I'll pick the broken tray. First, I'll block your thrown stars (assuming you can even get a good windup given the claustrophobic environment inside a plane) and, now that you're disarmed, beat you over the head with said tray.
Sounds like you don't even need the tray. You might as well declare that guns are harmless as well. Potential victims can simply dodge the bullets and then finish the fight with a Chuck Norris roundhouse kick.
For those of us with less Ninja skills than yourself, better weapons offer an advantage in a fight.
How different is this from someone taking a tie and strangling the person in front of them? Or breaking off the tray table? Or using any one of a hundred other improvised weapons?
Seriously? Failure to understand the difference between a throwing star, a necktie and a dinner tray is +5?
I'll help you out captain obvious. We'll put throwing stars, neckties and dinner trays on a table. Then we can each pick our weapons and have a little 'demonstration'. If you suddenly figure out the difference before picking your weapon, the demonstration won't be necessary.
A little more about traveling to North Korea. I'm living in Asia currently and as it's close to me, I plan to take a trip there this winter. During my life living in many countries I've learnt that prejudices are just those - prejudices. People always give a shittier picture about something, and when you see it yourself it's just different.
That's a very true observation. Lots of terrible things were said about the Nazi's, but when the allies finally got to Germany things were just different. Only in that case, they were different in the most horrific of ways, and the horror of what the Nazi's were actually doing was even worse than the picture that had been painted.
The pictures of North Korea are in that same category. Very few people have ever been allowed in to see the country, but of those that have escaped the stories are completely consistent. North Korea is a slave state, still officially run by a dead man. A nation whose forced labor camps are so cruel, that attempting to catch mice for food is a punishable offense. This isn't a propaganda picture, it is the exact same account given by every single person that has ever managed to escape it's horror.
Only aircraft carriers and submarines are nuclear-powered. Everything else runs on diesel.
The contention was that laser based weapons have the advantage of being limited by energy supply, rather than ammunition. A nuclear power source is implied as part and parcel of any laser weapon system deployment to a naval vessel. Anything larger than a Destroyer can run nuclear, opening the potential to be free of re-supply concerns for both ammunition and fuel.
As you point out, carriers already come equipped. Carriers are also plainly the first and most important target vessels. Everything in a carrier fleet but the carrier itself is just so much high tech meat shield for the carrier anyways.
Great, my use of hyperbole will now be attacked as though it's literal...
Lasers ARE more accurate than projectiles, wind doesn't shift a laser's course. The need for greater accuracy with a laser is a power issue, not an accuracy issue. Nobody is arguing yet that lasers are fully ready and powerful enough to replace projectiles, just that we are getting closer.
GP said "Unlimited ammunition and No pollution from spent weapons" P said "No"... to both
Again, solid state lasers, which are the topic of the article have their waste and ammunition limited only by their power source. Seeing as these are being tested for naval deployment, it's a pretty sure bet the power source for these in any significant deployment is going to be a nuclear reactor. That means the "ammunition" supply cycle for the ships lasers will by measured in years, so yes, that is as good as unlimited. The waste is also limited to the size of the reactor vessel, again over that same number of years. Not terribly shabby. The only obstacle is getting the power on the lasers up high enough to be useful even in foggy/cloudy weather.
The UN puts them square in the middle of human development, until the famine started.
That last qualifier is more important than you imply. Enough so as to make your statement utterly false. Mal-Nutrition in NK is so bad their average height is multiple inches shorter than in the South, their closest genetic relatives. Today's North Korea is a nation of grass eating slaves, suffering from dwarfism, still officially ruled by the deceased Godking, Kim Il Sung. You are very hard pressed to find a worse place to live anywhere on the face of the earth.
If there is something new going on here, it's absolutely impossible to decode from the layman's language used in the article. All I hear is "Other vendors use X bits for ECC. We use Y bits and we do it in software instead of hardware.", which is basically just another way of saying "Other vendors have 4 blades, we have 5 blades."
Not quite, it was more like ensuring we (or better our grandparent) don't swing all the way and vote socialist democratic party or worse communist party of Germany. The "right" party was the christian democratic union.
You see there is a fine line between making sure that evil-party X is not elected again and making sure that our favorite-buddy-party Y and no other is elected.
Yes, the USA and Allied liberation of Germany from the Nazi's wasn't done for the benefit of the German people. The following American rule after was imperfect and even was biased toward American interests rather than that of German citizens. It still bears notice that American management, with all it's warts, looked like heaven on Earth beside rule under Hitler or Stalin, which were the alternatives.
Sorry, but it is with good reason that few people have much tolerance for your degree of criticism of America's mismanagement of post-war Germany. When the options were Hitler, Stalin or America, the American rule was not only the best choice, but the only one any sane, rational person would wish for.
Only I commented on the years which came after conquering forces of the USA came marching through Berlin.
