The article suggests picking mass and shape: if the body is massive enough such that its own gravity formed it into a spheroid, it's a planet.
None of the steroids or comets would be planets, nor specs of dust nor billiard balls orbiting the sun. This seems like a much more reasonable criterion than "it's bigger than 2000km."
It's a body of matter vastly more massive than other matter in the vicinity.
From the article:
Location Rules. "Let's use an object's location as the criterion to establish or reject it from planethood."
The most common form of this idea is to classify an object as a planet if it is the largest thing in its region. By this criterion, objects like Ceres and Sedna are planets, for they are the largest known things in their regions of the solar system.
The main problem is that as we discover new objects, some planets may cease to become planets. And what happens if a planet shifts its orbit closer to a bigger planet? Does it stop being a planet until it moves far enough away?
Having read the article, I like his criterion: massive anough for gravity to form it into a spherical object. This doesn't change over time; it's based on physics; and it's very similar to the criterion for whether or not an object is a star (massive enough for fusion to provide the majority of its energy).
I knew that wasn't clear enough. I only wanted to avoid giving the impression that I thought all terrorism was the result of U.S. foreign policy. I don't view the tragedy of 9-11 as special in comparison to other horrible acts.
Even were the US to pull out of every other country, and return to the isolationist state of the 30s
I think we can find some compromise between sticking our heads in the sand and terrorizing lesser-developed countries for economic advantage. I'm not saying we should disappear from the world; it'd just be nice to stop destroying it so enthusiastically.
In think you're optimistic in thinking that the hatred for the US will go away just because the US is acting reasonably.
That's not what I think. I think that acting reasonably and like a good neighbor would go a long way toward mending our fences, but it will take more than that. For example, increase food aid spending instead of buying more weapons for Israel.
Good will doesn't blossom overnight, especially after the shit we've slung at our neigbors. It will take time and work and much less arrogance.
This is the exact mistake most people make. The "terrorists" stated quite clearly that they cannot tolerate our military base in Saudi Arabia and our massive (far more than any other country) military, economic and diplomatic aid to Israel. Neither of these is the slightest bit related to whether or not women can show their faces.
That their culture differs from ours is not the problem. While I think many of their laws are unethical and backward, given their history of repression by the stronger states I'm not surprised it's taking them longer to "evolve" their society. But you cannot claim that their laws justify the billions of dollars the U.S. puts into ensuring the entire Middle East region remains devastated for decades, much as we've left Indochina.
All in all, there is little to no more tyranny here than anywhere else.
In more democratic societies, propaganda works much more effectively than totalitarianism. You'll naturally see less force applied internally, though it does get applied from time to time.
I agree that we probably have some of the worst morals out of any country
Remember that America is many things: a people, a set of ideals, ethics and laws, and a government. I strongly agree with the ideals set out in the Constitution (one person, one vote, rule by the people). I don't see that it applies very well to the U.S. in some cases (how many votes do I have as a regular guy versus the general manager of Ford with his political and financial connections?). I appreciate the diversity of people we have here, even the ones I'd rather not associate with (KKK).
But when I talk of the actions of the U.S., keep in mind that it is for the most part the actions of the administration. Yes, we vote for some officials who appoint others who hire others, and somehow that means I have some control over whether we give $4 billion or $5 billion to Israel this year to pay for their "Wall of Justice/Security/Peace/Love/Brotherhood/Whatever."
While I feel it is our duty and responsibility to regain control of our governance, I don't directly hold U.S. citizens responsible for the bloodshed in Iraq and elsewhere. For that reason I would not commence bombing of Washington. And it was equally as wrong to destroy Iraq. Yes, we got Saddam. So what? Who is he? One of our thugs that went astray. But who has paid more dearly? Look at Iraq. How soon do you think the people of that country will be anywhere near healed?
Airport Security Agent: "Sir, did anyone give you anything to carry?"
Terrorist: "No."
Agent: "Have you had your bags with you at all times?"
Terrorist: "Yes."
Agent: "Are you a radical Islamist planning to hijack the airplane?"
Terrorist: "Yes -- I mean no!"
I think the events in New York and Madrid and many cities before them have shown that there is no "stopping terrorism" through screening and extra security. When people are desperate enough, they can do some amazing and horrendous things.
I believe air marshals combined with giving the cockpit crew the means to defend themselves would be the more effective than screening, if people insist on doing something to feel safer. The men from 9-11 had valid IDs and appeared normal. Or now that we have made air travel troublesome, they'll hit our trains or roads or something else.
Let's address the reasons why terrorists are gunning for the U.S. and other states in the first place. Do you accept the line that they "hate our freedoms"? If so, then we're helping them by curtailing our liberty in order to feel more secure.
It is my firm belief that terrorism is less of a threat than tyranny.
Since terrorism (in the 9-11 sense) is a response to U.S. tyranny elsewhere, ending the tyranny would end the terrorism. Thus "fighting terrorism" is pointless salve for the symptom -- not a cure for the problem.
