> > So the Unabomber was Muslim? Timmothy McVeigh is Muslim?
> No, but neither were they called terrorists. The term wasn't much in use before 9/11. Before that such people were quite properly called "criminals". I'm not disputing that they are criminals, but if you think they weren't called terrorists, you're not reading the same news everyone else is reading.
> > THe IRA are all Muslim? > First, the IRA is mainly concerned with Britain, and it would indeed be worthwhile to profile for IRA there. They don't care much about attacking the US, so profiling for them here would not be useful. Of course the IRA doesn't generally attack the US - that's where they get (or at least used to) most of their funding. They might be stupid, but they're not fools. Secondly, this is a website with a fairly international audience, and since us foreigners seem to be bear a lot of the fallout of US foreign policy it would be polite to at least consider the global ramifications. Once in a while.
> Second, observe that the IRA and Britain are also in a religious conflict. See a pattern here? The northern irish conflict has as much to do with religion as Santa Claus does.
>> muslim terrorists are a small portion of all terrorists. > How small? So far you have given us the Unabomber and Timothy McVeigh. To help out my unlearned colleague, in no particular order: * Tamil Tigers * Various communist groups in india * The Red Army Faction in Germany (before your time, but fairly serious back then) * Similar communist groups all over Europe * The contras in Nicaragua (yeah, we could argue about that one, but in my book, if you go and machine gun a bus full of nuns you're a terrorist) * La Resistance in France (fits all the textbook definitions) * Ditto for umpteen other countries during the second world war. * The ANC in Apartheid South Africa (again, fits all the textbook definitions of terrorist, no matter what you think of their aims) * The AWB in South Africa (sort of the ANCs opposite number) * Anti-Abortionists in the US (those that shoot people and firebomb clinics, at least) * Animal Rights nutters worldwide (see/. passim) That's off the top of my head. I'm not going to do your research for you for free.
> IRA is not concerned with the US, Al-Quaeida wasn't concerned with the rest of the west - they just wanted to attack the US. And you know what, we still cared, and we still supported you, and in fact we still do, even when you're clearly nuts. You just piss me off: I'm not American. 9/11 was still one of the worst days of my life. So it's good to know that the people we bend over backwards to support don't give a flying fuck about us.
Perhaps the civilised part of the US should segregate from the rednecks?
> are not that large in numbers, See above.
> and don't do nearly as much damage as the muslims do in the middle east. Go and do the sums.
Cynical hint: A towerblock in London costs a LOT more than family houses in Iraq. Or even a towerblock in Beirut [disclaimer:I haven't checked property prices in Beirut, but let's say it's an educated guess. Almost everything costs more in London than almost anywhere else in the world:) ] Less cynical hint: I'd count a life at the same value regardless of location.
> To me it simply looks like you can't count. To me it looks like you can't read. Or care.
> The IRA is not concerned with the US, are not that large in numbers, and don't do nearly as much damage as the muslims do in the middle east. To me it simply looks like you can't count.
> Suggesting that a young single woman flying out of Sweden with a round-the-world ticket is equally as likely to hijack/destroy the plane as a group of young single "middle eastern" men with one-way tickets flyng out of Saudi Arabia, is letting your idealistic bleeding-heart-leftist-stupidity get in the way of common sense.
It is, until your adversaries figure this out, at which point finding a young swedish radical blonde convert and buying her a round the world ticket with a credit card becomes incredibly easy.
> 5) they're strategic realists. they're small organizations that only have so much reach. lacking the resources to take on their largest opponents, they hit more vulnerable targets.
So when you were bullied at school, you didn't hit the big guy that beat you up, but instead you pounced on a guy that was smaller? Strategic realism at a young age...
The point isn't about the "targets" they choose, or that their aims are stupid, it's that their methods are criminal and immoral.
> Of course. If it had eyes or a mother, generally speaking, I won't eat it. Can you say the same? Good for you. Doesn't mean you're allowed to enforce the same dietary restrictions on me, any more than I'll force you to eat meat.
> You left out a basic human issue: They're simply frustrated. I'm frustrated, too. Does that give me the right to trash someone else's property? Or send firebombs to people I disagree with?
