Are you really suggesting that the measures taken in Boston over the last 24 hours are not temporary?
No, you don't find that in anything I said.
I agree completely that the permanence of the PATRIOT act is a stain on this country, but then I'd not have said "it's refreshing seeing an act of terror be treated as the jurisdiction of law enforcement" if I didn't see this as something different.
I think you and the other responder, who are suggesting that there's anything relevent about other security measures becoming permanent, need to review what's happening again and ask yourself if it's really that likely that temporary and quite possibly necessary restrictions of the type we're seeing in Boston could actually be made permanent, even if Obama was the dictator Glenn Beck says he is.
Do I think that Bostonians will be forced to stay in their houses permanently? No, of course not.
Do I think that we might see another patriot act come out of this (by whatever name) and that it might remove yet more freedoms from the American people? Yes, I think it's possible though I certainly hope not.
No, it's a temporary thing, based on the desire to apprehend two people considered extremely dangerous. If these people were Newtown style shooters - killing people out of mental instability rather than an ideological goal (and who knows, it's improbably but that might still be the case) and their exact whereabouts were unknown, I'd expect a similar reaction.
Terror? No, you're giving in to it if, after these guys are dealt with, you institute permanent or pseudo-temporary security restrictions that affect everyone, or if you wildly attack foreign countries simply because they have tenuous links to a terrorist attack, and if you, yourself, refuse to board a plane or run in a marathon or take a job in a high building or panic upon hearing about a Islamic outreach center promoting peace being built half a mile away from the site of an Islamic terrorist attack, or refuse to step in a British pub, or British bus, or British train station, or...
This isn't a case where fear is being used to shut down Boston, it's a case where a law enforcement process is temporarily having that affect. It's not permanent, it's not something unique to terrorism enforcement (in fact, it's refreshing seeing an act of terror be treated as the jurisdiction of law enforcement), and it's probably what has to be done right now.
Most dictators put temporary measures in place as well, using whatever current emergency happens to suit them as a justification.
The Patriot Act was supposed to be temporary as well.
So long as the actions in Boston are recommended and not required I don't have a problem with them and, if I were there, I would most likely follow them...but they should be voluntary.
The ratio of crappy versus good cops seems to go up when you're dealing with rent-a-cops and security, yes.
OK, just stop this bullshit now.
MIT Campus Police are real police, recruited only from among real police departments, with lots of experience required before they can even apply to the department.
After noting the higher "efficiencies" of privatizing education, Adam Smith still concludes that a more broadly educated public through public education (even at the expense of wasting a bit more money on less-motivated students) is ultimately for the public good.
The current school system in the US is a bloated government monopoly, indifferent to competing models of schooling. You pay for it through taxes whether you send your kids to public school, private school, or if you homeschool them (or even if you don't have kids at all). There are alternatives to public school in the US, but the government doesn't care. They get their money, even if you shell out for private school or quit your job to homeschool.
At the minimum, parents should receive vouchers equivalent in value to what the local public school system pays per pupil, vouchers that could be redeemed at private schools, or used for homeschooling expenses. This would put real pressure on crappy public schools to reform themselves or face starvation, unlike the misguided "No Child Left Behind Act".
Because private university works so well right? Very inexpensive and available to everyone who qualifies without going into massive debt. Yes, extending that down to grade school level is an excellent idea !!
Yeah, health care should definitely be eliminated as an employer benefit. That's what's caused the entire healthcare debacle in the first place: employers pay for health because it's a pretax benefit. You end up to a place where "insurance" just means paying for everything, and has no meaning anymore. And also hugely expensive.
Buy your own health insurance for cheap (for the small chance you'll have a heart attack or other catastrophic health care problem that a few percent of the population have). For the other stuff (colds and whatnot), just pay out of pocket. It would be cheap if everyone didn't have Cadillac health programs.
Perhaps you would care to list a few places where people can buy (useful) health insurance 'for cheap'?
The culture of fast and easy everyday litigation, health care companies and, more than anything else, brainwashed people thinking that a market driven, completely unregulated system is better for people than a single payer system is what caused the health care crisis.
Most of the people fighting on the North's side were Chinese.
There were about 600,000 South Koreans, backed up by 300,000 Americans and about 15,000 British fighting against only about 250,000 North Koreans.... but 1.3million Chinese, and about 25,000 Russians.
