We *can* create oil, even out of plain CO2 if necessary. We do have the chemical knowledge for that you know.
Making any plastic will be still as easy as it is today : you buy some type of oil-derivative at the store, and polymerisize it. Easy enough.
It will however, be a very costly thing to do indeed : it requires loads of energy. Right now that energy has simply been put in oil long ago, and making most plastics is in fact an exotherm process.
We will still make plastics. Producing them, however, will stop producing energy and start massively costing energy.
So that leaves multiple scenarios open. If we do get fusion operational somehow, for example, plastics will likely be as abundant as they are today, at least for a while. Even if we don't nuclear power is probably cheap enough to provide all those "specialty plastics", maybe even at comparable prices. The mass-market plastic will be the only thing disappearing.
My guess is, we'd replace it by another extremely useful and versatile substance we so massively used before the oil started to get so widespread : Iron. It's only marginally more expensive than plastics (mostly due to the mines' labour cost, there is more than enough iron in the ground to coat the entire earth with it several times). Instead of buying your salami in cheap plastic packaging you'll simply buy it in a can.
No it's not. Due to developers having to foot the bill themselves, you don't get to choose one of your options. Open source software HAS to be cheap. Value is not measured in money you know. Money's just the in-between "equalizer". Value is measured in computers, development time, eyeballs, testers, people, management, internet servers,... Just because you don't have to pay for something doesn't mean that the value you received wasn't created using resources.
Your argument would include stuff like "pirated games are free to produce for publishers". After all, there is no money involved in their "acquisition". More extreme, the same would be true for stolen goods.
Open source is only free for one side of the equation : it's only free for users, not for developers.
Unless I have a HUGE hole in my dynamic library knowledge, you are wrong.
Linux dynamic libraries, like any windows dynamic library, don't force context switches at all, neither on windows or on linux. They force a few page faults to generate new data segments, but they do so on both systems.
And in practice... linux easier to bugfix ? Dream on. Truth be told, as long as it's "high level" stuff, windows is massively easier to bugfix, due to massively better development tools (sorry but nothing beats microsoft's visual set of tools).
Since humans are not descendant from neanderthals that would be staggeringly unlikely. It would be like 2 nieces having genetically identical offspring : unlikely in the extreme. Only a human and a neanderthal aren't disconnected by 2 generations, but by a few thousand.
Actually during the time neanderthals lived alongside the real human ancestors, they were the smarter species of the two, so recreating a live neanderthal would be an interesting experience indeed... Just how smart are they ? Would they talk (most monkeys have at least a limited language, so probably they would talk). What sort of languages could they learn ? We've seen their bones, but do they look like gorilla's in real life (e.g. it's known most dinosaurs had feathers, so by looking only at bones you can make some pretty staggering mistakes) ? Would they be strong ?
Would they be dumber ? Smarter perhaps ? Especially smarter would be interesting. And if they turn against us ? Well we fought(/starved*) them to extinction already once before, didn't we ?
* starved being the "peaceful alternative" way for evolution to work. It appears that little actual fighting was done to kill neanderthals, we (or someone else ? perhaps some animal ?) just stole so much of their food they died out.
Wikipedia's only strength is that it's the way of least resistance. It's "slightly" better information than random webpages, but it has both of it's disadvantages :
1. it only provides majority opinion (e.g. total disregard for religious dimensions of both the darfur, kosovo and kashmir conflicts, economic theory (let's not go into exactly what is wrong with economic theory on wikipedia, we all know what the problem is), religious stuff like abortion/euthanasia/islam ordering the killings of gays, non-muslims and women, totally biased information on israel,...), and silences minorities. The problem is that academics are a tiny majority (and honest academics who only comment on their field of expertise are yet again a subset of them). The people who really know something are very quickly drowned out on any subject the mass-media push an opinion about anything. 2. Amongst it's contributors (and, sadly, admins) are people you really, really, really don't want to be the arbiters of knowledge. Lobbyists, journalists, "activists" and even kids trying to discredit someone's dad have all been known to use wikipedia to great damage. Outright falsifications and lies have been published to great acclaim (e.g. the many Jim Wales sagas), for reasons as idiotic as increasing some idiot's ego.
Wikipedia is like one of those know-it-alls. They can be surprisingly knowledgeable about tiny little subjects, but you really can't tell -at all- when you're being fed total bullshit.
All information from wikipedia should be treated as if it's probably falsified, because a subset of it is. It is not merely wrong or inaccurate, but actually falsified.
