"First point, they are detaining people who may have had knowledge of terrorist attacks, not people who certainly had knowledge. So now they're detaining people because they might know something, not just those who actually do know something."
Detaining accused criminals who are later exonerated in court is without doubt an injustice. They are innocent, yet they are held against their will in jail. Yet this preactice is both common and consititutional. Injustices are sometimes social necessities. That those suspected of having information which may lead to the capture of terrorists are detained is unjust. That they might not actually posess that information makes the practice even more unjust. However, merely asserting an injustice is not sufficient cause to contest it. We all agree that it is an injustice. What you need to convince us of is that this injustice is not outweighed by the competing interest of preventing terrorist attacks.
"You then claim they are treated humanely as enemy combatants, but then you go back and claim that the rules of law do not apply because they're not enemy combatants but terrorists."
The policy of the U.S. government it to treat them humanely though the Geneva Conventions to not require us to afford them the same protections as prisoners of war. What is your problem with that ?
"[bla bla bla]"
Whatever. You are obvioulsly not putting in the effort to think, and I will not put in an effort to type.
"Too bad your post won't get a fair hearing here in Slashdot land-- as you have calmly and logically defanged every outlandish point in the parent diatribe."
That was prescient. I got modded down to -1. Thanks for the endorsement, anyway.
So now at least we have some evidience of a left-wing tendency to suppress, rather than dispute, contrary points of view. I find that to be an uncomfortable tactic on either side. When I wield mod points it feels terribly wrong to mod down a well-articulated position with which I disagree; My own position would be delegitimatized by the craven act of suppressing, rather than countering arguments.
Oh well. I suppose when it comes to these things liberals have thier own values. One of which seems to be "if you disagree with what I say then you don't have right to be heard."
"The government has already proven it will detain people just for what they know"
True. One of the three classes of foreigners for whom Bush suspended habeus corpus after 9/11 were those who were believed to have knowledge of terrorits attacks though they were not themselves guilty. The stated motive was to prevent flight of potential witnesses. (The other two classes were suspected terrorists and illegal aliens). It is legitimate to oppose this policy but please give your reasons for why you believe its ok to allow those with knowledge of terrorist activity to flee the country. At least reveal why you feel that is more important to allow witnesses the right to flee than to gather from them evidence used to capture terrorists.
"without criminal charge"
Considered to be civilized treatment of enemy combatants and prisoners of war. What if in WWII Germany had tried for murder captured American pilots who had bombed Berlin ? What if Britain had tried and executed German prisoners of war, some of whom certainly would have been found guitly of murder ? To detain the enemy without trial has always been considered humane. You seem to disagree with what is considered to be humane and civilized treatment of enemy prisoners caputerd in times of war.
"without provocation,"
Most Americans consider a terrorist attack on the United States to be a provaocation. You, apparently, do not.
"without family access"
Normal practice for prisoners of war and enemy combatants. The Bush government is acting according to well established norms.
"without legal representation,"
False. Legal representatives for prisoners are now pleading their cases to the Supreme Court.
"without regard for international criticism,"
Within the power of any soverign nation. That is what soverignty means.
"without regard for international laws"
The treatment of prisoners of war is governed by the Geneva accords, which clearly state their own applicability to only soldiers. Beyond a doubt they do not apply to terrorists. The detention of enemy terrorists is simply not governed by any existing international law, therefore that detention is necessarily without regard for international law. It is impossible for the United States to comply with international law when their exists now applicable international law. International terrorism did not exist at the time the laws were written. Wars between nation states were the concern of the day.
" and norms,"
True to the extnat that there exist no norms. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 were unprecedented. We are the first nation in the history of the world to go to war with an an internation terrorist organization. See the previous point: there exists no international law governing the treatment of captured terrorists in times of war, therefore the United States necessarialy acts outside of international law.
To the extent that their exist norms, such as not trying enemies caputured in war, the U.S. is abides by those norms. One crucial point to note is that we are not executing detainees. That is a norm.
"without safeguards for personal safety,"
False. The Red Cross has inspected Guantanamo and certified that prisoners have been treated humanely.
"without justification"
We are not justified in detaining those suspected of engaging in terrorism ?
" or oversight by the courts."
False. Suspension of Habeus Corpus by the executive branch is always subject to judicial review on a case-by-case basis. Lawyers representing detainees are now arguing before the Supreme Court.
The Court is deciding the narrow issue of who decides, and on what basis, detainees are classified as prisoners of war and enemy combatants. The Bush Administratiion is not viloting existing laws or norms. There are none which apply. Hence the court is pondering the issue of what new rules to invent. The court is not deciding wether those classified as p
"Its impossible for me to say what the reasons were for the Bush administration to invade Iraq. All the ones they officially used have proven to be BS."
Mass graves. Long range missles. Rape. Torture. Chemical and biological weapons programs. Ethnic genocide. Looting the national treasury. Corruption of U.N. food-for-oil program. Never happened in Iraq? Bush adminstration never mentioned those ?
The United Nations, France, Russia, China opposed war. They do not contest that Saddam commited those crimes. You do. You are well past the exremist fringe, into the domain of utter nutcases.
Saddam Hussein was one of the worst tyrants the world has known. Your denial of his crimes is an essential aspect of your conspiracy theory that its all about oil. If you were to admit that the Hussein regime committed those crimes, and that to prevent him from continuing in those crimes could be a motive to remove him from power, then it is no longer all a plot to get the oil.
"no one outside the twisted corridors of the Bush administration knows what their motivations are today."
But according to you those motives are "NO SECRET". But their motives are to get the oil. Even though we are ouside of the corridors of the Bush adminstration so we don't know that. But even though we don't know that their motive is to get the oil it is NO SECRET. Though we don't know that their motive is to get the oil because only those in the twisted corridors of the Bush Adminisration knows the motives. Which are NO SECRET.
I have a copy of the DSM-IV in hand. I am totally serious: You should seek professional help. The first step to healing is to admit to yourself that you have a problem.
"I dont' believe... we know enough about the rest of the world to decide what is good for them"
"Freedom; yes. Democracy: yes. I strongly beleive these are good for any people of any culture."
So we don't know what's good from them and freedom and democracy are good for them. Those are contradictory statements. Well which is is it ? Do we know what is good form them and freedom and democracy is good from them ? Or do we not know what is good from them and thus can not say if freedom and democracy is good for them ?
"I dont' believe... we know enough about the rest of the world..."
"...we don't really understand people in a place like Iraq..."
" The more stirring a project sounds to us, the more it will incite fear and revulsion on the people we plan to impose it upon"
So we don't know about the rest of the world and we dont' understand the people of Iraq and we know and understand about the people of Iraq which projects will "incite fear and revulsion...". Which is it ? Do we know and undersand them and can predict what will incite fear and revulsion ? Or do we not know and understand them and can not predict what will incite fear and revulsion.
"messianic program to drag the unenlightened into accepting our values."
What you characterize as a "messianic program to drag the unenlightened into accepting our values." includes preventing Saddam Hussein from exterminating entire Kurdish villages using chemicial weapons, raping and torturing, looting the treasury of Iraq, filling mass graves with hundreds of thousands of bodies, and develeoping chemical and biological weapons. That Saddam Hussein comitted those acts and that the United States Under three different administrations acted to curtal and halt them is solid and indisputable fact. By mischaracterizing those actions you act as an appolgist for one of the most murderous and vile regimes in history. It is legitimate to appose the war. It is an act of illegitmate and despicable dishonesty to characterize the removal of a brutal genocidal dicatator as a "messianic program to drag the unenlightened into accepting our values," as you have.
