Animals do not have "rights", at least not in the sense humans do.
Legal rights are granted by law, they don't have divine provenance. So if there are laws that protect an animal species, then that species has rights, as far as I can see.
That aside, there is the question of whether it is wrong to kill pigeons or other animal species, no matter what the purpose, and that, I think, is a matter of taste. I don't eat much meat myself, but I can't see that it is wrong for others to do so - humans are not exclusively vegetarians, and if it is OK for lions to kill for food, then it is OK for humans, of course.
However, it is quite common to go hunting simply for fun (like the infamous, English fox hunts); is it desirabe for society to tolerate that mentality? Not in my view. It isn't about whether it causes suffering in an animal or violates its rights, but about whether we want people around us who enjoy killing "for fun". Its a bit like enjoying chopping down trees for fun, or smashing other peoples' cars for fun. Its simply meaningless destruction, and then you also have that uncomfortable feeling that maybe such a person would enjoy killing people too.
Hopefully, over time, this will attract a better class of muggers.
Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore Galloping through the sward Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore And his horse Concorde He steals from the rich And gives to the poor Mr. Moore, Mr. Moore, Mr. Moore
Re:Such systems have been proposed before
on
The Zuckerberg Tax
·
· Score: 1
"Income" is money that you earn
There is a difference between "earning money" and "making money" - earning implies that you deserve to be paid in return for doing something valuable; a job, in other words. The ultra-rich prefer to talk about "making money", probably because they know they have done little to deserve their wealth.
...what their possessions might be worth...
Are you saying that owning part of a company has no value - or that it is impossible to estimate the value? I think that is rubbish; stock traders estimate the value of companies all the time, I should think, and if they can do, then so can the Treasury. And thus, they should be able to demand tax payment on that basis.
As for shares becoming worthless - that's part of the game, isn't it? And it is a part that stock holders have influence on Saying that you shouldn't be taxed on the "potential" value of your stocks is like saying "I shouldn't pay tax because I am too stupid to take care of my possessions"; if that is the case, then perhaps you belong in an institution.
Good to know that greed and corruption still rule. I was worried that we may be entering some weird, "by and for the people" period in American history.
Were you ever in any doubt?
To be fair, though, a government can not go out and tell the police or the public prosecutor what cases to bring - separation of power is a fundamental principle of any modern state.
Reading the article, this is a heart-breaking story about "How The Evil Communist Party (TM) Oppressed The Freedom of The Innocent"; however:
- The article is on the front page of Falun Gong's own newspaper, which makes it less likely to be a fair and balanced representation of the facts.
- The telegram, that is alleged to have been leaked by WikiLeaks, speaks about something much more prosaic: NASDAQ's guy in Beijing was invited to some long and tedious questioning session.
- The telegram only says "... Pan MAY have pledged..."; ie it is speculation. It could be true - but we don't know.
Falun Gong are, in my view, nothing more than a pseudo-religious front-end to what seems like a quasi-criminal organisation; much like Scientology, in fact. The convenient thing about being "religious" is that somehow the public simply switch off their critical sense when they hear it is about religion. Suddenly you don't have to live up to even basic standards for accuracy, reliability, truthfulness or decency; and you can always claim you are being "oppressed", plus, of course, there are the tax advantages. It is also worth mentioning that the Chinese in general regard Falun Gong as a very dangerous cult; perhaps they are right - I am sure the average/. reader doesn't know enough about matters to form a qualified opinion.
So, what can one actually guess from the cable? Well, NASDAQ obviously wan't to get a piece of the action in China - no surprise there. They also allow reporters from different media to report from the stock exchange - that makes sense too. They allowed reporters from Falun Gong's paper in - nothing strange in that either, there probably didn't seem to be any reason to suspect anything. The Chinese authorities wanted to ask questions about this because they seriously don't like Falun Gong - I am sure if NASDAQ had picked up on the fact that "The Epoch Times" were Falun Gong, they would have considered that it was likely to harm their business in China and not allowed them in in the first place.
All in all, this is a non-story; the headline shouldn't be "NASDAQ Folded To Chinese Pressure", but "NASDAQ Exercised Due Diligence".
The problem is that marriage is a religious institution sponsored by our federal government.