Considering the timing, and the fact that Bush had 7 years in office before the first problems manifested themselves, the answer is clear.
Further research shows that 3 of those 7 years were spent arguing change in the policies that are now thought to be responsible for the crisis...
to those arguments house democrats basically shouted "racist". After all, not giving unreasonable amounts of money to black/poor/(insert favorite victim group here) people is clearly racism !
Maybe you should wake up to reality... honestly your view of the world is worrying.
Obama's first 10 days cost more than the entire "never before has the government spent so much" Bush administration. And he's spent most of his money repaying his campaign debts. After all, if you let ACORN's commit voter fraud and various other crimes for you, you best pay them afterwards.
But everyone who "contributed" to obama's campaign is getting a (way larger than the contribution) piece of the pie in return.
That's called corruption, in case you're not clear on that.
A government does not have to be good, and rarely is. It only has to be good enough that the populace will tolerate it.
A government has to do much, much more than that.
It must be in compliance (and at times, enforce others' compliance) with the basic laws of economics, or it will starve first it's people, then itself.
It has to protect itself from outside influence (it must "keep the barbarians out of the gates"), or it will quickly find itself swamped and destroyed from within.
It has to attack part of it's citizenry to protect other parts, ie. it has to enforce the laws.
It has to attack people outside of it's jurisdiction to protect it's trade relations (in other words : it has to attack pirates outside it's borders or refrain totally from international trade).
And finally : It has to attack "outsiders" to protect it's citizenry, intrests and critical resources that may be in limited supply or not available domestically.
Fail on any of these and the government will die quicker than you can say "revolution". Unless you believe everyone is just "naturally good", in which case you should share with me me some of that stuff you're smoking...
And if everybody did that, you would be doing what you'll be doing as a well-equipped soldier in afghanistan from the "comfort of your own living room", without backup, and without logistics, and since hospitals are the first targets of these assholes, without medical care.
I don't even have cable... But don't let that stop your panicky "insult him ! quick ! I'm starting to have doubts about weed-induced world peace !" adventures...
After all what are facts when you have the comfort of parotting what the tv tells you, that the only possible reason for doubting a massacrer's good intentions is racism...
Is that why Sudan never gets mentioned and gets even less action going ? It would be racist to help the victims of politically-correct killers ? Dear God you people are disgusting...
Or do you deny muslims are committing massacres right as we speak ? Do you deny the situations of Sudan, Darfur (and Chad), Kashmir, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and a dozen other parts of the world ?
No it isn't. The current record of maximum number of indiscriminate killings stands with the "socialist revolution" in asia, most of the party was directed by the USSR.
Second in the line are muslims. They took a hell of a long time though. What communists managed to kill in less than 100 years muslims took a thousand years.
Third in line, but separated by a VERY large margin from the muslim killers is the nazi government. They only managed to kill somewhere between 20 and 50 million random people. Otoh, they did so in barely 10 years, and over 95% of it in less than 3 years, so perhaps if america hadn't fought them they would have caught up with muslims. Some part of these bastards were killed by the most effective killing machine of the entire history of humanity... communism ("socialism" as they preferred to be called).
All did all that killing "by hand". They had actual "soldiers" on the ground killing people, murdering out entire villages. The weapons used are very, very basic, not even using firearms mostly. You see ammunition is expensive and large amounts of killing always seem to lead to economic collapse, preventing adequate supplies of ammunition from being present. Therefore (? not that I care, I don't plan to kill that many) more basic weapons were used, the largest portion was killed with knives, swords and cutting weapons, closely followed by letting them starve. I doubt bullets would make the third place.
"Large" massacres (say > 10000 people dead) are not done with atomic bombs, bullets, rockets or any of those weapons. Massacres are committed by a large amount of "extremists" using the most basic of weapons. They end badly for both the perpetrator and the victims.
You see, those weapons are simply too expensive to make large massacres possible. Of course, such ideas are much to realist for any self-respecting progressive to deal with.
There is an upside though : if you manage to commit an actual large massacre, say a million people, apparently "progressives" will praise you into the high heavens. Every sane individual will kill you on sight, of course, but you'll be praised posthumously. All sorts of excuses will be accepted ("allah told me", "I wanted to save the poor from opression", "we did it for social justice", "those damn jews stole our <fill in anything>"...
"Progressive" is a word used for a certain political persuasion that is meant to hide the fact they intend to bring back not even the dark ages, but the time before time. The time humans killed eachother for food. The time of the law of the jungle.