The Korean war had very little to do with Korea vs. Korea, it was all about the West vs. Communism.
It happened because after World War II, when Japan was kicked out of Korea, the US and Russia decided to split it up, taking part of it each.
The Koreas never split and fought because of any inherent distaste for each other, but because of post-World War II, cold war politics. The Koreans never got to have a say in their division.
As such, North Koreans killing South Koreans in the Korean war was entirely about being forced into it by the great superpowers - the US vs. Russia/China than it was because of any inherent dislike amongst the Korean people.
I agree with you on all points but...at the same time there were nonetheless Koreans killing Koreans regardless of whether they wanted to or not.
Before it was...encouraged at least if not forced, as you say, by the powers fighting over capitalism and communism (agree with you completely on that point by the way) where today it would be the 'leaders' of North Korea forcing their people to fight / kill Southerners and vice versa.
The people actually doing the fighting have very little say in the matter of who they are fighting.
I know the story about the artillery within range of Seoul makes a good scare piece, but there's zero chance they will be wantonly killing all the South Koreans just because it's technically a separate country.
Because they didn't kill any South Koreans in the Korean war right?
You are starting to understand how they feel about you. That is the real problem here. They can't just abandon their long range nuclear weapons programme because it is the only thing protecting them. They have to play this dangerous game.
I don't know what the solution is. I know what it isn't though: military intervention.
You must be joking.
The US wouldn't give a flying fuck about North Korea if they weren't actively testing nuclear weapons and delivery mechanisms, not to mention loudly threatening every western interest in reach.
And what exactly to do you propose as an alternative to military intervention?
On the other side of the scale is an extremely weighty counter-question: Can the USA afford another ground invasion and the regime change + nation building that would follow?
The answer to that is unequivocally "No"
It's no more 'no' than any other war the US has gotten involved with.
My point is that the longer we wait to shut NK down, the higher the cost (in every way) is going to be.
Compared to the farcical Iraq war, I think that taking out NK now is not only fully justified but is actually unavoidably necessary.
With regard to nation building...the US probably turns a profit on that normally but in this case I suspect the remains of NK would be handed to China instead.
North Korea has been waving their gun around for a long time. Even though you may not care about this from an American perspective, NK has for decades been fully capable of launching devastating attacks on major South Korean population centers (which don't require intercontinental long range missiles). Outside the perspective of "only American lives matter," NK's longer range weapons don't fundamentally change the diplomatic situation: they are still, as they have always been, capable of going out with an unacceptable suicidal bang, simply continuing the same decades-long tense standoff (in order to continue, on their side, receiving aid money/supplies as appeasement). NK's current round of bluster is really nothing new; and, while there is no certainty in dealing with madmen, there is also no positive reason to expect that NK's actual policies (of waving a gun with their finger on the trigger, but stopping short of anything beyond warning shots) have changed.
I don't think that only American lives matter. My point is that the longer we wait, the more 'bang' NK's suicide will generate.
They are not moving in any positive direction and I have no reason to believe that waiting longer will benefit anyone but Kim.
I also don't call sinking a SK ship or shelling SK islands to be warning shots.
It's a good question, but I feel it's an odd one for a Slashdotter to have posted.
1.) The United States is a part of an international community that would look down upon us for taking aggressive and provocative measures, even toward a nutcase. (Is he a nutcase if he becomes a hero to his people by standing up to the US? There is a reason why he is doing what he is doing.)
Even if we assume he is not a nutcase, he has stated that he is willing to kill potentially millions of people (ie Tokyo) with nuclear weapons.
I find it interesting that you think that it's the US that is taking 'aggressive and provocative measures' when NK has twice recently actually attacked SK, not to mention threatening everyone else within range.
2.) North Korea and China are allies, at this point, and it would be prudent to make sure that is not the case if the US must take action.
China will not go to war to protect North Korea. China is all about money now and their money comes from the west.
Unfortunately, patience is a virtue to be held until the last possible moment before something terrible happens. Although patience takes time, it gives you time that you could use to prepare for a terrible moment.
Patience is fine if there is no urgency. At some point waiting becomes counter-productive and allows the enemy to make gains that are not in anyone's best interest.
If, for example, we had attacked NK before they had nuclear weapons, we would have removed a risk that we currently have to face. If we had, for another example, attacked NK a couple of weeks ago, we would not now face the risk of their mobile hidden launching platforms.
