As you know, some people are so stupid they might actually think that they could somehow win money using it. The disclaimer protects them against such idiots. Count yourself lucky you knew better. Imagine if you were the person at the 7-11 buying a pre-packaged muffin in the morning and couldnt figure out the instructions.
dont ever stop smoking. It makes a great anti-depressent. Cheaper than prozac, zoloft and that ilk, safer, and more fun (OOOOOO! Pink Floyd is on the radio!!)
Start their own business's for example. I mean just because its third world and little infrastructure does not mean that there are no computers. Take Nepal for example, one of the poorest countries in the world. They have plenty of computers and computer systems. Cos while people are starving in the rural areas, Westernization is still taking hold. There are offices to book reservations, inventory to track, orders to fill, transactions to record, etc. Even in the world most depressed countries its not all "Trenchtown Rock".
My argument for this computer usage, training etc is that if these people are taught IT Fluency, and brought Open Source, then the opportunity for them to create their own systems, and thus business's becomes much greater. Give them Windows and the Microsoft paradigm, and you create more slave labor potential, and the ability for US based business to infuse the area which non-local (highly paid) middle managment. Nothing spells exploitation like that.
Man that is so disappointing. My dream is to do a similar thing, either in Laos or in this Tibetan village in Nepal.
So cool you went to Laos, I love that place and would go back in a heartbeat to work on something cool like that, but for the right reasons. This one village I stayed in for a while there I just informally taught english at night cos I had made a few friends and they would bring a bottle of Lao Lao and a small textbook and we would just hang out and teach each other.
Magical times.
Man what a bummer. The Lao people are amazing. They deserve so much more.
What you're probably seeing is a bunch of people trying to run Classic. Let OS9 die, for the love of God. Let it die. Don't run Classic apps, they bog the system down. Just let it die.
No classic here, sorry. Not on these machines. Believe me, I understand the significance of a premptible OS with protected memory. Thats why I use linux on my own home systems, and have for years. I am sure that taints my view of my own G4 system I use at work, but thats why I didnt bring up the troubles I have with my own system.
I let the average user, which is Apples target market, speak. They have spoken, they find OS X unusable compared to what they are used to. I do things to help speed them up. They still complain.
Are you sure you havent convinced yourself that its fast? Cos I tell ya, you want responsiveness? Build a Gentoo Linux system on a P4 2.83 ghz using all the processor specific opts. Mac users who spend all their time saying "its fast enough, it just works" woouldnt even know how to react to something that fast and responsive.
But, all my Mac cultbot friends refuse to look at touch/try my Gentoo system. I know its for fear of the bubble of illusion bursting for them. The one that allows them to believe a G4 550mhz machine is faster than a 2.0ghz+ x86 machine.
So, I digress. All the apps they are using are OS X native. They have plenty of ram, we have done clean installs, tossed prefs, zapped pram, made new users. All the crap Apple support suggests. The users still complain.
Throw in things like brilliant X11 [apple.com] support, a desktop graphics subsystem only dreamed about for other OS's now [apple.com], and even a Nightly Phoenix/Firebird build for OSX [mozillazine.org].
Let's see. I have a teacher here that has a nice G4 TiBook. About 2 weeks ago, she got her OS X for teachers promo package. I did a clean install for her, and sent her on her merry way.
Now, a little back story, she has been using Macs for years. Her machine has 512mb ram and a 550mhz G4 processor.
She came into my office today, put the powerbook on the table and said: Can you bring me back down to OS 9? With Jaguar, this machine is dog slow. It takes 20 seconds to even get a menu to drop down. And the beach ball spins for ages.
Etc.
Thing is, this isnt the first time this has happened at my site. In fact, every single user who has upgraded to OS X has complained strongly of speed decreases and productivity problems.
Granted OS X is kinda cool, especially since its based on Unix (my favorite OS paradigm). But the fact that scores of Apples long time users are complaining of performance frustrations, UI issues, and severely techie fixes that baffle the mind of the folks who signed on with Apple because of the "Computer for the rest of us" pitch.
Truth be told, Apple has been pulling this sort of thing throughout my entire career with them (thats a long long time).