Nonsense - marriage is a contract between two persons which formalises the purpose of their cohabitation, giving each side certain, mutual rights and obligations, such as parental authority over shared offspring. This has always been what a marriage is, and that is why people of any religion - and even atheists - can get married; you don't need the religion for the marriage part, it is simply an exchange of promises between two people.
It really annoys me when religious people - and it seems to be Christians in particular - try to hijack things that concern the relations between all people, like they imagine everybody must by necessity be either amoral or in denial about "the truth". You don't need any supernatural beings of any kind to make sensible and logical choices about morality, marriage or anything else; they spring naturally from the necessities of living in a society.
I am in a similar situation, on a somewhat bigger site (50+ UNIXes, large number of dissimilar HW platforms, as well as zSeries, iSeries, HP3000 and other, more exotic HW). I have put all documentation, notes and even ISO images on a single repository, accessible through a Wiki. The problem I have is, that it is hard to find documentation on specific subjects - some of the documentation is in PDFs or DOCs or other formats. The solution I am playing with is to use Oracle Text - it is part of Oracle Enterprise Edition - which should be able to create things like subject indexes into a collection of documents in various formats; or that's what I have heard.
The problem one always has when trying to index free-format texts is that most texts don't explicitly mention the subject words you are after - like, if you have a text about DNA sequencing, you might want to index it under phrases like "Gene therapy", "Medicine" or similar. I don't know how much work is involved, although I assume one will have to teach the "text indexer" how to identify different subjects from context.
On a final note: I have chosen Oracle simply because I know it - I am sure there are similar features in most large databases.
It strikes me as a very stupid way to handle the situation on the part of the company.
Firstly, an ambitious employee can most definitely be an asset to a company, if they are celver enough to keep him/her.
Secondly, if the employee was actually unhappy with the job, perhaps the company should see this as an opportunity to address the problem. If one employee is disgruntled, it is quite likely that there are others; dissatisfaction leads to low morale, which leads to poor results - this sort of thing is too important to ignore.
Thirdly, if an employee genuinely wants to leave, the company could do worse than to help him in a positive way; if an employee leaves with a good feeling, he will remember that in a new job and may even send business back to his previous employer.
I can imagine a third possiblity: The Chinese company have contacted Apple, asking them to sue them for a share in the proceeds - knowing full well that whatever the judgement will be, it won't make any difference for their ability to sell their product, and it is great publicity; sales are going straight to orbit.
What do you mean, I'm cynical? I am a very sensitive and thoughtful individual;-)
... teachers are opposed to it because the State is diverting funds from salaries to pay for it.
And so would you be in the same situation. Personally, I'd rather pay good salaries to good teachers and cut back on the technology. In my view, what they should teach students is how to access and manage information, something that could be just as easily achieved by going to the library and using paper based materials. Whether you can make a presentation with animations or similar is bloody irrelevant; when you need it, you'll pick it up in no time.
I'm no luddite - I work in IT (programming and UNIX system management) and I have worked with most of the cool technologies. What amazes me most is how little difference it makes whether you use the latest and greatest fad or some of the oldest, crustiest machinery. The really big step was when we went from no computers to the first programmable machine, and then later when networking was invented; all the rest is just glitter: nice and sometimes quite convenient, but not fundamentally important.
Funny enough, my first thought was "if only they'd do that here". I have almost stopped watching tv, because there is almost no factual programs, and the ones there are, are mostly rehashes of old "nature themes" with added soundtrack.
It would be really nice if they went for less "wow, awesome" and more insight and real knowledge.
I don't know where you get your numbers from, or for that matter, your ideas about what "socialism" is, although I can guess that most of it comes from inside your head.
As for how polluted China is - I doubt it very much. Sure, it isn't pristine wilderness, but I think you are speaking more for effect than for accuracy. And I can understand that it somehow feels easier to slag off an external "enemy" than your own country; but you would be better off if you stuck to the facts.
So the great isms have failed? I am not really sure about that either. What has always failed throughout history is when ideology or religion becomes more important than people and reality - somehow "The People" is not quite the same as simply people. Both socialism and capitalism are in my view necessary ingredients in a good society, but only as guiding principles. That is why China now have success - because ideology no longer takes priority over reality, and that also explains why Soviet communism - and now American capitalism - must fail, eventually.
