any & all Iraqi military sites to document the destruction of his WMD. The US & its allies also agreed to abide by the conclusions of the inspectors.
First sadaam starts playing games by declaring hundreds of new "presidential palaces" that he unilaterally declares are off limits to the inspectors, then he hides as much information on his WMD as he can. Shortly thereafter when the inspectors still find much of the WMD he has hidden, he destroys some of it & tries again to hide what's left. After a few cycles of this, he concludes that he cannot fool the inspectors so he throws them out.
This act following his games while the inspectors had partial access & his refusal to let them back in until it was much to late was the thing that made a second war inevitable unless the US chose to ignore it. It doesn't matter that two years after his fall that the inspectors were finally able to determine that he had destroyed them.
Cook judged that the west needed more accurate documentation on the continued existence of WMD before going back to war. Fine, very upstandingly chamberlainly of him. Bush & Blair chose to note that the cease-fire preconditioned the cessation of hostilities on sadaam's acceptation of the inspectors. No inspectors, no cessation of hostilities. For months, Bush/Blair said let the inspectors back in or pay the consequences as absent the inspectors, not even the most favorable estimates by counties like France who wanted to let Iraq off judged that Saddam had destroyed the last of his WMD.
Tapecutter, pay more attention to the people you argue with, Je n'habite pas aux USA et j'ai acces aux sources d'information beaucoup plus larges que tu ne le pense. It's not like its impossible for you to click on my name to discover that I live in a country that was overwhelmingly against the second war (All those oil contracts with Total & the juicy arms contracts sadaam was promising to finally pay for had nothing to do with it, ohhh nooo, Chiraq was being noble...). I had more than enough one-sided press to read, yet the press in France & the UK, like you, usually missed the point: "Let the arms inspectors in to document your destruction of your WMD and the war is over" versus "Make it impossible to independently verify that you have destroyed your WMD and you will be destroyed.".
Strawman: A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position.[1] To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting a superficially similar proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.
Yup, means what I thought, and you were indeed using one. Maybe if you repeat to yourself that it doesn't, it'll change, but just for you... Are you now to question the definition of the word "is" as your next trick? Maybe you will acknowledge that you are unable to sway me with mere emotions & use what looks to be another favorite of yours: Call me a nutter/extremist & spit on me every time I employ an argument that includes facts. That wouldn't surprise me from what you have displayed so far.
Funny that you object when I interpret someone using the one line, age old justification for all Castrist abuses as being a castrist. Then, in this post you use the other typical castrist line: "Before the US can criticize Cuba, they have to apologize for all their support of X Y Z", the key word being Before which gives Castro all the lattitude he needs to continue oppressing Cuba. You don't appear to realize this, but in many situations the US is forced to chose not between good & evil but between between two evils. Adults recognize this and leaven their condemnation of the US for it's bad choices while recognizing that these same bad choices do not give US adversaries like Castro a free pass to do whatever they want.
/.ID but you're certainly playing one at present. I wasn't insightful from inferring information from your posts, but was modded so by someone with mod points who judged that the information in my posts (Castro is in part responsible for the embargo as he oppresses his own people, has participated in the massacre of thousands of Angolans, etc) is insightful.
You may not be a noob from your
Feh, keep your strawman.
If you read the cease fire documents, you can see that Saddam agreed to document his destruction of his WMD as a condition to the cessation of hostilities. Are you trying to say that it was impossible for Saddam to do so? Humiliating? Certainly. Impossible? Certainly not.
One last time: At the time, due to Saddam's deliberate obfuscations, no-one could know whether Saddam had destroyed his WMD, but given his past history every major player including those like France & the Russians, judged that he had breached the ceasefire & stockpiled a kernel sufficient for him to expand later when the heat came off. Much like the plethora of people who claimed to be French resistance members after WWII, "many" who now claim in hindsight to have reservations are lying to themselves & everyone else.
Had you posted this the first time, I would never replied to your bashing. While I do not quite agree with you (Cook's disagreement with the resumption of major hostilities, ignoring the fact that his attempted shoot-downs of allied forces over Iraq would have been sufficient justifications in themselves, was ideological rather than fact based), at least you are now arguing from facts. Cook's position (like that of France & Russia) was that new information was needed to prove that a reopening of hostilities was justified. Bush & Blair's position was that non production of proof that Iraq had destroyed their WMD's ruptured the cease fire agreement that brought desert storm to an end. To a certain extent, given that all parties agreed to the cease fire agreement, that Sadaam clearly breached his obligations & that a resumption of hostilities was authorized in this case, I feel that this position is justified.
Yes, Cook quit, but because he disagreed with the basic premise for resuming hostilities, not because he had proof that sadaam had destroyed his WMDs.
For either to stick, you'd have had to come up with enough facts to invalidate his points detailing how everyone at the time was convinced that Saddam still had his WMD's. While there are legions who have argued in hindsight that we should have known, declarations from any major player at the time are nonexistent.
If you really have any facts, put up or shut up.
