The notion that such tribes lived in some sort of special harmony with nature is ridiculous
That is exactly my point: humans have never lived in "harmony with nature", and they never will. Yet, you say you want a world in which humans do not "use up resources faster than they can recover".
Every step forward in one area is counterbalanced by two steps back in another. All the fear is because things can only keep getting worse for so long before horrible things happen to the whole human race
Bullshit. Humanity is better off than it has ever been. Don't take my word for it, look at the UN data:
The negativity is because there are so many people like you who are either outright insane or just ignorant and you're so proud of it that you actually expend effort to actively fight attempts to improve our situation and exercise the most basic amount of caution.
It's you who is ignorant. You start off with the preposterous assumption that things are getting worse for humanity, and then you arrive at the equally preposterous conclusion that non-sustainable resource usage is to blame. And as a solution, you propose killing off the primary resource that has made human development over the last century possible: fossil fuel.
I'm all for "basic amounts of caution": I think toxic emissions should be limited, products inspected for their safety, garbage reduced, and resources recycled. I'm also for doing even more work on future energy sources, since we will run out of fossil fuels sooner or later.
But you don't want "basic amounts of caution", you want destructive interventions based on irrational FUD. Learn something about the world you live in and stop wallowing in your ignorance.
This is just another in a succession of stories on./ today that has deeply shaken my faith in democracy and liberty in the civilized world.
That's because you aren't thinking and questioning. While there are certainly plenty of things wrong with government intruding into freedom of speech and freedom of the press (a joint effort between Republicans and Democrats), this particular index attests only to two things: the utter incompetence of those compiling it and your gullibility in believing it. If you actually look at how the index was created, you see that it is little more than a self-assessment of journalists in each country. Imagine what the responses would have been like if you had sent that kind of survey to the government-selected journalists of Nazi Germany.
The fact that this level of incompetence hasn't caused a groundswell of outrage from reporters tells you only one thing: most reporters must be completely incompetent when it comes to statistics, data, or sound reasoning. Take that into account next time you read a story in the news. And then go out and check the data yourself, because journalists primarily give you rumors, hearsay and ideology, not rational analysis and fact checking.
Earlier today (or maybe last night) there was a story posted about proposed legislation that would require ISPs to log all internet activity of customers in HI for 2 years,
The EU already has equivalent legislation on the books. In the US, there's a good chance it won't stand (see also the recent SCOTUS decision).
If they consider direct media ownership by government officials as impinging on freedom of information.
No, they don't. The "index" is a compilation of the responses from journalists in that country. So, in the case of Italy, they sent questionnaires to Berlusconi-owned media outlets and asked them "do you feel oppressed". What do you think the responses were going to be?
As another example, on the same note, there is very little negative coverage of mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg. While he does not technically run the company, he does own Bloomberg LP which owns Bloomberg TV and US News
Oh, he would be covered in this kind of report. US journalists might or might not throw dirt at Bloomberg, but in this kind of anonymous survey, their response is likely to be the equivalent of "we here at ____ are not oppressed and are totally rational and independent, but the journalists over at _______ are pressured and biased."
The fact that Berlusconi owns most of Italy's private media works in favor of Italy's "press freedom index" because most of the people responding are going to work for him. The fact that the US has lots of media outlets with a huge range of political views and financing models, whose journalists often hate each other's guts, works against the US press freedom index, because they all are going to point fingers at each other.
Apparently, even Berlusconi has trouble to find enough people to present a better picture and doesn't quite have the control of Il Duce yet. But I imagine that if you had sent this to Nazi Germany, its government approved corps of journalists would have given it nearly perfect marks.
The press freedom index is little more than a compilation of the opinions and beliefs of journalists across the world, based on questionnaires. There is no calibration for cultural differences, no verification or validation, no guarantee of unbiased sampling, little to ensure objectivity. Look at the questionnaire yourself:
The very first question is "During [the last year], were there any cases of journalists 1. Being illegally detained (without an arrest warrant, for longer than the maximum period of police custody, without a court appearance etc)?" Now think about that. In what way are random journalists qualified to answer this question? How can they even answer that question? In most cases, legality hasn't even been determined in the courts by then. In countries in which the media are fully or partially controlled or operated by the government, "journalists" would have a strong bias in favor of the government and they would be unlikely to be detained, because anybody critical of the government wouldn't even get hired; yes, to some degree this is true even in Western Europe. And in countries with few legal protections for journalists, detentions of journalists would be much more likely to be legal.