The great -- and good, I believe -- White Chief sends us word that he wants to buy our land. But he will reserve us enough that we can live comfortably. This seems generous, since the red man no longer has rights he need respect. It may also be wise, since we no longer need a large country. Once my people covered this land like a flood-tide moving with wind across the shell- littered flats. But that time is gone, and with it the greatness of tribes now almost forgotten.
But I will not mourn the passing of my people. Nor do I blame our white brothers for causing it. We too were perhaps partly to blame. When our young men grow angry at some wrong, real or imagined, they make their faces ugly with black paint. Then their hearts too are ugly and black. They are hard and their cruelty knows no limits. And our old men cannot restrain them.
Let us hope that the wars between the red man and his white brothers will never come again. We would have everything to lose and nothing to gain. Young men may view revenge as gain, even when they lose their own lives. But the old men who stay behind in time of war, mothers with sons to lose -- they know better.
Our great father Washington -- for he must be our father now as well as yours, since [King] George has moved his boundary northward -- our great and good father sends word by his son, who is surely a great chief among his people, that he will protect us if we do what he wants. His brave soldiers will be a strong wall for my people, and his great warships will fill our harbor. Then our ancient enemies to the north -- the Haidas and the Tsimshians -- will no longer frighten our women and old men. Then he will be our father and we will be his children.
But can that ever be? Your God loves your people and hates mine. He puts his strong arm around the white man and leads him by the hand, as a father leads his little boy. He has abandoned his red children. He makes your people stronger every day. Soon they will flood all the land. But my people are an ebb tide, we will never return. No, the white man's God cannot love his red children or he would protect them. Now we are orphans. There is no one to help us.
So how can we be brothers? How can your father be our father, and make us prosper and send us dreams of future greatness? Your God is prejudiced. He came to the white man. We never saw him, never even heard his voice. He gave the white man laws, but he had no word for his red children whose numbers once filled this land as the stars filled the sky.
No, we are two separate races, and we must stay separate. There is little in common between us.
To us the ashes of our fathers are sacred. Their graves are holy ground. But you are wanderers, you leave your fathers' graves behind you, and you do not care.
You religion was written on tables of stone by the iron finger of an angry God, so you would not forget it. The red man could never understand it or remember it. Our religion is in the ways of our forefathers, the dreams of our old men, sent them by the Great Spirit, and the visions of our sachems. And it is written in the hearts of our people.
Your dead forget you and the country of their birth as soon as they go beyond the grave and walk among the stars. They are quickly forgotten and they never return. Our dead never forget this beautiful earth. It is their mother. They always remember and love her rivers, her great mountains, her valleys. They long for the living, who are lonely too and who long for the dead. And their spirits often return to visit and console us.
No, day and night cannot live together.
The red man has always retreated before the advancing white man, as the mist on the mountain slope runs before the morning sun.
So your offer seems fair, and I think my people will accept it and go to the reservation you offer them. We will live apart, and in peace. For the words of the Great White Chief are like the words of nature speaking to my people out of gr
But mine crashes all the time... I lose data left and right.
I was backing up a bunch. realized I had too many files, deleted them, was going to back up, and did a terminal based restart. BAM.. required a reset.. all data gone, no backups.
crap.. and I was having fun...:(
Re:A short history of how the U.S. got into this m
on
4l-j4z333ra 0wn3d
·
· Score: 1
I can understand some people have fears of "colonialism", but it is simply not the way the US works.
hahahahahahahaha.. Surely you jest! Right? You are kidding eh?
Two Questions:
Can you prove it?
Have you travelled much outside of the USA?
Re:A short history of how the U.S. got into this m
on
4l-j4z333ra 0wn3d
·
· Score: 1
Ahhh... Its true.. Thanks.. Normally I am quite sane. I very much appreciate the heads up. Late hours, strange world happenings, are all adding up.
Re:A short history of how the U.S. got into this m
on
4l-j4z333ra 0wn3d
·
· Score: 1
Are you a fuckin moron?
That right wing "anti american" website was founded by the fuckin people who are in power now.
