It seems to me that having a two party system is like having a one party system, with the added grief of having election campaigns with all the filthy tricks, the pathetic idiots that run for office and the lies; not to mention the long period of wasted time that could have been used for something sensible.
China has shown a great deal of ill-will toward other nations
How so? Oh, you mean they got unreasonably upset about what the British did to China (Opium wars), and what Japan did before and during WWII - and they totally misunderstood USA's intentions when America's rhetoric was all about 'Rolling Back Communism' and their actions included such things as the wars in Korea and Vietnam? I think they can be excused for thinking that the West wasn't trying to be their friends. And just to remind you - China has never gone out and invaded other nations or tried to undermine the democratically elected leaders of a sovereign nation. Yes, yes, I know you're going to say 'Tibet', but that is even at best a contentious issue - the argument that Tibet has 'always' belonged to Chinese territory is not entirely without merit, whereas nobody has ever thought that Korea, Vietnam, Panama, Afghanistan, Iraq and probably several others are part of the US.
They don't have to deal with the red tape we do when they want to shift directions or enforce changes to industry.
This is another common misunderstanding. It is true that a large part of the industry and property in China are state-owned, but even the Chinese government has to follow the laws. The law in any society is not about what you can or can't do - it is also the 'Great Masterplan', the way all parts of society expect things to move. It makes it possible for everybody to make plans and predict the outcome of your actions; if the government doesn't follow it's own laws, everything breaks down.
It is a funny sort of argument to make, really. Just around the time of the breakdown of the Soviet Union everybody talked about how Communism was never going to be as efficient and progressive as Capitalism; and now you say that the Communism of China is much more efficient than the Capitalism of America? I think the truth is that it doesn't matter one bit whether your society is one or the other - it is fully possible to have a largely Communist society, where everybody is motivated and happy, just as it is possible to have a Capitalist society that is stagnating, and where people are despondent and depressed. America has had it easy in the 20th century; it would seem the good times are just about over for the US. The solution, as always, is to adapt, and the best way to adapt is by looking at the successful nations and learning.
... it will also show whether someone inside a house is looking to harm you, because if they are, their heart rate will be raised.
This kind of reasoning is simply bogus. Just like a polygraph can't really show whether somebody is lying, this device can't tell whether a person wants to harm somebody. A heart rate can be raised because of so many things - the guy can have been working out, he may have thought about his sexy girlfriend or snorted coke (sorry, I mean he had a big cup of coffee); and of course, there is no guarantee that a would-be murderer isn't simply a cold-blooded psychopath, who doesn't feel anything about killing people and therefore doesn't show up on this thingy.
We'll scan a person with one of these things and tell what they're actually thinking.
Really? A person's thoughts don't run like the text of a book - we all think about a number of things at the same time. The brain isn't simply a 'thinking machine' it is a complex system that controls and monitors a huge number of functions - our conscious thoughts are simply a small part of this. We can, by closely analysing the output of brain scans, guess what a person is looking at (but only because their head is fixed in the scanner, so we can tell the exact position of the cranium); we can guess the general outline a persons thoughts by looking at which brain centres are active, but this is only if we have analysed that person's brain activity against a number of known thoughts - where you ask a person to think about certain things and then analyse the brain activity. This is something that is fairly individual - we all accumulate a small amount of brain damage during life, not enough to make us disabled, but enough to make the dream of creating a universal thought-reader in about 10 years' time completely unrealistic.
Yes, because as we all know, private companies are accountable to The People, whereas governments are only accountable to their shareholders.
Come on, do you really think that a private company like Microsoft will hesitate as much as one second abusing the information they hold about you if it could earn them money? At least a government - any government - is ultimately accountable by the people. Even the Chinese government has to take the population into account when they make their decisions if they don't want to end up having an uprising on their hands, but Microsoft, and most other multinationals have repeatedly demonstrated a complete disregard for the rule of law, as you well know. Multinational companies can just move to another country, but a government can't, you see.
That's all very well in a home environment, or even in a small office. But if you work in a medium to large company, that is simply not on. Yeah, you can talk about 'the professional Windows shop' and all that crap, but the fact remains that this is jumping through hoops. Windows is the only OS on this planet where you are required to sign away your own supreme right to use your own hardware.
The idea that we, in a major company should have to pull out network cables or set up a particularly shielded network segment just to be able to keep an OS at the version and patchlevel that we have decided to work with, is quite frankly ridiculus.
Call me a communist if you like, but I fail to see the merits of this reasoning. The internet is a public space, IMO - and just like I object to being forced to look at all-dominating, tacky adverts on all the beautiful, historical buildings in Central London, I object to being force-fed intrusive adverts from mostly dishonest companies every time I access a web-site. I would much rather be without it, even if it means that 90% of the web isn't viable any more.