SpamGourmet has a feature to combat this. When you sign up, you choose a user ID as usual (e.g. spamisevil). When you want to give out the address, you prefix it with whatever word you want (e.g. nyt, slashdot, etc.) to recognize the source and a number between 1 and 20 which tells SG how many emails to forward before consuming messages. So to sign up for NYT you would provide "nyt.2.spamisevil@spamgourmet.com".
Now this is susceptible to guessing. Once I know or guess a user ID, the rest is made up each time. To make this harder, you can set "code words" that must be in the made-up prefix. Further, you can set a "password" that must prefix the entire address (secret.nyt.2.spamisevil@...).
Keep in mind this is geared toward providing temporary throw-away accounts. If someone looks in their logs/database and sees "secret.nyt..." they can sure start spamming you. Change the password or list of code words and they can no longer make up email addresses for you.
Someone would have to be pretty damn desperate to start scanning logs for SG email addresses, especially since they'd stop working pretty soon after they started using them to spam.
I just started using it last week after a similar post here. The thing I like most is that I don't have to go to SG's website to create a new account. You literally make up email addresses with the option to use the extra features to make it more difficult for someone else to do it to you.
If this means you are declining to use the megaphones yourself, I stand behind you one hundred percent. It is my opinion that the world would benefit if many other people made the same choice.
Yet I will continue to defend their right to choose.
If instead you are saying that you desire to take away the microphones or pick some person/group to decide who gets to use them, then we wholeheartedly disagree. And while I may respect that desire and even understand and sympathize with the sentiment behind it, I will fight against any measures to make it reality.
If the price of freedom of speech for me is freedom of speech for the Nazi's, I will gladly pay it, for I know I am not paying for their opinions but their right to have and express them.
[N.B. I view uninstalling Freenet as putting down your megaphone -- not taking them all away from everyone. In this case, an example of the latter would be outlawing Freenet.]
[I]f you don't want your node to harbor child porn, you should not run a Freenet node.
Similarly, if you don't want to "support anyone who would take other's freedom away," you should immediately stop paying taxes. You see, taxes pay for roads and other city services, and it's a high probability that at least some child pornographers live in cities and use the roads and services.
In effect, you are already supporting child pornographers, rapists, murderers, Nazis, terrorists -- even a few politicians! The law forbids sexual relations with children, but I don't think we should close all roads because child pornographers use them.
Now, you may argue that the content in Freenet is mostly child pornagraphy. You may even be right. But that doesn't discount or devalue the other content in the system any more than a rapist living in California makes the other citizens there less worthy.
[S]upporting the right of Nazi freedom of speech can only lead to the growth of a movement that wants to take your freedom away.
I disagree. When I hear/read/see Nazi messages, I tend to pity them for living such small, narrow lives. If you don't get the opportunity to hear the real message of someone, you may end up falling for their charisma rather than applying reason to their arguments. People have been free to hold Nazi Pride marches for many decades, yet I haven't seen a rise in support for them.
Remember, it's important to give someone the opportunity to stick their foot in their mouth.
I'm uninstalling the freenet, sorry.
And that is your right. You are free to run it and free to uninstall it. Isn't that the whole point?
Freenet is an unlimited (well, very very large) supply of megaphones. If you'd like to use one of the megaphones, the only requirement is that you not stop other people from using the megaphones. As there are more megaphones than people, no one will ever be left wanting. In that vane, if you stop others from using the megaphones (uninstall Freenet), you lose the use of them as well.
Now, keep in mind that having a megaphone does not guarantee an audience. If you cannot get people to link to your content, your content goes nowhere. The only reason there is child porn on the net is because people are looking for it. Whether or not you run a Freenet node, child porn will be distributed so long as people keep wanting it.
C'mon, you can be more clever than that! Here are three options off the top of my head.
Join the market with your CIA connections.
Invest in one of the many corporations profiting from the prison system (e.g. Haliburton).
Start a career in enforcement and push for more $$ to be spent on it.
Isn't anyone else concerned that we spend millions of dollars attempting to squelch a contrived black market? It's only worse that the majority of the so-called drug-related problems (and the worse ones) are caused by the criminalization of the drugs, not the drugs themselves.
When you connect to the iTunes servers, they can check your IP address to see which country you are in. Granted, IPs can be forged, but the average consumer won't know how nor even know that it's a possibility.
I personally feel that the whole disable-purchased-music-when-you-move thing is ridiculous. If Apple is only allowed to sell music in the US, the fact that you move after the sale should not alter the location of the sale. I haven't used iTunes, but perhaps their license actually forbids the music to be played outside the US.
When I moved to San Francisco back in 1995, I was a little overweight (180 vs. 165 target) and in poor shape from no exercise. I compounded the problem by discovering the many fine microbreweries in the City and ballooned to 195.
The first thing I had to do was stop beating myself up for being fat and accept that my body was how it was. I began looking in the mirror and saying, "Hey, that's not me" rather than, "God what a piece of shit." Changing my attitude toward myself allowed me to take the next step.
That next step was finding an activity that I really liked. I love to ski, but I don't get to do it often. But rollerblading is very similar in feel and fun aspect. I began rollerblading after work every night. I wanted to do it for an hour every night, but it was so damn fun I didn't want to stop before two hours.