Elliott Abrams Gary Bauer William J. Bennett Jeb Bush
Dick Cheney Eliot A. Cohen Midge Decter Paula Dobriansky Steve Forbes
Aaron Friedberg Francis Fukuyama Frank Gaffney Fred C. Ikle
Donald Kagan Zalmay Khalilzad I. Lewis Libby Norman Podhoretz
Dan Quayle Peter W. Rodman Stephen P. Rosen Henry S. Rowen
Donald Rumsfeld Vin Weber George Weigel Paul Wolfowitz
So while you call me stupid, cos you are an anon idiot. Its fine that you can rant away about your beliefs on why it is right to defend ourselves. but the facts are, these right wing whackos, while I will agree, are Anti American. They are also currently in charge of this country.
I dont see how you can refute this? Do you need more links?
Re:A short history of how the U.S. got into this m
on
4l-j4z333ra 0wn3d
·
· Score: 1
Now instead of being a moron, how about backing up yer verbosity with some facts? or are you a typical conservative who comes to us sans factoid?
Re:A short history of how the U.S. got into this m
on
4l-j4z333ra 0wn3d
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I will add to this if you please. The portion I am adding reads like a conspiracy theory. Its not. It has been documented in many places, including PBS and the White House itself.
I wont go into details here, I will allow one to read the material themselves. You can also watch the video as PBS online is currently hosting a story frontline did about the mess.
In brief:
The Project for the New American Century is a DC based think tank that has imagined a world under complete US military and economic domination (or "freedom" as it were). They have fiddled with and written documents concerning a post cold war world where the USA has become the Worlds Only Superpower and what that means from a Strategic viewpoint.
In the early days, Paul Wolfowitz produced a document that detailed the expansion of the American empire that seemed too radical at the time and was cleaned up and rewritten and stowed away. Over time, and through the most recent Coup by this incredibly radical group of men, this updated document, with the help of the PNAC, became the National Security Strategy Of the United States. Most chilling about this turn of eventls and policy is the new found policy of "pre-emption". Which I think we are seeing now in the creation of the 51st state.
Also chilling (to me anyway) is the fact that this is the "official story", the one being reported by the obviously biased media.
Couldnt have anything to do with propaganda now could it? I mean, are you so FUCKIN stupid you actually believe CNN and the mainstream media?
Sorry. I feel sorry for you, I really do.
I mean even "lefty" PBS is a fuckin cheerleading squad these days. How come? Check out their corporate sponsership. Tell me, is Exxon really gonna want PBS to be "lefty" at a time like this?
You must be one of these self styled armchair general w00t w00t neo-cons! neat!
Re:Concerning "Bush the war mongerer" statements
on
Strike on Iraq
·
· Score: 1
How am I misinformed coward?
Re:Concerning "Bush the war mongerer" statements
on
Strike on Iraq
·
· Score: 1
Time to review:
http://stream.realimpact.net/rihurl.ram?file=web ac tive/demnow/dn20030319.ra&start=1:07:49.0
Get educated! Thanks!!!
Bonus gift! The full text of Robin Cooks reason for resigning from the House of Commons:
Why I Had to Leave Blair's Cabinet This Will be a War Without Support at Home or Agreement Abroad
by ROBIN COOK
I have resigned from the cabinet because I believe that a fundamental principle of Labour's foreign policy has been violated. If we believe in an international community based on binding rules and institutions, we cannot simply set them aside when they produce results that are inconvenient to us.
I cannot defend a war with neither international agreement nor domestic support. I applaud the determined efforts of the prime minister and foreign secretary to secure a second resolution. Now that those attempts have ended in failure, we cannot pretend that getting a second resolution was of no importance.
In recent days France has been at the receiving end of the most vitriolic criticism. However, it is not France alone that wants more time for inspections. Germany is opposed to us. Russia is opposed to us. Indeed at no time have we signed up even the minimum majority to carry a second resolution. We delude ourselves about the degree of international hostility to military action if we imagine that it is all the fault of President Chirac.
