But showing the few that don't want to lose their power makes more profit.
Not really: media revenue is driven by advertisement, and images of Iraq becoming another quagmire is not good for business. In any case, the media plays the patriotic tune much better. Remember when they brought the Saddam statue down? The media all made it look as if a huge, jubilant crowd was there, while in fact it was quite a small crowd. It's just that sometimes the media can't hide the truth, and now the truth is hitting hard: the war may have been won, but the peace hasn't.
I'm not trying to say that toppling Saddam was in itself a bad thing, mind you - he is a monster now, just as he was a monster back when the U.S. supported him and supplied him with weapons and biochemical agents. But Iraqis are not idiots, and they are not without pride: they know why americans are there (despite what you family members have reported, U.S. soldiers are not appreciated in Iraq). Yes, Saddam had to be brought down - but it was to be done by Iraqis, for Iraqis, not by Americans for ExxonMobil.
Right now, the american-led administration of Iraq is about to privatize the oil industry. Did anyone bother to ask ordinary iraqis if this is what they wanted, to let foreign companies reap huge profits with their natural resources, instead of profiting from it themselves (and perhaps using some of the profits to diversify their economy, because the oil industry is doomed within 50 years anyway)? No, this is done for their "own good"...
That doesn't mean what we did isn't right. It just means that it was all that more important to liberate Iraq.
What you say would be closer from the truth if that was really the motive in the first place. However, there are people being oppressed the world over, some in places where the oppressors are actively supported by the U.S. The human rights issue was the "convenient excuse" that Washington needed to invade Iraq and control its strategic resources, nothing more. (Actually, the prime "convenient excuse" was the WMDs, with human rights coming in second.)
Also, you'll not that a lot of those protesting American presence in Iraq are not in fact ex-members of the Baath party, or even sunnis for that matter - or perhaps you haven't noticed the general hostility of normal iraqis, even among the shi'ites (who were supposed to be welcoming GIs with open arms...)
So, in fact, the whole humanitarian angle is just so much BS used to draw attention away from the fact that it was, and remains, all about the oil.
People who are in power because they are violating human rights usually aren't happy when someone takes that power away.
Fortunately, if they're allied with the U.S., then they don't have to worry too much about those who would take power to violate human rights away. I mean, how many years did Saddam get away with bloody murder (here in its literal form) and keep getting money and arms from the U.S.? Even after he gassed the kurds he remained an ally - how you can reconcile this with your incredibly naive world view, I wonder. Only when he went after U.S. interests did Saddam become an enemy - just like Noriega, who got busted when he no longer toed the CIA line - oh, and 3,000 Panameans got killed when that happened, many of them civilians.
Take off your rose-colored glasses. It's your government: you better call it to order, because it's doing all of this in your name.
Wow, this is the first time I ever got a "Score 0, Flamebait" result! This calls for a celebration!
For those who might miss the original post because their threshold is too high, here's what it said:
This would be true if "defending" was the main occupation of the "defense" department. Instead, it seems the Pentagon's main job now (along with being a very interventionist economic tool) is to realize the megalomaniac ambitions of ExxonMobil and its puppet-in-chief in Washington - and that hardly entails "defending" the country you love.
I don't remember the US bombing for oil anywhere in the world in the last 2 years.
Well, it's never quite presented that way by the White House, now, is it? That doesn't make it any less true.
Either you or I are being delusional.
That would be you.
I see 2 towers that no longer exist and thousands dead.
A great crime, yes. But unrelated to the present discussion. Don't mix up things. Likewise, I won't bring in the 70,000 killed by the U.S.-backed military and paramilitary forces in El Salvador. Or the million killed in Vietnam. One should not use dead civilians for political gain.
I see mass graves of people in Iraq killed by the hand of a dictator no longer in power.
Mass graves dug when the dictator was an ally, mind you.
Now, what do you not see? Iraqis greeting americans as altruistic liberators. When U.S. soldiers liberated France in WWII, did they keep getting attacked and killed afterwards? No, they didn't.
Now, if the U.S. was truly altruistic, it wouldn't seek to privatize Iraq's oil, but instead would leave it as a property of the Iraqi people themselves, so that the profit would benefit them instead of mutlinational oil companies. But of course, that was the whole point - as honestly told by the Polish foreign minister, who candidly said that his country expected to have its share of oil exploitation rights, since they sent soldiers to help...
I don't see oil pouring in from anywhere or cheap gas prices, which would be the result of having access to lots of oil.
Are you really that naive? Do you really think that once ExxonMobil gets its hands on Iraqi oils it's going to sell it cheaper, even though it's the cheapest oil to produce in the world (and the world's second largest reserve)? You see, it's all about one thing: profit margins. Having access to Iraqi oil won't make prices cheaper at the pump: what it will do is let the oil barons make more money than before.
This would be true if "defending" was the main occupation of the "defense" department. Instead, it seems the Pentagon's main job now (along with being a very interventionist economic tool) is to realize the megalomaniac ambitions of ExxonMobil and its puppet-in-chief in Washington - and that hardly entails "defending" the country you love.
