Unless you happen to be jewish and can post a few links verifying your $100 million trust cutoff, kindly shut up. Where exactly did you get that? And no, I'm not jewish, but this level of ignorance is maddening. What, if I were jewish I could make millions selling dog food online? Oh, wait, someone tried that one already... dammit, if only I could have been born Israeli I'd bet set.
I respect the anonymity of my contacts and thus I choose not to provide verifying information. I can drop a hint however, look at the jewellers, the people in the shadows. You're right in another way, I can't prove causal effect, perhaps this group of high-powered contacts happens to be Jewish by coinicidence, like there being two types of mafia, the aggressive mafia that does drug-dealing and the other mafias and other groups that chose not to do drug-dealing (and thus aren't on front page news but instead pull up at a Vegas club in a stretched $100,000 limousine and then disappear again into anonymity).
Hmmm very well I withdraw my statement that it's Jewish contacts only, it's any group of rich contacts that can trust each other e.g. mafia, yakuza. Only a very small part of their business is drugs, and these people are usually distanced from the main group. If you seriously want to find them, go to exclusive areas where the restaurants and clubs don't advertise, there are white rooms just like in the movies where you go past the outer restaurant and into the "secret restaurant that nobody knows about after a weapons search" just like the movie "Rush Hour" I'm not joking. I suggest you read some books on the inner workings of business tycoons and mafia groups on www.amazon.com it's very interesting reading, much better than the usual "top sellers" trash.
Only VCs invested in dot-coms, but here's a clue - where do the VCs get their money from? I suggest you read this and find out to get some clues about how business really works.
No, this'll actually reduce the price. Monopolies and monopsonies are distortions of capitalism same as communism is a distortion of a democratic government. You cannot look at Micro$oft as the epitomy of good capitalism. A coffee farm employee in Brazil gets around $1 a day because Starbucks use their monopsony position to force them to sell coffee beans at very near cost price. Seattle coffee house feels sorry for these guys and gives them around 50% above marker rate which is why anti-capitalist demonstrators go there. Starbucks buys coffee beans for $1 and ends up selling them in coffee for $80. This is a greater profit margin than Micro$oft.
In Micro$oft the coders of a software package get paid out their $40 billion so in effect it's free for Micro$oft to create software (other businesses have to pay loan interest - Micro$oft has this in its kitty). Then they sell it, their costs are a box, $0.50, seven CDs $5, a manual $3. This product (VStudio.NET) sells for $1400. They don't have to pay for tech support because after they get this payment they can use it to hire some temp staff at $10/hour if they sell 100 units. Micro$oft can actually pay off all their debt but they won't because they'd have to pay a lot of tax, same as completely paying off a mortgage leaves you poor if your state gives tax credits on mortgages.
So it costs Micro$oft risk (insignificant) with their $40 billion plus $10 per unit, and the revenue they get is $1400 per unit. Where does that money go? Same with starbucks, it goes into the corporate kitty, have you ever wondered how they can set up a new Starbucks shop in like 6 days? Sorry to say something pro-Micro$oft on/. but they don't usually dump their customers, their software can be buggy but they don't say "You want an update, get lost asshole" they do eventually roll out SP-1 and updates, whereas with linux a software goes alpha, you try it, it's buggy but it never gets coded up because the developer got bored, when you buy Micro$oft you buy the handholding (they treat you like a baby).
Look at McDonalds and Burger King. I was driving to some place like I do once a month, and I saw this yellow M sign. I thought "Hey this'll be a great place to have a McDonalds" and then I expect to see scaffolding and "Opening Soon". I drive past it and - it's FULLY OPEN. I turned my car around and had breakfast there. I mean the thing just popped up out of nowhere, one day it's a disused gas station, the next day it's a McDs! The actual cost to McDs of manufacturing a 2xbeef patty, 1xsesame bun, 2xcheese slice is very low. Where does the rest of that money go? Wherever they want it to, at the moment is building new McDs in China. Now how about those poor cattle ranchers who have to sell one beef patty for 1cent, does it seem fair? If they raise their prices McDs will go somewhere else OR set up their own ranches. In a free market system this meat would be sold at market price (>> 1cent) to another buyer BUT McDonalds bankrupts surrounding burger shops establishing itself as a regional monopoly, so the ranchers can't sell to anybody else (not a free market - one buyer only). If the ranchers want to participate in a free market they have to move their meat from Texas to Washington, a prohibitive cost so the wholesellers who move massive amounts of meat also have a monopsony.
The barrier to entry into a mass manufacturing market is so gigantic that almost nobody would risk it, reinforcing the megacorporations monopoly on demand side, and monopsony on supply side, just like a big bloated middleware that everybody's afraid to break.
In summary capitalism works if Governments act against distortions like monopolies and monopsonies, unfortunately looking at DoJ vs. Micro$oft, Bush is abolishing the free market system
In latin america any extra money will only go to the guys on the take... it won't be "redistributed". If it is, I rather doubt that it would be in a manner that you would approve of. Face it, societies are social constructs and some work better than others... they are not all created equal
Chicken and egg. It's true that the plantation owners will whip their employees and not give them further money due to the massive number of unemployed people that would kill for their jobs, but you've got to start somewhere. It'd be easy to look at the gold prospectors in the US many years ago and say "OK, market is saturated with gold, withdraw from America, give it back to the native American indians". These people "on the take" will eventually become elected officials, same as Washington. Popular revolt still works no matter what Government you have.
for what it's worth the kkk mission is: "to build a nationwide grass roots movement of White Christian men, women, and children who support a return of White Christians to government." (the link is here [kukluxklan.org]) thus this organisation, which you claim to prefer, openly supports racism, and the desire to bring a certain race of people with a certain belief system into power, and presumeably remove anyone else who doesn't fit that description. but that was exactly what you seemed to dislike about islam, plus now you want to add racism.
I don't like either almuhajiroun nor kkk. I'm just saying one evil seems slightly less evil than the other - both are still very evil (to use a Bushism)
i also got the impression that you don't really think of multiculturalism in the same way as i do... my take on multiculturalism was that you actually have several cultures which are able to co-exist peacefully in tandem. that was the ideal which the ottoman empire aspired towards. you, on the other hand, seem to ascribe to the "melting pot" idea of multiculturalism, where what is really meant is that people are only welcome so long as they ascribe to the dominant culture (which, again, is one of the things you claim to dislike about islam). that's why you cheered the restaurant owner who insisted that his paying guest must eat pork if she wants to stay in the country - as if the only food in the UK is pork. or your earlier comments that you don't mind muslims as long as they would eat pork and drink beer like people from your favorite religions do
When she said pork shouldn't be on the menu, I disagree with that because it takes away from my right to eat it. I don't like horse meat, rat meat or dog meat, but I don't mind people eating it in front of me, heck I might even try it. I don't believe in a dominant culture, that must be a mis-statement by me somewhere in my long post sorry. A muslim drinking and eating pork shows they're not under the spell of the religion. I am also suspicious of christians with 20 crucifixes in their bedroom except for with rebelling teenagers. In christianity I've found this to be a minority, in Islam not so.
the terrorists are already dead. they died with their victims. you cannot hold an entire population accountable for the actions of a few crazy people. that would be an injustice, and an affront against the liberties of every innocent person who values freedom. nor is is possible to quench "terrorism" which was born of oppression by using more violence and oppression.
And there are hundreds willing to take the place of those terrorists - I challenge you to go to Pakistan and find people that would say, "Yeah I'd be too scared to fly into WTC". I'm guessing you noticed on the TV when they all cheered after receiving news that WTC had collapsed. The injustice of the IMF, etc. is a given, and I don't believe a people should be wiped out, nor do I believe that they brought it upon themselves. What I do believe is that this level of hatred of the US can only be quelled by waiting 10,000 years in which time Saddam would definitely have nuclear weapons for sale, or by the US committing genocide on the populations where extremism is prevalent. Brainwashing is such a tragedy, many movies have been made about it - when's someone's brain gets hijacked do you kill them? It's not exactly them but then again...
anyone who reads your message and takes the time to understand it (all 10000 lines of it), that i almost didn't reply
I think the thing that makes people sick about doing work for money is that so many people act like it is more valid to scam someone, and do crummy substandard work and get paid through the roof for it than it is to do good, productive work and make money on that.
Strongly agreed. However capitalism doesn't force money-oriented gain to be the only acceptable type of gain. Remember the construction of the Empire State Building, expansion capacity for 10 more floors both structurally and electrically, and the electric generators have been running non-stop since 1920. I remember long ago when consumer goods like washing machine became widepsread that there was great concern that once every home had a washing machine, only maintenance would be required. All the washing machine factories would be shut. They were correct, those washing machines were built to perfection by a few large companies and were prohibitively expensive. The parts broke down almost like clockwork. 5 years for the control system, 15 years for the drum friction surfaces, 5 years for the drainage pump. If these parts were replaced an infinite number of times, the washing machine was made to last forever. It was constructed like a military device, everything was over spec, a geek's dream, the motor would have windings 20% thicker than necessary, engineers would carry spare carbon brushes as this was the only component subject to wear in the motor. A worn motor bearing would be replaced by removing the rotor from the motor housing and replacing the slip ring. Nowadays we just bin it when it gets old.
