Liberty, basically, is a sum of non-contradictory rights held in common. Freedom is just an exemption of control, and often can conflict with other freedoms.
I am pretty sure, this is not a definition accepted anywhere. "Non-contradictory rights held in common" are never sufficient to form a basis of a society -- conflict is unavoidable and any resolution that requires a participation of any third party necessarily involves oppression. Claiming that some form of oppression is "natural" and therefore is not oppression at all, are based on nothing but subjective preferences of a person making such claim, and are often rejected after society's preferences.
Same founding fathers of US seen slavery as "non-contradictory rights held in common" by everyone who matters. Supporters of unrestricted Capitalism believe that unlimited property rights applied to means of production, natural resources and ideas to be "non-contradictory rights held in common". Spammers believe that their use and interpretation of freedom of speech is within "non-contradictory rights held in common", etc. Each of those "liberties" are suddenly recognized as something else when opposition to them becomes popular in society. The truth is, there are so few truly "non-contradictory" things in any society, any discussion of those things is pointless.
"Freedom" is by definition a negative right (and therefore "always good" in the mind of libertarians and similar idiots).
Not that the idea of "negative" and "positive" right has much of a foundation in reality to begin with -- humans can not live without affecting each other.
That's like calling regulation the same thing as oppression.
"Oppression" and "regulation" mean exactly the same. The difference between terms is entirely in speaker's feeling or agreement with the action -- "oppression" if he is opposed to it, "regulation" if it supports it.
Dictators
"Dictator" is a head of state that US Government is opposed to.
"Government is bad, businesses are good" is one of the fundamental tenets of American ideology. People who wholeheartedly believe in it, run the government.
The closest Russian equivalent was Yeltsin and "economists" in his administration.
Here is something more disturbing and just as relevant, though violence has no part in it:
Freedom is a stupid idea to begin with. All the time humans have to sacrifice something they want to achieve something more valuable and important. Sure, freedom is attractive -- as long as it is your freedom. But if some form of freedom is supposed to be available to either everyone or no one, it may be a perfectly valid reasoning that having it is not worth the trouble of other people having it, too. Most of "economic freedom" is firmly in this "not worth the trouble" category for everyone but tiny fraction of population that happens to be super rich.
Plenty of such freedom was sacrificed with great results -- now-oppressed employers can't pay below minimum wage, have unsafe working conditions, pay in scrip, defraud the employees, plan that employees will not survive long enough to be paid, etc. Make no mistake -- laws that prohibit those atrocities are denying people real freedoms, at the same level as, say, freedom of speech or freedom of association. Without those laws no fundamental principle of "freedom" is violated. Those forms of freedom (again, not unlike freedom of speech that some people love so much) are available to everyone, but only useful to wealthy and powerful people. With such freedom I would be able to hire, say, a maid or a shoe shine guy and impose unsafe working conditions on them. Then, after performing an act of minor assholery on a shoe shine guy I would have to go back to the coal mine and work for less than a cost of food to sustain my life while breathing more carbon in than out, but everyone would have more freedom.
It just happens that people are better off when no one has freedom to mistreat others in such a manner no matter how wealthy he is, so government oppresses population by denying everyone this kind of freedom, thus promoting public good at the price of certain kinds of freedom. So freedom can just likely be a good or bad thing, and in each particular case it should exist or not exist depending on its effect on the whole society. It's stupid to worship the idea of freedom by itself, and nothing should be promoted just because it is "freedom" -- things must have valid use and purpose, and their availability in society must be supported by those uses and purposes, not nebulous slogan of "freedom".
Nothing will be improved until American society will abandon the idea of freedom as foundation of its ideology, and start caring about well-being of people. Then maybe they will have some use for freedoms that they will have left and shown to be valuable. Or maybe even invent new, more useful ones -- I am sure, Thomas Jefferson would have hard time understanding what kinds of freedom Richard Stallman is talking about or what they are good for, so we can just as well have no understanding of what will be good or bad centuries or even decades later.
