Searching your bag is considered searching your person under the law.
Perhaps, but searching your shopping cart is probably not what most readers had in mind when they read "searching your person".
If done against the customer's explicit consent, which must be obtained each and every time they visit the store,...
The contract you signed may state that merely entering the store indicates such consent. Also for those unfamiliar with costco one has to show their membership card at the door to get it. Which may be another mechanism by which you are consenting. Failing to show the card is most likely trespassing.
... it is grounds to sue the store,
Kind of meaningless given that anyone can be sued for anything.
... for the store employee(s) to be arrested,...
Nope, you probably contractually agreed to have merchandize leaving the store inspected.
or, if they lay hands on you or detain you, for the store employee(s) to be laid out or dead for assaulting you and/or attempting to hold you hostage.
They are most likely perfectly entitled to prevent the merchandize from leaving without the contractually agreed upon inspection and direct you to customer support for a full refund.
If you try to force an exit with the merchandize you are most likely the aggressor in any physical person to person altercation that results and the employee the person entitled to self defense.
Costco cannot legally search anyone, nor can any non-LEO (and even LEOs MUST have probable cause). The store's only recourse would be to rescind the customer's membership and ask them not to return if they refuse the search.
Again, contractual agreement to have merchandise inspected. You may leave with inspected merchandise or with a refund.
Sounds like something highly dependent upon a particular state or jurisdiction. Basically it sounds as if the "Castle Doctrine" protection of the home itself has been enlarged to the entire homestead land that the home resides upon.
Even so I would expect certain caveats. Is the stranger trespassing on the property armed for example. Bad news for a lost hunter, perhaps not for a lost hiker.
Many states, including my home state of WV, have "stand your ground" laws where the bar to use deadly force is very low.
My understanding of the concept of "Stand Your Ground" is that it does not define the conditions upon which deadly force may be used. Different concepts, for example the "Castle Doctrine", define such conditions. Under the "Castle Doctrine" a person is by law considered to be in danger of death or severe bodily injury if a stranger forces his way into their home. That forcible entry into the home enables the use of deadly force. What "Stand Your Ground" adds to such concepts is whether the person is obligated to flee. Does the person enabled to use deadly force under the "Castle Doctrine" have to attempt to flee if possible to do so. "Stand Your Ground" merely say that they have no such obligation to flee.
Be aware that "Stand Your Ground" is being grossly misrepresented in the media. Partly through the normal day to day ignorance of the media (*) and partly through politics.
(*) Consider the media's abysmal coverage and discussion of anything computer related. What makes you think they do any better on any other subject matter?
Well technically he still has the right to refuse an unlawful search of his person...
For those unfamiliar with costco they are not searching your person. They ask you to show your receipt and they take a quick look through and under your shopping cart.
Nope. I paid for the products and they have no right to search me. Even at Costco, if the line is too long, I just walk out without letting them search me.
No right to search you? You mean other than the membership agreement you signed that allows you to enter their private property?
Don't confuse you having a right with Costco being polite despite you being an a-hole.
I am not a lawyer and I am only speaking of jurisdiction I am familiar with.
In the US it is usually (always ?) illegal to use deadly force to protect property. There must a threat of death or severe bodily injury to make deadly force legal. Note that certain situations imply by law that such a threat exists unless there is evidence to the contrary, ex stranger forcing their way into your home. Ie the occupant of a home is presumed by law to be acting in self defense.
A weird exception may be deadly force being legal in some jurisdictions during the suppression of a riot. Perhaps there is an implicit assumption that people are in serious danger by the very existence of a riot.
That said, a security guard may be able to use appropriate force to detain/restrain you if there is a reasonable belief that property was stolen. A citizens arrest sort of thing while awaiting the real police to show up.
I think Poles and Slavs, intellectuals, liberals, gays and various other groups would dispute the notion that if you were not a Jew you need not fear for your life under the Nazis. When I toured Dachau there was a display with the various patches indicating the offense of the prisoner, Jew was one of many.
