Zelaya also has constitutional rights: the right to defend himself at a trial is one ("due process"). Even if duly convicted, he would absolutely retain the right to remain in Honduras. Sending Hondurans into exile is expressly forbidden in the Honduran constitution. So the maneouvres against him were actually illegal, despite their legal form. When the military illegally exiles the democratically elected president and actively prevents his return, beats up on foreign diplomats, establishes a curfew, and shoots and kills demonstrators, this is what's usually known as a coup d'etat. And this is what the official representatives of every government world-wide are calling it, in fact, not just the US government.
You seem to be implying that legalizing cannabis would make people smoke it more. This is just an assumption on your part, and is IMHO very probably wrong.
OTOH, if banning a drug actually were an effective way of getting people to give up, why was the ban on alcohol in the US such a fiasco? Similarly, why has tobacco not been banned?
People have too much faith in prohibition to actually get rid of things... mostly it helps people to think that something is being done, and codifies people's negative opinions about drugs, but as a effective policy it's a wash-out.
Mousavi was not a "relative unknown". He used to be the Prime Minister for goodness sake!
In any case, if you don't like that poll, look at the other, more recent polls listed on that Wikipedia page. Now tell me it's statistically suspicious that Ahmadinejad won. OK maybe you think those polls are bollocks, too, but you can't then claim that there's "statistical evidence" of fraud. Either you accept the statistical evidence available, in which case you have to accept that Ahmadinejad's win was to be expected, or you have to deny the validity of those polls, in which case you've got no basis for asserting there's any statistical basis for suspicions. You can still be suspicious, of course, but not on a statistical basis.
And I would disagree. At minimum, you must admit it's odd that even in what one would call strongholds for Mousavi, Ahmadinejad still won with a landslide. Heck, Tehran apparently went better than 60/40 in favour of Ahmadinejad, despite there being a great deal of support for Mousavi there.
In fact the official figures show the ratio of the vote between the top 2 candidates in Tehran as 53/47. So, quite close, actually.
I'd certainly call that odd... definitely not incontrovertible proof (no one has that proof because, without the ballots, there can be no proof), but it's certainly statistical evidence.
It's certainly not statistical evidence of fraud!
On what basis do you say it's odd? You think Mousavi should've done better for some reason? Because you saw his mass rallies in Tehran on TV? Did you not also see the mass rallies in favour of Ahmadinejad?
Seriously, if you were an Iranian opinion pollster, and you had some opinion poll results which significantly contradicted the election result, then I'd consider your opinion "evidence". Otherwise, your opinion is really just wishful thinking. The only opinion poll results which I've seen showed Ahmadinejad with roughly a 2:1 lead over Mousavi, amongst decided voters. That poll is referenced on Wikipedia, by the way.
I'll tell you what I find really odd: that random Westerners think they have an accurate idea of the relative popularity of a bunch of politicians in some middle-eastern country!
Actually Tehran is not entirely populated by middle-class liberal types. There is a large working class majority in the city, and this is Ahmadinejad's power base, which he has been playing to with consummate political skill. People say that Mousavi (an Azeri) should've done better amongst Azeris than he did (even though he did do significantly better there than in other parts of the country). But Ahmadinejad also speaks Azeri and lived in Azerbaijan province for years, I understand. More importantly, he was responsible for policy changes which have allowed Azeris to study at universities in the Azeri language; a policy which was very popular. This is evidence that Ahmadinejad has understood the needs of his constituents and has responded intelligently. He's not the fool that the Western media likes to make him out. Westerners who've been fed a diet of anti-Ahmadinejad propaganda have misunderestimated him, but if this is statistical evidence of anything, it's that the Western media is not an objective source of news on Iranian politics.
For a start, you've quoted me out of context by cutting off the start of my sentence. I was talking about statistical evidence of vote-rigging, rather than anecdotal evidence. My point is: the statistics do not prove fraud.
