I think there's a little bit of small-town redneck police officer lurking inside almost every Australian - even the hippies and anti-authoritarians.
Even though you may have been joking, I'm an Aussie and I think it is a good summation. Australia to me is very similar to the bottom half of North America, strong redneck roots in the accent, thinking, attitude... (I don't mean redneck in a bad way necessarily).
I worry sometimes that these demographics are easily swayed by the flashiest advertisement on tv, and in fact rely on little else...
Me too, although I think people truly are becoming more sensitive to propaganda. My theory is that spam has opened the eyes of the general population, along with companies spending a greater percentage on marketing than in previous decades. People seem to develop much better BS detectors because of those things.
Actually, by not voting (just getting your name ticked off) or casting a donkey vote, you are actually casting a vote for the party in power at the time as it is assumed you are happy with the way things are.
To be more precise I would say that you are letting the majority decide for you (by not voting).
I think you have put a lot thought into your beliefs on the matter and you express them well without being insulting.
There are some large jumps in reasoning that I saw, for instance: John O'Neill with apparently vague warnings about an attack on the WTC by Osama. The thing about this is that Osama had already attacked that exact same building some years before, and publicly threatened to do it again many times.
The Saudis-flying-out-early issue was sorted out without any charges being layed by the democrats or anyone else, as far as I know. But I don't know that much about that one, and would be happy to see any _real_ evidence on it (please don't dissapoint me by pointing me to 60 pages of biased writings on democratic underground if you have any evidence).
Something I do agree with you on is that the attack increased support for the republicans. But this in no way means that the repubs planned it, otherwise you must also stay with your logic in this way: Losing US lives in Iraq, and losing control in Iraq increases support for democrats (which it does). Therefore the democrats want that (false, you'd hope).
There are only a few reasons why no one would allow him to pursue what he saw as an urgent threat from a known enemy of America:
1. They didn't believe him. Or,
2. They did a cost/benefit calculation based on the previous OBL-back attack on the WTC and decided that such an attack was worth the cost for the benefits or that the costs of preventing it would outweigh the benefit of stopping it. Or,
3. They did a cost/benefit as above based on the knowledge that the towers would undergo a massive attack capable of destroying them and most everyone inside.
4. They took John's knowledge, combined it with current intelligence, including the hundreds of thousands of other possible terrorists threats around the country, and did their best to prevent further bombings with tight security. Exactly the same as they are doing right now.
I believe in innocent until proven otherwise, and this is no exception. You state that some in the government truly knew this was coming and let it happen for politcal or other reasons. Please provide evidence for it (note that by evidence here I mean real evidence, not conjecture). You can't say "well it is all top secret" because while that may be true, you are still convicting someone without evidence.
Forcing me to speak my opinions via another country is censorship.
How is it censorship if your audience has the exact same acess to your information? (disregarding temporary domain change hassles). If other countries also stopped you transmitting, then I would agree that it is censorship.
It [September 11] turned out the attack was far worse than the car bomb that had been expected but, on the other hand, it was therefore much more useful in generating terror and gave the rulers more power than ever.
Folks, what we have here is your leftist equivalent of the nutbag christian fundamentalists we have on the right.
The parent already pre-empted this response with the analogy of publishing a book in the US if it can't be published in Russia.
Except it is a faulty analogy. The website owner banned from using the Kazakhistan domain is free to move his page to any other tld, making it accessable to the same number of people as before.
In your book analogy, the entire country of Russia is blocked from the content. Clearly very different.
IMHO, no amount of copying and moding over a game deserves hard time, there is a serious priority problem here, especially considering that it can be argued that they didn't do anything wrong at all.
Couldn't you make a similar argument about plain old fraud though? To me copying and selling a console or its software is effectively fraud.
Having said that I do not like the idea of jail for any non-violent crime whatsoever. Unfortunately, I would have trouble backing that up with a solid argument.
Both advocate torture, again with China doing it overtly, but with the US doing it covertly under a host of euphemisms and legal hijinks.
No. One of them advocates torture in your conspiracy filled mind, the other has thousands of _documented_ cases of torture on innocent civillians each year.
I'd be interested to hear what sort of timeframe this would occur in, in your opinion:
Instead, we can push for trade liberalization and hope that their government is gradually undermined by their population's increasing desire for a higher standard of living, including perhaps political liberalization.
Almost as if some large government- or media-induced program is going on to remind us how Evil they are and influence the collective consciousness to be in favor of breaking off relations with the most populous nation on Earth?
I think it's the other way around personally. To this day, China's human rights are still terrible (please don't compare this to the US as it is insulting the citizens who have been abused in China). But western governments on both sides of politics seem powerless and not even interested in stopping that.
Maybe you could send all users a CD via mail. It has a program that displays a number when run. That value is entered into www.bank.com and then the bank site spits back another value. When the user clicks next on their local software the numbers should match.
I agree it was interesting that the actual faulty software product was not named (was it the bank or Outlook displaying links wrongly). And the chair lift analogy is a good one.
