You mean, that Iraq war which was started to find weapons of mass destruction that never existed, and were known by the US government not to exist?
Got to point out that the French supported the invasion of Afghanistan, which was a legitimate response to 9/11. Invading Iraq was merely Bush and Cheney's way of beating their chest.
I personally think that the French only tried to claim the moral middle ground; it just looked high from where the US was looking.
As for 600,000 people: I call bullshit. The US lost 416,800 total in WWII, of which 183,588 were in the European theatre. By contrast the Soviet Union - who were responsible for the fall of the Third Reich - lost over 10 million, nearly all in Europe. The US/British invasion was timed to take advantage of weakened defences due to the fighting in the Eastern front, and had the goal, not of freeing Europe, but of stopping Russia. Without the US, the French would be speaking, well, French (the USSR never forced their satellite nations to adopt Russian), but would have been aligned with the USSR. Wait, that's how they spent the 70s anyway!
Want to bring World War I into the picture as well? Then add another 116,708 - more than half of which died from the flu due to poor sanitation in US training camps (both in the US and in Europe). Total number of US deaths that could be attributed to "saving France": 300,296 - about half the figure you named. I'm sorry about your grandfather and all; my own grandfather flew with the Australian volunteers in the RAF. But get your figures straight. By contrast, the Commonwealth nations (Great Britain and related countries) lost over 1.7 million between WWI and WWI, most in the European conflict.
Excluding the US civil war, the US military has claimed 447,137 combat deaths since the start of the War of Independence - well short of your 600,000 total.
Um, no - you're the one talking out of your ass. Britain has a constitution - it's just not codified into a single document. Instead, it's spread out of a number of other statues, starting with the Magna Carta and working down through history.
Constitutional law in the UK gets complicated, but it's very real.
The reason that John Kerr took the blame is that he acted completely by himself (which he had the authority to do). He wasn't acting as the Queen's representative - in fact, he took a number of steps to prevent Whitlam from "ante-ing up" and bring the Queen in directly, and violated a policy of non-intervention that the Queen had directed him to follow.
Note that Kerr couldn't dismiss Parliament on his own accord; that power is reserved for the Queen. All Kerr could do was dismiss the Prime Minister and appoint another - one who would request the dismissal. He appointed Fraser, Fraser arranges for the supply legislation (the Budget, essentially) to go through, informs everyone he's PM, then disappears. The House of Representatives declared no-confidence in him (which would have made it impossible for Fraser to request the dissolution of Parliament), but then Kerr refused to be told about the no confidence motion until he had signed off the budget and then accepted Fraser's request (made _after_ the no-confidence motion).
Kerr deliberately involved himself in the politics of the day, not least due to a personal animosity towards Whitlam (who, frankly, wasn't the nicest of politicians around). If Kerr had wanted to avoid the situation, he could have arranged an alternative without having to put Fraser in as a dummy PM. The Queen, furthermore, had already made her position clear to Kerr - to pursue a policy of non-intervention. Failing that, he could have made it clear it wasn't about job security (Kerr pointed out repeatedly that he didn't warn Whitlam, because Whitlam could have asked the Queen to sack him) by tendering his own resignation, to take affect once the special elections were over and a new government sworn in.
The '75 dismissal needed to happen. Whitlam deserved to lose the subsequent election, particularly because of how bad his campaign was. I would argue that the Liberal and National Coalition didn't deserve morally to win - their obstructionist tactics of the previous three years had caused the crisis in the first place - but Whitlam took what should have been an ironclad victory and pissed it away by allowing himself, and the rest of the ALP, to wallow in rage and vengeance.
Interestingly enough, the Coalition still plays by this handbook - for the first half of this year (when they controlled the Senate), they played the same nasty obstructionist tactics. Tactics that were never practised by the ALP when the Coalition was in power (to be fair, the Democrats had the balance of power during that period, so the ALP didn't have a chance).
I voted for the republic too, because I personally feel that we should have an Australian head of state. However, if the Queen decided to pass the throne of King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and Defender of the Faith to William and the King of Australia to Harry (and he then moved down here to live), I would have no problems with that. Harry's children would be Australian, and as for Harry himself - well, it's not like there aren't a lot of other poms around the place.;)
New Zealand can have Beatrice.