Secondly, I can't see what's "highly suspicious" about a polling station running out of ballot papers (the turnout was after all surprisingly high). These things happen; you can't always predict where people are going to vote. The logistics of running elections, especially in a large country, are not simple. It's a sign of inefficiency that the polling station wasn't resupplied with ballot papers until later in the day, but it's not what I'd call "highly suspicious at best".
I understand that, but everything I've heard coming out of Iran or from people who are from Iran (but might not be there now) seems to indicate that there are some major irregularities.
Well; pause for a moment and consider if there might be a reason why that's all you've heard. Ahmadinejad is well known to be popular amongst the poor. The highly-educated, urbanised, liberal middle classes aren't his power base at all. But the Iranian masses do not really have our ear do they? Not really - the Iranians we hear from are a different bunch of people. It's hardly a surprise that expatriate Iranians are displeased with the result (the official results show Mousavi outpolled Ahmadinejad in votes from outside the country), and it's hardly a surprise that Iran's twittering classes are upset that their candidate lost. That doesn't prove there were irregularities.
I've seen screeds of hype written about "statistical anomalies" in the election, but I've yet to find any that actually show evidence of vote-rigging. Mostly it's people mindlessly repeating what they've seen on TV, on some news website op-ed or outraged blogger, repeating what they've read on Twitter.
It's all been terribly convenient for the mainstream media in the West, too. Now that Saddam is dead, Bin Laden has gone to ground, and Kim Jong-Il is on his last legs, that leaves Ahmadinejad as the current Bad Person of the Month. We've got to have someone to hate.
A'nejad officially had consistent support all across the country and all through demographics. He officially did equally well in cities vs. rural areas.
According to these (apparently official) figures, Ahmadinejad's support ranged from a low of 44.8% in Tehran up to a maximum of 77% in Semnan. Is that what you mean by "consistent"?
A'nejad officially did equally well among sexes, age groups, class levels, ethnic groups, everything.
I wasn't aware that there were official results broken down by sex, age, class, and ethnic groups. I suspect that you are just making it up, actually.
Exactly. And one reason why the statistical facts deviated from his model could be that the model was simply wrong. For instance, what about the people who didn't vote at all last time, but now, after having seen Ahmadinejad in action, decide to vote for him. If there were a signifant number of people in that group then it would explain the "strange" pattern. To me, that hypothesis doesn't seem "strange" at all, hence I don't see the statistics as indicating anything untoward in the vote-counting (not to say there wasn't fraud, but just that the stats don't show it).
Like I said, corruption has a specific legal meaning and it is illegal. You may want other things included in the coverage of corruption but as long as it isn't, then it is not corruption.
You might want to look up the word "corruption" in a dictionary. It is not just a legal term. Maybe you think lawyers own the English language - they don't.
What's so bad about it? It's corrupt, that's what. Supposedly the USA is a democracy, but the power of money has corrupted (i.e. degraded) that democracy (government by the people) into a plutocracy (government by the rich). You obviously think that's fine, perhaps your standards aren't all that high.
Political corruption is illegal in the US. If it is something that is legal, then by definition, it is not corruption no matter how much you don't like it. You may subjectively find it unacceptable but it isn't corruption.
The US political system is incredibly and famously corrupt.
The United States is the most wealthy country in the world, and it's often said that it has "the best democracy money can buy". The entire system runs on money... hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on major elections. This is why the US political system is so responsive to the needs of the rich and so poor at reflecting the views of ordinary Americans. The government can give the banks billions of dollars because the banks have paid handsomely to own the politicians. The DMCA and the ridiculously long copyright terms were demanded by "IP" owners so they can extract more and more $$$ from ordinary people. "Single Payer" healthcare is supported by a solid majority of US citizens (according to polls) but their opinion is outweighted by the influence of $$$. I could go on all day, but instead I will go and do some work;-)
In short: corruption is there and you can't pretend it isn't real because it's legal; that's just sophistry.
