If you're (still) in a frog-bashing mood, don't bother to click the above link. It says good things about the French.
What I gather from this article is that you don't fight terror by invading unrelated countries. You fight terror through boring, tedious and frustrating police and intelligence work. You share resources and information with your allies, you try to outwit the terrorists.
I think it was John Kerry who got bashed for saying something along the lines "I don't think we can ever win the war on terror, but we can reduce it to a mere nuisance". He was spot on. And the guys this article mention are doing just that. Their cost is several orders of magnitude below the cost of the Iraq war and I think they are far more effective.
Invading Iraq was a huge mistake as far as terrorism is concerned. Proponents of this war tend to present a false dichotomy. It was invading Iraq or doing nothing. This is wrong. The choice was between invading Iraq and setting up more of this kind of counter-terrorist cells.
In fact, almost everywhere politicians have dared to give people the vote instead of just waving it through the vote has gone against the European institutions, and in many places a vote will not even be chanced because of overwhelming popular opposition
3 votes have been held. Spain voted massively for YES (77%), France and Netherlands (less) massively for NO (respectively 55% and 61%) but with a higher turnaround. Besides, the vote was not for or against European Institutions, it was for or against the European Charter.
Rubbish like ignoring a parliament to enact the will of civil servants will certainly not be helping.
You don't seem to understand how the European decision process goes. The EU is NOT a federal country. It has very little power over member states. The parliament has a consultative function but no real authority over member states. The Commission is just an administrative body and has no real power either. The EU Council has the power, it's basically a board room where EU countries negociate stuff. States are represented in the Council by the Heads of States not by anonymous European civil servants as you imply. It works pretty much like the UN. Each country has a representant in the Security Council who negociates and makes decisions in the best interest of his country.
I'll drive a parallel with the US. Donald Rumsfeld or Condi Rice are unelected officials. Yet they have been granted power by President Bush, who was elected (I won't get into the argument here). Within the bounds of theses powers, they can decide stuff independantly of the opinion of the Senate or Congress, which are elected bodies.
Maybe a better analogy : the EU is like the US would be if the Federal government had no power at all. The elected Senate would vote, but could only make recommandations since it would not have any power. The President of the US would not exist, the position would have no point. The real decisions would be made by direct negociations between State Governors, a broad equivalent of the EU Council.
but the point remains that these institutions have little to no popular support
This is ironic because the only European institution is the elected European parliament. Its powers would have been expanded in the EU constitution. It is misleading to present the EU constitution as a vote about giving power to elected or unelected bodies. The question is about transferring power from elected nationals to an elected European body. Do we want to go toward a federal European elected goverment with real powers over member states (like in the US) or do we want to keep all the power in the elected government of member states?
Prefering one way or the other is perfectly legitimate but please, don't claim that one is more democratic.
Sorry to hijack your discussion by nitpicking on your references to France and WWII but I have to correct a few historical inaccuracies.
You are saying that the French have moral authority because they did not take adequate steps to protect themselves? If that is the case, I would rather be free and immoral than moral and without my jewish friends.
You seem to believe that France refused to take part in the war, was attacked anyway and lost ; while the US decided to attack Nazi Germany, presumably to save Jews. Only the part about France losing is true. Here is a quick summary of the start of WW2 since you seem to be interested.
France (along with Britain, Canada, Australia and NZ) declared war on Germany (not the other way around) in early September 1939 in response to the German invasion of Poland. The US declared their neutrality in the conflict (apparently not convinced enough that the Nazis were bad guys, or that Jews were good guys, or whatever...) Granted, this whole declaration of war did not help the Poles at all and Poland fell in 3 weeks without receiving any military help from the allies.
Then the French (and the allies) made a stupid decision. They entrenched in the Maginot line... and waited. In May 1940, the Germans invaded by bypassing the Maginot line and overran the allies. The Britons evacuated their troops at Dunkirk and France surrendered in 6 weeks. Please note that at this point, the Nazis were still not bad enough or the Jews important enough to motivate an intervention from the US.
Fast forward 1 year til June 1941. The Nazis invade their former ally USSR. As always, they overrun their opponent and quickly reach the suburbs of Moscow. At this point, the US are getting nervous but still don't think the Nazis are bad enough to declare war to them. And yes, jews are being slaughtered but you know... shit happens.