And yes, it could have been worse. And it was for east Germany.
I only commented that the first so called "free election" in Germany was fixed. The USA says they bring democracy and then make sure enough people vote for the "right" party.
Which is why I made reference to the fact Germany had previously chosen the "wrong" party. Making sure the Nazi's stayed out of power in Germany doesn't seem as onerous as you make it out.
Democracy is not the only way to produce a functioning state. It is the way that works best here in The West due to our cultural background.
Look at The Soviet union, it managed to grow to superpower status, get people into space and be more than a military match for The West, and it was never a democracy. Of course The Soviet Union collapsed, and we like to think that was because it was undemocratic, although to me it seems that it was more due to a lot of bad policy decisions...
Yes, bad policy decisions. I guess that's a euphemism now for the mass execution and murder of millions of Soviet citizens.
In some circles Stalin's methods are still criticized and considered a poor substitute for other less effective but less brutal ones. America could have peace and stability in Afghanistan very quickly if they wanted it, but they opted to be more discriminate in their killing than is needed to bring order to a lawless region quickly.
Right. They're fucked. Their best hope was that all the dopes would get bored and get out. Now there's not a chance in hell of that happening.
Right, because devastating poverty and the lack of any economy outside the illegal drug trade was serving the Afghan people so well. Now that their nation might actually have something of value to build a legitimate economy around they are truly doomed.
Or the very opposite. As a German some of those History-Channel post WWII reports make me puke. All those niceties the USA did to us after there war where not that nice at all. Instead the USA fixed our elections, brain washed us with pro-capitalistic propaganda (designed by CIA specialists), made us have an army again (which we did not want at the time) and ignored a chance for re-unification because the USA did not want us to be neutral.
Yep, the American invasion and occupation of Germany was one of history's great tragedies. It was a dark day indeed when the conquering imperial forces of the American empire came marching through Berlin.
You don't get it. No one on./ really does. You're looking at this from the point of "those Muslims are trying to tell us what we can say".
To be fair, that point of view is correct. It's hard to interpret death threats and actual assassinations of people for saying or printing the wrong things in any other light.
I know there is a strong urge to defend the moderates within Islam from the backlash that will result. The whole point though is that anyone issuing death threats or the use of force to control what people say is NOT one of the moderates. Defending them is helping the extremists, which is actively harming the moderates you want to help.
This issue has the potential to radicalize more people than Al-Qaeda ever dreamed of. They shot their wad in Iraq with their murderous overreaching and failed to convince the Muslim masses to rise up. But this can very easily breathe new life into Islamist movements that have been discrediting themselves in the eyes of regular folks.
On this regard, I am with Christopher Hitchens: "Then bring it on!" The less people we have sitting on the fence between moderate and extremist sides, the easier it is to help one and defeat the other.
Also, just so you understand, the Muslim masses in Iraq DID rise up. Unfortunately for Al-Qaeda, the Muslim masses of Iraq are Shia, not Sunni. They didn't particularly care for Al-Qaeda's brand of Sunni Islam that called for their own destruction as infidels.
Al-Qaeda didn't fail in trying to stir up Iraqi Muslims, the Iraqi Muslims rose up and defeated them.
Oh, because no western Nation has any religious intolerance. Have you seen France lately?
Actually I said there was intolerance everywhere. I just also noticed that it is very, very much worse in Pakistan. America still has racial intolerance, but compared to the 1930's, the America of today is much, much better.
France has riots, Pakistan has entire states/provinces/regions that are overrun by religious fanatics. Their control there is so absolute that the Pakistani police and even army still dare not go there. These fanatics, let's call them the Pakistani Taliban, as that's what many of them call themselves, use those regions of Pakistan to launch terrorist attacks against such targets as universities that allow women to attend them. They've also claimed responsibility for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Their mindset stretches far enough though that the list of those suspected of involvement stretches out from them into Paksitan's Intelligence services, Military and former dictator, sorry that's president, Musharraf. Oh, but yes, France does have riots and sometimes people even get injured pretty badly. I guess if you close your eyes and cover your ears well enough you can pretend they are the same thing. That won't make it true mind you.
You really do know current affairs in Pakistan well;) Yea, things improve but slowly and maybe for the sake of closure, we do find the killers of Benazir. I am a Pakistani and you all can say its a nuclear armed nation of Taliban but trust me, its way better than that. I see hope and when you grow to take your grand children to school, you will see a better image of Pakistan and a Pakistani is saying this to you. I work 45 hour week in IT and more to improve my skills and trust me what worries me a zillion times more than FB and youtube blocks is my access to online forums and my 2 hours of study/blogging/ helping other techies and geeks and seeking info myself and whether my family gives me the time to sit on a computer reading webhosting/data center technology/*nix stuff.
