The whole reason that Iran and North Korea even began pursuing nuclear weapons is because of that incredibly stupid "Axis of Evil" speech that George Bush made in 2003.
North Korea's been pursuing nuclear weapon technology and missile technology since the 1990s, remember the 1994 treaty where they "promised to stop"?
When the largest military power in the world labels you as one of three "Axis of Evil" members, then proceeds to invade one of the other two, it tends to make you a bit twitchy. And, both Iran and NK know that the only way to really protect yourself from U.S. invasion is with nuclear weapons.
Oh, I agree there. It certainly made Kim Jong Nutbag run screaming into even more isolationism, and I'd argue it was a larger factor in Iran's becoming more hostile to the world in general; it certainly scuppered an ongoing wave of westernization as the mullahs saw another chance to crack down by declaring a new round of "eliminate the influence of the great satan."
Due mainly to Israeli and U.S. propaganda,
Seig something...
But the fact is that Iran has never shown itself to be a particularly hostile or irrational nation in any military sense.
Oh? They invaded Iraq. They've been weapons peddlers to rogue states for over 30 years. They do tend to operate by proxy, but their military actions from Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza are well, well documented. And both their crazy idiot president and the Mullahs are on record on what they would do to Israel if they "had the means," often including the words "wipe Israel off the face of the map."
So we cut off their banks and hit them with sanctions. Fine. A lot of Iranian people will suffer. And maybe this will lead them to negotiate, maybe not.
Well, the hope is that it will. It's what the UN decides on, and it's better than going to war.
But you know what I bet would ABSOLUTELY lead them to negotiate and drop their nuke program?
I bet you're going to tell us. And I bet you're going to miss out on the cultural issues of being seen as "weak" by coming into some form of negotiation unilaterally, especially the muslim/arab/persian tribalist dynamics involved. So let's move on.
1) Offer a few public goodwill gestures to make it clear that the U.S. is *not* going to invade them or attack them Like what - sending a ton of earthquake aid? Whoops, we did that. Not attacking them for all this time? We did that too. Offering unilateral negotiotions? Obama did that, and then the crazy-ass Republicans shot it all down. You want to know who's causing the problems right now, making Iran think they're going to be attacked, you want to look at Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and my personal favorite, Rick "end times" Santorum.
2) Tell Mossad to stop assassinating their scientists, or face sanctions of their own. Ah yes, Mossad, the eternal bogeyman of the muslim/arab/persian region. Anything happens? Blame "Mossad." Assassinated your brother in law to ascend to the throne? Don't worry, blame Mossad. Killed yourself from a life of excess while stealing the aid money intended for the poor (Arafat)? Don't worry, your followers will say "Mossad poisoned him." And on and on. The moment you get into stupid shit like this, you just reveal your own bias.
3) Reign [sic] in Israel and make it clear to them that attacking Iran will NOT be tolerated, and will cost them the friendship of the U.S. Really? We should take over the Israeli government by force and set up a puppet state? Last time there was one there it was called the Mandate of Palestine and the British ran it... then they parceled off Transjordan and refused to allow Jews to move anywhere but "Palestine" because the Arabs were bitching about too many Jews spreading out... then it was split in half and the Arabs launched a genocidal war to wipe out the Jews anyways.
4) Normalizing relations with Iran. Normalizing relations is a product of negotiations. W
BULLSHIT The segregationist racist laws of the US South were passed by DEMOCRATS
And at the time, if you had the education a 2nd grader has and more than a 50 IQ, you would know that the Democrats WERE the conservative party in America, and the Republicans were known as LIBERALS.
The Dixiecrats came over to the Republicans following LBJ's signing of the Civil Rights Act, at the time when Nixon was formulating the Southern Strategy.
Jesus H. Fucking Christ, the late "great" Senator Byrd D-WV was a member of the fucking KKK.
I know it's fun to hate on anything that becomes well known (maybe they don't believe as you do - those BASTARDS!) but do you actually know anything about them?
Actually, yes, I do since they took over my town's fourth of july celebration.
They're a bunch of racist Birthers. They love to get drunk and shout "go back to Mexico" at anyone that looks remotely latino. They claim to be about "reducing the size, power, and involvement in daily life of government" until the moment you suggest touching the programs they use, like food stamps, medicaid, and free public "education" (that they nevertheless refuse to vote to adequately fund while screaming about taxes 99.999% of them won't ever have to pay unless they hit the lottery).
Framing: it's a way to lie gruesomely without ever saying something false.
Framing: I know racist ass-hats when I see them, and where I live, the Tea Party is nothing but racist ass-hats who found a new way to appear "respectable" to idiots like you who are too stupid to notice it's the same old crowd, just without the white hoods.