Six weeks later I had dropped 30 pounds and had very nice, firm calves and legs. And DAMN did my butt look good. I've floated around 170 since then. Sometimes I'm in better shape; sometimes not. But I find that the key is finding activities you enjoy anyway and people to do them with.
I also took a diet/exercise course a little while ago that showed *why* eating healthy helps your body to remain healthy and strong as well as how to exercise effectively. Better to simply eat right than worry about cutting calories.
Fruit, vegetables, whole wheat and grains, dietary fiber, drop enriched/processed/refined foods, etc. Skip the Atkins diet as it's just not necessary, and there's enough evidence that it's not safe.
Don't think about replacing teachers with computers and stop there. The point is to use computers for tasks that computers are good at, freeing up the teacher's time to focus on things that computers can't do.
For example, let's take basic math. The teacher typically spends a lot of time doing "drills" on the board, "What's 4 + 7? And 11 + 32? How about 9 + 18, Johnny?" Those that grasp the concept quickly must suffer through endless boredom. Those that don't must struggle to keep up.
A computer game could do these drills (and I bet even the basic explanation of what the operators mean and do). Then the teacher could go around helping those in need one-on-one, maximizing personal interaction where it's needed most. As well, those that are doing well (easily determined by automatic scoring) could help out their classmates.
I'm realistic, and I know this is not the be-all-end-all solution. The trick is recognizing that (a) teachers are expensive (and should be paid far more, but don't get me started), (b) their time is limited, and (c) each student learns at a different pace. With class sizes much larger than most people believe to be effective, any solution that relieves the teacher of rote tasks while still being effective is a win.
...to expire ID cards is so they have to be physically replaced every so often. I don't know about other states, but California's ID cards change every few years. The latest ones have a smaller version of the photo on another part of the card.
As IDs get older, they become easier to forge. So if you force everyone to replace their IDs every 10 years, you make it harder to forge them overall.
Of course, I doubt anyone would notice that they were presented with an "old style" ID card with a future expiration date. That's asking way too much of cashier's.
"Support" is a long, long way from "holding gun to thier heads".
First, the US helped Suharto take power from Suharno in Indonesia via the usual CIA route. From 1966-69 Suharto was responsible for 1-2 million Indonesian deaths. The US provided economic, diplomatic, and military training and support. We weren't pulling the trigger, but giving him money to buy weapons and training his military in tortute and counterinsurgency goes along way toward producing dead bodies.
In 1975 Indonesia invaded East Timor after the population voted to become independent of Portugal (it was a Portuguese colony). Again, the US provided money for arms, weapons and equipment, and military training. When the UN tried to pass a resolution calling for Indonesia's withdrawal from East Timor, the US vetoed the resolution. The estimates range from 200,000 to 500,000 people dead of an original population of 750,000.
How is this behavior any different from doing the killing ourselves? Instead of stopping the slaughter -- which we could have easily done by removing diplomatic support (Clinton called Suharto "our kind of guy") -- we supported it. We are just as culpable.
Marxist-Stalinism doesn't get near as bad of a rap as the US does.
Are you serious? The "evil empire" has a better rap? Maybe now that we've pissed off the rest of the world by invading Iraq, but even today Communism has a major stigma associated with it.
I don't recall an invasion of South Vietnam, I recall the US sending forces to help the South Vietnamese government who was being invaded by the North.
This is false history, repeated again and again. In 1954, the French withdrew from Vietnam and the US set up a former Vietnamese official, Ngo Dinh Diem, in Saigon and was soon supporting it with money and arms as it had no internal support. The vast majority of the population supported the Vietminh. Diem was told to block the elections for reunification with the North.
In 1958, the South Vietnamese began guerilla operations against the regime, with some support coming from the Communist regime in Hanoi. In 1960, the National Liberation Front was created, and its main success was uniting the various villages into a single organization against the Diem/US regime. Realize that the Buddhist monks were setting themselves ablaze to protest Diem's regime. This wasn't a NVA invasion, it was a popular uprising.
Then in 1963, being deeply disappointed with the Diem regime, the CIA plotted with some of Diem's generals to oust him in a coup. As a side note, why did the US have so much interest in maintaining control of Vietnam and Indochina? Kennedy's Undersecretary of State, U. Alexis Johnson, explains:
"First, it provides a lush climate, fertile soil, rich natural resources, a relatively sparse population in most areas, and room to expand. The countries of Southeast Asia produce rich exportable surpluses such as rice, rubber, teak, corn, tin, spices, oil, and many others."
Finally, in August 1964, President Johnson declared that a US destroyer had been attacked by torpedos in the Gulf of Tonkin. There had actually been no attack. The same thing happened two days later, and the war was begun. Two hundred thousand troops were initially sent to South Vietnam, and most of the areas along the border were declared free-fire zones.
The goal was to destroy the popular base of support of the NLF. This meant destroying villages, bombing rice fields and dams (against the Geneva Conventions), and driving people from their rural homes to the cities to work in factories. True, we spent a lot of time attacking the North, but we saved the severe actions (chemical weapons, napalm, mass defoleation campaigns) for the South. For example, "the CIA in Vietnam, in a program called 'Operation Phoenix,' secretly, without trial, executed at least twenty thousand civilians i
No no, I'm not saying the top photos are fakes, too. I'm saying the event depicted in the lower photo didn't happen as it's shown.