(The Monarchy of Australia is a separate office to the Monarchy of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, as is the Monarchy of New Zealand and the Monarchy of Canada - not to mention the 13 other monarchies in the Commonwealth).
Service to the Arts has always been a valid category for honours to be awarded. Note that it's not enough to write a lot of books yourself (or songs, or paint a bunch of pictures, etc); it's also necessary to actively inspire and help others.
It also reflects a solid career in doing so, not merely a flash-in-the-pan fad star.
More than one universe. L-Space theory shows that there are 10 to the power of N possible books, where N is the number of possible universes. This is why there is never enough shelf space.
They're not saying that the planet in question will support life. They're saying that Kepler is able to determine, at inter-stellar distances, the components of the atmosphere. So if, for example, they point Kepler at a planet that happens to have a large amount of free oxygen (which would be a strong indicator of the presence of life), then Kepler would probably be able to say "Yes, there's oxygen there".
Yes. That's what I said. Prohibition was never accepted in all the states, and the various groups that backed prohibition realised that. Hence the push for a constitutional amendment.
"Democracy is a license for 50% + 1 of the population to punish 50% - 1"
Because alcohol was banned at a federal level, partly because the prohibition movement never convinced all the states.
Drugs are banned at the state level, not by the federal government. All the federal government does is classify drugs (which states can choose to ignore), and control importation - both powers assigned to the federal government.
This is why Alaska can legalise marijuana. It's also why blaming the Federal government for the "war-on-drugs" is a waste of time - hassle your state politicans, not your federal congressmen.
(By the same token, the US Federal government can't legalise drugs, either, other than de-classifying them)
The worst bodily harm comes from two drugs that are both legal: tobacco and alcohol. The worst withdrawals come from these two, plus another legal drug (or class thereof), benzodiazapines (valium family).
So - the legal drugs, with the widest exposure - provide the worst cases. Is that possibly because they provide the most cases? Would legalising other drugs provide greater acceptance, and presumably greater uptake? Even if it didn't produce more users, would it increase consumption by existing users? Would that increased consumption result in greater "bodily harm" and worse "withdrawals"?
So attack the demand instead of supply. Make the use of drugs the crime, with stiff (as in decades-of-jail) penalties. Also make the penalty automatically waived if the offender takes up, and sticks to, a free treatment program.
Also, how about trying to fix the broken social systems which encourage drug use in the first place?
It's even possible that they could have used this gear to go, at the time of the incident, and fetch the toolkit - however, it's plainly obvious that the risk wouldn't be worth it.
Depends on the glass - you can make glass very scratch resistant if you want.
The glass on the iPhone and iPod Touch that I own hasn't scratched yet, but the back of the Touch (which I've had about a year longer than the iPhone) is scratched like crazy. Jobs said that they went with toughened glass for the iPhone precisely because it was harder than most items people carry in their pockets (esp. keys & coins)
Normal window glass is about 5.5 - but it can get harder.
It doesn't matter. The Chicago 2016 Olympic organising committee sought their trademark 2 years after the domain name was awarded and put into use.
McDonald's have a pattern of naming burgers with a Mc-prefix. If I started a domain named 'www.mcchocolatecake.com', and McDonald's started to offer, two years later, a McChocolate Cake, they wouldn't have a right to seize my domain. Same deal.
The only thing in the EULA that is not covered in the licensing agreement is a notification that they send details about the sites you visit to an anti-malware site, so that they can find out if the site is, well, malware.
You don't have to use this feature. But you can't use it without giving up a certain amount of privacy, because of the nature of the feature (anymore than you can hide the fact that you visit a website, because there's a log entry on the website's server)
*ahem* Pay attention to the language. "Reproducing" does not mean "copy". Furthermore, by "making available" via P2P, you are not "reproducing" - the person downloading is doing the copying.
Futhermore, the punitive penalties the RIAA go for are around the distribution angle. There is nothing in there about giving away for free - yes, you can't re-sell or otherwise transfer ownership, but there's nothing about giving it away (especially if the other person makes the copy); there's an inbuilt assumption that copying & distribution is expensive, and therefore nobody would do it for free.