My problem is that I understand that there are solutions. Whereas with the chair lift you could add an anti-sway system, you could give bank customers an RSA key, smart card or similar. But it means users who know better than to click a link from OE will have to pay this 'Outlook Express tax' now.
Actually no one has shown intent. To show intent you'd have to establish what was in his mind at the time he commited an act. You have to have an act before you can establish intent.
I agree intent was wrong.
As for evidence, a machine that consistantly makes mistakes in favor of an ally of the person accused establishes means, motive and opportunity.
But how do you tell that they weren't actually errors? Your only evidence seems to be that there were more errors favoring repubs than dems. This is still not valid evidence.
But I wouldn't expect that to be understood by people defending the CEO of a computer company that can't build a computer who's sole purpose is to COUNT BY ONES.
In the world-wide history of voting machines there have been problems and errors. Same with non-electronic. The machines must do much, much more than incrememt a value but feel free to reduce it to 'counting by ones'. I'm sure a typical voting machine developer would really agree.
Sorry I do not know what waterboarding is. If that is the recent debate on sending people to egypt for possible torture then I agree it is bad and as far as I know it has been stopped. Therefore no need for invasion of USA going by my logic.
They are great links, and I do sincerely appreciate the quotes (some of them interesting stuff to someone on the other side of the issue). But my original question still stands, if exit polling is as foolproof as the quotes say it is, why is not used as an official double check?
Note that if you argue it is because it is wrong on occasion, then surely that is enough to stop it being used in any serious argument.
Are they the same thirty thousand civilians GW said have been killed since the invasion?
I haven't looked at what sources Bush used for that recent figure but I would be wary of any hard numbers. After all, you would have to somehow estimate what rate Saddam would have continued torturing people, it may have grown or shrunk.
However, I do believe that state sanctioned torture should be opposed by international force if diplomatic means fail. I don't understand how anyone can disagree with that single sentence in any way.
Slashdot Mirror
I think there's a little bit of small-town redneck police officer lurking inside almost every Australian - even the hippies and anti-authoritarians.
Even though you may have been joking, I'm an Aussie and I think it is a good summation. Australia to me is very similar to the bottom half of North America, strong redneck roots in the accent, thinking, attitude... (I don't mean redneck in a bad way necessarily).
I worry sometimes that these demographics are easily swayed by the flashiest advertisement on tv, and in fact rely on little else...
Me too, although I think people truly are becoming more sensitive to propaganda. My theory is that spam has opened the eyes of the general population, along with companies spending a greater percentage on marketing than in previous decades. People seem to develop much better BS detectors because of those things.
Actually, by not voting (just getting your name ticked off) or casting a donkey vote, you are actually casting a vote for the party in power at the time as it is assumed you are happy with the way things are.
To be more precise I would say that you are letting the majority decide for you (by not voting).
What do you think?
I think you have put a lot thought into your beliefs on the matter and you express them well without being insulting.
There are some large jumps in reasoning that I saw, for instance: John O'Neill with apparently vague warnings about an attack on the WTC by Osama. The thing about this is that Osama had already attacked that exact same building some years before, and publicly threatened to do it again many times.
The Saudis-flying-out-early issue was sorted out without any charges being layed by the democrats or anyone else, as far as I know. But I don't know that much about that one, and would be happy to see any _real_ evidence on it (please don't dissapoint me by pointing me to 60 pages of biased writings on democratic underground if you have any evidence).
Something I do agree with you on is that the attack increased support for the republicans. But this in no way means that the repubs planned it, otherwise you must also stay with your logic in this way: Losing US lives in Iraq, and losing control in Iraq increases support for democrats (which it does). Therefore the democrats want that (false, you'd hope).
There are only a few reasons why no one would allow him to pursue what he saw as an urgent threat from a known enemy of America:
1. They didn't believe him. Or,
2. They did a cost/benefit calculation based on the previous OBL-back attack on the WTC and decided that such an attack was worth the cost for the benefits or that the costs of preventing it would outweigh the benefit of stopping it. Or,
3. They did a cost/benefit as above based on the knowledge that the towers would undergo a massive attack capable of destroying them and most everyone inside.
4. They took John's knowledge, combined it with current intelligence, including the hundreds of thousands of other possible terrorists threats around the country, and did their best to prevent further bombings with tight security. Exactly the same as they are doing right now.
I believe in innocent until proven otherwise, and this is no exception. You state that some in the government truly knew this was coming and let it happen for politcal or other reasons. Please provide evidence for it (note that by evidence here I mean real evidence, not conjecture). You can't say "well it is all top secret" because while that may be true, you are still convicting someone without evidence.
Forcing me to speak my opinions via another country is censorship.
How is it censorship if your audience has the exact same acess to your information? (disregarding temporary domain change hassles). If other countries also stopped you transmitting, then I would agree that it is censorship.