When the market approached saturation, the American product-style system came to Britain where washing machines are designed to break down after five years ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H to not last longer than five years. I remember there being digust at the low reliability and build quality, the units weren't constructed by hand. The burden of disposing this number of machines was considered prohibitive. The Americans argued that as time progressed the design and efficiency of new washing machines improved, but these improvements couldn't propogate unless the old products were disposed of, thus the American system allowed technological progress. Of course the Americans won the day, my washing machine will die in 3 years. US culture ingrains into its citizen that cash is king, you are what you have, a man with a ferrari is a better man than one with a 15-year odl Lincoln towncar. However surely changing this would be killing the American dream?
Not only might there be a necessary level of wealth redistibution at present, it's worth noting that a significant portion of Euro-American wealth is built upon a foundation of stolen capital. It's also worth noting that multinational corporations (or governments, or whomever) will repeat this plunder if given the opportunity.
LOL! Like the crusades but conquest via prime industrial this time instead of prime military (colonisation) of the past. One of the clearest indications of this is the symptom that workers in the supply chain are unable to purchase the finished product they are creating, whereas the Americans are. Cocoa bean growers cannot afford chocolate.
I'm much disturbed by the hardcore capitalism implemented in the US. Globalisation in the world today is a distorted oligopoly meat market where these corporations are monopsonies in their supply chain countries. For example:
Latin America should be far, far more wealthy than it is today. A lot of resources have been exploited, not traded
The majority of goods exported from these countries are wood and other raw materials. Due to the limited number of massive globalised corporations with a sophisticated transport infrastructure capable of transporting these massive volumes of raw materials, the corporations are in effect monopsonies and can thus force the sale of raw materials at near cost price.
But there is the difficult problem of bootstrapping the economies of the very poorest regions of the world. Market forces would take care of it if they had something to trade (and were allowed to do so). But, for example, Africa's biggest problem is that much of it is resource-poor and it's simply over-populated. The only thing they have to trade is labor. Ideally, market globalism should include as fundamental complete fluidity of labor. But the biggest bleeding-heart liberals, worrying over the world's impoverished, become notably less caring when it comes to the question of those poor people "taking away jobs".
The textile industry among others thrive in Africa, unfortunately the trade barriers between the US and these countries is so high that business is impossible. The only way to decrease these barriers and allow trade is to gain favour, usually achieved by buying weapons from the west. Unfortunately instead of being stockpiled as an unwanted goodwill purchase, often the temptation to use these weapons is too great, giving the west a smooth revenue stream whilst distancing themselves, no *ourselves* from the conflict by deluding ourselves that they fired the weapons, we're merely supplying them.
I understand. It's not unusual to be in denial that nuclear weapons would be used by binLaden if we had waited a few years under Bush's old isolationist policies. These weapons far outclass the WTC attacks, if used nobody within 100 miles of NY would be alive and all buildings including WTC would have been completely obliterated. With airline security as it was the airline attacks were relatively cheapskate to implement. I don't think you understand how easy it is to make a nuclear weapon
I would love to take your sheltered American world view of "aaaah my golden retriever is so cute", but some of us live in the real world and see real genocide. My friend served as a Doctor on a ship that goes around Africa and provides medical assistance. They stopped at Sierra Leone during the rebel attacks. 5,000 people with severed hands tried to get on for treatment (see CNN archives). Obviously they don't have the funding or time to reattach severed limbs, and in hot countries the severed limb degrades quickly. They gave the minimum care, they ran out of painkiller and anaesthetic within a few minutes. All they could do is treat the stub by cauterising it with a flame, VERY painful without anaesthetic but it sure beats bleeding to death. When the rebels advanced because of their brutal tactics an American cruiser was on standby but was ordered not to violate territorial waters and create an incident. Without this protection the medical ship had to get the treated and semi-treated people off the ship, leave 2000 people untreated and withdraw. I doubt many of those people survived. All the big bad kick ass American cruiser had to do was bend the rules like in the movies and provide an escort and ground perimeter for the medical ship, but they just sat there 30 miles from the shore worried about the small print on their report to their Admirals, they just sat there while thousands of people were slughtered. And this was before Bush's isolationist policies came into effect.
Grow up America, elsewhere in the world events happen all the time where tens of thousands of people die. Only 2000 die and 2 buildings collapse and you whine so badly. Should Britain follow this precedent and bomb the hell out of Ireland?
I don't like the way business is conducted in the world today, it hurts human beings. I don't like the way the major countries are run, they hurt their people. I dislike the legal systems of all major countries, they are corrupt and doesn't protect the individual from the superior force of large companies and goverments
So you believe you are God with high morals and the ability to pass judgement on all world legal systems. Mullah Mohammed Omar is just as convinced as you that he's got the high morals what with massive crimes in the US who protects the victims? Chop off their hands, on Jenny Jones transvestites get sex changes and have lesbian bisexual sex with dogs and cats. Mullah Mohammed Omar sees this as evil and enacts laws to prevent this and other things women seem prone to. You are a Mullah Mohammed Omar, you also believe you have higher morals than anybody else. I'd love to lock you in a room with him and hear you indoctrinate each other, each of you constantly believing that you alone are right.
Now if companies are small like you want, what happens if someone nukes the US and all telephone and electricity get knocked out, what centralised mechanism will restore order and repair the damamged systems? Small companies will just go "Bzzzzzzt, that's not part of our business model, we're declaring chapter 11".
I have no solution I'm afraid.
Cute. I bet you said that as an afterthought to conform to the expression "The first step to knowledge is knowing what you don't know" to make yourself look benevolent. Well done, but your $10 ethics don't wash with me I'm afraid.
Of course you can make a pretty good case that it works because people believe it should work, try hard at being rational self-interested agents, largely succeed, and their efforts result in wealth. I don't like that these theories offer a very reductionist view of human nature - people are much, much more interesting than rational self-interested agents. It's fair to say that you can count on people being self-interested perhaps more than other qualities like altruism, need for a bond with others, intellectual and physical passions, etc., but those other qualities fill in what it means to be human.
Obviously, but I think you have the causal effect mixed up a little. From an economic point of view people want to accrue. As for intellectual and physical passions, etc. the idea is the pursuit of these passions coincides with accruing money. For instance an athlete can enter races and make money doing something he loves. Of course in the US altruism has been warped out of all proportion, to such an extent that corporate rule seems like a distinct possibility, resulting in an unhealthy jump from passion to obsession, leading to athlete's taking drugs because coming second is a failure all of a sudden. Programmers work 18 hours a day taking all the enjoyment out of the job, the slightest oversupply of programmers resulting in brutal capitalism devouring passion and creating obsessed borg drones. The toilet cleaner gets more respect than us programmers because nobody wants to do his job - doing something so far from everybody's passion, and yet he's paid so little despite sacrificing his passion.
In this age of global fluidity, you can thread together a pretty convincing story that rational self-interest also requires some redistribution of wealth... ...If you believe Marx's economic analysis (leaving aside the crap about "collective anarchy") - those with money make more money, and quickly accumulate power. Pretty convincing.
You are incorrect, in the past whenever redistributions of wealth occur where all money is confiscated from the rich and is given to the poor, the people that used to be rich simply become rich again. How? Well, this is proof it's not what you know it's who you know. Is a poor black kid from the drug-infested projects going to get an interview at the White House or in Xerox PARC?
Business flows via contacts, and jobs flow via hierarchical mechanisms. The economy is constructed not to override this structure but is built around it, supporting it. This is why people that through personality/wishes want a compartmentalised symbiotic relationship with a business entity get jobs, being dependent on others for their living. On the other hand people that want to pursue business do networking, cut deals, come up with good ideas, and bad ideas, and cost these using the capitalistic model and then take a chance. Employees don't want to "take a chance" with their house, so businessmen do this using Banks and private funding (friends' money, Banks' money). This is why Jews coexist optimally with the capitalist system, they have a network of contacts where they can trust every contact upto $100million. Many normal Americans would break friendships for $1000 which makes normal Americans far inferior to Jews at the levels of trust and co-operation require for big business (in the current implementation of the capitalist system).
For instance here a construction company which has Jewish people in the background dishing out the big $$$ has approached a sparse village near me with massive disused warehouses and offered $60million to buy all properties so that they can demolish them and invest $200million in constructing a small CITY.
Us programmers in dot-coms think we're important but when we look at these big managers you can see that you're an almost insignificant part of the pie when it comes to cooperative wealth-pooling in a circle of trust. You definitely need money to make money.
now we've got Market Cultists in the White House, and this bad news for a market that needs some coralling.
*sigh* I wonder how those Alaskan and Arctic drilling platforms are getting along. Kyoto violators and non-signatories should get sanctions.
I'd hesitate to argue that more people are better off today than before - there's a lot of very poor and desperate people in this world today. Is it better or worse than before? I don't know if that question can be answered, or really if it should - the relevant one is how do we make most people OK off, without putting roadblocks in the way of generating wealth
The rich say they want the poor to be better off, but really they don't, and the political elite know that the rich are just having "conscience pains". People treat being rich like a right - we've been rich for so long we cannot even comprehend what we'll lose if we fall from grace. Americans always assume they won't get turned away by customs due to posing an unacceptable risk of asylum (economic migrant) or something. When planes full of Americans get turned back and American businesses are denied loans, then they'll fight tooth and nail to get things back the way they were with massive trade barriers against importing African goods --- why? Well one way or another, the poor will have their pain eased thanks to AIDS. Turns out that God is indeed mericful, even if we are not.