> They live in a world where hubris and cruelty are the order of the day. I don't think they're doing the best that could be done. hubris? "excessive pride or self-confidence; arrogance." - true, the world is full of that, quite often in animal "Liberationists".
As to cruelty and suffering, the world is full of that, too. Against people. So I'll start worrying about animals when Medecins Sans Frontieres, Amnesty International and the RSPCC disolve themselves for lack of work. In the meantime, anyone who tells me that lab rats are an important issue clearly isn't living in the same world I'm living in.
> I say, "This is a totally optional product, not worth anyone or anything suffering over, and I need to be doing something actually productive -- then I find something productive to do. Just as I would not take a job abusing children for the benefit of cosmetics for your face, or your girl's face, I would not take (or create) a job abusing other innocents for that type of thing. Is that so difficult to imagine for you? No, not at all. But is it hard for you to understand that I would gladly kill all the rats in the world in horrible ways to save my daughter?
Don't get me wrong - I'm not advocating pointless cruelty to animals. We should behave responsibly towards them, and minimise their suffering where it's possible. And I'm all for cosmetic products that aren't animal tested. But let's not forget that companies don't use animal testing because their directors enjoy wasting huge amounts of money to see animals suffer; they do it because it's either required by regulators, or the only way to currently test new drugs before human trials.
> Animal testing is bad. Period. Because the vast majority of it is cruel. Another way needs to be found. Until then, cosmetics aren't on my list of humanity's "must haves", frankly. Cosmetics, no. Medical research, yes. Drugs research, yes.
You disagree? Fine, don't use the results. But anyone using terrorist tactics should be treated as a terrorist and hit with the full force of the law.
>"The Animal Liberation Front has always had a policy of not harming life, but while it would not condone what took place, it understands the anger and frustration that leads people to take this kind of action."
While I wouldn't condone physical violence against rabid idiots who terrorise people involved in an activity they object to, I completely understand the anger and frustration that their victims feel when their homes are firebombed, their cars destroyed, they are falsely accused of being paedophiles, their dead grandmothers dug up and taken hostage,...
What a fucking hyppocrite.
IMHO, people who object to animal testing should refuse all medical treatment tested on animals. That would give them the benefit of logical consistency, and a bunch of martyrs, and us the benefit of being rid of them in a generation or two.
And any serious criminal will happily go to jail for a maximum of two years, effectively more likely 9 months including good behaviour, in an open prison for a trivial offence, rather than give you the password and go to a high security jail for 25 years for my terrorist plots, twenty yeras on the nonce's wing for child pornography, and another 10 for the money laundering I did to finance the above.
> You'd need an external power supply to use it without it being connected to a computer, which would mean both a cord and the space for a power transformer. That probably wouldn't work out well. You can get power over ethernet these days...
fair enough, but if we talk about being unbiased you also have to accept the fact that a lot of the lousy corrupt governments have been propped up by the west for decades - first against the communists, now against the islamists.
Since the RIP Act the UK government has given itself fairly unlimited powers to spy on its citizens with negligible oversight, judicial or otherwise. I have no doubt that governments do each other's dirty work sometimes, but in this case the UK govt is quite capable of doing it itself.
> Why the hell does anyone need more than their book & a passport anyway? Because some of us can read. You wouldn't understand, just keep looking at the moving pictures.
> I've had far more flights ruined by some dickhead taking up the entire overhead compartment, blocking the entire plane at entry/exit while they collect their reams of carry on, etc than I've had flights ruined by terrorists. If waiting 5 minutes for someone to get their luggage out instead of spending that time waiting for your luggage in the terminal irritates you as much as your plane being blown up, you have issues.
> So how come the PM flew out on holiday two days ago? > And how come he's still not back? Because he's sod all use to anyone, and quite frankly we're better of without him?
But seriously - do you really think that he's ever going to be more than 30 seconds away from an audio conference if he's needed? When you're a PM or President, you don't go on vacation, you just work from the beach.
> Imagine for a moment that you live in a country filled with impoverished people, a country whose only natural resource is owned by foreign corporations and protected by foreign militaries. Recall that your region of the world has been sliced, colonized, re-sliced, and re-colonized by those same foreigners more times than you can count.