Is it possible to make Communism work well in a large society? I think so - but that is just my opinion, and I may be wrong. As far as I can see, we will one day have a society where owning land and companies seems like a rather pathetic concept. Hopefully I will live to see that.
But modernizing the safer, non-weaponizable form of nuclear power is a great way to go.
And while we're at it, we should invite Iran to join this programme. They keep claiming they are not after developing nuclear weapons*, only producing power, so this would be ideal both for them and the world; the Iranians are clever people, and well educated, and taking part in international cooperation would get them into the global society.
* They could be lying, of course, just like Israel did.
You can't blame Einstein in doubting the uncertain principle
Indeed; it can be argued that doubt is the fundamental outlook of science, and that the positive results that are produced by science are the things science has not (yet) been able to disprove.
In Denmark, the monarch is protected by the usual libel paragraph (Â 267 of the penal code which allows for up to four months of imprisonment), but Â115[7] allows for doubling of the usual punishment when the regent is target of the libel. When a queen consort, queen dowager or the crown prince is the target, the punishment may be increased by 50%. There are no historical records of Â115 having ever been used, but in March 2011, Greenpeace activists who unfurled a banner at a dinner at the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference were charged under this section.[8] They received minor sentences for other crimes, but were acquitted of the charge relating to the monarch.[9]
Problem is we have so little understanding of how the earth reacts to these changes over time.
Wrong - the problem is that we have so much resistance against even finding out. I think the scientists know better than any how little we know, and they are not shy to point it out ether. But the anti-climate change lodge use every tactic possible to divert attention from facts and raise doubts about the by now quite obvious conclusions.
We don't need to understand everything about the climate in order to draw sound conclusions - just like we don't need to understand all aspects of hydrodynamics in order to realise that when the river bursts its banks, you are likely to get wet.
I think they look like something that has been photoshopped into the pictures. You can see the structure of the surface under them - if they had been real, the ground would have been leveled, or they would not have looked so perfectly straight when seen from a slight angle as in the pictures.
Perhaps they are some of the little flaws that mapmakers put into their maps and photos as a sort of "watermark" so they can prove in court that you have made an illegal copy?
Ah, but glacier kan suddenly move fast sometimes, and then it is time to step aside. And China have been putting on speed steadily, whereas America's achievements have slowed down in the recent how many decades?
I think the term "addictive" has been severely overused for a very long time. And I think this discussion - as always - has veered way off course; the real issue here is not whether cannabis or other drugs are harmful - they are, no doubt, under some circumstances.
The real issue, though, is that society already lives with a large number of harmful substances (e.g. nicotine and alcohol), and seems to be able to manage the consequences. So, in the end it boils down to how we intend to manage the risks, and what we can do to minimize the harm.
I think we can all see that the way it is done currently is simply wrong - society spends loads on criminalising people for insignificant drugs offences, and the only ones that really benefit are the real criminals, who make some absolutely obscene profits. It would be cheaper simply to pay our tax money directly into their accounts.
I can't see that it would not be much more beneficial to society as a whole if we legalised and taxed the drugs that people are going to use any way - after all, we know for a fact that a huge proportion of normal, otherwise law-abiding citizens do occasionally use certains drugs, while managing to have career, family etc.
Plus, of course, it is becoming increasingly obvious that drugs like alcohol and nicotine are much more harmful than cannabis - at the very least it would make more sense to place ALL drugs under a science based legislation rather than the current, which seems to be based on Victorian superstition and fear.
A bit naive to imagine that the UN can dictate anything - the US habitually ignores the UN, Israel is notorious for doing so, etc etc. The UN is a forum where governments can shout at each other, because it is better than going to war; they are not a world government, and they don't have military power.
This is another Tibet...
China's claim to Tibet, or Xizang, is a lot less controversial than many other nations' claim to territories. This is not "The Evil Communists (TM)" that have conquered a poor nation, this claim has far older roots than that; and apart from that, Guomindang too felt Tibet to be Chinese territory.
... with global implications on shipping lanes and free navigation.
That may be so, but it is not unique. Take for example Iceland's 200 miles zone, or for that matter, the way UK, Denmark, Germany and Norway have split the North Sea.