"Collaborating with the Nazis" is purely a western point of view? Only in the sense that some Fins seem to be in denial about history. When your government is secretly recruiting members of your active duty army to join the German Waffen SS you are a collaborator. The fact that you are motivated by the idea of reclaiming lost territory *and* seeking revenge on the Russians does not change this fact. Yes "seeking revenge on Russia". Such a motivation is absolutely exposed by the Waffen SS participation. If Finnish participation had been limited to the Finnish army only fighting to reclaim lost territory then "revenge" would be an unfair claim, but that is not the case. Waffen SS were recruited with the absolute intent of participating in the broader fight outside of formerly Finnish territory and absolutely with the intent to contribute to a German victory over Russia. That is collaboration.
If you read the classic "When Women Stopped Coding" articles it blames personal computers in the home. That boys gravitated towards them but not girls, and the girls were thus less competitive when they started studying CS in college unlike in pre-personal computer decades when they were on an equal footing.
The suggestion is made that computers were marketed towards boys. That is speculation. It has not been shown that high school aged girls had equal interest but were discouraged or if there was some other age/gender trait that made them less interested.
The article I recall reading mentioned a girl who was a math wiz and decided she wanted to study CS. Well maybe math wizes were more equally distributed between the sexes and CS was formerly dominated by such people, and maybe the personal computer opened up CS to non-math wizes so were are comparing two completely different demographics pre and post personal computer, so comparisons are more complicated. While math wizes may naturally be more equally distributed maybe the non-math wizes with computer interests are naturally not so equally distributed. Its a bit of a leap not to consider such factors and just assume it was due to marketing.
If no one gives a shit about who writes functions, then why are women so underrepresented in computing? Do not say it because women don't like programming or engineering, because that's clearly false. Women had much more representation in the industry 30 years ago.
I had a girlfriend who was an actual developer, MS CS, 68K embedded systems. A close female friend with a BS CS was a developer and DB person in the corporate world, now a project leader in such areas. I had a female project leader who although not a developer was quite tech savvy and a good leader/manager, and a gamer. Regrettably these are few and far between. However I think your argument demonstrates a basic failure in statistics. Recall how in your statistics class caveats such as "all other things being equal" were constantly being thrown about. You fail because the workflow of the industry decades ago was radically different.
Decades ago there was a lot more "clerical" work is software development, especially in corporate and government environments. A great-aunt was a punch card operator who took code written on paper by developers and created the punch cards to be fed into the mainframes. It was considered an inefficient use of resources to have an "engineer" create their own punch cards when one could hire a "girl" to do so at a fraction of the cost. This sort of thing contributes to the higher participation of women in the tech industry in the past.
Whether or not there is some inherent bias against coding tasks, a bias that occurs naturally more often in females than in males, is an unanswered question.
It's been declining over the years while the frat boy attitude in the workplace has been going up.
Also read up on causality in that statistics textbook. Frat boy behavior may be the result of a lack of women. Males in isolation deviate from their normal behavior. I'm not 100% sure but I think it has been documented that men typically voluntarily act "better" (self control and self censorship in the less childish sense) when women are around. As a long term participant of the industry I've certainly seen such behavior as the rare female developer joins/leaves the team. Most, like me, thought it good to have women around, that the sausage fest and the stupidity that results is dumb.
If you're perfect, then great. But there are many men who are offended that women would even compete with them, many men who intimidate others especially women, many men who think telling a dirty joke is proper on-the-job conduct, many men who see discrimination but do nothing about it and thus reinforce the status quo.
Substitute "many men" for "some men" and your comment becomes more realistic and less political dogma. Then note that you are merely saying that there are a few a-holes in every large group. Well, yeah.
I'm old enough to remember when people claimed there was no racism in the 70s either.
And I'm old enough to remember being in elementary school during the 70s and that there was no racism between the four white boys (me one of them) who had the desks adjacent to a black boy in a blue collar neighborhood. Racism is largely a generational thing. Most often you were raised that way or you weren't, and for the exceptions its probably far more common for someone who was raised racist to reject it than for someone who was raised without it to embrace it. Racism has been in sharp decline for many decades. As has sexism. My grandmother who had done electronics assembly for Navy aircraft during WW2 was "let go" when the war ended to create a job for a man returning from the war. She may have been able to get a clerical job, like her sister, in a tech company but not anything close to technical work as she had done. Today's issue being crude frat boy jokes demonstrates remarkable progress.