The patience that you advise only benefits the (self proclaimed) enemy.
If the US had acted too quickly in World War II, we might not have had the manufacturing capability that we had. True we were a sleeping giant, but there are 3,000,000 British.303 rounds in the hull of the Lusitania, which speak that we were not such a sleeping giant. So, now let us appear to sleep.
You have to ask yourself...what is the cost of not going to war against North Korea now.
Do you want to wait to be certain that he has not only nuclear capability and also medium range missile capability but the ability to launch medium range missiles with nuclear warheads (which may not currently be the case) ?
I think that it's probably a move meant to give the North Koreans a chance to back down and declare 'victory' to their own people so that the crisis can end before things become unpredictable.
Even if the US wanted a war with North Korea this would not be the time. A war like that takes months of planning and logistics if it's going to go well. The US and South Korea could defeat North Korea over the next couple of weeks if necessary, but at what cost?
You need to look at the cost of not going to war as well.
Would you like to wait, perhaps, until North Korea is testing their Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile equivalents?
NK is a bully child in the playground. Fists can be ignored but when he pulls out a knife you have to do something about him...before he pulls out a gun the next time and starts shooting.
The only exception I can think of is a prohibition on people who move from company A to company B, contacting their co-workers in company A, in their capacity as an employee of company B. This could be considered in improper use of that person's professional contacts at company A.
US (and other developed, educated, industrialized countries) workers should not have to accept a drastic reduction of standard of living and safety of the workplace so that the owners of companies can make more money.
That's ok. Your acceptance isn't required.
Unfortunately in all probability you are right and people like you will continue to fuck up the American standard of living under the short sighted and narrow minded vastly mistaken belief that corporate profits and the right to carry guns are all that matters.
Like public education?
The US spends more per student adjusted for standard of living (PPP) than all but a handful of countries and it gets a relatively weak educational outcome for that money spent.
When you have a system that is necessary but doesn't work correctly you fix it..you don't just shut it off.
The US should be looking at the educational (and health) systems that work best and modeling itself after them...but oh wait..that would be socialist and therefore must be bad.
And what's the point of all your other nonsense, if the US doesn't have an economy to support all the stuff you want? My approach keeps and strengthens that economy. Your approach loses that economy and turns the US into another Ottoman empire, no called something like the "sick man of the west" that everyone would be waiting on to croak.
You haven't answered the vast majority of my 'nonsense' comments I made on your original post. It seems that you are very good at spouting right wing corporate republican bullshit but not very good at addressing individual points made against it.
Your approach results in an economy where only the major shareholders of corporations make money and the rest of the population slides into decline, eventually being unable to afford to buy the products and services being sold by the very corporations that you support so blindly.
You also need to consider the effect of outsourcing manufacturing on the companies that you love so well. Companies that give their designs and technology to competing countries who copy and sell the same product back for lower than what they're charging the original company to start with will eventually be driven out of business.
What is the long term effect on American companies where the CEOs sell off proprietary technology for great short term profits (resulting in huge bonuses for themselves of course)?
What is the benefit of increasing the profits of American companies who outsource R&D to India (for example), their manufacturing to China (for example) and their profits to the Bahamas (for example) ?
I for one am for protecting the standard of living that our recent forefathers fought for.
Then implement my suggestions. That what will work.
Your suggestions do not, in the long run, support any standard of living for anyone but the extremely rich. Your suggestions move us backward towards the middle ages with an ignorant working class and a privileged elite.
America has many problems that need to be fixed but reducing the vast majority of the population to serfs is not going to help anyone but the very small percentage of people at the very top.
I am a reasonably successful small business owner who was born into a very poor family that relied on the food stamps, welfare and free education that you scorn to enable me to avoid a life of unskilled labor to where I am today - paying taxes and supporting the society that made it possible for me to improve my situation in life and be in a position to argue against people like yourself who can't see further than their next paycheck and the taxes that would be taken out of it.
At first I thought you were being ironic. Then somewhat beyond belief I realized that you weren't.
US (and other developed, educated, industrialized countries) workers should not have to accept a drastic reduction of standard of living and safety of the workplace so that the owners of companies can make more money.
I'm just saying the last 30 years have been a superating wound on the middle class with no end in site, and our government is about to cut the social safety net completely away leaving the poorest and least able to take care of themselves without means to live.