Thank you, if you don't mind my asking please be vocal to our side of the world about how things are going over in your country. As I see it Musharraf returning to power isn't as much a concern for us over here as it is for people like yourself that would be living under him again.
If you don't mind I've a got questions for someone closer to what's happening:).
Do you see the PPP being able to hold on to power much longer? Do you see them being able to get anything good done for the people, or do they lack the strength needed? Do you care who is leading the nation, or do you think any leading party would stay on the generally positive path things are slowly following already?
The GP did not state Pakistan doesn't have problems, but to state the democratic nations also have problems which shouldn't be ignored. Stating these problems in developed and democratic nations should not be ignored is neither malicious nor ignorant.
No, he didn't simply say that our problems shouldn't be ignored. He compared the state of affairs in Paksitan as comparable to pretty much any developed nation: I find that a lot of these foreign developing countries that seem to be oppressive and support censorship are usually pretty much just as bad as any developed nation.
I spoke directly to the relativism that would compare censorship acts and declare all is equal. I pointed out the notable difference that Pakistan's elements pushing for this ban, are also the elements that not only aren't pursuing Benazir's assassins, but are additionally going as far as to blame her for her own murder. That is after all what a women gets for not knowing her rightful religious place. She may not have drawn a picture of Mohammad, but being a female politician was really no better.
My point was to make it entirely clear that the posters implication that Pakistan's problems were comparable to anything faced in the western world was a load of lies. I stand by it needing to have been said, and by it being overwhelmingly true.
I wish we could ban backwards countries from the ENTIRE internet. We could use a few less Nigerian scams and terrorist recruitment websites. We should establish a rule that if it's legal in your country to kill a woman for showing her face in public, you're not ready for the internet (or television or radio for that matter). You can give your people the internet when you get them sewers and a secular government first.
I think your ignorance is leading you to propose bad ideas. You do realize that Pakistan's current ruling party IS a secular party. They were actually led by a women, Benazir Bhutto, until she was killed just recently, you may have heard of her.
You might also want to know although the former dictator didn't care to extend the nations infrastructure to all ends of the country, he did manage to give the people Nuclear weapons.
Finally, and most importantly, you should know that social networking sites like Facebook are one of the strongest tools available to the secular parties of the country that are struggling against both the military and religious fanatics. Don't think that the religious elements pushing for the ban are ignorant of how much their cause would be helped by depriving the secular and moderate elements the use of Facebook. But don't let any of that stop you from making like Bush and bull dogging your way straight into aiding the people you so rightly want to marginalize.
If only fluff pieces like this could bring attention to the more real issues in Pakistan. Like the recent assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the first and only head of a muslim state. It's unfortunate in the extreme that the country's court has now been more effective and interested in this youtube and facebook ban than it's pursuit of Benazir's killers.
This ban is not the only thing that has been more important to many of Pakistan's leadership either. Since Benazir's widow became president, the entirety of the country's opposition parties, courts and media have given more attention to corruption charges against Benazir's widow than to the pursuit of her killers.
Former dictator Musharraf is a leading suspect as a co-conspirator in her assassination. The latest news from him is his intent to return to Pakistan, at the head of a new political party that will include the PML-Q. The PML-Q is one Pakistan's strongest conservative Islamic parties, and one the ones advocating the strongest for this ban, for charges of corruption against Benazir's widow, and one of the quietest about her assassins still running free.
Well, I guess that's my small part in trying to draw attention from the 'fluff' over this ban to the real problems it is a symptom of.
Each country has its quirks, we seem so quick to condemn Pakistan for blocking a web site when we don't even have our own house in order.
Your relativism only shows that you are either malicious or ignorant. You do realize that the same powers in Pakistan pushing for this religious ban are also the ones failing to pursue the assassins of Benazir Bhutto. Not coincidentally, the first female head of state of any Islamic nation. In fact, in many papers the same crowd of leaders calling for permanent bans of facebook and youtube for religious reasons, are also remarking on Benazir's own guilt in her assassination for placing herself in harms way.
Sorry, but Pakistan's ban of media that offends the religious is a very minor symptom of much deeper, malicious and vile religious intolerance. Actually, you may have heard something of it on the news a few years ago, some of them went by the name of Tali-something or other. But who can be bothered to remember that sort of thing, we've got our own house to worry about and this couldn't possibly effect us.
1. The global temperature will increase - predicted by Hansen's model from early eighties. There is an observed increase in temperature.
That's not an AGW prediction, that's also a predication based on us just coming out an ice age. Try again please.
2. Arctic and antarctic to warm faster than rest of the planet - predicted by all models. Observed.
That's not an AGW prediction, it's a prediction of warming no matter what the source. Try again please.
3. Troposphere to warm and stratosphere to cool - predicted by all models. Observed.
And yet again, not an anthropogenic prediction, but a prediction for the increase of many GHG's from a great many reasons.