And just like I mentally shut out adverts on building or switch channel when the adverts start, I will continue to avoid looking at them on the internet. I am not against companies trying to earn an honest buck, but the crucial word here is HONEST. Apart from that, I don't believe that people buy because of adverts - or at least not the kind of adverts you mostly see; the 'research' may say that we do, but who is it that actually pays for this 'research'? I have only seen one article about the effects of advertising, that was certifiably independently funded - its conclusion was that after the age of 30 people would as a rule simply ignore adverts. The explanation is that people think before they buy - first they realise that they need to buy an item, then they look for where they can get it and compare prices, then they buy. In other words, to most people, most of the time, most adverts are simply irrelevant noise or, even worse, an irritation.
Think about that for a moment - would you buy Coca Cola if they advertised in a way that constantly pissed you off? Fortunately there is a practical limit to how many cubic meters of junk mail you are likely to receive, but not so on the internet; if we don't block advertising, browsing will simply become a nightmare where we have little or no control over what happens on our computer. The sad fact is that we can't trust the advertisers to respect us and allow us a reasonable amount of personal space.
Most fish have pharyngeal jaws, although they are normally used for crushing rather than 'biting', having bony plates or small teeth. The moray eels have pharyngeal jaws that are used for grabbing prey and drag it into the mouth - most fish will suck their prey into the mouth, but since moray eels live in small crevices in reefs, they don't have enough room for this, so they've evolved this instead.
Nonsense. Yes, there is little doubt that the bosses of CoS wouldn't mind that the lower ranks were persecuted, because maybe it could be useful. But the idea that persecution alone will somehow legitimate them as a religion is bullshit. It only works that way if people in general think they are basically good people that are unjustly persecuted.
This is why nobody feels sorry for the Mafia when they are persecuted all over the world.
So have Christians, not all that long ago. The United States of America were more of less founded by people who were persucted because they dared to disagree with the established churches in their home countries, weren't they?
And apart from that - the way you say this makes it sound as if this is what all Muslims do: 'The Muslims have...' The truth, however, is that Muslims, just like Christians are simply people, and just like with Christians, most are tolerant, kind and open-minded, unlike you.
And don't start quoting the Qur`an at me either - the Bible contains some hair-raising crap all of its own, even in what Jesus is alleged to have said. The morale of all this is that it is not what your religious book says that counts, it is what you choose to do in your life. Jesus never said that all you had to do was go and have water splashed on your head, and then you would go free from the eternal punishment, no matter WTF you did afterwards.
My point being that if the Bible is the infallible word of God then there is no room to pick and choose
Good point. However, the Bible is NOT the infallible word of God; it is a collection of texts that were extracted from a larger tradition of Jewish and early Christian texts by a group of Christian leaders some time in the early middle ages; or something like that. In other words - this is a highly edited work and certainly anything but a text written or inspired directly by an almighty god. So you can indeed pick and choose - it makes no sense to insist that it must all be perfectly true. At best it can serve as an inspiration, an indication that if you go looking for God, it may not be all wasted.
That said, though - I think the Bible is mostly a collection of insipid nonsense and trivialities, but that is just my opinion.
I agree with your sentiment - he does sound like one of these all-negative whiners; but I don't think you are right in what you say about respect. Even children need to feel that they are respected, not least in school. It's just that the respect you show a child will necessarily be of another kind than the one you show a mature person that has achived something big in their life. Respect, I feel, is not a question about admiration, it is a question of respecting the choices of the other person and understanding that something can be important for somebody else, even if you yourself can't see why.
When I grew up children were "something that should be seen, not heard" and their wishes, choices and will was irrelevant; that was the main reason for the so-called youth-revolution. Now, perhaps, we are beginning to lose it again; there is certainly a clear trend towards a culture of antisocial behaviour: it is sickening to hear this constant mantra of "me, me, me". Maybe it has to do with the fact that people are isolated from their neighbors, in a sense - you get up, turn on the telly while eating your ready made breakfast product, get in the car - alone - to go to work, sit in front of a computer all day, drive home, look at the tv programmes or sit in fron of the computer some more, and then sleep. People get too little in contact with each other, so they don't learn it can be valuable to give up a little bit of hollow freedom to be together.
And by your logic one has to be either 100% for or against an idea? You are either 'free' or a 'hive mind'? There is no such thing as mostly favouring freedom, but also realising that there has to be responsibility, that respect for your individuality and freedom requires you to show the same respect to others. Only a psychopath expects to have full freedom himself without ever having to care about others.
And just for your information, it is perfectly possible to believe that social concerns are more important than one's own needs. Every time a father or mother takes care of their sick child through a long, desperately tired night, they give up some of their freedom. In fact, as soon as you make a choice of any kind, you give up freedom - by choosing one thing and not another, you restrict yourself. Yes, I know it is silly to squeeze the subject that much, but that is what many of the more immature 'libertarians' do. They talk as if they had discovered absolute truth, and anybody who fall on his face in front of them is a heretic.