At the end of the day, the legitimacy of a nation's claim to a territory rests for the most part on that nation's ability to hold on to it, whether through military might or because nobody else cares. Take Greenland, for example - if suddenly Greenland became very important to Canada, or the US for that matter, would they hesitate more a than a nanosecond before laying in a hefty claim on it? I mean, considering Denmark's overall, military strength? I woudn't bet on it.
The Galileo system is also an important part of the new car taxing scheme... Where you basicly pay taxes from the distance you drive
Which is a very sensible way to do i, since you are going to pay road tax anyway. To me it makes a lot of sense that Mr and Mrs Peterson, who drive about 5 miles every day, would pay less, whereas lorrydrivers and others who drive tens of thousands of miles every year whould pay a lot more. After all, they pollute more and they wear the road surfaces dwn more.
It seems so typically American to roll out the big scarecrows of "The Evil Government" and "The Evil Taxes" instead of stepping back and thinking about things. (I know, most Americans actually do exactly that, but you never hear from them).
You know, in Europe people are not 1) paranoid about the government - possibly because we actually believe in our democracy, and 2) we are not against paying tax, even high taxes, if we can see that it is fair.
I don't buy that the stated purpose for the system (independence from the US's military) is very credible, given that the US is, you know, part of NATO and whatnot. And if the EU does turn hostile to the US in some sort of bizarro-world, the US possesses capabilities to shoot them down. So it doesn't make a lot of sense along those lines.
Military alliances like NATO have their place, but I think a major part of this is not about being America's enemy, only about independence. Is it in Europe's interest to not feel they have to bow to America's political pressure? I should certainly think so. America is far to much in the pockets of big corporations, and as long as that is so, I think a politically weaker America is in everybody elses interest - and possibly in the American people's interest as well.
Slashdot Mirror
Animals do not have "rights", at least not in the sense humans do.
Legal rights are granted by law, they don't have divine provenance. So if there are laws that protect an animal species, then that species has rights, as far as I can see.
That aside, there is the question of whether it is wrong to kill pigeons or other animal species, no matter what the purpose, and that, I think, is a matter of taste. I don't eat much meat myself, but I can't see that it is wrong for others to do so - humans are not exclusively vegetarians, and if it is OK for lions to kill for food, then it is OK for humans, of course.
However, it is quite common to go hunting simply for fun (like the infamous, English fox hunts); is it desirabe for society to tolerate that mentality? Not in my view. It isn't about whether it causes suffering in an animal or violates its rights, but about whether we want people around us who enjoy killing "for fun". Its a bit like enjoying chopping down trees for fun, or smashing other peoples' cars for fun. Its simply meaningless destruction, and then you also have that uncomfortable feeling that maybe such a person would enjoy killing people too.
Hopefully, over time, this will attract a better class of muggers.
Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore
Galloping through the sward
Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore
And his horse Concorde
He steals from the rich
And gives to the poor
Mr. Moore, Mr. Moore, Mr. Moore
"Income" is money that you earn
There is a difference between "earning money" and "making money" - earning implies that you deserve to be paid in return for doing something valuable; a job, in other words. The ultra-rich prefer to talk about "making money", probably because they know they have done little to deserve their wealth.
...what their possessions might be worth ...
Are you saying that owning part of a company has no value - or that it is impossible to estimate the value? I think that is rubbish; stock traders estimate the value of companies all the time, I should think, and if they can do, then so can the Treasury. And thus, they should be able to demand tax payment on that basis.
As for shares becoming worthless - that's part of the game, isn't it? And it is a part that stock holders have influence on Saying that you shouldn't be taxed on the "potential" value of your stocks is like saying "I shouldn't pay tax because I am too stupid to take care of my possessions"; if that is the case, then perhaps you belong in an institution.
Good to know that greed and corruption still rule. I was worried that we may be entering some weird, "by and for the people" period in American history.
Were you ever in any doubt?
To be fair, though, a government can not go out and tell the police or the public prosecutor what cases to bring - separation of power is a fundamental principle of any modern state.
Reading the article, this is a heart-breaking story about "How The Evil Communist Party (TM) Oppressed The Freedom of The Innocent"; however:
- The article is on the front page of Falun Gong's own newspaper, which makes it less likely to be a fair and balanced representation of the facts.