Apologies if I was confusing in the other response but when I referred to what I had previous written I was mostly referring to this post: http://slashdot.org/comments.p..., not necessarily my post to you.
They never invaded the USSR, stopped at the original border.
You are quite selective in your history. You ignore the Finish Waffen SS units.
Wikipedia is your friend.
Funny you mention that. That is were I double checked everything I wrote.
The USSR stole important territory from the Fins which they still hold.
Agreed. The Soviets were absolutely in the wrong for originally invading Finland. However that was not the topic being addressed, the myth of Finland successfully defending itself and knowing how to handle the Russians was. Both wars ended with Finland ceding territory to the Soviets.
(Are you Russian? If so then realize that virtually all you were taught at school is a fabrication.)
The Finns need to do as Germany has done. Admit its defeat. Admit its sins. Not build myths (or as you say, fabrications) to cover up both.
I am not a Russian, the Russians have an entirely different fabrication of events from what I offered.
I am just someone who saw a western documentary on Nazi collaborators. Finland was covered in one episode so I had a basic familiarity with the history. I then went to wikipedia (as you now suggest) to get the details and double check my recollection.
Since you are hinting about my motivations I will share them. I believe it is best not to let people who put on Waffen SS uniforms perpetuate "lies" pretending they were not defeated. Such myths must be challenged. The reality is:
- The Finns fought well and slowed the Russian down but were defeated and ceded territory.
- They grossly compromised their ethics by collaborating with the Nazis to invade Russia. They had prior knowledge of Barbarosa and their retaking of previously ceded territory was part of Barbarosa. They further collaborated with the Nazis by supplying Waffen SS troops that fought in German campaigns against Russia.
- They were again defeated, ceded even more territory, paid reparation, removed border defense and leased still more territory to the Soviets for a Soviet navy base.
- Successfully preserving an "independent" Finland is a myth. The Finnish General Staff admitted the Soviet intentions were always limited, they Soviet plan was only to take part of Finland.
That said, as things turned out, the Fins would have been much better off just giving Stalin what he demanded, even if the demand was unreasonable.
Finland has a very long history of living with Russia on its borders, and unlike our hysterical neighbours in the West and South, we actually know how to communicate with them to defuse conflicts. Comes with being a neutral European state with huge border with Soviet Union that isn't a part of NATO, as well as fighting USSR off twice during 1939-1944 period.
Actually in the 1939-40 Winter War Finland briefly defended itself from a crippled Soviet Army that had its professional officer corp severely purged and replaced by men loyal to Stalin and devoid of military competence. It took the Soviets three months longer than planned to defeat Finland. Finland surrendered more territory to the USSR than the USSR originally demanded before the invasion. 11% of its land and 30% of its economy.
Finland then allied itself with Nazi Germany and participated in the Nazi invasion of the USSR, leading to the Continuation War of 1941-44. Thanks to the Nazi invasion Finland was able to retake the territory it had just surrendered. After fighting the Nazis for several years the Soviets then retook the previously surrendered territory from Finland.
In 1944 Finland was defeated again, was ordered to fight their Nazi allies to remove them from Finland, was ordered to clean vast minefields placed by the Germans -- i.e. remove defenses and make their frontier easily traversed by the Soviets once again, had to surrender additional territory to the USSR beyond what was already surrendered in 1940, and had to lease additional territory to the Soviets so they could have a Naval base on Finish soil.
The idea that Finland successfully fought to maintain its independence is a myth. Members of the Finnish General Staff publicly admitted that they knew the Soviets ambitions in Finland were limited, that the complete conquest of Finnish territory was never a Soviet goal.
Finland's post-war neutrality, it reluctance to ally with the west, was strongly "encouraged" by the Soviets.
Various towns around here must not have gotten the OPSEC memo. For years they have flown banners on main street with local service members names and faces.