So say I. On the other hand, the conservatard/Republican party and their Tea Party yokels seem to like to say so every day. So I was pointing out how un-christian those assholes really are.
Sadly, what will ACTUALLY happen if you bring this up during voir dire is that the judge will hold you in contempt for "poisoning the jury pool" and you spend some time in jail.
If the judge hears of you bringing it up in the jury box - and remember, jury deliberations are NOT actually private or protected, the other jurors are free to rat you out - then he can do the same thing, hold you in contempt and replace you with an alternate.
You think THAT's bad, consider the following: elected judges and prosecutors = assholes who have a built-in reason to pad their "conviction rate" and "tough sentencing" as much as possible, especially in racist ass states like Texas.
The liberal obsession with statist solutions is very scary.
Liberal? It's been the Conservatives at the forefront of the "fuck them, imprison them all, especially the n____s and spics" system.
What, you didn't think that sentencing guidelines different for "crack" and "powder" cocaine came out of nowhere did you? Crack is predominantly used by blacks, powder primarily used by the silver-spoon sons of the upper crust. And as for Marijuana, Texas senators are on record, "All Mexicans are crazy, and this stuff is what makes them crazy"; in the Deep South, marijuana bans were a way to discriminate against blacks, and again came up the comments, like "Marihuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men’s shadows and look at a white woman twice."
Which is one reason the system is so fucked up to start with.
Just getting ACCUSED of something can bankrupt you. Guilt doesn't enter it. Just like in the civil court system, big companies mostly use the legal system as a bludgeon, burying opponents in paperwork and attorney's fees regardless of truth or merit of any lawsuit.
Read the study. They told some of the religious people that they were being prayed for; the religious people actually had more complications due to stressing themselves up and expecting miracles to occur.
Sure we can. In fact, numerous studies on the matter have been conducted. All the properly double-blinded ones show no difference between people who were being "prayed for" and those who aren't.
He probably thought you could turn lead into gold with the proper application of liquefied horse dung, too.
Well, if by "liquefied horse dung" you mean "hydrogen atoms produced from horse dung by chemical breakdown, then flung at incredible speeds through a cyclotron towards a small quantity of lead", you might get a little bit of gold. Maybe.;)
We can observe the results of actual evolution occurring in the real world, with species drift and controlled experimentation (the creation of Dwarf Wheat through controlled plant breeding for chosen characteristics being a key example).
We can't observe the magical-thinking existence of "cures" based on someone praying to a dead carpenter on a stick.
I don't think it was firing him for believing in a dead carpenter on a stick.
I think it was firing him for handing out religious literature at work and demanding his coworkers and subordinates read it.
Someone was nice and let him ride out the project before they let whoever couldn't be easily reassigned go; instead of seeing it as a favor to him, he thinks his being let go was "discrimination."
AT&T and Comcrap are both "you get a warning and throttled if you exceed 250GB" shops now. Meanwhile, applications use more all the time. HD video from Hulu+ or Netflix or Amazon streaming? Whoops! Telecommute? Oh dear. Set up a backup pairing with your family or friends, over Crashplan? Oh my.
I'm not going to say it wasn't unnecessarily rough, but policies on this are often the case for the protection of both parties - once you're out the door and your passwords are changed, then they don't run the risk that you lied on your exit reasons or someone else does something to piss you off during your notice period (thus causing you to do something stupid); AND, if something goes wrong, there's very little chance that you (with access removed) could have done something to cause it.
It sucks, and they could have been nicer about it (which leads to believe they did indeed have a crappy job atmosphere) but think of it this way: would you REALLY have wanted to keep going in knowing they were going to be like that? I can just see the bullshit now - "system X is down, blame bob, we all know he's leaving."
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They were even a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
As if the treaty was ever worth more than the paper on which Kim Jong Il wiped his ass...
The whole reason that Iran and North Korea even began pursuing nuclear weapons is because of that incredibly stupid "Axis of Evil" speech that George Bush made in 2003.
North Korea's been pursuing nuclear weapon technology and missile technology since the 1990s, remember the 1994 treaty where they "promised to stop"?
When the largest military power in the world labels you as one of three "Axis of Evil" members, then proceeds to invade one of the other two, it tends to make you a bit twitchy. And, both Iran and NK know that the only way to really protect yourself from U.S. invasion is with nuclear weapons.
Oh, I agree there. It certainly made Kim Jong Nutbag run screaming into even more isolationism, and I'd argue it was a larger factor in Iran's becoming more hostile to the world in general; it certainly scuppered an ongoing wave of westernization as the mullahs saw another chance to crack down by declaring a new round of "eliminate the influence of the great satan."
