All statements made on the record by members of the International Answer steering committee.
A link would be nice.
Saying things like, "Saddam provides free education and health care. What has Bush done?" makes someone pro-Saddam.
A link would be nice.
The biggest pro-Saddam marches of 2003 had, by reliable estimates, a few tens of thousands of participants. These are very small numbers considering that more people than that turn out to watch your average Orioles game.
"In Rome, between 1 million and 3 million people turned out, according to police officials and protest organizers; in London, between half-million and 1 million; in Berlin, a half-million."
They were right? Iraq never did anything wrong? They were right? Iraq was a sovereign state with a legitimate government? They were right? The Iraqi regime should have been allowed to continue committing mass murder on a global scale?
I'll take your questions in order: Yes. I disagree with that statement. Who is "they"? Yes on sovereign, but not legitimate. Who is "they"? Your last question is a straw man. Iraq didn't commit mass murder on a global scale, unless you're including the Iran-Iraq war, which was a long time ago, when Saddam was our ally.
Now that I've caught you in a lie, what do you have to say for yourself? Are you embarrassed?
"Not really. The whole notion of "international law" is a myth. International law, unlike actual law, is basically just another word for consensus."
You just make this stuff up as you go along, don't you?
"But that's not the topic for discussion here. Take it somewhere else, please."
As I said, you're the one who wanted to express your dumb opinions about what the protesters were trying to achieve. If you don't want to talk about something, don't talk about it. But, don't start crying when someone calls you on your asinine statements.
"Answer held their first public event on September 29, 2001, in DC to protest a military response to 9/11."
Unrelated. We were talking about the marches which involved dozens, if not hundreds, of organizations, and millions of people.
As I've said, I was FOR the marches, but I'm not a member of ANSWER, and I never considered joining, because I didn't think I agreed with their politics. But, they're not pro-Baathist.
" They stood up and shouted "no war!" but what they were really advocating..."
How could they really advocate something different from what they were standing up and shouting? How exactly does that work? Mind control? If you're the only genius who figured out ANSWER's hidden agenda, then they weren't very effective at getting their message across.
"Heh. Funny. I spent eleven months there. How many times have you been over there?"
Wow, a true neocon. I'd better be careful. You probably have connections in high places. Are you the 24-year-old Republican with no experience who got the job to set up the Iraqi stock exchange?
Or are you older? Are you L. Paul Bremer?
Regardless, you are now home safe and tucked into your bed nightly while Iraq turns into Lebanon only on a much larger scale. Nighty night neocons, job well done!
"the Swift Vets' record on truthfulness and accuracy is far, far better than Move On's"
Still waiting for evidence. At least I gave you some links (which you ignored). You've only given me your opinion, which was composed conveniently for you by Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh's "Stack of Stuff" (TM).
ANSWER is not pro-Baathist. They are socialist. That does not make them pro-Baathist. Also, marching against invading Iraq does not make someone pro-Saddam. It makes one anti-war-with-Saddam.
You can criticize that position. That would be an honest criticism, unlike your current "straw man" argument.
I agree that ANSWER organized the marches. What I am saying is that the marches were an alliance of disparate organizations, all with their own separate agendas, who came together to protest on one issue. How hard can that be for you to understand? How many times and in how many ways do I have to say it?!
"I'm sure lots of naive but well-meaning people got roped into being totalitarian socialists for a day in that manner."
Baseless dirty innuendo.
"Invading Iraq was a foolish idea that only naive ivory-tower neocons could fall in love with.
That's not what we're talking about."
You brought it up, by ranting wild-eyed about communist pro-Baathist protestors, who you falsely claim turned out in small numbers. Ultimately, those tens of millions of peace marchers, who filled the streets of cities around the world, who you snidely deride as pro-Baathist and communist sympathizers, were right. They were right! The war was a stupid idea thought up by small minds living in ivory towers, people who had no understanding of history or even simple cause-and-effect.
Hell freezes over when the first neocon steps forward and admits to a mistake.
Anyway, I agree with the other poster. Your rant about journalistic balance is just an effort to express your view that liberals need to get hammered on more.
If you didn't want to talk about the war, you shouldn't have expressed your stupid ideas of what the protesters were trying to accomplish.
National sovereignty is a concept of international law. I know that you think it's a leftist, commie conspiracy, but it's actually a mainstream convention which is designed to try to prevent nations from invading other nations and looting them and burning them to the ground, as we are in the process of doing in Iraq. That article I recommended talks about how the recent handover of sovereignty was really a scam to evade international law with regard to privatizing state-run industries. It turns out that the occupying power is not allowed to make wholesale changes in state assets, but a puppet government is, and privatization was one of the great schemes which the neocons were so eager to try out in Iraq.
Unfortunately, their grand experiment has failed pretty spectacularly.
"ANSWER was a prime organizing force, but most of the marchers were not directly affiliated with them.
On what do you base that statement?"
If you went to the websites at the time, you would see the long list of participating organizations, all with disparate agendas. They came together solely to protest the Iraq war, much as you would like to believe that they were protesting to install Fidel Castro in the White House. Also I would have participated if it had been more convenient for me to do so, and I by no means agreed with all of ANSWER's politics. It's reasonable to assume that there were many more people like myself.
"I appreciate that you're scrambling to change the subject"
Sorry, just trying to help. Feel free to continue on in your ignorance. It's not like the Iraq disaster will ever affect you personally. It's only other people who have to die for the dumb ideas you support.
"This may or may not be true, but their failure to be equally critical of Move On and ACT is a disservice to the public."