The harsh reality is that Britain is being asked to embark on a war without agreement in any of the international bodies of which we are a leading member. Not Nato. Not the EU. And now not the security council. To end up in such diplomatic isolation is a serious reverse. Only a year ago we and the US were part of a coalition against terrorism which was wider and more diverse than I would previously have thought possible. History will be astonished at the diplomatic miscalculations that led so quickly to the disintegration of that powerful coalition.
Britain is not a superpower. Our interests are best protected, not by unilateral action, but by multilateral agreement and a world order governed by rules. Yet tonight the international partnerships most important to us are weakened. The European Union is divided. The security council is in stalemate. Those are heavy casualties of war without a single shot yet being fired.
The threshold for war should always be high. None of us can predict the death toll of civilians in the forthcoming bombardment of Iraq. But the US warning of a bombing campaign that will "shock and awe" makes it likely that casualties will be numbered at the very least in the thousands. Iraq's military strength is now less than half its size at the time of the last Gulf war. Ironically, it is only because Iraq's military forces are so weak that we can even contemplate invasion. And some claim his forces are so weak, so demoralised and so badly equipped that the war will be over in days.
We cannot base our military strategy on the basis that Saddam is weak and at the same time justify pre-emptive action on the claim that he is a seri ous threat. Iraq probably has no weapons of mass destruction in the commonly understood sense of that term - namely, a credible device capable of being delivered against strategic city targets. It probably does still have biological toxins and battlefield chemical munitions. But it has had them since the 1980s when the US sold Saddam the anthrax agents and the then British government built his chemical and munitions factories.
Why is it now so urgent that we should take military action to disarm a military capacity that has been there for 20 years and which we helped to create? And why is it necessary to resort to war this week while Saddam's ambition to complete his weapons programme is frustrated by the presence of UN inspectors?
I have heard it said that Iraq has had not months but 12 years in which to disarm, and our patience is exhausted. Yet it is over 30 years since resolution 242
Slashdot Mirror
As you know, some people are so stupid they might actually think that they could somehow win money using it. The disclaimer protects them against such idiots. Count yourself lucky you knew better. Imagine if you were the person at the 7-11 buying a pre-packaged muffin in the morning and couldnt figure out the instructions.
Directions: Unwrap muffin, place in mouth, chew.
Just a tip:
dont ever stop smoking. It makes a great anti-depressent. Cheaper than prozac, zoloft and that ilk, safer, and more fun (OOOOOO! Pink Floyd is on the radio!!)
1. What does 'consolomodnination' mean?
2. Is that big GAP sale this week?
yeah for sure.. If it wasnt for Apple USB would be completely defunct. Just like Nubus and every other proprietary interface Apple has dreamed up.
Start their own business's for example. I mean just because its third world and little infrastructure does not mean that there are no computers. Take Nepal for example, one of the poorest countries in the world. They have plenty of computers and computer systems. Cos while people are starving in the rural areas, Westernization is still taking hold. There are offices to book reservations, inventory to track, orders to fill, transactions to record, etc. Even in the world most depressed countries its not all "Trenchtown Rock".
My argument for this computer usage, training etc is that if these people are taught IT Fluency, and brought Open Source, then the opportunity for them to create their own systems, and thus business's becomes much greater. Give them Windows and the Microsoft paradigm, and you create more slave labor potential, and the ability for US based business to infuse the area which non-local (highly paid) middle managment. Nothing spells exploitation like that.
Are you American?
Man that is so disappointing. My dream is to do a similar thing, either in Laos or in this Tibetan village in Nepal.
So cool you went to Laos, I love that place and would go back in a heartbeat to work on something cool like that, but for the right reasons. This one village I stayed in for a while there I just informally taught english at night cos I had made a few friends and they would bring a bottle of Lao Lao and a small textbook and we would just hang out and teach each other.
Magical times.
Man what a bummer. The Lao people are amazing. They deserve so much more.
bzzt to you too.
Alas, you are wrong.
What you're probably seeing is a bunch of people trying to run Classic. Let OS9 die, for the love of God. Let it die. Don't run Classic apps, they bog the system down. Just let it die.
No classic here, sorry. Not on these machines. Believe me, I understand the significance of a premptible OS with protected memory. Thats why I use linux on my own home systems, and have for years. I am sure that taints my view of my own G4 system I use at work, but thats why I didnt bring up the troubles I have with my own system.