Karl Marx would have called for government to come in and heavily regulate software. Designate a central authority to manage the development of software, public schools train a specific number of necessary software developers, outlaw the possession, development, or use of "rogue" compilers to help protect people from poor quality software that wasn't approved by the state, and possibly imprison people for unauthorized forking of projects arguing that such action "steals" the necessary resources of the state and impedes progress.
This is pure fantasy. Seriously, you have never read a word Marx wrote, have you? Marx has been dead well over a century, but he still gets the blame / credit for everything every self-declared "Marxist" has ever done.
What they are describing is entirely free-market anarchism
I think it's a mistake to characterise it as "free-market". It misses the point and obscures the thing which is actually the most interesting about "dot-communism".
A market is a place where you go to exchange goods and services for other things of equal value (="commodity exchange"). What makes it "free" is that you are free to exchange or not. No-one forces you to buy or sell.
But a market is only one possible exchange mechanism. For instance, my girlfriend brought me coffee in bed this morning. On the weekend I'll make breakfast while she sleeps in. This is an exchange of valued goods and services, but it is not a market. I did not pay for that coffee. When you cook dinner for your family, you don't typically expect them to pay you for it. Sometimes kids do get paid for doing chores around the house, and to that extent they are working in a market (though not a free market!). But usually domestic production is carried on outside of market mechanisms, using a form of "gift exchange". Note that gift exchange predates the market, historically. Our distant ancestors did not have money, but they have always had exchange.
Similarly, market transactions are unlike the transactions that take place in a "dot-communist" system. e.g. if I download a piece of free software, and I contribute a patch to that same software, I have clearly made an exchange, but this is not a market transaction. I don't buy the software and sell my patch. I don't swap the software for my patch. I freely (as in gratuitously) obtain the software and am under no obligation to submit my patch, which I submit entirely voluntarily. I could just as easily (more easily) not submit a patch at all. It is this non-market nature which is the unusual thing about "dot-communism".
What's new here (and politically significant), is that non-market exchange is hitting the big-time, outside of the domestic sphere, as part of large-scale, socialised, economic production (e.g. Linux).
Best thing you did was kick him out of the flat. Should've done it sooner. His parents should've done something too... get him some professional therapy or kick him out.
Einstein was not a religious believer by the way. He liked to use metaphorical language, that's all. Lots of people have the idea that he was a believer for that reason, and the myth gets repeated again and again until it becomes received wisdom.
Very true. But you, when all you have is a hammer, everyone else looks like a nail.
The US is so hypermilitarised that militarism is a natural first response to anything. This is how we get such absurdities as "humanitarian bombing campaigns" and "destroying the village in order to save it".
It's true, the Funnel Web spider is considered very dangerous (i.e. has often killed), and the Redback is also dangerous (can kill), but please don't forget the dangerous Mouse spider!
You get on a train in the suburbs (I'm guessing your wife drops you off, or you drive to train depot and park.
I catch a bus to my local railway station (bus stop is 2 min walk from my house), or if feel like it, I walk there (less than 20 min).
Once you get to the 'city', how do you get to/from your work site? I'm quite sure the train doesn't drop you off anywhere near the front door of your office for most people, so, how do you get to and from work?
I catch a tram. Trams to my work leave about every 30s from the railway station where I get off in town. The tram drops me outside my office. Or I can walk (about 20min).
If you try to walk..what happens when weather is bad? To me, especially living in the climate I do, that is the greatest impediment to any type of mass transit to go to work daily. It would take me much longer to catch and switch busses all over town, to get to my work...not to mention that there is not a bus stop very near either my home or office. So, if I were to do this during the summer...I'd be a sweat soaked heap by the time I got there
Where I live, in Melbourne, Australia, it gets very very hot in summer (47 degrees one day this summer! that's about 116F for you Americans). On really hot days, I do indeed elect not to walk, and actually there was some disruption to the public transport network, but we struggled through it;-)
....and the travel time would be hours instead of the 10 min or so it takes me to get there on motorcycle or car (I drive quite fast), and on the route, a bicycle wouldn't cut it. What if you need to go to the gym or shop after work on the way home?? How do you live like that without a car...I just have a hard time seeing how you do that and have any resemblance to a normal life and life schedule.