Mostly, what this attests to is utter incompetence on the part of RSF and the journalists who sign responsible for it.
The clear evidence that we're using up most of our resources faster than they can recover doesn't mean a thing
Yes, it doesn't mean a thing. When have humans ever behaved differently? Why should we start now? Is your vision for humanity really that of an economically, socially, and technologically perpetually static society?
Too many people are dead set on the idea that it's all going to be roses no matter what we do to the environment.
It's worked so far: sometimes we screw up and then we fix it. The US has a cleaner environment now than any time since the start of the industrial revolution. Why all this fear and negativity?
"Evolution progresses exponentially" is meaningless because evolution in general is undirected so there's nothing for it to progress against, let alone progress against "exponentially".
Evolution doesn't have values or goals, but it certainly has a direction (more complexity, more intelligence, more adaptivity) and speed (more complexity per unit time). And the speed has increased "exponentially", in particular if you consider neural and cultural adaptation part of the overall process (even genetic evolution of humans has speeded up, but not as much).
Then return to the US and arrive at the decision it is a backward country for dismantling most of its once far-reaching rail network in favor of a car (or two) for every adult
The US hasn't dismantled its rail system--it still has the biggest rail system in the world, bigger than the entire EU taken together (in terms of miles). However, the US railway system is mainly used for freight, while people mostly drive.
When I traveled around Europe on trains I was thrilled how carefree I could be about intercity travel and how fast and comfortable TGV/ICE can be
It's fast and comfortable, but it's also a boondoggle and heavily subsidized. It's also not particularly environmently friendly, since it displaces a lot of freight traffic to the roads and often has to operate far below capacity. And even with all those wonderful trains, say, Germans still own as many cars per capita as Americans.
It's even going to be high among currently friendly countries like the US and Canada. The US is, after all, a very heavily armed and aggressive country.... The overall point, specifics aside, is that nations won't be operating in a vacuum where they can reap the rewards of a locally improved situation while ignoring the problems of the rest of the world.
If large parts of Canada turn habitable, Canada will need people to settle them, and Americans would migrate to Canada quite voluntarily and without war. Given that the two cultures and languages are nearly indistinguishable anyway, what's the problem? Countries generally benefit from immigration. Canada already encourages immigration. The only real "problem" I can see is a degree of xenophobia in your thinking.
And don't you worry about conditions in the US; even under worst case IPCC scenarios, the US and Europe are going to be fine. At worst, the costs of global warming are going to be a slight drain on the economy. But given how much land the US and Europe have up north, even that is likely going to be balanced out.
First of all, that functionality is already widely available in systems like Quicksilver and its UNIX clones, like Gnome Do and Kupfer. Those are useful for expert users in some circumstances (I run Gnome Do).
But is there any evidence at all that these kinds of systems improve usability for the general user? Any published papers? Any user testing?
Ahlquist demanded the removal of religious symbols from her public high school and succeeded in court. Yes, that ruffled some feathers, but the courts upheld religious freedoms, and that's all it can do.
In Europe, she couldn't have been lynched for this because European governments and courts unabashedly promote Christianity in schools and wouldn't have forced the school to remove the symbol in the first place. And the Italian foreign minister unabashedly praised the decision and said that it was just what "the mob" wanted.
No, it is not true "for most of USA too". The US vigorously defends free speech, has gay marriage in some states and domestic partnerships in others, and abortion is legal everywhere in the US. Outing yourself as an atheist and even insulting religions may lose you friends in the US, but it is legal and protected.
Contrast that with Europe, say Germany. Germany is governed by a Christian party, gay marriage doesn't exist, abortion is technically illegal and has significant restrictions, the government funnels billions of Euros to Christian churches, and you can get jail time for disparaging religions. Other European nations aren't quite as backwards as Germany, but they all share at least some of these restrictions.
You're mightily confused if you think this "legal sh**" doesn't exist in other places. Europe, for example, has draconian copyright laws and enforcement, and in addition taxes consumers to transfer money to copyright holders whether they use their products or not (on the principle that it doesn't matter whether you're actually guilty of copyright infringement, you have to pay anyway).