That's, apparently, what's meant by "social justice", which is a word meant for some horrible world system which is neither social nor just.
You should read some actual history, and you'd realise the absurdity of your claim.
The "muslims" never had any significant technology (with the exception, ironically, of contemporary Iran and Turkey).
The truth is simple : for a time, the muslims controlled the most technologically advanced civilization on earth, of which all learning centers, academics and engineers were all non-muslims, with only 2 exceptions. Both exceptions were killed by the clergy, so presumably they weren't very good muslims, and science died while the "muslim civilization" was in the process (through jihad, racist laws,...) of actually becoming muslim.
Hardly has anyone ever thought that maybe they just want a decent level of tech
Hardly anyone has, indeed, including the leader of Iran.
Nor has anyone with enough technical knowledge to realize that the story doesn't check out : you don't need a 6000 centrifuge cascade to make fuel, you only need it for bombs.
You know, for an islamic government, Iran's is pretty good. Or rather : ahmadinejad is pretty good. Sure he massacres gays, infidels, and anyone with an even slightly different skin tone or lifestyle from himself, but that's something you just can't avoid in muslims. He does have levels of concern for his own people that are unheard of in many other muslim countries. And he's actually not stupid (not particularly smart either, but he's got an exact sciences phd, he'd probably beat the crap out of obama in any maths exam).
Rational responses are not going to make these guys see the light.
They just parrot what the TV says. So unless you convince MSM bosses to tell the truth about things like muslims being on a mission to kill everyone else... you're not going to get very far.
Heyhey, the top poster said Iran was involved in ZERO wars.
How can there be any weapons for non-existent wars ?
Perhaps the propagandic nature is showing : no need to have consistency in your propaganda. This also often shows in Iran's "we have no gays here, I don't know what your talking about" from a person who orders massacres on gays.
Aren't you guys liberal ? How could a liberal possibly be against destroying a government that massacres gays for their sexual tastes, in addition to executing many people for the most idiotic of reasons.
Heyheyhey, now don't go comparing countries who massacre journalists with countries that have constitutions protecting those journalists !
Of course journalists don't complain about Iran, and that's all some people see. Complaining about Iran gets your network's people massacred in the middle east.
Of course their cowardice will only end in every country attacking journalists with wrong messages. Democracy doesn't exist without courage to tell the truth, courage that has long vanished from american media. Democracy is slowly following.
Now american media just cheer on countries that kill journalists. Just look at how they adore hamas and fatah.
Euhm ? The Iran-Iraq war ? The many incursions into Afghanistan ? The Pakistan border issues ? The hezbollah-Israel war ? The hamas-Israel war ?
All these were started by Iran. In the last 30 years no less.
Which war, exactly, was started by Israel ? It was involved in many wars, but always acted in self-defense. All the wars Israel was involved in were wars that had as an explicit goal to exterminate all Jews.
In other words, they were all racist wars directed against Jews, and Jews always won when they fought.
And they always restrained their response. They were multiple times in a position to take over Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, and they never did.
You're either stupid or a racist lyer. Not that it matters.
The taliban ("learned muslims"), the enemy that the US is fighting, has obviously totally respected pakistani borders, and when in pakistan, shown complete and utter compliance with pakistani law.
Oh wait... they haven't ? And pakistan is (not publicly of course) actually quite happy about these idiot assholes getting a few rockets in their faces ?
Who'd have thought. If you go into some foreign country, take over parts of it... you might get some resistance. That country would even be happy to let your enemies bomb the crap out of you ?
Nicaragua... no us government Panama... no us government Venezuela... no us government (and a murder rate that exceeds the death rate of the inner blast circle of a nuclear explosion... thank you mr. Chavez)
Are you insane ? I mean these are not details.
Let's take for example a really imperialist expansionist murderous ideology : islam.
Egypt : sharia government Libya : sharia government Tunisia : sharia government Algeria : sharia government Morocco : "mostly" sharia government (ie. in theory not so much in practice)
Of course we never see mad assholes like you rant about the constant massacres, right into the 21st century, that created these governments...
Of course that's because you're a total coward : you only complain if the side you're madly blabbering about doesn't attack you back.
Which means the only type of US government that you'd be happy about is... a REALLY imperialistic dictatorship, one that DOES hurt you. Which is "supposedly" what you want to avoid in the first place.
Not really. I don't even like Islam (or any religion, really) - but I don't like people saying misleading things about it due to a lack of perspective either.
You claim that certain details are insufficiently provided (such as the age of that girl involved, which really was 9, some sources say 6 and some very, very far fetched sources say 11, but none of those ages make me feel comfortable).