Your equating the Swift Boat Liars with Move On shows how screwed up your thinking is. You seem to think that anyone who makes negative attacks is equally culpable, rather than my thinking which is that the liars are the ones who should be called out. There's nothing really wrong with negative attacks, if they are true. To my knowledge, nobody has caught Move On making false statements, wherease the Swift Boat Liars have been caught in a number of lies.
If you're going to make outrageous allegations about ANSWER, you should back them up with evidence. ANSWER is not pro-Bathist, although I believe it does have a socialist leaning.
Anyway, the marches were not pro-ANSWER, they were anti-war. I didn't protest, but if I had, I would have been protesting to represent my opinion, which isn't anti-war, but is anti-unnecessary-war.
Invading Iraq was a foolish idea that only naive ivory-tower neocons could fall in love with. Anyone with even a slight knowledge of the Middle East and its history knew that this wasn't going to be the cakewalk that the neocons promised us.
Read "Baghdad Year Zero", in Harper's magazine, September 2004 edition. To summarize poorly, Iraq was the testing grounds for the neocons' wacky economic ideas, but they never guessed that putting hundreds of thousands of Iraqis out of work would really piss them off.
Fortunately for the neocons, they don't have to live with the results of their stupendous failure.
If the New York Times was really liberal, it would have opposed the Iraq war, instead of breathlessly advocating it.
There is no national wide-circulation liberal newspaper. I heard that the Guardian might be published in the U.S. That is a truly liberal newspaper. Try comparing it to the New York Times, and I think you'll see an obvious difference.
You said: "But they failed to deliver the proper perspective: that the people protesting the war were few in number and insidious in motive."
Those points are respectively false and your opinion.
You said: "Who protested? Members of the radical leftist revolutionary group International Answer. Why? To show their support for Saddam Hussein."
ANSWER was a prime organizing force, but most of the marchers were not directly affiliated with them. Most marchers just took advantage of ANSWER's organizational abilities. Your assertion that peace protesters were marching to support Saddam Hussein is pure demagoguery. If this is what you have to do to win an argument, you've already lost.
If you want some reading which may challenge your beliefs, I suggest "Baghdad Year Zero" in the September issue of Harper's magazine, by Naomi Klein. Nice illustration of ideology meeting cold hard reality, and a good history of the occupation, from the perspective of the neocon economic shock program.
I have a Sharp PC-MM10 laptop with the extended battery. Even with the extended battery, the thing is very light (maybe 3 lbs). I get 8-9 hours of battery life in Windows, if I turn the display brightness down slightly. I haven't gotten the longrun stuff working under Linux yet.
One caveat: the hard disk may be questionable. A friend of mine had his PC-MM10 hard disk fail after just over a year. There is a story at epinions.com about someone who had several successive hard disk failures.
The PC-MM10 runs on 1 GHz Transmeta processor, which could be why it conserves battery power so well. I don't know about the newer PC-MM20.
Republicans control all three branches of the federal government and they still can't take responsibility for their own failed policies. Somehow, it's the fault of the liberals, who have no power, because they supposedly *wished* for things to go badly.
I think it's time for a revolution. We have to take the country back from all the stupid people.
I'd be more excited about this announcement, if I could get my own Actius PC-MM10 to boot from the USB CDROM drive. First, I tried a generic CDROM drive. No go. I called Sharp (1-800-BE-SHARP), and they told me that practically the only CDROM which the laptop can boot from is the Lite-On model which comes bundled with it (I didn't go for the bundle). The tech support guy told me that I didn't have to purchase the drive from Sharp, as long as I got the correct Lite-On model.
I purchased that CDROM drive (not from Sharp, which charges $300 for a simple combo drive) and now I have two CDROM drives which the laptop can't boot from. I'm pretty frustrated, because I'm trying to create a dual-boot installation, and resizing the Windows partition has made it unbootable. Also, I'm not an expert, and so I'm having some trouble installing Linux through the cradle. I think it's a problem with initrd. I'm not too worried about that. I'll figure it out. But, it would be nice to retain a small Windows installation, as well.
I absolutely love my laptop. It's super-portable and has a wonderful bright screen, but not being able to boot from USB CDROM is making my life very difficult.
I emailed John Lee from the first link above, and he confirmed that he is able to boot from his CDROM drive. I'm interested to know how Sharp tech support will handle this, because they have so far been very courteous.
Novak said it was two senior administration officials. We have no reason to doubt him, since he has no motive for harming the Bush administration. He didn't know he was helping to commit a federal crime. The guy is so stupid, he just played right along.
"The fact is that there is no evidence that Bush or anyone high up had anything to do with the CIA leak."
You're wrong!
Novak wrote a column divulging Plame's identity as an "agency operative" (Washington-speak for "undercover agent"), and said he got information from "two senior administration officials" that Plame's wife was the one who suggested sending him to Niger.
"Senior Administration officials" is a term which is widely understood to refer to the President, Vice President, or senior members of the cabinet.
I've used Mandrake for about 4 years. I was a member of Mandrake Club, and I really thought Mandrake was easy to use and a very complete distribution. I still would recommend it to anyone who wants to get started with Linux. However, after spending so much time with Mandrake and KDE, I found that I liked GNOME better. To me, KDE vs. GNOME is essentially quantity vs. quality, and I'll stick with quality. Most of the KDE apps are just plain inferior to their GNOME counterparts. Konqueror vs. Galeon? Puh-lease. (OK, so Galeon isn't really part of GNOME. Picky, picky.)