Which country would that be, then? Saudi-Arabia? Hardly. Afghanistan? Hardly...the fighting there for the last 20 years has been largely domestic. Lebanon? Again, they seem to have staged a pretty good civil war without western involvement, and arguably have been colonised by Syria more than the west. Indonesia - with a clear local terrorism problem? again, hardly.
The poverty part clearly applies to Palestine, but not the rest.
> Now imagine that every attempt your government has made to carve itself out a small piece of the world's ever-shrinking pie of resources and wealth, has failed miserably, that you are surrounded by poverty and misery everywhere and have absolutely no confidence that your life, or the life of anyone you know and care about, will ever be any better. Quite often the governments in the middle east are remarkably successful at gathering a sizeable chunk of wealth, just very reluctant to share it with their population.
USA, Canada, British Virgin Islands, Jamaica, Great Britain, Ireland, South Africa, New Zealand, Trinidad & Tobago, Australia... it'll take you a while to run out of english speaking countries. And when you do, you could just try learning another language - I know it's hard to believe, but several dozen Anglo-Saxons have managed this amazing feat;)
> Please, when Bush retires and Tony goes to make sure his boots are properly licked to a shine every morning, could the US extradite most of the Labour Cabinet (under the one sided extradition treaty they agreed to) without prima facie evidence, and lock them up in Texas somewhere?
I hate Blair more than the average man, but I'm somewhat confused:
>I have had several parking tickets (citations) in London whereby my car was photographed BEFORE the alleged offence, and without my permission. Wgy would anyone hve to ask permission to photograph your CAR in a public place?
>I was stunned to receive pictures of my car and toughly written letters demanding payment of £100 for very very minor and totally accidental parking offences. "minor" is obviously open to interpretation, and "accidental" is completely irrelevant.
I've paid extortionate amounts on parking tickets, and I hate it, but rulse are rules, even if they're stupid, and if you break them you have to pay. Didn't know about them? Your own fault. sadly. Now if they fuck up, and give you a ticket while you're obeying the rules, go and fight them. Sometimesit works.
>Considering the astounding number of people on Slashdot and Fark who insist citizens have greater constitutional/common law rights as opposed to visitors... godspeed, my friend
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
"All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights."
I rest my case. Sometimes the people you argue with are just wromg.
And I have no intention of getting british citizenship, either, not until they come up with a democratoc voting system:(
>Only those who honestly believe that this Government could organise an IT project in a datacenter need fear. The insane rantings of Blair and his Home Secretary Of The Month would be pretty damn terrifying, if I ever thought they will manage to build it and make it work. But there's very little evidence they will suddenly develop this ability. Well, there's an off chance it'll work..and even if they fuck it up, you might still be required to carry an ID card to get treated on the NHS etc. Personally, as a non-citizen, I'm planning to carry my passport and tax return instead.,,
>Blair likes gigantic IT projects because they sound shiny and tough, and send taxpayers' money to Crapita by the billion. At which point a nice big chunk goes straight into Labour Party coffers. There's no real expectation that they'll need to do any real _work_ to continue being funded, thank God. It'll still cost us 20 billion pounds that we either needn't have spent or could have spent on something useful instead.
Let's see...the garage parks "hundreds of cars", Let's be conservative and say 200.
Let's again be conservative, and say they charge $10 per day. $2000 per day, conservatively assuming that it's quiet on the weekeneds, 20 working days a month - Hoboken takes in $40,000 per month. All they have to pay is the software license and electricity.
so 1. it doesn't look unreasonable on economic terms, and 2. you get what you negotiate for.
>> If the biology of the sea is reverting back to a more primative state, it could mean that a biological reset and redesign is happening. Go back to a >> checkpoint in the design, scrap what came after it and start again to see if the new design can better cope with the changed environment.
> Dude, don't anthropomorphize nature. She doesn't like it when you do that.
> I'm in the UK, and I've seen this and worse happen for years. At an anti capitalist demo (I'm not a loony, but I do think some of the issues raised at those demos need to be raised - like subsidising the third world out of the world markets etc... but lets not go off topic)I've been charged at by police on horses FOR NO REASON AT ALL!.