Personally I think it is a nice tribute and hope it continues. These service members are at a greater driving their car on the highway than from ISIS. Lets not get all hysterical, which is what ISIS wants.
Having spent a lifetime around pig headed engineers (including myself), this is my reasoning: I think it has everything to do with intelligence, or, at least self perceived intelligence. The smarter someone thinks they are, the less likely they are to listen to others who they think are somehow less intelligent.
Sounds like every day politics not engineering. The far right and the far left both think those who disagree with them must be idiots, when the truth is both the far left and the far right are not nearly as smart as they believe themselves to be. Both want to be the nanny/supervisor, neither is qualified.
You do realize that "level playing field" and "equal opportunity" conflict with "minimal" government and "most local level", right?
No, there is no such conflict. Minimal is in the sense to achieve these goals. What reasonable libertarians and liberals disagree on is what constitutes a level playing field. A libertarian may lean more towards equal opportunity, a liberal more to equal outcomes. The later requires far more gov't involvement. A libertarian would also be less nanny-state'ish. Vax for measles, compulsory, Vax an infant for a STD, optional.
A lot of government programs are trying to help people in bad situations and give them opportunities, and very frequently local governments serve local prejudices.
Not really. The far more common situations is that Washington DC applies a one size fits all solution to problems that contain a high degree of local circumstances. Besides dollars sent to DC to address the situation coming back missing a large chunk of change, the DC money is also ineffectively used since it doesn't consider the local circumstances. Local dollars under local control could be far more effective at addressing the problem.
They're dogmatic. They spend their entire university career learning formulas and recipes (excuse me, algorithms) without questioning them the way physicists or philosophers do...
Perhaps its different overseas but here in the US arguing with professors over algorithms and concepts is hardly uncommon, and discussing the origins of things is sometimes part of this argument. As in that concept/algorithm made more sense back in the day when hardware/software attribute X was true, but its not true any more.
Pick up an operating systems textbook. Some of the most popular start with computers were once this way and this is why operating systems tended to do things a certain way. And the legacy of this persists today. I've seen professors of Intro to CS classes have students do things in extremely arcane obsolete ways to experience the ancient history that has a legacy to this day.
For someone that speaks against dogma and superficial understanding you seem to be strangely practicing what our preach against.
I think it's more common among liberals (which makes me ashamed to call myself a liberal at times) but libertarians have a big problem with vaccines too for different reasons - and Silicon Valley is the kind of place to which libertarians are naturally drawn.
Since it's California and it's filled with both populations, you just have a double-whammy.:\
Most libertarians I know are reasonable libertarians. They want some service and regulations, they just want such to be minimal and to be served by the lowest and most local level of government. Just enough for basic safety, a level playing field, equal opportunity and most importantly accountability to locals. Not social engineering through the tax code or regulations, not consolidation of power in Washington DC and the lack of accountability to locals that results. But I am in California in a tech hub region, Libertarians may be different in Vermont.:-) The more extreme anti-gov libertarians, the ones you seem to be referring to, I can't image many being drawn to California. California is very high regulation, very high gov't involvement in everything, often to a ridiculous level.
I'm not surprised by this. There's a particularly rabid strain of libertarianism that seems to hold anything related to authority in contempt, even when it's bound on sound science. Since "the man" wants them to be vaccinated, libertarians automatically distrust vaccines.
If you look at some of these enclaves of anti-vaxxers you will find that they are generally liberal enclaves, not libertarian enclaves.
Science denial is probably more strongly correlated with politics/emotions not intelligence level. The left and the right merely have different things they are in denial about, different things that touch on their politics and their emotions. And emotions lead people to stand by their beliefs regardless of rational thought and evidence, both on the left and the right.
Slashdot Mirror
Searching your bag is considered searching your person under the law.
Perhaps, but searching your shopping cart is probably not what most readers had in mind when they read "searching your person".
If done against the customer's explicit consent, which must be obtained each and every time they visit the store, ...
The contract you signed may state that merely entering the store indicates such consent. Also for those unfamiliar with costco one has to show their membership card at the door to get it. Which may be another mechanism by which you are consenting. Failing to show the card is most likely trespassing.