"What is even worse than telling seductive lies is being seduced by them yourself. In the first case you discredit yourself. In the latter case you discredit yourself and your ideals."
What a bunch of pompous self-righteous condescending horse shit that sentence is. Like it is an established fact that Iraq can't be converted into a democracy, and anyone who takes the apposing position that we will succeed in establshing democracy in Iraq is telling a "seductive lies" which discredit the very ideal of democracy. I, as would any reasonable person, will simply say of those who differ from my own predictions on the prospects for democracy in Iraq that we disagree, they are entitled to their opinions, and time will prove one of us right. You, on the other hand, feel the need to portray anyone who disagrees with you as some sort of traitor to the ideals of freedom and democracy: "..you discredit yourself and your ideals." How dare you accusing us of discreding the ideal of democracy and freedom ? How dare you ? How dare you ?
Summary: You engage in rampant self contradiction. You act as an appolgist for gencoide, corruption, murder and torture by characterizing the removal of regime which engages in those acts as a "messianic program to drag the unenlightened into accepting our values". You accuse those who predict that Iraqis could practice democray of discrediting American ideals of freedom and democracy.
1. You allege that there has existed a right-wing conspiracy since the Eisenhower administration to take over all of the oil fields in the world.
2. I accuse you of being a liberal wacko conspiracy theorist and lament the modern deceline of liberalism into in morass of paranoid hysteria.
3. You defend your consipracy theory.
Ok. I've had enough of you. Better watch it, or I'll have Koffi sic the black helicopters on you.
". Everything historical I'm posting you can corroborate from historical sources."
As it is with conspiracy theorists, the sickness lies not in observation of outward evidence, but the delusional and paranoid inferences which you draw from observation. Quote historical facts all day long and it wont' help your case because the facts which you site simply do not constitute evidence for your own assertions. If you tried to put two and two together you would not get four, but evidence of a Republican plot to control mathematics.
" You're making out like I'm claiming this is some grand and secret conspiracy. Its not. Why, because its not particularly secret."
Not secret and evident to whom besides yourself ? Do I need to wear a flaming aluminum foil hat to block the mind control rays if I am to understand this ?
Any sane human being would look at the history of improper influence exerted on politicians by the petroleum lobby and lament it along with the umpteen zillion other instances of influence pedling in democracies by special interests of every stripe and color, from the automobile industry to the farm lobby. You, on the other hand, believe political support of special intersts is proof a vast 50-year old conspiracy by Republicans, involving the CIA, to take over all of the oil fields in the world.
..quote from the testimony at Smith's court martial
Cruel individuals exist within all societes. The merit of a civilization lies in how it how it treats those who act with cruetly. In the United States prosectute them, which speaks well for us.
" Either your respect the sovereignty of nations or you don't"
In fact, there are any number of posible policies for respect of sovereignty. For example, a nation could choose to respect the sovereignty of democracies but not of genocidal dictatorships.
Not sure how well you are versed in history but Iraq sits on top of the cradle of civilization. There were great civilizations there when your Western ancestors were living in caves or sod huts and running around in animal skins.
An interesting point for it would seem to indicate that there exists no first-mover advantage with respect to the advance of civilzations. Without doubt the kingdoms of ancient Sumeria, Egypt and China far surpased their Europen contemporaires with respect to all social and intellectual endeavor. Yet despite this fantastic head start, once dominant civilizations have now fallen far behind. They are now characterized by illiteracy, poverty, religious fanatism and government oppression. Western societies are characterized by high rates of literacy, greater wealth, more even distibution of wealth, rule of law, and rapid technological advance, a high degree of social mobility and individual social and economic freedom. As a result Arabs have become jealous and emittered, despiratley recounting ancient greatness to preserve a lingering pride in their failed civilizations.
Many of the misfortune's of the Arab world can be traced to military interventions from the West, including the Romans, the Crusades, British imperialism and now U.S. imperialism.
Ancient Romans occupied England, France, Spain and the middle east. Following the collapse of Roman Empire Arab civilization countinued its asent and Europe entered a thousand-year period of stagnation and decline known as the dark ages. From those facts you nonsensically conclude that Romans are partly accountable for Arab misfortune and the relative ascenadancy of the west. Europeans were ultimately defeated in the crusades by Arabs. For whom was that a setback ? From the time of the crusades until the first modern occuptation of Arab lands by western nations, the French occupation of Egypt by Napolean, Europe had undergone a renassaince in art, music, science and commerce and the middle east had indepently declined into backwardsness and poverty. The Rosetta stone was discoved among Arabs by Euroepeans because scholorship in Egypt had declined so low as to not recognize its worth. Arab nations are not poor and illiterate because they were occupied by Britain, rather, Arab tribes were so easily overthrown and occupied by Britain because they were poor and illiterate and thus could not contend, militarily, against the comparative sophisitaction of an industrialized nation. Blaming the long-term decline of Arab civilization on western nations has no basis in historical fact.
"The Neocons are in fact looking ahead to when the day there isn't enough oil to meet demand."
Perhaps you should consider loosening the strap on your tinfoil hat. It might be restricting circulation to your brain.
You are attributing hidden malevolent motives to political leaders with whom you disagree, accusing them pursing a secret agenda, over decades, to sieze the world's oil supplies. Accusations that your political oppponents are working toward a secret malevloent agenda are an old and tired form of propaganda wherin you seek to malign those with whom you disagree while protecting your own accusations from a lack of evidence by intrinsicly coupling the evidenciary flaw into your own argument; If we assert that there is no evidence to support your claim of a secret plot then you will likely reply "Exactly, that's proves it, because it's secret plot!". We around here know the valuelessness of an untestable an non-falseifiable proposition. Those not blinded by their own political bias will certainly recognize you for a conspiracy theorist.
If you don't want to give the impression that you are a fringe wacko, then try to find some reasons to disagree with Republicans without resorting to conspiracy theories about a secret plot to sieze the world's oil fields.
You believe that Republicans have, since the Eisenhower administration, been engaged in a secret, decades-long conspiracy to control the world's oil fields. You might also be interested to learn that the Jews have been engaged in a secret conspiracy to control the world's banks, the U.S military is engaged in a secret conspiracy to supress evidence of alien landings and the AIDs virus was developed by the CIA to exterminate blacks in Africa.
The fact of the matter is that U.S. foreign policy is a process of gradual bungling forward toward fragementary and irratic consensus on multiple forign policy goals. That somewhere from amid that ambling choas you can pull out a few acts which, by intent or not, ultimately, to some degree benefited U.S. oil interests proves exactly shit.
Liberalism was once a respectable idiology. How has it become then new home base of consipary theory wackos with a hyterical animosities ?
personally don't mind extra scrutiny if it's in the name of keeping me and my family alive.
People in 1933 Germany were quite happy to put up with Hitler's new policies, and give up "some" of their civil rights, for a variety of perfectly valid reasons too...
With a single sentence you have exemplified both Godwin's law and Arthur Schopenhauer's thirty-second strategem. Readers can draw their own conlcusions about this conjunction of well-documented forms of noxious and invalid rhetoric with "+5 insighful" moderation.