No, call me a socialist if you like, but I think 'freedom', at least in that sense, is highly overrated - it has become a tool to bully others with. It is as if people say "Death is evil; but Death wouldn't exist if there were no life. Therefore, it is my duty to end all life" - yeah, nice one.
What I don't like about this is the secrecy. Yes, it's not the privacy issue that concerns me - our privacy has long been an illusion, but the fact that they slink around in the background, outside democratic control. It smacks too much of secret laws; like being forced to play game where you are not allowed to know the rules.
It should not be necessary in a democratic society to have that much secrecy - it should be an exception rather than the main principle for what the government does. In this case - what is the point of secrecy? It wouldn't hamper the FBI's work one bit that people were told from the start that this is going on, it is simply because it has become a habit to keep the people in the dark. This is a very serious trend that endangers our democracy - democracy can't work if people don't know what is going on.
What is this stupid substition game about, really, other than silly?
The British empire, the Soviet Union and the Belgian colonies - all have failed, and with good reason. Are you suggesting that China are like the British, when they invaded India and tried to suck the country dry of its natural riches? And that people come from Beijing and set up their own little 'kingdoms' in Tibet? Can you give (documented) examples? Not just rumours, I mean - I can find lots of rumours about everything.
Or that China is trying to crush Tibet like Russia tried to crush the East European countries? As far as I can see the Chinese government is actively trying to encourage the minority cultures everywhere in their domain. Perhaps not because they are good hearted, but it certainly makes sense - minorities that feel under threat will give rise to many problems, and apart from that, there's a lot of tourist money in having great cultural diversity; why would the Chinese government throw that away? They are not idiots.
As for the Americans in the Philippines - I don't think they should be there, but that is because I think American influence is far too big in the world, and the world is a poorer place because of it. But they are there, and although it is not really good, it isn't too bad either. Would the Philippinians be better off without the Americans? Perhaps - probably if you ask my subjective opinion. There may be many that want them to leave, but then on the other hand I suspect that there are many that want them to stay.
What I say is - wake up to reality. There is a lot of shit going on in the world, but some is worse than other. I don't think the Americans in the Philippines or the Chinese in Tibet are anyway near as big problems as the situations in Africa, or the fact that Israel is caught in a state of near psychosis that makes it almost impossible to get anywhere with solving the problems. And then of course there is the whole climate change thing; nope, China-in-Tibet is no problem at all in that context.
Well said. So the US should stop trading with Columbia (oops, no more good coffee), Saudia Arabia (oops, no more oil)...
You can see where this leads, can't you? Cutting off all communication with the rest of the world will give you a huge amount of problems and will not benefit the people that you propose to do this for - the people who are supposedly oppressed. So why do it? The unfortunate reality is that isolation and mutual displays of hate is self-perpetuating; look at Northern Ireland. They've been killing each other there with no hope of it ever ending - it was not until they finally TALKED TO EACH OTHER that things began to clear up. It was not isolationism, not constant retaliation, but talking, and keeping talking, no matter how hopeless and frustrating it seemed.
If America really want to change things in China, just to take an example, doing what we're doing now is pretty much the right thing. When you're friends, perhaps you can say to each other 'Hear, I am worried about this that you're doing; I think you should change your ways' - and perhaps the other part will listen. Enemies will never be able to do that.
Or, if you want to get rid of 'Cuba, the enemy on our doorstep' - how about trying to initiate a friendship? Isn't it better to have friends?
Here's some background: Whether you like the Chinese government or not, and whether you feel that they are wrongfully occupying Tibet or not, the fact is that they feel that this is their territory, and nobody in the world offers any serious challenge; ergo, Tibet is de facto a part of China. Nobody in their right mind would expect a country to allow an external, hostile, political power to influence the internal affairs of the country - the US have historically been very heavyhanded in similar situations (eg. the communist scare after WWII); many would still today argue that it was right of them.
The Dalai Lama is undeniably a political influence in Tibet, and he is undeniably hostile to the Chinese government; it is pure common sense that they want to minimize his influence on any part of the Chinese population (and as I pointed out, the Tibetans are de facto part of the Chinese population). It is not only common sense, it is the duty of any government to oppose any influence that would destabilise the society they are governing; and it is only fair to say that the Dalai Lama wants to destabilize the situation - after all, he wants the Chinese to leave and Tibet to be an independent nation. How could that be achieved without a war of independence? And even more - if the Chinese government were to say 'OK, we agree; we simply leave Tibet', that in itself would destabilize the country. Suddenly most Chinese investments would be withdrawn, most Han Chinese would probably leave etc; the result would be BIG PROBLEMS.
And while we are talking about the 'horrible repression of the Buddhists' - do you actually know what it was like in Tibet before? It was a feudal society (like Europe in the middle ages). If you were born into a rich family, you could get away with anything; if you were poor, you could get cruel and absurd punishments for small 'crimes' - like having a foot chopped off or your eyes gouged out. There is no doubt that it is better now. There is also no doubt that it could be better than what it is now, but it isn't too bad for most. The ones that howl and complain now are the ones who were members of the aristocracy or the corrupt monastries.