This is one of the reasons copyright law needs to be reconsidered in an era of digital content, and that laws designed to protect book publishers in the 18th century may not quite be appropriate now.
And, about the the fire violation arrest: if you don't want to get arrested for fire violations, don't violate the building codes. It's pretty easy. If the cops invade a room (with a warrant) to search for counterfeit money but only get a room filled with countefeit checks, do you expect the cops to say "Ohh damn, we came here just for the money, not checks! Let's go home!"? A crime is a crime.
First: according to several of the sources, the police did not produce warrants at some of the sites raided, and at other sites ignored several requests to produce a warrant, but did do so eventually.
Second: when you have a search warrant, and you use it to search a private apartment, you can't just arrest a person for everything wrong in the place. You need to get them on something related - so yes, you could bust them for counterfeiting checks, but if all you found was that they were stealing cable, you can't arrest them for that. There are certain exceptions - e.g. if you were looking for stolen goods, and you find a meth lab - but they are exceptions, not the rule. Fire code violations are way out.
The fact that the cops couldn't even pull out charges of "resisting arrest" or "interfering with an officer in the course of his duty" shows how much the protesters went out of their way to avoid doing anything wrong. When fire-code violations are all that get applied, it's very clear to see that the cops over-reacted.
Were they planning on doing something illegal? I doubt it.
Um... possibly. From the article: "On Saturday afternoon, he [Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher] displayed a number of the confiscated items: a gun, throwing knives, a bow and arrows, flammable liquids, paint, slingshots, rocks and buckets of urine."
Assuming the items were legitimately confiscated (and not planted), there's a fair indication that something illegal may have been planned. Buckets of urine aren't standard household equipment (and throwing it around would be a crime).
Furthermore, large scale protests _do_ attract idiots who like to cause violence (on both sides). Raids to disrupt such activity would be legitimate police work.
However, the scale of the raids, the nature in which they were conducted (e.g. refusing to show a warrant), and the fairly indiscriminate targeting is far too extreme. SWAT tactics aren't needed, and the only purpose is to intimidate people who intend to protest in a legal fashion.
Umm... the repair tech had physical, unrestricted access to the laptop. If there was such wiring that the light had to go on, then a few minutes with a screwdriver and a micro-soldering gun would correct that.
Well, for starters, you can put out military contracts worth billions of dollars out to competitive bids, rather than just awarding no-bid contracts to your buddies.
Secondly, you can stop putting pressure onto the new Iraqi government to allow US oil companies complete & free access to Iraqi oil fields.
Thirdly, you could actually supply the military what it needs, instead of putting troops into the field with inadequate body armour.
Sorry, but any form of government that requires the People to keep it working, and which does not take into account the fact that the populace is "uninformed and overly-obedient" is broken today. This is not to say it was broken 200 years ago, because it wasn't. But there are a lot of compromises from those early days that don't make sense today (e.g. the Electoral College), so it's clear that not everything is the same today as it was then.
As for trying to punish the telecom companies for following the request of the government - well, I for one can't see how you can punish someone for doing what the Executive Branch asked for without punishing the Executive Branch as well. After all, if it was illegal to do, it was illegal to ask for.
Do you have any evidence at all that GWBush has made money from Iraq
Well, that kind of thing runs in the family. After all, we all know that his grandpappy was a war profiteer who traded with the Nazis.
More seriously: W may or may not have made money out of the war. Cheney certainly did - he failed to disclose several hundred thousand stock options and shares in companies with a financial interest in the war until 2003 - companies like his old stomping grounds of Haliburton. Heck, Haliburton paid him a salary in 2001 & 2002 - "deferred compensation", apparently.
And even if no elected official made a single cent out of Iraq, there's no disputing the fact that several of Bush's key supporters and fundraisers did make a heck of a lot of money out of Iraq over the last 5 years. The real proof will come after January next year, when we see where Dubya's devils go; that's when they will get their "deferred compensation".
Bush has indicated on several occasions that his religious beliefs are more fundamentalist than the standard that the Methodist Church holds up. The classic one is his support for ID & the "teach-the-controversy" campaign; the Methodist Church hierarchy has denounced ID on several occasions, and supports the teaching of evolution in school.