Mandrake is committed to KDE. They don't cripple GNOME, but I felt I'd be better off with a more pure GNOME desktop. (I was right. I'm much happier having switched.)
I thought about Ximian and Red Hat, but I went with Gentoo after reading about the distribution and the philosophy behind it (I would paraphrase it as "power and simplicity"). I had tried to install Gentoo before, but the compile time wore me out. Now, there is a Gentoo Reference Platform, which contains binaries for a fairly complete installation. I personally chose not to go that way, because my computer is a 2.2 GH P4, which is basically fast enough to bring the compile time down to something reasonable (GNOME compiles overnight - I didn't check exactly how long it took). But, the GRP seems like a very reasonable way to quickly get Gentoo on your system.
I've been very pleased to find that I'm learning much more about the system, by reading the excellent Gentoo docs, and by asking the occasional question at the #gentoo IRC channel. I am not a Linux guru, by any means, but I'm not a newbie either. Somewhere in the middle.
I'm amazed at the breadth of software available. Yeah, it's a bit of a hassle installing from source, rather than from binary packages, but I feel like I'm closer to the metal. And once I get all my favorite stuff installed, I can update them all to the latest, just by typing "emerge --update world". I can easily download and try the latest unstable kernel, if I want, or get the latest Mozilla Firebird, to see if a bug has been addressed. Or I can shoot back to an older version which is known to work. I guess I could have used Cooker with Mandrake, in order to experience the bleeding edge, but I never gave that a try. Somehow, I doubt it is as simple and easy to use as the Gentoo portage system.
In fact, I would compare Mandrake vs. Gentoo in the same way I compared KDE vs. GNOME. Mandrake is "quantity" of tools, but Gentoo is "quality" of tools. There seems to be a great deal of thought behind the Gentoo architecture and tools. They're typically command line - no GUI whiz bang stuff, but they just work.
The Mandrake GUI config stuff didn't always work properly anyway, and I'm finding that I enjoy editing the config files and learning how to make my system work the way I want it to.
If you're a newbie, stick with Mandrake, but if you're a little more advanced, and you can afford to initially spend some time learning and problem-solving, I highly recommend Gentoo.
The #Gentoo IRC channel almost always has tons of people on it, who are more than happy to help a new user figure out what's going on with their system. Try to find your answer in the user docs first, though, so you don't waste someone else's time.
"Read the articles of the UN resolutions again. The inspectors were not there to find weapons, but to be shown weapons. It's a subtle but important difference. The UN made it quite clear that Iraq had to tell the inspectors where the weapons were, not lead them on a wild goose chase."
Iraq says they fully complied. The U.S. says they didn't. The only way to resolve the situation is for the inspectors to turn up something which shows that Iraq was holding out on us. The weapons inspectors called U.S. intelligence "garbage after garbage".
The weapons inspectors were free to visit any and all sites in Iraq. Iraq claims that they released all pertinent information. The U.S. never proved to the international community that this was not the case.
Based on all information we know today, it's quite possible that Saddam destroyed his WMD's immediately after the war, as his son-in-law told our intelligence agencies, when he defected. In which case, we're not invading Iraq to protect the national security interests of the United States, but to liberate the Iraqi people. This is all well and good, but if that's the case, then we should have built up a real coalition, rather than pissing off the entire world as we have.
I challenge you to travel abroad and see how you are treated as an American. Enjoy the fruits of what is really American imperialism (and I have never ever used that term before).
I agree completely with Presidential candidate Howard Dean, who says that we absolutely cannot allow North Korea to begin manufacturing nuclear weapons. The result of inaction is that North Korea will be in a position to engage in nuclear blackmail or to sell nuclear weapons to Al Qaeda or Hamas terrorists.
We absolutely can do something about it. Dean says that he would call for direct talks, contingent on the following two things:
1) U.S. guarantees not to attack North Korea during the period of the talks. 2) North Korea ceases nuclear development and allows inspectors to come in and verify.
Implicit in Dean's position is that a refusal on the part of North Korea to agree to these terms means that there is no guarantee the U.S. will not attack. And I would argue that if North Korea did not cooperate, that the United States should state unequivocally that we will attack, and we will destroy all known nuclear production facilities.
That would leave the choice for war up to North Korea. Yes, a war could cost hundreds of thousands of lives, but the risks only increase the longer Bush ignores the problem.
The idea behind holding talks is to negotiate a permanent settlement to the nuclear standoff, and perhaps formalize a peace treaty for the Korean peninsula. It might involve opening up trade relations or helping North Korea get through the famine. In exchange, we get the right to intrusive inspections to ensure that North Korea will not build anything that can be set off in one of our cities.
"conservative" is not the opposite of "liberal"
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Salon Asks for Help
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Not true at all, due to the different way in which the two words are accepted in society.
In news reporting, people are usually referred to by the way they identify themselves, unless there is a very strong consensus to the contrary. Far more people are willing to refer to themselves as "conservative", because it doesn't have the stigma attached to it, which "liberal" has from years of attack from the right. Therefore, one would expect to hear the term "conservative" used more often, because more people would choose to call themselves by that name. "Conservative" implies that a person is to the right of center, even if only a little bit.
"Liberal", on the other hand, implies well to the left of center. "Liberals" who are not on the far left would typically refer to themselves as "progressives", or even "moderates", because that's how they view themselves. Hence, the media would not label them ("progressive" is a loaded term and would make the media sound like they supported the person's views), unless they were truly far to the left, but would merely mention their alignment with labor and the environment.
I don't know if you will see this post, but maybe you can answer a question for me.