It's true that a bunch of inter-city high-speed trains are not the complete answer; you also need fleets of taxis, buses, trams, etc, etc. You need your public authorities to invest in large-scale efficient transport infrastructure. It will be hard work getting there, but it's worth it! It is possible to live without a car and still go out to the movies, grocery shopping etc. It's well past the time to wean ourselves off cars.
We (Western nations) should just bite the bullet and install fibre. The theoretical limit of data transfer over fibre is far in excess of what we can reach now, so a good fibre network would serve the country for decades.
They were named as part of the Axis of Evil in 2001, but the US govt believed they had 10 bombs worth of plutonium in 1994. The US threatened and blustered then but it was too late.
Slashdot Mirror
Not the case at all, I'm afraid.
Zelaya also has constitutional rights: the right to defend himself at a trial is one ("due process"). Even if duly convicted, he would absolutely retain the right to remain in Honduras. Sending Hondurans into exile is expressly forbidden in the Honduran constitution. So the maneouvres against him were actually illegal, despite their legal form. When the military illegally exiles the democratically elected president and actively prevents his return, beats up on foreign diplomats, establishes a curfew, and shoots and kills demonstrators, this is what's usually known as a coup d'etat. And this is what the official representatives of every government world-wide are calling it, in fact, not just the US government.
Hohmann orbit too mechanically stressful and expensive? Use a cheaper and slower transfer orbit.
Lumpy gravitational field? Orbit a Lagrange point instead of the Moon itself.
Too much radiation? Use supplementary radiation shielding.
Those are not "assumptions" but well-documented facts. Unlike your assertion that the world has cooled over the last 10 years, which is simply a myth.
You seem to be implying that legalizing cannabis would make people smoke it more. This is just an assumption on your part, and is IMHO very probably wrong.
OTOH, if banning a drug actually were an effective way of getting people to give up, why was the ban on alcohol in the US such a fiasco? Similarly, why has tobacco not been banned?
People have too much faith in prohibition to actually get rid of things ... mostly it helps people to think that something is being done, and codifies people's negative opinions about drugs, but as a effective policy it's a wash-out.
Mousavi was not a "relative unknown". He used to be the Prime Minister for goodness sake!
In any case, if you don't like that poll, look at the other, more recent polls listed on that Wikipedia page. Now tell me it's statistically suspicious that Ahmadinejad won. OK maybe you think those polls are bollocks, too, but you can't then claim that there's "statistical evidence" of fraud. Either you accept the statistical evidence available, in which case you have to accept that Ahmadinejad's win was to be expected, or you have to deny the validity of those polls, in which case you've got no basis for asserting there's any statistical basis for suspicions. You can still be suspicious, of course, but not on a statistical basis.
In fact the official figures show the ratio of the vote between the top 2 candidates in Tehran as 53/47. So, quite close, actually.
It's certainly not statistical evidence of fraud!
On what basis do you say it's odd? You think Mousavi should've done better for some reason? Because you saw his mass rallies in Tehran on TV? Did you not also see the mass rallies in favour of Ahmadinejad?
Seriously, if you were an Iranian opinion pollster, and you had some opinion poll results which significantly contradicted the election result, then I'd consider your opinion "evidence". Otherwise, your opinion is really just wishful thinking. The only opinion poll results which I've seen showed Ahmadinejad with roughly a 2:1 lead over Mousavi, amongst decided voters. That poll is referenced on Wikipedia, by the way.
I'll tell you what I find really odd: that random Westerners think they have an accurate idea of the relative popularity of a bunch of politicians in some middle-eastern country!