December 1941 : Pearl Harbor. The Japanese aggression takes the US completely by surprise. Germany, being allied with Japan, declares war to the US. Note that it's not the other way around. The US never decided to go to war against Germany, that was imposed upon them. Maybe the fate of the Jews was not that important.
The rest is pretty straightforward. The US singlehandedly defeat Japan in the Pacific despite a terrible headstart. The Soviets manage to stall the Germans then break their backbone in Stalingrad. The Allied landing in Normandy seals the coffin.
This all paints a pretty different picture from what you infer. The French were stupid and inefficient in not arming themselves properly. But they made the moral choice in chosing to go to war against Germany. They probably had not much choice, but it can be argued that if the Allies had not moved in 1939, Germany could have turned against USSR earlier and left the west completely out of the conflict.
On the other hand, the US made the bright decision in staying out of the conflict as long as they could. America obviously is THE single country with the best benefit/cost ratio in WWII (with the possible exception of Switzerland, which stayed neutral all along). Huge benefits : de facto control of half the world, boost to their industry, boost to their prestige, destruction of much of the European economy. Small costs : 300 000 casualties (1.5% of Soviet losses, less than Britain, less than France, slightly more than Holland), no civilian casualties, no destruction on their soil. USSR had a similar benefit but payed 60 times more.
Yet, it's hard to say that the US hold the moral high grounds here. I think that US neutrality for 2 long years in a war against a foe that was so obviously evil and dangerous is a major shame to this great country.
Frog bashing can make you feel good but will not change the truth. France was definitively not up to its task in WWII, yet it payed dearly for it and French people don't consider WWII as one of their proudest moments. Since the war had such a happy outcome for the US, Americans tend to think that they did everything right. That's true with respect to efficiency, not with respect to morality.
We're the USA, if someone starts to militarize space, we'll just knock their systems down.
Do you realize that people from other countries also read this site? This whole "we do what we want, fuck the rest of the world" attitude has seem to become the norm in the US. I don't think most Americans realize how much their country has benefited from being viewed essentially as a benevolent power.
Don't misunderstand me. I agree with your general message and find your post insightful. That's precisely what scares me. Ann Coulter would nuke the whole middle east just because it would make her feel good. That's not a big deal, she's a loony extremist and all countries have their loony extremists. But you seem to be a reasonable, moderate person. And what you said basically amounts to: "we can do it or not do it, but we won't ever let anyone else do it". And that says a lot.
As companies find that they can't be profitable (enough) with real journalism, they'll stop doing real journalism.
You can drop the future tense here. To reduce costs, radio and TV channels are increasingly airing prepackaged news produced by the government. Of course, most of the time, they don't mention the origin of the news and make it appear as if they were independently produced and checked.
Economic pressures are pushing away from what it takes to make a good news source. In a competitive market, customers use the products they like most. Problem is that good news (ie truth) are not especially pleasant ; and can be quite unpleasant (when they prove you wrong). Also fact finding and checking is *very* expensive. All in all, papers willing to provide real news suffer a competitive disavantage against those who push cheap, sugar-coated content. The best example is the astounding coverage of Michael Jackson's trial. It's a perfect topic, business-wise. Content is incredibly cheap to produce (an anchor and a couple of *experts* arguing in a studio) and everybody loves a paedophilia trial involving a celebrity.
At the end of the day, serious news sources have a choice : stop doing actual news or die. None is good for democracy. This is one of the rare cases where free markets do not drive the public good. I realize that for many Americans, suggesting that this is possible at all verges on heresy. Yet, the merger of news and entertainment is a real issue that must be addressed.
Look, I don't share most of Rocard's ideas (he's a socialist). But I think he's one of the most honest French politicians. I know that this does not say much, yet I really believe in his integrity. It probably cost him his career in the 80's when he was killed politically by President Mitterrand (also a socialist) who rightly saw Rocard as a competitor.
Since he lost all hope of ever becoming president, Rocard has been one of the very few reliable French politicians. This freed himself from demagoguery. He's been a lonely voice of wisdom on many controversial topics (pensions, health care etc...) Software patents are just the kind of causes he likes to get involved in : important long-term consequences, not much to gain politically, yet somebody's gotta do it.
Michel Rocard's involvement in software patents is a Good Thing (TM).