It IS Wikipedia. Worse yet, it's a Wikipedia article on 20th century politics, something about as authoritative as scrawling on a public bathroom's stall. Most of the "references" it has, do not even have the word "eugenics" anywhere in the text. Nazi were concerned with "purity" of what they believed to be the master race. So was every racist over the whole history of mankind, and almost everyone before the concepts of "racism" and "xenophobia" became recognized and not just the default behavior. It was the very least of their problems, and had very little to do with extermination or mistreatment of people of "lower races". It would be giving way too much of a credit to racists to claim that they are engaged in "eugenics". If anything, a Nazi would be horrified at the thought of involving members of lower races in anything that involves development of "better" people.
BTW, most of my grandfather's family was killed by Nazi in the massacre of Streshin/Zhlobin Jews.
Another poster, way up above, has already made reference to the eugenics programs of the Nazi party.
Nazi had no eugenics program. Germans were supposed to be perfect already.
That "dignity" thing has far less to do with any question of God's existence, than it has to do with the atrocities committed in the name of "science", before and during WW2.
1. EU allows patenting of medical procedures on cellular level (it would be patentable if it was for the "benefit" of the embryo. 2. EU adopted US-style "embryos are babies!!!" bullshit. The only reason why it was not patentable was because it affects "dignity" of embryo. Remainder of sanity prevented them, so far, from charging anyone with murder, however they can't possibly avoid this line of reasoning unless they will reverse the whole thing.
There is no economic reason to colonize space. In fact, there is no economic reason for anything other than killing all people and let the last remaining person to live the remainder of his life as the supposed owner of the world. Here is your perfect solution, the whole Earth population (1 person) acquiring maximum possible amount of all possible resources and products per time (whatever he can lay his eyes on). But this is why economists should shut up and go back to whoring to the aristocracy. Hey, look, Austrian School is unpopular again, you have some work to do!
Any country which isn't a democracy, or worse, a non-secular government, should be feared.
Why would a democracy will be less feared? Once effective brainwashing propaganda was invented, it's just as likely to be run by tiny, abusive elite as any other political system.
If Bush had finished the first Iraq war by destroying anything and anyone who got in the way to Baghdad there would have been no need for a 2nd Iraq war.
Of course, there would be. Instead of moderate, secular government that survived the first war, there would be extremist religious government consisting of former neighbors that would come to now-free-to-settle land.
And why, exactly, don't they just ask police in all involved countries to investigate the papers and board for fraud? 40% means jack shit if RICO and similar laws are applied to the board.
The original Quake server WAS written when John Carmack did not know how to program. And most game servers are still written with complete disregard for quality by people who should not be allowed to program.
I have no idea, who wrote buffer overflows in OpenSSH and what kind of drugs he was on at the time, but there is no excuse for it, either. Theo de Raadt, despite his intentions to keep things secure, is known for many stupid things. However if you look at the history of security bugs in OpenSSH, you will find that most of them, and all recent ones (as in, not a decade old), are very much language-neutral, and would be just as bad if OpenSSH was written in Shiny Sparkly Visual Super Safe Basic # For Retards 2012.8.
Slashdot Mirror
Congratulations, you are an idiot.
There never was any other goal of "Trusted Computing" but to force users to use Windows with DRM-ed media players.
http://xkcd.com/801/
Liberty, basically, is a sum of non-contradictory rights held in common. Freedom is just an exemption of control, and often can conflict with other freedoms.
I am pretty sure, this is not a definition accepted anywhere. "Non-contradictory rights held in common" are never sufficient to form a basis of a society -- conflict is unavoidable and any resolution that requires a participation of any third party necessarily involves oppression. Claiming that some form of oppression is "natural" and therefore is not oppression at all, are based on nothing but subjective preferences of a person making such claim, and are often rejected after society's preferences.