Why? You a lawyer? Go chase an ambulance (honestly) right now the career is quiet stable - it's immune to globalisation because laws vary wildly worldwide - lawyers in China are taught Chinese law, so your job can't be outsourced there.
Do you honestly believe that it would have been better to wait until Saddam succeeded in creating nukes and seld them to binLaden? Come on I don't think anybody's stupid enough to think that Saddam's nuclear programme is just gonna go away like a bad dream. I say it's lucky that WTC happened before binLaden got his hands on a nuke. Remember Bush was making the US more isolationist until 9/11 so count yourself lucky that 9/11 happened when it did, causing Bush to turn around his foreign policies. Otherwise if WTC didn't happen there would've been nukes in all major cities in 10 years.
In my book blowing WTC and Wall Street was OK, after all Wall Street didn't hesitate to destroy our childrens' careers by creating the tech bubble and Enron debacle. I interviewed at a number of these Wall Street companies, and now I know that I didn't get the job probably because they found I have a conscience. The beancounters and cold tacticians like (RI|MP)AA employees are the only type of people these city firms'll give jobs to.
Agreed. To evade the IRS they hide money in tax havens like Cayman islands. Same place binLaden put his money. A small island having $36 billion, hmmmm. All the big companies do it, as far as the IRS is concerned teh money's gone into a big black hole.
Another popular one is a boss ordering a $100 product from India and paying $10,000 for it. The supplier gives his client the product PLUS $9,900 as a present to his own personal account in Cayman islands or whatever. If the Indian IRS tries to investigate, in that part of the world you just give the tax inspector $100 and he'll say, "Nothing to see here, move along now". As IRS controls become tightened, we're going to see more corruption to get around it, Bill Gates meeting the CEO of Sun in dark alleys, whilst a Bill Gates lookalike is at a product launch on TV or something, so that's Billy's alibi.
People won't try to fix the US banking system after Enron, they'll just blow hot air until everybody's forgotten about it just like BCCI... Ooooooh, jogged some memories did I? Forgotten about that hadn't you? The collapse of BCCI was supposed to trigger this big change, destroy corruption and make everything transparent, but it didn't - why exactly?
Read my lips - the banking system changes for nobody, you might get some token changes because the banks want to look liek they're doing something. After WTC everyone's gonna cut the banks some slack and they'll have us by the balls again after Enron blows over.
Many of the flaws in the U.S. financial system WILL be fixed. At some point, the American people will not accept anything but a good-faith effort to correct these problems. At first, the existing government will be given a year or two to make the required changes. After that, people will begin to demand a "New Deal" and clean house on Capitol Hill. If things don't change significantly by early 2004, the voters will bust out the brooms in November of that year.
Nope. In the war against terrorism, everybody's supporting the President, nobody will care about Enron in a few months.
Marijuana is not illegal just because of its stigma. What about if you take smoke marijuana and then go driving? In that case it's worse than alcohol.
No, it's not. The UK government says marijuana is OK to drive read here.
Similarly, there was no significant difference between braking reaction times. The mean response times increased slightly, but there was too much variability in the data for this to be statistically significant. This variability in the results when considering the impairing effects of cannabis has been observed by other researchers. The variability of drug effects on individuals is well recognised and this seems to be even more in evidence with cannabis than with other drugs.
---- In terms of road safety, it cannot be concluded that driving under the influence of cannabis is not a hazard, as the effects on various aspects of driver performance are unpredictable. However, in comparison with alcohol, the severe effects of alcohol on the higher cognitive processes of driving are likely to make this more of a hazard, particularly at higher blood alcohol levels.
Therefore I reiterate that marijuana is illegal because of stigma and bureaucratic oversight only. With marijuana people feel funky and drive slowly and so are safer than drunk drivers who think they are invincible and drive at 100mph round blind bends. The two drugs have very different effects. Marijuana causes people to waggle, drive slow and sit at 4-way stop signs for 1 hour totally chilled, alcohol causes people to run stop signs at 100mph. Two very different effects.
The average Islamic person isn't that bad you know. Christianity too. A few dozen Christians will attack abortion doctors, that shouldn't affect your view on the 2 billion more "normal" ones. There are many Muslims living in the US who completely disagree with Al Quada, i wouldn't put them in the minority of muslims
That's right, the people that follow Koranic Islam based upon the Koran itself are mmmmmmkay, it's the other ones that are brought up in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Iran, Saudi that are crazy. This is because you look at teh Koran and think it's nice, and then when your kids ask you questions about it, they look at the other aspects of the religion - Mohammed's life where he waged wars and killed a heck of a lot of people. Since the children of people following even the purest Koranic Islam will delve further into the religion and see such massive violence as part of the religion, which can always and forever more be used to fire up muslims and justify violence, Sharia Law and tyranny, Islam is flawed and needs to be destroyed. Most other religions don't have war built in, like christianity emphasises the self-sacrifice of Jesus, Hinduism has the enlightenment of Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita.
My friend is working at a hospital in India, one of her coworkers is a Pakistan woman. When her husband comes he forces her to wear a bhurka (as the religion states), then when her husband leaves she throws her bhirka on the floor. Since India is majority Hindu and doesn't have Sharia law, she can get away with it. The problem with Islam is that when the religion propogates >80% her coworkers would police her bhurka-wearing and kick her ass when she throws it on the floor. She would be forced to submit to the religion, everybody would be forced to submit to the religion, Islam is the end of freedom.
If anybody knows of a country that's >80% muslim and has a seccular non-Sharia system where alchohol and pork are freely available where women are free to not wear bhurkas if they choose not to please enlighten me.
Personally I think Mohammed and buddies would be ashamed of seeing the practice of Islam today, unfortunately I don't think the religion can be repaired due to the fact that Mohammed's life will remain Mohammed's life and can be manipulated at any time in future to justify widespread fundamentalism. At least the Christian crusades had no basis in the bible, but Islam *does* have a very violent Klingon side to it which can never be removed.
To me a bad person is one that forces me to wear a bhurka if I don't want to. Go to Saudi and ask *any* Pakistani taxi driver what he thinks about the WTC and the US, they'll say, "O! Allah (swt) may more of those American Kaffir die die die die".... This is NOT a small sliver of the pie chart. My point is made.
BTW if Jesus died on the cross for man's sins, then surely he conned us when he got resurrected because he didn't exactly *die* did he?
As someone who left Islam, I know from experience that I am not dead
I talk to people, watch the BBC and then use Google to provide supporting documentation. If you listen to the BBC world service in the US you'll get the most uncesnored newsfeed in the world, heck they even called the Queen Mother racist on the same day she died.
If you were in Afghanistan then you *would* be dead for converting away from Islam. Last time I checked the United States didn't have Sharia law, it has weak beauracratic Christian law imposed by heavy-handed oppressive cops (why the heck were tanks used against WTO protestors I mean *tanks* if Tianneman square happens in the United States it's OK but not in China, hypocrites). The US is far from perfect, but still it's far closer than a *lot* of countries, like China massacring Tibetan monks, jailing Falun Gong Tai Chi practitioners (WTF??) and Brazil torturing and killing poor people for being well, poor, and you thought medicaid was bad. Do you believe the women on rawa who get shot for walking without their husband beside them => were whores could have said, "But I'm not muslim" as a defense. The countries that implement Osama binLaden-type Islam and need to be nuked: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, UAE. Read this
People converting from Islam were warned they will face the death penalty in an edict issued by the Mullah in January.
Non-Muslims have no right to worship in open areas, and can only do so in places assigned to them, AFP quoted Wali as saying.
An order to Hindus to wear yellow colors was introduced a few years ago in Kandahar, the center of the Taliban's main power base in the south of the country, though it was only partially implemented, Wali said.
The dress code is aimed at non-Muslims, particularly Hindus and Sikhs, being spared when religious police squads order shops to close and herd people to mosques at prayer times, AFP cited local press reports as saying
Now bear in mind that here in the UK the muslims of Bradford (where the Oldham riots took place) are calling for Sharia law. These are BAD arab-supported people and my gut tells me suicide bombing and sabotage of British military installations to be imminent, it's not that I know anything, it's damn common sense, just look at their website for God's sake, even the KKK isn't this ouvert, I'm ashamed that these people are in the UK. Have a *good* read of their entire website, listen to their audio, see their video, and read the fatwahs of this Sharia Court of the UK. Yes you heard me, these people have a Sharia Court in the UK. I've heard these people lecturing when they came to Ilford mosque, and their rhetoric is worse than Hitler's speeches. Muslims are free to enter churches and hindu temples, but when a non-muslim walks into a mosque especially on Friday I feel like someone's gonna kill me, I don't think even James Bond could infiltrate. Oh why why why does Islam always become like this when the propogation of the religion >80%?
Which reminds me my neighbour from across teh street lived in Egypt 30 years ago. There was a crisis involving the Americans, I couldn't make out what it was because she broke down crying. All Americans and British were warned to leave the country, but the warning came too late. After Friday prayers, after a furious speech by the Imam, hundreds of muslims poured out of the mosque looking real pissed, a British man was in the wrong place at the wrong time, several muslims grabbed his right arm and leg, several more his left arm and leg. They pulled and tore him apart, severing his limbs. He died. She broke down crying again so it was difficult to make out, but it was something like because the mobs started looking for all the Brits and Americans so they broke into her flat with machettees looking for non-muslims to kill, but fortunately she had anticipated this and had sought refuge in her neighbour's flat. The next day she and her British husband left and claimed asylum in the UK.