Really? Says who? Worthless in terms of natural resources, food production, climate, tourism? Nonsense. The truth is that China is as big as the US and has all the natural resources a country would want.
we still produce twice as much as China does (see above CIA link). They need to seriously work on their production per-capita.
They've been doing just that for the past 10 years and show no sign of stopping soon.
That, and feeding those folks is already a serious problem
On which planet have you been for the last 50 years? Food was a major problem for China and India before the 50's. It has been solved since. OK, there are still (lots of) people starving in China/India but it's a problem of distribution, not production.
Actually, this is probably the single most impressive economic feat of the past 5 decades. China and India have moved from NOT feeding 1.6Bn people in the 50s to feeding 2.4Bn today. And they still don't reach half the land efficiency of western Europe. Nobody doubts they will be able to feed their population in the foreseeable future.
Being the biggest consumers has been a major harm to the US economy (trade deficits, etc)
Being the biggest customer is the best thing that ever happened to the US. The world is so dependant on US internal consumption that it's been financing their deficits forever. And now that the budget deficit is spiralling out of control, US debtors (especially Japan) are so much invested in T-bonds that they can't pull the plug.
The rise of India and China is a real threat for US/EU. I don't think that apples are the answer.
You're mostly right, it's a paper transaction that does not involve cash. The seller is paid in Mandrake stock, not in cash.
Yet your analogy with stock splits is erroneous. In a stock split, nothing really happens. Each old share becomes 2 or 10 new shares. It's just a story of splitting the cake in more pieces, but everybody still has the same proportion of the cake. An investor that used to own 1% of the stock will own twice (or ten times) more shares but still own 1% because the total number of outstanding shares has been doubled (decupled).
In a merger, the cake increases but you have a smaller part of it. An investor owning 1% of Mandrake before the deal will now own 0.96% of Mandrake+Conectiva (since Mandrake's market cap seems to be around 40mEUR).
And to my French "friends", I only wish you had war dead buried here whose graves I could desecrate the way you did the graves of the brave Americans who helped free your land from the Nazis! Of course if there were such graves, I wouldn't do anything because unlike you fuckers I have class.
I know I shouldn't feed the trolls but... No, you obviously don't have class.
Even if you don't speak French, the headline is pretty easy to grasp. Now, as for the reason why you deemed necessary to leap into frog-bashing mode, I can only wonder.
Your post made me mad, really. I've had to make a serious effort to remind myself that I should not fall to easy generalizations. No, most Americans are not like you. Most Americans are actually decent and caring people.
Most Americans just happen to live in the same country as you. I don't even think that the proportion of selfish bastards is higher in the US than in other countries. It's just that, for some reason, selfish bastards are more vocal in the US than elsewhere.
It's OK now, the burst of anger has receded. My faith and respect in the American people is unharmed. I'm even willing to consider that you didn't really think before posting and that you don't really mean that. But do you realize how hard you make it not to hate the US? Do you realize that you're a liability to your country?
Quit whining. "It appears that the European Commission may not in fact be a complete waste of space after all" IS flamebait. You had a valid point but you chose to bury it into irrelevant drivel. Deal with the (petty) consequences.
Trying to tell us how much this matters, you use the words "intellectual", "Italian", "history", "culture", "invention", "idea", "fact", "logic", "thinking", "progress", "understanding", "world" and "Dungeons & Dragons".
Not once do you use the words "bible", "faith", "good", "evil", "values", "appropriate", "church", "America", "family", "hate", "terrorist", "abstinence", "God-given right", "profit", "US-led" or "crusade".
The argument seems to be about wether such research should receive public funding or not. Based on the above and the fact that Bush won, I can say with much certainty : this research IS totally pointless.
That's exactly what the French are doing. And we've been doing this for 40 years. No way this administration is going to admit that we had one good idea. Besides, your President can't pronounce the frigging word.
Unless... Yeah, maybe changing the name would do it... What about Freedom power instead of Nucular?
I understand your frustration. I can't say I feel the same because I'm not American; I'm French. Yet, I understand this longing for Easy digestible soundbites.
I don't think the problem is that democrat ideas are too complex. I think that the US democrats (I mean politicians) are not proud of their ideas. They fear their own opinions. Nobody said that Bush's tax cuts were evil and selfish. They said that those tax cuts were bad for the economy. Maybe; maybe not; but they are missing the point.