You obviously love the Potemkin village of Cuba, as do so many naive Europeans.
I am not European. And yes Cuba has a lot of problems, and Castro is hanging on to power while he should be giving it up - but things would have been quite different if the U.S. hadn't strangled the island with its embargo. By the way, local administrators take a lot of decisions that are not handled directly by Castro. So in fact they do have an impact on how people live. Secret police? Sure, there are - hey, there's civilian surveillance going on in the U.S. even as we speak! But it's nowhere near the Stalinist state you paint it out to be.
As far as refusing foreign aid, are you telling me that the people intentionally voted in an evil government rather than the saintly Sandinistas because they otherwise wouldn't get free money from the US?
No, what I'm telling you is that the people were not free to vote for the party of their choice because of economic blackmail from the U.S.
To me, what it says is that leftists like yourself can always make up excuses for when democracy fails to achieve the desired result!
No, what it says is that right-wingers like yourself are quick to defend American interference with free elections when democracy risks achieving a result that would go against U.S. interests.
You also deny that the rebels in El Salvador committed atrocities. Flatly deny it. That's remarkably ignorant of you, but telling.
Rather than try to rewrite history, which is basically what you're trying to do here, why don't you give us an example of such "atrocities" commited by rebels, with sources? Then compare the numbers of civilians killed by rebels vs. those killed by the military and paramilitary death squads? If the rebels killed 100 civilians and the military killed 70,000, do you still think both sides are to blame equally?
Believe all the leftist myths you want, but the blood of Latin Americans is on the hands of Americans, Cubans, Russians, and most espeically Latin Americans!
Yes, the U.S. likes to fight proxy wars, that is why it trained death squads to massacre civilians and peasants in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Crimes for which the U.S. was condemned by the UN - and not only the dictatorships, mind you! Let's forget all about the non-democratic countries in the UN...guess what? Nearly all the western democracies voted against the U.S. on this - so your attack of the UN (which the Bush administration, totally overwhelmed in Iraq, is pitifully running back to
as we speak) is completely irrelevant.
As for the Miskitu Indians, they were deceived by Washington by being promised economic aid for their help in fighting the Sandinistas. Now that the people of Nicaragua have voted the Sandinistas out due to the U.S.'s economic blackmail, the indians are still struggling under terrible poverty while living in one of the richest area of the region as far as natural resources are concerned.
But let's concentrate on Chile: here we have a democratically-elected government, and yet you support a bloody coup that instituted a brutal dictator. That is proof enough that you have no respect whatsoever for the ideals of democracy.
Cuba is a non-authoritarian, democratic socialist government?
It might have become one had the U.S. not done everything it could to cripple them economically. But, tell me, have you ever been to Cuba? Did you know that local administrators are elected? Have you witness debates in these local elections? I have. And let me tell you, it is a lot more democratic than a lot of things you see in North America. Of course, they can't elect their leader and that is a shame - but they do elect administrators nonetheless.
Oh, and the same comments apply to Nicaragua under the Sandinistas, who purged all the democratic forces who had joined them in fighting Somoza. The Sandinistas who seized the best houses in Managua to live in.
Give us your sources, please - and, no, the Washington Times doesn't count.
The Sandinistas who brutally repressed the Mosquito Indians of eastern Nicaragua.
You mean the Indians who had been bribed into the Contras by the illegal actions of the U.S., which exacerbated ethnic tensions in Nicaragua to further its political ends? The "brutal repression" of which you speak came after bloody riots, mind you. But, hey, things are much better for the Miskitu now that the Sandinistas are out of power, and that the Miskitu have an unemployment rate of 85%, right? Now, how many people did Somoza repress with the U.S.'s approval? How many people were slaughtered by the contras? FYI, the U.S. was deemed responsible of what amounts to International Terrorism by the United Nations. The Sandinistas weren't. Oh, yeah, I forget: you're right, and the rest of the planet is wrong. How silly of me...
The Sandinistas who were voted out of power in the first free elections after their coup, an election certified as free by all the usual leftists (like Carter and the leftist journalists).
Actually, no. If you had bothered to read the independent international press (that of course you'd consider "leftist", being so far to the right that you condone the massacre of civilians by contra death squads as long as they're "fighting communism"), you would have known that the U.S. threatened to cut off all foreign aid - and to effectively isolate Nicaragua - if the people voted for the Sandinistas. These veiled threats were numerous and clear, so that the voters of Nicaragua had no illusion: to vote for Sandinistas was to ensure an economic suicide due to the U.S.'s interference. Faced with such blackmail, the people voted against the Sandinistas, who graciously accepted the democratic results of the election and relinquished power (wait a minute, aren't they supposed to be anti-democracy? How dare they?)
Both sides committed atrocities - especially in El Salvador, where a vicious communist insurgency used the same terrorist tactics as the Viet Cong had used in Vietnam.
Bullshit. The atrocities committed in El Salvador were the results of the U.S.-backed military. 70,000 killed, including an archbishop and four american nuns. This is widely documented.