It [September 11] turned out the attack was far worse than the car bomb that had been expected but, on the other hand, it was therefore much more useful in generating terror and gave the rulers more power than ever.
Folks, what we have here is your leftist equivalent of the nutbag christian fundamentalists we have on the right.
The parent already pre-empted this response with the analogy of publishing a book in the US if it can't be published in Russia.
Except it is a faulty analogy. The website owner banned from using the Kazakhistan domain is free to move his page to any other tld, making it accessable to the same number of people as before.
In your book analogy, the entire country of Russia is blocked from the content. Clearly very different.
Top Gear is a great show btw for anyone who is into racing games, mainly because it is not one big infomercial like every other car show.
...most language [function pointers] aren't nearly as fast as C. Pointers to functions in C can give you both high performance and full flexibility...
I get the feeling function pointer speed isn't all that important these days.
99% of the emails replies i receive are top posted. Why try to change something that is such a standard for email?
IMHO, no amount of copying and moding over a game deserves hard time, there is a serious priority problem here, especially considering that it can be argued that they didn't do anything wrong at all.
Couldn't you make a similar argument about plain old fraud though? To me copying and selling a console or its software is effectively fraud.
Having said that I do not like the idea of jail for any non-violent crime whatsoever. Unfortunately, I would have trouble backing that up with a solid argument.
Both advocate torture, again with China doing it overtly, but with the US doing it covertly under a host of euphemisms and legal hijinks.
No. One of them advocates torture in your conspiracy filled mind, the other has thousands of _documented_ cases of torture on innocent civillians each year.
The only reason you here about the Chinese evildoing more is, well because they are "the Enemy".
So you will confirm that you view Chinese and US treatment of human rights about the same?
That was a great post.
I'd be interested to hear what sort of timeframe this would occur in, in your opinion:
Instead, we can push for trade liberalization and hope that their government is gradually undermined by their population's increasing desire for a higher standard of living, including perhaps political liberalization.
Remember, Chinese tourism is state run. They MIGHT. Just MIGHT. Be showing you what they want you to see.
I think you still need to implicate the USA somehow in your post to get mod points though.
sometimes not knowing the truth, or being killed, is the best thing for the country
True but still nearly always immoral.
Almost as if some large government- or media-induced program is going on to remind us how Evil they are and influence the collective consciousness to be in favor of breaking off relations with the most populous nation on Earth?
I think it's the other way around personally. To this day, China's human rights are still terrible (please don't compare this to the US as it is insulting the citizens who have been abused in China). But western governments on both sides of politics seem powerless and not even interested in stopping that.
Maybe you could send all users a CD via mail. It has a program that displays a number when run. That value is entered into www.bank.com and then the bank site spits back another value. When the user clicks next on their local software the numbers should match.
I agree it was interesting that the actual faulty software product was not named (was it the bank or Outlook displaying links wrongly). And the chair lift analogy is a good one.
My problem is that I understand that there are solutions. Whereas with the chair lift you could add an anti-sway system, you could give bank customers an RSA key, smart card or similar. But it means users who know better than to click a link from OE will have to pay this 'Outlook Express tax' now.
Actually no one has shown intent. To show intent you'd have to establish what was in his mind at the time he commited an act. You have to have an act before you can establish intent.
I agree intent was wrong.
As for evidence, a machine that consistantly makes mistakes in favor of an ally of the person accused establishes means, motive and opportunity.
But how do you tell that they weren't actually errors? Your only evidence seems to be that there were more errors favoring repubs than dems. This is still not valid evidence.
But I wouldn't expect that to be understood by people defending the CEO of a computer company that can't build a computer who's sole purpose is to COUNT BY ONES.
In the world-wide history of voting machines there have been problems and errors. Same with non-electronic. The machines must do much, much more than incrememt a value but feel free to reduce it to 'counting by ones'. I'm sure a typical voting machine developer would really agree.
Sorry I do not know what waterboarding is. If that is the recent debate on sending people to egypt for possible torture then I agree it is bad and as far as I know it has been stopped. Therefore no need for invasion of USA going by my logic.
They are great links, and I do sincerely appreciate the quotes (some of them interesting stuff to someone on the other side of the issue). But my original question still stands, if exit polling is as foolproof as the quotes say it is, why is not used as an official double check?
Note that if you argue it is because it is wrong on occasion, then surely that is enough to stop it being used in any serious argument.
Are they the same thirty thousand civilians GW said have been killed since the invasion?
I haven't looked at what sources Bush used for that recent figure but I would be wary of any hard numbers. After all, you would have to somehow estimate what rate Saddam would have continued torturing people, it may have grown or shrunk.
However, I do believe that state sanctioned torture should be opposed by international force if diplomatic means fail. I don't understand how anyone can disagree with that single sentence in any way.
Some on the right are fuktards that...
Your statement speaks for itself.
Forget "intentions", his consequences wouldn't have been so bad.
Some on the right would argue that his consequences would be thousands of civilians still being targeted for toture by Saddam.