Benefit? Detriment? The universe IS - it most likely doesn't care one bit whether we exist or not. If we blow ourselves to quarks or beyond - what difference does it make to the universe? We may be harmful or beneficial to ourselves and to other life-forms, but the universe is just the universe.
The author of TFA seems to think that we are te only intelligent life around: Without us, there is no one to witness its infinite beauty. That is most likely not true. Even if the probability of life evolving in any given environment was vanishingly small, and intelligence was incredibly unlikely (well, you can believe that when you read/.), the size of the known universe is still enough to make it a virtual certainty that there will intelligent life in many places. It may be spread out thinly, but that is another matter. Apart from that, all the newest research seems to indicate that life is not unlikely, but almost a fundamental consequence of the laws of physics. The whole place may be crawling with the stuff, but much of it may take a form that we do not easily recognise.
the laws make the mere possession of (creates, obtains or provides access to, sells, yields, distributes or otherwise allows access to)
Where does it say 'possess'? As far as I can see, all it says is that if you break in or make it possible for others to break in, then you are violating the law. Your interpretation goes far beyond that, and I think it is likely because you want to see it as a violation of some sort of 'freedom'. If one were to use the same sort of interpretation on, say, breaking into a house, then you would say that owning a key to your house was a crime.
If you want to be taken serious, at least try to give a fair and accurate representation of things.
Now, how does selling a counterfeit under someone else's name fit in to your view of capitalism?
The key issue here, I think, is one of honesty and decency. Have a look at some typical products developed in the capitalist West: MacDonald hamburgers, most cosmetics, most 'health' products. MacDonald meals are full of fat, sugar, soy powder and other 'goodies' that are basically ruining the health of the nation because they are being power-sold to our children through TV - this is certainly very capitalistic, but is it right? Is it 'deceny and honesty'? I think not. Cosmetics companies try to convince you that using their products will make your skin younger - which can't be called anything but a flat out lie; and the same can be said about all these dubious health products, which at best have no effect, or worst are harmful. Very capitalistic - you make as big a profit as possible no matter what - but fundamentally dishonest and indecent. Seen from this angle I think ripping off somebody and counterfeiting their product fits right in.
There is another facet to this that is always ignored when people complain about China, namely the cultural difference. We in the West have got used to the idea that copying the work of others is wrong (although it has not been this way for long - I remember that The Lord of the Rings was in the beginning copied and sold in the US without permission from Tolkien). In China there is a long tradition for copying great masters, certainly in arts, but also in other matters. After all, if something is good, why not? I am not saying that this excuses making illegal copies, but that's the way it is. 2000+ years of habits don't die overnight.
Why should your personal judgement override Manhunt 2's intended audience's CHOICE to play it?
Indeed - but this argument can be used about almost anything. So, if I CHOOSE to use illegal drugs, why should I not be allowed? The fact is that your right to choose according to your whim and personal preference is not considered as important as eg. the impact it would have on society in general if certain things - like drugs, child abuse and video games that glorify extreme violence - were just set free. This may be wrong in your opinion, but then we can win them all, can we?
Having looked through some of the responses I can see that this debate has become one about GM as much as one about abuse of frivolous patents.
GM first - the main problem I see with GM crops is not so much that "it is unnatural" and therefore harmful. Philosophically speaking, nothing we do is unnatural - it all follows the laws of nature, even if it isn't always good for us. That's an aside, though - the real problem is more one of genetic pollution. Never mind they say that it doesn't happen "very often", whatever that means; the basic idea with the gene modifications we see from the likes of Monsanto is to create a plant that has some sort of advantage, in a very narrow sense, over unmodified plants - once the modified gene escapes into the wild, which it will unless the modified plants are unable to reproduce sexually (and what is the point of corn that doesn't produce seeds?) - once the genes escape, we don't know what will happen. Perhaps the genes that were a moderate afvantage for a crop plant turns out to be a huge advantage for a wild species, and suddenly we have a big problem on our hands; we simply don't know, and we have no way of reliably assessing the risk. This however, is the least of the problems.
The real problem, as Monsanto shows us, is that these patents it will be used as a weapon by multinational corporations; it gives them power far beyond what is reasonable, and on a very dubious foundation. The likely truth is that no matter which genes any company "invents", they already exist somewhere in nature; in light of this I think the law should be changed, at least for genes - either it should rest on the company to prove that their invention is a real invention, or it should simply be impossible to patent genes.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems to me that having a two party system is like having a one party system, with the added grief of having election campaigns with all the filthy tricks, the pathetic idiots that run for office and the lies; not to mention the long period of wasted time that could have been used for something sensible.
To hell with it all.