Reducing taxes that much is evil and selfish. People with high revenues basically deny that luck had any impact on their success. They deny that, even if you're honest and hard working, it's so frigging hard to put bread on the table and give proper health care to your family, if you were born in the wrong neighborhood. I can't fathom how a good and charitable person can make 250k per year and still feel good about him(her)self if (s)he doesn't give back a good chunk of that amount to the community. When life smiles to you, don't you want to share with those who deserve no less, but were less lucky? Everybody knows that some bad people feed on welfare programs, but proper procedures can be implemented to limit that. And it should not be an excuse to ignore the good people who would really need some help.
I realize this sounds frighteningly leftie (especially to Americans). Yet my point holds. Those self-righteous zealots chanting "government is evil; taxes are evil" just have found a very convenient way to hide their moral shortcomings and their utter selfishness. When is the last time when they drove into a lower class neighborhood or talked with their janitor? Do they realize how life is like for these people? I'm not talking about drowning lazy bastards in tax money, I'm talking about giving poor people a chance, helping them to meet success. I'm no politician and English is not my mother tongue. I'm sure some talented politician can come up with a proper wording for this.
The important thing is to trust the goodness of your own opinions, to be proud of your values. It's got nothing to do with dumbing them down. Think about it. If you dumb yourself down, who will be left in the USA for us Rest of the Worldians to love and respect?
Slashdot Mirror
Here
If you're (still) in a frog-bashing mood, don't bother to click the above link. It says good things about the French.
What I gather from this article is that you don't fight terror by invading unrelated countries. You fight terror through boring, tedious and frustrating police and intelligence work. You share resources and information with your allies, you try to outwit the terrorists.
I think it was John Kerry who got bashed for saying something along the lines "I don't think we can ever win the war on terror, but we can reduce it to a mere nuisance". He was spot on. And the guys this article mention are doing just that. Their cost is several orders of magnitude below the cost of the Iraq war and I think they are far more effective.
Invading Iraq was a huge mistake as far as terrorism is concerned. Proponents of this war tend to present a false dichotomy. It was invading Iraq or doing nothing. This is wrong. The choice was between invading Iraq and setting up more of this kind of counter-terrorist cells.
So if you are a haliburton employee and you are against the war in iraq you should be fired?
Yes, of course. Was that a trick question on what?
You're perfectly right. Thank you for the clarification.
In fact, almost everywhere politicians have dared to give people the vote instead of just waving it through the vote has gone against the European institutions, and in many places a vote will not even be chanced because of overwhelming popular opposition
3 votes have been held. Spain voted massively for YES (77%), France and Netherlands (less) massively for NO (respectively 55% and 61%) but with a higher turnaround. Besides, the vote was not for or against European Institutions, it was for or against the European Charter.
Rubbish like ignoring a parliament to enact the will of civil servants will certainly not be helping.
You don't seem to understand how the European decision process goes. The EU is NOT a federal country. It has very little power over member states. The parliament has a consultative function but no real authority over member states. The Commission is just an administrative body and has no real power either. The EU Council has the power, it's basically a board room where EU countries negociate stuff. States are represented in the Council by the Heads of States not by anonymous European civil servants as you imply. It works pretty much like the UN. Each country has a representant in the Security Council who negociates and makes decisions in the best interest of his country.
I'll drive a parallel with the US. Donald Rumsfeld or Condi Rice are unelected officials. Yet they have been granted power by President Bush, who was elected (I won't get into the argument here). Within the bounds of theses powers, they can decide stuff independantly of the opinion of the Senate or Congress, which are elected bodies.
Maybe a better analogy : the EU is like the US would be if the Federal government had no power at all. The elected Senate would vote, but could only make recommandations since it would not have any power. The President of the US would not exist, the position would have no point. The real decisions would be made by direct negociations between State Governors, a broad equivalent of the EU Council.
but the point remains that these institutions have little to no popular support
This is ironic because the only European institution is the elected European parliament. Its powers would have been expanded in the EU constitution. It is misleading to present the EU constitution as a vote about giving power to elected or unelected bodies. The question is about transferring power from elected nationals to an elected European body. Do we want to go toward a federal European elected goverment with real powers over member states (like in the US) or do we want to keep all the power in the elected government of member states?