Due mainly to Israeli and U.S. propaganda,
Seig something...
But the fact is that Iran has never shown itself to be a particularly hostile or irrational nation in any military sense.
Oh? They invaded Iraq. They've been weapons peddlers to rogue states for over 30 years. They do tend to operate by proxy, but their military actions from Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza are well, well documented. And both their crazy idiot president and the Mullahs are on record on what they would do to Israel if they "had the means," often including the words "wipe Israel off the face of the map."
So we cut off their banks and hit them with sanctions. Fine. A lot of Iranian people will suffer. And maybe this will lead them to negotiate, maybe not.
Well, the hope is that it will. It's what the UN decides on, and it's better than going to war.
But you know what I bet would ABSOLUTELY lead them to negotiate and drop their nuke program?
I bet you're going to tell us. And I bet you're going to miss out on the cultural issues of being seen as "weak" by coming into some form of negotiation unilaterally, especially the muslim/arab/persian tribalist dynamics involved. So let's move on.
1) Offer a few public goodwill gestures to make it clear that the U.S. is *not* going to invade them or attack them
Like what - sending a ton of earthquake aid? Whoops, we did that. Not attacking them for all this time? We did that too. Offering unilateral negotiotions? Obama did that, and then the crazy-ass Republicans shot it all down. You want to know who's causing the problems right now, making Iran think they're going to be attacked, you want to look at Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and my personal favorite, Rick "end times" Santorum.
2) Tell Mossad to stop assassinating their scientists, or face sanctions of their own.
Ah yes, Mossad, the eternal bogeyman of the muslim/arab/persian region. Anything happens? Blame "Mossad." Assassinated your brother in law to ascend to the throne? Don't worry, blame Mossad. Killed yourself from a life of excess while stealing the aid money intended for the poor (Arafat)? Don't worry, your followers will say "Mossad poisoned him." And on and on. The moment you get into stupid shit like this, you just reveal your own bias.
3) Reign [sic] in Israel and make it clear to them that attacking Iran will NOT be tolerated, and will cost them the friendship of the U.S.
Really? We should take over the Israeli government by force and set up a puppet state? Last time there was one there it was called the Mandate of Palestine and the British ran it... then they parceled off Transjordan and refused to allow Jews to move anywhere but "Palestine" because the Arabs were bitching about too many Jews spreading out... then it was split in half and the Arabs launched a genocidal war to wipe out the Jews anyways.
4) Normalizing relations with Iran.
Normalizing relations is a product of negotiations. W
You misspelled that. It's "meAting"...
BULLSHIT The segregationist racist laws of the US South were passed by DEMOCRATS
And at the time, if you had the education a 2nd grader has and more than a 50 IQ, you would know that the Democrats WERE the conservative party in America, and the Republicans were known as LIBERALS.
The Dixiecrats came over to the Republicans following LBJ's signing of the Civil Rights Act, at the time when Nixon was formulating the Southern Strategy.
Jesus H. Fucking Christ, the late "great" Senator Byrd D-WV was a member of the fucking KKK.
Jesu Christos on a Motherfucking Bicycle - Senator Robert Byrd was one of only a handful of the Dixiecrats who DIDN'T defect to the Racist Republicans, and whose views changed remarkably as he learned how wrongly he had been brought up.
I don't know what you think you proved, other than your own lack of knowledge and functioning brain matter.
I know it's fun to hate on anything that becomes well known (maybe they don't believe as you do - those BASTARDS!) but do you actually know anything about them?
Actually, yes, I do since they took over my town's fourth of july celebration.
They're a bunch of racist Birthers.
They love to get drunk and shout "go back to Mexico" at anyone that looks remotely latino.
They claim to be about "reducing the size, power, and involvement in daily life of government" until the moment you suggest touching the programs they use, like food stamps, medicaid, and free public "education" (that they nevertheless refuse to vote to adequately fund while screaming about taxes 99.999% of them won't ever have to pay unless they hit the lottery).
Framing: it's a way to lie gruesomely without ever saying something false.
Framing: I know racist ass-hats when I see them, and where I live, the Tea Party is nothing but racist ass-hats who found a new way to appear "respectable" to idiots like you who are too stupid to notice it's the same old crowd, just without the white hoods.
So say I. On the other hand, the conservatard/Republican party and their Tea Party yokels seem to like to say so every day. So I was pointing out how un-christian those assholes really are.
"Be impartial in your decisions. Listen to the least important people the same way you listen to the most important people" - Deuteronomy 1:17
For a supposedly "christian" nation they sure don't fucking act like it...