The reason you don't hear more about it is that few places produce anything anybody would even bother ripping off. The number of French or German movies or songs with any impact outside France or Germany is negligible.
No, I'm not "misinterpreting" what you're saying, I just take it to its logical conclusion: you argued that lack of habitability of parts of Canada were discouraging the US from invading it. Your premise is preposterous, and so is your conclusion.
As for the balance of positive and negative for global warming, I think Canada would be one of the few countries that would be unequivocally better off. The fact that Canada becomes a more desirable place for everybody once large parts of it become warmer is not a disadvantage.
Clinton supports Resolution 16 / 18. The resolution is an improvement over previous anti-blasphemy laws, but its goals are still incompatible with free speech principles. And the resolution effectively strongly favors the organized, monotheistic religions over other world views. It basically throws non-believers under a truck. And it's quite telling that the resolution is favored so much by Islamic nations.
The way I read it, the Indonesian government would likely consider actions against atheist statements to be within what Resolution 16 / 18 permits and encourages.
The problem is that Islamic civilization was not always as you describe,
Islamic civilization used to be more advanced and more tolerant relative to Christian Europe at the time. But that isn't saying much: Christian Europe used to be a shithole. By modern standards, Islam itself was violent and bent on conquest from the start.
What you're saying makes about as much sense as condemning Christianity based on what you find wrong in Catholicism.
And that makes a lot of sense, since Catholicism is both by far the largest Christian denomination, its dogma for the most part is representative of Christianity in general, and other Christian denominations recognize it as Christian.
Of course, most Muslims and Christians are peaceful, law-abiding, and caring people. But we need to recognize that their religions have not always promoted such behavior, and may (at the discretion of their religious leaders) promote violent and oppressive behaviors again.
People may snicker and think that this is an Islamic or Indonesian problem, but there are many Western countries with laws against disparaging religion. In Germany, for example, saying anything that might get a member of a religious organization upset enough to "disturb the peace" is illegal. So, statements disparaging Islam or Mohammed are in violation of German law. And the law is enforced; for example, someone who printed the word "Koran" on toilet paper (in response to Islamic terrorism in Germany) was sentenced to prison. The violation is determined not by the speech itself, but by how upset people get; so, if people become more fundamentalist on average, merely stating that God does not exist could fall under it as well.
Oh, I have listened carefully. For example, I hadn't realized how discriminatory the Israeli Declaration of Independence actually is. What you haven't done is made any compelling argument why the US should continue its extraordinary support of Israel. Thanks for at least refraining from calling me anti-Semitic for asking this question, like many Israeli politicians do.
how is this worse than what the US did with its Japanese citizens during WW2? Or how anyone Muslim or perceived as Muslim was treated after 9/11?
If your implication of "tu quoque" were true, it would be even more of a reason to disapprove of the behavior in Israel, because disapproving of something in others is a good first step of changing yourself.
But your analogy is false anyway, in a very fundamental way. Some politicians have, in fact, advocated overt ethnic and religious profiling in fighting terrorism, and the US has so far resisted that. In Israel, on the other hand, that kind of profiling is government-instituted, open, unapologetic, and blatant, as anybody who has flown through Ben Gurion (as I have) knows.
The reference given was that "Jewish" referred to nation, not religion.
And your reference actually does the opposite: it shows clearly that Israel is a state that is defined in terms of, and founded on, a specific ethnic and religious identity. This is in contrast to the US, which is founded on an ideal of universal rights and liberties.
Israel defines the Arab language as an official state language along Hebrew, and has explicit setting for days off on Muslim holidays, not in spite of what its declaration of independence says, but because of it.
Israel also used to be a much more idealistic and much more secular country. Unfortunately, it has changed and seems increasingly dominated by religious extremists and nationalists.
That's why the vast majority of democratic countries in the world are nation states.
Sure, Israel is no worse than many other "democratic" nations and we shouldn't treat it any worse than them. But there is no reason to treat it any better. Israel should receive about the same level of US attention and support as Hungary, and I want US politicians to stop wasting their time and money on it. We really have more important domestic and international issues to deal with.
