Stalin had nothing to do with Holocaust -- or any act of genocide during WWII. He was a major asshole, oppressive and often incompetent ruler, however he is at most responsible for 2 millions of politically motivated deaths. That's 2 millions too many, but nowhere at the scale of Hitler, and none of it had anything to do with genocide.
Hitler, on the other hand, is solely responsible for WWII in Europe -- that's at least 70 millions dead, including at least 10 millions in outright genocide, 6 millions of them being Jewish.
Since they do not fulfill those conditions, they cannot be considered to be 'members of organized resistance'.
Again, says who? Resistance movements (or military) have no obligations to act openly toward their enemy. In either case, if they are not resistance, they are criminals -- who are protected by both US and Iraqi law.
This is such a naive statement that borders on the ridiculous.
Oh, wow, defender of Bush decided that something is "naive" and "ridiculous".
You cannot be afforded the protections of the treaties if you do not follow the rules in them. That's the trade-off.
Geneva Convention does not apply to prisoners, it applies to government. Nothing a person does can absolve the government from obligations to recognize his rights -- everything else goes on top of that.
1. They are definitely members of "organized resistance movement" -- otherwise how can they be declared to be "combatants" in the first place?
2. When the war is claimed to be waged against "terrorists", it would require some very special kind of logic to claim that "terrorists" (again, by attackers' own definition) fighting it are not a party to the conflict.
3. The intent of Geneva Convention is not to exclude any category if people that may be captured during a war that is not already protected by other laws. It is assumed that whoever is not protected by Convention, would be protected under local laws related to civilian population. Treating Geneva Convention as an invitation for loophole hunt is nothing but word games on part of Bush administration.
They don't even have any affiliation with any sovereign nations as far as their actions go
So as long as instead of declaration of war the aggressor declares that it no longer recognized a nation, it's OK to shove everyone who resists into a death camp? What about attacking states without universally recognized government or disputed territories, like, say, Taiwan or Somalia? How about South Ossetia? (Oh wait, US client state tried that -- by firing rockets at civilians' houses covering the whole capital city).
So, Bush administration can call them either "illegal enemy combatant", or "terrorists", or if they really wanted to, even "freedom fighters". It's just words. It doesn't change the essence of what (a good majority of) these people are.
Members of a military that has been or is being defeated? Armed resistance fighters? Violent criminals?
All those categories are protected under those treaties.
The best choice for a truly secure system, is to use some weird shit, that nobody else wants to use. And thus, there are not a lot of folks hacking about trying to poke holes in it.
Yeah. So the only people that will try to break into that will be people who know it better than its admins. That will end well, indeed...
Isn't "illegal enemy combatant" a new term invented by Bush administration to describe people they sent to Guantanamo prison in violation of Geneva Convention and pretty much all other laws or treaties relevant to those people?
Why shouldn't people who put resources at risk be compensated for doing so?
Why should they? There is nothing inherently risky about living on an incredibly resource-rich planet with 6 billions of people, most of those people capable and willing to perform incredible amount of useful work just because they can, and would be bored if they didn't do it. "Risk" is created by manipulating and controlling resources, limiting the applicability of others' labor, messing with currency and other in general negative actions. There is nothing to "reward" about making life dangerous for themselves and extremely dangerous for others.
So you tolerated the new interface that annoyed you for TWO WEEKS just because it came from your glorious masters at Microsoft.
I have a strong suspicion that you didn't ever try to do this with Linux, OpenOffice.org or any other piece of software that presented you a slightly unfamiliar GUI.
What the Hell is this copypasta? Where did I mention ANYTHING "local"? Why should economy as a whole care about elevating any particular category of people -- shareholders or not -- at the expense of everyone else? Least of all allocating wealth to what amounts to pyramid schemes, currency speculation and gambling?
A company can reduce its profit to literally zero, and successfully operate by immediately spending all profits. With high enough taxes most companies will actually choose to do so instead of growing like cancer.
Like what, port their implementations of Win32/DirectX and.NET as applications running on Linux or other existing OS, thus solving both performance and applications compatibility problems, and allowing users to migrate away from their systems by running other subsystems on the same platform? Can't be hard considering how Wine does most that without a single byte from Microsoft sources, and how Microsoft changes drivers interface between versions anyway.