4. Increasing signature of CO2 in long wave spectrum form top of atmosphere. Observed by satellite spectrographically.
Which is not an AGW prediction, but a prediction tied to increased CO2 concentrations. The nature of the correlation is hardly well spoken to.
5. Increasing acidification of the oceans. Observed.
Strike 5.
and plenty more where those came from. Please cut the crap about climate science not being falsifiable. Try looking at the evidence, the science and the facts for a change.
Please present the 'others' then. The real trick to AGW as a theory is falsifiable predictions are hard to come by. Virtually all the observations and data that can be gathered about it still rely on an understanding of the relationship between human CO2 emissions and global CO2 concentrations, and then from global CO2 concentrations to long term climate trends. It's easily proven that increased CO2 increases warming. Demonstrating that human activity has introduced so much new CO2 as to cause historically unprecedented warming requires extraordinary proof. I've yet to find any articles claiming evidence above the level of suggestive.
why it's okay to fire someone for something that is completely unrelated to their job performance in any way, shape, or form.
It's not, and I think we're well agreed on that then.
I was responding to "Explain to me why it's okay to fire someone for being a smoker." The only context I was pulling from anywhere else was that the concept applied similarly to sexual choices and behavior's. Where that behavior is relevant to the job, it should be allowed as a hiring and firing criteria. That includes jobs in religious orders that have specific beliefs about our behaviors. The distinction being that religions should be allowed to discriminate based on behaviors but not on genetics. That ties back very directly and importantly to the notion of choice or genetics.
your ridiculous premise that homosexuality is a "behavioral decision".
The science on genetic 'ties' to sexual preference are no stronger than studies on the ties to criminally violent behavior. Nobody goes around talking about the ridiculous premise that violence is a "behavioral decision".
Explain to me why it's okay to fire someone for being a smoker.
Almost, but not quite, never. Smoking cessation centers and rehab clinics might well find some justification for requiring that their employees not smoke. Explain to my why sexual behavior should be treated any differently. It certainly is rarely relevant, but can you honestly say it never is?
One controversy with this data is that they added instrument records (that is, the CRU temperature series) to the end of the chart (which you can see as the black line in the image), which shows more warming in recent times. Another is that one proxy (tree ring data) shows a decline in the proxy measurement (tree ring width) from the 1960s onwards, which on the face of it, should imply that temperatures are declining, but which no other data, including all the various instrument data show. Mann used a statistical trick of stopping the tree ring data with the 60s and tacking on the instrument data, a technique some people disagree with.
I think you are understating things when you call that a technique some people disagree with. Have you taken a look at the raw proxy data records in Mann's supplementary? Every last sample bears a closer resemblance to line noise than anything else. Most importantly, there is absolutely NOTHING noteworthy or even giving a hint of a trend starting at the point Mann's hockey stick makes it's turn. From 1900 through 1960 his calibrating of the proxy data pulls it up into the start of the hockey stick, but when it drops off after the 1960's he just throws it away and inserts the instrumental record.
When Mann's graph's entire weight is based on how it 'proves' the strong correlation between proxy and instrumental records, and reflects historically unprecedented warming starting in the 1900's I call that a little more than 'questionable'. It's a graph being fitted not on what best matches the data being graphed, but instead the assumptions of the scientist and possibly their political agendas as well.
It's also worth remembering that any time churches have been in a positions of real power, power to change and order society, they have universally repressed these things, often with extreme violence.
It's also worth remembering that any time HUMANS have been in a positions of real power, power to change and order society, they have universally repressed these things, often with extreme violence.
The Saudis, Emiratis, Kuwaitis etc. are almost racists, and the countries are tyrannies far worse than the West's enemies like Iran, Libya, Syria Saddam Hussain
Your completely ignorant if you want to include Saddam there. There have been few tyrants to match Saddam, if anything he not only ran from the playbooks of those that came before him, but improved upon it. When he seized power and had eliminated all opposition leaders, he immediately went on to purge the leaders within his own party as well. He orchestrated a man he'd tortured to single out 60 members of his own party at a convention and insisted on televising the event. What was not televised was the event immediately after where he went one better than Stalin and didn't simply have them executed, but gave those lucky enough not to have been singled out guns and made them perform the executions, sealing them to himself as part of the crime.
The rest of his rule was equally if not even more brutal. It was characterized by collective punishment, concentration camps, rape rooms, mass murder, chemical gassing, and genocide.
You probably aught to leave Saddam off your list of people that are 'just as bad' as any other dictator.
religious minorities where much better off under Saddam Hussein than they are in Iraq now.