Government survilenace can be used either to protect the safety of law abiding citizens or to deprive those citizens of their privacy and freedom. The former is a shield from violent attack on the innocent, the latter a gurantee of opression. There is hard question: How does a democratic society permit benificial surveilance and disallow oppressive surveilance. Those who condem all government monitoring out of hand (see parent post) are a threat to democracy just as are those who support government monitoring without question; both groups advocate policies which place citizens at risk.
We should have government controls in place to catch terrorists and we should insure that those controls do not become a tool for oppresion by our own government. Those serious about the defense of life and liberty will consider the complicated issue of how to achieve that. We would do well to ignore the extremeists: the tinfoil hat brigade on the left and the "my government can do no wrong" CIA fanboys on the right.
from the article: "This naturally occurring methane is a potent greenhouse gas, estimated to be 21 times as damaging to the ozone layer as carbon dioxide."
Perhaps, given the topic, it is appropriate that that the article itself contain some bullshit. But that statement is excessive.
Greenhouse gasses DO NOT deplete the ozone layer. A single egregious falsehood within the article undermines the credibility of the entire article; The author has demonstrated that she can not acurately report important facts, therefore all statements made in the article fall into question.
Its obvious from your post that you are a phony expert, only posing as a developer, whith no actual experience. Perhaps you should include disclaimer, "I am not a real software developer but I play one on Slashdot".
"both companies offer excellent APIs that are specific to their platforms (e.g. DirectX on Windows and Cocoa on Mac)."
There is first piece of evidence that you don't have clue what you are talking about: DirectX and Cocoa are not comparaible APIs. DirectX is the Microsoft's graphics API for video games. A comparable API on OS X would be the combination of Core Graphics and OpenGL, aka Core OpenGL. Cocoa is an Object C object library, not a Graphics API optimized for video game programming.
"Apple seems to care about its users somewhat, but not at all about its developers. There just isn't the same level of outreach nor the same 'developers come first' attitude as Microsoft."
If you actually developed on Windows and OS X, or had even attemped it, the first thing you would notice is that all of Apple's development tools are excellent and free, including Project Builder/Xcode and debugging tools such as Shark. Microsoft's Visual Studio.net costs $1000.00 per workstation. If you install on both home and office machines, its $2,000.00. I have the full set of Apple development tools installed on my laptop, desktop at home and desktop at work. Total cost: $0.00. The comparable setup for Windows would cost me $3000.00. For that reason I only have Visual Studio installed on one computer at work. Oh, and Visual Studio required that I sit and feed the damn thing six CDs over the course of hours. Apple developer tools only takes a moment to install from a downloaded package.
Then there is the issue of support. Apple hosts free topic-specific mailing lists and Apple's own programmers who develop the OS post replies to these lists. Thus if you develop for Apple, you can get good answers straight from the developers for free. I haven't found anything comparible offered by Microsoft.
"Apple has a habit of shipping free products by surprise that demolish the market for an established Mac vendor. (how'd you like to be a Mac-only calendar/email application developer the day after iCal and Mail came out? or MetroWerks' Mac team after Xcode?)"
First of all, third-party developers do not have god-given right to monopoly. Others can and will compete, possibly among them the OS vendor itself. Maybe its doesn't work that way on the Planet of Make-Believe Developers where you come from, but down here on earth its just a fact of life.
Secondly, how is this meaninfully different than what Micosoft does ? How would you like to be developer working at Netscape the day before Internet Explorer was announced ? Not to mention that Microsoft not only expands into new markets but takes the opprotunity to establish closed standard (MS Office document formats) or pervert existing standards (Java, Kerberos). Apple helps develoers by adhering to open information interchange formats. Microsoft is downright adversarial, making enemies of developers by promoting closed document formats accessible only by Micrsoft applications.
"Since the corn farmers of Iowa have made ethanol a political litmus-test for presidential nominees, the American people have been stuck paying huge amounts (something like $30 for each $1 of profit earned by ethanol sales"
Agreed, but that's only the financial cost. Ethanol fuel has staggering environmental costs:
1. Destruction of natural habitat. You have to plow under a lot of prararie and chop down forests to make room for those fields of corn. 2. Soil erosion. Ploughing up fields causes soil erosion. Even with best practices, topsoil washes away, clogging streams and rivers with mud. 3. Water pollution. Runnoff from farm fields contaminates rivers and streams with pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers. Even runoff contaminated with natural fertizliziers, such as dung, pollute waterways with nitrogen. 4. Air pollution. For every gallon of fuel ethanal, it requires 1.8 times that amount of energy from fossil fuels to create that gallon of ethanol. So we are contamating the air with combustion byproducts from 2.8 gallons of fuel, instead of 1. 5. Refinement byproducts. The process of converting biomass leaves stuff which must be disposed of.
Don't get me wrong, I am not against agriculture. We need to eat. However, I am against pointless environment destruction. There is no better example of that than ethanol fuel; If you consume the fossil fuels directly instead of using them to produce ethanol, then you can eleminate the expense of producing ethanol and come out ahead.
Government ethanol subsidies have four main aspects: -They cost tax payers a fortune. -Politicians use them to bribe farmers for votes. -It is corporate welfare handout to ADM, which dominates the ethanol refinment business and owns almost every politician in the US and Canada. - It fucks up the environment with no net redeeming benefit.
How can we fix this ? The combined lobbying power of ADM and agriculture is insurmountable. So the only feasible remedy is: The government should just cut ADM and the farmers an annual welfare check, pay them directly, and not reqire that they produce ethanol as a condition for receiving that check. It's a win-win situation. The taxpayers win because they only have to payoff ADM and farmers but not support the additional expense of producing ethanol. The environment wins. ADM and farmers win because they still recieve their corporate and agricultureal welfare payments, but they do not have to work work to produce ethanol.
from the article: "This floors houses the Machine Intelligence Lab(MIL) as well class rooms and professor's offices."
Spoken like a true engineer.
Re:Does NASA have too much money?
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Our Man In Black
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Mars: 1 Earth: 1
Looks to me like tie.
Re:First Draft of the Prime Directive?
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Our Man In Black
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"no Star Fleet personnel may interfere with the healthy development of alien life and culture."
The Prime Directive is an ethical cop out. It cherry picks the issue of interference, making the easy decision of whether to intervene when intervention is unneccessary, in the case of "healthy development". It avoids the moral dilema of how to act in the case of unhealthy development. It does not address the truly difficult eithical questions: How are we to distinquish healthy from unhealthy development ? By what right do we judge what is healthy for an alien species and what is not ? Should we intervene when our own standards indicate that development is unhealthy ?
I once believed that the Prime Directive was an atrocious work of design by the architects of the Star Trek Universe. A more forgiving interpretation would be that it consititutes deliberate and cyncial comentary on the perpetual unwillingess of politicians to address the hard issues. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.
Re:Administration hasn't done anything bad
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"Clinton: War in Bosnia/Serbia WITH UN backing" "Bush: War in Iraq with NO international support"
That's a disingenuous statement, given that the Clinton Administration did not have U.N. approval for its war on Serbia during the Kosovo conflict.
Your comment recalls this amusing exchange between Edith Cresson, John Reid, and Richard Perle:
EDITH CRESSON: No, the problem is not to know if Saddam is a bad chap or not. Of course he is and nobody doubts of that. The problem is, is it allowed to enter a country with arms and make war outside the legal framework of the United Nations who has two conditions very clear. Either you are attacked and then of course you can respond or there is a resolution with a majority that delivers the authorisation to make a war. Outside of those two conditions you are not allowed to make a war.