... it is grounds to sue the store,
Kind of meaningless given that anyone can be sued for anything.
... for the store employee(s) to be arrested, ...
Nope, you probably contractually agreed to have merchandize leaving the store inspected.
or, if they lay hands on you or detain you, for the store employee(s) to be laid out or dead for assaulting you and/or attempting to hold you hostage.
They are most likely perfectly entitled to prevent the merchandize from leaving without the contractually agreed upon inspection and direct you to customer support for a full refund. If you try to force an exit with the merchandize you are most likely the aggressor in any physical person to person altercation that results and the employee the person entitled to self defense.
Costco cannot legally search anyone, nor can any non-LEO (and even LEOs MUST have probable cause). The store's only recourse would be to rescind the customer's membership and ask them not to return if they refuse the search.
Again, contractual agreement to have merchandise inspected. You may leave with inspected merchandise or with a refund.
Sounds like something highly dependent upon a particular state or jurisdiction. Basically it sounds as if the "Castle Doctrine" protection of the home itself has been enlarged to the entire homestead land that the home resides upon.
Even so I would expect certain caveats. Is the stranger trespassing on the property armed for example. Bad news for a lost hunter, perhaps not for a lost hiker.
Many states, including my home state of WV, have "stand your ground" laws where the bar to use deadly force is very low.
My understanding of the concept of "Stand Your Ground" is that it does not define the conditions upon which deadly force may be used. Different concepts, for example the "Castle Doctrine", define such conditions. Under the "Castle Doctrine" a person is by law considered to be in danger of death or severe bodily injury if a stranger forces his way into their home. That forcible entry into the home enables the use of deadly force. What "Stand Your Ground" adds to such concepts is whether the person is obligated to flee. Does the person enabled to use deadly force under the "Castle Doctrine" have to attempt to flee if possible to do so. "Stand Your Ground" merely say that they have no such obligation to flee.
Be aware that "Stand Your Ground" is being grossly misrepresented in the media. Partly through the normal day to day ignorance of the media (*) and partly through politics.
(*) Consider the media's abysmal coverage and discussion of anything computer related. What makes you think they do any better on any other subject matter?
Well technically he still has the right to refuse an unlawful search of his person ...
For those unfamiliar with costco they are not searching your person. They ask you to show your receipt and they take a quick look through and under your shopping cart.
Nope. I paid for the products and they have no right to search me. Even at Costco, if the line is too long, I just walk out without letting them search me.
No right to search you? You mean other than the membership agreement you signed that allows you to enter their private property?
Don't confuse you having a right with Costco being polite despite you being an a-hole.
I am not a lawyer and I am only speaking of jurisdiction I am familiar with.
In the US it is usually (always ?) illegal to use deadly force to protect property. There must a threat of death or severe bodily injury to make deadly force legal. Note that certain situations imply by law that such a threat exists unless there is evidence to the contrary, ex stranger forcing their way into your home. Ie the occupant of a home is presumed by law to be acting in self defense.
A weird exception may be deadly force being legal in some jurisdictions during the suppression of a riot. Perhaps there is an implicit assumption that people are in serious danger by the very existence of a riot.
That said, a security guard may be able to use appropriate force to detain/restrain you if there is a reasonable belief that property was stolen. A citizens arrest sort of thing while awaiting the real police to show up.
I think Poles and Slavs, intellectuals, liberals, gays and various other groups would dispute the notion that if you were not a Jew you need not fear for your life under the Nazis. When I toured Dachau there was a display with the various patches indicating the offense of the prisoner, Jew was one of many.
"Collaborating with the Nazis" is purely a western point of view? Only in the sense that some Fins seem to be in denial about history. When your government is secretly recruiting members of your active duty army to join the German Waffen SS you are a collaborator. The fact that you are motivated by the idea of reclaiming lost territory *and* seeking revenge on the Russians does not change this fact. Yes "seeking revenge on Russia". Such a motivation is absolutely exposed by the Waffen SS participation. If Finnish participation had been limited to the Finnish army only fighting to reclaim lost territory then "revenge" would be an unfair claim, but that is not the case. Waffen SS were recruited with the absolute intent of participating in the broader fight outside of formerly Finnish territory and absolutely with the intent to contribute to a German victory over Russia. That is collaboration.