Now, maybe his stance is political, not religious - if so, that would reveal his true beliefs about religion.
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You mean, that Iraq war which was started to find weapons of mass destruction that never existed, and were known by the US government not to exist?
Got to point out that the French supported the invasion of Afghanistan, which was a legitimate response to 9/11. Invading Iraq was merely Bush and Cheney's way of beating their chest.
I personally think that the French only tried to claim the moral middle ground; it just looked high from where the US was looking.
As for 600,000 people: I call bullshit. The US lost 416,800 total in WWII, of which 183,588 were in the European theatre. By contrast the Soviet Union - who were responsible for the fall of the Third Reich - lost over 10 million, nearly all in Europe. The US/British invasion was timed to take advantage of weakened defences due to the fighting in the Eastern front, and had the goal, not of freeing Europe, but of stopping Russia. Without the US, the French would be speaking, well, French (the USSR never forced their satellite nations to adopt Russian), but would have been aligned with the USSR. Wait, that's how they spent the 70s anyway!
Want to bring World War I into the picture as well? Then add another 116,708 - more than half of which died from the flu due to poor sanitation in US training camps (both in the US and in Europe). Total number of US deaths that could be attributed to "saving France": 300,296 - about half the figure you named. I'm sorry about your grandfather and all; my own grandfather flew with the Australian volunteers in the RAF. But get your figures straight. By contrast, the Commonwealth nations (Great Britain and related countries) lost over 1.7 million between WWI and WWI, most in the European conflict.
Excluding the US civil war, the US military has claimed 447,137 combat deaths since the start of the War of Independence - well short of your 600,000 total.
(figures sourced from wikipedia)
Um, no - you're the one talking out of your ass. Britain has a constitution - it's just not codified into a single document. Instead, it's spread out of a number of other statues, starting with the Magna Carta and working down through history.
Constitutional law in the UK gets complicated, but it's very real.
The reason that John Kerr took the blame is that he acted completely by himself (which he had the authority to do). He wasn't acting as the Queen's representative - in fact, he took a number of steps to prevent Whitlam from "ante-ing up" and bring the Queen in directly, and violated a policy of non-intervention that the Queen had directed him to follow.
Note that Kerr couldn't dismiss Parliament on his own accord; that power is reserved for the Queen. All Kerr could do was dismiss the Prime Minister and appoint another - one who would request the dismissal. He appointed Fraser, Fraser arranges for the supply legislation (the Budget, essentially) to go through, informs everyone he's PM, then disappears. The House of Representatives declared no-confidence in him (which would have made it impossible for Fraser to request the dissolution of Parliament), but then Kerr refused to be told about the no confidence motion until he had signed off the budget and then accepted Fraser's request (made _after_ the no-confidence motion).
Kerr deliberately involved himself in the politics of the day, not least due to a personal animosity towards Whitlam (who, frankly, wasn't the nicest of politicians around). If Kerr had wanted to avoid the situation, he could have arranged an alternative without having to put Fraser in as a dummy PM. The Queen, furthermore, had already made her position clear to Kerr - to pursue a policy of non-intervention. Failing that, he could have made it clear it wasn't about job security (Kerr pointed out repeatedly that he didn't warn Whitlam, because Whitlam could have asked the Queen to sack him) by tendering his own resignation, to take affect once the special elections were over and a new government sworn in.
The '75 dismissal needed to happen. Whitlam deserved to lose the subsequent election, particularly because of how bad his campaign was. I would argue that the Liberal and National Coalition didn't deserve morally to win - their obstructionist tactics of the previous three years had caused the crisis in the first place - but Whitlam took what should have been an ironclad victory and pissed it away by allowing himself, and the rest of the ALP, to wallow in rage and vengeance.
Interestingly enough, the Coalition still plays by this handbook - for the first half of this year (when they controlled the Senate), they played the same nasty obstructionist tactics. Tactics that were never practised by the ALP when the Coalition was in power (to be fair, the Democrats had the balance of power during that period, so the ALP didn't have a chance).
