"And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every
Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he
would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests,
as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not
simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at
every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set
up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or
whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers
and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground
to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more - we had no awareness of the
real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward."
No always true. Here in Minnesota, we recently had two major elections, governor and Senator that were decided by a few hundred votes. This is with Acorn being documented as providing 2812 bogus (dead people) voter registrations. The party in power simply recounted votes over and over until their guy won.
Different topic: Any election, no matter how well run will have a noise floor. It’s unavoidable in any human activity. When vote count differences fall into the noise floor, corruption flourishes. Damn the cost, elections need to be re-run when that happens.
I worked as a carpenter in the deep South for many years. Only Yankees complained about the heat, seriously.
Yeah, it was really hot in the summer, but no one died or made a big deal of it. You just work. The upside is that we got a lot more done in the winter.
Guys, it would have to get *really* hot, really fast to make a difference. My experience is that you get used to whatever you need to. I moved to MN a while back and was shocked by the cold, but yesterday as I went off to my programming job, I told the wife, "Hey 18(Fahrenheit) above this morning, summer is almost here!". I wasn't kidding.
I built my house a few years ago and worked though the winter nights and weekends. I worked in temperatures I wouldn't have believed could be survived, much less been productive in.
If the temperature goes up, we'll all be OK.
Side note: Space heating is a huge user of energy. Real warming will reduce that.
One has to make a reasonable presentation of a serious, life threatning situation. A punch in the nose of itself would generally be insufficient.
Really people, the fear around self defense is pitiful. Yes, boundry situations can occur where the determination of was the response appropriate can be murky, but please stop with the "We're all gonna be shot down in the street because of Stand Your Ground!".
But I assume that they would not need a 30-round clip.
What does "need" have to do with this topic? Seriously. shall we put in place a government commission to determine what American citizens need and limit possession to that list? After all, no one *needs* fashionable clothing, or big screen TV's or video games.
Oh, you say, we only need a government defined list for dangerous things. No one needs dangerous things, of course. No wait, I just mean things that someone *could* use to harm another person. No one needs anything that could used to hurt other people!
Is that a serious argument? I hear dumbasses all the time say crap like "Those scary looking guns are only designed for killing people. No one needs one of those!"
Really? Wow, scary "assault rifles" are only for killing people? Then why are they so bad at it? Over a hundred million rifles are owned by Americans with probably hundreds of millions of rounds fired each year. Every "assault rifle" I've ever seen comes with a 30 round mag. Less than 400 people were killed with a rifle of any kind last year, with "assault weapons" being a fraction of that. In a country of 314 million people armed with over 100 million rifles.
The "gun control" frenzy has NOTHING to do with safety. The great murderer Chairman Mao said it very clearly: "All political power flows from the barrel of a gun".
All the talk here about "fairness" and companies needing to "Pay their share" completely misses the point.
The real problem is voracious government entities that will NEVER be satisfied with how much they take from you. NEVER.
You want fairness? Get rid of the sales tax on the brick and mortar stores. What? We can’t do that need that money! For the children! To buy civilization!
We are WAY past “buying civilization”. The only question discussed by any parasitic government entity is how quickly to kill the host.
And yes, the host is dying. The U.S. is over 100 trillion in the crapper with admitted debt and unfunded government liabilities according to the Dallas Federal Reserve president. We can’t grow our way out of a 100 trillion (and rapidly growing because of massive spending) problem.
The U.S. at least, is screwed.
Somehow I don't think expanding the TSA, buying millions of rounds of hollow-point ammo and giving them automatic assault rifles to fight U.S. citizens is helping anything.
Government exists to consume resources. Any benefits to the citizens/subjects are incidental.
I really believe that.
I also believe that some government is a lot better than no government. The current U.S. problem is WAY too much government.
Government is at it's best when it provides for the lightest possible framework for us to live and work together.
Sensible people can debate where to draw that line, but now in the U.S. at least, the only argument going is how much parasitic government we can have without immediately killing the host.
It WANTS them because we've evolved to fatten up when food is plentiful so that we don't starve when food is scarce.
Really? Says who? I love the presumption that we know what "cavemen" ate and why. Studies of contemporary hunter gatherer around the globe don't show this. In areas that haven't been wildly altered by the introduction of agriculture, these societies spend LESS time getting food than more "advanced" groups. When well meaning first worlders try to talk the Kalihari(sp) bushmen into growing stuff, they responded with incredulity asking why anyone would want to work that hard.
The "We evolved to gorge" isn't supported by ANY research, but is rather the "obesity is the fault of prosperity" meme.
I hope this study isn't like the 6 city CDC study purporting to show that gun carry license liberalization didn't reduce gun crime. The CDC cherry picked 6 cities for different six month periods in order to "prove" that guns possessed by legal carriers didn't help.
Contrast that "study" to John Lott’s study that looked at every single city in every single county for all 50 states for an over 20 year contiguous time frame.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/More_Guns,_Less_Crime
How many US citizens would RISK harm to procure freedom. Very few people willingly die for any cause, but many will take significant risk for a cause they believe in.
How many people here deriding the TSA as security theater are, at the same time, screaming for more "gun control" in America because of the recent school shooting?
To be fair, more than half those "gun violence" deaths is a suicide. Every violent death can be considered a tragedy, but taking away everyones liberty because a crazy person or criminal does something bad is crazy itself.
I'm always amazed to hear geeks complaining about overreaching government affecting their lives for no real reason turn arond and scream about guns when something happens. More kids are killed by falling televisions than school shootings.
Too much crappy food, e.g., sugar and carbs (whole grains also).
Too little fat. Substituting carbs for fat is killing more people than Stalin. (A turn of phrase, don't be so literal)
Slashdot Mirror
...getting organized (contact your local anarchist chapter),...