Having been on the receiving end of the police at demonstrations myself, I doubt very much that they charged "for no reason at all". They're not stupid, and not likely to endanger themselves and their horses because it's fun. You might not have been aware of it, but I bet someone was throwing rocks or worse.
> And yes I've seen cameras blocked, and their owners arrested. Blocking cameras and destroying evidence is fundamentally wrong; so is arresting people for documenting things. Agreed.
> I've seen the unlawful detainment of hundreds of demonstrators (I would have been one of them, if I hadn't been light on my feet, and had a friend to help me over a piked fence. Ironically the fence of the Royal Courts of Justice I believe). Well, I've also seen crowds of demonstrators unlawfully destroying property... If it was your job to uphold the law, and protect the people and property that have nothing whatsoever to do with the issue at hand, what would you do? Let the idiots run riot until they get tired?
> Well - taxes can be legaly sidestepped. Previously it was only the rich who could afford off shaw accounts etc... With this shiny new interweb of ours, we can build open source solutions to tax, for the masses! Forgive me for being cynicsl, but if you can't even spell off-shore then I doubt you understand the concepts, or have the solution.
> So - imagine a karma system generating elected, regional education 'node leaders', for home and comunity eductator to amasses comparible resources as those in state schools. Now health, security, transport, energy,.... It's called Anarcho-Syndicalism. Great idea. Not so sure if it will work in practice - do you have any idea how bad local politics can be?
> Yes this might sound wacky, but there's nothing stopping us trying. And I'm sick of the winging in here. YES your government is crap! Do something! Change your personal behaviour [do you buy fair trade everytime you have the choice? do you use public transport at every opportunity, even if it's inconvenient? Do you write to your MP? Do you give a proportion of your income to charity? Did you vote at the last election?)
Slashdot Mirror
> > So the Unabomber was Muslim? Timmothy McVeigh is Muslim?
/. passim)
:) ]
> No, but neither were they called terrorists. The term wasn't much in use before 9/11. Before that such people were quite properly called "criminals".
I'm not disputing that they are criminals, but if you think they weren't called terrorists, you're not reading the same news everyone else is reading.
> > THe IRA are all Muslim?
> First, the IRA is mainly concerned with Britain, and it would indeed be worthwhile to profile for IRA there. They don't care much about attacking the US, so profiling for them here would not be useful.
Of course the IRA doesn't generally attack the US - that's where they get (or at least used to) most of their funding. They might be stupid, but they're not fools.
Secondly, this is a website with a fairly international audience, and since us foreigners seem to be bear a lot of the fallout of US foreign policy it would be polite to at least consider the global ramifications. Once in a while.
> Second, observe that the IRA and Britain are also in a religious conflict. See a pattern here?
The northern irish conflict has as much to do with religion as Santa Claus does.
>> muslim terrorists are a small portion of all terrorists.
> How small? So far you have given us the Unabomber and Timothy McVeigh.
To help out my unlearned colleague, in no particular order:
* Tamil Tigers
* Various communist groups in india
* The Red Army Faction in Germany (before your time, but fairly serious back then)
* Similar communist groups all over Europe
* The contras in Nicaragua (yeah, we could argue about that one, but in my book, if you go and machine gun a bus full of nuns you're a terrorist)
* La Resistance in France (fits all the textbook definitions)
* Ditto for umpteen other countries during the second world war.
* The ANC in Apartheid South Africa (again, fits all the textbook definitions of terrorist, no matter what you think of their aims)
* The AWB in South Africa (sort of the ANCs opposite number)
* Anti-Abortionists in the US (those that shoot people and firebomb clinics, at least)
* Animal Rights nutters worldwide (see
That's off the top of my head. I'm not going to do your research for you for free.
> IRA is not concerned with the US,
Al-Quaeida wasn't concerned with the rest of the west - they just wanted to attack the US. And you know what, we still cared, and we still supported you, and in fact we still do, even when you're clearly nuts. You just piss me off: I'm not American. 9/11 was still one of the worst days of my life.
So it's good to know that the people we bend over backwards to support don't give a flying fuck about us.
Perhaps the civilised part of the US should segregate from the rednecks?