Again, you're missing the point. She wasn't 9 for the whole of the marriage - and she damn well wasn't 9 when the marriage was consumated, or when the quote you were talking about occured. (A girl starting menstruation at 9 is possible in western countries now, but back then? No way.)
Indeed. She was SIX, seven and eight in the marriage before she turned nine, when the marriage was indeed consummated :
(this hadith is considered authentic, and at times "in practice only" overrides the quran in authority (e.g. in death by stoning), so let's not hear about how this is not considered reliable :
The Prophet engaged me when I was a girl of six (years). We went to Medina and stayed at the home of Bani-al-Harith bin Khazraj. Then I got ill and my hair fell down. Later on my hair grew (again) and my mother, Um Ruman, came to me while I was playing in a swing with some of my girl friends. She called me, and I went to her, not knowing what she wanted to do to me. She caught me by the hand and made me stand at the door of the house. I was breathless then, and when my breathing became Allright, she took some water and rubbed my face and head with it. Then she took me into the house. There in the house I saw some Ansari women who said, "Best wishes and Allah's Blessing and a good luck." Then she entrusted me to them and they prepared me (for the marriage). Unexpectedly Allah's Apostle came to me in the forenoon and my mother handed me over to him, and at that time I was a girl of nine years of age.
Given that this comes from the source where most (if not all) of sharia comes from, I feel fully justified in calling muslims "paedophile worshippers".
That is a 100% true statement. Not in the least more offensive than something like "murderers have killed people" : you are saying a negative, but 100% true, fact about a group of people.
Why do you feel you need to make excuses for these paeophile worshippers ? Do you seriously think it's a coincidence that girls of age six (and even younger in Iran) STILL get sold into marriage in most muslim countries ?
Why even younger in Iran ? Well ayatollah khomeini, the person who founded the current government was a baby fucker. I don't know any other term for the vile acts of this imam, who is still defended by most shi'as. He actually fucked a girl of 2 yearls old, then had her locked away, literally ripped apart.
Of course he did so with the full support of the paedophile religion.
You make a thousand excuses. You claim that certain details are insufficiently provided (such as the age of that girl involved, which really was 9, some sources say 6 and some very, very far fetched sources say 11, but none of those ages make me feel comfortable).
Does it not make you uncomfortable in the extreme that you need those thousands of excuses ?
Your comparison of the old testament doesn't apply for nearly all christians since at the very least they consider the new testament to supercede the old. Christians follow... Christ. Not moses. Those old testament "issues"... you might ask a few Jews about them, but they'll respond that they do not consider those parts of the torah to be valid.
Now about those details. Of course you're right. To create a logically sound version of events the details are far less than sufficient. The writings are confusing and incoherent (childish really. Every 5 lines you run into a sort of "he did it" "NO he did it" "I'm right" "No I'm right" "allah says I'm right so I'm right" discussion)
Muslims, obviously, have no such "western" demands of consistency of their theology. They're perfectly happy interpreting the incoherent childisch gibberish in their theological texts. Unfortunately such an application, e.g. reading the age of the girl involved at 9, leads to massive state-sanctioned child-rape or paedophilia by muslims in nearly all muslim countries, even to it being imported into the USA (with the type of excuses "are you against 'child-marriage' and it's consummation ? you are an islamophobe !")
There are other examples, where the opposite happens. The quran clearly stipulates that you cannot be held to the contracts you've signed in the past, yet every last muslim country obviously sides with christian law on this point (except when the govt. is involved, but that's the same in america too).
islam destroyed the middle east, huge parts of india, and about the whole of africa with it's slave trade and slave-fought wars. Everything it touched lies in total shambles, a result of their war on everything ("jihad"), including eachother.
And that answer of "yes" is what you will get, with no limitations whatsoever. Not that many of them will actually do it, but they *will* support those who do it. That's why you have the massive support for muslim massacres around the globe, especially in "moderate" muslims.
Slashdot Mirror
We *can* create oil, even out of plain CO2 if necessary. We do have the chemical knowledge for that you know.
Making any plastic will be still as easy as it is today : you buy some type of oil-derivative at the store, and polymerisize it. Easy enough.
It will however, be a very costly thing to do indeed : it requires loads of energy. Right now that energy has simply been put in oil long ago, and making most plastics is in fact an exotherm process.
We will still make plastics. Producing them, however, will stop producing energy and start massively costing energy.