Roll on the floor all you want, in Central America the blood of the innocent is on Washington's hands. And it is no laughing matter.
While leftists love to believe that the Allende regime was one of flowers and love and all that, in fact it had its own repressive and murderous side.
Perhaps you would like to give some sources to back up this unsubstantiated allegation?
The reason investment dried up was that companies were not interested in putting money into a regime which confiscated property, as Allende had done.
Actually the reason the economy was doing bad is that the CIA did its best to cripple it. That is also in the official U.S. govt. documents that are linked to in the entry.
The CIA was active in the containment effort, and did indeed sponsor the coup. An interesting thing about this is that Pinochet, who came to power as a result, voluntarily returned the country to democracy some years later... unlike any communist nation except the USSR itself
Huh, Chile was already democratic. They had freely elected Allende. So, let's say, if a dictator took control of the US, then naturally returned it to democracy some years later after killing 3,000 people, then it would be okay? It's hilarious the length you rabid anti-communists will go to justify the murdering actions of America's client regimes.
Reagan revitalized (to some extend, always hobbled by a hostile congress) the US efforts to contain, and even roll back the communist hegemonic efforts. He was most successful in Nicaragua and El Salvador.
Yeah, killing 30,000+ civilians (including a bishop and four american nuns), using death squads to terrorize peasants, threatening to withdraw all foreign aid to Nicaragua so that people wouldn't vote for the Sandinistas - who in fact did "voluntarily returned the country to democracy some years" after their uprising against the cruel dictatorship of Somoza.
You know, there is a little thing called democracy, which means that people are free to choose their own government. Now, that can even be a socialist or communist government - the people's choice is sacred in that regards. But you seem to say it's okay to prevent people from choosing a socialist government. In other words, you don't believe in democracy.
The real threat that Cuba, Chile and Nicaragua posed to the U.S. is that they risked showing that a non-authoritarian, democratic socialist government in fact could work, and might therefore offer a successful political alternative: the "threat of the good example", if you will. Because in fact the governing elite of the U.S. is not interested in "power to the people," but rather in maintaining the status quo so it can continue enjoying its massive economic and social privileges. Any model of a successful socialist government is a threat to that status quo. Fortunately, it can count on loyal stooges such as yourself to continue with the ol' "red scare" propaganda...
I agree the timing was suspicious - but MS does have unix tools
True, but MS didn't need a Unix license for these tools. For one, the tools came out before MS got the license - if they had needed the license, they would have got it before releasing the product. Second, they may be Unix tools, but they are not an implementation of Unix - I doubt very much that they are reusing SysV code or other SCO properties.
they were probably just giving SCO a boost, which couldn't hurt them. But people have equated that action to a plot from the depth of Redmond to destroy Linux
Well, I don't think they're masterminding it, but the injection of cash certainly looked like material support for the legal fight.
You and I my friend have had exactly experiences here. Read at -1, and watch the flames and trolls that are spewed at MS / MS users for every possible thing.
Flaming MS is fine. It is after all a non-living entity, and as such has no feelings nor the ability to suffer. Personally attacking MS users is wrong - however in the heat of a flamewar these things can happen. But you're right, of course: there is rude behaviour on both sides of the fence. It just irks me to see people perpetrating the myth that only Linux advocates are guilty of rude behavior, when that is clearly not the case.
I am not attached to labels. I have shot the buddha on the road. Symbols and dogma are not important, only spreading good karma.
Now, back to the topic: saying that MS is funding the SCO lawsuit isn't spreading neither Fear, Uncertainty nor Doubt. It is a fact: as the lawsuit was announced, MS bought a totally unnecessary Unix license for quite a large sum of money. I cannot say that they are directly funding the lawsuit, however the timing was highly suspicious, especially considering that MS would greatly benefit from SCO winning the case (which seems less likely every day). You may not have the same opinion as I have regarding this, however you cannot prove me wrong - and I do believe that to be the truth, therefore I am indeed abstaining from flase speech.
The RTFM attitude, the "end-luser" attitude, the "it works for me" mentality?
Actually, in the two years since I've started using Linux, I've nearly always found other Linux users to be helpful and polite. Not once was I ever told to RTFM. On the contrary, the great spirit of cooperation and general helfulness has been one of the things that has kept me with Linux.
Surely, I must also be a Microsoft employee since I don't like Linux and speak of it in public?
Not necessarily. But I am curious as to why you have such hostility towards Linux...If you do not have a personal stake in MS, why do you feel compelled to defend them even though they have shown themselves to be capable of such shady behavior? You aggressively attack anyone suggesting that MS might be involved...without offering any other counter-arguments than personal insults. In fact, you display the same kind of bad behaviour that you accuse Linux advocates of...however, speaking out of personal experience, I've seen much more personal insults coming out of anti-Linux posters than from pro-Linux ones (who generally aim their attacks at MS, not at invidual Windows users).
In other words, no, I do not spread FUD. But those anti-Linux web sites are. Why aren't you concerned with those? Oh, I forgot, you're not really interested in fair and balanced debate, just in tarnishing the free OS's name and the reputation of those who use it...