Actually Tehran is not entirely populated by middle-class liberal types. There is a large working class majority in the city, and this is Ahmadinejad's power base, which he has been playing to with consummate political skill. People say that Mousavi (an Azeri) should've done better amongst Azeris than he did (even though he did do significantly better there than in other parts of the country). But Ahmadinejad also speaks Azeri and lived in Azerbaijan province for years, I understand. More importantly, he was responsible for policy changes which have allowed Azeris to study at universities in the Azeri language; a policy which was very popular. This is evidence that Ahmadinejad has understood the needs of his constituents and has responded intelligently. He's not the fool that the Western media likes to make him out. Westerners who've been fed a diet of anti-Ahmadinejad propaganda have misunderestimated him, but if this is statistical evidence of anything, it's that the Western media is not an objective source of news on Iranian politics.
For a start, you've quoted me out of context by cutting off the start of my sentence. I was talking about statistical evidence of vote-rigging, rather than anecdotal evidence. My point is: the statistics do not prove fraud.
Secondly, I can't see what's "highly suspicious" about a polling station running out of ballot papers (the turnout was after all surprisingly high). These things happen; you can't always predict where people are going to vote. The logistics of running elections, especially in a large country, are not simple. It's a sign of inefficiency that the polling station wasn't resupplied with ballot papers until later in the day, but it's not what I'd call "highly suspicious at best".
Well; pause for a moment and consider if there might be a reason why that's all you've heard. Ahmadinejad is well known to be popular amongst the poor. The highly-educated, urbanised, liberal middle classes aren't his power base at all. But the Iranian masses do not really have our ear do they? Not really - the Iranians we hear from are a different bunch of people. It's hardly a surprise that expatriate Iranians are displeased with the result (the official results show Mousavi outpolled Ahmadinejad in votes from outside the country), and it's hardly a surprise that Iran's twittering classes are upset that their candidate lost. That doesn't prove there were irregularities.
I've seen screeds of hype written about "statistical anomalies" in the election, but I've yet to find any that actually show evidence of vote-rigging. Mostly it's people mindlessly repeating what they've seen on TV, on some news website op-ed or outraged blogger, repeating what they've read on Twitter.
It's all been terribly convenient for the mainstream media in the West, too. Now that Saddam is dead, Bin Laden has gone to ground, and Kim Jong-Il is on his last legs, that leaves Ahmadinejad as the current Bad Person of the Month. We've got to have someone to hate.
Citation required!
According to state-owned TV station PressTV, the official results from the interior ministry show no such thing. The actual figures are quoted on Wikipedia.
According to these (apparently official) figures, Ahmadinejad's support ranged from a low of 44.8% in Tehran up to a maximum of 77% in Semnan. Is that what you mean by "consistent"?
I wasn't aware that there were official results broken down by sex, age, class, and ethnic groups. I suspect that you are just making it up, actually.
Exactly. And one reason why the statistical facts deviated from his model could be that the model was simply wrong. For instance, what about the people who didn't vote at all last time, but now, after having seen Ahmadinejad in action, decide to vote for him. If there were a signifant number of people in that group then it would explain the "strange" pattern. To me, that hypothesis doesn't seem "strange" at all, hence I don't see the statistics as indicating anything untoward in the vote-counting (not to say there wasn't fraud, but just that the stats don't show it).
and Amaya
Sure, Microsoft can threaten to cut off their own nose ... but they would never actually do so and the EU knows this.
You might want to look up the word "corruption" in a dictionary. It is not just a legal term. Maybe you think lawyers own the English language - they don't.
What's so bad about it? It's corrupt, that's what. Supposedly the USA is a democracy, but the power of money has corrupted (i.e. degraded) that democracy (government by the people) into a plutocracy (government by the rich). You obviously think that's fine, perhaps your standards aren't all that high.
The US political system is incredibly and famously corrupt.
The United States is the most wealthy country in the world, and it's often said that it has "the best democracy money can buy". The entire system runs on money ... hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on major elections. This is why the US political system is so responsive to the needs of the rich and so poor at reflecting the views of ordinary Americans. The government can give the banks billions of dollars because the banks have paid handsomely to own the politicians. The DMCA and the ridiculously long copyright terms were demanded by "IP" owners so they can extract more and more $$$ from ordinary people. "Single Payer" healthcare is supported by a solid majority of US citizens (according to polls) but their opinion is outweighted by the influence of $$$. I could go on all day, but instead I will go and do some work ;-)
In short: corruption is there and you can't pretend it isn't real because it's legal; that's just sophistry.