We are building a civilization on a limited, single-use resource. This is not sustainable. Sooner or later we will run out of fossil fuels. As you said, much of our standard of living depends on oil and coal.
I question whether sustainability is even a desirable goal. If you look at human history, societies that live in a stable equilibrium with their environment die out, either through competition from aggressive neighbors, or even through natural changes in their environment. Life and progress mean constant change. Humanity didn't die out when large game was hunted to near extinction, or when Europeans chopped down their forests and used up all their ore, or when the sea levels rose by 240 ft to their current levels; humanity adapted and made enormous progress in the process
Shouldn't we be planning to move off them to something we can get more of while we can still do so at a leisurely pace?
We have the technologies to move off of fossil fuels any day, it's a question of cost. At some point, fossil fuel will become more expensive and alternatives will become economically attractive. More likely, alternatives will become so cheap by themselves that we'll stop using fossil fuels long before we run out anyway. I don't see a reason to hurry along the process through government intervention or mandates, beyond possibly funding of public research.
But in the case of Israel, Jewish definitely refers to the nation. Please do read the declaration of independence and see if you can interpret it otherwise.
You mean the declaration that starts: "ERETZ-ISRAEL was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books."
Are you kidding? That is supposed to be the foundation of an ethnically and religiously pluralistic state? Even the first word, "ERETZ-ISRAEL", is imbued with religious and ethnic meaning, and stakes a religiously and ethnically based claim to the land of Israel. Let's not even get into the profound cultural chauvinism underlying the claims of "creating cultural values of universal significance" and "the eternal Book of Books". Thank you for getting me to look up this passage because it actually supports what I was saying.
Israel is far from being the only country that filter immigration based on ethnic criteria,
True, there are many nations that are far worse than Israel, but I don't want the US to support those nations either (except to achieve specific economic or military aims for the US).
You have a large group of people with distinct ethnicity. They openly sympathize with countries you are in open war with. They cheer when your civilians are bombarded. Their leaders use their official capacity as representatives of the state to undermine that state's efforts in negotiations. Do you know of a country where ethnicity wouldn't become a part of the politics under those conditions?
You are giving the usual litany of collective guilt and judging people based on their ethnicity rather than their individual identity: those are the defining characteristic of bigotry and racism. You are a bigot and a racist, and sadly, people like you increasingly dominate Israeli politics.
Just because you think it should be called "Israeli" instead means nothing. No one is asking you.
If Israeli politicians didn't care, they wouldn't so frequently lob charges of anti-Semitism against anybody who suggests reducing support for Israel. Note that I don't want the US to support the Palestinians either, I just want the US to phase out the special support it has given Israel in the past and treat it like any other small nation.
Global warming is a massive uncontrolled experiment, and if it goes badly humanity will suffer for it. We don't necessarily know it will go badly, but it appears at least as likely as it going well. (In fact, it appears more likely, overall.) I'd rather avoid that type of situation.
That's a reasonable argument to make in principle (and I used to make it myself). But there are a couple of problems with that. First, climate is inherently variable and complex, so it's hard to predict what the consequences of emitting or not emitting CO2 are. Second, even the IPCC climate change predictions pale in comparison to other sources of "unmoderated human change": environmental destruction, war, poverty, population growth, so why not focus on those? And people tend to underestimate the cost of reducing carbon emissions: much of our standard of living depends on oil and coal. On the whole, I think the arguments for action on global warming are not strong enough yet.
Frankly there's a wide range of consequences that I care about from the extinction of the human race to simple political upheaval as the locations of arable land change that I don't want to face
Why not? Massive climate and environmental change has been a part of human history for the past 20000 years. It has probably contributed significantly to the development of civilization and humanity has flourished. On the other hand, preventing climate change won't prevent upheaval, or even noticeably reduce it.
You got the tense wrong - I've been noticing a steady shift in online arguments over the last few years
And why shouldn't arguments shift, online or offline? Scientific results and data change. Originally, the data supporting the notion that warming has occurred was piss-poor. There was no need to talk about the consequences of global warming as long as it wasn't established that it is happening. Now, that conclusion is better supported, and the argument shifts to what that data means.