More recently my friend whom I've known since I was 5 was supposed to go to India and Pakistan with his good good friend who was so nice to him called "Sheikh Omar" - yes that one, I know 2 people that went to the same school as Sheikh Omar. In India they were supposed to meet with my friend's Uncle, a Brigadier in the Indian army. There was a last minute cancellation and my friend couldn't make the flight. If he made that flight he'd be dead, and would be on the Daniel Pearl decapitation video (available for download on Kazaa). He's already informed the FBI and given a full report so this is on the up and up.
So the next time you suggest that I'm "just quoting from Google" you might want to think again. After all you have to know what you're looking for to find what you're looking for unless you try the "Are you feeling lucky?" button.
Many people on/. know people that died in WTC, well I indirectly know the people that actually did it. Small world, eh? I think think this makes me qualified enough to comment on the evils of Islam's most popular implementation.
As for who created these problems and the history of the Taliban, Mujihadeen, native American Indians, British, French and Spanish(wipe out the entire Mayan race WTF???) colonisation, yes it's an unfortunate truth that every colonial nation has committed heinous crimes against many others, except for Tibet, Hinduism and Buddhism, the three most dissed religions. Immigration has worked because the immigrants' religions were malleable, Hindus would go screw it and eat American beef steaks, Scottish immirants would forget haggis and eat Pizza Hut, multiculturalism was working so well... until Islam came along. In my office canteen a woman wearing a bhurka was sitting there saying I shouldn't eat pork, one of our managers replied, "If you don't like pork, the airport is that way". I'm glad to see the native culture is adapting to resist Islam in this way, the same way Picard treats a Klingon completely different than anyone else. Before the British divide and conquor techniques were used these types of militant muslims didn't exist. Ultimately Britain is to blame for WTC by segregating Hindus and Muslims in India by creating a feedback loop especially in the muslims by telling them they were "outnumbered and repressed". But then without Britain's colonistaion would America exist at all?
You speak about corporate rule, and yet the SEC knows that if it doesn't regulate them these corporates will destroy themselves, just look at Enron. Better the devil you know.
In WW2 Winston Churchill knew that the Japanese were going to attack Pearl harbour, but they didn't tell the US because they knew that the average US citizen doesn't know or care about anything unless NY gets nuked or something, so that's exactly what you got. This is why bad stuff keeps happening to the US, maybe you should have a complaints box at the white house which actually makes a difference, but then that's not possible because it'll never get more ratings than WWF. Don't believe me? Well OK where's the USS Nimitz right now? Where's the USS Kennedy? Where's the S. S. Essess? Which one's the odd one out? Heck I don't even know, the only time I'd notice a big international event is when somebody gets nuked or the world trade centre falls down, even now. This is why I'm pretty sure a lot more peope knew about WTC before it happened than are owning up now.
Do you know how many innocent afghani citizens were killed while "radicals" were purged? I'll bet you can give me exact figures for the number of Americans who were killed
About 150,000 Afghanis, a handful of Americans (I don't remember exactly). Although the Afghanis do remember the B-52s NOT bombing I think Gardez city (I can't remember - the one before the Taliban fell back to Kandahar). 150,000 people is nothing, 2,500,000 Hindus were massacred in Pakistan, DO YOU HEAR THAT IN THE NEWS??? Because muslims speak out due to their religion being strong like Scientology, whereas hindus and buddhists are quiet and shy and just want to make money. Look at the actual poor people in Cambodia in the profoundly tragic Discovery channel filmreal documentary The Land of the Wandering Souls. What the heck happened to protecting the weak?
Well Islam is strong and that's why people don't want to hurt it. Loads of Hindus die, who cares? CNN is blaming the Indian government for the dead people in Gujurat. How did this start? 2000 muslims surrounded a train and burnt everybody alive. How dare the international media tries to blame the hindus? That's like the (RI|MP)AA making computers illegal and then being surprised when there's a civil war. Oh yeah geeks are sissies like hindus so if computers are made illegal geeks'll just rant on/. and that'll be the end of it. If (RI|MP)AA kills RMS in an "accident" EFF will collapse, he's irreplacable, his moral viewpoint is unique. Only stupid people attack Klingons
Just leave Google alone and actually go talk to people, and maybe you will learn that Google doesn't have all the answers. Live a little, and you might discover that even you are not capable of being perfect, even though everyone tries (Americans, Canadians, and Muslims included).
I've proved my point, read the middle of this post. Heh maybe when this post is indexed by Google people will use *this* post as a reference. I'm not perfect, heck maybe if everything was perfect there would be stagnation like in the Japanese economy, 0% growth is nothing to be ashamed of in my book, but, well.... Maybe conflict and oppression is necessary otherwise we'd have unrealistic isolationism and decadence as in the movie Demolition Man.
If you read the source. I don't know about you, but I don't have time to go through everything I build with a fine tooth comb looking for nasties.
Grabbing source and make installing it is about the same as grabbing a binary, as far as security goes. You just don't know what's in there.
Heh. The vast majority of people don't even check the PGP signatures and correlate the signature with the one on PGP servers. Windozzze users just click Next >> a few times so they have the luxury of time to check PGP signatures and read Terms and Conds.
With linux on the other hand, I know that after a make install and spending 6 hours tweaking the makefile that I don't notice the terms and conds flashing on my screen 100 times, I just regard it as 75Hz monitor flicker. After such an arduous install I'm not even going to notice a kernel panic! Now as for checking >10,000 lines of C++ piped into Java piped into a 100,000 line Perl script... *Somehow* I don't think even Linus would read it all.
Pop quiz hotshot - what if I hack into redhat.com and change one line in the depths of the linux kernel in the distro file to open up port 7876 whenever (systemtime mod 1000)==0 ? Who'd notice?
I've long since given up reading the hardware specs for the processors I'm using and expecting to understand every wire on the circuit board and every byte of code in the PROM. (Yes, I used to do this.) It's just all too complicated, and one does wish to have some time left to use the stuff.
It all got too much for me when processors started caching stuff internally
You poor poor guy. You're a computer fanatic fallen from grace. Go to University (a good one like Imperial) and do a computing course taking the Simulation and Modelling module. Then you'll be able to calculate execution based on cache latency and associativity, LRU cache management, etc. At least the signals on the system bus haven't changed much. I think you'll probably the only person that'd be against SiS integrating Northbridge and Southbridge onto one chip. I'll feel sorry for you when hyperthreading CPUs come out bwa ha ha haaaa! Look, if it goes over your head just stick with the worst case and put speed limiters in if the worst case is missed by caching.
Ironically your worst nightmare is Transmeta and Itanium - where the CPU modifies the code. You'll just have to face up to the fact that to model a mechanism this complicated you'll have to write a computer program yourself to predict these complexities. Remember, all chip and chipset manufacturers aren't breaking the laws of physics. How the heck do you get a logic probe onto the pin of a P4 without creating a pin to pin short anyway? I think it's possible if you use a hypodermic needle not to inject yourself but instead as a logic probe.
What I find funny is that you say you're a computer freak and yet on your CV you state you use Micro$oft Access and Microsoft C++ <Krusty the Clown> Bwa ha ha ha, huh, huhhhhhhhhhhh </Krusty the Clown>
Presumably your embedded development sparked your interest in knowing what the CPU does, well you'd be pretty stupid to use a P4 in embedded RealTime situations, unless it's supposed to double as a hand-warmer. Make your own CPU using an Altera FPGA.
I know these people as well. Poverty and not much choice of food was true, but then again I can argue the same thing when I walk into McDonalds and ask for a chow mein. After McDonalds drives prices low and makes all other restaurants bankrupt, they'll raise prices and select a profit-maximising menu (3 items - Economy Mac, Big Mac, Mega Mac) and act like a monopoly. If someone tried to set up a competing restaurant McDonalds would get a thousand lawyers and argue about residential/industrial zoning disputes, native American land disputes from 500 years ago and eventually would make it impossible for the competing business to set itself up. This would be the same as communism except that under communism the Government would set the menu. And so surprisingly an extreme free market = communism (with non-Governmental leaders). I think the sweet spot is halfway between American-style corporate rule which is tyrannical (precedent: Total Recall 2070, Bladerunner), and Stalinist-style communism.
I'm talking about economic system only, as far as politics go the democratic system is best, although today's brand of communism in China doesn't seem too bad, especially considering the fact that if they implement a democracy their Uighur people would attempt to implement Sharia law. In no uncertain terms, if the United States in the next 50 years wants to resist Sharia Law (the wishes of the majority of its future population) it'll have to strike off the Bill of Rights temporarily and eradicate the muslim population unless the native muslim population can be enlightened or assimilated. Same as if bible-belt grade christianity suddenly started spreading like wildfire. Heck it only took one Pakistani muslim to create big trouble in China, article here. Now if one muslim can cause this much damage, then surely Islam is an inferior religion that can easily be manipulated to justify genocide. If these "calm" muslims come to America they might seem nice and innocent and say, "Islam is a religion of love" and then one man can come from Pakistan and all these people suddenly turn into Taliban.