Prefering one way or the other is perfectly legitimate but please, don't claim that one is more democratic.
Sorry to hijack your discussion by nitpicking on your references to France and WWII but I have to correct a few historical inaccuracies.
You are saying that the French have moral authority because they did not take adequate steps to protect themselves? If that is the case, I would rather be free and immoral than moral and without my jewish friends.
You seem to believe that France refused to take part in the war, was attacked anyway and lost ; while the US decided to attack Nazi Germany, presumably to save Jews. Only the part about France losing is true. Here is a quick summary of the start of WW2 since you seem to be interested.
France (along with Britain, Canada, Australia and NZ) declared war on Germany (not the other way around) in early September 1939 in response to the German invasion of Poland. The US declared their neutrality in the conflict (apparently not convinced enough that the Nazis were bad guys, or that Jews were good guys, or whatever...) Granted, this whole declaration of war did not help the Poles at all and Poland fell in 3 weeks without receiving any military help from the allies.
Then the French (and the allies) made a stupid decision. They entrenched in the Maginot line... and waited. In May 1940, the Germans invaded by bypassing the Maginot line and overran the allies. The Britons evacuated their troops at Dunkirk and France surrendered in 6 weeks. Please note that at this point, the Nazis were still not bad enough or the Jews important enough to motivate an intervention from the US.
Fast forward 1 year til June 1941. The Nazis invade their former ally USSR. As always, they overrun their opponent and quickly reach the suburbs of Moscow. At this point, the US are getting nervous but still don't think the Nazis are bad enough to declare war to them. And yes, jews are being slaughtered but you know... shit happens.
December 1941 : Pearl Harbor. The Japanese aggression takes the US completely by surprise. Germany, being allied with Japan, declares war to the US. Note that it's not the other way around. The US never decided to go to war against Germany, that was imposed upon them. Maybe the fate of the Jews was not that important.
The rest is pretty straightforward. The US singlehandedly defeat Japan in the Pacific despite a terrible headstart. The Soviets manage to stall the Germans then break their backbone in Stalingrad. The Allied landing in Normandy seals the coffin.
This all paints a pretty different picture from what you infer. The French were stupid and inefficient in not arming themselves properly. But they made the moral choice in chosing to go to war against Germany. They probably had not much choice, but it can be argued that if the Allies had not moved in 1939, Germany could have turned against USSR earlier and left the west completely out of the conflict.
On the other hand, the US made the bright decision in staying out of the conflict as long as they could. America obviously is THE single country with the best benefit/cost ratio in WWII (with the possible exception of Switzerland, which stayed neutral all along). Huge benefits : de facto control of half the world, boost to their industry, boost to their prestige, destruction of much of the European economy. Small costs : 300 000 casualties (1.5% of Soviet losses, less than Britain, less than France, slightly more than Holland), no civilian casualties, no destruction on their soil. USSR had a similar benefit but payed 60 times more.
Yet, it's hard to say that the US hold the moral high grounds here. I think that US neutrality for 2 long years in a war against a foe that was so obviously evil and dangerous is a major shame to this great country.
Frog bashing can make you feel good but will not change the truth. France was definitively not up to its task in WWII, yet it payed dearly for it and French people don't consider WWII as one of their proudest moments. Since the war had such a happy outcome for the US, Americans tend to think that they did everything right. That's true with respect to efficiency, not with respect to morality.
We're the USA, if someone starts to militarize space, we'll just knock their systems down.
Do you realize that people from other countries also read this site? This whole "we do what we want, fuck the rest of the world" attitude has seem to become the norm in the US. I don't think most Americans realize how much their country has benefited from being viewed essentially as a benevolent power.
Don't misunderstand me. I agree with your general message and find your post insightful. That's precisely what scares me. Ann Coulter would nuke the whole middle east just because it would make her feel good. That's not a big deal, she's a loony extremist and all countries have their loony extremists. But you seem to be a reasonable, moderate person. And what you said basically amounts to: "we can do it or not do it, but we won't ever let anyone else do it". And that says a lot.
As companies find that they can't be profitable (enough) with real journalism, they'll stop doing real journalism.
You can drop the future tense here. To reduce costs, radio and TV channels are increasingly airing prepackaged news produced by the government. Of course, most of the time, they don't mention the origin of the news and make it appear as if they were independently produced and checked.