So, the questions you are making fun of are exactly the right ones to ask. In fact, you left out an important one: is climate sensitivity going to grow (positive feedback) or shrink (negative feedback) as CO2 emissions rise; all the most dire predictions assume positive feedback, but the evidence is weak.
As long as there are no scientifically and economically sound answers to those questions, yes, we should not take action on climate change. choice.
So, you're saying that it would be better for large parts of Canada to remain uninhabitable in order to avoid a hypothetical conflict over land? Well, that makes sense! Why not extend that logic? Canada could explode some nuclear bombs, cover itself in fallout, and then nobody would ever want to live there! Instant, perfect protection from that evil neighbor to the south! Get real.
Seriously, the US has plenty of arctic territory of its own; it doesn't need Canada. And whatever resources the US wants in Canada, it can get through investment and cooperation, much more cheaply than through war--to the benefit of both Americans and Canadians.
Furthermore, the cost and effects of global warming on the US are likely fairly limited overall anyway, which is one reason the US is reluctant to do anything about it.
Find a definition of the word 'marriage', or heck the equivilent word in any human language, older than a hundred years (or fifty) that includes two men or two women. Yes some definitions do include more thab one woman and one man.
You got it backwards: the modern marriage that "conservatives" like to hold up as traditional was rare; families had a completely different structure and living arrangements, and many men never could marry at all.
Which of the benefits of marriage are they wanting? Really. Unless children are unvolved there ain't any that civil unions couldn't provide other than using it as a wedge to drive religion farther out of the mainstream of society.
No, it's a "wedge" to drive religiously-based discrimination out of government.
Hell, I only TOLERATE progressives, I certainly don't ACCEPT em and since 99% of gays are also progs
Funny, except for your God delusion, Christian conservatives like you seem pretty much the same as "progressives": you want to use big government to impose your lifestyle and your views on everybody else, and reason and liberty mean nothing to you.
Slashdot Mirror
That is exactly my point: humans have never lived in "harmony with nature", and they never will. Yet, you say you want a world in which humans do not "use up resources faster than they can recover".
Bullshit. Humanity is better off than it has ever been. Don't take my word for it, look at the UN data:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Human_Development_Index_trends.svg
http://hdr.undp.org/en/data/trends/
It's you who is ignorant. You start off with the preposterous assumption that things are getting worse for humanity, and then you arrive at the equally preposterous conclusion that non-sustainable resource usage is to blame. And as a solution, you propose killing off the primary resource that has made human development over the last century possible: fossil fuel.
I'm all for "basic amounts of caution": I think toxic emissions should be limited, products inspected for their safety, garbage reduced, and resources recycled. I'm also for doing even more work on future energy sources, since we will run out of fossil fuels sooner or later.
But you don't want "basic amounts of caution", you want destructive interventions based on irrational FUD. Learn something about the world you live in and stop wallowing in your ignorance.
That's because you aren't thinking and questioning. While there are certainly plenty of things wrong with government intruding into freedom of speech and freedom of the press (a joint effort between Republicans and Democrats), this particular index attests only to two things: the utter incompetence of those compiling it and your gullibility in believing it. If you actually look at how the index was created, you see that it is little more than a self-assessment of journalists in each country. Imagine what the responses would have been like if you had sent that kind of survey to the government-selected journalists of Nazi Germany.
The fact that this level of incompetence hasn't caused a groundswell of outrage from reporters tells you only one thing: most reporters must be completely incompetent when it comes to statistics, data, or sound reasoning. Take that into account next time you read a story in the news. And then go out and check the data yourself, because journalists primarily give you rumors, hearsay and ideology, not rational analysis and fact checking.
The EU already has equivalent legislation on the books. In the US, there's a good chance it won't stand (see also the recent SCOTUS decision).
No, they don't. The "index" is a compilation of the responses from journalists in that country. So, in the case of Italy, they sent questionnaires to Berlusconi-owned media outlets and asked them "do you feel oppressed". What do you think the responses were going to be?
Oh, he would be covered in this kind of report. US journalists might or might not throw dirt at Bloomberg, but in this kind of anonymous survey, their response is likely to be the equivalent of "we here at ____ are not oppressed and are totally rational and independent, but the journalists over at _______ are pressured and biased."