The soldier was there, yes. There were civilians present, yes. The soldier's gun looks like it was pointing at various civilians by being in his hand, not as a result of him aiming at them. And yes, he did put his hand up, apparently while talking to someone on the far right of the photo on the left.
However, the bottom photo makes it look like the soldier is right on top of the center guy, and the guy is looking kinda nervous looking at the soldier. But he was making that face while further away from the soldier. When the soldier was closer, the center guy wasn't really looking at him.
True, the differences may be slight and may incorporate things that happened at different times, but putting two photos (and thus times) together in one creates a new event that didn't happen. It does seem we basically agree, though, that altering photos like this is bad, period. I don't care if all you do is change the color of some guy's shirt. Once you start leaving objective evidence of events open to subjectivity, you lose all claims to objectivity.
Chomsky... let his ideology blind him from the atrocities committed by Pol Pot in Cambodia.
Incorrect. From an article by Edward S. Herman on the subject:
Lewis then goes on: "A few Western intellectuals, notably Prof. Noam Chomsky, refused to believe what was going on in Cambodia. At first, at least, they put the reports of killing down to a conspiratorial effort by American politicians and press to destroy the Cambodian revolution." This is a multiple lie: First, we did not disbelieve the reports in general and were very clear that "gruesome" atrocities were being carried out. We did contest some blatant lies, like those of Lacouture, and media gullibility, which in this case, where points were being scored against an enemy. reached remarkable levels. Second, we never believed or said that there was any conspiracy going on, and regularly cited State Department experts as sources of plausible information. Third, we weren't defending the "Cambodian revolution," and never believed that the propaganda campaign was designed to destroy it; in fact, we stressed that its spokespersons didn't do, or even propose doing, anything to help Cambodians. We saw the propaganda campaign as aimed at Americans, to help reconstruct an imperial ideology that had been badly damaged by the Vietnam War.
In fact, it was the U.S. that was supporting Pol Pot directly and via its ally at the time, China.
The
Times editorial of June 24 recognizes a small problem in pursuing Pol Pot, arising from the fact that after he was forced out of Cambodia by Vietnam, "From 1979 to 1991, Washington indirectly backed the Khmer Rouge, then a component of the guerrilla coalition fighting the Vietnamese installed Government [in Phnom Penh]." This does seem awkward: the United States and its allies giving economic, military, and political support to Pol Pot, and voting for over a decade to have his government retain Cambodia's UN seat, but now urging his trial for war crimes. The Times misstates and understates the case: the United States gave direct as well as indirect aid to Pol Pot--in one estimate, $85 million in direct support--and it "pressured UN agencies to supply the Khmer Rouge," which "rapidly improved" the health and capability of Pol Pot's forces after 1979 (Ben Kiernan, "Cambodia's Missed Chance," Indochina Newsletter, Nov.-Dec. 1991). U.S. ally China was a very large arms supplier to Pol Pot, with no penalty from the U.S. and in fact U.S. connivance--Carter's National Security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski stated that in 1979 "I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot...Pol Pot was an abomination. We could never support him but China could."
Read that last sentence again. Carter's National Security advisor said that, while Pol Pot was an "abomination," the U.S. encouraged China to support him since the U.S. couldn't do so openly. Yet it is Chomsky who is accused of being an apologist for Pol Pot.
I read this argument a lot on Slashdot, yet I've never come across Chomsky using it himself. Could you provide a quote that supports your view?
For one thing, Chomsky goes out of his way to avoid pronouncing judgment about what you should think. If you ask him about the war, or Vietnam, or Guatemala, inevitably he will tell you to go read more, read from varied sources to get a balanced view, to think for yourself. I've never heard him say, "I'm right becaouse you're just an idiot who's been fooled by the government."
I'm reading Manufacturing Consent right now, and all I'm seeing are quotes from media sources used to back up his argument. And by the way, the argument is not that there is a conspiracy of any kind. His point is that the propaganda system works the way it does because everyone involved has a vested interest in doing exactly what they are already doing. The government doesn't have to tell the New York Times to bury a story because the Times will bury it for its own reasons.
For example, if I were a journalist at the White House, and I asked Ari, "You said that Saddam was an evil monster who would use WMD at his earliest opportunity against the U.S. Well, our troops are at his front door. Why haven't we seen any WMD being used?" you can bet that I won't be invited back the following day. Therefore, reporters ask safe questions that won't rock the boats of their sources. Ari doesn't need to get up there and say, "No questions about the lack of WMD in Iraq."
There is no conspiracy, no grand scheme by five rich old white guys running the show. The system polices itself quite naturally. Any deviation will be minor and corrected quickly, negating the need for a master plan of coersion.
But the United States didn't target the literate for execution.