If you read the classic "When Women Stopped Coding" articles it blames personal computers in the home. That boys gravitated towards them but not girls, and the girls were thus less competitive when they started studying CS in college unlike in pre-personal computer decades when they were on an equal footing.
The suggestion is made that computers were marketed towards boys. That is speculation. It has not been shown that high school aged girls had equal interest but were discouraged or if there was some other age/gender trait that made them less interested.
The article I recall reading mentioned a girl who was a math wiz and decided she wanted to study CS. Well maybe math wizes were more equally distributed between the sexes and CS was formerly dominated by such people, and maybe the personal computer opened up CS to non-math wizes so were are comparing two completely different demographics pre and post personal computer, so comparisons are more complicated. While math wizes may naturally be more equally distributed maybe the non-math wizes with computer interests are naturally not so equally distributed. Its a bit of a leap not to consider such factors and just assume it was due to marketing.
If no one gives a shit about who writes functions, then why are women so underrepresented in computing? Do not say it because women don't like programming or engineering, because that's clearly false. Women had much more representation in the industry 30 years ago.
I had a girlfriend who was an actual developer, MS CS, 68K embedded systems. A close female friend with a BS CS was a developer and DB person in the corporate world, now a project leader in such areas. I had a female project leader who although not a developer was quite tech savvy and a good leader/manager, and a gamer. Regrettably these are few and far between. However I think your argument demonstrates a basic failure in statistics. Recall how in your statistics class caveats such as "all other things being equal" were constantly being thrown about. You fail because the workflow of the industry decades ago was radically different.
Decades ago there was a lot more "clerical" work is software development, especially in corporate and government environments. A great-aunt was a punch card operator who took code written on paper by developers and created the punch cards to be fed into the mainframes. It was considered an inefficient use of resources to have an "engineer" create their own punch cards when one could hire a "girl" to do so at a fraction of the cost. This sort of thing contributes to the higher participation of women in the tech industry in the past.
Whether or not there is some inherent bias against coding tasks, a bias that occurs naturally more often in females than in males, is an unanswered question.
It's been declining over the years while the frat boy attitude in the workplace has been going up.
Also read up on causality in that statistics textbook. Frat boy behavior may be the result of a lack of women. Males in isolation deviate from their normal behavior. I'm not 100% sure but I think it has been documented that men typically voluntarily act "better" (self control and self censorship in the less childish sense) when women are around. As a long term participant of the industry I've certainly seen such behavior as the rare female developer joins/leaves the team. Most, like me, thought it good to have women around, that the sausage fest and the stupidity that results is dumb.
If you're perfect, then great. But there are many men who are offended that women would even compete with them, many men who intimidate others especially women, many men who think telling a dirty joke is proper on-the-job conduct, many men who see discrimination but do nothing about it and thus reinforce the status quo.
Substitute "many men" for "some men" and your comment becomes more realistic and less political dogma. Then note that you are merely saying that there are a few a-holes in every large group. Well, yeah.
I'm old enough to remember when people claimed there was no racism in the 70s either.
And I'm old enough to remember being in elementary school during the 70s and that there was no racism between the four white boys (me one of them) who had the desks adjacent to a black boy in a blue collar neighborhood. Racism is largely a generational thing. Most often you were raised that way or you weren't, and for the exceptions its probably far more common for someone who was raised racist to reject it than for someone who was raised without it to embrace it. Racism has been in sharp decline for many decades. As has sexism. My grandmother who had done electronics assembly for Navy aircraft during WW2 was "let go" when the war ended to create a job for a man returning from the war. She may have been able to get a clerical job, like her sister, in a tech company but not anything close to technical work as she had done. Today's issue being crude frat boy jokes demonstrates remarkable progress.
Apologies if I was confusing in the other response but when I referred to what I had previous written I was mostly referring to this post: http://slashdot.org/comments.p..., not necessarily my post to you.
They never invaded the USSR, stopped at the original border.