China has shown a great deal of ill-will toward other nations
How so? Oh, you mean they got unreasonably upset about what the British did to China (Opium wars), and what Japan did before and during WWII - and they totally misunderstood USA's intentions when America's rhetoric was all about 'Rolling Back Communism' and their actions included such things as the wars in Korea and Vietnam? I think they can be excused for thinking that the West wasn't trying to be their friends. And just to remind you - China has never gone out and invaded other nations or tried to undermine the democratically elected leaders of a sovereign nation. Yes, yes, I know you're going to say 'Tibet', but that is even at best a contentious issue - the argument that Tibet has 'always' belonged to Chinese territory is not entirely without merit, whereas nobody has ever thought that Korea, Vietnam, Panama, Afghanistan, Iraq and probably several others are part of the US.
They don't have to deal with the red tape we do when they want to shift directions or enforce changes to industry.
This is another common misunderstanding. It is true that a large part of the industry and property in China are state-owned, but even the Chinese government has to follow the laws. The law in any society is not about what you can or can't do - it is also the 'Great Masterplan', the way all parts of society expect things to move. It makes it possible for everybody to make plans and predict the outcome of your actions; if the government doesn't follow it's own laws, everything breaks down.
It is a funny sort of argument to make, really. Just around the time of the breakdown of the Soviet Union everybody talked about how Communism was never going to be as efficient and progressive as Capitalism; and now you say that the Communism of China is much more efficient than the Capitalism of America? I think the truth is that it doesn't matter one bit whether your society is one or the other - it is fully possible to have a largely Communist society, where everybody is motivated and happy, just as it is possible to have a Capitalist society that is stagnating, and where people are despondent and depressed. America has had it easy in the 20th century; it would seem the good times are just about over for the US. The solution, as always, is to adapt, and the best way to adapt is by looking at the successful nations and learning.
... it will also show whether someone inside a house is looking to harm you, because if they are, their heart rate will be raised.
This kind of reasoning is simply bogus. Just like a polygraph can't really show whether somebody is lying, this device can't tell whether a person wants to harm somebody. A heart rate can be raised because of so many things - the guy can have been working out, he may have thought about his sexy girlfriend or snorted coke (sorry, I mean he had a big cup of coffee); and of course, there is no guarantee that a would-be murderer isn't simply a cold-blooded psychopath, who doesn't feel anything about killing people and therefore doesn't show up on this thingy.
We'll scan a person with one of these things and tell what they're actually thinking.
Really? A person's thoughts don't run like the text of a book - we all think about a number of things at the same time. The brain isn't simply a 'thinking machine' it is a complex system that controls and monitors a huge number of functions - our conscious thoughts are simply a small part of this. We can, by closely analysing the output of brain scans, guess what a person is looking at (but only because their head is fixed in the scanner, so we can tell the exact position of the cranium); we can guess the general outline a persons thoughts by looking at which brain centres are active, but this is only if we have analysed that person's brain activity against a number of known thoughts - where you ask a person to think about certain things and then analyse the brain activity. This is something that is fairly individual - we all accumulate a small amount of brain damage during life, not enough to make us disabled, but enough to make the dream of creating a universal thought-reader in about 10 years' time completely unrealistic.
Yes, because as we all know, private companies are accountable to The People, whereas governments are only accountable to their shareholders.
Come on, do you really think that a private company like Microsoft will hesitate as much as one second abusing the information they hold about you if it could earn them money? At least a government - any government - is ultimately accountable by the people. Even the Chinese government has to take the population into account when they make their decisions if they don't want to end up having an uprising on their hands, but Microsoft, and most other multinationals have repeatedly demonstrated a complete disregard for the rule of law, as you well know. Multinational companies can just move to another country, but a government can't, you see.
That's all very well in a home environment, or even in a small office. But if you work in a medium to large company, that is simply not on. Yeah, you can talk about 'the professional Windows shop' and all that crap, but the fact remains that this is jumping through hoops. Windows is the only OS on this planet where you are required to sign away your own supreme right to use your own hardware.
The idea that we, in a major company should have to pull out network cables or set up a particularly shielded network segment just to be able to keep an OS at the version and patchlevel that we have decided to work with, is quite frankly ridiculus.
Call me a communist if you like, but I fail to see the merits of this reasoning. The internet is a public space, IMO - and just like I object to being forced to look at all-dominating, tacky adverts on all the beautiful, historical buildings in Central London, I object to being force-fed intrusive adverts from mostly dishonest companies every time I access a web-site. I would much rather be without it, even if it means that 90% of the web isn't viable any more.