The U.S. supported Indonesia's invasion of East Timor from 1975 to 1999, resulting in the death of some 250,000 (of 750,000) people and a massive refugee crisis. No, the U.S. didn't target the literate -- it targeted the poor, brown people of the world. It sponsored terror throughout Central and South America (though many more were literate in some of those cases). This makes it all okay, right? So long as you are not the target, no worries!
As for Cambodia, you chose an interesting case. During the U.S. invasion of South Vietnam, the U.S. bombed both Laos and Cambodia without telling congress. Cambodia became so decimated that Pol Pot was able to sieze power and implement the nastiness you mentioned. While he was in power, he was "evil." However, when South Vietnam invaded Cambodia to remove Pol Pot, he fled to Thailand. Suddenly he became a "good" guy again, and the U.S. supported his bid to retake power.
The United States didn't put classes of people into concentration camps.
Maybe you haven't heard (been out of town?), there was this little scuffle back in 1942-45 called World War II. The U.S. put Japanese Americans (a "class of people") into concentration camps for "national security." Sure, they weren't exterminated with glee, but three years in detention for doing nothing is a tad extreme.
Every time I read or hear someone give the same argument -- "But the U.S. has never done anything that horrible!" -- I marvel at how effective the propaganda system truly is. I think it's amazing that someone could still see the U.S. as so innocent.
After supporting dictators, initiating military coups, practicing state terror, outright invasion of other countries to maintain its sphere of influence, etc., people still stand up and say, "Yeah, but the U.S. isn't no Hitler!" That Pol Pot was no Hitler either doesn't mean he wasn't a really bad guy.
As noted in another reply, your quotes don't support your hypothesis. When Hitler was in power, he created some very positive effects in German society, the creation of Volkswagon to provide cheap cars for a larger population being one thing. Does that make fascism and Nazism good? Of course not.
People often accuse Chomsky of supporting the terrorists or past totalitarian governments when he attempts to correct perceptions and point out "inconvenient" facts. But it's just the same thing at work. Bush has been trumpeting Iraq's responsibility for 9/11 without giving any proof. I call bullshit on that and point out that there is no proof, but don't mistake that for support of Saddam.
What the photographer did, was to add a few more civilians than was already present.
First of all, if that had been all the photographer-turned-artist did, I would still object. You could put an "extra" person in the line-of-sight of a soldier's gun where there had been none before.
But look at the final photo again. As someone else mentioned above, the top of soldier's head is cropped (along with his foot). The crowd has been brought closer to the soldier, and it looks like he's pointing his gun right at the center guy's head.
To top it all off, it wasn't even one doctored photo. Two photos were pieced together. How could it even occur to a journalist that this might be ethical?
Most importantly, that event as depicted did not actually happen. And when you're feeding this photo to the public in a medium purported to be describing factual events, you have to keep the original idea of the image.
Slashdot Mirror
Did they become round by the force of their own gravity? If yes, then yes. If not (they became round by some other process), they are not planets.
None of the steroids or comets would be planets, nor specs of dust nor billiard balls orbiting the sun. This seems like a much more reasonable criterion than "it's bigger than 2000km."
From the article:
The main problem is that as we discover new objects, some planets may cease to become planets. And what happens if a planet shifts its orbit closer to a bigger planet? Does it stop being a planet until it moves far enough away?
Having read the article, I like his criterion: massive anough for gravity to form it into a spherical object. This doesn't change over time; it's based on physics; and it's very similar to the criterion for whether or not an object is a star (massive enough for fusion to provide the majority of its energy).
I knew that wasn't clear enough. I only wanted to avoid giving the impression that I thought all terrorism was the result of U.S. foreign policy. I don't view the tragedy of 9-11 as special in comparison to other horrible acts.
I think we can find some compromise between sticking our heads in the sand and terrorizing lesser-developed countries for economic advantage. I'm not saying we should disappear from the world; it'd just be nice to stop destroying it so enthusiastically.
That's not what I think. I think that acting reasonably and like a good neighbor would go a long way toward mending our fences, but it will take more than that. For example, increase food aid spending instead of buying more weapons for Israel.
Good will doesn't blossom overnight, especially after the shit we've slung at our neigbors. It will take time and work and much less arrogance.
That their culture differs from ours is not the problem. While I think many of their laws are unethical and backward, given their history of repression by the stronger states I'm not surprised it's taking them longer to "evolve" their society. But you cannot claim that their laws justify the billions of dollars the U.S. puts into ensuring the entire Middle East region remains devastated for decades, much as we've left Indochina.
In more democratic societies, propaganda works much more effectively than totalitarianism. You'll naturally see less force applied internally, though it does get applied from time to time.
Remember that America is many things: a people, a set of ideals, ethics and laws, and a government. I strongly agree with the ideals set out in the Constitution (one person, one vote, rule by the people). I don't see that it applies very well to the U.S. in some cases (how many votes do I have as a regular guy versus the general manager of Ford with his political and financial connections?). I appreciate the diversity of people we have here, even the ones I'd rather not associate with (KKK).
But when I talk of the actions of the U.S., keep in mind that it is for the most part the actions of the administration. Yes, we vote for some officials who appoint others who hire others, and somehow that means I have some control over whether we give $4 billion or $5 billion to Israel this year to pay for their "Wall of Justice/Security/Peace/Love/Brotherhood/Whatever."