I have a somewhat bitter solution here. Gut US spending everywhere so that the federal budget isn't a boat anchor on US competitiveness. Second, in addition to that, seriously cut back on anything that makes US workers more expensive. This includes environmental and worker safety regulation as well as some cutting of those "safety nets", particularly Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid (both which greatly harm labor competitiveness in the US).
Like public education? Certainly that makes American workers more expensive, this whole education thing. In fact, since we're cutting public education and we're removing health and safety laws we can let children work again say from the age that they can walk or so. Can reduce the cost of unskilled labor right down to south Asian levels in about five years that way right?
If you're going to cut Medicare/Medicaid you might as well stop paying social security benefits to the old while you're at it, since that system is already more or less bankrupt. Hell with it let's just off all the folks who can't work just like Hitler's Nazi Germany. Save a lot of money that way and we'll be more competitive against cheap ignorant foreign child labor.
The focus here is on cost reduction of employment which means that some regulations may be retained just by changing how the business is required to report things to a less expensive method. But some other regulations should just be cut back or dropped such as weakening threshold limits for chemicals in the workplace.
That's a start but you can really cut costs by eliminating all health and safety regulation and after all...that's the focus - to save money for corporations, not to ensure any standard of living for the workers.
In addition, drop minimum wage substantially. I'd favor getting rid of it altogether so that the US isn't spending money at all on that particular regulation. Remember that the actual minimum wage is always $0 per hour. Anything above that is a win for your economy.
Yes the economy is certainly more important than having a sub-class of people who cannot afford to live. No doubt we can bring back indentured labor too - oh hell and slavery too because that was GREAT for the economy!!
Strip out prepaid medical care and elective medical care as a requirement of health insurance. Reverse Obamacare and get employers out of the health insurance business.
An excellent idea then we can be just like India with no healthcare at all for the poor. The rampant diseases might come back though and keep in mind that your kids will no longer be protected by herd immunity so you'll be putting your own family at risk but hell, that's a small price to pay for the MONEY WE WOULD SAVE!
And finally, I suggest growing up and reducing your expectations. The fundamental problem is that the pool of labor for global business has increased by a factor of several. Most of those people will work for much less than developed world workers do. Similarly, regulations are much less stringent leading to the greatest economic migrations of capital of all time.
Yes, why should hard working people have any expectations of earning a decent wage and having some minimum standard of living that includes education and
In other words: Cyberbunker is not currently under assault by police, and we have only their word that they ever have been. I suspect that at one time they were successful in having visiting cops think nobody was home by being real quiet and quickly turning off all the lights.
You mean your police don't just give up and go away when faced with a bunch of geeks with plastic lightsabers?
Even if you were to accept and trust Nokia (and Opera, etc) and the people working for them to intercept and re-encrypt your supposedly secure traffic without keeping any sensitive information, their servers become targets for anyone who might want to get such information.
The more people sending sensitive information through the servers, the more interesting the servers become to 'the bad guys'.
When they're interesting enough, they will be compromised.
In your haste to bold the word "could", you seemed to have skipped over the qualifier "reasonably". Read a little closer.
'Reasonably' is subjective, 'could' is not. Analyze a little better.
Subjective or not, it's still a qualifier, which clearly indicates it does not refer to every person alive. As I said, read a little closer.
And I'm saying that it could apply to anyone alive because 'reasonable' can be twisted however one wishes because 'reasonable' is subjective.
There aren't many people alive over the age of twenty who have not 'resorted to lawlessness' in some minor way at the very least in their lives.
Peaceful people legally demonstrating were investigated, harassed and eventually smashed because they were going up against (for lack of a better word) the establishment. This should not be the way things work in a country that is supposed to be free.
You will be an interesting foreigner. With or without the internet, this gives you an edge.
It's true - and the poorer the country, the more 'interesting' you become...especially if you have enough to drive around in a luxury car and throw cash around in the nightclubs.
Of course you probably won't get a woman that actually cares about you or stays with you for longer than it takes to get papers so don't expect anything more.
Slashdot Mirror
The singular of anecdote is "stop posting anecdotes like theyre statistically relevant".
Anything greater than zero is relevant against a binary statement.
Don't bother me with nonsense.
Are you really suggesting that the measures taken in Boston over the last 24 hours are not temporary?
No, you don't find that in anything I said.
I agree completely that the permanence of the PATRIOT act is a stain on this country, but then I'd not have said "it's refreshing seeing an act of terror be treated as the jurisdiction of law enforcement" if I didn't see this as something different.