REID: Bonsoir Edith. Isn't it the case that you joined us in Kosovo without a resolution in the face of a Russian veto precisely because we thought the danger was so great that people had to be protected?
CRESSON: But everybody agreed then.
REID: No, no, everybody didn't agree. The Russians didn't agree, there was no UN resolution. We went into Kosovo through NATO because the United Nations wouldn't agree but we thought the moral consequences of not going in were so great that we should take that action, and the French agreed with us on that occasion and this occasion they don't think that the consequences are so great.
CRESSON: There was a big problem inside Kosovo, people were killing each other and we of course... the intervention was quite normally taken.. the decision was taken so we agreed on that aspect. Nobody has said that there has been a majority to get inside Iraq, there was no majority, there was not even a vote.
PERLE: Well I am listening to this discussion and there is no question that John Reid has demolished Madame Cresson's argument. When France thought it was a good thing to use force outside the United Nations, France did so, didn't complain, didn't say this is illegal and outside a legal framework. In this case, where the French President believes that it is not in France's interest to use force, she is invoking a legal argument that was irrelevant the last time. Let's not be hypocritical about this.
[I've edited out the moderators comments. The full transript appears here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/programmes/panorama/transcripts/dividedworld.txt ]
"Because they don't contribute their hard-earned money back into our* economy."
Every time the issue of trade comes up here some dumb-ass posts something like that.
It's trade people. It's an EXCHANGE of goods and services. Meaning that transfers of goods in one direction are reciprocated by transfers of equal value in the reverse direction. If foreigners don't "contribute...mony back" then they are transfering goods and services to us but we are not transfering goods back to them. Yay ! Free stuff for Amercians !
When Americans purchase (goods, services, labor) from India we spend American dollars to do that. Either we first buy rupees from India then purchase in that currency, or else we purchase from India directly in dollars. Either way, dollars have left the country. Someone outside the country is left holding U.S. dollars. Those dollars serve as an IOU for the U.S. eceonomy. They can be exchanged for goods. They say "You gave the US economy goods or services from the India economy. These dollars represent the right of the holder to claim goods are services worth an equivelent amount from the American economy."
"And the thing you don't realize is this also means the muggers have guns."
If guns are legal then muggers will have guns. If guns are illegal then muggers will have guns. Gun control laws insure that law-abiding citizens will be out-gunned by criminals. The gun control debate is not about whether we allow criminals to carry guns. Criminals will carry guns regardless of the law. Criminals, by definition, break the law. The gun control debate is really about whether it should be legal for potential victims to carry guns.
"Having a gun is useless when a mugger pulls one on you first."
It usually works that way in movies and TV. You might be confusing those things with the real world. The possibility that potential victims and bystanders are armed is a significant deterent to crime. The actual fact of the matter is that victims and bystanders do draw and fire. When I was living in Tennesee two guys in black ski masks pulled up to an all-night convenience in a stolen van, burst in with semi-automatic rifles and opened fire on the clerk. The clerk pulled his pistol and fired five shots; Three bullets into the heart of one assailant and two into the heart of the other.
You seem too focused on this one scenerio of an armed attacker holding up one person in isolation. Armed assailants have no advantage in a crowds where the average citizen is packing. They are immediatly outgunned. You can "get the draw" on one person or perhaps a tightly clustered group of a few people. You can't get the draw on a crowd of people scattered around a bank lobby or convenience store when ordinary citizens are carrying concealed weapons. This goes for city streets and iPods too.
Gun control laws are an aberation created when a society stops taking crime seriously. In a society under threat law-abiding citizens need the right to be as well armed as are their attackers.
News is supposed to be "PC"
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"News is supposed to be 'PC'"
The term "Politically Correct" (PC) is a satirical epithet applied to liberal doctrine by conservatives. It mocks the presumption that liberal opinions are the "correct" opinions, in an absolute sense, not one perspective among many.
The term "PC" is made more amusing to conservatives by the liberals' conviction of their own political correctness preventing liberals from recognizing the joke that liberals' are unawaredly convinced of their own political correctness. "Of course our beliefs are the correct beliefs, why is that funny ?" ask the liberals.
Which brings us to your assertion that "News is supposed to be PC" What you are telling us ?
1. That news should be reported from a liberal perspective because... 2. Liberals are right and conservatives are wrong. 3. You are blind to the fact that you are promoting your own perspective in absolutist terms.
Note, "PC" denotes both the status of a particular belief as liberal and the associated presumption of correctness. For example, consider the statement "Johnny failed first grade, but he is African-American, therefore holding him back at that grade level would not be PC". In this sentence, "PC" serves to associate with liberals the principle that unqualified indviduals should be promoted if they are members of a particular ethnic group. But "PC" is also meant to characerize the attitude of those who would defend that principle as an absolutist faith that they are "right" and others are "wrong".
Fox News is unpopular with liberals not becuase it sets forth alnternative and consertavie "correct" notions, but because it undermines the very notion of correctnees in political discourse. Fox betrays the news broadcast tradition of delivering news in somber, ministerial tones which close off question and doubt; "Though shalt not question the word of Jennings". "The shalt now question the word of Brokaw." The informal on-air attitude of Fox news is like "Here are our correspondents and here is what they seem to to think is going on." It's more upbeat and friendly. We are allowed to ask questions. Fox news conveys to television viewers the dangerous attitude that what you see on TV is people telling you what they think is going on, not sacred and unquestionable truths. It undermines the notion of TV news as a conduit for absolute and correct truths, subverting the entire system of liberal propagandizing through control of unexamined "correct" news content.
"One area in the Great Lakes where a team of horses... went through the ice with a load of logs... the skeletal remains of the horse are still there, harness, logs and all."
"For expensive items, I believe they give you a note saying you had it with you, when you left your home country. If you can't produce such a note going back, tough luck, you have to pay a small fortune in tax."
Trivial to defeat. Have a friend deliver the laptop and the note to you. When the checkers check him on his return flight to the U.S. they find neither a laptop nor a note.
"you don't know who I am, what I am, or where I am."... "What passes for economics these days is nothing more than capitalist economics. The day will come when all of you are shown to be a bunch of fools. You guys are nothing more than the modern day alchemists. Capitalism WILL collapse..."
Well that remark tells us all we need to know about you, comrade Velauthapillai.
You can not be for real. You've picked up this Marxist personna for trolling purposes. Right ? Drop out of character and admit it. Nobody actually believes that shit anymore. Ok, so for a while I thought you were some poor deluded third worlder suckered by communist propanda. You're really a fat lonely chick from New Jersey who gets her kicks by trolling on Slashdot and masturbating to photos of Leonardo DiCaprio.
But wait, you are more prissy than that. Ahh... You're gay ? Yes, high liklihood that you are gay. Hence left-wing. But you exagerate that position to the point of communism. Because communism is flamboyant. Prissy and flamboyent=gay. Admit it, I figured out who you are, right ?
Ok, so you are a gay guy pretending to be a Marxist. Or a Leninist or Trotskyite. Whatever. I can already predict that you're going get all prissy about exactly what category of communism you place yourself in. Make a big deal about the distintions between these categories. That's part of the act.
"you don't know who I am, what I am, or where I am."
And see ? You are teasing there, attempting to flirt.