> are not that large in numbers,
See above.
> and don't do nearly as much damage as the muslims do in the middle east.
Go and do the sums.
Cynical hint: A towerblock in London costs a LOT more than family houses in Iraq. Or even a towerblock in Beirut [disclaimer:I haven't checked property prices in Beirut, but let's say it's an educated guess. Almost everything costs more in London than almost anywhere else in the world
Less cynical hint: I'd count a life at the same value regardless of location.
> To me it simply looks like you can't count.
To me it looks like you can't read. Or care.
> The IRA is not concerned with the US, are not that large in numbers, and don't do nearly as much damage as the muslims do in the middle east. To me it simply looks like you can't count.
> Suggesting that a young single woman flying out of Sweden with a round-the-world ticket is equally as likely to hijack/destroy the plane as a group of young single "middle eastern" men with one-way tickets flyng out of Saudi Arabia, is letting your idealistic bleeding-heart-leftist-stupidity get in the way of common sense.
It is, until your adversaries figure this out, at which point finding a young swedish radical blonde convert and buying her a round the world ticket with a credit card becomes incredibly easy.
It's not a strategic masterstroke, but it happened. Just goes to show the lengths these people go to to impose their views on the rest of the world.
I do, which is why I'd approach a novelist, a poet or even a journalist for advice on good writing.
The concept of scientific journals has never crossed your path, has it?
> 5) they're strategic realists. they're small organizations that only have so much reach. lacking the resources to take on their largest opponents, they hit more vulnerable targets.
So when you were bullied at school, you didn't hit the big guy that beat you up, but instead you pounced on a guy that was smaller? Strategic realism at a young age...
The point isn't about the "targets" they choose, or that their aims are stupid, it's that their methods are criminal and immoral.
> Of course. If it had eyes or a mother, generally speaking, I won't eat it. Can you say the same?
Good for you. Doesn't mean you're allowed to enforce the same dietary restrictions on me, any more than I'll force you to eat meat.
> You left out a basic human issue: They're simply frustrated.
I'm frustrated, too. Does that give me the right to trash someone else's property? Or send firebombs to people I disagree with?
> They live in a world where hubris and cruelty are the order of the day. I don't think they're doing the best that could be done.
hubris? "excessive pride or self-confidence; arrogance." - true, the world is full of that, quite often in animal "Liberationists".
As to cruelty and suffering, the world is full of that, too. Against people. So I'll start worrying about animals when Medecins Sans Frontieres, Amnesty International and the RSPCC disolve themselves for lack of work. In the meantime, anyone who tells me that lab rats are an important issue clearly isn't living in the same world I'm living in.
> I say, "This is a totally optional product, not worth anyone or anything suffering over, and I need to be doing something actually productive -- then I find something productive to do. Just as I would not take a job abusing children for the benefit of cosmetics for your face, or your girl's face, I would not take (or create) a job abusing other innocents for that type of thing. Is that so difficult to imagine for you?
No, not at all. But is it hard for you to understand that I would gladly kill all the rats in the world in horrible ways to save my daughter?
Don't get me wrong - I'm not advocating pointless cruelty to animals. We should behave responsibly towards them, and minimise their suffering where it's possible. And I'm all for cosmetic products that aren't animal tested.
But let's not forget that companies don't use animal testing because their directors enjoy wasting huge amounts of money to see animals suffer; they do it because it's either required by regulators, or the only way to currently test new drugs before human trials.
> Animal testing is bad. Period. Because the vast majority of it is cruel. Another way needs to be found. Until then, cosmetics aren't on my list of humanity's "must haves", frankly.
Cosmetics, no. Medical research, yes. Drugs research, yes.
You disagree? Fine, don't use the results. But anyone using terrorist tactics should be treated as a terrorist and hit with the full force of the law.
>"The Animal Liberation Front has always had a policy of not harming life, but while it would not condone what took place, it understands the anger and frustration that leads people to take this kind of action."
...
While I wouldn't condone physical violence against rabid idiots who terrorise people involved in an activity they object to, I completely understand the anger and frustration that their victims feel when their homes are firebombed, their cars destroyed, they are falsely accused of being paedophiles, their dead grandmothers dug up and taken hostage,
What a fucking hyppocrite.