I have a friend who recently suffered a stroke. He is a programmer, and he was at the keyboard at the time the stroke occurred. He has recovered 100%, but at the time, he had aphasia - half of his body was partially unresponsive. He was eventually treated with 3 aspirin in the ER and recovered 100% a few hours after that.
He has a high cholesterol level, but low blood pressure. Is this possibly related to DVT? Could it be related to long sessions at the computer? I don't recall any bruising or swelling of his legs or feet.
By the way, he is following up with a physician, and he is taking some sort of thinner, I believe.
The correct thing to do is to encourage abstinence, but teach children all about sex and all it entails. This includes the purpose of the sexual organs, how men and women couple, how women become pregnant, and how to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Conservatives are opposed to sex education classes, because they believe that they encourage children to have sex. This is preposterous. I'm sure that virtually all of them are as I have described above. First, encourage abstinence, but go ahead and explain, so that children have all the facts. If you want to prevent unwanted pregnancies, and you want to prevent abortions, this is the proper and moral way to bring up our children.
I also think that many conservatives are embarrassed or squeamish about sex, and they don't think children are capable of understanding. Better to keep them in the dark, and not only their children, but mine as well. This I oppose. Send your own children to a religious school, if you're so intent on protecting them from knowledge.
I'm sure someone advocates each and every one of the positions you've stated, but attributing them to the Left is incorrect.
Frankenfoods - nobody is predicting they will kill us. Nobody knows what the effect will be. It's essentially experimentation, and some of us don't want to be guinea pigs.
Air pollution - It's widely accepted that it has improved markedly in Los Angeles (near where I live) over the past 20 years, thanks to environmental activism.
Organic food - OK, you may be right that the Left claims this, but organic food may well be safer. No one really knows whether there may be a link between pesticides in our food and cancer.
global warming - It's widely accepted that it won't kill us all, just cause dramatic climate change.
breast implants - the Left argues this??!! I thought it was attorneys out to make a buck.
rich don't pay taxes - it's widely accepted that the rich do pay taxes, but that corporations don't. Many liberals believe that the rich should pay more taxes, because they are more able to pay.
If you want to know the difference between liberals and conservatives, it's this:
Liberals want to tax you heavily and give it to the poor. They want eliminate laws against victimless crimes.
Conservatives want a moral God-fearing nation, with corresponding laws enforcing it. The poor can fend for themselves.
I vote for Democrats, because I'd rather pay a higher tax bill than have Uncle Sam in my bedroom, if you know what I mean.
This administration treats the word "science" the same as "compassionate conservatism". It's pure marketing. It's the only way they can ease rules on how much arsenic would be permitted in drinking water and how much fecal matter in the meat covered by the federal school lunch program.
Previous administrations (both Republican and Democrat) made rulings based upon science. This administration makes science based upon the rulings which they desire to enact. Anyone who doesn't see that is letting their views be distorted by their blind love for the Republicans and loathing for Democrats. AKA a Rush Limbaugh "ditto-head".
You obviously haven't checked out Mandrake's financials. Did you bother to follow the link? They're within reach of breaking even. They won't do it this quarter or next, but the one after is doable. So, all this whining about Mandrake continually asking for support is a bunch of bunk.
Red Hat would be in the same position, if they hadn't had their miraculous cash infusion a la hyped up IPO. Mandrake didn't have the benefit of that, which is clearly why they are an inferior company, right?!
Mandrake's business model is evolving, not failing. It will only fail if all the freeloaders and so-called anti-corporate types on this site win the day and convince people that they should only pay money for a product when it's forcibly extracted out of their grubby mitts. I.e. "I only pay money to Red Hat, because they make me. I won't pay money to Mandrake, even though I use their product, and I think it's better, because their business model sucks. Wah! Wah!"
If you don't use Mandrake, then you're out of the equation. This is a question for the Mandrake community to respond to - is Mandrake worth supporting or not? I have voted yes, by purchasing the 9.0 DVD set as well as signing up for Mandrake Club.
The club allows me convenient access to the commercial software in the distro, which more than makes it worth the $60 I paid in. If club membership is not your thing, but you want to run Mandrake, then for Christ's sake, buy the friggin' software!!!...And stop whining about business models!!!
If you don't use Mandrake, it's not worth saving, plain and simple. If you use Mandrake, and you like it, then getting Mandrake through this rough patch ensures that they'll be around for you to use their next release.
Numerous polls show that Mandrake is the favorite desktop distribution by a wide margin, so there are clearly a lot of people who use Mandrake and like it, and if Mandrake goes out of business, they're all going to be moving to SuSE or Red Hat. Clearly, there are reasons that so many people opted to use Mandrake in the first place, so SuSE and Red Hat are going to be a step down for many.
I am a standard member of the club, and I purchased the DVD set of Mandrake 9.0, because it was worth paying for.
Red Hat is the king of Linux distributions, and they have only JUST NOW broken even. So, it's kind of overcritical to attack Mandrake for not reaching the break-even point yet. They are on a good track to be profitable by next year, if they survive. All they need is for everyone who downloaded the last ISO for free to cough up a couple of bucks.
I paid for the DVD set of Mandrake 9.0 as well as a club membership. What have you done for your favorite distribution?
Slashdot Mirror
All statements made on the record by members of the International Answer steering committee.
A link would be nice.
Saying things like, "Saddam provides free education and health care. What has Bush done?" makes someone pro-Saddam.
A link would be nice.
The biggest pro-Saddam marches of 2003 had, by reliable estimates, a few tens of thousands of participants. These are very small numbers considering that more people than that turn out to watch your average Orioles game.