And just like I mentally shut out adverts on building or switch channel when the adverts start, I will continue to avoid looking at them on the internet. I am not against companies trying to earn an honest buck, but the crucial word here is HONEST. Apart from that, I don't believe that people buy because of adverts - or at least not the kind of adverts you mostly see; the 'research' may say that we do, but who is it that actually pays for this 'research'? I have only seen one article about the effects of advertising, that was certifiably independently funded - its conclusion was that after the age of 30 people would as a rule simply ignore adverts. The explanation is that people think before they buy - first they realise that they need to buy an item, then they look for where they can get it and compare prices, then they buy. In other words, to most people, most of the time, most adverts are simply irrelevant noise or, even worse, an irritation.
Think about that for a moment - would you buy Coca Cola if they advertised in a way that constantly pissed you off? Fortunately there is a practical limit to how many cubic meters of junk mail you are likely to receive, but not so on the internet; if we don't block advertising, browsing will simply become a nightmare where we have little or no control over what happens on our computer. The sad fact is that we can't trust the advertisers to respect us and allow us a reasonable amount of personal space.
Most fish have pharyngeal jaws, although they are normally used for crushing rather than 'biting', having bony plates or small teeth. The moray eels have pharyngeal jaws that are used for grabbing prey and drag it into the mouth - most fish will suck their prey into the mouth, but since moray eels live in small crevices in reefs, they don't have enough room for this, so they've evolved this instead.
Blessed hash, you say? Are you some kind of Rastafari?
Nonsense. Yes, there is little doubt that the bosses of CoS wouldn't mind that the lower ranks were persecuted, because maybe it could be useful. But the idea that persecution alone will somehow legitimate them as a religion is bullshit. It only works that way if people in general think they are basically good people that are unjustly persecuted.
This is why nobody feels sorry for the Mafia when they are persecuted all over the world.
So have Christians, not all that long ago. The United States of America were more of less founded by people who were persucted because they dared to disagree with the established churches in their home countries, weren't they?
...' The truth, however, is that Muslims, just like Christians are simply people, and just like with Christians, most are tolerant, kind and open-minded, unlike you.
And apart from that - the way you say this makes it sound as if this is what all Muslims do: 'The Muslims have
And don't start quoting the Qur`an at me either - the Bible contains some hair-raising crap all of its own, even in what Jesus is alleged to have said. The morale of all this is that it is not what your religious book says that counts, it is what you choose to do in your life. Jesus never said that all you had to do was go and have water splashed on your head, and then you would go free from the eternal punishment, no matter WTF you did afterwards.
My point being that if the Bible is the infallible word of God then there is no room to pick and choose
Good point. However, the Bible is NOT the infallible word of God; it is a collection of texts that were extracted from a larger tradition of Jewish and early Christian texts by a group of Christian leaders some time in the early middle ages; or something like that. In other words - this is a highly edited work and certainly anything but a text written or inspired directly by an almighty god. So you can indeed pick and choose - it makes no sense to insist that it must all be perfectly true. At best it can serve as an inspiration, an indication that if you go looking for God, it may not be all wasted.
That said, though - I think the Bible is mostly a collection of insipid nonsense and trivialities, but that is just my opinion.
I agree with your sentiment - he does sound like one of these all-negative whiners; but I don't think you are right in what you say about respect. Even children need to feel that they are respected, not least in school. It's just that the respect you show a child will necessarily be of another kind than the one you show a mature person that has achived something big in their life. Respect, I feel, is not a question about admiration, it is a question of respecting the choices of the other person and understanding that something can be important for somebody else, even if you yourself can't see why.
When I grew up children were "something that should be seen, not heard" and their wishes, choices and will was irrelevant; that was the main reason for the so-called youth-revolution. Now, perhaps, we are beginning to lose it again; there is certainly a clear trend towards a culture of antisocial behaviour: it is sickening to hear this constant mantra of "me, me, me". Maybe it has to do with the fact that people are isolated from their neighbors, in a sense - you get up, turn on the telly while eating your ready made breakfast product, get in the car - alone - to go to work, sit in front of a computer all day, drive home, look at the tv programmes or sit in fron of the computer some more, and then sleep. People get too little in contact with each other, so they don't learn it can be valuable to give up a little bit of hollow freedom to be together.
So by your logic the society must act as one
And by your logic one has to be either 100% for or against an idea? You are either 'free' or a 'hive mind'? There is no such thing as mostly favouring freedom, but also realising that there has to be responsibility, that respect for your individuality and freedom requires you to show the same respect to others. Only a psychopath expects to have full freedom himself without ever having to care about others.
And just for your information, it is perfectly possible to believe that social concerns are more important than one's own needs. Every time a father or mother takes care of their sick child through a long, desperately tired night, they give up some of their freedom. In fact, as soon as you make a choice of any kind, you give up freedom - by choosing one thing and not another, you restrict yourself. Yes, I know it is silly to squeeze the subject that much, but that is what many of the more immature 'libertarians' do. They talk as if they had discovered absolute truth, and anybody who fall on his face in front of them is a heretic.
No, call me a socialist if you like, but I think 'freedom', at least in that sense, is highly overrated - it has become a tool to bully others with. It is as if people say "Death is evil; but Death wouldn't exist if there were no life. Therefore, it is my duty to end all life" - yeah, nice one.