The only part you may even possibly have correct in that is to say specifically the Sunni minority was better off under Saddam. The 60% Shia majority however were the victims of systematic slaughter under Saddam, as were every one of Iraq's millions of Kurds. It would seem you don't know the first thing of conditions in Iraq under Saddam. You really should take the time to read up on what Saddam was actually like. The occupation of Iraq has been terrible, Saddam was worse, at least now there is a light at the end of the tunnel for Iraqi's, even if it is still fraught with violence and hatred at least it now exists.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll pick the broken tray. First, I'll block your thrown stars (assuming you can even get a good windup given the claustrophobic environment inside a plane) and, now that you're disarmed, beat you over the head with said tray.
Sounds like you don't even need the tray. You might as well declare that guns are harmless as well. Potential victims can simply dodge the bullets and then finish the fight with a Chuck Norris roundhouse kick.
For those of us with less Ninja skills than yourself, better weapons offer an advantage in a fight.
How different is this from someone taking a tie and strangling the person in front of them? Or breaking off the tray table? Or using any one of a hundred other improvised weapons?
Seriously? Failure to understand the difference between a throwing star, a necktie and a dinner tray is +5?
I'll help you out captain obvious. We'll put throwing stars, neckties and dinner trays on a table. Then we can each pick our weapons and have a little 'demonstration'. If you suddenly figure out the difference before picking your weapon, the demonstration won't be necessary.
A little more about traveling to North Korea. I'm living in Asia currently and as it's close to me, I plan to take a trip there this winter. During my life living in many countries I've learnt that prejudices are just those - prejudices. People always give a shittier picture about something, and when you see it yourself it's just different.
That's a very true observation. Lots of terrible things were said about the Nazi's, but when the allies finally got to Germany things were just different. Only in that case, they were different in the most horrific of ways, and the horror of what the Nazi's were actually doing was even worse than the picture that had been painted.
The pictures of North Korea are in that same category. Very few people have ever been allowed in to see the country, but of those that have escaped the stories are completely consistent. North Korea is a slave state, still officially run by a dead man. A nation whose forced labor camps are so cruel, that attempting to catch mice for food is a punishable offense. This isn't a propaganda picture, it is the exact same account given by every single person that has ever managed to escape it's horror.
Only aircraft carriers and submarines are nuclear-powered. Everything else runs on diesel.
The contention was that laser based weapons have the advantage of being limited by energy supply, rather than ammunition. A nuclear power source is implied as part and parcel of any laser weapon system deployment to a naval vessel. Anything larger than a Destroyer can run nuclear, opening the potential to be free of re-supply concerns for both ammunition and fuel.
As you point out, carriers already come equipped. Carriers are also plainly the first and most important target vessels. Everything in a carrier fleet but the carrier itself is just so much high tech meat shield for the carrier anyways.
Great, my use of hyperbole will now be attacked as though it's literal...
GP said "Better accuracy"
P said "No"
Lasers ARE more accurate than projectiles, wind doesn't shift a laser's course. The need for greater accuracy with a laser is a power issue, not an accuracy issue. Nobody is arguing yet that lasers are fully ready and powerful enough to replace projectiles, just that we are getting closer.
GP said "Unlimited ammunition and No pollution from spent weapons"
P said "No"... to both
Again, solid state lasers, which are the topic of the article have their waste and ammunition limited only by their power source. Seeing as these are being tested for naval deployment, it's a pretty sure bet the power source for these in any significant deployment is going to be a nuclear reactor. That means the "ammunition" supply cycle for the ships lasers will by measured in years, so yes, that is as good as unlimited. The waste is also limited to the size of the reactor vessel, again over that same number of years. Not terribly shabby. The only obstacle is getting the power on the lasers up high enough to be useful even in foggy/cloudy weather.
The UN puts them square in the middle of human development, until the famine started.
That last qualifier is more important than you imply. Enough so as to make your statement utterly false. Mal-Nutrition in NK is so bad their average height is multiple inches shorter than in the South, their closest genetic relatives. Today's North Korea is a nation of grass eating slaves, suffering from dwarfism, still officially ruled by the deceased Godking, Kim Il Sung. You are very hard pressed to find a worse place to live anywhere on the face of the earth.
If there is something new going on here, it's absolutely impossible to decode from the layman's language used in the article. All I hear is "Other vendors use X bits for ECC. We use Y bits and we do it in software instead of hardware.", which is basically just another way of saying "Other vendors have 4 blades, we have 5 blades."
Well, as you can see, their dials go to eleven!
Not quite, it was more like ensuring we (or better our grandparent) don't swing all the way and vote socialist democratic party or worse communist party of Germany. The "right" party was the christian democratic union.
You see there is a fine line between making sure that evil-party X is not elected again and making sure that our favorite-buddy-party Y and no other is elected.
Yes, the USA and Allied liberation of Germany from the Nazi's wasn't done for the benefit of the German people. The following American rule after was imperfect and even was biased toward American interests rather than that of German citizens. It still bears notice that American management, with all it's warts, looked like heaven on Earth beside rule under Hitler or Stalin, which were the alternatives.