FUD? Nah, truth. Linux doesn't need dirty tricks, like MS funding SCO's baseless lawsuit, in order to gain grounds.
You misinterpret what I said: what you should have correctly understood is that, if I was in the place of the evil empire, that my survival was at stake AND that I already had a history of underhanded maneuvers, then why wouldn't I also fund such anti-Linux sites? Might as well: it's cheap, moderately effective with the more naive computing crowd (though increasingly less so) and it's impossible to prove if one is careful.
That doesn't mean I endorse it, though, just that I understand why it would be an attractive option for MS. Personally, I see no use in using similar tactics to promote Linux - and as a buddhist I am profoundly opposed to spreading lies even if the goal is noble. So I promote Linux by talking about its strength and its openness, not by trashing its competitors. However, I'm also a realist, and I understand that others, such as MS, are not beyond using lies to spread their FUD.
But you are obviously an anti-Linux fanatic, so there's probably no use trying to have a rational debate about this with you.
I mean, if I was in charge of anti-competitive measures at MS, I would certainly fund such "fan" sites. I mean, it's not as if such dirty tricks were unheard of in MS's case. As a Ninja enthusiast, surely you understand the usefulness of such underhanded tactics to achieve victory, don't you?
If you're asking for sources about the CIA's involvment in the 1953 coup in Iran, then I suggest the CIA's own declassified documents, compiled by the National Security Archive. Very enlightening. Basically, the democratically-elected govt. of Mossadeq was seen as too "independent", and so the CIA orchestrated a coup that placed the Shah and the Ayatollahs in power. The Ayatollahs eventually decided they didn't want to share power, and the rest is history, as they say.
Oh, and by the way, the U.S. also prompted the U.S.S.R. to invade Afghanistan by getting involved there first, contrary to the official propaganda at the time. Carter's National Security Advisor admitted as much...
About the console issue: is it a VGA console? If so, do you have a recent 3D card with 128MB of on-board memory and a system with 1GB+ of RAM? This has been a long-standing framebuffer bug for which a patched kernel is now available (2.4.21). I thought that this fix was included in 2.6, though. I hope so, otherwise I won't be switching until the patch for it is available...
Perhaps, but then what of the fact that SCO continued to distribute GPLed software after they made their allegations? You can still get the 2.4.X kernels from their FTP web site. So, even if there was illegal code put into Linux, they have continued to distribute it, knowingly and willfully. Therefore, the offending code (if there was any) has since then been distributed under the GPL by SCO itself. You should ask your lawyer friend again, with this precision in mind.
That SCO never conciously chose to distribute their IP inside of Linux.
Not quite true: they did continue to distribute kernels with the alleged offending code well after they made their allegations. In fact, you can still download the kernels from their ftp site.
In other words: even when the right hand found out what the left hand had done, they continued with business as usual. For all practical purposes, SCO has willfully and knowingly distributed the offending code (if there is any) under the GPL. They can still sue IBM, but it's of no concern to Linux developers and users at all.
Why, is it illegal to download something if it's available on a ftp server? Don't they have to place their server behind a username/password combination in order to prevent unauthorized downloads?
Uh, since this is a Consumer Electronics component, I can only assume that there are NO man-hours required to make the machine run. In other words, your lame attempt at trolling was misdirected in this case.
Though your analogy would normally be correct, in this case I believe you are mistaken. In this Letter to partners, SCO pretty much says that SCO Linux customers are indemnified, and that they can continue to use the product. How else could you explain this verbatim quote?
"SCO will continue to honor all contractual obligations with existing customers including product updates, service, and support."
Now, the GPL (under which SCO released SCO Linux - even after they announced that Linux supposedly contained their code) does not permit SCO to grant immunity to its customers while denying it to other users of that GPL'ed software. Ergo, it cannot sue Linux users (not that it could, having released the offending code under the GPL in the first place).
Nope. Because of the GPL, they can't sue a group and not another. And since they won't sue their own customers, Linux users (and distributors) are safe. In fact, since SCO continued to distribute Linux after announcing the suit and saying that it had proof of improper code allegedly found in the kernel, then it can be convincingly be argued that SCO distributed that specific code under the GPL and therefore made it Open Source.
This is different from the contractual dispute with IBM. Even if they win this, they won't be able to touch Linux users, corporate or otherwise, nor won't they have anything against distributors. They kept on distributing SCO Linux for one month after announcing that Linux contained SCO-owned code. Now they'll have to live with that decision (probably not for long, though).
I was referring to Apocalypse Now, but that story you linked to is quite interesting. I imagined that these "operatives" existed, but it's interesting to actually read about one.
Slashdot Mirror
You never make mistakes right ? You always make correct choices, associate with honest people etc ... etc ...
Well, I have never associated with brutal dictators, if that's what you're asking.
What we have a here is a fucking genius
Finally someone realizes it! Gee, I just kept waiting for "Karma: Fucking Genius" to appear, but it never did.
or a typical armchair general.