Ok. So this is my best guess: You are a homosexual pseudo-communist troll.
Slashdot Mirror
Some of us consider that to be a feature.
"First point, they are detaining people who may have had knowledge of terrorist attacks, not people who certainly had knowledge. So now they're detaining people because they might know something, not just those who actually do know something."
Detaining accused criminals who are later exonerated in court is without doubt an injustice. They are innocent, yet they are held against their will in jail. Yet this preactice is both common and consititutional. Injustices are sometimes social necessities. That those suspected of having information which may lead to the capture of terrorists are detained is unjust. That they might not actually posess that information makes the practice even more unjust. However, merely asserting an injustice is not sufficient cause to contest it. We all agree that it is an injustice. What you need to convince us of is that this injustice is not outweighed by the competing interest of preventing terrorist attacks.
"You then claim they are treated humanely as enemy combatants, but then you go back and claim that the rules of law do not apply because they're not enemy combatants but terrorists."
The policy of the U.S. government it to treat them humanely though the Geneva Conventions to not require us to afford them the same protections as prisoners of war. What is your problem with that ?
"[bla bla bla]"
Whatever. You are obvioulsly not putting in the effort to think, and I will not put in an effort to type.
"Too bad your post won't get a fair hearing here in Slashdot land-- as you have calmly and logically defanged every outlandish point in the parent diatribe."
That was prescient. I got modded down to -1. Thanks for the endorsement, anyway.
So now at least we have some evidience of a left-wing tendency to suppress, rather than dispute, contrary points of view. I find that to be an uncomfortable tactic on either side. When I wield mod points it feels terribly wrong to mod down a well-articulated position with which I disagree; My own position would be delegitimatized by the craven act of suppressing, rather than countering arguments.
Oh well. I suppose when it comes to these things liberals have thier own values. One of which seems to be "if you disagree with what I say then you don't have right to be heard."
"The government has already proven it will detain people just for what they know"
True. One of the three classes of foreigners for whom Bush suspended habeus corpus after 9/11 were those who were believed to have knowledge of terrorits attacks though they were not themselves guilty. The stated motive was to prevent flight of potential witnesses. (The other two classes were suspected terrorists and illegal aliens). It is legitimate to oppose this policy but please give your reasons for why you believe its ok to allow those with knowledge of terrorist activity to flee the country. At least reveal why you feel that is more important to allow witnesses the right to flee than to gather from them evidence used to capture terrorists.
"without criminal charge"
Considered to be civilized treatment of enemy combatants and prisoners of war. What if in WWII Germany had tried for murder captured American pilots who had bombed Berlin ? What if Britain had tried and executed German prisoners of war, some of whom certainly would have been found guitly of murder ? To detain the enemy without trial has always been considered humane. You seem to disagree with what is considered to be humane and civilized treatment of enemy prisoners caputerd in times of war.
"without provocation,"
Most Americans consider a terrorist attack on the United States to be a provaocation. You, apparently, do not.
"without family access"
Normal practice for prisoners of war and enemy combatants. The Bush government is acting according to well established norms.
"without legal representation,"
False. Legal representatives for prisoners are now pleading their cases to the Supreme Court.
"without regard for international criticism,"
Within the power of any soverign nation. That is what soverignty means.
"without regard for international laws"
The treatment of prisoners of war is governed by the Geneva accords, which clearly state their own applicability to only soldiers. Beyond a doubt they do not apply to terrorists. The detention of enemy terrorists is simply not governed by any existing international law, therefore that detention is necessarily without regard for international law. It is impossible for the United States to comply with international law when their exists now applicable international law. International terrorism did not exist at the time the laws were written. Wars between nation states were the concern of the day.
" and norms,"
True to the extnat that there exist no norms. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 were unprecedented. We are the first nation in the history of the world to go to war with an an internation terrorist organization. See the previous point: there exists no international law governing the treatment of captured terrorists in times of war, therefore the United States necessarialy acts outside of international law.
To the extent that their exist norms, such as not trying enemies caputured in war, the U.S. is abides by those norms. One crucial point to note is that we are not executing detainees. That is a norm.
"without safeguards for personal safety,"
False. The Red Cross has inspected Guantanamo and certified that prisoners have been treated humanely.
"without justification"
We are not justified in detaining those suspected of engaging in terrorism ?
" or oversight by the courts."
False. Suspension of Habeus Corpus by the executive branch is always subject to judicial review on a case-by-case basis. Lawyers representing detainees are now arguing before the Supreme Court.
The Court is deciding the narrow issue of who decides, and on what basis, detainees are classified as prisoners of war and enemy combatants. The Bush Administratiion is not viloting existing laws or norms. There are none which apply. Hence the court is pondering the issue of what new rules to invent. The court is not deciding wether those classified as p
"Its impossible for me to say what the reasons were for the Bush administration to invade Iraq. All the ones they officially used have proven to be BS."
Mass graves. Long range missles. Rape. Torture. Chemical and biological weapons programs. Ethnic genocide. Looting the national treasury. Corruption of U.N. food-for-oil program. Never happened in Iraq? Bush adminstration never mentioned those ?
The United Nations, France, Russia, China opposed war. They do not contest that Saddam commited those crimes. You do. You are well past the exremist fringe, into the domain of utter nutcases.
Saddam Hussein was one of the worst tyrants the world has known. Your denial of his crimes is an essential aspect of your conspiracy theory that its all about oil. If you were to admit that the Hussein regime committed those crimes, and that to prevent him from continuing in those crimes could be a motive to remove him from power, then it is no longer all a plot to get the oil.
"no one outside the twisted corridors of the Bush administration knows what their motivations are today."
But according to you those motives are "NO SECRET". But their motives are to get the oil. Even though we are ouside of the corridors of the Bush adminstration so we don't know that. But even though we don't know that their motive is to get the oil it is NO SECRET. Though we don't know that their motive is to get the oil because only those in the twisted corridors of the Bush Adminisration knows the motives. Which are NO SECRET.
I have a copy of the DSM-IV in hand. I am totally serious: You should seek professional help. The first step to healing is to admit to yourself that you have a problem.
"I dont' believe... we know enough about the rest of the world to decide what is good for them"
...". Which is it ? Do we know and undersand them and can predict what will incite fear and revulsion ? Or do we not know and understand them and can not predict what will incite fear and revulsion.
"Freedom; yes. Democracy: yes. I strongly beleive these are good for any people of any culture."
So we don't know what's good from them and freedom and democracy are good for them. Those are contradictory statements. Well which is is it ? Do we know what is good form them and freedom and democracy is good from them ? Or do we not know what is good from them and thus can not say if freedom and democracy is good for them ?
"I dont' believe... we know enough about the rest of the world..."
"...we don't really understand people in a place like Iraq..."
" The more stirring a project sounds to us, the more it will incite fear and revulsion on the people we plan to impose it upon"
So we don't know about the rest of the world and we dont' understand the people of Iraq and we know and understand about the people of Iraq which projects will "incite fear and revulsion
"messianic program to drag the unenlightened into accepting our values."
What you characterize as a "messianic program to drag the unenlightened into accepting our values." includes preventing Saddam Hussein from exterminating entire Kurdish villages using chemicial weapons, raping and torturing, looting the treasury of Iraq, filling mass graves with hundreds of thousands of bodies, and develeoping chemical and biological weapons. That Saddam Hussein comitted those acts and that the United States Under three different administrations acted to curtal and halt them is solid and indisputable fact. By mischaracterizing those actions you act as an appolgist for one of the most murderous and vile regimes in history. It is legitimate to appose the war. It is an act of illegitmate and despicable dishonesty to characterize the removal of a brutal genocidal dicatator as a "messianic program to drag the unenlightened into accepting our values," as you have.