Sorry, but it is with good reason that few people have much tolerance for your degree of criticism of America's mismanagement of post-war Germany. When the options were Hitler, Stalin or America, the American rule was not only the best choice, but the only one any sane, rational person would wish for.
Only I commented on the years which came after conquering forces of the USA came marching through Berlin.
And yes, it could have been worse. And it was for east Germany.
I only commented that the first so called "free election" in Germany was fixed. The USA says they bring democracy and then make sure enough people vote for the "right" party.
Which is why I made reference to the fact Germany had previously chosen the "wrong" party. Making sure the Nazi's stayed out of power in Germany doesn't seem as onerous as you make it out.
Democracy is not the only way to produce a functioning state. It is the way that works best here in The West due to our cultural background.
Look at The Soviet union, it managed to grow to superpower status, get people into space and be more than a military match for The West, and it was never a democracy. Of course The Soviet Union collapsed, and we like to think that was because it was undemocratic, although to me it seems that it was more due to a lot of bad policy decisions...
Yes, bad policy decisions. I guess that's a euphemism now for the mass execution and murder of millions of Soviet citizens.
In some circles Stalin's methods are still criticized and considered a poor substitute for other less effective but less brutal ones. America could have peace and stability in Afghanistan very quickly if they wanted it, but they opted to be more discriminate in their killing than is needed to bring order to a lawless region quickly.
Right. They're fucked. Their best hope was that all the dopes would get bored and get out. Now there's not a chance in hell of that happening.
Right, because devastating poverty and the lack of any economy outside the illegal drug trade was serving the Afghan people so well. Now that their nation might actually have something of value to build a legitimate economy around they are truly doomed.
Or the very opposite. As a German some of those History-Channel post WWII reports make me puke. All those niceties the USA did to us after there war where not that nice at all. Instead the USA fixed our elections, brain washed us with pro-capitalistic propaganda (designed by CIA specialists), made us have an army again (which we did not want at the time) and ignored a chance for re-unification because the USA did not want us to be neutral.
Yep, the American invasion and occupation of Germany was one of history's great tragedies. It was a dark day indeed when the conquering imperial forces of the American empire came marching through Berlin.
You don't get it. No one on ./ really does. You're looking at this from the point of "those Muslims are trying to tell us what we can say".
To be fair, that point of view is correct. It's hard to interpret death threats and actual assassinations of people for saying or printing the wrong things in any other light.
I know there is a strong urge to defend the moderates within Islam from the backlash that will result. The whole point though is that anyone issuing death threats or the use of force to control what people say is NOT one of the moderates. Defending them is helping the extremists, which is actively harming the moderates you want to help.
This issue has the potential to radicalize more people than Al-Qaeda ever dreamed of. They shot their wad in Iraq with their murderous overreaching and failed to convince the Muslim masses to rise up. But this can very easily breathe new life into Islamist movements that have been discrediting themselves in the eyes of regular folks.
On this regard, I am with Christopher Hitchens: "Then bring it on!" The less people we have sitting on the fence between moderate and extremist sides, the easier it is to help one and defeat the other.
Also, just so you understand, the Muslim masses in Iraq DID rise up. Unfortunately for Al-Qaeda, the Muslim masses of Iraq are Shia, not Sunni. They didn't particularly care for Al-Qaeda's brand of Sunni Islam that called for their own destruction as infidels.
Al-Qaeda didn't fail in trying to stir up Iraqi Muslims, the Iraqi Muslims rose up and defeated them.
Oh, because no western Nation has any religious intolerance. Have you seen France lately?
Actually I said there was intolerance everywhere. I just also noticed that it is very, very much worse in Pakistan. America still has racial intolerance, but compared to the 1930's, the America of today is much, much better.
France has riots, Pakistan has entire states/provinces/regions that are overrun by religious fanatics. Their control there is so absolute that the Pakistani police and even army still dare not go there. These fanatics, let's call them the Pakistani Taliban, as that's what many of them call themselves, use those regions of Pakistan to launch terrorist attacks against such targets as universities that allow women to attend them. They've also claimed responsibility for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Their mindset stretches far enough though that the list of those suspected of involvement stretches out from them into Paksitan's Intelligence services, Military and former dictator, sorry that's president, Musharraf. Oh, but yes, France does have riots and sometimes people even get injured pretty badly. I guess if you close your eyes and cover your ears well enough you can pretend they are the same thing. That won't make it true mind you.
You really do know current affairs in Pakistan well
Thank you, if you don't mind my asking please be vocal to our side of the world about how things are going over in your country. As I see it Musharraf returning to power isn't as much a concern for us over here as it is for people like yourself that would be living under him again.
If you don't mind I've a got questions for someone closer to what's happening :).
Do you see the PPP being able to hold on to power much longer?