You are quite selective in your history. You ignore the Finish Waffen SS units.
Wikipedia is your friend.
Funny you mention that. That is were I double checked everything I wrote.
The USSR stole important territory from the Fins which they still hold.
Agreed. The Soviets were absolutely in the wrong for originally invading Finland. However that was not the topic being addressed, the myth of Finland successfully defending itself and knowing how to handle the Russians was. Both wars ended with Finland ceding territory to the Soviets.
(Are you Russian? If so then realize that virtually all you were taught at school is a fabrication.)
The Finns need to do as Germany has done. Admit its defeat. Admit its sins. Not build myths (or as you say, fabrications) to cover up both.
I am not a Russian, the Russians have an entirely different fabrication of events from what I offered. I am just someone who saw a western documentary on Nazi collaborators. Finland was covered in one episode so I had a basic familiarity with the history. I then went to wikipedia (as you now suggest) to get the details and double check my recollection.
Since you are hinting about my motivations I will share them. I believe it is best not to let people who put on Waffen SS uniforms perpetuate "lies" pretending they were not defeated. Such myths must be challenged. The reality is:
- The Finns fought well and slowed the Russian down but were defeated and ceded territory.
- They grossly compromised their ethics by collaborating with the Nazis to invade Russia. They had prior knowledge of Barbarosa and their retaking of previously ceded territory was part of Barbarosa. They further collaborated with the Nazis by supplying Waffen SS troops that fought in German campaigns against Russia.
- They were again defeated, ceded even more territory, paid reparation, removed border defense and leased still more territory to the Soviets for a Soviet navy base.
- Successfully preserving an "independent" Finland is a myth. The Finnish General Staff admitted the Soviet intentions were always limited, they Soviet plan was only to take part of Finland.
That said, as things turned out, the Fins would have been much better off just giving Stalin what he demanded, even if the demand was unreasonable.
Very sadly, yes.
Finland had to pay heavy reparations to the Soviets for many years after the war because they dared to prevent the Soviet attack.
No, because they allied with the Nazis and participated in the Nazi invasion of the USSR.
Finland has a very long history of living with Russia on its borders, and unlike our hysterical neighbours in the West and South, we actually know how to communicate with them to defuse conflicts. Comes with being a neutral European state with huge border with Soviet Union that isn't a part of NATO, as well as fighting USSR off twice during 1939-1944 period.
Actually in the 1939-40 Winter War Finland briefly defended itself from a crippled Soviet Army that had its professional officer corp severely purged and replaced by men loyal to Stalin and devoid of military competence. It took the Soviets three months longer than planned to defeat Finland. Finland surrendered more territory to the USSR than the USSR originally demanded before the invasion. 11% of its land and 30% of its economy.
Finland then allied itself with Nazi Germany and participated in the Nazi invasion of the USSR, leading to the Continuation War of 1941-44. Thanks to the Nazi invasion Finland was able to retake the territory it had just surrendered. After fighting the Nazis for several years the Soviets then retook the previously surrendered territory from Finland.
In 1944 Finland was defeated again, was ordered to fight their Nazi allies to remove them from Finland, was ordered to clean vast minefields placed by the Germans -- i.e. remove defenses and make their frontier easily traversed by the Soviets once again, had to surrender additional territory to the USSR beyond what was already surrendered in 1940, and had to lease additional territory to the Soviets so they could have a Naval base on Finish soil.
The idea that Finland successfully fought to maintain its independence is a myth. Members of the Finnish General Staff publicly admitted that they knew the Soviets ambitions in Finland were limited, that the complete conquest of Finnish territory was never a Soviet goal.
Finland's post-war neutrality, it reluctance to ally with the west, was strongly "encouraged" by the Soviets.
Should we have a vagina joke project too?
A software project, absolutely not. But a Broadway show would be OK.
Various towns around here must not have gotten the OPSEC memo. For years they have flown banners on main street with local service members names and faces.
Personally I think it is a nice tribute and hope it continues. These service members are at a greater driving their car on the highway than from ISIS. Lets not get all hysterical, which is what ISIS wants.
And the right thought Occupy was the biggest threat to civilization possible.