So that leaves multiple scenarios open. If we do get fusion operational somehow, for example, plastics will likely be as abundant as they are today, at least for a while. Even if we don't nuclear power is probably cheap enough to provide all those "specialty plastics", maybe even at comparable prices. The mass-market plastic will be the only thing disappearing.
My guess is, we'd replace it by another extremely useful and versatile substance we so massively used before the oil started to get so widespread : Iron. It's only marginally more expensive than plastics (mostly due to the mines' labour cost, there is more than enough iron in the ground to coat the entire earth with it several times). Instead of buying your salami in cheap plastic packaging you'll simply buy it in a can.
No it's not. Due to developers having to foot the bill themselves, you don't get to choose one of your options. Open source software HAS to be cheap. Value is not measured in money you know. Money's just the in-between "equalizer". Value is measured in computers, development time, eyeballs, testers, people, management, internet servers, ... Just because you don't have to pay for something doesn't mean that the value you received wasn't created using resources.
Your argument would include stuff like "pirated games are free to produce for publishers". After all, there is no money involved in their "acquisition". More extreme, the same would be true for stolen goods.
Open source is only free for one side of the equation : it's only free for users, not for developers.
Unless I have a HUGE hole in my dynamic library knowledge, you are wrong.
Linux dynamic libraries, like any windows dynamic library, don't force context switches at all, neither on windows or on linux. They force a few page faults to generate new data segments, but they do so on both systems.
And in practice ... linux easier to bugfix ? Dream on. Truth be told, as long as it's "high level" stuff, windows is massively easier to bugfix, due to massively better development tools (sorry but nothing beats microsoft's visual set of tools).
Since humans are not descendant from neanderthals that would be staggeringly unlikely. It would be like 2 nieces having genetically identical offspring : unlikely in the extreme. Only a human and a neanderthal aren't disconnected by 2 generations, but by a few thousand.
Actually during the time neanderthals lived alongside the real human ancestors, they were the smarter species of the two, so recreating a live neanderthal would be an interesting experience indeed ... Just how smart are they ? Would they talk (most monkeys have at least a limited language, so probably they would talk). What sort of languages could they learn ? We've seen their bones, but do they look like gorilla's in real life (e.g. it's known most dinosaurs had feathers, so by looking only at bones you can make some pretty staggering mistakes) ? Would they be strong ?
Would they be dumber ? Smarter perhaps ? Especially smarter would be interesting. And if they turn against us ? Well we fought(/starved*) them to extinction already once before, didn't we ?
* starved being the "peaceful alternative" way for evolution to work. It appears that little actual fighting was done to kill neanderthals, we (or someone else ? perhaps some animal ?) just stole so much of their food they died out.
And WWII was started by Poland. Look it up.
Wikipedia's only strength is that it's the way of least resistance. It's "slightly" better information than random webpages, but it has both of it's disadvantages :
1. it only provides majority opinion (e.g. total disregard for religious dimensions of both the darfur, kosovo and kashmir conflicts, economic theory (let's not go into exactly what is wrong with economic theory on wikipedia, we all know what the problem is), religious stuff like abortion/euthanasia/islam ordering the killings of gays, non-muslims and women, totally biased information on israel, ...), and silences minorities. The problem is that academics are a tiny majority (and honest academics who only comment on their field of expertise are yet again a subset of them). The people who really know something are very quickly drowned out on any subject the mass-media push an opinion about anything.
2. Amongst it's contributors (and, sadly, admins) are people you really, really, really don't want to be the arbiters of knowledge. Lobbyists, journalists, "activists" and even kids trying to discredit someone's dad have all been known to use wikipedia to great damage. Outright falsifications and lies have been published to great acclaim (e.g. the many Jim Wales sagas), for reasons as idiotic as increasing some idiot's ego.
Wikipedia is like one of those know-it-alls. They can be surprisingly knowledgeable about tiny little subjects, but you really can't tell -at all- when you're being fed total bullshit.
All information from wikipedia should be treated as if it's probably falsified, because a subset of it is. It is not merely wrong or inaccurate, but actually falsified.
Considering the timing, and the fact that Bush had 7 years in office before the first problems manifested themselves, the answer is clear.
Further research shows that 3 of those 7 years were spent arguing change in the policies that are now thought to be responsible for the crisis ...
to those arguments house democrats basically shouted "racist". After all, not giving unreasonable amounts of money to black/poor/(insert favorite victim group here) people is clearly racism !
Maybe you should wake up to reality ... honestly your view of the world is worrying.