Do you see them being able to get anything good done for the people, or do they lack the strength needed?
Do you care who is leading the nation, or do you think any leading party would stay on the generally positive path things are slowly following already?
The GP did not state Pakistan doesn't have problems, but to state the democratic nations also have problems which shouldn't be ignored. Stating these problems in developed and democratic nations should not be ignored is neither malicious nor ignorant.
No, he didn't simply say that our problems shouldn't be ignored. He compared the state of affairs in Paksitan as comparable to pretty much any developed nation:
I find that a lot of these foreign developing countries that seem to be oppressive and support censorship are usually pretty much just as bad as any developed nation.
I spoke directly to the relativism that would compare censorship acts and declare all is equal. I pointed out the notable difference that Pakistan's elements pushing for this ban, are also the elements that not only aren't pursuing Benazir's assassins, but are additionally going as far as to blame her for her own murder. That is after all what a women gets for not knowing her rightful religious place. She may not have drawn a picture of Mohammad, but being a female politician was really no better.
My point was to make it entirely clear that the posters implication that Pakistan's problems were comparable to anything faced in the western world was a load of lies. I stand by it needing to have been said, and by it being overwhelmingly true.
I wish we could ban backwards countries from the ENTIRE internet. We could use a few less Nigerian scams and terrorist recruitment websites. We should establish a rule that if it's legal in your country to kill a woman for showing her face in public, you're not ready for the internet (or television or radio for that matter). You can give your people the internet when you get them sewers and a secular government first.
I think your ignorance is leading you to propose bad ideas. You do realize that Pakistan's current ruling party IS a secular party. They were actually led by a women, Benazir Bhutto, until she was killed just recently, you may have heard of her.
You might also want to know although the former dictator didn't care to extend the nations infrastructure to all ends of the country, he did manage to give the people Nuclear weapons.
Finally, and most importantly, you should know that social networking sites like Facebook are one of the strongest tools available to the secular parties of the country that are struggling against both the military and religious fanatics. Don't think that the religious elements pushing for the ban are ignorant of how much their cause would be helped by depriving the secular and moderate elements the use of Facebook. But don't let any of that stop you from making like Bush and bull dogging your way straight into aiding the people you so rightly want to marginalize.
If only fluff pieces like this could bring attention to the more real issues in Pakistan. Like the recent assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the first and only head of a muslim state. It's unfortunate in the extreme that the country's court has now been more effective and interested in this youtube and facebook ban than it's pursuit of Benazir's killers.
This ban is not the only thing that has been more important to many of Pakistan's leadership either. Since Benazir's widow became president, the entirety of the country's opposition parties, courts and media have given more attention to corruption charges against Benazir's widow than to the pursuit of her killers.
Former dictator Musharraf is a leading suspect as a co-conspirator in her assassination. The latest news from him is his intent to return to Pakistan, at the head of a new political party that will include the PML-Q. The PML-Q is one Pakistan's strongest conservative Islamic parties, and one the ones advocating the strongest for this ban, for charges of corruption against Benazir's widow, and one of the quietest about her assassins still running free.
Well, I guess that's my small part in trying to draw attention from the 'fluff' over this ban to the real problems it is a symptom of.
Each country has its quirks, we seem so quick to condemn Pakistan for blocking a web site when we don't even have our own house in order.
Your relativism only shows that you are either malicious or ignorant. You do realize that the same powers in Pakistan pushing for this religious ban are also the ones failing to pursue the assassins of Benazir Bhutto. Not coincidentally, the first female head of state of any Islamic nation. In fact, in many papers the same crowd of leaders calling for permanent bans of facebook and youtube for religious reasons, are also remarking on Benazir's own guilt in her assassination for placing herself in harms way.
Sorry, but Pakistan's ban of media that offends the religious is a very minor symptom of much deeper, malicious and vile religious intolerance. Actually, you may have heard something of it on the news a few years ago, some of them went by the name of Tali-something or other. But who can be bothered to remember that sort of thing, we've got our own house to worry about and this couldn't possibly effect us.
1. The global temperature will increase - predicted by Hansen's model from early eighties. There is an observed increase in temperature.
That's not an AGW prediction, that's also a predication based on us just coming out an ice age. Try again please.
2. Arctic and antarctic to warm faster than rest of the planet - predicted by all models. Observed.
That's not an AGW prediction, it's a prediction of warming no matter what the source. Try again please.
3. Troposphere to warm and stratosphere to cool - predicted by all models. Observed.
And yet again, not an anthropogenic prediction, but a prediction for the increase of many GHG's from a great many reasons.
4. Increasing signature of CO2 in long wave spectrum form top of atmosphere. Observed by satellite spectrographically.
Which is not an AGW prediction, but a prediction tied to increased CO2 concentrations. The nature of the correlation is hardly well spoken to.