I think you and the other responder, who are suggesting that there's anything relevent about other security measures becoming permanent, need to review what's happening again and ask yourself if it's really that likely that temporary and quite possibly necessary restrictions of the type we're seeing in Boston could actually be made permanent, even if Obama was the dictator Glenn Beck says he is.
Do I think that Bostonians will be forced to stay in their houses permanently? No, of course not.
Do I think that we might see another patriot act come out of this (by whatever name) and that it might remove yet more freedoms from the American people? Yes, I think it's possible though I certainly hope not.
No, it's a temporary thing, based on the desire to apprehend two people considered extremely dangerous. If these people were Newtown style shooters - killing people out of mental instability rather than an ideological goal (and who knows, it's improbably but that might still be the case) and their exact whereabouts were unknown, I'd expect a similar reaction.
Terror? No, you're giving in to it if, after these guys are dealt with, you institute permanent or pseudo-temporary security restrictions that affect everyone, or if you wildly attack foreign countries simply because they have tenuous links to a terrorist attack, and if you, yourself, refuse to board a plane or run in a marathon or take a job in a high building or panic upon hearing about a Islamic outreach center promoting peace being built half a mile away from the site of an Islamic terrorist attack, or refuse to step in a British pub, or British bus, or British train station, or...
This isn't a case where fear is being used to shut down Boston, it's a case where a law enforcement process is temporarily having that affect. It's not permanent, it's not something unique to terrorism enforcement (in fact, it's refreshing seeing an act of terror be treated as the jurisdiction of law enforcement), and it's probably what has to be done right now.
Most dictators put temporary measures in place as well, using whatever current emergency happens to suit them as a justification.
The Patriot Act was supposed to be temporary as well.
So long as the actions in Boston are recommended and not required I don't have a problem with them and, if I were there, I would most likely follow them...but they should be voluntary.
Which seems to indicate that he logged in since the events:
last seen today at 3:04 am Djohar Tsarnaev
The ratio of crappy versus good cops seems to go up when you're dealing with rent-a-cops and security, yes.
OK, just stop this bullshit now.
MIT Campus Police are real police, recruited only from among real police departments, with lots of experience required before they can even apply to the department.
Because of campus police like Lt. John Pike http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UC_Davis_pepper-spray_incident
I'm not saying all campus police (or any other type for that matter) are bad, but one might not automatically assume they're good guys either.
After noting the higher "efficiencies" of privatizing education, Adam Smith still concludes that a more broadly educated public through public education (even at the expense of wasting a bit more money on less-motivated students) is ultimately for the public good.
The current school system in the US is a bloated government monopoly, indifferent to competing models of schooling. You pay for it through taxes whether you send your kids to public school, private school, or if you homeschool them (or even if you don't have kids at all). There are alternatives to public school in the US, but the government doesn't care. They get their money, even if you shell out for private school or quit your job to homeschool.
At the minimum, parents should receive vouchers equivalent in value to what the local public school system pays per pupil, vouchers that could be redeemed at private schools, or used for homeschooling expenses. This would put real pressure on crappy public schools to reform themselves or face starvation, unlike the misguided "No Child Left Behind Act".
Because private university works so well right? Very inexpensive and available to everyone who qualifies without going into massive debt. Yes, extending that down to grade school level is an excellent idea !!
Yeah, health care should definitely be eliminated as an employer benefit. That's what's caused the entire healthcare debacle in the first place: employers pay for health because it's a pretax benefit. You end up to a place where "insurance" just means paying for everything, and has no meaning anymore. And also hugely expensive.
Buy your own health insurance for cheap (for the small chance you'll have a heart attack or other catastrophic health care problem that a few percent of the population have). For the other stuff (colds and whatnot), just pay out of pocket. It would be cheap if everyone didn't have Cadillac health programs.
Perhaps you would care to list a few places where people can buy (useful) health insurance 'for cheap'?
The culture of fast and easy everyday litigation, health care companies and, more than anything else, brainwashed people thinking that a market driven, completely unregulated system is better for people than a single payer system is what caused the health care crisis.
Most of the people fighting on the North's side were Chinese.
There were about 600,000 South Koreans, backed up by 300,000 Americans and about 15,000 British fighting against only about 250,000 North Koreans.... but 1.3million Chinese, and about 25,000 Russians.