I let the average user, which is Apples target market, speak. They have spoken, they find OS X unusable compared to what they are used to. I do things to help speed them up. They still complain.
Are you sure you havent convinced yourself that its fast? Cos I tell ya, you want responsiveness? Build a Gentoo Linux system on a P4 2.83 ghz using all the processor specific opts. Mac users who spend all their time saying "its fast enough, it just works" woouldnt even know how to react to something that fast and responsive.
But, all my Mac cultbot friends refuse to look at touch/try my Gentoo system. I know its for fear of the bubble of illusion bursting for them. The one that allows them to believe a G4 550mhz machine is faster than a 2.0ghz+ x86 machine.
So, I digress. All the apps they are using are OS X native. They have plenty of ram, we have done clean installs, tossed prefs, zapped pram, made new users. All the crap Apple support suggests. The users still complain.
Whats yer next theory Einstein?
Throw in things like brilliant X11 [apple.com] support, a desktop graphics subsystem only dreamed about for other OS's now [apple.com], and even a Nightly Phoenix/Firebird build for OSX [mozillazine.org].
Let's see. I have a teacher here that has a nice G4 TiBook. About 2 weeks ago, she got her OS X for teachers promo package. I did a clean install for her, and sent her on her merry way.
Now, a little back story, she has been using Macs for years. Her machine has 512mb ram and a 550mhz G4 processor.
She came into my office today, put the powerbook on the table and said: Can you bring me back down to OS 9? With Jaguar, this machine is dog slow. It takes 20 seconds to even get a menu to drop down. And the beach ball spins for ages.
Etc.
Thing is, this isnt the first time this has happened at my site. In fact, every single user who has upgraded to OS X has complained strongly of speed decreases and productivity problems.
Granted OS X is kinda cool, especially since its based on Unix (my favorite OS paradigm). But the fact that scores of Apples long time users are complaining of performance frustrations, UI issues, and severely techie fixes that baffle the mind of the folks who signed on with Apple because of the "Computer for the rest of us" pitch.
Truth be told, Apple has been pulling this sort of thing throughout my entire career with them (thats a long long time).
Oh shut the fuck up wanker yerself. Stop looking the gift horse in the mouth.
you dumb fuck..
RMS may not be palatable to your oh so cozy free software lovin ass, but he is the *root* of your free software loving ass.
Could be IBM.. Ya never know about that shit...
I was at the NW Linuxfest last week and saw SCO there and was pretty much like: WTF are you doing here?
I mean, I hate thinking like that, but I just really resent the audacity of their little Swan Song .
The buddha taught that everything is interdependant. So if a butterfly farts in mexico and earthquake is indeed possible in the Tibetan plateu.
tr00f!
Its the American WAY!!
The great -- and good, I believe -- White Chief sends us word that he wants to buy our land. But he will reserve us enough that we can live comfortably. This seems generous, since the red man no longer has rights he need respect. It may also be wise, since we no longer need a large country. Once my people covered this land like a flood-tide moving with wind across the shell- littered flats. But that time is gone, and with it the greatness of tribes now almost forgotten.
But I will not mourn the passing of my people. Nor do I blame our white brothers for causing it. We too were perhaps partly to blame. When our young men grow angry at some wrong, real or imagined, they make their faces ugly with black paint. Then their hearts too are ugly and black. They are hard and their cruelty knows no limits. And our old men cannot restrain them.
Let us hope that the wars between the red man and his white brothers will never come again. We would have everything to lose and nothing to gain. Young men may view revenge as gain, even when they lose their own lives. But the old men who stay behind in time of war, mothers with sons to lose -- they know better.
Our great father Washington -- for he must be our father now as well as yours, since [King] George has moved his boundary northward -- our great and good father sends word by his son, who is surely a great chief among his people, that he will protect us if we do what he wants. His brave soldiers will be a strong wall for my people, and his great warships will fill our harbor. Then our ancient enemies to the north -- the Haidas and the Tsimshians -- will no longer frighten our women and old men. Then he will be our father and we will be his children.