5. Increasing acidification of the oceans. Observed.
Strike 5.
and plenty more where those came from. Please cut the crap about climate science not being falsifiable. Try looking at the evidence, the science and the facts for a change.
Please present the 'others' then. The real trick to AGW as a theory is falsifiable predictions are hard to come by. Virtually all the observations and data that can be gathered about it still rely on an understanding of the relationship between human CO2 emissions and global CO2 concentrations, and then from global CO2 concentrations to long term climate trends. It's easily proven that increased CO2 increases warming. Demonstrating that human activity has introduced so much new CO2 as to cause historically unprecedented warming requires extraordinary proof. I've yet to find any articles claiming evidence above the level of suggestive.
why it's okay to fire someone for something that is completely unrelated to their job performance in any way, shape, or form.
It's not, and I think we're well agreed on that then.
I was responding to "Explain to me why it's okay to fire someone for being a smoker." The only context I was pulling from anywhere else was that the concept applied similarly to sexual choices and behavior's. Where that behavior is relevant to the job, it should be allowed as a hiring and firing criteria. That includes jobs in religious orders that have specific beliefs about our behaviors. The distinction being that religions should be allowed to discriminate based on behaviors but not on genetics. That ties back very directly and importantly to the notion of choice or genetics.
your ridiculous premise that homosexuality is a "behavioral decision".
The science on genetic 'ties' to sexual preference are no stronger than studies on the ties to criminally violent behavior. Nobody goes around talking about the ridiculous premise that violence is a "behavioral decision".
Explain to me why it's okay to fire someone for being a smoker.
Almost, but not quite, never. Smoking cessation centers and rehab clinics might well find some justification for requiring that their employees not smoke. Explain to my why sexual behavior should be treated any differently. It certainly is rarely relevant, but can you honestly say it never is?
One controversy with this data is that they added instrument records (that is, the CRU temperature series) to the end of the chart (which you can see as the black line in the image), which shows more warming in recent times. Another is that one proxy (tree ring data) shows a decline in the proxy measurement (tree ring width) from the 1960s onwards, which on the face of it, should imply that temperatures are declining, but which no other data, including all the various instrument data show. Mann used a statistical trick of stopping the tree ring data with the 60s and tacking on the instrument data, a technique some people disagree with.
I think you are understating things when you call that a technique some people disagree with. Have you taken a look at the raw proxy data records in Mann's supplementary? Every last sample bears a closer resemblance to line noise than anything else. Most importantly, there is absolutely NOTHING noteworthy or even giving a hint of a trend starting at the point Mann's hockey stick makes it's turn. From 1900 through 1960 his calibrating of the proxy data pulls it up into the start of the hockey stick, but when it drops off after the 1960's he just throws it away and inserts the instrumental record.
When Mann's graph's entire weight is based on how it 'proves' the strong correlation between proxy and instrumental records, and reflects historically unprecedented warming starting in the 1900's I call that a little more than 'questionable'. It's a graph being fitted not on what best matches the data being graphed, but instead the assumptions of the scientist and possibly their political agendas as well.
It's also worth remembering that any time churches have been in a positions of real power, power to change and order society, they have universally repressed these things, often with extreme violence.
It's also worth remembering that any time HUMANS have been in a positions of real power, power to change and order society, they have universally repressed these things, often with extreme violence.
There, that's better.
The Saudis, Emiratis, Kuwaitis etc. are almost racists, and the countries are tyrannies far worse than the West's enemies like Iran, Libya, Syria Saddam Hussain
Your completely ignorant if you want to include Saddam there. There have been few tyrants to match Saddam, if anything he not only ran from the playbooks of those that came before him, but improved upon it. When he seized power and had eliminated all opposition leaders, he immediately went on to purge the leaders within his own party as well. He orchestrated a man he'd tortured to single out 60 members of his own party at a convention and insisted on televising the event. What was not televised was the event immediately after where he went one better than Stalin and didn't simply have them executed, but gave those lucky enough not to have been singled out guns and made them perform the executions, sealing them to himself as part of the crime.
The rest of his rule was equally if not even more brutal. It was characterized by collective punishment, concentration camps, rape rooms, mass murder, chemical gassing, and genocide.
You probably aught to leave Saddam off your list of people that are 'just as bad' as any other dictator.
religious minorities where much better off under Saddam Hussein than they are in Iraq now.
The only part you may even possibly have correct in that is to say specifically the Sunni minority was better off under Saddam. The 60% Shia majority however were the victims of systematic slaughter under Saddam, as were every one of Iraq's millions of Kurds. It would seem you don't know the first thing of conditions in Iraq under Saddam. You really should take the time to read up on what Saddam was actually like. The occupation of Iraq has been terrible, Saddam was worse, at least now there is a light at the end of the tunnel for Iraqi's, even if it is still fraught with violence and hatred at least it now exists.