That's "armchair pacifist", you Anonymous Coward, you.
But showing the few that don't want to lose their power makes more profit.
Not really: media revenue is driven by advertisement, and images of Iraq becoming another quagmire is not good for business. In any case, the media plays the patriotic tune much better. Remember when they brought the Saddam statue down? The media all made it look as if a huge, jubilant crowd was there, while in fact it was quite a small crowd. It's just that sometimes the media can't hide the truth, and now the truth is hitting hard: the war may have been won, but the peace hasn't.
I'm not trying to say that toppling Saddam was in itself a bad thing, mind you - he is a monster now, just as he was a monster back when the U.S. supported him and supplied him with weapons and biochemical agents. But Iraqis are not idiots, and they are not without pride: they know why americans are there (despite what you family members have reported, U.S. soldiers are not appreciated in Iraq). Yes, Saddam had to be brought down - but it was to be done by Iraqis, for Iraqis, not by Americans for ExxonMobil.
Right now, the american-led administration of Iraq is about to privatize the oil industry. Did anyone bother to ask ordinary iraqis if this is what they wanted, to let foreign companies reap huge profits with their natural resources, instead of profiting from it themselves (and perhaps using some of the profits to diversify their economy, because the oil industry is doomed within 50 years anyway)? No, this is done for their "own good"...
It's all about the oil, nothing more.
That doesn't mean what we did isn't right. It just means that it was all that more important to liberate Iraq.
What you say would be closer from the truth if that was really the motive in the first place. However, there are people being oppressed the world over, some in places where the oppressors are actively supported by the U.S. The human rights issue was the "convenient excuse" that Washington needed to invade Iraq and control its strategic resources, nothing more. (Actually, the prime "convenient excuse" was the WMDs, with human rights coming in second.)
Also, you'll not that a lot of those protesting American presence in Iraq are not in fact ex-members of the Baath party, or even sunnis for that matter - or perhaps you haven't noticed the general hostility of normal iraqis, even among the shi'ites (who were supposed to be welcoming GIs with open arms...)
So, in fact, the whole humanitarian angle is just so much BS used to draw attention away from the fact that it was, and remains, all about the oil.
People who are in power because they are violating human rights usually aren't happy when someone takes that power away.
Fortunately, if they're allied with the U.S., then they don't have to worry too much about those who would take power to violate human rights away. I mean, how many years did Saddam get away with bloody murder (here in its literal form) and keep getting money and arms from the U.S.? Even after he gassed the kurds he remained an ally - how you can reconcile this with your incredibly naive world view, I wonder. Only when he went after U.S. interests did Saddam become an enemy - just like Noriega, who got busted when he no longer toed the CIA line - oh, and 3,000 Panameans got killed when that happened, many of them civilians.
Take off your rose-colored glasses. It's your government: you better call it to order, because it's doing all of this in your name.
Wow, this is the first time I ever got a "Score 0, Flamebait" result! This calls for a celebration!
For those who might miss the original post because their threshold is too high, here's what it said:
This would be true if "defending" was the main occupation of the "defense" department. Instead, it seems the Pentagon's main job now (along with being a very interventionist economic tool) is to realize the megalomaniac ambitions of ExxonMobil and its puppet-in-chief in Washington - and that hardly entails "defending" the country you love.
I don't remember the US bombing for oil anywhere in the world in the last 2 years.
Well, it's never quite presented that way by the White House, now, is it? That doesn't make it any less true.
Either you or I are being delusional.
That would be you.
I see 2 towers that no longer exist and thousands dead.
A great crime, yes. But unrelated to the present discussion. Don't mix up things. Likewise, I won't bring in the 70,000 killed by the U.S.-backed military and paramilitary forces in El Salvador. Or the million killed in Vietnam. One should not use dead civilians for political gain.
I see mass graves of people in Iraq killed by the hand of a dictator no longer in power.
Mass graves dug when the dictator was an ally, mind you.
Now, what do you not see? Iraqis greeting americans as altruistic liberators. When U.S. soldiers liberated France in WWII, did they keep getting attacked and killed afterwards? No, they didn't.
Now, if the U.S. was truly altruistic, it wouldn't seek to privatize Iraq's oil, but instead would leave it as a property of the Iraqi people themselves, so that the profit would benefit them instead of mutlinational oil companies. But of course, that was the whole point - as honestly told by the Polish foreign minister, who candidly said that his country expected to have its share of oil exploitation rights, since they sent soldiers to help...
I don't see oil pouring in from anywhere or cheap gas prices, which would be the result of having access to lots of oil.
Are you really that naive? Do you really think that once ExxonMobil gets its hands on Iraqi oils it's going to sell it cheaper, even though it's the cheapest oil to produce in the world (and the world's second largest reserve)? You see, it's all about one thing: profit margins. Having access to Iraqi oil won't make prices cheaper at the pump: what it will do is let the oil barons make more money than before.
This would be true if "defending" was the main occupation of the "defense" department. Instead, it seems the Pentagon's main job now (along with being a very interventionist economic tool) is to realize the megalomaniac ambitions of ExxonMobil and its puppet-in-chief in Washington - and that hardly entails "defending" the country you love.