Sadly, what will ACTUALLY happen if you bring this up during voir dire is that the judge will hold you in contempt for "poisoning the jury pool" and you spend some time in jail.
If the judge hears of you bringing it up in the jury box - and remember, jury deliberations are NOT actually private or protected, the other jurors are free to rat you out - then he can do the same thing, hold you in contempt and replace you with an alternate.
You think THAT's bad, consider the following: elected judges and prosecutors = assholes who have a built-in reason to pad their "conviction rate" and "tough sentencing" as much as possible, especially in racist ass states like Texas.
The liberal obsession with statist solutions is very scary.
Liberal? It's been the Conservatives at the forefront of the "fuck them, imprison them all, especially the n____s and spics" system.
What, you didn't think that sentencing guidelines different for "crack" and "powder" cocaine came out of nowhere did you? Crack is predominantly used by blacks, powder primarily used by the silver-spoon sons of the upper crust. And as for Marijuana, Texas senators are on record, "All Mexicans are crazy, and this stuff is what makes them crazy"; in the Deep South, marijuana bans were a way to discriminate against blacks, and again came up the comments, like "Marihuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men’s shadows and look at a white woman twice."
These laws were passed by Conservatives, not liberals. Conservatives, aka deranged lunatics like this.
Which is one reason the system is so fucked up to start with.
Just getting ACCUSED of something can bankrupt you. Guilt doesn't enter it. Just like in the civil court system, big companies mostly use the legal system as a bludgeon, burying opponents in paperwork and attorney's fees regardless of truth or merit of any lawsuit.
Only if you consider humans intelligent... granted, Dr. Norman Borluag was probably a stellar example of the species.
Well, yes. The influence of the mind is the entire reason we double-blind studies and test for placebo effects.
Makes you wonder what the Fundies are afraid of :)
I imagine they imagine something like this.
Read the study. They told some of the religious people that they were being prayed for; the religious people actually had more complications due to stressing themselves up and expecting miracles to occur.
Sure we can. In fact, numerous studies on the matter have been conducted. All the properly double-blinded ones show no difference between people who were being "prayed for" and those who aren't.
He probably thought you could turn lead into gold with the proper application of liquefied horse dung, too.
Well, if by "liquefied horse dung" you mean "hydrogen atoms produced from horse dung by chemical breakdown, then flung at incredible speeds through a cyclotron towards a small quantity of lead", you might get a little bit of gold. Maybe. ;)
We can observe the results of actual evolution occurring in the real world, with species drift and controlled experimentation (the creation of Dwarf Wheat through controlled plant breeding for chosen characteristics being a key example).
We can't observe the magical-thinking existence of "cures" based on someone praying to a dead carpenter on a stick.
Get the picture?
I don't think it was firing him for believing in a dead carpenter on a stick.
I think it was firing him for handing out religious literature at work and demanding his coworkers and subordinates read it.
Someone was nice and let him ride out the project before they let whoever couldn't be easily reassigned go; instead of seeing it as a favor to him, he thinks his being let go was "discrimination."
If the takedown notice was in error, and there was no good faith basis for it, I am sure there are several avenues of damages available.
Actually, the only thing you can do under the DMCA is try to get a prosecutor to indict them for perjury.
*gigglesnort* yeah right, a prosecutor ever going after the MafiAA...
some sort of not shown due to DMCA status
Funny, that's what MegaUpload did. And look what happened to them...
I'm having some serious deja vu.
Don't we get stories like this every couple of years? And they always turn into vaporware.
Too late.
AT&T and Comcrap are both "you get a warning and throttled if you exceed 250GB" shops now. Meanwhile, applications use more all the time. HD video from Hulu+ or Netflix or Amazon streaming? Whoops! Telecommute? Oh dear. Set up a backup pairing with your family or friends, over Crashplan? Oh my.
We're talking about Cary Sherman and the RIAA here.
What was it Mad-Eye Moody was saying during D-A-D-A classes? Oh yeah - CONSTANT VIGILANCE.
I'm not going to say it wasn't unnecessarily rough, but policies on this are often the case for the protection of both parties - once you're out the door and your passwords are changed, then they don't run the risk that you lied on your exit reasons or someone else does something to piss you off during your notice period (thus causing you to do something stupid); AND, if something goes wrong, there's very little chance that you (with access removed) could have done something to cause it.
It sucks, and they could have been nicer about it (which leads to believe they did indeed have a crappy job atmosphere) but think of it this way: would you REALLY have wanted to keep going in knowing they were going to be like that? I can just see the bullshit now - "system X is down, blame bob, we all know he's leaving."
He marched the entire class down the hallway along with them for that reason...