"What is even worse than telling seductive lies is being seduced by them yourself. In the first case you discredit yourself. In the latter case you discredit yourself and your ideals."
What a bunch of pompous self-righteous condescending horse shit that sentence is. Like it is an established fact that Iraq can't be converted into a democracy, and anyone who takes the apposing position that we will succeed in establshing democracy in Iraq is telling a "seductive lies" which discredit the very ideal of democracy. I, as would any reasonable person, will simply say of those who differ from my own predictions on the prospects for democracy in Iraq that we disagree, they are entitled to their opinions, and time will prove one of us right. You, on the other hand, feel the need to portray anyone who disagrees with you as some sort of traitor to the ideals of freedom and democracy: "..you discredit yourself and your ideals." How dare you accusing us of discreding the ideal of democracy and freedom ? How dare you ? How dare you ?
Summary: You engage in rampant self contradiction. You act as an appolgist for gencoide, corruption, murder and torture by characterizing the removal of regime which engages in those acts as a "messianic program to drag the unenlightened into accepting our values". You accuse those who predict that Iraqis could practice democray of discrediting American ideals of freedom and democracy.
Summary and review:
1. You allege that there has existed a right-wing conspiracy since the Eisenhower administration to take over all of the oil fields in the world.
2. I accuse you of being a liberal wacko conspiracy theorist and lament the modern deceline of liberalism into in morass of paranoid hysteria.
3. You defend your consipracy theory.
Ok. I've had enough of you. Better watch it, or I'll have Koffi sic the black helicopters on you.
". Everything historical I'm posting you can corroborate from historical sources."
As it is with conspiracy theorists, the sickness lies not in observation of outward evidence, but the delusional and paranoid inferences which you draw from observation. Quote historical facts all day long and it wont' help your case because the facts which you site simply do not constitute evidence for your own assertions. If you tried to put two and two together you would not get four, but evidence of a Republican plot to control mathematics.
" You're making out like I'm claiming this is some grand and secret conspiracy. Its not. Why, because its not particularly secret."
Not secret and evident to whom besides yourself ? Do I need to wear a flaming aluminum foil hat to block the mind control rays if I am to understand this ?
Any sane human being would look at the history of improper influence exerted on politicians by the petroleum lobby and lament it along with the umpteen zillion other instances of influence pedling in democracies by special interests of every stripe and color, from the automobile industry to the farm lobby. You, on the other hand, believe political support of special intersts is proof a vast 50-year old conspiracy by Republicans, involving the CIA, to take over all of the oil fields in the world.
Cruel individuals exist within all societes. The merit of a civilization lies in how it how it treats those who act with cruetly. In the United States prosectute them, which speaks well for us.
The above statement is an example of a false dichotomy.
In fact, there are any number of posible policies for respect of sovereignty. For example, a nation could choose to respect the sovereignty of democracies but not of genocidal dictatorships.
An interesting point for it would seem to indicate that there exists no first-mover advantage with respect to the advance of civilzations. Without doubt the kingdoms of ancient Sumeria, Egypt and China far surpased their Europen contemporaires with respect to all social and intellectual endeavor. Yet despite this fantastic head start, once dominant civilizations have now fallen far behind. They are now characterized by illiteracy, poverty, religious fanatism and government oppression. Western societies are characterized by high rates of literacy, greater wealth, more even distibution of wealth, rule of law, and rapid technological advance, a high degree of social mobility and individual social and economic freedom. As a result Arabs have become jealous and emittered, despiratley recounting ancient greatness to preserve a lingering pride in their failed civilizations.
Ancient Romans occupied England, France, Spain and the middle east. Following the collapse of Roman Empire Arab civilization countinued its asent and Europe entered a thousand-year period of stagnation and decline known as the dark ages. From those facts you nonsensically conclude that Romans are partly accountable for Arab misfortune and the relative ascenadancy of the west. Europeans were ultimately defeated in the crusades by Arabs. For whom was that a setback ? From the time of the crusades until the first modern occuptation of Arab lands by western nations, the French occupation of Egypt by Napolean, Europe had undergone a renassaince in art, music, science and commerce and the middle east had indepently declined into backwardsness and poverty. The Rosetta stone was discoved among Arabs by Euroepeans because scholorship in Egypt had declined so low as to not recognize its worth. Arab nations are not poor and illiterate because they were occupied by Britain, rather, Arab tribes were so easily overthrown and occupied by Britain because they were poor and illiterate and thus could not contend, militarily, against the comparative sophisitaction of an industrialized nation. Blaming the long-term decline of Arab civilization on western nations has no basis in historical fact."The Neocons are in fact looking ahead to when the day there isn't enough oil to meet demand."
Perhaps you should consider loosening the strap on your tinfoil hat. It might be restricting circulation to your brain.
You are attributing hidden malevolent motives to political leaders with whom you disagree, accusing them pursing a secret agenda, over decades, to sieze the world's oil supplies. Accusations that your political oppponents are working toward a secret malevloent agenda are an old and tired form of propaganda wherin you seek to malign those with whom you disagree while protecting your own accusations from a lack of evidence by intrinsicly coupling the evidenciary flaw into your own argument; If we assert that there is no evidence to support your claim of a secret plot then you will likely reply "Exactly, that's proves it, because it's secret plot!". We around here know the valuelessness of an untestable an non-falseifiable proposition. Those not blinded by their own political bias will certainly recognize you for a conspiracy theorist.
If you don't want to give the impression that you are a fringe wacko, then try to find some reasons to disagree with Republicans without resorting to conspiracy theories about a secret plot to sieze the world's oil fields.
You believe that Republicans have, since the Eisenhower administration, been engaged in a secret, decades-long conspiracy to control the world's oil fields. You might also be interested to learn that the Jews have been engaged in a secret conspiracy to control the world's banks, the U.S military is engaged in a secret conspiracy to supress evidence of alien landings and the AIDs virus was developed by the CIA to exterminate blacks in Africa.
The fact of the matter is that U.S. foreign policy is a process of gradual bungling forward toward fragementary and irratic consensus on multiple forign policy goals. That somewhere from amid that ambling choas you can pull out a few acts which, by intent or not, ultimately, to some degree benefited U.S. oil interests proves exactly shit.
Liberalism was once a respectable idiology. How has it become then new home base of consipary theory wackos with a hyterical animosities ?
With a single sentence you have exemplified both Godwin's law and Arthur Schopenhauer's thirty-second strategem. Readers can draw their own conlcusions about this conjunction of well-documented forms of noxious and invalid rhetoric with "+5 insighful" moderation.
Government survilenace can be used either to protect the safety of law abiding citizens or to deprive those citizens of their privacy and freedom. The former is a shield from violent attack on the innocent, the latter a gurantee of opression. There is hard question: How does a democratic society permit benificial surveilance and disallow oppressive surveilance. Those who condem all government monitoring out of hand (see parent post) are a threat to democracy just as are those who support government monitoring without question; both groups advocate policies which place citizens at risk.