The fact that Berlusconi owns most of Italy's private media works in favor of Italy's "press freedom index" because most of the people responding are going to work for him. The fact that the US has lots of media outlets with a huge range of political views and financing models, whose journalists often hate each other's guts, works against the US press freedom index, because they all are going to point fingers at each other.
Apparently, even Berlusconi has trouble to find enough people to present a better picture and doesn't quite have the control of Il Duce yet. But I imagine that if you had sent this to Nazi Germany, its government approved corps of journalists would have given it nearly perfect marks.
The press freedom index is little more than a compilation of the opinions and beliefs of journalists across the world, based on questionnaires. There is no calibration for cultural differences, no verification or validation, no guarantee of unbiased sampling, little to ensure objectivity. Look at the questionnaire yourself:
http://www.rsf.org/IMG/pdf/quest_en.pdf
The very first question is "During [the last year], were there any cases of journalists 1. Being illegally detained (without an arrest warrant, for longer than the maximum period of police custody, without a court appearance etc)?" Now think about that. In what way are random journalists qualified to answer this question? How can they even answer that question? In most cases, legality hasn't even been determined in the courts by then. In countries in which the media are fully or partially controlled or operated by the government, "journalists" would have a strong bias in favor of the government and they would be unlikely to be detained, because anybody critical of the government wouldn't even get hired; yes, to some degree this is true even in Western Europe. And in countries with few legal protections for journalists, detentions of journalists would be much more likely to be legal.
Mostly, what this attests to is utter incompetence on the part of RSF and the journalists who sign responsible for it.
Yes, it doesn't mean a thing. When have humans ever behaved differently? Why should we start now? Is your vision for humanity really that of an economically, socially, and technologically perpetually static society?
It's worked so far: sometimes we screw up and then we fix it. The US has a cleaner environment now than any time since the start of the industrial revolution. Why all this fear and negativity?
Evolution doesn't have values or goals, but it certainly has a direction (more complexity, more intelligence, more adaptivity) and speed (more complexity per unit time). And the speed has increased "exponentially", in particular if you consider neural and cultural adaptation part of the overall process (even genetic evolution of humans has speeded up, but not as much).
The US hasn't dismantled its rail system--it still has the biggest rail system in the world, bigger than the entire EU taken together (in terms of miles). However, the US railway system is mainly used for freight, while people mostly drive.
It's fast and comfortable, but it's also a boondoggle and heavily subsidized. It's also not particularly environmently friendly, since it displaces a lot of freight traffic to the roads and often has to operate far below capacity. And even with all those wonderful trains, say, Germans still own as many cars per capita as Americans.
If large parts of Canada turn habitable, Canada will need people to settle them, and Americans would migrate to Canada quite voluntarily and without war. Given that the two cultures and languages are nearly indistinguishable anyway, what's the problem? Countries generally benefit from immigration. Canada already encourages immigration. The only real "problem" I can see is a degree of xenophobia in your thinking.
And don't you worry about conditions in the US; even under worst case IPCC scenarios, the US and Europe are going to be fine. At worst, the costs of global warming are going to be a slight drain on the economy. But given how much land the US and Europe have up north, even that is likely going to be balanced out.
First of all, that functionality is already widely available in systems like Quicksilver and its UNIX clones, like Gnome Do and Kupfer. Those are useful for expert users in some circumstances (I run Gnome Do).
But is there any evidence at all that these kinds of systems improve usability for the general user? Any published papers? Any user testing?
Ahlquist demanded the removal of religious symbols from her public high school and succeeded in court. Yes, that ruffled some feathers, but the courts upheld religious freedoms, and that's all it can do.
In Europe, she couldn't have been lynched for this because European governments and courts unabashedly promote Christianity in schools and wouldn't have forced the school to remove the symbol in the first place. And the Italian foreign minister unabashedly praised the decision and said that it was just what "the mob" wanted.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/19/world/europe/19briefs-ART-Crucifix.html?_r=1&ref=crossesandcrucifixes
No, it is not true "for most of USA too". The US vigorously defends free speech, has gay marriage in some states and domestic partnerships in others, and abortion is legal everywhere in the US. Outing yourself as an atheist and even insulting religions may lose you friends in the US, but it is legal and protected.