This is pure fantasy. Seriously, you have never read a word Marx wrote, have you?
Marx has been dead well over a century, but he still gets the blame / credit for everything every self-declared "Marxist" has ever done.
I think it's a mistake to characterise it as "free-market". It misses the point and obscures the thing which is actually the most interesting about "dot-communism".
A market is a place where you go to exchange goods and services for other things of equal value (="commodity exchange"). What makes it "free" is that you are free to exchange or not. No-one forces you to buy or sell.
But a market is only one possible exchange mechanism. For instance, my girlfriend brought me coffee in bed this morning. On the weekend I'll make breakfast while she sleeps in. This is an exchange of valued goods and services, but it is not a market. I did not pay for that coffee. When you cook dinner for your family, you don't typically expect them to pay you for it. Sometimes kids do get paid for doing chores around the house, and to that extent they are working in a market (though not a free market!). But usually domestic production is carried on outside of market mechanisms, using a form of "gift exchange". Note that gift exchange predates the market, historically. Our distant ancestors did not have money, but they have always had exchange.
Similarly, market transactions are unlike the transactions that take place in a "dot-communist" system. e.g. if I download a piece of free software, and I contribute a patch to that same software, I have clearly made an exchange, but this is not a market transaction. I don't buy the software and sell my patch. I don't swap the software for my patch. I freely (as in gratuitously) obtain the software and am under no obligation to submit my patch, which I submit entirely voluntarily. I could just as easily (more easily) not submit a patch at all. It is this non-market nature which is the unusual thing about "dot-communism".
What's new here (and politically significant), is that non-market exchange is hitting the big-time, outside of the domestic sphere, as part of large-scale, socialised, economic production (e.g. Linux).
Join the online game, with a few other concerned friends, track him down and KILL HIM. Repeatedly, if necessary.
Or hang out on his pirate ship saying "come out to the park!" "it's your turn to cook dinner!" "mow the lawn!" "get a job!" etc.
Best thing you did was kick him out of the flat. Should've done it sooner. His parents should've done something too ... get him some professional therapy or kick him out.
Einstein was not a religious believer by the way. He liked to use metaphorical language, that's all. Lots of people have the idea that he was a believer for that reason, and the myth gets repeated again and again until it becomes received wisdom.
Very true. But you, when all you have is a hammer, everyone else looks like a nail.
The US is so hypermilitarised that militarism is a natural first response to anything. This is how we get such absurdities as "humanitarian bombing campaigns" and "destroying the village in order to save it".
It's true, the Funnel Web spider is considered very dangerous (i.e. has often killed), and the Redback is also dangerous (can kill), but please don't forget the dangerous Mouse spider!
I catch a bus to my local railway station (bus stop is 2 min walk from my house), or if feel like it, I walk there (less than 20 min).
I catch a tram. Trams to my work leave about every 30s from the railway station where I get off in town. The tram drops me outside my office. Or I can walk (about 20min).
Where I live, in Melbourne, Australia, it gets very very hot in summer (47 degrees one day this summer! that's about 116F for you Americans). On really hot days, I do indeed elect not to walk, and actually there was some disruption to the public transport network, but we struggled through it ;-)
It's true that a bunch of inter-city high-speed trains are not the complete answer; you also need fleets of taxis, buses, trams, etc, etc. You need your public authorities to invest in large-scale efficient transport infrastructure. It will be hard work getting there, but it's worth it!
It is possible to live without a car and still go out to the movies, grocery shopping etc. It's well past the time to wean ourselves off cars.
Correct. This is what the Australian federal government has recently announced.
Good on them, the damn socialists!
They were named as part of the Axis of Evil in 2001, but the US govt believed they had 10 bombs worth of plutonium in 1994. The US threatened and blustered then but it was too late.