That's a lie.
200,000+ protested in Manhattan.
"In Rome, between 1 million and 3 million people turned out, according to police officials and protest organizers; in London, between half-million and 1 million; in Berlin, a half-million."
They were right? Iraq never did anything wrong? They were right? Iraq was a sovereign state with a legitimate government? They were right? The Iraqi regime should have been allowed to continue committing mass murder on a global scale?
I'll take your questions in order: Yes. I disagree with that statement. Who is "they"? Yes on sovereign, but not legitimate. Who is "they"? Your last question is a straw man. Iraq didn't commit mass murder on a global scale, unless you're including the Iran-Iraq war, which was a long time ago, when Saddam was our ally.
Now that I've caught you in a lie, what do you have to say for yourself? Are you embarrassed?
At long last, have you no shame?
"Not really. The whole notion of "international law" is a myth. International law, unlike actual law, is basically just another word for consensus."
You just make this stuff up as you go along, don't you?
"But that's not the topic for discussion here. Take it somewhere else, please."
As I said, you're the one who wanted to express your dumb opinions about what the protesters were trying to achieve. If you don't want to talk about something, don't talk about it. But, don't start crying when someone calls you on your asinine statements.
"Answer held their first public event on September 29, 2001, in DC to protest a military response to 9/11."
Unrelated. We were talking about the marches which involved dozens, if not hundreds, of organizations, and millions of people.
As I've said, I was FOR the marches, but I'm not a member of ANSWER, and I never considered joining, because I didn't think I agreed with their politics. But, they're not pro-Baathist.
" They stood up and shouted "no war!" but what they were really advocating..."
How could they really advocate something different from what they were standing up and shouting? How exactly does that work? Mind control? If you're the only genius who figured out ANSWER's hidden agenda, then they weren't very effective at getting their message across.
"Heh. Funny. I spent eleven months there. How many times have you been over there?"
Wow, a true neocon. I'd better be careful. You probably have connections in high places. Are you the 24-year-old Republican with no experience who got the job to set up the Iraqi stock exchange?
Or are you older? Are you L. Paul Bremer?
Regardless, you are now home safe and tucked into your bed nightly while Iraq turns into Lebanon only on a much larger scale. Nighty night neocons, job well done!
"the Swift Vets' record on truthfulness and accuracy is far, far better than Move On's"
Still waiting for evidence. At least I gave you some links (which you ignored). You've only given me your opinion, which was composed conveniently for you by Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh's "Stack of Stuff" (TM).
ANSWER is not pro-Baathist. They are socialist. That does not make them pro-Baathist. Also, marching against invading Iraq does not make someone pro-Saddam. It makes one anti-war-with-Saddam.
You can criticize that position. That would be an honest criticism, unlike your current "straw man" argument.
I agree that ANSWER organized the marches. What I am saying is that the marches were an alliance of disparate organizations, all with their own separate agendas, who came together to protest on one issue. How hard can that be for you to understand? How many times and in how many ways do I have to say it?!
"I'm sure lots of naive but well-meaning people got roped into being totalitarian socialists for a day in that manner."
Baseless dirty innuendo.
"Invading Iraq was a foolish idea that only naive ivory-tower neocons could fall in love with.
That's not what we're talking about."
You brought it up, by ranting wild-eyed about communist pro-Baathist protestors, who you falsely claim turned out in small numbers. Ultimately, those tens of millions of peace marchers, who filled the streets of cities around the world, who you snidely deride as pro-Baathist and communist sympathizers, were right. They were right! The war was a stupid idea thought up by small minds living in ivory towers, people who had no understanding of history or even simple cause-and-effect.
Hell freezes over when the first neocon steps forward and admits to a mistake.
Anyway, I agree with the other poster. Your rant about journalistic balance is just an effort to express your view that liberals need to get hammered on more.
If you didn't want to talk about the war, you shouldn't have expressed your stupid ideas of what the protesters were trying to accomplish.
National sovereignty is a concept of international law. I know that you think it's a leftist, commie conspiracy, but it's actually a mainstream convention which is designed to try to prevent nations from invading other nations and looting them and burning them to the ground, as we are in the process of doing in Iraq. That article I recommended talks about how the recent handover of sovereignty was really a scam to evade international law with regard to privatizing state-run industries. It turns out that the occupying power is not allowed to make wholesale changes in state assets, but a puppet government is, and privatization was one of the great schemes which the neocons were so eager to try out in Iraq.
- ed-swiftpress24aug24,1,2693113.story?coll=la-news- comment-editorials
Unfortunately, their grand experiment has failed pretty spectacularly.
"ANSWER was a prime organizing force, but most of the marchers were not directly affiliated with them.
On what do you base that statement?"
If you went to the websites at the time, you would see the long list of participating organizations, all with disparate agendas. They came together solely to protest the Iraq war, much as you would like to believe that they were protesting to install Fidel Castro in the White House. Also I would have participated if it had been more convenient for me to do so, and I by no means agreed with all of ANSWER's politics. It's reasonable to assume that there were many more people like myself.
"I appreciate that you're scrambling to change the subject"
Sorry, just trying to help. Feel free to continue on in your ignorance. It's not like the Iraq disaster will ever affect you personally. It's only other people who have to die for the dumb ideas you support.
"This may or may not be true, but their failure to be equally critical of Move On and ACT is a disservice to the public."