While I feel it is our duty and responsibility to regain control of our governance, I don't directly hold U.S. citizens responsible for the bloodshed in Iraq and elsewhere. For that reason I would not commence bombing of Washington. And it was equally as wrong to destroy Iraq. Yes, we got Saddam. So what? Who is he? One of our thugs that went astray. But who has paid more dearly? Look at Iraq. How soon do you think the people of that country will be anywhere near healed?
Airport Security Agent: "Sir, did anyone give you anything to carry?"
Terrorist: "No."
Agent: "Have you had your bags with you at all times?"
Terrorist: "Yes."
Agent: "Are you a radical Islamist planning to hijack the airplane?"
Terrorist: "Yes -- I mean no!"
I think the events in New York and Madrid and many cities before them have shown that there is no "stopping terrorism" through screening and extra security. When people are desperate enough, they can do some amazing and horrendous things.
I believe air marshals combined with giving the cockpit crew the means to defend themselves would be the more effective than screening, if people insist on doing something to feel safer. The men from 9-11 had valid IDs and appeared normal. Or now that we have made air travel troublesome, they'll hit our trains or roads or something else.
Let's address the reasons why terrorists are gunning for the U.S. and other states in the first place. Do you accept the line that they "hate our freedoms"? If so, then we're helping them by curtailing our liberty in order to feel more secure.
Since terrorism (in the 9-11 sense) is a response to U.S. tyranny elsewhere, ending the tyranny would end the terrorism. Thus "fighting terrorism" is pointless salve for the symptom -- not a cure for the problem.
Now this is susceptible to guessing. Once I know or guess a user ID, the rest is made up each time. To make this harder, you can set "code words" that must be in the made-up prefix. Further, you can set a "password" that must prefix the entire address (secret.nyt.2.spamisevil@...).
Keep in mind this is geared toward providing temporary throw-away accounts. If someone looks in their logs/database and sees "secret.nyt..." they can sure start spamming you. Change the password or list of code words and they can no longer make up email addresses for you.
Someone would have to be pretty damn desperate to start scanning logs for SG email addresses, especially since they'd stop working pretty soon after they started using them to spam.
I just started using it last week after a similar post here. The thing I like most is that I don't have to go to SG's website to create a new account. You literally make up email addresses with the option to use the extra features to make it more difficult for someone else to do it to you.
If this means you are declining to use the megaphones yourself, I stand behind you one hundred percent. It is my opinion that the world would benefit if many other people made the same choice.
Yet I will continue to defend their right to choose.
If instead you are saying that you desire to take away the microphones or pick some person/group to decide who gets to use them, then we wholeheartedly disagree. And while I may respect that desire and even understand and sympathize with the sentiment behind it, I will fight against any measures to make it reality.
If the price of freedom of speech for me is freedom of speech for the Nazi's, I will gladly pay it, for I know I am not paying for their opinions but their right to have and express them.
[N.B. I view uninstalling Freenet as putting down your megaphone -- not taking them all away from everyone. In this case, an example of the latter would be outlawing Freenet.]
Similarly, if you don't want to "support anyone who would take other's freedom away," you should immediately stop paying taxes. You see, taxes pay for roads and other city services, and it's a high probability that at least some child pornographers live in cities and use the roads and services.
In effect, you are already supporting child pornographers, rapists, murderers, Nazis, terrorists -- even a few politicians! The law forbids sexual relations with children, but I don't think we should close all roads because child pornographers use them.
Now, you may argue that the content in Freenet is mostly child pornagraphy. You may even be right. But that doesn't discount or devalue the other content in the system any more than a rapist living in California makes the other citizens there less worthy.
I disagree. When I hear/read/see Nazi messages, I tend to pity them for living such small, narrow lives. If you don't get the opportunity to hear the real message of someone, you may end up falling for their charisma rather than applying reason to their arguments. People have been free to hold Nazi Pride marches for many decades, yet I haven't seen a rise in support for them.
Remember, it's important to give someone the opportunity to stick their foot in their mouth.
And that is your right. You are free to run it and free to uninstall it. Isn't that the whole point?
Freenet is an unlimited (well, very very large) supply of megaphones. If you'd like to use one of the megaphones, the only requirement is that you not stop other people from using the megaphones. As there are more megaphones than people, no one will ever be left wanting. In that vane, if you stop others from using the megaphones (uninstall Freenet), you lose the use of them as well.
Now, keep in mind that having a megaphone does not guarantee an audience. If you cannot get people to link to your content, your content goes nowhere. The only reason there is child porn on the net is because people are looking for it. Whether or not you run a Freenet node, child porn will be distributed so long as people keep wanting it.
Oh my, that's one hell of an assumption. Isn't that generally the way with humans, though?
"I have a problem. How do I make it everyone else's problem so they'll solve it for me?"
Isn't anyone else concerned that we spend millions of dollars attempting to squelch a contrived black market? It's only worse that the majority of the so-called drug-related problems (and the worse ones) are caused by the criminalization of the drugs, not the drugs themselves.