Contrast that with Europe, say Germany. Germany is governed by a Christian party, gay marriage doesn't exist, abortion is technically illegal and has significant restrictions, the government funnels billions of Euros to Christian churches, and you can get jail time for disparaging religions. Other European nations aren't quite as backwards as Germany, but they all share at least some of these restrictions.
You're mightily confused if you think this "legal sh**" doesn't exist in other places. Europe, for example, has draconian copyright laws and enforcement, and in addition taxes consumers to transfer money to copyright holders whether they use their products or not (on the principle that it doesn't matter whether you're actually guilty of copyright infringement, you have to pay anyway).
The reason you don't hear more about it is that few places produce anything anybody would even bother ripping off. The number of French or German movies or songs with any impact outside France or Germany is negligible.
No, I'm not "misinterpreting" what you're saying, I just take it to its logical conclusion: you argued that lack of habitability of parts of Canada were discouraging the US from invading it. Your premise is preposterous, and so is your conclusion.
As for the balance of positive and negative for global warming, I think Canada would be one of the few countries that would be unequivocally better off. The fact that Canada becomes a more desirable place for everybody once large parts of it become warmer is not a disadvantage.
Clinton supports Resolution 16 / 18. The resolution is an improvement over previous anti-blasphemy laws, but its goals are still incompatible with free speech principles. And the resolution effectively strongly favors the organized, monotheistic religions over other world views. It basically throws non-believers under a truck. And it's quite telling that the resolution is favored so much by Islamic nations.
The way I read it, the Indonesian government would likely consider actions against atheist statements to be within what Resolution 16 / 18 permits and encourages.
http://www.iheu.org/combating-intolerance
Islamic civilization used to be more advanced and more tolerant relative to Christian Europe at the time. But that isn't saying much: Christian Europe used to be a shithole. By modern standards, Islam itself was violent and bent on conquest from the start.
And that makes a lot of sense, since Catholicism is both by far the largest Christian denomination, its dogma for the most part is representative of Christianity in general, and other Christian denominations recognize it as Christian.
Of course, most Muslims and Christians are peaceful, law-abiding, and caring people. But we need to recognize that their religions have not always promoted such behavior, and may (at the discretion of their religious leaders) promote violent and oppressive behaviors again.
People may snicker and think that this is an Islamic or Indonesian problem, but there are many Western countries with laws against disparaging religion. In Germany, for example, saying anything that might get a member of a religious organization upset enough to "disturb the peace" is illegal. So, statements disparaging Islam or Mohammed are in violation of German law. And the law is enforced; for example, someone who printed the word "Koran" on toilet paper (in response to Islamic terrorism in Germany) was sentenced to prison. The violation is determined not by the speech itself, but by how upset people get; so, if people become more fundamentalist on average, merely stating that God does not exist could fall under it as well.
Oh, I have listened carefully. For example, I hadn't realized how discriminatory the Israeli Declaration of Independence actually is. What you haven't done is made any compelling argument why the US should continue its extraordinary support of Israel. Thanks for at least refraining from calling me anti-Semitic for asking this question, like many Israeli politicians do.
If your implication of "tu quoque" were true, it would be even more of a reason to disapprove of the behavior in Israel, because disapproving of something in others is a good first step of changing yourself.
But your analogy is false anyway, in a very fundamental way. Some politicians have, in fact, advocated overt ethnic and religious profiling in fighting terrorism, and the US has so far resisted that. In Israel, on the other hand, that kind of profiling is government-instituted, open, unapologetic, and blatant, as anybody who has flown through Ben Gurion (as I have) knows.
And your reference actually does the opposite: it shows clearly that Israel is a state that is defined in terms of, and founded on, a specific ethnic and religious identity. This is in contrast to the US, which is founded on an ideal of universal rights and liberties.
Israel also used to be a much more idealistic and much more secular country. Unfortunately, it has changed and seems increasingly dominated by religious extremists and nationalists.
Sure, Israel is no worse than many other "democratic" nations and we shouldn't treat it any worse than them. But there is no reason to treat it any better. Israel should receive about the same level of US attention and support as Hungary, and I want US politicians to stop wasting their time and money on it. We really have more important domestic and international issues to deal with.