Your equating the Swift Boat Liars with Move On shows how screwed up your thinking is. You seem to think that anyone who makes negative attacks is equally culpable, rather than my thinking which is that the liars are the ones who should be called out. There's nothing really wrong with negative attacks, if they are true. To my knowledge, nobody has caught Move On making false statements, wherease the Swift Boat Liars have been caught in a number of lies.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200408050001
http://mediamatters.org/items/200408250002
http://mediamatters.org/items/200408250004
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la
Twirlip,
If you're going to make outrageous allegations about ANSWER, you should back them up with evidence. ANSWER is not pro-Bathist, although I believe it does have a socialist leaning.
Anyway, the marches were not pro-ANSWER, they were anti-war. I didn't protest, but if I had, I would have been protesting to represent my opinion, which isn't anti-war, but is anti-unnecessary-war.
Invading Iraq was a foolish idea that only naive ivory-tower neocons could fall in love with. Anyone with even a slight knowledge of the Middle East and its history knew that this wasn't going to be the cakewalk that the neocons promised us.
Read "Baghdad Year Zero", in Harper's magazine, September 2004 edition. To summarize poorly, Iraq was the testing grounds for the neocons' wacky economic ideas, but they never guessed that putting hundreds of thousands of Iraqis out of work would really piss them off.
Fortunately for the neocons, they don't have to live with the results of their stupendous failure.
If the New York Times was really liberal, it would have opposed the Iraq war, instead of breathlessly advocating it.
There is no national wide-circulation liberal newspaper. I heard that the Guardian might be published in the U.S. That is a truly liberal newspaper. Try comparing it to the New York Times, and I think you'll see an obvious difference.
You said:
"But they failed to deliver the proper perspective: that the people protesting the war were few in number and insidious in motive."
Those points are respectively false and your opinion.
You said:
"Who protested? Members of the radical leftist revolutionary group International Answer. Why? To show their support for Saddam Hussein."
ANSWER was a prime organizing force, but most of the marchers were not directly affiliated with them. Most marchers just took advantage of ANSWER's organizational abilities. Your assertion that peace protesters were marching to support Saddam Hussein is pure demagoguery. If this is what you have to do to win an argument, you've already lost.
If you want some reading which may challenge your beliefs, I suggest "Baghdad Year Zero" in the September issue of Harper's magazine, by Naomi Klein. Nice illustration of ideology meeting cold hard reality, and a good history of the occupation, from the perspective of the neocon economic shock program.
I have a Sharp PC-MM10 laptop with the extended battery. Even with the extended battery, the thing is very light (maybe 3 lbs). I get 8-9 hours of battery life in Windows, if I turn the display brightness down slightly. I haven't gotten the longrun stuff working under Linux yet.
One caveat: the hard disk may be questionable. A friend of mine had his PC-MM10 hard disk fail after just over a year. There is a story at epinions.com about someone who had several successive hard disk failures.
The PC-MM10 runs on 1 GHz Transmeta processor, which could be why it conserves battery power so well. I don't know about the newer PC-MM20.
Republicans control all three branches of the federal government and they still can't take responsibility for their own failed policies. Somehow, it's the fault of the liberals, who have no power, because they supposedly *wished* for things to go badly.
I think it's time for a revolution. We have to take the country back from all the stupid people.
I'd be more excited about this announcement, if I could get my own Actius PC-MM10 to boot from the USB CDROM drive. First, I tried a generic CDROM drive. No go. I called Sharp (1-800-BE-SHARP), and they told me that practically the only CDROM which the laptop can boot from is the Lite-On model which comes bundled with it (I didn't go for the bundle). The tech support guy told me that I didn't have to purchase the drive from Sharp, as long as I got the correct Lite-On model.
I purchased that CDROM drive (not from Sharp, which charges $300 for a simple combo drive) and now I have two CDROM drives which the laptop can't boot from. I'm pretty frustrated, because I'm trying to create a dual-boot installation, and resizing the Windows partition has made it unbootable. Also, I'm not an expert, and so I'm having some trouble installing Linux through the cradle. I think it's a problem with initrd. I'm not too worried about that. I'll figure it out. But, it would be nice to retain a small Windows installation, as well.
I absolutely love my laptop. It's super-portable and has a wonderful bright screen, but not being able to boot from USB CDROM is making my life very difficult.
Resources for installing Linux on this laptop:
Gentoo Linux on the Sharp Actius PC-MM10
Linux on the Sharp PC-MM10
I emailed John Lee from the first link above, and he confirmed that he is able to boot from his CDROM drive. I'm interested to know how Sharp tech support will handle this, because they have so far been very courteous.
So we're back to the tried and true Republican strategy of "plausible deniability" are we? Oh yes, the good old days of "Iran Contra".
Novak said it was two senior administration officials. We have no reason to doubt him, since he has no motive for harming the Bush administration. He didn't know he was helping to commit a federal crime. The guy is so stupid, he just played right along.
"The fact is that there is no evidence that Bush or anyone high up had anything to do with the CIA leak."
You're wrong!
Novak wrote a column divulging Plame's identity as an "agency operative" (Washington-speak for "undercover agent"), and said he got information from "two senior administration officials" that Plame's wife was the one who suggested sending him to Niger.
"Senior Administration officials" is a term which is widely understood to refer to the President, Vice President, or senior members of the cabinet.
Here's a reference for you.
You can inform yourself on Bush's lies here.
Amen! Bush is a lying machine, and the media whores let him get away with it. This country is just sick.