But can that ever be? Your God loves your people and hates mine. He puts his strong arm around the white man and leads him by the hand, as a father leads his little boy. He has abandoned his red children. He makes your people stronger every day. Soon they will flood all the land. But my people are an ebb tide, we will never return. No, the white man's God cannot love his red children or he would protect them. Now we are orphans. There is no one to help us.
So how can we be brothers? How can your father be our father, and make us prosper and send us dreams of future greatness? Your God is prejudiced. He came to the white man. We never saw him, never even heard his voice. He gave the white man laws, but he had no word for his red children whose numbers once filled this land as the stars filled the sky.
No, we are two separate races, and we must stay separate. There is little in common between us.
To us the ashes of our fathers are sacred. Their graves are holy ground. But you are wanderers, you leave your fathers' graves behind you, and you do not care.
You religion was written on tables of stone by the iron finger of an angry God, so you would not forget it. The red man could never understand it or remember it. Our religion is in the ways of our forefathers, the dreams of our old men, sent them by the Great Spirit, and the visions of our sachems. And it is written in the hearts of our people.
Your dead forget you and the country of their birth as soon as they go beyond the grave and walk among the stars. They are quickly forgotten and they never return. Our dead never forget this beautiful earth. It is their mother. They always remember and love her rivers, her great mountains, her valleys. They long for the living, who are lonely too and who long for the dead. And their spirits often return to visit and console us.
No, day and night cannot live together.
The red man has always retreated before the advancing white man, as the mist on the mountain slope runs before the morning sun.
So your offer seems fair, and I think my people will accept it and go to the reservation you offer them. We will live apart, and in peace. For the words of the Great White Chief are like the words of nature speaking to my people out of gr
....For tonight.. When I sleep like a baby, resting assured that you got modded down for being an idiot.
But mine crashes all the time... I lose data left and right.
:(
I was backing up a bunch. realized I had too many files, deleted them, was going to back up, and did a terminal based restart. BAM.. required a reset.. all data gone, no backups.
crap.. and I was having fun...
I can understand some people have fears of "colonialism", but it is simply not the way the US works.
hahahahahahahaha.. Surely you jest! Right? You are kidding eh?
Two Questions:
Can you prove it?
Have you travelled much outside of the USA?
Ahhh... Its true.. Thanks.. Normally I am quite sane. I very much appreciate the heads up. Late hours, strange world happenings, are all adding up.
Are you a fuckin moron?
That right wing "anti american" website was founded by the fuckin people who are in power now.
Scroll to the bottom of this page
Here, I will list them for you:
Elliott Abrams Gary Bauer William J. Bennett Jeb Bush
Dick Cheney Eliot A. Cohen Midge Decter Paula Dobriansky Steve Forbes
Aaron Friedberg Francis Fukuyama Frank Gaffney Fred C. Ikle
Donald Kagan Zalmay Khalilzad I. Lewis Libby Norman Podhoretz
Dan Quayle Peter W. Rodman Stephen P. Rosen Henry S. Rowen
Donald Rumsfeld Vin Weber George Weigel Paul Wolfowitz
So while you call me stupid, cos you are an anon idiot. Its fine that you can rant away about your beliefs on why it is right to defend ourselves. but the facts are, these right wing whackos, while I will agree, are Anti American . They are also currently in charge of this country.
I dont see how you can refute this? Do you need more links?
Let me link you again idiot:
PNAC
NSS
Now instead of being a moron, how about backing up yer verbosity with some facts? or are you a typical conservative who comes to us sans factoid?
I will add to this if you please. The portion I am adding reads like a conspiracy theory. Its not. It has been documented in many places, including PBS and the White House itself.
I wont go into details here, I will allow one to read the material themselves. You can also watch the video as PBS online is currently hosting a story frontline did about the mess.
In brief:
The Project for the New American Century is a DC based think tank that has imagined a world under complete US military and economic domination (or "freedom" as it were). They have fiddled with and written documents concerning a post cold war world where the USA has become the Worlds Only Superpower and what that means from a Strategic viewpoint.