We should have government controls in place to catch terrorists and we should insure that those controls do not become a tool for oppresion by our own government. Those serious about the defense of life and liberty will consider the complicated issue of how to achieve that. We would do well to ignore the extremeists: the tinfoil hat brigade on the left and the "my government can do no wrong" CIA fanboys on the right.
from the article:
"This naturally occurring methane is a potent greenhouse gas, estimated to be 21 times as damaging to the ozone layer as carbon dioxide."
Perhaps, given the topic, it is appropriate that that the article itself contain some bullshit. But that statement is excessive.
Greenhouse gasses DO NOT deplete the ozone layer. A single egregious falsehood within the article undermines the credibility of the entire article; The author has demonstrated that she can not acurately report important facts, therefore all statements made in the article fall into question.
Its obvious from your post that you are a phony expert, only posing as a developer, whith no actual experience. Perhaps you should include disclaimer, "I am not a real software developer but I play one on Slashdot".
"both companies offer excellent APIs that are specific to their platforms (e.g. DirectX on Windows and Cocoa on Mac)."
There is first piece of evidence that you don't have clue what you are talking about: DirectX and Cocoa are not comparaible APIs. DirectX is the Microsoft's graphics API for video games. A comparable API on OS X would be the combination of Core Graphics and OpenGL, aka Core OpenGL. Cocoa is an Object C object library, not a Graphics API optimized for video game programming.
"Apple seems to care about its users somewhat, but not at all about its developers. There just isn't the same level of outreach nor the same 'developers come first' attitude as Microsoft."
If you actually developed on Windows and OS X, or had even attemped it, the first thing you would notice is that all of Apple's development tools are excellent and free, including Project Builder/Xcode and debugging tools such as Shark. Microsoft's Visual Studio.net costs $1000.00 per workstation. If you install on both home and office machines, its $2,000.00. I have the full set of Apple development tools installed on my laptop, desktop at home and desktop at work. Total cost: $0.00. The comparable setup for Windows would cost me $3000.00. For that reason I only have Visual Studio installed on one computer at work. Oh, and Visual Studio required that I sit and feed the damn thing six CDs over the course of hours. Apple developer tools only takes a moment to install from a downloaded package.
Then there is the issue of support. Apple hosts free topic-specific mailing lists and Apple's own programmers who develop the OS post replies to these lists. Thus if you develop for Apple, you can get good answers straight from the developers for free. I haven't found anything comparible offered by Microsoft.
"Apple has a habit of shipping free products by surprise that demolish the market for an established Mac vendor. (how'd you like to be a Mac-only calendar/email application developer the day after iCal and Mail came out? or MetroWerks' Mac team after Xcode?)"
First of all, third-party developers do not have god-given right to monopoly. Others can and will compete, possibly among them the OS vendor itself. Maybe its doesn't work that way on the Planet of Make-Believe Developers where you come from, but down here on earth its just a fact of life.
Secondly, how is this meaninfully different than what Micosoft does ? How would you like to be developer working at Netscape the day before Internet Explorer was announced ? Not to mention that Microsoft not only expands into new markets but takes the opprotunity to establish closed standard (MS Office document formats) or pervert existing standards (Java, Kerberos). Apple helps develoers by adhering to open information interchange formats. Microsoft is downright adversarial, making enemies of developers by promoting closed document formats accessible only by Micrsoft applications.
"Since the corn farmers of Iowa have made ethanol a political litmus-test for presidential nominees, the American people have been stuck paying huge amounts (something like $30 for each $1 of profit earned by ethanol sales"
.
Agreed, but that's only the financial cost. Ethanol fuel has staggering environmental costs:
1. Destruction of natural habitat. You have to plow under a lot of prararie and chop down forests to make room for those fields of corn.
2. Soil erosion. Ploughing up fields causes soil erosion. Even with best practices, topsoil washes away, clogging streams and rivers with mud.
3. Water pollution. Runnoff from farm fields contaminates rivers and streams with pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers. Even runoff contaminated with natural fertizliziers, such as dung, pollute waterways with nitrogen
4. Air pollution. For every gallon of fuel ethanal, it requires 1.8 times that amount of energy from fossil fuels to create that gallon of ethanol. So we are contamating the air with combustion byproducts from 2.8 gallons of fuel, instead of 1.
5. Refinement byproducts. The process of converting biomass leaves stuff which must be disposed of.
Don't get me wrong, I am not against agriculture. We need to eat. However, I am against pointless environment destruction. There is no better example of that than ethanol fuel; If you consume the fossil fuels directly instead of using them to produce ethanol, then you can eleminate the expense of producing ethanol and come out ahead.
Government ethanol subsidies have four main aspects:
-They cost tax payers a fortune.
-Politicians use them to bribe farmers for votes.
-It is corporate welfare handout to ADM, which dominates the ethanol refinment business and owns almost every politician in the US and Canada.
- It fucks up the environment with no net redeeming benefit.
How can we fix this ? The combined lobbying power of ADM and agriculture is insurmountable. So the only feasible remedy is: The government should just cut ADM and the farmers an annual welfare check, pay them directly, and not reqire that they produce ethanol as a condition for receiving that check. It's a win-win situation. The taxpayers win because they only have to payoff ADM and farmers but not support the additional expense of producing ethanol. The environment wins. ADM and farmers win because they still recieve their corporate and agricultureal welfare payments, but they do not have to work work to produce ethanol.
from the article:
"This floors houses the Machine Intelligence Lab(MIL) as well class rooms and professor's offices."
Spoken like a true engineer.
Mars: 1
Earth: 1
Looks to me like tie.
"no Star Fleet personnel may interfere with the healthy development of alien life and culture."
The Prime Directive is an ethical cop out. It cherry picks the issue of interference, making the easy decision of whether to intervene when intervention is unneccessary, in the case of "healthy development". It avoids the moral dilema of how to act in the case of unhealthy development. It does not address the truly difficult eithical questions: How are we to distinquish healthy from unhealthy development ? By what right do we judge what is healthy for an alien species and what is not ? Should we intervene when our own standards indicate that development is unhealthy ?
I once believed that the Prime Directive was an atrocious work of design by the architects of the Star Trek Universe. A more forgiving interpretation would be that it consititutes deliberate and cyncial comentary on the perpetual unwillingess of politicians to address the hard issues. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.
"Clinton: War in Bosnia/Serbia WITH UN backing"
s /panorama/transcripts/dividedworld.txt ]
"Bush: War in Iraq with NO international support"
That's a disingenuous statement, given that the Clinton Administration did not have U.N. approval for its war on Serbia during the Kosovo conflict.
Your comment recalls this amusing exchange between Edith Cresson, John Reid, and Richard Perle:
EDITH CRESSON: No, the problem is not to know if Saddam is a bad chap or not. Of course he is and
nobody doubts of that. The problem is, is it allowed to enter a country with arms and make war outside the
legal framework of the United Nations who has two conditions very clear. Either you are attacked and then
of course you can respond or there is a resolution with a majority that delivers the authorisation to make a
war. Outside of those two conditions you are not allowed to make a war.
REID: Bonsoir Edith. Isn't it the case that you joined us in Kosovo without a resolution in the face of a
Russian veto precisely because we thought the danger was so great that people had to be protected?
CRESSON: But everybody agreed then.
REID: No, no, everybody didn't agree. The Russians didn't agree, there was no UN resolution. We went
into Kosovo through NATO because the United Nations wouldn't agree but we thought the moral
consequences of not going in were so great that we should take that action, and the French agreed with us
on that occasion and this occasion they don't think that the consequences are so great.