I've used Mandrake for about 4 years. I was a member of Mandrake Club, and I really thought Mandrake was easy to use and a very complete distribution. I still would recommend it to anyone who wants to get started with Linux. However, after spending so much time with Mandrake and KDE, I found that I liked GNOME better. To me, KDE vs. GNOME is essentially quantity vs. quality, and I'll stick with quality. Most of the KDE apps are just plain inferior to their GNOME counterparts. Konqueror vs. Galeon? Puh-lease. (OK, so Galeon isn't really part of GNOME. Picky, picky.)
Mandrake is committed to KDE. They don't cripple GNOME, but I felt I'd be better off with a more pure GNOME desktop. (I was right. I'm much happier having switched.)
I thought about Ximian and Red Hat, but I went with Gentoo after reading about the distribution and the philosophy behind it (I would paraphrase it as "power and simplicity"). I had tried to install Gentoo before, but the compile time wore me out. Now, there is a Gentoo Reference Platform, which contains binaries for a fairly complete installation. I personally chose not to go that way, because my computer is a 2.2 GH P4, which is basically fast enough to bring the compile time down to something reasonable (GNOME compiles overnight - I didn't check exactly how long it took). But, the GRP seems like a very reasonable way to quickly get Gentoo on your system.
I've been very pleased to find that I'm learning much more about the system, by reading the excellent Gentoo docs, and by asking the occasional question at the #gentoo IRC channel. I am not a Linux guru, by any means, but I'm not a newbie either. Somewhere in the middle.
I'm amazed at the breadth of software available. Yeah, it's a bit of a hassle installing from source, rather than from binary packages, but I feel like I'm closer to the metal. And once I get all my favorite stuff installed, I can update them all to the latest, just by typing "emerge --update world". I can easily download and try the latest unstable kernel, if I want, or get the latest Mozilla Firebird, to see if a bug has been addressed. Or I can shoot back to an older version which is known to work. I guess I could have used Cooker with Mandrake, in order to experience the bleeding edge, but I never gave that a try. Somehow, I doubt it is as simple and easy to use as the Gentoo portage system.
In fact, I would compare Mandrake vs. Gentoo in the same way I compared KDE vs. GNOME. Mandrake is "quantity" of tools, but Gentoo is "quality" of tools. There seems to be a great deal of thought behind the Gentoo architecture and tools. They're typically command line - no GUI whiz bang stuff, but they just work.
The Mandrake GUI config stuff didn't always work properly anyway, and I'm finding that I enjoy editing the config files and learning how to make my system work the way I want it to.
If you're a newbie, stick with Mandrake, but if you're a little more advanced, and you can afford to initially spend some time learning and problem-solving, I highly recommend Gentoo.
The #Gentoo IRC channel almost always has tons of people on it, who are more than happy to help a new user figure out what's going on with their system. Try to find your answer in the user docs first, though, so you don't waste someone else's time.
"Read the articles of the UN resolutions again. The inspectors were not there to find weapons, but to be shown weapons. It's a subtle but important difference. The UN made it quite clear that Iraq had to tell the inspectors where the weapons were, not lead them on a wild goose chase."
Iraq says they fully complied. The U.S. says they didn't. The only way to resolve the situation is for the inspectors to turn up something which shows that Iraq was holding out on us. The weapons inspectors called U.S. intelligence "garbage after garbage".
The weapons inspectors were free to visit any and all sites in Iraq. Iraq claims that they released all pertinent information. The U.S. never proved to the international community that this was not the case.
Based on all information we know today, it's quite possible that Saddam destroyed his WMD's immediately after the war, as his son-in-law told our intelligence agencies, when he defected. In which case, we're not invading Iraq to protect the national security interests of the United States, but to liberate the Iraqi people. This is all well and good, but if that's the case, then we should have built up a real coalition, rather than pissing off the entire world as we have.
I challenge you to travel abroad and see how you are treated as an American. Enjoy the fruits of what is really American imperialism (and I have never ever used that term before).
I agree completely with Presidential candidate Howard Dean, who says that we absolutely cannot allow North Korea to begin manufacturing nuclear weapons. The result of inaction is that North Korea will be in a position to engage in nuclear blackmail or to sell nuclear weapons to Al Qaeda or Hamas terrorists.
We absolutely can do something about it. Dean says that he would call for direct talks, contingent on the following two things:
1) U.S. guarantees not to attack North Korea during the period of the talks.
2) North Korea ceases nuclear development and allows inspectors to come in and verify.
Implicit in Dean's position is that a refusal on the part of North Korea to agree to these terms means that there is no guarantee the U.S. will not attack. And I would argue that if North Korea did not cooperate, that the United States should state unequivocally that we will attack, and we will destroy all known nuclear production facilities.
That would leave the choice for war up to North Korea. Yes, a war could cost hundreds of thousands of lives, but the risks only increase the longer Bush ignores the problem.
The idea behind holding talks is to negotiate a permanent settlement to the nuclear standoff, and perhaps formalize a peace treaty for the Korean peninsula. It might involve opening up trade relations or helping North Korea get through the famine. In exchange, we get the right to intrusive inspections to ensure that North Korea will not build anything that can be set off in one of our cities.
Not true at all, due to the different way in which the two words are accepted in society.
In news reporting, people are usually referred to by the way they identify themselves, unless there is a very strong consensus to the contrary. Far more people are willing to refer to themselves as "conservative", because it doesn't have the stigma attached to it, which "liberal" has from years of attack from the right. Therefore, one would expect to hear the term "conservative" used more often, because more people would choose to call themselves by that name. "Conservative" implies that a person is to the right of center, even if only a little bit.