Islam is an amazing religion, because it allows it's followers to look peaceful and loving, and then when a sufficient muslim population to cause a civil war has been achieved, all that's needed is one Pakistani extremist to preach his hatred and these muslims suddenly become Taliban foot soldiers. If Islam looks peaceful, it's just a subterfuge while they build their numbers. It's necessary to modify the religion to resist this. Now how do you modify a religion? You can't pretty much so.....
The theory needs tweaking to embrace multiculturalism: As always, Google has the answers, 1 and I'll quote from here
Jizyah Unbelievers are required to pay jizyah (poll tax) in lieu of security provided to them as the Dhimmis (Protected People) of an Islamic state, and their exemption from military service and payment of Zakah. Jizyah symbolizes the submission of the unbelievers to the suzerainty of Islam.
The implementation needs major overhaul: more from here
In Islamic law, however, this is simply not the case. The life of a Muslim is considered superior to that of a non-Muslim, so much so that whilst a non-Muslim killing a Muslim would be executed, the reverse would not occur. [5] This is despite the fact that murder is normally considered a capital offence in Islam, with regular executions in most Muslim states. This inequity is also demonstrable in the blood rate paid to non-Muslims where murder or injury has occurred, which is half that of a Muslim. [6] Effectively, this ruling means that a Muslim need not fear the usual retribution for murder if he kills a non-Muslim. The law deliberately and consciously does not protect non-Muslims as it does Muslims. The position of Islamic law is not that human life is sacred, but that Muslim life is so.
----- the Christian must gain at least another Christian witness even to match the testimony of the Muslim ----- Obviously, this considerably disadvantages non-Muslims, and becomes of practical import when we consider the frequent charges of blasphemy used by Muslims against Christians in places like Pakistan, which usually have an ulterior motive (often personal or land disputes). Legal conditions such as these give unscrupulous Muslims the idea that it is 'open season' on minorities. A similar ruling endangers the inheritance rights of Christian wives of Muslims. [8] Again, this gives opportunity to dishonest Muslim relatives of a widow. ---- The consequence of this is that in an Islamic State - specifically the Khilafah - non-Muslims should be denied Government posts, since the state exists for the Muslims, who alone are true citizens, whilst the non-Muslims are merely conquered residents, and the Jizyah signifies this ---- As this state of things inevitably produce chaos and disorder, it is the duty of the true Muslims to exert their utmost to bring an end to their wicked rule and bring them under a righteous order ---- AL-HEDAYA Vol. II (Hanafi Manual) ...capitation-tax is due only in lie of destruction... That is to say, is imposed as a return from the mercy and forbearance shown by the Muslims, and as a substitute for that destruction which is due upon infidels.
AL-HEDAYA Vol. II (Hanafi Manual)
[On infidels refusing either to embrace the faith, or to pay tribute, they may be attacked.]
...approves of violence against infidels and those who leave Islam as their native or chosen religion. Fighting and killing are described as beloved activities. Apostacy is punished by death.
As for womens' rights see the videos of oppression here. Google came up with 90 other hits but I couldn't be bothered to go over them, I think this is enough. In summary the Koran is in need of some tweaking, and the Imams' biased teaching of it in corrupt gulf dictatorships desperately needs a complete overhaul. Religions were created to unite the tribes, today's multicultural (in the west) world hadn't been anticipated. Islam scales very badly compared to other religions, especially when some Imams have special agendas on creating hatred to cover up their paedophilia.
In my book the people that pick up the Koran and say "Hey this is cool, there's some profound stuff in here" are okay, if they accept the minor tweaks by tacitly eating pork or drinking alcohol but if their country of origin is a Pakistani madrasa then he has the culture built not around the Koran but around other crap (see above) ingrained in him, the type of guy that believes he's the second coming or something. If your Muslim friends refuse to denounce AL-HEDAYA Vol. II (Hanafi Manual) then they must kill people that don't pay the Jizyah as these people are no longer entitled to protection in an Islamic state.
However just as the mafia doesn't represent every Italian, extremists don't represent Koranic Islam, they represent a very warped Islam (Pakistan madrasa edition) which I say is unreservedly evil. Many say that Islam is spreading, but here's the secret - it's not Koranic Islam that's spreading.
langkjer, please read my other posts on this topic, then you'll understand my viewpoint more. Islam has a good IP system and has good ideals like not hoarding wealth. The Koran itself isn't that bad, especially considering that the bible and christianity with its DO NOT KILL in the EULA somehow was still used to justify the tyrannical genocidal British empire worldwide under the "we must convert the heathens" banner.
How can the implementation of Islam be fixed, well has the implementation of Windows been fixed? You'd need something pretty drastic for that like Bill Gates being brought up on child abuse charges like Michael Jacson. Consequently to repair the implementation of Islam, heres one possible approach - H-bomb all civilian population centres in Saudi, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Indonesia, Turkey, N. Cyprus, Libya, Algeria, Yemen, Pakistan, Bangladesh. Like blowing up all BSA and Microsoft regional offices and retail outlets simultaneously.
The basic idea of communism was OK - when you turned 21 you'd automatically get your own car and apartment from the state for free. Here in the west our 16 year olds have to slave away for 16 hours a day in Pizza Hut just to keep a roof on their heads. So which country has the better standard of living if you *really* look at it? BUT the political system of communism is trash and highly prone to totalitarianism. I think socialism is a pretty good compromise. How do you change the implementation of P4? Only something massive like Rambus being unavailable can trigger a chipset change. All in all move to Canada, it's just better there.
Power and money. Political power is the worst thing Religion can have, after all, look at the messes in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India
How dare you say that religion has any bearing whatsosver upon Indians. That's the most stupid comment I've heard in my life, it's obvious that your international affairs knowledge is that of an average American ie. zero.
India is a seccular multi-religous country with 51 languages and many different religions. When did you last hear about an extremist Hindu blowing himself up in the name of God? Heck the religion has 2 million Gods so he'll spend the rest of his life working out which God he is actually sacrificing himself for!
The same is true but to a lesser extent with Pakistan, despite being a dictatorship, Musharaff is a nice guy with a good personality and a nice smile. Actually scrub that nice smile part. Many of the citizens in its west are extremists (BTW the video of the execution of the American jewish journalist Daniel Pearl is now available for download on Kazaa courtesy of www.ogrish.com). Unfortunately the Pakistani troops on the ground as everybody knows can be bribed just like in the movie "Three Kings", no joke. All Osama binLaden has to do is give the Pakistani troops $10,000 and they'll look the other way.
Al Qaeada people still walk about in Pakistan as free men, the cops tip them off before they raid them or seize their bank accounts because the cops are their buddies. In many of the seized accounts the balance of the account was just $2, yeah America great victory against terrorist funding. Al Qaeda are like those popular jocks in US schools, everybody bends over backwards for them, no matter how much Musharraff jumps up and down. He has to fire his entire police force and CIA (SiS) but that ain't gonna happen 'cos of National pride. And so the vast majority of people arrested including Omar Sheikh responsible for the death of Daniel Pearl (above) get set free. Unfortunately total war is the only way to resolve such a level of injustice.
Just because you're caught with a copy of a floppy doesn't mean it's not a backup
Dude, that's a great excuse! "I'm not a software pirate, I'm just making backups of all files on the Kazaa network, and ensuring the integrity of downloaded files by installing these downloaded apps."
True. Islam is a beautiful religion, but its implementation has been seriously botched and subverted. I wonder if Bush will have more success in Saudi and friends if he says stuff like, "Because of the corrupt officials subverting the Ha'diths and rules of the Sharia, we will invade Iraq."
His current speeches are "America is great, axis of evil yada yada, you people are bad, drugs are bad mmmkay".
They are people who have been directly harmed by Western foreign policies, to the point where they have nothing to lose. They are literally like upset bees whose last assault results in their deaths
You either deserve a +5 or a -1
I've heard this so many times. Does anybody have a comprehensive list of what's wrong with US Foreign Policy or is it classified or censored and therefore unpostable on/. ? Especially for the sake of the younger ones among us. Let me start off the list:
The US support of Israel The actions of the CIA before watergate US troops in Saudi beating the crap out of Saudi cops the list continues someone please...
I think that seatbelt laws are better example than Marijuana, but it's all the same thing
NO NO NO NO NO!!!!! It's completely different. There are some laws because Joe sixpack just doesn't get it. This is one of them. Half these damn kids are on Ritilin. Many kids can't be educated. Kids are susceptible to peer pressure, they'll not wear seatbelts to look tough when they're driving with their buddies knowing full well that it might kill them. This is a good law and must stay for the sake of Joe sixpack, people with lack of self-confidence, people susceptible to peer pressure (read: everyone).
Marijuana does less harm than alcohol, it's just illegal because of stigma, same as being gay used to be illegal. It took 50 years to destigmatise being gay and for those changes to propogate to the law.
The theory of Islam, the Koran, political power distributed via Imams and religious leaders is very good, in some ways better than christianity.
When Microsoft started marketing Windows 3.0 they said it offered unprecedented reliability, a universal platform upon which anyone could build a software application. I think we all agree that the actual implementation left a lot to be desired both technologically and idealogically.
I say in no uncertain terms the *implementation* of Islam is repressive and oppressive, can anybody name one predominantly Islamic country where pork is openly and widely available? Where alcohol is openly and widely available (despite the fact the Koran DOES NOT FORBID alcohol, just excessive drinking)? Where there aren't significant calls for Sharia Law? Malaysia, Indonesia, Cyprus, Chechnya, Bosnia. The faulty implementation of Islam is spreading like Microsoft Windows 3.0 with its co-operative scheduling.