Economic pressures are pushing away from what it takes to make a good news source. In a competitive market, customers use the products they like most. Problem is that good news (ie truth) are not especially pleasant ; and can be quite unpleasant (when they prove you wrong). Also fact finding and checking is *very* expensive. All in all, papers willing to provide real news suffer a competitive disavantage against those who push cheap, sugar-coated content. The best example is the astounding coverage of Michael Jackson's trial. It's a perfect topic, business-wise. Content is incredibly cheap to produce (an anchor and a couple of *experts* arguing in a studio) and everybody loves a paedophilia trial involving a celebrity.
At the end of the day, serious news sources have a choice : stop doing actual news or die. None is good for democracy. This is one of the rare cases where free markets do not drive the public good. I realize that for many Americans, suggesting that this is possible at all verges on heresy. Yet, the merger of news and entertainment is a real issue that must be addressed.
If you want a better metaphor, Democracy is 90 sheep and 10 wolves deciding what's for dinner.
Nah. In the US, Constitutional, Democratic Republic is 98 sheep choosing which one of 2 wolves will get to decide what's for dinner.
Look, I don't share most of Rocard's ideas (he's a socialist). But I think he's one of the most honest French politicians. I know that this does not say much, yet I really believe in his integrity. It probably cost him his career in the 80's when he was killed politically by President Mitterrand (also a socialist) who rightly saw Rocard as a competitor.
Since he lost all hope of ever becoming president, Rocard has been one of the very few reliable French politicians. This freed himself from demagoguery. He's been a lonely voice of wisdom on many controversial topics (pensions, health care etc...) Software patents are just the kind of causes he likes to get involved in : important long-term consequences, not much to gain politically, yet somebody's gotta do it.
Michel Rocard's involvement in software patents is a Good Thing (TM).
Militarily, economically, culturally, diplomatically, environmentally... you name it.
If someone becomes more powerful than you, he becomes a threat because he can do stuff and you can't stop him.
... nothing is.
Most of China's land mass is worthless
Really? Says who? Worthless in terms of natural resources, food production, climate, tourism? Nonsense. The truth is that China is as big as the US and has all the natural resources a country would want.
we still produce twice as much as China does (see above CIA link). They need to seriously work on their production per-capita.
They've been doing just that for the past 10 years and show no sign of stopping soon.
That, and feeding those folks is already a serious problem
On which planet have you been for the last 50 years? Food was a major problem for China and India before the 50's. It has been solved since. OK, there are still (lots of) people starving in China/India but it's a problem of distribution, not production.
Actually, this is probably the single most impressive economic feat of the past 5 decades. China and India have moved from NOT feeding 1.6Bn people in the 50s to feeding 2.4Bn today. And they still don't reach half the land efficiency of western Europe. Nobody doubts they will be able to feed their population in the foreseeable future.
Being the biggest consumers has been a major harm to the US economy (trade deficits, etc)
Being the biggest customer is the best thing that ever happened to the US. The world is so dependant on US internal consumption that it's been financing their deficits forever. And now that the budget deficit is spiralling out of control, US debtors (especially Japan) are so much invested in T-bonds that they can't pull the plug.
The rise of India and China is a real threat for US/EU. I don't think that apples are the answer.
French government forbidding their employees to say "e-mail" just because it's a word that came from English is nothing but pure nazism.
I don't think this word means what you think it means.
You're mostly right, it's a paper transaction that does not involve cash. The seller is paid in Mandrake stock, not in cash.
Yet your analogy with stock splits is erroneous. In a stock split, nothing really happens. Each old share becomes 2 or 10 new shares. It's just a story of splitting the cake in more pieces, but everybody still has the same proportion of the cake. An investor that used to own 1% of the stock will own twice (or ten times) more shares but still own 1% because the total number of outstanding shares has been doubled (decupled).
In a merger, the cake increases but you have a smaller part of it. An investor owning 1% of Mandrake before the deal will now own 0.96% of Mandrake+Conectiva (since Mandrake's market cap seems to be around 40mEUR).
I'll follow your analogy...
An automaker asking a government for financial incentives before building a plant is one thing.
An automaker asking a government to pass a law drastically reducing car safety measures before building the plant is quite a different thing.
An automaker, already having a plant, threatening the government to close that plant unless the car safety law is passed is yet another thing.