Obama's first 10 days cost more than the entire "never before has the government spent so much" Bush administration. And he's spent most of his money repaying his campaign debts. After all, if you let ACORN's commit voter fraud and various other crimes for you, you best pay them afterwards.
But everyone who "contributed" to obama's campaign is getting a (way larger than the contribution) piece of the pie in return.
That's called corruption, in case you're not clear on that.
A government does not have to be good, and rarely is. It only has to be good enough that the populace will tolerate it.
A government has to do much, much more than that.
It must be in compliance (and at times, enforce others' compliance) with the basic laws of economics, or it will starve first it's people, then itself.
It has to protect itself from outside influence (it must "keep the barbarians out of the gates"), or it will quickly find itself swamped and destroyed from within.
It has to attack part of it's citizenry to protect other parts, ie. it has to enforce the laws.
It has to attack people outside of it's jurisdiction to protect it's trade relations (in other words : it has to attack pirates outside it's borders or refrain totally from international trade).
And finally : It has to attack "outsiders" to protect it's citizenry, intrests and critical resources that may be in limited supply or not available domestically.
Fail on any of these and the government will die quicker than you can say "revolution". Unless you believe everyone is just "naturally good", in which case you should share with me me some of that stuff you're smoking ...
And if everybody did that, you would be doing what you'll be doing as a well-equipped soldier in afghanistan from the "comfort of your own living room", without backup, and without logistics, and since hospitals are the first targets of these assholes, without medical care.
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-1 Uncomfortable truth
I don't even have cable ... But don't let that stop your panicky "insult him ! quick ! I'm starting to have doubts about weed-induced world peace !" adventures ...
After all what are facts when you have the comfort of parotting what the tv tells you, that the only possible reason for doubting a massacrer's good intentions is racism ...
Is that why Sudan never gets mentioned and gets even less action going ? It would be racist to help the victims of politically-correct killers ? Dear God you people are disgusting ...
Or do you deny muslims are committing massacres right as we speak ? Do you deny the situations of Sudan, Darfur (and Chad), Kashmir, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and a dozen other parts of the world ?
No it isn't. The current record of maximum number of indiscriminate killings stands with the "socialist revolution" in asia, most of the party was directed by the USSR.
Second in the line are muslims. They took a hell of a long time though. What communists managed to kill in less than 100 years muslims took a thousand years.
Third in line, but separated by a VERY large margin from the muslim killers is the nazi government. They only managed to kill somewhere between 20 and 50 million random people. Otoh, they did so in barely 10 years, and over 95% of it in less than 3 years, so perhaps if america hadn't fought them they would have caught up with muslims. Some part of these bastards were killed by the most effective killing machine of the entire history of humanity ... communism ("socialism" as they preferred to be called).
All did all that killing "by hand". They had actual "soldiers" on the ground killing people, murdering out entire villages. The weapons used are very, very basic, not even using firearms mostly. You see ammunition is expensive and large amounts of killing always seem to lead to economic collapse, preventing adequate supplies of ammunition from being present. Therefore (? not that I care, I don't plan to kill that many) more basic weapons were used, the largest portion was killed with knives, swords and cutting weapons, closely followed by letting them starve. I doubt bullets would make the third place.
"Large" massacres (say > 10000 people dead) are not done with atomic bombs, bullets, rockets or any of those weapons. Massacres are committed by a large amount of "extremists" using the most basic of weapons. They end badly for both the perpetrator and the victims.
You see, those weapons are simply too expensive to make large massacres possible. Of course, such ideas are much to realist for any self-respecting progressive to deal with.
There is an upside though : if you manage to commit an actual large massacre, say a million people, apparently "progressives" will praise you into the high heavens. Every sane individual will kill you on sight, of course, but you'll be praised posthumously. All sorts of excuses will be accepted ("allah told me", "I wanted to save the poor from opression", "we did it for social justice", "those damn jews stole our <fill in anything>" ...
"Progressive" is a word used for a certain political persuasion that is meant to hide the fact they intend to bring back not even the dark ages, but the time before time. The time humans killed eachother for food. The time of the law of the jungle.
That's, apparently, what's meant by "social justice", which is a word meant for some horrible world system which is neither social nor just.
You should read some actual history, and you'd realise the absurdity of your claim.
The "muslims" never had any significant technology (with the exception, ironically, of contemporary Iran and Turkey).