- The telegram, that is alleged to have been leaked by WikiLeaks, speaks about something much more prosaic: NASDAQ's guy in Beijing was invited to some long and tedious questioning session.
- The telegram only says "... Pan MAY have pledged ..."; ie it is speculation. It could be true - but we don't know.
Falun Gong are, in my view, nothing more than a pseudo-religious front-end to what seems like a quasi-criminal organisation; much like Scientology, in fact. The convenient thing about being "religious" is that somehow the public simply switch off their critical sense when they hear it is about religion. Suddenly you don't have to live up to even basic standards for accuracy, reliability, truthfulness or decency; and you can always claim you are being "oppressed", plus, of course, there are the tax advantages. It is also worth mentioning that the Chinese in general regard Falun Gong as a very dangerous cult; perhaps they are right - I am sure the average /. reader doesn't know enough about matters to form a qualified opinion.
So, what can one actually guess from the cable? Well, NASDAQ obviously wan't to get a piece of the action in China - no surprise there. They also allow reporters from different media to report from the stock exchange - that makes sense too. They allowed reporters from Falun Gong's paper in - nothing strange in that either, there probably didn't seem to be any reason to suspect anything. The Chinese authorities wanted to ask questions about this because they seriously don't like Falun Gong - I am sure if NASDAQ had picked up on the fact that "The Epoch Times" were Falun Gong, they would have considered that it was likely to harm their business in China and not allowed them in in the first place.
All in all, this is a non-story; the headline shouldn't be "NASDAQ Folded To Chinese Pressure", but "NASDAQ Exercised Due Diligence".
The problem is that marriage is a religious institution sponsored by our federal government.
Nonsense - marriage is a contract between two persons which formalises the purpose of their cohabitation, giving each side certain, mutual rights and obligations, such as parental authority over shared offspring. This has always been what a marriage is, and that is why people of any religion - and even atheists - can get married; you don't need the religion for the marriage part, it is simply an exchange of promises between two people.
It really annoys me when religious people - and it seems to be Christians in particular - try to hijack things that concern the relations between all people, like they imagine everybody must by necessity be either amoral or in denial about "the truth". You don't need any supernatural beings of any kind to make sensible and logical choices about morality, marriage or anything else; they spring naturally from the necessities of living in a society.
It's easy to poke fun of astrologers and the like
Say what you like about astrology, but no one can deny that an opposition between Mercury and the Sun is something to worry about, for example.
I am in a similar situation, on a somewhat bigger site (50+ UNIXes, large number of dissimilar HW platforms, as well as zSeries, iSeries, HP3000 and other, more exotic HW). I have put all documentation, notes and even ISO images on a single repository, accessible through a Wiki. The problem I have is, that it is hard to find documentation on specific subjects - some of the documentation is in PDFs or DOCs or other formats. The solution I am playing with is to use Oracle Text - it is part of Oracle Enterprise Edition - which should be able to create things like subject indexes into a collection of documents in various formats; or that's what I have heard.
The problem one always has when trying to index free-format texts is that most texts don't explicitly mention the subject words you are after - like, if you have a text about DNA sequencing, you might want to index it under phrases like "Gene therapy", "Medicine" or similar. I don't know how much work is involved, although I assume one will have to teach the "text indexer" how to identify different subjects from context.
On a final note: I have chosen Oracle simply because I know it - I am sure there are similar features in most large databases.
It strikes me as a very stupid way to handle the situation on the part of the company.
Firstly, an ambitious employee can most definitely be an asset to a company, if they are celver enough to keep him/her.
Secondly, if the employee was actually unhappy with the job, perhaps the company should see this as an opportunity to address the problem. If one employee is disgruntled, it is quite likely that there are others; dissatisfaction leads to low morale, which leads to poor results - this sort of thing is too important to ignore.
Thirdly, if an employee genuinely wants to leave, the company could do worse than to help him in a positive way; if an employee leaves with a good feeling, he will remember that in a new job and may even send business back to his previous employer.
I can imagine a third possiblity: The Chinese company have contacted Apple, asking them to sue them for a share in the proceeds - knowing full well that whatever the judgement will be, it won't make any difference for their ability to sell their product, and it is great publicity; sales are going straight to orbit.