I put it to all that the theory of Islam is pure and whole, but the actual implementation encourages terrorism and *yes* condones binLaden. Just look at Palestine, hundreds of binLadens committing suicide bombing. If binLaden is killed there are thousands to take his place willing to give their lives for their cause, like Palestinian suicide bombers.
Christianity is also quite pure in theory, but in implementation we have the KKK and David Koresh, but these violoations are nowhere near as widespread as Islam's implementation. So do we regard theory or implementation as more important? Looking at/. bashing Microsoft all the time it seems that implementation is far more important than theoretical ideals and marketing.
In summary, the theory of Islam is pure, the implementation is evil. To fix this implementation, how to you convince Windoze user to linux? Enlightenment is one way but only the elite would be intelligent enough to understand. How do you change the way of thinking of 1x10^8 Islamic Joe sixpacks? The only way is war.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmmm very well I withdraw my statement that it's Jewish contacts only, it's any group of rich contacts that can trust each other e.g. mafia, yakuza. Only a very small part of their business is drugs, and these people are usually distanced from the main group. If you seriously want to find them, go to exclusive areas where the restaurants and clubs don't advertise, there are white rooms just like in the movies where you go past the outer restaurant and into the "secret restaurant that nobody knows about after a weapons search" just like the movie "Rush Hour" I'm not joking. I suggest you read some books on the inner workings of business tycoons and mafia groups on www.amazon.com it's very interesting reading, much better than the usual "top sellers" trash.
Only VCs invested in dot-coms, but here's a clue - where do the VCs get their money from? I suggest you read this and find out to get some clues about how business really works.
In Micro$oft the coders of a software package get paid out their $40 billion so in effect it's free for Micro$oft to create software (other businesses have to pay loan interest - Micro$oft has this in its kitty). Then they sell it, their costs are a box, $0.50, seven CDs $5, a manual $3. This product (VStudio .NET) sells for $1400. They don't have to pay for tech support because after they get this payment they can use it to hire some temp staff at $10/hour if they sell 100 units. Micro$oft can actually pay off all their debt but they won't because they'd have to pay a lot of tax, same as completely paying off a mortgage leaves you poor if your state gives tax credits on mortgages.
So it costs Micro$oft risk (insignificant) with their $40 billion plus $10 per unit, and the revenue they get is $1400 per unit. Where does that money go? Same with starbucks, it goes into the corporate kitty, have you ever wondered how they can set up a new Starbucks shop in like 6 days? Sorry to say something pro-Micro$oft on /. but they don't usually dump their customers, their software can be buggy but they don't say "You want an update, get lost asshole" they do eventually roll out SP-1 and updates, whereas with linux a software goes alpha, you try it, it's buggy but it never gets coded up because the developer got bored, when you buy Micro$oft you buy the handholding (they treat you like a baby).
Look at McDonalds and Burger King. I was driving to some place like I do once a month, and I saw this yellow M sign. I thought "Hey this'll be a great place to have a McDonalds" and then I expect to see scaffolding and "Opening Soon". I drive past it and - it's FULLY OPEN. I turned my car around and had breakfast there. I mean the thing just popped up out of nowhere, one day it's a disused gas station, the next day it's a McDs! The actual cost to McDs of manufacturing a 2xbeef patty, 1xsesame bun, 2xcheese slice is very low. Where does the rest of that money go? Wherever they want it to, at the moment is building new McDs in China. Now how about those poor cattle ranchers who have to sell one beef patty for 1cent, does it seem fair? If they raise their prices McDs will go somewhere else OR set up their own ranches. In a free market system this meat would be sold at market price (>> 1cent) to another buyer BUT McDonalds bankrupts surrounding burger shops establishing itself as a regional monopoly, so the ranchers can't sell to anybody else (not a free market - one buyer only). If the ranchers want to participate in a free market they have to move their meat from Texas to Washington, a prohibitive cost so the wholesellers who move massive amounts of meat also have a monopsony.
The barrier to entry into a mass manufacturing market is so gigantic that almost nobody would risk it, reinforcing the megacorporations monopoly on demand side, and monopsony on supply side, just like a big bloated middleware that everybody's afraid to break.
In summary capitalism works if Governments act against distortions like monopolies and monopsonies, unfortunately looking at DoJ vs. Micro$oft, Bush is abolishing the free market system
Chicken and egg. It's true that the plantation owners will whip their employees and not give them further money due to the massive number of unemployed people that would kill for their jobs, but you've got to start somewhere. It'd be easy to look at the gold prospectors in the US many years ago and say "OK, market is saturated with gold, withdraw from America, give it back to the native American indians". These people "on the take" will eventually become elected officials, same as Washington. Popular revolt still works no matter what Government you have.When the market approached saturation, the American product-style system came to Britain where washing machines are designed to break down after five years ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H to not last longer than five years. I remember there being digust at the low reliability and build quality, the units weren't constructed by hand. The burden of disposing this number of machines was considered prohibitive. The Americans argued that as time progressed the design and efficiency of new washing machines improved, but these improvements couldn't propogate unless the old products were disposed of, thus the American system allowed technological progress. Of course the Americans won the day, my washing machine will die in 3 years. US culture ingrains into its citizen that cash is king, you are what you have, a man with a ferrari is a better man than one with a 15-year odl Lincoln towncar. However surely changing this would be killing the American dream?
I'm much disturbed by the hardcore capitalism implemented in the US. Globalisation in the world today is a distorted oligopoly meat market where these corporations are monopsonies in their supply chain countries. For example:
The majority of goods exported from these countries are wood and other raw materials. Due to the limited number of massive globalised corporations with a sophisticated transport infrastructure capable of transporting these massive volumes of raw materials, the corporations are in effect monopsonies and can thus force the sale of raw materials at near cost price.The textile industry among others thrive in Africa, unfortunately the trade barriers between the US and these countries is so high that business is impossible. The only way to decrease these barriers and allow trade is to gain favour, usually achieved by buying weapons from the west. Unfortunately instead of being stockpiled as an unwanted goodwill purchase, often the temptation to use these weapons is too great, giving the west a smooth revenue stream whilst distancing themselves, no *ourselves* from the conflict by deluding ourselves that they fired the weapons, we're merely supplying them.I would love to take your sheltered American world view of "aaaah my golden retriever is so cute", but some of us live in the real world and see real genocide. My friend served as a Doctor on a ship that goes around Africa and provides medical assistance. They stopped at Sierra Leone during the rebel attacks. 5,000 people with severed hands tried to get on for treatment (see CNN archives). Obviously they don't have the funding or time to reattach severed limbs, and in hot countries the severed limb degrades quickly. They gave the minimum care, they ran out of painkiller and anaesthetic within a few minutes. All they could do is treat the stub by cauterising it with a flame, VERY painful without anaesthetic but it sure beats bleeding to death. When the rebels advanced because of their brutal tactics an American cruiser was on standby but was ordered not to violate territorial waters and create an incident. Without this protection the medical ship had to get the treated and semi-treated people off the ship, leave 2000 people untreated and withdraw. I doubt many of those people survived. All the big bad kick ass American cruiser had to do was bend the rules like in the movies and provide an escort and ground perimeter for the medical ship, but they just sat there 30 miles from the shore worried about the small print on their report to their Admirals, they just sat there while thousands of people were slughtered. And this was before Bush's isolationist policies came into effect.
Grow up America, elsewhere in the world events happen all the time where tens of thousands of people die. Only 2000 die and 2 buildings collapse and you whine so badly. Should Britain follow this precedent and bomb the hell out of Ireland?
Now if companies are small like you want, what happens if someone nukes the US and all telephone and electricity get knocked out, what centralised mechanism will restore order and repair the damamged systems? Small companies will just go "Bzzzzzzt, that's not part of our business model, we're declaring chapter 11".
Cute. I bet you said that as an afterthought to conform to the expression "The first step to knowledge is knowing what you don't know" to make yourself look benevolent. Well done, but your $10 ethics don't wash with me I'm afraid.Business flows via contacts, and jobs flow via hierarchical mechanisms. The economy is constructed not to override this structure but is built around it, supporting it. This is why people that through personality/wishes want a compartmentalised symbiotic relationship with a business entity get jobs, being dependent on others for their living. On the other hand people that want to pursue business do networking, cut deals, come up with good ideas, and bad ideas, and cost these using the capitalistic model and then take a chance. Employees don't want to "take a chance" with their house, so businessmen do this using Banks and private funding (friends' money, Banks' money). This is why Jews coexist optimally with the capitalist system, they have a network of contacts where they can trust every contact upto $100million. Many normal Americans would break friendships for $1000 which makes normal Americans far inferior to Jews at the levels of trust and co-operation require for big business (in the current implementation of the capitalist system).
For instance here a construction company which has Jewish people in the background dishing out the big $$$ has approached a sparse village near me with massive disused warehouses and offered $60million to buy all properties so that they can demolish them and invest $200million in constructing a small CITY.
Us programmers in dot-coms think we're important but when we look at these big managers you can see that you're an almost insignificant part of the pie when it comes to cooperative wealth-pooling in a circle of trust. You definitely need money to make money.