You obviously love the Potemkin village of Cuba, as do so many naive Europeans.
I am not European. And yes Cuba has a lot of problems, and Castro is hanging on to power while he should be giving it up - but things would have been quite different if the U.S. hadn't strangled the island with its embargo. By the way, local administrators take a lot of decisions that are not handled directly by Castro. So in fact they do have an impact on how people live. Secret police? Sure, there are - hey, there's civilian surveillance going on in the U.S. even as we speak! But it's nowhere near the Stalinist state you paint it out to be.
As far as refusing foreign aid, are you telling me that the people intentionally voted in an evil government rather than the saintly Sandinistas because they otherwise wouldn't get free money from the US?
No, what I'm telling you is that the people were not free to vote for the party of their choice because of economic blackmail from the U.S.
To me, what it says is that leftists like yourself can always make up excuses for when democracy fails to achieve the desired result!
No, what it says is that right-wingers like yourself are quick to defend American interference with free elections when democracy risks achieving a result that would go against U.S. interests.
You also deny that the rebels in El Salvador committed atrocities. Flatly deny it. That's remarkably ignorant of you, but telling.
Rather than try to rewrite history, which is basically what you're trying to do here, why don't you give us an example of such "atrocities" commited by rebels, with sources? Then compare the numbers of civilians killed by rebels vs. those killed by the military and paramilitary death squads? If the rebels killed 100 civilians and the military killed 70,000, do you still think both sides are to blame equally?
Believe all the leftist myths you want, but the blood of Latin Americans is on the hands of Americans, Cubans, Russians, and most espeically Latin Americans!
Yes, the U.S. likes to fight proxy wars, that is why it trained death squads to massacre civilians and peasants in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Crimes for which the U.S. was condemned by the UN - and not only the dictatorships, mind you! Let's forget all about the non-democratic countries in the UN...guess what? Nearly all the western democracies voted against the U.S. on this - so your attack of the UN (which the Bush administration, totally overwhelmed in Iraq, is pitifully running back to as we speak) is completely irrelevant.
As for the Miskitu Indians, they were deceived by Washington by being promised economic aid for their help in fighting the Sandinistas. Now that the people of Nicaragua have voted the Sandinistas out due to the U.S.'s economic blackmail, the indians are still struggling under terrible poverty while living in one of the richest area of the region as far as natural resources are concerned.
But let's concentrate on Chile: here we have a democratically-elected government, and yet you support a bloody coup that instituted a brutal dictator. That is proof enough that you have no respect whatsoever for the ideals of democracy.
Cuba is a non-authoritarian, democratic socialist government?
It might have become one had the U.S. not done everything it could to cripple them economically. But, tell me, have you ever been to Cuba? Did you know that local administrators are elected? Have you witness debates in these local elections? I have. And let me tell you, it is a lot more democratic than a lot of things you see in North America. Of course, they can't elect their leader and that is a shame - but they do elect administrators nonetheless.
Oh, and the same comments apply to Nicaragua under the Sandinistas, who purged all the democratic forces who had joined them in fighting Somoza. The Sandinistas who seized the best houses in Managua to live in.
Give us your sources, please - and, no, the Washington Times doesn't count.
The Sandinistas who brutally repressed the Mosquito Indians of eastern Nicaragua.
You mean the Indians who had been bribed into the Contras by the illegal actions of the U.S., which exacerbated ethnic tensions in Nicaragua to further its political ends? The "brutal repression" of which you speak came after bloody riots, mind you. But, hey, things are much better for the Miskitu now that the Sandinistas are out of power, and that the Miskitu have an unemployment rate of 85%, right? Now, how many people did Somoza repress with the U.S.'s approval? How many people were slaughtered by the contras? FYI, the U.S. was deemed responsible of what amounts to International Terrorism by the United Nations. The Sandinistas weren't. Oh, yeah, I forget: you're right, and the rest of the planet is wrong. How silly of me...
The Sandinistas who were voted out of power in the first free elections after their coup, an election certified as free by all the usual leftists (like Carter and the leftist journalists).
Actually, no. If you had bothered to read the independent international press (that of course you'd consider "leftist", being so far to the right that you condone the massacre of civilians by contra death squads as long as they're "fighting communism"), you would have known that the U.S. threatened to cut off all foreign aid - and to effectively isolate Nicaragua - if the people voted for the Sandinistas. These veiled threats were numerous and clear, so that the voters of Nicaragua had no illusion: to vote for Sandinistas was to ensure an economic suicide due to the U.S.'s interference. Faced with such blackmail, the people voted against the Sandinistas, who graciously accepted the democratic results of the election and relinquished power (wait a minute, aren't they supposed to be anti-democracy? How dare they?)
Both sides committed atrocities - especially in El Salvador, where a vicious communist insurgency used the same terrorist tactics as the Viet Cong had used in Vietnam.