I personally feel that the whole disable-purchased-music-when-you-move thing is ridiculous. If Apple is only allowed to sell music in the US, the fact that you move after the sale should not alter the location of the sale. I haven't used iTunes, but perhaps their license actually forbids the music to be played outside the US.
The first thing I had to do was stop beating myself up for being fat and accept that my body was how it was. I began looking in the mirror and saying, "Hey, that's not me" rather than, "God what a piece of shit." Changing my attitude toward myself allowed me to take the next step.
That next step was finding an activity that I really liked. I love to ski, but I don't get to do it often. But rollerblading is very similar in feel and fun aspect. I began rollerblading after work every night. I wanted to do it for an hour every night, but it was so damn fun I didn't want to stop before two hours.
Six weeks later I had dropped 30 pounds and had very nice, firm calves and legs. And DAMN did my butt look good. I've floated around 170 since then. Sometimes I'm in better shape; sometimes not. But I find that the key is finding activities you enjoy anyway and people to do them with.
I also took a diet/exercise course a little while ago that showed *why* eating healthy helps your body to remain healthy and strong as well as how to exercise effectively. Better to simply eat right than worry about cutting calories.
Fruit, vegetables, whole wheat and grains, dietary fiber, drop enriched/processed/refined foods, etc. Skip the Atkins diet as it's just not necessary, and there's enough evidence that it's not safe.
For example, let's take basic math. The teacher typically spends a lot of time doing "drills" on the board, "What's 4 + 7? And 11 + 32? How about 9 + 18, Johnny?" Those that grasp the concept quickly must suffer through endless boredom. Those that don't must struggle to keep up.
A computer game could do these drills (and I bet even the basic explanation of what the operators mean and do). Then the teacher could go around helping those in need one-on-one, maximizing personal interaction where it's needed most. As well, those that are doing well (easily determined by automatic scoring) could help out their classmates.
I'm realistic, and I know this is not the be-all-end-all solution. The trick is recognizing that (a) teachers are expensive (and should be paid far more, but don't get me started), (b) their time is limited, and (c) each student learns at a different pace. With class sizes much larger than most people believe to be effective, any solution that relieves the teacher of rote tasks while still being effective is a win.
As IDs get older, they become easier to forge. So if you force everyone to replace their IDs every 10 years, you make it harder to forge them overall.
Of course, I doubt anyone would notice that they were presented with an "old style" ID card with a future expiration date. That's asking way too much of cashier's.
First, the US helped Suharto take power from Suharno in Indonesia via the usual CIA route. From 1966-69 Suharto was responsible for 1-2 million Indonesian deaths. The US provided economic, diplomatic, and military training and support. We weren't pulling the trigger, but giving him money to buy weapons and training his military in tortute and counterinsurgency goes along way toward producing dead bodies.
In 1975 Indonesia invaded East Timor after the population voted to become independent of Portugal (it was a Portuguese colony). Again, the US provided money for arms, weapons and equipment, and military training. When the UN tried to pass a resolution calling for Indonesia's withdrawal from East Timor, the US vetoed the resolution. The estimates range from 200,000 to 500,000 people dead of an original population of 750,000.
How is this behavior any different from doing the killing ourselves? Instead of stopping the slaughter -- which we could have easily done by removing diplomatic support (Clinton called Suharto "our kind of guy") -- we supported it. We are just as culpable.
Are you serious? The "evil empire" has a better rap? Maybe now that we've pissed off the rest of the world by invading Iraq, but even today Communism has a major stigma associated with it.
This is false history, repeated again and again. In 1954, the French withdrew from Vietnam and the US set up a former Vietnamese official, Ngo Dinh Diem, in Saigon and was soon supporting it with money and arms as it had no internal support. The vast majority of the population supported the Vietminh. Diem was told to block the elections for reunification with the North.
In 1958, the South Vietnamese began guerilla operations against the regime, with some support coming from the Communist regime in Hanoi. In 1960, the National Liberation Front was created, and its main success was uniting the various villages into a single organization against the Diem/US regime. Realize that the Buddhist monks were setting themselves ablaze to protest Diem's regime. This wasn't a NVA invasion, it was a popular uprising.
Then in 1963, being deeply disappointed with the Diem regime, the CIA plotted with some of Diem's generals to oust him in a coup. As a side note, why did the US have so much interest in maintaining control of Vietnam and Indochina? Kennedy's Undersecretary of State, U. Alexis Johnson, explains:
Finally, in August 1964, President Johnson declared that a US destroyer had been attacked by torpedos in the Gulf of Tonkin. There had actually been no attack. The same thing happened two days later, and the war was begun. Two hundred thousand troops were initially sent to South Vietnam, and most of the areas along the border were declared free-fire zones.
The goal was to destroy the popular base of support of the NLF. This meant destroying villages, bombing rice fields and dams (against the Geneva Conventions), and driving people from their rural homes to the cities to work in factories. True, we spent a lot of time attacking the North, but we saved the severe actions (chemical weapons, napalm, mass defoleation campaigns) for the South. For example, "the CIA in Vietnam, in a program called 'Operation Phoenix,' secretly, without trial, executed at least twenty thousand civilians i
The soldier was there, yes. There were civilians present, yes. The soldier's gun looks like it was pointing at various civilians by being in his hand, not as a result of him aiming at them. And yes, he did put his hand up, apparently while talking to someone on the far right of the photo on the left.