*sigh* I wonder how those Alaskan and Arctic drilling platforms are getting along. Kyoto violators and non-signatories should get sanctions.The rich say they want the poor to be better off, but really they don't, and the political elite know that the rich are just having "conscience pains". People treat being rich like a right - we've been rich for so long we cannot even comprehend what we'll lose if we fall from grace. Americans always assume they won't get turned away by customs due to posing an unacceptable risk of asylum (economic migrant) or something. When planes full of Americans get turned back and American businesses are denied loans, then they'll fight tooth and nail to get things back the way they were with massive trade barriers against importing African goods --- why? Well one way or another, the poor will have their pain eased thanks to AIDS. Turns out that God is indeed mericful, even if we are not.Do you honestly believe that it would have been better to wait until Saddam succeeded in creating nukes and seld them to binLaden? Come on I don't think anybody's stupid enough to think that Saddam's nuclear programme is just gonna go away like a bad dream. I say it's lucky that WTC happened before binLaden got his hands on a nuke. Remember Bush was making the US more isolationist until 9/11 so count yourself lucky that 9/11 happened when it did, causing Bush to turn around his foreign policies. Otherwise if WTC didn't happen there would've been nukes in all major cities in 10 years.
In my book blowing WTC and Wall Street was OK, after all Wall Street didn't hesitate to destroy our childrens' careers by creating the tech bubble and Enron debacle. I interviewed at a number of these Wall Street companies, and now I know that I didn't get the job probably because they found I have a conscience. The beancounters and cold tacticians like (RI|MP)AA employees are the only type of people these city firms'll give jobs to.
Another popular one is a boss ordering a $100 product from India and paying $10,000 for it. The supplier gives his client the product PLUS $9,900 as a present to his own personal account in Cayman islands or whatever. If the Indian IRS tries to investigate, in that part of the world you just give the tax inspector $100 and he'll say, "Nothing to see here, move along now". As IRS controls become tightened, we're going to see more corruption to get around it, Bill Gates meeting the CEO of Sun in dark alleys, whilst a Bill Gates lookalike is at a product launch on TV or something, so that's Billy's alibi.
People won't try to fix the US banking system after Enron, they'll just blow hot air until everybody's forgotten about it just like BCCI... Ooooooh, jogged some memories did I? Forgotten about that hadn't you? The collapse of BCCI was supposed to trigger this big change, destroy corruption and make everything transparent, but it didn't - why exactly?
Read my lips - the banking system changes for nobody, you might get some token changes because the banks want to look liek they're doing something. After WTC everyone's gonna cut the banks some slack and they'll have us by the balls again after Enron blows over.
Nope. In the war against terrorism, everybody's supporting the President, nobody will care about Enron in a few months.My friend is working at a hospital in India, one of her coworkers is a Pakistan woman. When her husband comes he forces her to wear a bhurka (as the religion states), then when her husband leaves she throws her bhirka on the floor. Since India is majority Hindu and doesn't have Sharia law, she can get away with it. The problem with Islam is that when the religion propogates >80% her coworkers would police her bhurka-wearing and kick her ass when she throws it on the floor. She would be forced to submit to the religion, everybody would be forced to submit to the religion, Islam is the end of freedom.
If anybody knows of a country that's >80% muslim and has a seccular non-Sharia system where alchohol and pork are freely available where women are free to not wear bhurkas if they choose not to please enlighten me.
Personally I think Mohammed and buddies would be ashamed of seeing the practice of Islam today, unfortunately I don't think the religion can be repaired due to the fact that Mohammed's life will remain Mohammed's life and can be manipulated at any time in future to justify widespread fundamentalism. At least the Christian crusades had no basis in the bible, but Islam *does* have a very violent Klingon side to it which can never be removed.
To me a bad person is one that forces me to wear a bhurka if I don't want to. Go to Saudi and ask *any* Pakistani taxi driver what he thinks about the WTC and the US, they'll say, "O! Allah (swt) may more of those American Kaffir die die die die".... This is NOT a small sliver of the pie chart. My point is made.
BTW if Jesus died on the cross for man's sins, then surely he conned us when he got resurrected because he didn't exactly *die* did he?
If you were in Afghanistan then you *would* be dead for converting away from Islam. Last time I checked the United States didn't have Sharia law, it has weak beauracratic Christian law imposed by heavy-handed oppressive cops (why the heck were tanks used against WTO protestors I mean *tanks* if Tianneman square happens in the United States it's OK but not in China, hypocrites). The US is far from perfect, but still it's far closer than a *lot* of countries, like China massacring Tibetan monks, jailing Falun Gong Tai Chi practitioners (WTF??) and Brazil torturing and killing poor people for being well, poor, and you thought medicaid was bad. Do you believe the women on rawa who get shot for walking without their husband beside them => were whores could have said, "But I'm not muslim" as a defense. The countries that implement Osama binLaden-type Islam and need to be nuked: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, UAE. Read this
Now bear in mind that here in the UK the muslims of Bradford (where the Oldham riots took place) are calling for Sharia law. These are BAD arab-supported people and my gut tells me suicide bombing and sabotage of British military installations to be imminent, it's not that I know anything, it's damn common sense, just look at their website for God's sake, even the KKK isn't this ouvert, I'm ashamed that these people are in the UK. Have a *good* read of their entire website, listen to their audio, see their video, and read the fatwahs of this Sharia Court of the UK. Yes you heard me, these people have a Sharia Court in the UK. I've heard these people lecturing when they came to Ilford mosque, and their rhetoric is worse than Hitler's speeches. Muslims are free to enter churches and hindu temples, but when a non-muslim walks into a mosque especially on Friday I feel like someone's gonna kill me, I don't think even James Bond could infiltrate. Oh why why why does Islam always become like this when the propogation of the religion >80%?Which reminds me my neighbour from across teh street lived in Egypt 30 years ago. There was a crisis involving the Americans, I couldn't make out what it was because she broke down crying. All Americans and British were warned to leave the country, but the warning came too late. After Friday prayers, after a furious speech by the Imam, hundreds of muslims poured out of the mosque looking real pissed, a British man was in the wrong place at the wrong time, several muslims grabbed his right arm and leg, several more his left arm and leg. They pulled and tore him apart, severing his limbs. He died. She broke down crying again so it was difficult to make out, but it was something like because the mobs started looking for all the Brits and Americans so they broke into her flat with machettees looking for non-muslims to kill, but fortunately she had anticipated this and had sought refuge in her neighbour's flat. The next day she and her British husband left and claimed asylum in the UK.
More recently my friend whom I've known since I was 5 was supposed to go to India and Pakistan with his good good friend who was so nice to him called "Sheikh Omar" - yes that one, I know 2 people that went to the same school as Sheikh Omar. In India they were supposed to meet with my friend's Uncle, a Brigadier in the Indian army. There was a last minute cancellation and my friend couldn't make the flight. If he made that flight he'd be dead, and would be on the Daniel Pearl decapitation video (available for download on Kazaa). He's already informed the FBI and given a full report so this is on the up and up.
So the next time you suggest that I'm "just quoting from Google" you might want to think again. After all you have to know what you're looking for to find what you're looking for unless you try the "Are you feeling lucky?" button.
Many people on /. know people that died in WTC, well I indirectly know the people that actually did it. Small world, eh? I think think this makes me qualified enough to comment on the evils of Islam's most popular implementation.
As for who created these problems and the history of the Taliban, Mujihadeen, native American Indians, British, French and Spanish(wipe out the entire Mayan race WTF???) colonisation, yes it's an unfortunate truth that every colonial nation has committed heinous crimes against many others, except for Tibet, Hinduism and Buddhism, the three most dissed religions. Immigration has worked because the immigrants' religions were malleable, Hindus would go screw it and eat American beef steaks, Scottish immirants would forget haggis and eat Pizza Hut, multiculturalism was working so well... until Islam came along. In my office canteen a woman wearing a bhurka was sitting there saying I shouldn't eat pork, one of our managers replied, "If you don't like pork, the airport is that way". I'm glad to see the native culture is adapting to resist Islam in this way, the same way Picard treats a Klingon completely different than anyone else. Before the British divide and conquor techniques were used these types of militant muslims didn't exist. Ultimately Britain is to blame for WTC by segregating Hindus and Muslims in India by creating a feedback loop especially in the muslims by telling them they were "outnumbered and repressed". But then without Britain's colonistaion would America exist at all?
You speak about corporate rule, and yet the SEC knows that if it doesn't regulate them these corporates will destroy themselves, just look at Enron. Better the devil you know.
In WW2 Winston Churchill knew that the Japanese were going to attack Pearl harbour, but they didn't tell the US because they knew that the average US citizen doesn't know or care about anything unless NY gets nuked or something, so that's exactly what you got. This is why bad stuff keeps happening to the US, maybe you should have a complaints box at the white house which actually makes a difference, but then that's not possible because it'll never get more ratings than WWF. Don't believe me? Well OK where's the USS Nimitz right now? Where's the USS Kennedy? Where's the S. S. Essess? Which one's the odd one out? Heck I don't even know, the only time I'd notice a big international event is when somebody gets nuked or the world trade centre falls down, even now. This is why I'm pretty sure a lot more peope knew about WTC before it happened than are owning up now.