However that would actually benefit the users. Microsoft can't allow that.
You forgot that those taxes are on profit, so they can be easily reduced by, say, increasing employees' salaries. Heck, they can even pay "salaries" to a few parasites on the board and top executives, though that probably will have to be curbed by other means.
With low taxes it's OK to rack up profits and "invest" them in companies' bank accounts, buying competitors and other things that don't show up as expenses. With high taxes the company is forced to spend money on expenses, things that usually benefit people who are not shareholders or top executives.
I know those people, too. However I don't think, opinions of former Nazi collaborators and CIA-funded saboteurs count for much.
After moving to US I occasionally try to imagine what kind of person I would become if I was born here instead of USSR, and raised by your society. Those are the most terrifying thoughts I ever had.
I assumed that produced power will be eventually dissipated as heat anyway (even if the source is different, such electricity delivered from somewhere else in a rather unrealistic best case scenario). So that would correspond to 50% efficiency, not 100%. I guess, too optimistic but still close enough.
If the argument was that any energy-consuming development in that area is bad, this would be invalid. However then I would have to compare its impact with similar industrial development elsewhere or other means of obtaining energy that would be produced by fuel extracted in those areas. I doubt that any alternatives would end up being friendlier to environment.
The only serious nuclear incident in USSR history, Chernobyl, happened in Ukraine, and was a result of combination of idiocy never seen before or after it anywhere near a nuclear installation. In fact, this amount of mishandling would cause a meltdown of any reactor, even one that is supposed to be completely "meltdown-proof", or a similarly disastrous incident on a non-nuclear facility such as chemical plant or oil refinery.
The rest is pretty much the same as in any other country that did any kind of development related to nuclear weapons or nuclear energy -- US included.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh wow, another American demonstrating his knowledge of WWII history.
People are just slowly producing larger and larger scams, so at any time one of the current scams is guaranteed to be the biggest evar.
What the fuck are you talking about?
Stalin had nothing to do with Holocaust -- or any act of genocide during WWII. He was a major asshole, oppressive and often incompetent ruler, however he is at most responsible for 2 millions of politically motivated deaths. That's 2 millions too many, but nowhere at the scale of Hitler, and none of it had anything to do with genocide.
Hitler, on the other hand, is solely responsible for WWII in Europe -- that's at least 70 millions dead, including at least 10 millions in outright genocide, 6 millions of them being Jewish.
Since they do not fulfill those conditions, they cannot be considered to be 'members of organized resistance'.
Again, says who? Resistance movements (or military) have no obligations to act openly toward their enemy. In either case, if they are not resistance, they are criminals -- who are protected by both US and Iraqi law.
This is such a naive statement that borders on the ridiculous.
Oh, wow, defender of Bush decided that something is "naive" and "ridiculous".
You cannot be afforded the protections of the treaties if you do not follow the rules in them. That's the trade-off.
Geneva Convention does not apply to prisoners, it applies to government. Nothing a person does can absolve the government from obligations to recognize his rights -- everything else goes on top of that.
Espionage is damaging, too, however it is never treated as an act of war.
1. They are definitely members of "organized resistance movement" -- otherwise how can they be declared to be "combatants" in the first place?
2. When the war is claimed to be waged against "terrorists", it would require some very special kind of logic to claim that "terrorists" (again, by attackers' own definition) fighting it are not a party to the conflict.
3. The intent of Geneva Convention is not to exclude any category if people that may be captured during a war that is not already protected by other laws. It is assumed that whoever is not protected by Convention, would be protected under local laws related to civilian population. Treating Geneva Convention as an invitation for loophole hunt is nothing but word games on part of Bush administration.
They don't even have any affiliation with any sovereign nations as far as their actions go
So as long as instead of declaration of war the aggressor declares that it no longer recognized a nation, it's OK to shove everyone who resists into a death camp? What about attacking states without universally recognized government or disputed territories, like, say, Taiwan or Somalia? How about South Ossetia? (Oh wait, US client state tried that -- by firing rockets at civilians' houses covering the whole capital city).
So, Bush administration can call them either "illegal enemy combatant", or "terrorists", or if they really wanted to, even "freedom fighters". It's just words. It doesn't change the essence of what (a good majority of) these people are.