However, the bottom photo makes it look like the soldier is right on top of the center guy, and the guy is looking kinda nervous looking at the soldier. But he was making that face while further away from the soldier. When the soldier was closer, the center guy wasn't really looking at him.
True, the differences may be slight and may incorporate things that happened at different times, but putting two photos (and thus times) together in one creates a new event that didn't happen. It does seem we basically agree, though, that altering photos like this is bad, period. I don't care if all you do is change the color of some guy's shirt. Once you start leaving objective evidence of events open to subjectivity, you lose all claims to objectivity.
Incorrect. From an article by Edward S. Herman on the subject:
In fact, it was the U.S. that was supporting Pol Pot directly and via its ally at the time, China.
Read that last sentence again. Carter's National Security advisor said that, while Pol Pot was an "abomination," the U.S. encouraged China to support him since the U.S. couldn't do so openly. Yet it is Chomsky who is accused of being an apologist for Pol Pot.
For one thing, Chomsky goes out of his way to avoid pronouncing judgment about what you should think. If you ask him about the war, or Vietnam, or Guatemala, inevitably he will tell you to go read more, read from varied sources to get a balanced view, to think for yourself. I've never heard him say, "I'm right becaouse you're just an idiot who's been fooled by the government."
I'm reading Manufacturing Consent right now, and all I'm seeing are quotes from media sources used to back up his argument. And by the way, the argument is not that there is a conspiracy of any kind. His point is that the propaganda system works the way it does because everyone involved has a vested interest in doing exactly what they are already doing. The government doesn't have to tell the New York Times to bury a story because the Times will bury it for its own reasons.
For example, if I were a journalist at the White House, and I asked Ari, "You said that Saddam was an evil monster who would use WMD at his earliest opportunity against the U.S. Well, our troops are at his front door. Why haven't we seen any WMD being used?" you can bet that I won't be invited back the following day. Therefore, reporters ask safe questions that won't rock the boats of their sources. Ari doesn't need to get up there and say, "No questions about the lack of WMD in Iraq."
There is no conspiracy, no grand scheme by five rich old white guys running the show. The system polices itself quite naturally. Any deviation will be minor and corrected quickly, negating the need for a master plan of coersion.
The U.S. supported Indonesia's invasion of East Timor from 1975 to 1999, resulting in the death of some 250,000 (of 750,000) people and a massive refugee crisis. No, the U.S. didn't target the literate -- it targeted the poor, brown people of the world. It sponsored terror throughout Central and South America (though many more were literate in some of those cases). This makes it all okay, right? So long as you are not the target, no worries!
As for Cambodia, you chose an interesting case. During the U.S. invasion of South Vietnam, the U.S. bombed both Laos and Cambodia without telling congress. Cambodia became so decimated that Pol Pot was able to sieze power and implement the nastiness you mentioned. While he was in power, he was "evil." However, when South Vietnam invaded Cambodia to remove Pol Pot, he fled to Thailand. Suddenly he became a "good" guy again, and the U.S. supported his bid to retake power.
Maybe you haven't heard (been out of town?), there was this little scuffle back in 1942-45 called World War II. The U.S. put Japanese Americans (a "class of people") into concentration camps for "national security." Sure, they weren't exterminated with glee, but three years in detention for doing nothing is a tad extreme.
Every time I read or hear someone give the same argument -- "But the U.S. has never done anything that horrible!" -- I marvel at how effective the propaganda system truly is. I think it's amazing that someone could still see the U.S. as so innocent.
After supporting dictators, initiating military coups, practicing state terror, outright invasion of other countries to maintain its sphere of influence, etc., people still stand up and say, "Yeah, but the U.S. isn't no Hitler!" That Pol Pot was no Hitler either doesn't mean he wasn't a really bad guy.
People often accuse Chomsky of supporting the terrorists or past totalitarian governments when he attempts to correct perceptions and point out "inconvenient" facts. But it's just the same thing at work. Bush has been trumpeting Iraq's responsibility for 9/11 without giving any proof. I call bullshit on that and point out that there is no proof, but don't mistake that for support of Saddam.
First of all, if that had been all the photographer-turned-artist did, I would still object. You could put an "extra" person in the line-of-sight of a soldier's gun where there had been none before.
But look at the final photo again. As someone else mentioned above, the top of soldier's head is cropped (along with his foot). The crowd has been brought closer to the soldier, and it looks like he's pointing his gun right at the center guy's head.
To top it all off, it wasn't even one doctored photo. Two photos were pieced together. How could it even occur to a journalist that this might be ethical?
Most importantly, that event as depicted did not actually happen. And when you're feeding this photo to the public in a medium purported to be describing factual events, you have to keep the original idea of the image.
You're speaking of Guantanemo Bay on Cuba -- not in Guatemala. The same country that has been under a U.S. embargo since 1962.