Classic "Progressive" claptrap! Organized anarchists!?!
Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
...and we slowly cook ourselves in a greenhouse of our own making...
I wish! I'm sitting in southern Minnesota watching the snow fall on the first of May.
Cartoon characters promised me three things I haven't gotten, dammit!
The Jetsons promised me robot maids and flying cars. Al Gore promised me global warming. Where ARE these things?!?
Different topic: Any election, no matter how well run will have a noise floor. It’s unavoidable in any human activity. When vote count differences fall into the noise floor, corruption flourishes. Damn the cost, elections need to be re-run when that happens.
Yeah, it was really hot in the summer, but no one died or made a big deal of it. You just work. The upside is that we got a lot more done in the winter.
Guys, it would have to get *really* hot, really fast to make a difference. My experience is that you get used to whatever you need to. I moved to MN a while back and was shocked by the cold, but yesterday as I went off to my programming job, I told the wife, "Hey 18(Fahrenheit) above this morning, summer is almost here!". I wasn't kidding.
I built my house a few years ago and worked though the winter nights and weekends. I worked in temperatures I wouldn't have believed could be survived, much less been productive in.
If the temperature goes up, we'll all be OK.
Side note: Space heating is a huge user of energy. Real warming will reduce that.
When other peoples money (mine) is taken for things I don't like - not so much.
How about we really try to not take much of anyone's money for anything?
One has to make a reasonable presentation of a serious, life threatning situation. A punch in the nose of itself would generally be insufficient.
Really people, the fear around self defense is pitiful. Yes, boundry situations can occur where the determination of was the response appropriate can be murky, but please stop with the "We're all gonna be shot down in the street because of Stand Your Ground!".
But I assume that they would not need a 30-round clip.
What does "need" have to do with this topic? Seriously. shall we put in place a government commission to determine what American citizens need and limit possession to that list? After all, no one *needs* fashionable clothing, or big screen TV's or video games.
Oh, you say, we only need a government defined list for dangerous things. No one needs dangerous things, of course. No wait, I just mean things that someone *could* use to harm another person. No one needs anything that could used to hurt other people!
Is that a serious argument? I hear dumbasses all the time say crap like "Those scary looking guns are only designed for killing people. No one needs one of those!"
Really? Wow, scary "assault rifles" are only for killing people? Then why are they so bad at it? Over a hundred million rifles are owned by Americans with probably hundreds of millions of rounds fired each year. Every "assault rifle" I've ever seen comes with a 30 round mag. Less than 400 people were killed with a rifle of any kind last year, with "assault weapons" being a fraction of that. In a country of 314 million people armed with over 100 million rifles.
The "gun control" frenzy has NOTHING to do with safety. The great murderer Chairman Mao said it very clearly: "All political power flows from the barrel of a gun".
Literally, no gun, no political power.
The real problem is voracious government entities that will NEVER be satisfied with how much they take from you. NEVER.
You want fairness? Get rid of the sales tax on the brick and mortar stores. What? We can’t do that need that money! For the children! To buy civilization!
We are WAY past “buying civilization”. The only question discussed by any parasitic government entity is how quickly to kill the host.
And yes, the host is dying. The U.S. is over 100 trillion in the crapper with admitted debt and unfunded government liabilities according to the Dallas Federal Reserve president. We can’t grow our way out of a 100 trillion (and rapidly growing because of massive spending) problem. The U.S. at least, is screwed.
Because in private enterprise the return on investment is always 100% guaranteed?
Because in actual private enterprise, not Facist crony capitalisim, investment isn't made at the point of a gun.
Somehow I don't think expanding the TSA, buying millions of rounds of hollow-point ammo and giving them automatic assault rifles to fight U.S. citizens is helping anything.
FIFY
I really believe that.
I also believe that some government is a lot better than no government. The current U.S. problem is WAY too much government.
Government is at it's best when it provides for the lightest possible framework for us to live and work together.
Sensible people can debate where to draw that line, but now in the U.S. at least, the only argument going is how much parasitic government we can have without immediately killing the host.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctuary_city
It WANTS them because we've evolved to fatten up when food is plentiful so that we don't starve when food is scarce.
Really? Says who? I love the presumption that we know what "cavemen" ate and why. Studies of contemporary hunter gatherer around the globe don't show this. In areas that haven't been wildly altered by the introduction of agriculture, these societies spend LESS time getting food than more "advanced" groups. When well meaning first worlders try to talk the Kalihari(sp) bushmen into growing stuff, they responded with incredulity asking why anyone would want to work that hard.
The "We evolved to gorge" isn't supported by ANY research, but is rather the "obesity is the fault of prosperity" meme.
Contrast that "study" to John Lott’s study that looked at every single city in every single county for all 50 states for an over 20 year contiguous time frame. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/More_Guns,_Less_Crime
Trucking is a fairly low profit margin industry. Everyone who can already ships via rail where it makes sense.
The point of this type of legislation isn't about "fairness", it's about getting every dime from you in every possibe way.
Long live the revolution!
How many US citizens would RISK harm to procure freedom. Very few people willingly die for any cause, but many will take significant risk for a cause they believe in.
If 3D makes your movie better, your movie sucks. Exception: Surfing movies
and no place to go.
How many people here deriding the TSA as security theater are, at the same time, screaming for more "gun control" in America because of the recent school shooting?
I'm always amazed to hear geeks complaining about overreaching government affecting their lives for no real reason turn arond and scream about guns when something happens. More kids are killed by falling televisions than school shootings.
I thought, "Man, they really are in trouble."
Too much crappy food, e.g., sugar and carbs (whole grains also). Too little fat. Substituting carbs for fat is killing more people than Stalin. (A turn of phrase, don't be so literal)
Are you saying the CT shooter had/was using an automatic weapon? Citation please.