The Korean war had very little to do with Korea vs. Korea, it was all about the West vs. Communism.
It happened because after World War II, when Japan was kicked out of Korea, the US and Russia decided to split it up, taking part of it each.
The Koreas never split and fought because of any inherent distaste for each other, but because of post-World War II, cold war politics. The Koreans never got to have a say in their division.
As such, North Koreans killing South Koreans in the Korean war was entirely about being forced into it by the great superpowers - the US vs. Russia/China than it was because of any inherent dislike amongst the Korean people.
I agree with you on all points but...at the same time there were nonetheless Koreans killing Koreans regardless of whether they wanted to or not.
Before it was...encouraged at least if not forced, as you say, by the powers fighting over capitalism and communism (agree with you completely on that point by the way) where today it would be the 'leaders' of North Korea forcing their people to fight / kill Southerners and vice versa.
The people actually doing the fighting have very little say in the matter of who they are fighting.
I know the story about the artillery within range of Seoul makes a good scare piece, but there's zero chance they will be wantonly killing all the South Koreans just because it's technically a separate country.
Because they didn't kill any South Koreans in the Korean war right?
You are starting to understand how they feel about you. That is the real problem here. They can't just abandon their long range nuclear weapons programme because it is the only thing protecting them. They have to play this dangerous game.
I don't know what the solution is. I know what it isn't though: military intervention.
You must be joking.
The US wouldn't give a flying fuck about North Korea if they weren't actively testing nuclear weapons and delivery mechanisms, not to mention loudly threatening every western interest in reach.
And what exactly to do you propose as an alternative to military intervention?
On the other side of the scale is an extremely weighty counter-question:
Can the USA afford another ground invasion and the regime change + nation building that would follow?
The answer to that is unequivocally "No"
It's no more 'no' than any other war the US has gotten involved with.
My point is that the longer we wait to shut NK down, the higher the cost (in every way) is going to be.
Compared to the farcical Iraq war, I think that taking out NK now is not only fully justified but is actually unavoidably necessary.
With regard to nation building...the US probably turns a profit on that normally but in this case I suspect the remains of NK would be handed to China instead.
North Korea has been waving their gun around for a long time. Even though you may not care about this from an American perspective, NK has for decades been fully capable of launching devastating attacks on major South Korean population centers (which don't require intercontinental long range missiles). Outside the perspective of "only American lives matter," NK's longer range weapons don't fundamentally change the diplomatic situation: they are still, as they have always been, capable of going out with an unacceptable suicidal bang, simply continuing the same decades-long tense standoff (in order to continue, on their side, receiving aid money/supplies as appeasement). NK's current round of bluster is really nothing new; and, while there is no certainty in dealing with madmen, there is also no positive reason to expect that NK's actual policies (of waving a gun with their finger on the trigger, but stopping short of anything beyond warning shots) have changed.
I don't think that only American lives matter. My point is that the longer we wait, the more 'bang' NK's suicide will generate.
They are not moving in any positive direction and I have no reason to believe that waiting longer will benefit anyone but Kim.
I also don't call sinking a SK ship or shelling SK islands to be warning shots.
It's a good question, but I feel it's an odd one for a Slashdotter to have posted.
1.) The United States is a part of an international community that would look down upon us for taking aggressive and provocative measures, even toward a nutcase. (Is he a nutcase if he becomes a hero to his people by standing up to the US? There is a reason why he is doing what he is doing.)
Even if we assume he is not a nutcase, he has stated that he is willing to kill potentially millions of people (ie Tokyo) with nuclear weapons.
I find it interesting that you think that it's the US that is taking 'aggressive and provocative measures' when NK has twice recently actually attacked SK, not to mention threatening everyone else within range.
2.) North Korea and China are allies, at this point, and it would be prudent to make sure that is not the case if the US must take action.
China will not go to war to protect North Korea. China is all about money now and their money comes from the west.
Unfortunately, patience is a virtue to be held until the last possible moment before something terrible happens. Although patience takes time, it gives you time that you could use to prepare for a terrible moment.
Patience is fine if there is no urgency. At some point waiting becomes counter-productive and allows the enemy to make gains that are not in anyone's best interest.
If, for example, we had attacked NK before they had nuclear weapons, we would have removed a risk that we currently have to face.
If we had, for another example, attacked NK a couple of weeks ago, we would not now face the risk of their mobile hidden launching platforms.