I voted for the republic too, because I personally feel that we should have an Australian head of state. However, if the Queen decided to pass the throne of King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and Defender of the Faith to William and the King of Australia to Harry (and he then moved down here to live), I would have no problems with that. Harry's children would be Australian, and as for Harry himself - well, it's not like there aren't a lot of other poms around the place. ;)
New Zealand can have Beatrice.
(The Monarchy of Australia is a separate office to the Monarchy of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, as is the Monarchy of New Zealand and the Monarchy of Canada - not to mention the 13 other monarchies in the Commonwealth).
Service to the Arts has always been a valid category for honours to be awarded. Note that it's not enough to write a lot of books yourself (or songs, or paint a bunch of pictures, etc); it's also necessary to actively inspire and help others.
It also reflects a solid career in doing so, not merely a flash-in-the-pan fad star.
More than one universe. L-Space theory shows that there are 10 to the power of N possible books, where N is the number of possible universes. This is why there is never enough shelf space.
Hotter than Hell, but considerably cooler than Heaven.
They're not saying that the planet in question will support life. They're saying that Kepler is able to determine, at inter-stellar distances, the components of the atmosphere. So if, for example, they point Kepler at a planet that happens to have a large amount of free oxygen (which would be a strong indicator of the presence of life), then Kepler would probably be able to say "Yes, there's oxygen there".
Yes. That's what I said. Prohibition was never accepted in all the states, and the various groups that backed prohibition realised that. Hence the push for a constitutional amendment.
"Democracy is a license for 50% + 1 of the population to punish 50% - 1"
Because alcohol was banned at a federal level, partly because the prohibition movement never convinced all the states.
Drugs are banned at the state level, not by the federal government. All the federal government does is classify drugs (which states can choose to ignore), and control importation - both powers assigned to the federal government.
This is why Alaska can legalise marijuana. It's also why blaming the Federal government for the "war-on-drugs" is a waste of time - hassle your state politicans, not your federal congressmen.
(By the same token, the US Federal government can't legalise drugs, either, other than de-classifying them)
So - the legal drugs, with the widest exposure - provide the worst cases. Is that possibly because they provide the most cases? Would legalising other drugs provide greater acceptance, and presumably greater uptake? Even if it didn't produce more users, would it increase consumption by existing users? Would that increased consumption result in greater "bodily harm" and worse "withdrawals"?
So attack the demand instead of supply. Make the use of drugs the crime, with stiff (as in decades-of-jail) penalties. Also make the penalty automatically waived if the offender takes up, and sticks to, a free treatment program.
Also, how about trying to fix the broken social systems which encourage drug use in the first place?
It's even possible that they could have used this gear to go, at the time of the incident, and fetch the toolkit - however, it's plainly obvious that the risk wouldn't be worth it.
Depends on the glass - you can make glass very scratch resistant if you want.
The glass on the iPhone and iPod Touch that I own hasn't scratched yet, but the back of the Touch (which I've had about a year longer than the iPhone) is scratched like crazy. Jobs said that they went with toughened glass for the iPhone precisely because it was harder than most items people carry in their pockets (esp. keys & coins)
Normal window glass is about 5.5 - but it can get harder.
It doesn't matter. The Chicago 2016 Olympic organising committee sought their trademark 2 years after the domain name was awarded and put into use.
McDonald's have a pattern of naming burgers with a Mc-prefix. If I started a domain named 'www.mcchocolatecake.com', and McDonald's started to offer, two years later, a McChocolate Cake, they wouldn't have a right to seize my domain. Same deal.
The only thing in the EULA that is not covered in the licensing agreement is a notification that they send details about the sites you visit to an anti-malware site, so that they can find out if the site is, well, malware.
You don't have to use this feature. But you can't use it without giving up a certain amount of privacy, because of the nature of the feature (anymore than you can hide the fact that you visit a website, because there's a log entry on the website's server)
*ahem* Pay attention to the language. "Reproducing" does not mean "copy". Furthermore, by "making available" via P2P, you are not "reproducing" - the person downloading is doing the copying.