The truth is simple : for a time, the muslims controlled the most technologically advanced civilization on earth, of which all learning centers, academics and engineers were all non-muslims, with only 2 exceptions. Both exceptions were killed by the clergy, so presumably they weren't very good muslims, and science died while the "muslim civilization" was in the process (through jihad, racist laws, ...) of actually becoming muslim.
Hardly has anyone ever thought that maybe they just want a decent level of tech
Hardly anyone has, indeed, including the leader of Iran.
Nor has anyone with enough technical knowledge to realize that the story doesn't check out : you don't need a 6000 centrifuge cascade to make fuel, you only need it for bombs.
You know, for an islamic government, Iran's is pretty good. Or rather : ahmadinejad is pretty good. Sure he massacres gays, infidels, and anyone with an even slightly different skin tone or lifestyle from himself, but that's something you just can't avoid in muslims. He does have levels of concern for his own people that are unheard of in many other muslim countries. And he's actually not stupid (not particularly smart either, but he's got an exact sciences phd, he'd probably beat the crap out of obama in any maths exam).
Rational responses are not going to make these guys see the light.
They just parrot what the TV says. So unless you convince MSM bosses to tell the truth about things like muslims being on a mission to kill everyone else ... you're not going to get very far.
Heyhey, the top poster said Iran was involved in ZERO wars.
How can there be any weapons for non-existent wars ?
Perhaps the propagandic nature is showing : no need to have consistency in your propaganda. This also often shows in Iran's "we have no gays here, I don't know what your talking about" from a person who orders massacres on gays.
Aren't you guys liberal ? How could a liberal possibly be against destroying a government that massacres gays for their sexual tastes, in addition to executing many people for the most idiotic of reasons.
Heyheyhey, now don't go comparing countries who massacre journalists with countries that have constitutions protecting those journalists !
Of course journalists don't complain about Iran, and that's all some people see. Complaining about Iran gets your network's people massacred in the middle east.
Of course their cowardice will only end in every country attacking journalists with wrong messages. Democracy doesn't exist without courage to tell the truth, courage that has long vanished from american media. Democracy is slowly following.
Now american media just cheer on countries that kill journalists. Just look at how they adore hamas and fatah.
Euhm ? The Iran-Iraq war ? The many incursions into Afghanistan ? The Pakistan border issues ? The hezbollah-Israel war ? The hamas-Israel war ?
All these were started by Iran. In the last 30 years no less.
Which war, exactly, was started by Israel ? It was involved in many wars, but always acted in self-defense. All the wars Israel was involved in were wars that had as an explicit goal to exterminate all Jews.
In other words, they were all racist wars directed against Jews, and Jews always won when they fought.
And they always restrained their response. They were multiple times in a position to take over Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, and they never did.
You're either stupid or a racist lyer. Not that it matters.
If you want to kill random people, like muslims do, then it's quite OK to be in the general vicinity.
If you want to avoid getting blasted in return. You need thousands of perfect hits, or hundreds in Israel.
Iran ? Mad ? Bent on causing the second coming ? Muslim ? Sponsoring terrorists ?
I'm sure that's all claptrap. Of course, if it isn't ...
Actually close enough would not be sufficient. Well it depends on what you want to do :
-> kill "enough" so as to demoralize the enemy
Yes no problem. You'd have to get lucky to get as many victims as 9/11 did though.
-> actually cause problems for the enemy, preventing retaliation
You pretty much need to hit the correct square centimeter, in addition to perfect intelligence.
Also you'd need hundreds, if not thousands of nukes.
The taliban ("learned muslims"), the enemy that the US is fighting, has obviously totally respected pakistani borders, and when in pakistan, shown complete and utter compliance with pakistani law.
Oh wait ... they haven't ? And pakistan is (not publicly of course) actually quite happy about these idiot assholes getting a few rockets in their faces ?
Who'd have thought. If you go into some foreign country, take over parts of it ... you might get some resistance. That country would even be happy to let your enemies bomb the crap out of you ?
Imagine that.
Nicaragua ... no us government ... no us government ... no us government (and a murder rate that exceeds the death rate of the inner blast circle of a nuclear explosion ... thank you mr. Chavez)
Panama
Venezuela
Are you insane ? I mean these are not details.
Let's take for example a really imperialist expansionist murderous ideology : islam.
Egypt : sharia government
Libya : sharia government
Tunisia : sharia government
Algeria : sharia government
Morocco : "mostly" sharia government (ie. in theory not so much in practice)
Of course we never see mad assholes like you rant about the constant massacres, right into the 21st century, that created these governments ...
Of course that's because you're a total coward : you only complain if the side you're madly blabbering about doesn't attack you back.