The patience that you advise only benefits the (self proclaimed) enemy.
If the US had acted too quickly in World War II, we might not have had the manufacturing capability that we had. True we were a sleeping giant, but there are 3,000,000 British .303 rounds in the hull of the Lusitania, which speak that we were not such a sleeping giant. So, now let us appear to sleep.
Very poetic but immaterial.
You have to ask yourself...what is the cost of not going to war against North Korea now.
Do you want to wait to be certain that he has not only nuclear capability and also medium range missile capability but the ability to launch medium range missiles with nuclear warheads (which may not currently be the case) ?
I think that it's probably a move meant to give the North Koreans a chance to back down and declare 'victory' to their own people so that the crisis can end before things become unpredictable.
Even if the US wanted a war with North Korea this would not be the time. A war like that takes months of planning and logistics if it's going to go well. The US and South Korea could defeat North Korea over the next couple of weeks if necessary, but at what cost?
You need to look at the cost of not going to war as well.
Would you like to wait, perhaps, until North Korea is testing their Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile equivalents?
NK is a bully child in the playground. Fists can be ignored but when he pulls out a knife you have to do something about him...before he pulls out a gun the next time and starts shooting.
The only exception I can think of is a prohibition on people who move from company A to company B, contacting their co-workers in company A, in their capacity as an employee of company B. This could be considered in improper use of that person's professional contacts at company A.
Why?
print-a-girlfriend.com
US (and other developed, educated, industrialized countries) workers should not have to accept a drastic reduction of standard of living and safety of the workplace so that the owners of companies can make more money.
That's ok. Your acceptance isn't required.
Unfortunately in all probability you are right and people like you will continue to fuck up the American standard of living under the short sighted and narrow minded vastly mistaken belief that corporate profits and the right to carry guns are all that matters.
Like public education?
The US spends more per student adjusted for standard of living (PPP) than all but a handful of countries and it gets a relatively weak educational outcome for that money spent.
When you have a system that is necessary but doesn't work correctly you fix it..you don't just shut it off.
The US should be looking at the educational (and health) systems that work best and modeling itself after them...but oh wait..that would be socialist and therefore must be bad.
And what's the point of all your other nonsense, if the US doesn't have an economy to support all the stuff you want? My approach keeps and strengthens that economy. Your approach loses that economy and turns the US into another Ottoman empire, no called something like the "sick man of the west" that everyone would be waiting on to croak.
You haven't answered the vast majority of my 'nonsense' comments I made on your original post. It seems that you are very good at spouting right wing corporate republican bullshit but not very good at addressing individual points made against it.
Your approach results in an economy where only the major shareholders of corporations make money and the rest of the population slides into decline, eventually being unable to afford to buy the products and services being sold by the very corporations that you support so blindly.
You also need to consider the effect of outsourcing manufacturing on the companies that you love so well. Companies that give their designs and technology to competing countries who copy and sell the same product back for lower than what they're charging the original company to start with will eventually be driven out of business.
What is the long term effect on American companies where the CEOs sell off proprietary technology for great short term profits (resulting in huge bonuses for themselves of course)?
What is the benefit of increasing the profits of American companies who outsource R&D to India (for example), their manufacturing to China (for example) and their profits to the Bahamas (for example) ?
I for one am for protecting the standard of living that our recent forefathers fought for.
Then implement my suggestions. That what will work.
Your suggestions do not, in the long run, support any standard of living for anyone but the extremely rich. Your suggestions move us backward towards the middle ages with an ignorant working class and a privileged elite.
America has many problems that need to be fixed but reducing the vast majority of the population to serfs is not going to help anyone but the very small percentage of people at the very top.
I am a reasonably successful small business owner who was born into a very poor family that relied on the food stamps, welfare and free education that you scorn to enable me to avoid a life of unskilled labor to where I am today - paying taxes and supporting the society that made it possible for me to improve my situation in life and be in a position to argue against people like yourself who can't see further than their next paycheck and the taxes that would be taken out of it.
At first I thought you were being ironic. Then somewhat beyond belief I realized that you weren't.
US (and other developed, educated, industrialized countries) workers should not have to accept a drastic reduction of standard of living and safety of the workplace so that the owners of companies can make more money.
I'm just saying the last 30 years have been a superating wound on the middle class with no end in site, and our government is about to cut the social safety net completely away leaving the poorest and least able to take care of themselves without means to live.