Futhermore, the punitive penalties the RIAA go for are around the distribution angle. There is nothing in there about giving away for free - yes, you can't re-sell or otherwise transfer ownership, but there's nothing about giving it away (especially if the other person makes the copy); there's an inbuilt assumption that copying & distribution is expensive, and therefore nobody would do it for free.
This is one of the reasons copyright law needs to be reconsidered in an era of digital content, and that laws designed to protect book publishers in the 18th century may not quite be appropriate now.
First: according to several of the sources, the police did not produce warrants at some of the sites raided, and at other sites ignored several requests to produce a warrant, but did do so eventually.
Second: when you have a search warrant, and you use it to search a private apartment, you can't just arrest a person for everything wrong in the place. You need to get them on something related - so yes, you could bust them for counterfeiting checks, but if all you found was that they were stealing cable, you can't arrest them for that. There are certain exceptions - e.g. if you were looking for stolen goods, and you find a meth lab - but they are exceptions, not the rule. Fire code violations are way out.
The fact that the cops couldn't even pull out charges of "resisting arrest" or "interfering with an officer in the course of his duty" shows how much the protesters went out of their way to avoid doing anything wrong. When fire-code violations are all that get applied, it's very clear to see that the cops over-reacted.
Um... possibly. From the article: "On Saturday afternoon, he [Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher] displayed a number of the confiscated items: a gun, throwing knives, a bow and arrows, flammable liquids, paint, slingshots, rocks and buckets of urine."
Assuming the items were legitimately confiscated (and not planted), there's a fair indication that something illegal may have been planned. Buckets of urine aren't standard household equipment (and throwing it around would be a crime).
Furthermore, large scale protests _do_ attract idiots who like to cause violence (on both sides). Raids to disrupt such activity would be legitimate police work.
However, the scale of the raids, the nature in which they were conducted (e.g. refusing to show a warrant), and the fairly indiscriminate targeting is far too extreme. SWAT tactics aren't needed, and the only purpose is to intimidate people who intend to protest in a legal fashion.
Umm... the repair tech had physical, unrestricted access to the laptop. If there was such wiring that the light had to go on, then a few minutes with a screwdriver and a micro-soldering gun would correct that.
Well, for starters, you can put out military contracts worth billions of dollars out to competitive bids, rather than just awarding no-bid contracts to your buddies.
Secondly, you can stop putting pressure onto the new Iraqi government to allow US oil companies complete & free access to Iraqi oil fields.
Thirdly, you could actually supply the military what it needs, instead of putting troops into the field with inadequate body armour.
Those things would be a help.
Sorry, but any form of government that requires the People to keep it working, and which does not take into account the fact that the populace is "uninformed and overly-obedient" is broken today. This is not to say it was broken 200 years ago, because it wasn't. But there are a lot of compromises from those early days that don't make sense today (e.g. the Electoral College), so it's clear that not everything is the same today as it was then.
As for trying to punish the telecom companies for following the request of the government - well, I for one can't see how you can punish someone for doing what the Executive Branch asked for without punishing the Executive Branch as well. After all, if it was illegal to do, it was illegal to ask for.
Well, that kind of thing runs in the family. After all, we all know that his grandpappy was a war profiteer who traded with the Nazis.
More seriously: W may or may not have made money out of the war. Cheney certainly did - he failed to disclose several hundred thousand stock options and shares in companies with a financial interest in the war until 2003 - companies like his old stomping grounds of Haliburton. Heck, Haliburton paid him a salary in 2001 & 2002 - "deferred compensation", apparently.
And even if no elected official made a single cent out of Iraq, there's no disputing the fact that several of Bush's key supporters and fundraisers did make a heck of a lot of money out of Iraq over the last 5 years. The real proof will come after January next year, when we see where Dubya's devils go; that's when they will get their "deferred compensation".
Bush has indicated on several occasions that his religious beliefs are more fundamentalist than the standard that the Methodist Church holds up. The classic one is his support for ID & the "teach-the-controversy" campaign; the Methodist Church hierarchy has denounced ID on several occasions, and supports the teaching of evolution in school.
Now, maybe his stance is political, not religious - if so, that would reveal his true beliefs about religion.
This isn't search, it's seizure; the right to search doesn't allow the border guards to take your property away from you to conduct the search.