IMHO, people who object to animal testing should refuse all medical treatment tested on animals. That would give them the benefit of logical consistency, and a bunch of martyrs, and us the benefit of being rid of them in a generation or two.
And what would professional linguists know about good writing?
And any serious criminal will happily go to jail for a maximum of two years, effectively more likely 9 months including good behaviour, in an open prison for a trivial offence, rather than give you the password and go to a high security jail for 25 years for my terrorist plots, twenty yeras on the nonce's wing for child pornography, and another 10 for the money laundering I did to finance the above.
> You'd need an external power supply to use it without it being connected to a computer, which would mean both a cord and the space for a power transformer. That probably wouldn't work out well.
You can get power over ethernet these days...
You're far too sensible, you'd never make it as a politician ;(
fair enough, but if we talk about being unbiased you also have to accept the fact that a lot of the lousy corrupt governments have been propped up by the west for decades - first against the communists, now against the islamists.
Since the RIP Act the UK government has given itself fairly unlimited powers to spy on its citizens with negligible oversight, judicial or otherwise. I have no doubt that governments do each other's dirty work sometimes, but in this case the UK govt is quite capable of doing it itself.
> Why the hell does anyone need more than their book & a passport anyway?
Because some of us can read. You wouldn't understand, just keep looking at the moving pictures.
> I've had far more flights ruined by some dickhead taking up the entire overhead compartment, blocking the entire plane at entry/exit while they collect their reams of carry on, etc than I've had flights ruined by terrorists.
If waiting 5 minutes for someone to get their luggage out instead of spending that time waiting for your luggage in the terminal irritates you as much as your plane being blown up, you have issues.
> So how come the PM flew out on holiday two days ago?
> And how come he's still not back?
Because he's sod all use to anyone, and quite frankly we're better of without him?
But seriously - do you really think that he's ever going to be more than 30 seconds away from an audio conference if he's needed? When you're a PM or President, you don't go on vacation, you just work from the beach.
> Imagine for a moment that you live in a country filled with impoverished people, a country whose only natural resource is owned by foreign corporations and protected by foreign militaries. Recall that your region of the world has been sliced, colonized, re-sliced, and re-colonized by those same foreigners more times than you can count.
Which country would that be, then? Saudi-Arabia? Hardly. Afghanistan? Hardly...the fighting there for the last 20 years has been largely domestic. Lebanon? Again, they seem to have staged a pretty good civil war without western involvement, and arguably have been colonised by Syria more than the west. Indonesia - with a clear local terrorism problem? again, hardly.
The poverty part clearly applies to Palestine, but not the rest.
> Now imagine that every attempt your government has made to carve itself out a small piece of the world's ever-shrinking pie of resources and wealth, has failed miserably, that you are surrounded by poverty and misery everywhere and have absolutely no confidence that your life, or the life of anyone you know and care about, will ever be any better.
Quite often the governments in the middle east are remarkably successful at gathering a sizeable chunk of wealth, just very reluctant to share it with their population.
USA, Canada, British Virgin Islands, Jamaica, Great Britain, Ireland, South Africa, New Zealand, Trinidad & Tobago, Australia... it'll take you a while to run out of english speaking countries. And when you do, you could just try learning another language - I know it's hard to believe, but several dozen Anglo-Saxons have managed this amazing feat ;)
> Please, when Bush retires and Tony goes to make sure his boots are properly licked to a shine every morning, could the US extradite most of the Labour Cabinet (under the one sided extradition treaty they agreed to) without prima facie evidence, and lock them up in Texas somewhere?
:)
couldn't you please do that NOW?
I hate Blair more than the average man, but I'm somewhat confused:
>I have had several parking tickets (citations) in London whereby my car was photographed BEFORE the alleged offence, and without my permission.
Wgy would anyone hve to ask permission to photograph your CAR in a public place?
>I was stunned to receive pictures of my car and toughly written letters demanding payment of £100 for very very minor and totally accidental parking offences.
"minor" is obviously open to interpretation, and "accidental" is completely irrelevant.