Too numerous to document here? Why? Because you're too lazy or because you just think it sounds more impressive & might make a few fools believe that the USG has continued to try to assassinate the old buzzard? Given that you were too afraid to post other than as a coward it's almost certainly just because you're lazy teenager without the courage to defend his convictions openly.
As if something that the US did the never actually came to pass almost 50 years ago is justification for the decades of oppression that the Cubans have had to suffer under for over 40 years.
I'm sure that all the Angolans killed over 27 years of Cuban intervention in their once prosperous country are reassured by Cuba's justification that Cuba helped destroy their country to assist the people being oppressed by US supported dictators in the rest of the world. None of which changes my point: Castro's oppression of his own people is as responsible for the embargo as the USG is. Arrange free elections. Win them. No way could the US justify the continued embargo. Continue to oppress the any cuban who speaks out in favor of free speech and see the embargo continued until the day you die. We can all see how Castro & his apologists like you have chosen: Any sacrifice (preferrably by others) is justified if it serves "The Cause"...
My, how intelligent you appear when you apply yourself!
I'll leave you to your prejudices and saliva games as you seem to enjoy them so much.
Lets not forget that for decades Cuba/Castro worked to undermine democracy internationally every chance they got while oppressing anyone at home who suggested the slightest criticism of the castrist "nirvana". A unsubstainable nirvana that was bought & paid for by subsidies from the kremlin. When the URSS collapsed, instead of accepting dissent and moving towards a system where the cubans could freely elect their leaders, Castro chose to crash the cuban economy. After all, that wayn whatever the pain to the population, Castro would still be comfortably in power... The problem between Cuba & the US not just one-sided, the cuban government actively hates and fears democracy.
Because he backs up his arguments with facts or because he disagrees with you? I assume it's the latter given that you never tried to invalidate anything he said with, but just performed the slashdot equivalent of opening your window & spitting on him as you drove by...
As I've said elsewhere, I, and many like me do not consider it to be a joke but a well considered judgment and reminder of their morally corrupt business practices.
I do not believe that the leopard has changed it's spots & given the fleeting timespan of much of the public, continuing to use pejorative terms for these companies is more important now than it was when you were a teen. That you thought the terms were "ha ha" funny & now think that they are tired is part of the problem.
Yet they do deserve it, no?
The people in my experience who consider it childish are part of my parents generation & I'm in my mid 40's. People past their 50's may disregard my points due to the fact that I use belittling terms for microsoft but they are usually so set in their ways that any effort expended is pointless anyway.
Those who are younger and mistake me for a "35 year old with a neckbeard in his mother's basement" because I use belittling terms for these corporate entities are either so far out of touch with reality to make the "idiot" label stick or work for one of the entities in question.
See elsewhere in this thread why I think using belittling terms for these corps is a good idea.
Some people in my experience have been offended. They have generally been working for Microsoft, one of it's partners, or part of the recording industry. However, none of the artists I have met or the other IT workers have been. You label people who use the belittling terms marginal. Perhaps in your environment. In mine, where most IT workers from their 20's to their mid'40's like me use them, you're the marginal. I've described elsewhere in this thread why I think using these terms in a general fashion is a good idea.
Consider it as part of the debate. By defining the terms one moves the goalposts. An example in RL that I have noticed between France & the US is how unauthorized noncitizens are called. In the US they are commonly called "Illegal Aliens". In France they are called "Sans Papiers" or "People without ID". This difference in terminology has really profound effects in my opinion. The vocabulary used defines the expectations of the people taking part. In the court of popular opinion, companies like M$ & $ony who ride roughshod over individual rights in the interest of making ever more money "because they can" deserve to be renamed in a pejorative fashion. If you don't want to, hey that's your call & I'm not calling for everyone to do it if they are not comfortable with it. However, if majority or even a sizable minority take to using the belittling terms in general, it will certainly affect their bottom line as trust in their products will fall.
Spoken by a typical AC, You're part of the idiots I couldn't care less about.
Only idiots are offended. Why should we care?
When Microsoft embraced & extended it's way into an abusive monopoly & then Sony betrayed our trust & installed rootkits on people who were buying music they earned the epithets & mockery they are receiving. "M$" & "$ony" are but pale shadows of the abuse they deserve.
Because, unlike what the russians did with Buran, NASA never installed a fully automated landing system on the shuttle, due in large part to the astronaut corps not wanting to be obsoleted.
Ahh, so no-one need worry about any resistance you oppose if we invade you... I take that back. Given Italy's performance in WW2, resistance will be directly & inversely proportional to the size of the units being deployed. If you are the only one to resist, you will be formidable.
Like France, Belgium, Norway, etc in 1917 & 1944, Malaysia in the 50's, the Philippines in 1944, Korea in 1950, Kuwait in 1991? Open a history book, there are many other examples where foreign interventions were appreciated by the locals. Should the rest of the world have overlooked the genocide in Rwanda because the oppressors were their neighbors?
An ex, cough, current RIAA attourney without any doubt...
Not quite, AFAIK, Anandtech broke the story here and though he did say the Intel was the SSD vendor who was the least affected by the fragmentation bug, he also details that OCZ had already made great progress in resolving it's issues and becoming the SSD price/preformance king.