All these situations can be called negotiations. Yet they are very different morally and legally. I sincerely hope you can see the differences.
then stop sending your hard-earned money to other countries that are of no value to us/you
They are human beings. 'nuff said.
And to my French "friends", I only wish you had
war dead buried here whose graves I could desecrate
the way you did the graves of the brave Americans
who helped free your land from the Nazis! Of
course if there were such graves, I wouldn't do
anything because unlike you fuckers I have class.
I know I shouldn't feed the trolls but... No, you obviously don't have class.
Reuters says France gave 15m euros (20m$). You should switch to a channel that broadcasts news, not hate.
Hmmm
Even if you don't speak French, the headline is pretty easy to grasp. Now, as for the reason why you deemed necessary to leap into frog-bashing mode, I can only wonder.
God!
Your post made me mad, really. I've had to make a serious effort to remind myself that I should not fall to easy generalizations. No, most Americans are not like you. Most Americans are actually decent and caring people.
Most Americans just happen to live in the same country as you. I don't even think that the proportion of selfish bastards is higher in the US than in other countries. It's just that, for some reason, selfish bastards are more vocal in the US than elsewhere.
It's OK now, the burst of anger has receded. My faith and respect in the American people is unharmed. I'm even willing to consider that you didn't really think before posting and that you don't really mean that. But do you realize how hard you make it not to hate the US? Do you realize that you're a liability to your country?
Quit whining. "It appears that the European Commission may not in fact be a complete waste of space after all" IS flamebait. You had a valid point but you chose to bury it into irrelevant drivel. Deal with the (petty) consequences.
And quit answering your own posts too.
Trying to tell us how much this matters, you use the words "intellectual", "Italian", "history", "culture", "invention", "idea", "fact", "logic", "thinking", "progress", "understanding", "world" and "Dungeons & Dragons".
Not once do you use the words "bible", "faith", "good", "evil", "values", "appropriate", "church", "America", "family", "hate", "terrorist", "abstinence", "God-given right", "profit", "US-led" or "crusade".
The argument seems to be about wether such research should receive public funding or not. Based on the above and the fact that Bush won, I can say with much certainty : this research IS totally pointless.
Even though I don't think you have to apologize that much when giving us credit, I thank you for the praise anyway :)
If this is not irony, nothing is.
That's exactly what the French are doing. And we've been doing this for 40 years. No way this administration is going to admit that we had one good idea. Besides, your President can't pronounce the frigging word.
Unless... Yeah, maybe changing the name would do it... What about Freedom power instead of Nucular?
I understand your frustration. I can't say I feel the same because I'm not American; I'm French. Yet, I understand this longing for Easy digestible soundbites.
I don't think the problem is that democrat ideas are too complex. I think that the US democrats (I mean politicians) are not proud of their ideas. They fear their own opinions. Nobody said that Bush's tax cuts were evil and selfish. They said that those tax cuts were bad for the economy. Maybe; maybe not; but they are missing the point.
Reducing taxes that much is evil and selfish. People with high revenues basically deny that luck had any impact on their success. They deny that, even if you're honest and hard working, it's so frigging hard to put bread on the table and give proper health care to your family, if you were born in the wrong neighborhood. I can't fathom how a good and charitable person can make 250k per year and still feel good about him(her)self if (s)he doesn't give back a good chunk of that amount to the community. When life smiles to you, don't you want to share with those who deserve no less, but were less lucky? Everybody knows that some bad people feed on welfare programs, but proper procedures can be implemented to limit that. And it should not be an excuse to ignore the good people who would really need some help.
I realize this sounds frighteningly leftie (especially to Americans). Yet my point holds. Those self-righteous zealots chanting "government is evil; taxes are evil" just have found a very convenient way to hide their moral shortcomings and their utter selfishness. When is the last time when they drove into a lower class neighborhood or talked with their janitor? Do they realize how life is like for these people? I'm not talking about drowning lazy bastards in tax money, I'm talking about giving poor people a chance, helping them to meet success. I'm no politician and English is not my mother tongue. I'm sure some talented politician can come up with a proper wording for this.
The important thing is to trust the goodness of your own opinions, to be proud of your values. It's got nothing to do with dumbing them down. Think about it. If you dumb yourself down, who will be left in the USA for us Rest of the Worldians to love and respect?