Bullshit. The atrocities committed in El Salvador were the results of the U.S.-backed military. 70,000 killed, including an archbishop and four american nuns. This is widely documented.
Roll on the floor all you want, in Central America the blood of the innocent is on Washington's hands. And it is no laughing matter.
While leftists love to believe that the Allende regime was one of flowers and love and all that, in fact it had its own repressive and murderous side.
Perhaps you would like to give some sources to back up this unsubstantiated allegation?
The reason investment dried up was that companies were not interested in putting money into a regime which confiscated property, as Allende had done.
Actually the reason the economy was doing bad is that the CIA did its best to cripple it. That is also in the official U.S. govt. documents that are linked to in the entry.
The CIA was active in the containment effort, and did indeed sponsor the coup. An interesting thing about this is that Pinochet, who came to power as a result, voluntarily returned the country to democracy some years later... unlike any communist nation except the USSR itself
Huh, Chile was already democratic. They had freely elected Allende. So, let's say, if a dictator took control of the US, then naturally returned it to democracy some years later after killing 3,000 people, then it would be okay? It's hilarious the length you rabid anti-communists will go to justify the murdering actions of America's client regimes.
Reagan revitalized (to some extend, always hobbled by a hostile congress) the US efforts to contain, and even roll back the communist hegemonic efforts. He was most successful in Nicaragua and El Salvador.
Yeah, killing 30,000+ civilians (including a bishop and four american nuns), using death squads to terrorize peasants, threatening to withdraw all foreign aid to Nicaragua so that people wouldn't vote for the Sandinistas - who in fact did "voluntarily returned the country to democracy some years" after their uprising against the cruel dictatorship of Somoza.
You know, there is a little thing called democracy, which means that people are free to choose their own government. Now, that can even be a socialist or communist government - the people's choice is sacred in that regards. But you seem to say it's okay to prevent people from choosing a socialist government. In other words, you don't believe in democracy.
The real threat that Cuba, Chile and Nicaragua posed to the U.S. is that they risked showing that a non-authoritarian, democratic socialist government in fact could work, and might therefore offer a successful political alternative: the "threat of the good example", if you will. Because in fact the governing elite of the U.S. is not interested in "power to the people," but rather in maintaining the status quo so it can continue enjoying its massive economic and social privileges. Any model of a successful socialist government is a threat to that status quo. Fortunately, it can count on loyal stooges such as yourself to continue with the ol' "red scare" propaganda...
I agree the timing was suspicious - but MS does have unix tools
True, but MS didn't need a Unix license for these tools. For one, the tools came out before MS got the license - if they had needed the license, they would have got it before releasing the product. Second, they may be Unix tools, but they are not an implementation of Unix - I doubt very much that they are reusing SysV code or other SCO properties.
they were probably just giving SCO a boost, which couldn't hurt them. But people have equated that action to a plot from the depth of Redmond to destroy Linux
Well, I don't think they're masterminding it, but the injection of cash certainly looked like material support for the legal fight.
You and I my friend have had exactly experiences here. Read at -1, and watch the flames and trolls that are spewed at MS / MS users for every possible thing.
Flaming MS is fine. It is after all a non-living entity, and as such has no feelings nor the ability to suffer. Personally attacking MS users is wrong - however in the heat of a flamewar these things can happen. But you're right, of course: there is rude behaviour on both sides of the fence. It just irks me to see people perpetrating the myth that only Linux advocates are guilty of rude behavior, when that is clearly not the case.
Peace.
I am not attached to labels. I have shot the buddha on the road. Symbols and dogma are not important, only spreading good karma.
Now, back to the topic: saying that MS is funding the SCO lawsuit isn't spreading neither Fear, Uncertainty nor Doubt. It is a fact: as the lawsuit was announced, MS bought a totally unnecessary Unix license for quite a large sum of money. I cannot say that they are directly funding the lawsuit, however the timing was highly suspicious, especially considering that MS would greatly benefit from SCO winning the case (which seems less likely every day). You may not have the same opinion as I have regarding this, however you cannot prove me wrong - and I do believe that to be the truth, therefore I am indeed abstaining from flase speech.
The RTFM attitude, the "end-luser" attitude, the "it works for me" mentality?
Actually, in the two years since I've started using Linux, I've nearly always found other Linux users to be helpful and polite. Not once was I ever told to RTFM. On the contrary, the great spirit of cooperation and general helfulness has been one of the things that has kept me with Linux.
Surely, I must also be a Microsoft employee since I don't like Linux and speak of it in public?
Not necessarily. But I am curious as to why you have such hostility towards Linux...If you do not have a personal stake in MS, why do you feel compelled to defend them even though they have shown themselves to be capable of such shady behavior? You aggressively attack anyone suggesting that MS might be involved...without offering any other counter-arguments than personal insults. In fact, you display the same kind of bad behaviour that you accuse Linux advocates of...however, speaking out of personal experience, I've seen much more personal insults coming out of anti-Linux posters than from pro-Linux ones (who generally aim their attacks at MS, not at invidual Windows users).