"Liberal", on the other hand, implies well to the left of center. "Liberals" who are not on the far left would typically refer to themselves as "progressives", or even "moderates", because that's how they view themselves. Hence, the media would not label them ("progressive" is a loaded term and would make the media sound like they supported the person's views), unless they were truly far to the left, but would merely mention their alignment with labor and the environment.
I don't know if you will see this post, but maybe you can answer a question for me.
I have a friend who recently suffered a stroke. He is a programmer, and he was at the keyboard at the time the stroke occurred. He has recovered 100%, but at the time, he had aphasia - half of his body was partially unresponsive. He was eventually treated with 3 aspirin in the ER and recovered 100% a few hours after that.
He has a high cholesterol level, but low blood pressure. Is this possibly related to DVT? Could it be related to long sessions at the computer? I don't recall any bruising or swelling of his legs or feet.
By the way, he is following up with a physician, and he is taking some sort of thinner, I believe.
The correct thing to do is to encourage abstinence, but teach children all about sex and all it entails. This includes the purpose of the sexual organs, how men and women couple, how women become pregnant, and how to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Conservatives are opposed to sex education classes, because they believe that they encourage children to have sex. This is preposterous. I'm sure that virtually all of them are as I have described above. First, encourage abstinence, but go ahead and explain, so that children have all the facts. If you want to prevent unwanted pregnancies, and you want to prevent abortions, this is the proper and moral way to bring up our children.
I also think that many conservatives are embarrassed or squeamish about sex, and they don't think children are capable of understanding. Better to keep them in the dark, and not only their children, but mine as well. This I oppose. Send your own children to a religious school, if you're so intent on protecting them from knowledge.
I'm sure someone advocates each and every one of the positions you've stated, but attributing them to the Left is incorrect.
Frankenfoods - nobody is predicting they will kill us. Nobody knows what the effect will be. It's essentially experimentation, and some of us don't want to be guinea pigs.
Air pollution - It's widely accepted that it has improved markedly in Los Angeles (near where I live) over the past 20 years, thanks to environmental activism.
Organic food - OK, you may be right that the Left claims this, but organic food may well be safer. No one really knows whether there may be a link between pesticides in our food and cancer.
global warming - It's widely accepted that it won't kill us all, just cause dramatic climate change.
breast implants - the Left argues this??!! I thought it was attorneys out to make a buck.
rich don't pay taxes - it's widely accepted that the rich do pay taxes, but that corporations don't. Many liberals believe that the rich should pay more taxes, because they are more able to pay.
If you want to know the difference between liberals and conservatives, it's this:
Liberals want to tax you heavily and give it to the poor. They want eliminate laws against victimless crimes.
Conservatives want a moral God-fearing nation, with corresponding laws enforcing it. The poor can fend for themselves.
I vote for Democrats, because I'd rather pay a higher tax bill than have Uncle Sam in my bedroom, if you know what I mean.
This administration treats the word "science" the same as "compassionate conservatism". It's pure marketing. It's the only way they can ease rules on how much arsenic would be permitted in drinking water and how much fecal matter in the meat covered by the federal school lunch program.
Previous administrations (both Republican and Democrat) made rulings based upon science. This administration makes science based upon the rulings which they desire to enact. Anyone who doesn't see that is letting their views be distorted by their blind love for the Republicans and loathing for Democrats. AKA a Rush Limbaugh "ditto-head".
You obviously haven't checked out Mandrake's financials. Did you bother to follow the link? They're within reach of breaking even. They won't do it this quarter or next, but the one after is doable. So, all this whining about Mandrake continually asking for support is a bunch of bunk.
...And stop whining about business models!!!
Red Hat would be in the same position, if they hadn't had their miraculous cash infusion a la hyped up IPO. Mandrake didn't have the benefit of that, which is clearly why they are an inferior company, right?!
Mandrake's business model is evolving, not failing. It will only fail if all the freeloaders and so-called anti-corporate types on this site win the day and convince people that they should only pay money for a product when it's forcibly extracted out of their grubby mitts. I.e. "I only pay money to Red Hat, because they make me. I won't pay money to Mandrake, even though I use their product, and I think it's better, because their business model sucks. Wah! Wah!"
If you don't use Mandrake, then you're out of the equation. This is a question for the Mandrake community to respond to - is Mandrake worth supporting or not? I have voted yes, by purchasing the 9.0 DVD set as well as signing up for Mandrake Club.
The club allows me convenient access to the commercial software in the distro, which more than makes it worth the $60 I paid in. If club membership is not your thing, but you want to run Mandrake, then for Christ's sake, buy the friggin' software!!!
Wish I could mod you up to +100, but I'll leave that honor to someone with the power. Well said!! :-)
If you don't use Mandrake, it's not worth saving, plain and simple. If you use Mandrake, and you like it, then getting Mandrake through this rough patch ensures that they'll be around for you to use their next release.
Numerous polls show that Mandrake is the favorite desktop distribution by a wide margin, so there are clearly a lot of people who use Mandrake and like it, and if Mandrake goes out of business, they're all going to be moving to SuSE or Red Hat. Clearly, there are reasons that so many people opted to use Mandrake in the first place, so SuSE and Red Hat are going to be a step down for many.
I am a standard member of the club, and I purchased the DVD set of Mandrake 9.0, because it was worth paying for.
Red Hat is the king of Linux distributions, and they have only JUST NOW broken even. So, it's kind of overcritical to attack Mandrake for not reaching the break-even point yet. They are on a good track to be profitable by next year, if they survive. All they need is for everyone who downloaded the last ISO for free to cough up a couple of bucks.
I paid for the DVD set of Mandrake 9.0 as well as a club membership. What have you done for your favorite distribution?