CRESSON: There was a big problem inside Kosovo, people were killing each other and we of course... the
intervention was quite normally taken.. the decision was taken so we agreed on that aspect. Nobody has
said that there has been a majority to get inside Iraq, there was no majority, there was not even a vote.
PERLE: Well I am listening to this discussion and there is no question that John Reid has demolished
Madame Cresson's argument. When France thought it was a good thing to use force outside the United
Nations, France did so, didn't complain, didn't say this is illegal and outside a legal framework. In this
case, where the French President believes that it is not in France's interest to use force, she is invoking a
legal argument that was irrelevant the last time. Let's not be hypocritical about this.
[I've edited out the moderators comments. The full transript appears here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/programme
from the article: ... Boies will get 400,000 shares from SCO."
... Boies will get 400,000 shares from SCO."
"The stock plunge won't affect star lawyer David Boies' compensation.
Is that statement just plain wrong ?
Shouldn't that read:
"The stock plunge will affect star lawyer David Boies' compensation.
"Because they don't contribute their hard-earned money back into our* economy."
...mony back" then they are transfering goods and services to us but we are not transfering goods back to them. Yay ! Free stuff for Amercians !
Every time the issue of trade comes up here some dumb-ass posts something like that.
It's trade people. It's an EXCHANGE of goods and services. Meaning that transfers of goods in one direction are reciprocated by transfers of equal value in the reverse direction. If foreigners don't "contribute
When Americans purchase (goods, services, labor) from India we spend American dollars to do that. Either we first buy rupees from India then purchase in that currency, or else we purchase from India directly in dollars. Either way, dollars have left the country. Someone outside the country is left holding U.S. dollars. Those dollars serve as an IOU for the U.S. eceonomy. They can be exchanged for goods. They say "You gave the US economy goods or services from the India economy. These dollars represent the right of the holder to claim goods are services worth an equivelent amount from the American economy."
"And the thing you don't realize is this also means the muggers have guns."
If guns are legal then muggers will have guns. If guns are illegal then muggers will have guns. Gun control laws insure that law-abiding citizens will be out-gunned by criminals. The gun control debate is not about whether we allow criminals to carry guns. Criminals will carry guns regardless of the law. Criminals, by definition, break the law. The gun control debate is really about whether it should be legal for potential victims to carry guns.
"Having a gun is useless when a mugger pulls one on you first."
It usually works that way in movies and TV. You might be confusing those things with the real world. The possibility that potential victims and bystanders are armed is a significant deterent to crime. The actual fact of the matter is that victims and bystanders do draw and fire. When I was living in Tennesee two guys in black ski masks pulled up to an all-night convenience in a stolen van, burst in with semi-automatic rifles and opened fire on the clerk. The clerk pulled his pistol and fired five shots; Three bullets into the heart of one assailant and two into the heart of the other.
You seem too focused on this one scenerio of an armed attacker holding up one person in isolation. Armed assailants have no advantage in a crowds where the average citizen is packing. They are immediatly outgunned. You can "get the draw" on one person or perhaps a tightly clustered group of a few people. You can't get the draw on a crowd of people scattered around a bank lobby or convenience store when ordinary citizens are carrying concealed weapons. This goes for city streets and iPods too.
Gun control laws are an aberation created when a society stops taking crime seriously. In a society under threat law-abiding citizens need the right to be as well armed as are their attackers.
"News is supposed to be 'PC'"
The term "Politically Correct" (PC) is a satirical epithet applied to liberal doctrine by conservatives. It mocks the presumption that liberal opinions are the "correct" opinions, in an absolute sense, not one perspective among many.
The term "PC" is made more amusing to conservatives by the liberals' conviction of their own political correctness preventing liberals from recognizing the joke that liberals' are unawaredly convinced of their own political correctness. "Of course our beliefs are the correct beliefs, why is that funny ?" ask the liberals.
Which brings us to your assertion that "News is supposed to be PC" What you are telling us ?
1. That news should be reported from a liberal perspective because...
2. Liberals are right and conservatives are wrong.
3. You are blind to the fact that you are promoting your own perspective in absolutist terms.
Note, "PC" denotes both the status of a particular belief as liberal and the associated presumption of correctness. For example, consider the statement "Johnny failed first grade, but he is African-American, therefore holding him back at that grade level would not be PC". In this sentence, "PC" serves to associate with liberals the principle that unqualified indviduals should be promoted if they are members of a particular ethnic group. But "PC" is also meant to characerize the attitude of those who would defend that principle as an absolutist faith that they are "right" and others are "wrong".
Fox News is unpopular with liberals not becuase it sets forth alnternative and consertavie "correct" notions, but because it undermines the very notion of correctnees in political discourse. Fox betrays the news broadcast tradition of delivering news in somber, ministerial tones which close off question and doubt; "Though shalt not question the word of Jennings". "The shalt now question the word of Brokaw." The informal on-air attitude of Fox news is like "Here are our correspondents and here is what they seem to to think is going on." It's more upbeat and friendly. We are allowed to ask questions. Fox news conveys to television viewers the dangerous attitude that what you see on TV is people telling you what they think is going on, not sacred and unquestionable truths. It undermines the notion of TV news as a conduit for absolute and correct truths, subverting the entire system of liberal propagandizing through control of unexamined "correct" news content.
News should not be PC.
Companies are salvaging lumber from the Great Lakes also.
from the article:
"One area in the Great Lakes where a team of horses ... went through the ice with a load of logs ... the skeletal remains of the horse are still there, harness, logs and all."
"For expensive items, I believe they give you a note saying you had it with you, when you left your home country. If you can't produce such a note going back, tough luck, you have to pay a small fortune in tax."
Trivial to defeat. Have a friend deliver the laptop and the note to you. When the checkers check him on his return flight to the U.S. they find neither a laptop nor a note.
"That way you'll be able to make better use of fat pipes when you can finally get them."
According to an email I received today they are already available and no prescription is required.
"you don't know who I am, what I am, or where I am." ...
"What passes for economics these days is nothing more than capitalist economics. The day will come when all of you are shown to be a bunch of fools. You guys are nothing more than the modern day alchemists. Capitalism WILL collapse..."
Well that remark tells us all we need to know about you, comrade Velauthapillai.
You can not be for real. You've picked up this Marxist personna for trolling purposes. Right ? Drop out of character and admit it. Nobody actually believes that shit anymore. Ok, so for a while I thought you were some poor deluded third worlder suckered by communist propanda. You're really a fat lonely chick from New Jersey who gets her kicks by trolling on Slashdot and masturbating to photos of Leonardo DiCaprio.
But wait, you are more prissy than that. Ahh... You're gay ? Yes, high liklihood that you are gay. Hence left-wing. But you exagerate that position to the point of communism. Because communism is flamboyant. Prissy and flamboyent=gay. Admit it, I figured out who you are, right ?
Ok, so you are a gay guy pretending to be a Marxist. Or a Leninist or Trotskyite. Whatever. I can already predict that you're going get all prissy about exactly what category of communism you place yourself in. Make a big deal about the distintions between these categories. That's part of the act.
"you don't know who I am, what I am, or where I am."
And see ? You are teasing there, attempting to flirt.
Ok. So this is my best guess: You are a homosexual pseudo-communist troll.
Right ?