I've paid extortionate amounts on parking tickets, and I hate it, but rulse are rules, even if they're stupid, and if you break them you have to pay. Didn't know about them? Your own fault. sadly. Now if they fuck up, and give you a ticket while you're obeying the rules, go and fight them. Sometimesit works.
>Considering the astounding number of people on Slashdot and Fark who insist citizens have greater constitutional/common law rights as opposed to visitors... godspeed, my friend
:(
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
"All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights."
I rest my case. Sometimes the people you argue with are just wromg.
And I have no intention of getting british citizenship, either, not until they come up with a democratoc voting system
>Only those who honestly believe that this Government could organise an IT project in a datacenter need fear. The insane rantings of Blair and his Home Secretary Of The Month would be pretty damn terrifying, if I ever thought they will manage to build it and make it work. But there's very little evidence they will suddenly develop this ability.
Well, there's an off chance it'll work..and even if they fuck it up, you might still be required to carry an ID card to get treated on the NHS etc. Personally, as a non-citizen, I'm planning to carry my passport and tax return instead.,,
>Blair likes gigantic IT projects because they sound shiny and tough, and send taxpayers' money to Crapita by the billion. At which point a nice big chunk goes straight into Labour Party coffers. There's no real expectation that they'll need to do any real _work_ to continue being funded, thank God.
It'll still cost us 20 billion pounds that we either needn't have spent or could have spent on something useful instead.
It's fucking cheap.
Let's see...the garage parks "hundreds of cars", Let's be conservative and say 200.
Let's again be conservative, and say they charge $10 per day. $2000 per day, conservatively assuming that it's quiet on the weekeneds, 20 working days a month - Hoboken takes in $40,000 per month. All they have to pay is the software license and electricity.
so 1. it doesn't look unreasonable on economic terms, and 2. you get what you negotiate for.
>> If the biology of the sea is reverting back to a more primative state, it could mean that a biological reset and redesign is happening. Go back to a >> checkpoint in the design, scrap what came after it and start again to see if the new design can better cope with the changed environment.
> Dude, don't anthropomorphize nature. She doesn't like it when you do that.
That's why she's doing it!
> I'm in the UK, and I've seen this and worse happen for years. At an anti capitalist demo (I'm not a loony, but I do think some of the issues raised at those demos need to be raised - like subsidising the third world out of the world markets etc... but lets not go off topic)I've been charged at by police on horses FOR NO REASON AT ALL!.
Having been on the receiving end of the police at demonstrations myself, I doubt very much that they charged "for no reason at all". They're not stupid, and not likely to endanger themselves and their horses because it's fun. You might not have been aware of it, but I bet someone was throwing rocks or worse.
> And yes I've seen cameras blocked, and their owners arrested.
Blocking cameras and destroying evidence is fundamentally wrong; so is arresting people for documenting things. Agreed.
> I've seen the unlawful detainment of hundreds of demonstrators (I would have been one of them, if I hadn't been light on my feet, and had a friend to help me over a piked fence. Ironically the fence of the Royal Courts of Justice I believe).
Well, I've also seen crowds of demonstrators unlawfully destroying property... If it was your job to uphold the law, and protect the people and property that have nothing whatsoever to do with the issue at hand, what would you do? Let the idiots run riot until they get tired?
> Well - taxes can be legaly sidestepped. Previously it was only the rich who could afford off shaw accounts etc... With this shiny new interweb of ours, we can build open source solutions to tax, for the masses!
Forgive me for being cynicsl, but if you can't even spell off-shore then I doubt you understand the concepts, or have the solution.
> So - imagine a karma system generating elected, regional education 'node leaders', for home and comunity eductator to amasses comparible resources as those in state schools. Now health, security, transport, energy,....
It's called Anarcho-Syndicalism. Great idea. Not so sure if it will work in practice - do you have any idea how bad local politics can be?
> Yes this might sound wacky, but there's nothing stopping us trying. And I'm sick of the winging in here. YES your government is crap! Do something!
Change your personal behaviour [do you buy fair trade everytime you have the choice? do you use public transport at every opportunity, even if it's inconvenient? Do you write to your MP? Do you give a proportion of your income to charity? Did you vote at the last election?)