Same founding fathers of US seen slavery as "non-contradictory rights held in common" by everyone who matters. Supporters of unrestricted Capitalism believe that unlimited property rights applied to means of production, natural resources and ideas to be "non-contradictory rights held in common". Spammers believe that their use and interpretation of freedom of speech is within "non-contradictory rights held in common", etc. Each of those "liberties" are suddenly recognized as something else when opposition to them becomes popular in society. The truth is, there are so few truly "non-contradictory" things in any society, any discussion of those things is pointless.
"Freedom" is by definition a negative right (and therefore "always good" in the mind of libertarians and similar idiots).
Not that the idea of "negative" and "positive" right has much of a foundation in reality to begin with -- humans can not live without affecting each other.
That's like calling regulation the same thing as oppression.
"Oppression" and "regulation" mean exactly the same. The difference between terms is entirely in speaker's feeling or agreement with the action -- "oppression" if he is opposed to it, "regulation" if it supports it.
Dictators
"Dictator" is a head of state that US Government is opposed to.
You don't understand.
"Government is bad, businesses are good" is one of the fundamental tenets of American ideology. People who wholeheartedly believe in it, run the government.
The closest Russian equivalent was Yeltsin and "economists" in his administration.
Here is something more disturbing and just as relevant, though violence has no part in it:
Freedom is a stupid idea to begin with. All the time humans have to sacrifice something they want to achieve something more valuable and important. Sure, freedom is attractive -- as long as it is your freedom. But if some form of freedom is supposed to be available to either everyone or no one, it may be a perfectly valid reasoning that having it is not worth the trouble of other people having it, too. Most of "economic freedom" is firmly in this "not worth the trouble" category for everyone but tiny fraction of population that happens to be super rich.
Plenty of such freedom was sacrificed with great results -- now-oppressed employers can't pay below minimum wage, have unsafe working conditions, pay in scrip, defraud the employees, plan that employees will not survive long enough to be paid, etc. Make no mistake -- laws that prohibit those atrocities are denying people real freedoms, at the same level as, say, freedom of speech or freedom of association. Without those laws no fundamental principle of "freedom" is violated. Those forms of freedom (again, not unlike freedom of speech that some people love so much) are available to everyone, but only useful to wealthy and powerful people. With such freedom I would be able to hire, say, a maid or a shoe shine guy and impose unsafe working conditions on them. Then, after performing an act of minor assholery on a shoe shine guy I would have to go back to the coal mine and work for less than a cost of food to sustain my life while breathing more carbon in than out, but everyone would have more freedom.
It just happens that people are better off when no one has freedom to mistreat others in such a manner no matter how wealthy he is, so government oppresses population by denying everyone this kind of freedom, thus promoting public good at the price of certain kinds of freedom. So freedom can just likely be a good or bad thing, and in each particular case it should exist or not exist depending on its effect on the whole society. It's stupid to worship the idea of freedom by itself, and nothing should be promoted just because it is "freedom" -- things must have valid use and purpose, and their availability in society must be supported by those uses and purposes, not nebulous slogan of "freedom".
Nothing will be improved until American society will abandon the idea of freedom as foundation of its ideology, and start caring about well-being of people. Then maybe they will have some use for freedoms that they will have left and shown to be valuable. Or maybe even invent new, more useful ones -- I am sure, Thomas Jefferson would have hard time understanding what kinds of freedom Richard Stallman is talking about or what they are good for, so we can just as well have no understanding of what will be good or bad centuries or even decades later.
...and spread your paranoia there.
If so, our work is not done.
People should shudder at the sound of his name and be horrified when reminded that such a person ever existed.
Oh shut up, hairyfeet! All you do is whoring for karma and repeating Microsoft talking points. Die in a fire.
It IS Wikipedia. Worse yet, it's a Wikipedia article on 20th century politics, something about as authoritative as scrawling on a public bathroom's stall. Most of the "references" it has, do not even have the word "eugenics" anywhere in the text. Nazi were concerned with "purity" of what they believed to be the master race. So was every racist over the whole history of mankind, and almost everyone before the concepts of "racism" and "xenophobia" became recognized and not just the default behavior. It was the very least of their problems, and had very little to do with extermination or mistreatment of people of "lower races". It would be giving way too much of a credit to racists to claim that they are engaged in "eugenics". If anything, a Nazi would be horrified at the thought of involving members of lower races in anything that involves development of "better" people.