In other words, no, I do not spread FUD. But those anti-Linux web sites are. Why aren't you concerned with those? Oh, I forgot, you're not really interested in fair and balanced debate, just in tarnishing the free OS's name and the reputation of those who use it...
FUD? Nah, truth. Linux doesn't need dirty tricks, like MS funding SCO's baseless lawsuit, in order to gain grounds.
You misinterpret what I said: what you should have correctly understood is that, if I was in the place of the evil empire, that my survival was at stake AND that I already had a history of underhanded maneuvers, then why wouldn't I also fund such anti-Linux sites? Might as well: it's cheap, moderately effective with the more naive computing crowd (though increasingly less so) and it's impossible to prove if one is careful.
That doesn't mean I endorse it, though, just that I understand why it would be an attractive option for MS. Personally, I see no use in using similar tactics to promote Linux - and as a buddhist I am profoundly opposed to spreading lies even if the goal is noble. So I promote Linux by talking about its strength and its openness, not by trashing its competitors. However, I'm also a realist, and I understand that others, such as MS, are not beyond using lies to spread their FUD.
But you are obviously an anti-Linux fanatic, so there's probably no use trying to have a rational debate about this with you.
I mean, if I was in charge of anti-competitive measures at MS, I would certainly fund such "fan" sites. I mean, it's not as if such dirty tricks were unheard of in MS's case. As a Ninja enthusiast, surely you understand the usefulness of such underhanded tactics to achieve victory, don't you?
If you're asking for sources about the CIA's involvment in the 1953 coup in Iran, then I suggest the CIA's own declassified documents, compiled by the National Security Archive. Very enlightening. Basically, the democratically-elected govt. of Mossadeq was seen as too "independent", and so the CIA orchestrated a coup that placed the Shah and the Ayatollahs in power. The Ayatollahs eventually decided they didn't want to share power, and the rest is history, as they say.
Oh, and by the way, the U.S. also prompted the U.S.S.R. to invade Afghanistan by getting involved there first, contrary to the official propaganda at the time. Carter's National Security Advisor admitted as much...
About the console issue: is it a VGA console? If so, do you have a recent 3D card with 128MB of on-board memory and a system with 1GB+ of RAM? This has been a long-standing framebuffer bug for which a patched kernel is now available (2.4.21). I thought that this fix was included in 2.6, though. I hope so, otherwise I won't be switching until the patch for it is available...
Interesting post. Keep us informed if you get info from your lawyer about this.
Perhaps, but then what of the fact that SCO continued to distribute GPLed software after they made their allegations? You can still get the 2.4.X kernels from their FTP web site. So, even if there was illegal code put into Linux, they have continued to distribute it, knowingly and willfully. Therefore, the offending code (if there was any) has since then been distributed under the GPL by SCO itself. You should ask your lawyer friend again, with this precision in mind.
That SCO never conciously chose to distribute their IP inside of Linux.
Not quite true: they did continue to distribute kernels with the alleged offending code well after they made their allegations. In fact, you can still download the kernels from their ftp site.
In other words: even when the right hand found out what the left hand had done, they continued with business as usual. For all practical purposes, SCO has willfully and knowingly distributed the offending code (if there is any) under the GPL. They can still sue IBM, but it's of no concern to Linux developers and users at all.
Why, is it illegal to download something if it's available on a ftp server? Don't they have to place their server behind a username/password combination in order to prevent unauthorized downloads?
Yep. Downloaded it just to make sure...Don't they realize they're digging their own grave, still allowing the Kernel to be downloaded?
Uh, since this is a Consumer Electronics component, I can only assume that there are NO man-hours required to make the machine run. In other words, your lame attempt at trolling was misdirected in this case.
Though your analogy would normally be correct, in this case I believe you are mistaken. In this Letter to partners, SCO pretty much says that SCO Linux customers are indemnified, and that they can continue to use the product. How else could you explain this verbatim quote?
"SCO will continue to honor all contractual obligations with existing customers including product updates, service, and support."
Now, the GPL (under which SCO released SCO Linux - even after they announced that Linux supposedly contained their code) does not permit SCO to grant immunity to its customers while denying it to other users of that GPL'ed software. Ergo, it cannot sue Linux users (not that it could, having released the offending code under the GPL in the first place).
Nope. Because of the GPL, they can't sue a group and not another. And since they won't sue their own customers, Linux users (and distributors) are safe. In fact, since SCO continued to distribute Linux after announcing the suit and saying that it had proof of improper code allegedly found in the kernel, then it can be convincingly be argued that SCO distributed that specific code under the GPL and therefore made it Open Source.
This is different from the contractual dispute with IBM. Even if they win this, they won't be able to touch Linux users, corporate or otherwise, nor won't they have anything against distributors. They kept on distributing SCO Linux for one month after announcing that Linux contained SCO-owned code. Now they'll have to live with that decision (probably not for long, though).
I checked it out on the "Internet" using a "computer". :-)
I was referring to Apocalypse Now, but that story you linked to is quite interesting. I imagined that these "operatives" existed, but it's interesting to actually read about one.