I question whether sustainability is even a desirable goal. If you look at human history, societies that live in a stable equilibrium with their environment die out, either through competition from aggressive neighbors, or even through natural changes in their environment. Life and progress mean constant change. Humanity didn't die out when large game was hunted to near extinction, or when Europeans chopped down their forests and used up all their ore, or when the sea levels rose by 240 ft to their current levels; humanity adapted and made enormous progress in the process
We have the technologies to move off of fossil fuels any day, it's a question of cost. At some point, fossil fuel will become more expensive and alternatives will become economically attractive. More likely, alternatives will become so cheap by themselves that we'll stop using fossil fuels long before we run out anyway. I don't see a reason to hurry along the process through government intervention or mandates, beyond possibly funding of public research.
You mean the declaration that starts: "ERETZ-ISRAEL was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books."
Are you kidding? That is supposed to be the foundation of an ethnically and religiously pluralistic state? Even the first word, "ERETZ-ISRAEL", is imbued with religious and ethnic meaning, and stakes a religiously and ethnically based claim to the land of Israel. Let's not even get into the profound cultural chauvinism underlying the claims of "creating cultural values of universal significance" and "the eternal Book of Books". Thank you for getting me to look up this passage because it actually supports what I was saying.
True, there are many nations that are far worse than Israel, but I don't want the US to support those nations either (except to achieve specific economic or military aims for the US).
You are giving the usual litany of collective guilt and judging people based on their ethnicity rather than their individual identity: those are the defining characteristic of bigotry and racism. You are a bigot and a racist, and sadly, people like you increasingly dominate Israeli politics.
If Israeli politicians didn't care, they wouldn't so frequently lob charges of anti-Semitism against anybody who suggests reducing support for Israel. Note that I don't want the US to support the Palestinians either, I just want the US to phase out the special support it has given Israel in the past and treat it like any other small nation.
That's a reasonable argument to make in principle (and I used to make it myself). But there are a couple of problems with that. First, climate is inherently variable and complex, so it's hard to predict what the consequences of emitting or not emitting CO2 are. Second, even the IPCC climate change predictions pale in comparison to other sources of "unmoderated human change": environmental destruction, war, poverty, population growth, so why not focus on those? And people tend to underestimate the cost of reducing carbon emissions: much of our standard of living depends on oil and coal. On the whole, I think the arguments for action on global warming are not strong enough yet.
Why not? Massive climate and environmental change has been a part of human history for the past 20000 years. It has probably contributed significantly to the development of civilization and humanity has flourished. On the other hand, preventing climate change won't prevent upheaval, or even noticeably reduce it.
And why shouldn't arguments shift, online or offline? Scientific results and data change. Originally, the data supporting the notion that warming has occurred was piss-poor. There was no need to talk about the consequences of global warming as long as it wasn't established that it is happening. Now, that conclusion is better supported, and the argument shifts to what that data means.
So, the questions you are making fun of are exactly the right ones to ask. In fact, you left out an important one: is climate sensitivity going to grow (positive feedback) or shrink (negative feedback) as CO2 emissions rise; all the most dire predictions assume positive feedback, but the evidence is weak.
As long as there are no scientifically and economically sound answers to those questions, yes, we should not take action on climate change. choice.
So, you're saying that it would be better for large parts of Canada to remain uninhabitable in order to avoid a hypothetical conflict over land? Well, that makes sense! Why not extend that logic? Canada could explode some nuclear bombs, cover itself in fallout, and then nobody would ever want to live there! Instant, perfect protection from that evil neighbor to the south! Get real.
Seriously, the US has plenty of arctic territory of its own; it doesn't need Canada. And whatever resources the US wants in Canada, it can get through investment and cooperation, much more cheaply than through war--to the benefit of both Americans and Canadians.
Furthermore, the cost and effects of global warming on the US are likely fairly limited overall anyway, which is one reason the US is reluctant to do anything about it.
You got it backwards: the modern marriage that "conservatives" like to hold up as traditional was rare; families had a completely different structure and living arrangements, and many men never could marry at all.
No, it's a "wedge" to drive religiously-based discrimination out of government.
Funny, except for your God delusion, Christian conservatives like you seem pretty much the same as "progressives": you want to use big government to impose your lifestyle and your views on everybody else, and reason and liberty mean nothing to you.