Which means the only type of US government that you'd be happy about is ... a REALLY imperialistic dictatorship, one that DOES hurt you. Which is "supposedly" what you want to avoid in the first place.
You make a thousand excuses.
Not really. I don't even like Islam (or any religion, really) - but I don't like people saying misleading things about it due to a lack of perspective either.
You claim that certain details are insufficiently provided (such as the age of that girl involved, which really was 9, some sources say 6 and some very, very far fetched sources say 11, but none of those ages make me feel comfortable).
Again, you're missing the point. She wasn't 9 for the whole of the marriage - and she damn well wasn't 9 when the marriage was consumated, or when the quote you were talking about occured. (A girl starting menstruation at 9 is possible in western countries now, but back then? No way.)
Indeed. She was SIX, seven and eight in the marriage before she turned nine, when the marriage was indeed consummated :
(this hadith is considered authentic, and at times "in practice only" overrides the quran in authority (e.g. in death by stoning), so let's not hear about how this is not considered reliable :
http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/bukhari/058.sbt.html#005.058.234
Narrated Aisha:
The Prophet engaged me when I was a girl of six (years). We went to Medina and stayed at the home of Bani-al-Harith bin Khazraj. Then I got ill and my hair fell down. Later on my hair grew (again) and my mother, Um Ruman, came to me while I was playing in a swing with some of my girl friends. She called me, and I went to her, not knowing what she wanted to do to me. She caught me by the hand and made me stand at the door of the house. I was breathless then, and when my breathing became Allright, she took some water and rubbed my face and head with it. Then she took me into the house. There in the house I saw some Ansari women who said, "Best wishes and Allah's Blessing and a good luck." Then she entrusted me to them and they prepared me (for the marriage). Unexpectedly Allah's Apostle came to me in the forenoon and my mother handed me over to him, and at that time I was a girl of nine years of age.
Given that this comes from the source where most (if not all) of sharia comes from, I feel fully justified in calling muslims "paedophile worshippers".
That is a 100% true statement. Not in the least more offensive than something like "murderers have killed people" : you are saying a negative, but 100% true, fact about a group of people.
Why do you feel you need to make excuses for these paeophile worshippers ? Do you seriously think it's a coincidence that girls of age six (and even younger in Iran) STILL get sold into marriage in most muslim countries ?
Why even younger in Iran ? Well ayatollah khomeini, the person who founded the current government was a baby fucker. I don't know any other term for the vile acts of this imam, who is still defended by most shi'as. He actually fucked a girl of 2 yearls old, then had her locked away, literally ripped apart.
Of course he did so with the full support of the paedophile religion.
You make a thousand excuses. You claim that certain details are insufficiently provided (such as the age of that girl involved, which really was 9, some sources say 6 and some very, very far fetched sources say 11, but none of those ages make me feel comfortable).
Does it not make you uncomfortable in the extreme that you need those thousands of excuses ?
Your comparison of the old testament doesn't apply for nearly all christians since at the very least they consider the new testament to supercede the old. Christians follow ... Christ. Not moses. Those old testament "issues" ... you might ask a few Jews about them, but they'll respond that they do not consider those parts of the torah to be valid.
Now about those details. Of course you're right. To create a logically sound version of events the details are far less than sufficient. The writings are confusing and incoherent (childish really. Every 5 lines you run into a sort of "he did it" "NO he did it" "I'm right" "No I'm right" "allah says I'm right so I'm right" discussion)
Muslims, obviously, have no such "western" demands of consistency of their theology. They're perfectly happy interpreting the incoherent childisch gibberish in their theological texts. Unfortunately such an application, e.g. reading the age of the girl involved at 9, leads to massive state-sanctioned child-rape or paedophilia by muslims in nearly all muslim countries, even to it being imported into the USA (with the type of excuses "are you against 'child-marriage' and it's consummation ? you are an islamophobe !")
There are other examples, where the opposite happens. The quran clearly stipulates that you cannot be held to the contracts you've signed in the past, yet every last muslim country obviously sides with christian law on this point (except when the govt. is involved, but that's the same in america too).
islam destroyed the middle east, huge parts of india, and about the whole of africa with it's slave trade and slave-fought wars. Everything it touched lies in total shambles, a result of their war on everything ("jihad"), including eachother.
And that answer of "yes" is what you will get, with no limitations whatsoever. Not that many of them will actually do it, but they *will* support those who do it. That's why you have the massive support for muslim massacres around the globe, especially in "moderate" muslims.