BTW, most of my grandfather's family was killed by Nazi in the massacre of Streshin/Zhlobin Jews.
The Nazis did indeed have eugenics. Why did you think they were trying to rid the world of the Jews?
That is not eugenics. Nazi believed that they are the master race, and had to subjugate or remove the rest.
And, it doesn't matter whether you choose to believe that human embryos are not people. They are HUMAN.
So is human blood. And even human excrement, but blood is a better example because it's both human and alive, yet does not constitute a human life.
Try reading. The Euro prohibition specifically uses the word HUMAN. A human embryo is certainly not canine, or feline, or - whatever.
That's idiotic word games. I can just as well argue that dolls and portraits should be treated as people because they are HUMAN depictions.
Another poster, way up above, has already made reference to the eugenics programs of the Nazi party.
Nazi had no eugenics program. Germans were supposed to be perfect already.
That "dignity" thing has far less to do with any question of God's existence, than it has to do with the atrocities committed in the name of "science", before and during WW2.
That's bullshit. Embryos are not people.
"Dignity of an embryo" has absolutely nothing to do with economic policy.
No. This is actually two stories in one.
1. EU allows patenting of medical procedures on cellular level (it would be patentable if it was for the "benefit" of the embryo.
2. EU adopted US-style "embryos are babies!!!" bullshit. The only reason why it was not patentable was because it affects "dignity" of embryo. Remainder of sanity prevented them, so far, from charging anyone with murder, however they can't possibly avoid this line of reasoning unless they will reverse the whole thing.
I would say that this is an unholy merge of rising tide and broken window fallacies.
...the right thing with false reasoning.
There is no economic reason to colonize space. In fact, there is no economic reason for anything other than killing all people and let the last remaining person to live the remainder of his life as the supposed owner of the world. Here is your perfect solution, the whole Earth population (1 person) acquiring maximum possible amount of all possible resources and products per time (whatever he can lay his eyes on). But this is why economists should shut up and go back to whoring to the aristocracy. Hey, look, Austrian School is unpopular again, you have some work to do!
fourth year students
Second-year students. It's the time when students know enough to do something but not enough to avoid doing it seriously wrong.
But they can't get Murdoch and his cronies out any other way, so there isn't really a choice.
Any country which isn't a democracy, or worse, a non-secular government, should be feared.
Why would a democracy will be less feared? Once effective brainwashing propaganda was invented, it's just as likely to be run by tiny, abusive elite as any other political system.
Countries with these kinds of policies will lead to the destruction of civilization, one day.
Support the Tea Party, the savior of the world!
If Bush had finished the first Iraq war by destroying anything and anyone who got in the way to Baghdad there would have been no need for a 2nd Iraq war.
Of course, there would be. Instead of moderate, secular government that survived the first war, there would be extremist religious government consisting of former neighbors that would come to now-free-to-settle land.
Then you must be TERRIFIED of Pakistan (a.k.a. CIA's best friend).
And why, exactly, don't they just ask police in all involved countries to investigate the papers and board for fraud? 40% means jack shit if RICO and similar laws are applied to the board.
The original Quake server WAS written when John Carmack did not know how to program. And most game servers are still written with complete disregard for quality by people who should not be allowed to program.
I have no idea, who wrote buffer overflows in OpenSSH and what kind of drugs he was on at the time, but there is no excuse for it, either. Theo de Raadt, despite his intentions to keep things secure, is known for many stupid things. However if you look at the history of security bugs in OpenSSH, you will find that most of them, and all recent ones (as in, not a decade old), are very much language-neutral, and would be just as bad if OpenSSH was written in Shiny Sparkly Visual Super Safe Basic # For Retards 2012.8.