Actually the right thought Occupy was a gift. It discredited the calls for strong reform and heavy punishment, giving such calls a wacko fringe taint.
Targeting those with the ability to shoot back seems like a less than cunning plan.
Unless the addresses are in jurisdictions that heavily restrict the private possession of firearms.
Having spent a lifetime around pig headed engineers (including myself), this is my reasoning: I think it has everything to do with intelligence, or, at least self perceived intelligence. The smarter someone thinks they are, the less likely they are to listen to others who they think are somehow less intelligent.
Sounds like every day politics not engineering. The far right and the far left both think those who disagree with them must be idiots, when the truth is both the far left and the far right are not nearly as smart as they believe themselves to be. Both want to be the nanny/supervisor, neither is qualified.
You do realize that "level playing field" and "equal opportunity" conflict with "minimal" government and "most local level", right?
No, there is no such conflict. Minimal is in the sense to achieve these goals. What reasonable libertarians and liberals disagree on is what constitutes a level playing field. A libertarian may lean more towards equal opportunity, a liberal more to equal outcomes. The later requires far more gov't involvement. A libertarian would also be less nanny-state'ish. Vax for measles, compulsory, Vax an infant for a STD, optional.
A lot of government programs are trying to help people in bad situations and give them opportunities, and very frequently local governments serve local prejudices.
Not really. The far more common situations is that Washington DC applies a one size fits all solution to problems that contain a high degree of local circumstances. Besides dollars sent to DC to address the situation coming back missing a large chunk of change, the DC money is also ineffectively used since it doesn't consider the local circumstances. Local dollars under local control could be far more effective at addressing the problem.
They're dogmatic. They spend their entire university career learning formulas and recipes (excuse me, algorithms) without questioning them the way physicists or philosophers do ...
Perhaps its different overseas but here in the US arguing with professors over algorithms and concepts is hardly uncommon, and discussing the origins of things is sometimes part of this argument. As in that concept/algorithm made more sense back in the day when hardware/software attribute X was true, but its not true any more.
Pick up an operating systems textbook. Some of the most popular start with computers were once this way and this is why operating systems tended to do things a certain way. And the legacy of this persists today. I've seen professors of Intro to CS classes have students do things in extremely arcane obsolete ways to experience the ancient history that has a legacy to this day.
For someone that speaks against dogma and superficial understanding you seem to be strangely practicing what our preach against.
And the tired chorus of "Both sides do it!" spreads like a dirge across the land...
So you would prefer to deny and hide that fact? See, you "do it" too. :-)
I think it's more common among liberals (which makes me ashamed to call myself a liberal at times) but libertarians have a big problem with vaccines too for different reasons - and Silicon Valley is the kind of place to which libertarians are naturally drawn.
Since it's California and it's filled with both populations, you just have a double-whammy. :\
Most libertarians I know are reasonable libertarians. They want some service and regulations, they just want such to be minimal and to be served by the lowest and most local level of government. Just enough for basic safety, a level playing field, equal opportunity and most importantly accountability to locals. Not social engineering through the tax code or regulations, not consolidation of power in Washington DC and the lack of accountability to locals that results. But I am in California in a tech hub region, Libertarians may be different in Vermont. :-) The more extreme anti-gov libertarians, the ones you seem to be referring to, I can't image many being drawn to California. California is very high regulation, very high gov't involvement in everything, often to a ridiculous level.
I'm not surprised by this. There's a particularly rabid strain of libertarianism that seems to hold anything related to authority in contempt, even when it's bound on sound science. Since "the man" wants them to be vaccinated, libertarians automatically distrust vaccines.
If you look at some of these enclaves of anti-vaxxers you will find that they are generally liberal enclaves, not libertarian enclaves.
Science denial is probably more strongly correlated with politics/emotions not intelligence level. The left and the right merely have different things they are in denial about, different things that touch on their politics and their emotions. And emotions lead people to stand by their beliefs regardless of rational thought and evidence, both on the left and the right.
Knowledge would have one keep firearms and/or ammo locked. Scenarios such as yours are trivially prevented without infringing upon anyone's rights.