What I don't like about this is the secrecy. Yes, it's not the privacy issue that concerns me - our privacy has long been an illusion, but the fact that they slink around in the background, outside democratic control. It smacks too much of secret laws; like being forced to play game where you are not allowed to know the rules.
It should not be necessary in a democratic society to have that much secrecy - it should be an exception rather than the main principle for what the government does. In this case - what is the point of secrecy? It wouldn't hamper the FBI's work one bit that people were told from the start that this is going on, it is simply because it has become a habit to keep the people in the dark. This is a very serious trend that endangers our democracy - democracy can't work if people don't know what is going on.
What is this stupid substition game about, really, other than silly?
The British empire, the Soviet Union and the Belgian colonies - all have failed, and with good reason. Are you suggesting that China are like the British, when they invaded India and tried to suck the country dry of its natural riches? And that people come from Beijing and set up their own little 'kingdoms' in Tibet? Can you give (documented) examples? Not just rumours, I mean - I can find lots of rumours about everything.
Or that China is trying to crush Tibet like Russia tried to crush the East European countries? As far as I can see the Chinese government is actively trying to encourage the minority cultures everywhere in their domain. Perhaps not because they are good hearted, but it certainly makes sense - minorities that feel under threat will give rise to many problems, and apart from that, there's a lot of tourist money in having great cultural diversity; why would the Chinese government throw that away? They are not idiots.
As for the Americans in the Philippines - I don't think they should be there, but that is because I think American influence is far too big in the world, and the world is a poorer place because of it. But they are there, and although it is not really good, it isn't too bad either. Would the Philippinians be better off without the Americans? Perhaps - probably if you ask my subjective opinion. There may be many that want them to leave, but then on the other hand I suspect that there are many that want them to stay.
What I say is - wake up to reality. There is a lot of shit going on in the world, but some is worse than other. I don't think the Americans in the Philippines or the Chinese in Tibet are anyway near as big problems as the situations in Africa, or the fact that Israel is caught in a state of near psychosis that makes it almost impossible to get anywhere with solving the problems. And then of course there is the whole climate change thing; nope, China-in-Tibet is no problem at all in that context.
Well said. So the US should stop trading with Columbia (oops, no more good coffee), Saudia Arabia (oops, no more oil) ...
You can see where this leads, can't you? Cutting off all communication with the rest of the world will give you a huge amount of problems and will not benefit the people that you propose to do this for - the people who are supposedly oppressed. So why do it? The unfortunate reality is that isolation and mutual displays of hate is self-perpetuating; look at Northern Ireland. They've been killing each other there with no hope of it ever ending - it was not until they finally TALKED TO EACH OTHER that things began to clear up. It was not isolationism, not constant retaliation, but talking, and keeping talking, no matter how hopeless and frustrating it seemed.
If America really want to change things in China, just to take an example, doing what we're doing now is pretty much the right thing. When you're friends, perhaps you can say to each other 'Hear, I am worried about this that you're doing; I think you should change your ways' - and perhaps the other part will listen. Enemies will never be able to do that.
Or, if you want to get rid of 'Cuba, the enemy on our doorstep' - how about trying to initiate a friendship? Isn't it better to have friends?
I don't think so - it hasn't given Microsoft much joy.
- quite beside the point, I think.
Here's some background: Whether you like the Chinese government or not, and whether you feel that they are wrongfully occupying Tibet or not, the fact is that they feel that this is their territory, and nobody in the world offers any serious challenge; ergo, Tibet is de facto a part of China. Nobody in their right mind would expect a country to allow an external, hostile, political power to influence the internal affairs of the country - the US have historically been very heavyhanded in similar situations (eg. the communist scare after WWII); many would still today argue that it was right of them.
The Dalai Lama is undeniably a political influence in Tibet, and he is undeniably hostile to the Chinese government; it is pure common sense that they want to minimize his influence on any part of the Chinese population (and as I pointed out, the Tibetans are de facto part of the Chinese population). It is not only common sense, it is the duty of any government to oppose any influence that would destabilise the society they are governing; and it is only fair to say that the Dalai Lama wants to destabilize the situation - after all, he wants the Chinese to leave and Tibet to be an independent nation. How could that be achieved without a war of independence? And even more - if the Chinese government were to say 'OK, we agree; we simply leave Tibet', that in itself would destabilize the country. Suddenly most Chinese investments would be withdrawn, most Han Chinese would probably leave etc; the result would be BIG PROBLEMS.
And while we are talking about the 'horrible repression of the Buddhists' - do you actually know what it was like in Tibet before? It was a feudal society (like Europe in the middle ages). If you were born into a rich family, you could get away with anything; if you were poor, you could get cruel and absurd punishments for small 'crimes' - like having a foot chopped off or your eyes gouged out. There is no doubt that it is better now. There is also no doubt that it could be better than what it is now, but it isn't too bad for most. The ones that howl and complain now are the ones who were members of the aristocracy or the corrupt monastries.