In the early days, Paul Wolfowitz produced a document that detailed the expansion of the American empire that seemed too radical at the time and was cleaned up and rewritten and stowed away. Over time, and through the most recent Coup by this incredibly radical group of men, this updated document, with the help of the PNAC, became the National Security Strategy Of the United States. Most chilling about this turn of eventls and policy is the new found policy of "pre-emption". Which I think we are seeing now in the creation of the 51st state.
Also chilling (to me anyway) is the fact that this is the "official story", the one being reported by the obviously biased media.
Anyway.. some more links..
CBC.ca's take.
More Canadian Insight
The Frontline Special
Couldnt have anything to do with propaganda now could it? I mean, are you so FUCKIN stupid you actually believe CNN and the mainstream media?
Sorry. I feel sorry for you, I really do.
I mean even "lefty" PBS is a fuckin cheerleading squad these days. How come? Check out their corporate sponsership. Tell me, is Exxon really gonna want PBS to be "lefty" at a time like this?
I doubt it.
Ok Coward!!
You must be one of these self styled armchair general w00t w00t neo-cons! neat!
How am I misinformed coward?
Time to review:
http://stream.realimpact.net/rihurl.ram?file=web ac tive/demnow/dn20030319.ra&start=1:07:49.0
Get educated! Thanks!!!
Bonus gift! The full text of Robin Cooks reason for resigning from the House of Commons:
Why I Had to Leave Blair's Cabinet
This Will be a War Without Support at Home or Agreement Abroad
by ROBIN COOK
I have resigned from the cabinet because I believe that a fundamental principle of Labour's foreign policy has been violated. If we believe in an international community based on binding rules and institutions, we cannot simply set them aside when they produce results that are inconvenient to us.
I cannot defend a war with neither international agreement nor domestic support. I applaud the determined efforts of the prime minister and foreign secretary to secure a second resolution. Now that those attempts have ended in failure, we cannot pretend that getting a second resolution was of no importance.
In recent days France has been at the receiving end of the most vitriolic criticism. However, it is not France alone that wants more time for inspections. Germany is opposed to us. Russia is opposed to us. Indeed at no time have we signed up even the minimum majority to carry a second resolution. We delude ourselves about the degree of international hostility to military action if we imagine that it is all the fault of President Chirac.
The harsh reality is that Britain is being asked to embark on a war without agreement in any of the international bodies of which we are a leading member. Not Nato. Not the EU. And now not the security council. To end up in such diplomatic isolation is a serious reverse. Only a year ago we and the US were part of a coalition against terrorism which was wider and more diverse than I would previously have thought possible. History will be astonished at the diplomatic miscalculations that led so quickly to the disintegration of that powerful coalition.
Britain is not a superpower. Our interests are best protected, not by unilateral action, but by multilateral agreement and a world order governed by rules. Yet tonight the international partnerships most important to us are weakened. The European Union is divided. The security council is in stalemate. Those are heavy casualties of war without a single shot yet being fired.
The threshold for war should always be high. None of us can predict the death toll of civilians in the forthcoming bombardment of Iraq. But the US warning of a bombing campaign that will "shock and awe" makes it likely that casualties will be numbered at the very least in the thousands. Iraq's military strength is now less than half its size at the time of the last Gulf war. Ironically, it is only because Iraq's military forces are so weak that we can even contemplate invasion. And some claim his forces are so weak, so demoralised and so badly equipped that the war will be over in days.
We cannot base our military strategy on the basis that Saddam is weak and at the same time justify pre-emptive action on the claim that he is a seri ous threat. Iraq probably has no weapons of mass destruction in the commonly understood sense of that term - namely, a credible device capable of being delivered against strategic city targets. It probably does still have biological toxins and battlefield chemical munitions. But it has had them since the 1980s when the US sold Saddam the anthrax agents and the then British government built his chemical and munitions factories.
Why is it now so urgent that we should take military action to disarm a military capacity that has been there for 20 years and which we helped to create? And why is it necessary to resort to war this week while Saddam's ambition to complete his weapons programme is frustrated by the presence of UN inspectors?
I have heard it said that Iraq has had not months but 12 years in which to disarm, and our patience is exhausted. Yet it is over 30 years since resolution 242