What do you mean, I'm cynical? I am a very sensitive and thoughtful individual ;-)
... teachers are opposed to it because the State is diverting funds from salaries to pay for it.
And so would you be in the same situation. Personally, I'd rather pay good salaries to good teachers and cut back on the technology. In my view, what they should teach students is how to access and manage information, something that could be just as easily achieved by going to the library and using paper based materials. Whether you can make a presentation with animations or similar is bloody irrelevant; when you need it, you'll pick it up in no time.
I'm no luddite - I work in IT (programming and UNIX system management) and I have worked with most of the cool technologies. What amazes me most is how little difference it makes whether you use the latest and greatest fad or some of the oldest, crustiest machinery. The really big step was when we went from no computers to the first programmable machine, and then later when networking was invented; all the rest is just glitter: nice and sometimes quite convenient, but not fundamentally important.
Funny enough, my first thought was "if only they'd do that here". I have almost stopped watching tv, because there is almost no factual programs, and the ones there are, are mostly rehashes of old "nature themes" with added soundtrack.
It would be really nice if they went for less "wow, awesome" and more insight and real knowledge.
I don't know where you get your numbers from, or for that matter, your ideas about what "socialism" is, although I can guess that most of it comes from inside your head.
As for how polluted China is - I doubt it very much. Sure, it isn't pristine wilderness, but I think you are speaking more for effect than for accuracy. And I can understand that it somehow feels easier to slag off an external "enemy" than your own country; but you would be better off if you stuck to the facts.
So the great isms have failed? I am not really sure about that either. What has always failed throughout history is when ideology or religion becomes more important than people and reality - somehow "The People" is not quite the same as simply people. Both socialism and capitalism are in my view necessary ingredients in a good society, but only as guiding principles. That is why China now have success - because ideology no longer takes priority over reality, and that also explains why Soviet communism - and now American capitalism - must fail, eventually.
Is it possible to make Communism work well in a large society? I think so - but that is just my opinion, and I may be wrong. As far as I can see, we will one day have a society where owning land and companies seems like a rather pathetic concept. Hopefully I will live to see that.
But modernizing the safer, non-weaponizable form of nuclear power is a great way to go.
And while we're at it, we should invite Iran to join this programme. They keep claiming they are not after developing nuclear weapons*, only producing power, so this would be ideal both for them and the world; the Iranians are clever people, and well educated, and taking part in international cooperation would get them into the global society.
* They could be lying, of course, just like Israel did.
The work was first presented at a conference dedicated to influenza that took place in September in Malta
It looks like it is bit late to close the stable door now, anyway.
You can't blame Einstein in doubting the uncertain principle
Indeed; it can be argued that doubt is the fundamental outlook of science, and that the positive results that are produced by science are the things science has not (yet) been able to disprove.
To quote Wikipedia:
In Denmark, the monarch is protected by the usual libel paragraph (Â 267 of the penal code which allows for up to four months of imprisonment), but Â115[7] allows for doubling of the usual punishment when the regent is target of the libel. When a queen consort, queen dowager or the crown prince is the target, the punishment may be increased by 50%. There are no historical records of Â115 having ever been used, but in March 2011, Greenpeace activists who unfurled a banner at a dinner at the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference were charged under this section.[8] They received minor sentences for other crimes, but were acquitted of the charge relating to the monarch.[9]
Denmark is, as you may know, in Scandinavia; as for the rest of Europe, read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A8se_majest%C3%A9
Problem is we have so little understanding of how the earth reacts to these changes over time.
Wrong - the problem is that we have so much resistance against even finding out. I think the scientists know better than any how little we know, and they are not shy to point it out ether. But the anti-climate change lodge use every tactic possible to divert attention from facts and raise doubts about the by now quite obvious conclusions.
We don't need to understand everything about the climate in order to draw sound conclusions - just like we don't need to understand all aspects of hydrodynamics in order to realise that when the river bursts its banks, you are likely to get wet.
I think they look like something that has been photoshopped into the pictures. You can see the structure of the surface under them - if they had been real, the ground would have been leveled, or they would not have looked so perfectly straight when seen from a slight angle as in the pictures.
Perhaps they are some of the little flaws that mapmakers put into their maps and photos as a sort of "watermark" so they can prove in court that you have made an illegal copy?