Is this really a good idea? Can't you see the poor soldiers accidentally decapitating themselves when they salute?
Benefit? Detriment? The universe IS - it most likely doesn't care one bit whether we exist or not. If we blow ourselves to quarks or beyond - what difference does it make to the universe? We may be harmful or beneficial to ourselves and to other life-forms, but the universe is just the universe.
/.), the size of the known universe is still enough to make it a virtual certainty that there will intelligent life in many places. It may be spread out thinly, but that is another matter. Apart from that, all the newest research seems to indicate that life is not unlikely, but almost a fundamental consequence of the laws of physics. The whole place may be crawling with the stuff, but much of it may take a form that we do not easily recognise.
The author of TFA seems to think that we are te only intelligent life around: Without us, there is no one to witness its infinite beauty. That is most likely not true. Even if the probability of life evolving in any given environment was vanishingly small, and intelligence was incredibly unlikely (well, you can believe that when you read
Honestly what on Earth is the attraction some people see in a surveillance state, regardless of who is doing the surveilling?
People ARE interested in that - why else would so many stay glued to the idiot-box, watching Big Brother?
the laws make the mere possession of (creates, obtains or provides access to, sells, yields, distributes or otherwise allows access to)
Where does it say 'possess'? As far as I can see, all it says is that if you break in or make it possible for others to break in, then you are violating the law. Your interpretation goes far beyond that, and I think it is likely because you want to see it as a violation of some sort of 'freedom'. If one were to use the same sort of interpretation on, say, breaking into a house, then you would say that owning a key to your house was a crime.
If you want to be taken serious, at least try to give a fair and accurate representation of things.
Now, how does selling a counterfeit under someone else's name fit in to your view of capitalism?
The key issue here, I think, is one of honesty and decency. Have a look at some typical products developed in the capitalist West: MacDonald hamburgers, most cosmetics, most 'health' products. MacDonald meals are full of fat, sugar, soy powder and other 'goodies' that are basically ruining the health of the nation because they are being power-sold to our children through TV - this is certainly very capitalistic, but is it right? Is it 'deceny and honesty'? I think not. Cosmetics companies try to convince you that using their products will make your skin younger - which can't be called anything but a flat out lie; and the same can be said about all these dubious health products, which at best have no effect, or worst are harmful. Very capitalistic - you make as big a profit as possible no matter what - but fundamentally dishonest and indecent. Seen from this angle I think ripping off somebody and counterfeiting their product fits right in.
There is another facet to this that is always ignored when people complain about China, namely the cultural difference. We in the West have got used to the idea that copying the work of others is wrong (although it has not been this way for long - I remember that The Lord of the Rings was in the beginning copied and sold in the US without permission from Tolkien). In China there is a long tradition for copying great masters, certainly in arts, but also in other matters. After all, if something is good, why not? I am not saying that this excuses making illegal copies, but that's the way it is. 2000+ years of habits don't die overnight.
Why should your personal judgement override Manhunt 2's intended audience's CHOICE to play it?
Indeed - but this argument can be used about almost anything. So, if I CHOOSE to use illegal drugs, why should I not be allowed? The fact is that your right to choose according to your whim and personal preference is not considered as important as eg. the impact it would have on society in general if certain things - like drugs, child abuse and video games that glorify extreme violence - were just set free. This may be wrong in your opinion, but then we can win them all, can we?
Having looked through some of the responses I can see that this debate has become one about GM as much as one about abuse of frivolous patents.
GM first - the main problem I see with GM crops is not so much that "it is unnatural" and therefore harmful. Philosophically speaking, nothing we do is unnatural - it all follows the laws of nature, even if it isn't always good for us. That's an aside, though - the real problem is more one of genetic pollution. Never mind they say that it doesn't happen "very often", whatever that means; the basic idea with the gene modifications we see from the likes of Monsanto is to create a plant that has some sort of advantage, in a very narrow sense, over unmodified plants - once the modified gene escapes into the wild, which it will unless the modified plants are unable to reproduce sexually (and what is the point of corn that doesn't produce seeds?) - once the genes escape, we don't know what will happen. Perhaps the genes that were a moderate afvantage for a crop plant turns out to be a huge advantage for a wild species, and suddenly we have a big problem on our hands; we simply don't know, and we have no way of reliably assessing the risk. This however, is the least of the problems.
The real problem, as Monsanto shows us, is that these patents it will be used as a weapon by multinational corporations; it gives them power far beyond what is reasonable, and on a very dubious foundation. The likely truth is that no matter which genes any company "invents", they already exist somewhere in nature; in light of this I think the law should be changed, at least for genes - either it should rest on the company to prove that their invention is a real invention, or it should simply be impossible to patent genes.