I have a somewhat bitter solution here. Gut US spending everywhere so that the federal budget isn't a boat anchor on US competitiveness. Second, in addition to that, seriously cut back on anything that makes US workers more expensive. This includes environmental and worker safety regulation as well as some cutting of those "safety nets", particularly Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid (both which greatly harm labor competitiveness in the US).
Like public education? Certainly that makes American workers more expensive, this whole education thing. In fact, since we're cutting public education and we're removing health and safety laws we can let children work again say from the age that they can walk or so. Can reduce the cost of unskilled labor right down to south Asian levels in about five years that way right?
If you're going to cut Medicare/Medicaid you might as well stop paying social security benefits to the old while you're at it, since that system is already more or less bankrupt. Hell with it let's just off all the folks who can't work just like Hitler's Nazi Germany. Save a lot of money that way and we'll be more competitive against cheap ignorant foreign child labor.
The focus here is on cost reduction of employment which means that some regulations may be retained just by changing how the business is required to report things to a less expensive method. But some other regulations should just be cut back or dropped such as weakening threshold limits for chemicals in the workplace.
That's a start but you can really cut costs by eliminating all health and safety regulation and after all...that's the focus - to save money for corporations, not to ensure any standard of living for the workers.
In addition, drop minimum wage substantially. I'd favor getting rid of it altogether so that the US isn't spending money at all on that particular regulation. Remember that the actual minimum wage is always $0 per hour. Anything above that is a win for your economy.
Yes the economy is certainly more important than having a sub-class of people who cannot afford to live. No doubt we can bring back indentured labor too - oh hell and slavery too because that was GREAT for the economy!!
Strip out prepaid medical care and elective medical care as a requirement of health insurance. Reverse Obamacare and get employers out of the health insurance business.
An excellent idea then we can be just like India with no healthcare at all for the poor. The rampant diseases might come back though and keep in mind that your kids will no longer be protected by herd immunity so you'll be putting your own family at risk but hell, that's a small price to pay for the MONEY WE WOULD SAVE!
And finally, I suggest growing up and reducing your expectations. The fundamental problem is that the pool of labor for global business has increased by a factor of several. Most of those people will work for much less than developed world workers do. Similarly, regulations are much less stringent leading to the greatest economic migrations of capital of all time.
Yes, why should hard working people have any expectations of earning a decent wage and having some minimum standard of living that includes education and
In other words: Cyberbunker is not currently under assault by police, and we have only their word that they ever have been. I suspect that at one time they were successful in having visiting cops think nobody was home by being real quiet and quickly turning off all the lights.
You mean your police don't just give up and go away when faced with a bunch of geeks with plastic lightsabers?
Might it be http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlXbUatPc-A ?
Warning: This video is violent and disturbing.
Even if you were to accept and trust Nokia (and Opera, etc) and the people working for them to intercept and re-encrypt your supposedly secure traffic without keeping any sensitive information, their servers become targets for anyone who might want to get such information.
The more people sending sensitive information through the servers, the more interesting the servers become to 'the bad guys'.
When they're interesting enough, they will be compromised.
Your definition includes every person alive.
In your haste to bold the word "could", you seemed to have skipped over the qualifier "reasonably". Read a little closer.
'Reasonably' is subjective, 'could' is not. Analyze a little better.
Subjective or not, it's still a qualifier, which clearly indicates it does not refer to every person alive. As I said, read a little closer.
And I'm saying that it could apply to anyone alive because 'reasonable' can be twisted however one wishes because 'reasonable' is subjective.
There aren't many people alive over the age of twenty who have not 'resorted to lawlessness' in some minor way at the very least in their lives.
Peaceful people legally demonstrating were investigated, harassed and eventually smashed because they were going up against (for lack of a better word) the establishment. This should not be the way things work in a country that is supposed to be free.
Just move country.
You will be an interesting foreigner. With or without the internet, this gives you an edge.
It's true - and the poorer the country, the more 'interesting' you become...especially if you have enough to drive around in a luxury car and throw cash around in the nightclubs.
Of course you probably won't get a woman that actually cares about you or stays with you for longer than it takes to get papers so don't expect anything more.
Your definition includes every person alive.
In your haste to bold the word "could", you seemed to have skipped over the qualifier "reasonably". Read a little closer.
'Reasonably' is subjective, 'could' is not. Analyze a little better.