I'd say more 'glacial' than 'brisk'
Ah, but glacier kan suddenly move fast sometimes, and then it is time to step aside. And China have been putting on speed steadily, whereas America's achievements have slowed down in the recent how many decades?
I think the term "addictive" has been severely overused for a very long time. And I think this discussion - as always - has veered way off course; the real issue here is not whether cannabis or other drugs are harmful - they are, no doubt, under some circumstances.
The real issue, though, is that society already lives with a large number of harmful substances (e.g. nicotine and alcohol), and seems to be able to manage the consequences. So, in the end it boils down to how we intend to manage the risks, and what we can do to minimize the harm.
I think we can all see that the way it is done currently is simply wrong - society spends loads on criminalising people for insignificant drugs offences, and the only ones that really benefit are the real criminals, who make some absolutely obscene profits. It would be cheaper simply to pay our tax money directly into their accounts.
I can't see that it would not be much more beneficial to society as a whole if we legalised and taxed the drugs that people are going to use any way - after all, we know for a fact that a huge proportion of normal, otherwise law-abiding citizens do occasionally use certains drugs, while managing to have career, family etc.
Plus, of course, it is becoming increasingly obvious that drugs like alcohol and nicotine are much more harmful than cannabis - at the very least it would make more sense to place ALL drugs under a science based legislation rather than the current, which seems to be based on Victorian superstition and fear.
This being petty cash, like the Triganic Ningi, it isn't worth hanging on to, since the banks wont exchange them.
Your choice of words is somewhat tendentious, IMO. China does not deserve to be called a thug, for one thing - certainly not militarily. Even the Dalai Lama has recognised that the Chinese army behaved with unusual restraint when they went into Tibet (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_Tibet_into_the_People's_Republic_of_China)
The U.N. needs to sit down with China, ...
A bit naive to imagine that the UN can dictate anything - the US habitually ignores the UN, Israel is notorious for doing so, etc etc. The UN is a forum where governments can shout at each other, because it is better than going to war; they are not a world government, and they don't have military power.
This is another Tibet ...
China's claim to Tibet, or Xizang, is a lot less controversial than many other nations' claim to territories. This is not "The Evil Communists (TM)" that have conquered a poor nation, this claim has far older roots than that; and apart from that, Guomindang too felt Tibet to be Chinese territory.
... with global implications on shipping lanes and free navigation.
That may be so, but it is not unique. Take for example Iceland's 200 miles zone, or for that matter, the way UK, Denmark, Germany and Norway have split the North Sea.
At the end of the day, the legitimacy of a nation's claim to a territory rests for the most part on that nation's ability to hold on to it, whether through military might or because nobody else cares. Take Greenland, for example - if suddenly Greenland became very important to Canada, or the US for that matter, would they hesitate more a than a nanosecond before laying in a hefty claim on it? I mean, considering Denmark's overall, military strength? I woudn't bet on it.
The Galileo system is also an important part of the new car taxing scheme... Where you basicly pay taxes from the distance you drive
Which is a very sensible way to do i, since you are going to pay road tax anyway. To me it makes a lot of sense that Mr and Mrs Peterson, who drive about 5 miles every day, would pay less, whereas lorrydrivers and others who drive tens of thousands of miles every year whould pay a lot more. After all, they pollute more and they wear the road surfaces dwn more.
It seems so typically American to roll out the big scarecrows of "The Evil Government" and "The Evil Taxes" instead of stepping back and thinking about things. (I know, most Americans actually do exactly that, but you never hear from them).
You know, in Europe people are not 1) paranoid about the government - possibly because we actually believe in our democracy, and 2) we are not against paying tax, even high taxes, if we can see that it is fair.
I don't buy that the stated purpose for the system (independence from the US's military) is very credible, given that the US is, you know, part of NATO and whatnot. And if the EU does turn hostile to the US in some sort of bizarro-world, the US possesses capabilities to shoot them down. So it doesn't make a lot of sense along those lines.
Military alliances like NATO have their place, but I think a major part of this is not about being America's enemy, only about independence. Is it in Europe's interest to not feel they have to bow to America's political pressure? I should certainly think so. America is far to much in the pockets of big corporations, and as long as that is so, I think a politically weaker America is in everybody elses interest - and possibly in the American people's interest as well.