Members of a military that has been or is being defeated?
Armed resistance fighters?
Violent criminals?
All those categories are protected under those treaties.
since none of those sent to Guantanamo fell into the definitions
Says who, Bush and Gonzales?
The best choice for a truly secure system, is to use some weird shit, that nobody else wants to use. And thus, there are not a lot of folks hacking about trying to poke holes in it.
Yeah. So the only people that will try to break into that will be people who know it better than its admins. That will end well, indeed...
Isn't "illegal enemy combatant" a new term invented by Bush administration to describe people they sent to Guantanamo prison in violation of Geneva Convention and pretty much all other laws or treaties relevant to those people?
"s/commercial software/Windows/g"
Why shouldn't people who put resources at risk be compensated for doing so?
Why should they? There is nothing inherently risky about living on an incredibly resource-rich planet with 6 billions of people, most of those people capable and willing to perform incredible amount of useful work just because they can, and would be bored if they didn't do it. "Risk" is created by manipulating and controlling resources, limiting the applicability of others' labor, messing with currency and other in general negative actions. There is nothing to "reward" about making life dangerous for themselves and extremely dangerous for others.
What the Hell are you talking about?
So you tolerated the new interface that annoyed you for TWO WEEKS just because it came from your glorious masters at Microsoft.
I have a strong suspicion that you didn't ever try to do this with Linux, OpenOffice.org or any other piece of software that presented you a slightly unfamiliar GUI.
What the Hell is this copypasta? Where did I mention ANYTHING "local"? Why should economy as a whole care about elevating any particular category of people -- shareholders or not -- at the expense of everyone else? Least of all allocating wealth to what amounts to pyramid schemes, currency speculation and gambling?
A company can reduce its profit to literally zero, and successfully operate by immediately spending all profits. With high enough taxes most companies will actually choose to do so instead of growing like cancer.
That's what I have on my large Averatec 2250 laptop (with upgraded RAM and hard drive). My "netbook" is OLPC XO.
I don't remember a single project that had a requirement that implementation contained bugs.
Or an implementation that didn't have them.
Like what, port their implementations of Win32/DirectX and .NET as applications running on Linux or other existing OS, thus solving both performance and applications compatibility problems, and allowing users to migrate away from their systems by running other subsystems on the same platform? Can't be hard considering how Wine does most that without a single byte from Microsoft sources, and how Microsoft changes drivers interface between versions anyway.
However that would actually benefit the users. Microsoft can't allow that.
("such electricity..." should be "such as electricity...")
You forgot that those taxes are on profit, so they can be easily reduced by, say, increasing employees' salaries. Heck, they can even pay "salaries" to a few parasites on the board and top executives, though that probably will have to be curbed by other means.
With low taxes it's OK to rack up profits and "invest" them in companies' bank accounts, buying competitors and other things that don't show up as expenses. With high taxes the company is forced to spend money on expenses, things that usually benefit people who are not shareholders or top executives.
Judging by how easily US starts wars, most of the rest definitely are.
I know those people, too. However I don't think, opinions of former Nazi collaborators and CIA-funded saboteurs count for much.
After moving to US I occasionally try to imagine what kind of person I would become if I was born here instead of USSR, and raised by your society. Those are the most terrifying thoughts I ever had.
No.
I assumed that produced power will be eventually dissipated as heat anyway (even if the source is different, such electricity delivered from somewhere else in a rather unrealistic best case scenario). So that would correspond to 50% efficiency, not 100%. I guess, too optimistic but still close enough.
If the argument was that any energy-consuming development in that area is bad, this would be invalid. However then I would have to compare its impact with similar industrial development elsewhere or other means of obtaining energy that would be produced by fuel extracted in those areas. I doubt that any alternatives would end up being friendlier to environment.
Oh really? Who told you that?
The only serious nuclear incident in USSR history, Chernobyl, happened in Ukraine, and was a result of combination of idiocy never seen before or after it anywhere near a nuclear installation. In fact, this amount of mishandling would cause a meltdown of any reactor, even one that is supposed to be completely "meltdown-proof", or a similarly disastrous incident on a non-nuclear facility such as chemical plant or oil refinery.
The rest is pretty much the same as in any other country that did any kind of development related to nuclear weapons or nuclear energy -- US included.