About 150,000 Afghanis, a handful of Americans (I don't remember exactly). Although the Afghanis do remember the B-52s NOT bombing I think Gardez city (I can't remember - the one before the Taliban fell back to Kandahar). 150,000 people is nothing, 2,500,000 Hindus were massacred in Pakistan, DO YOU HEAR THAT IN THE NEWS??? Because muslims speak out due to their religion being strong like Scientology, whereas hindus and buddhists are quiet and shy and just want to make money. Look at the actual poor people in Cambodia in the profoundly tragic Discovery channel filmreal documentary The Land of the Wandering Souls. What the heck happened to protecting the weak?Well Islam is strong and that's why people don't want to hurt it. Loads of Hindus die, who cares? CNN is blaming the Indian government for the dead people in Gujurat. How did this start? 2000 muslims surrounded a train and burnt everybody alive. How dare the international media tries to blame the hindus? That's like the (RI|MP)AA making computers illegal and then being surprised when there's a civil war. Oh yeah geeks are sissies like hindus so if computers are made illegal geeks'll just rant on /. and that'll be the end of it. If (RI|MP)AA kills RMS in an "accident" EFF will collapse, he's irreplacable, his moral viewpoint is unique. Only stupid people attack Klingons
I've proved my point, read the middle of this post. Heh maybe when this post is indexed by Google people will use *this* post as a reference. I'm not perfect, heck maybe if everything was perfect there would be stagnation like in the Japanese economy, 0% growth is nothing to be ashamed of in my book, but, well.... Maybe conflict and oppression is necessary otherwise we'd have unrealistic isolationism and decadence as in the movie Demolition Man.With linux on the other hand, I know that after a make install and spending 6 hours tweaking the makefile that I don't notice the terms and conds flashing on my screen 100 times, I just regard it as 75Hz monitor flicker. After such an arduous install I'm not even going to notice a kernel panic! Now as for checking >10,000 lines of C++ piped into Java piped into a 100,000 line Perl script... *Somehow* I don't think even Linus would read it all.
Pop quiz hotshot - what if I hack into redhat.com and change one line in the depths of the linux kernel in the distro file to open up port 7876 whenever (systemtime mod 1000)==0 ? Who'd notice?
Ironically your worst nightmare is Transmeta and Itanium - where the CPU modifies the code. You'll just have to face up to the fact that to model a mechanism this complicated you'll have to write a computer program yourself to predict these complexities. Remember, all chip and chipset manufacturers aren't breaking the laws of physics. How the heck do you get a logic probe onto the pin of a P4 without creating a pin to pin short anyway? I think it's possible if you use a hypodermic needle not to inject yourself but instead as a logic probe.
What I find funny is that you say you're a computer freak and yet on your CV you state you use Micro$oft Access and Microsoft C++ <Krusty the Clown> Bwa ha ha ha, huh, huhhhhhhhhhhh </Krusty the Clown>
Presumably your embedded development sparked your interest in knowing what the CPU does, well you'd be pretty stupid to use a P4 in embedded RealTime situations, unless it's supposed to double as a hand-warmer. Make your own CPU using an Altera FPGA.
I'm talking about economic system only, as far as politics go the democratic system is best, although today's brand of communism in China doesn't seem too bad, especially considering the fact that if they implement a democracy their Uighur people would attempt to implement Sharia law. In no uncertain terms, if the United States in the next 50 years wants to resist Sharia Law (the wishes of the majority of its future population) it'll have to strike off the Bill of Rights temporarily and eradicate the muslim population unless the native muslim population can be enlightened or assimilated. Same as if bible-belt grade christianity suddenly started spreading like wildfire. Heck it only took one Pakistani muslim to create big trouble in China, article here. Now if one muslim can cause this much damage, then surely Islam is an inferior religion that can easily be manipulated to justify genocide. If these "calm" muslims come to America they might seem nice and innocent and say, "Islam is a religion of love" and then one man can come from Pakistan and all these people suddenly turn into Taliban.
Islam is an amazing religion, because it allows it's followers to look peaceful and loving, and then when a sufficient muslim population to cause a civil war has been achieved, all that's needed is one Pakistani extremist to preach his hatred and these muslims suddenly become Taliban foot soldiers. If Islam looks peaceful, it's just a subterfuge while they build their numbers. It's necessary to modify the religion to resist this. Now how do you modify a religion? You can't pretty much so.....
In my book the people that pick up the Koran and say "Hey this is cool, there's some profound stuff in here" are okay, if they accept the minor tweaks by tacitly eating pork or drinking alcohol but if their country of origin is a Pakistani madrasa then he has the culture built not around the Koran but around other crap (see above) ingrained in him, the type of guy that believes he's the second coming or something. If your Muslim friends refuse to denounce AL-HEDAYA Vol. II (Hanafi Manual) then they must kill people that don't pay the Jizyah as these people are no longer entitled to protection in an Islamic state.
However just as the mafia doesn't represent every Italian, extremists don't represent Koranic Islam, they represent a very warped Islam (Pakistan madrasa edition) which I say is unreservedly evil. Many say that Islam is spreading, but here's the secret - it's not Koranic Islam that's spreading.
How can the implementation of Islam be fixed, well has the implementation of Windows been fixed? You'd need something pretty drastic for that like Bill Gates being brought up on child abuse charges like Michael Jacson. Consequently to repair the implementation of Islam, heres one possible approach - H-bomb all civilian population centres in Saudi, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Indonesia, Turkey, N. Cyprus, Libya, Algeria, Yemen, Pakistan, Bangladesh. Like blowing up all BSA and Microsoft regional offices and retail outlets simultaneously.
The basic idea of communism was OK - when you turned 21 you'd automatically get your own car and apartment from the state for free. Here in the west our 16 year olds have to slave away for 16 hours a day in Pizza Hut just to keep a roof on their heads. So which country has the better standard of living if you *really* look at it? BUT the political system of communism is trash and highly prone to totalitarianism. I think socialism is a pretty good compromise. How do you change the implementation of P4? Only something massive like Rambus being unavailable can trigger a chipset change. All in all move to Canada, it's just better there.
India is a seccular multi-religous country with 51 languages and many different religions. When did you last hear about an extremist Hindu blowing himself up in the name of God? Heck the religion has 2 million Gods so he'll spend the rest of his life working out which God he is actually sacrificing himself for!
The same is true but to a lesser extent with Pakistan, despite being a dictatorship, Musharaff is a nice guy with a good personality and a nice smile. Actually scrub that nice smile part. Many of the citizens in its west are extremists (BTW the video of the execution of the American jewish journalist Daniel Pearl is now available for download on Kazaa courtesy of www.ogrish.com). Unfortunately the Pakistani troops on the ground as everybody knows can be bribed just like in the movie "Three Kings", no joke. All Osama binLaden has to do is give the Pakistani troops $10,000 and they'll look the other way.
Al Qaeada people still walk about in Pakistan as free men, the cops tip them off before they raid them or seize their bank accounts because the cops are their buddies. In many of the seized accounts the balance of the account was just $2, yeah America great victory against terrorist funding. Al Qaeda are like those popular jocks in US schools, everybody bends over backwards for them, no matter how much Musharraff jumps up and down. He has to fire his entire police force and CIA (SiS) but that ain't gonna happen 'cos of National pride. And so the vast majority of people arrested including Omar Sheikh responsible for the death of Daniel Pearl (above) get set free. Unfortunately total war is the only way to resolve such a level of injustice.
His current speeches are "America is great, axis of evil yada yada, you people are bad, drugs are bad mmmkay".
I've heard this so many times. Does anybody have a comprehensive list of what's wrong with US Foreign Policy or is it classified or censored and therefore unpostable on /. ? Especially for the sake of the younger ones among us. Let me start off the list:
The US support of Israel
The actions of the CIA before watergate
US troops in Saudi beating the crap out of Saudi cops
the list continues someone please...
Marijuana does less harm than alcohol, it's just illegal because of stigma, same as being gay used to be illegal. It took 50 years to destigmatise being gay and for those changes to propogate to the law.
The theory of Islam, the Koran, political power distributed via Imams and religious leaders is very good, in some ways better than christianity.
When Microsoft started marketing Windows 3.0 they said it offered unprecedented reliability, a universal platform upon which anyone could build a software application. I think we all agree that the actual implementation left a lot to be desired both technologically and idealogically.
I say in no uncertain terms the *implementation* of Islam is repressive and oppressive, can anybody name one predominantly Islamic country where pork is openly and widely available? Where alcohol is openly and widely available (despite the fact the Koran DOES NOT FORBID alcohol, just excessive drinking)? Where there aren't significant calls for Sharia Law? Malaysia, Indonesia, Cyprus, Chechnya, Bosnia. The faulty implementation of Islam is spreading like Microsoft Windows 3.0 with its co-operative scheduling.
I put it to all that the theory of Islam is pure and whole, but the actual implementation encourages terrorism and *yes* condones binLaden. Just look at Palestine, hundreds of binLadens committing suicide bombing. If binLaden is killed there are thousands to take his place willing to give their lives for their cause, like Palestinian suicide bombers.
Christianity is also quite pure in theory, but in implementation we have the KKK and David Koresh, but these violoations are nowhere near as widespread as Islam's implementation. So do we regard theory or implementation as more important? Looking at /. bashing Microsoft all the time it seems that implementation is far more important than theoretical ideals and marketing.
In summary, the theory of Islam is pure, the implementation is evil. To fix this implementation, how to you convince Windoze user to linux? Enlightenment is one way but only the elite would be intelligent enough to understand. How do you change the way of thinking of 1x10^8 Islamic Joe sixpacks? The only way is war.