Yeah, okay. Given that the Chinese government doesn't deny any of the things I just said (saying instead that they are justified), perhaps you can explain why I should believe that they are not happening?
With due respect, I've never been to Nazi-era Germany, Apartheid-era South Africa, or Soviet-era Russia either, but as with China, I know enough about each place to know that I don't want to.
We're talking about a country which imprisons tens of thousands of its citizens for political crimes ranging from belonging to a non-state-approved religion to wanting to have a second child, from calling for elections to buying or selling a bible, and you think I have to go there to know for sure I don't like the place? C'mon...
So let me see if I understand your argument. You are saying `we should make sure that wars, when they do occur, result in more civilian casualties, in hopes that this will keep people from supporting wars.'?
Are you against smart bombs too, then?
And do you hold this position even given the obvious fact that some wars, like this one, will be necessary in any case, so that if you make wars more dangerous for civilians, the end result will be more civilian deaths no matter how you slice it...
Sure, in the streets, by those who can be trusted not to do anything about their gripes, and who don't belong to a non-state-run church or try to associate freely with others who have similar complaints, you mean.
For a source on the origins of the `America created AIDS' myth as a Soviet Active-Measures propaganda program, check out The Sword and the Shield: the Mitrokhin archive and the secret history of the KGB by Christopher Andrew and Vasily Mitrokhin, which is one of the best histories of the KGB written since declassified records have become available with the end of the cold war (including the Mitrokhin archive, which is a collection of copies of KGB archival material smuggled over the Finish border by a defecting KGB archivist as the USSR crumbled), and can be purchased
here.
One more point (I knew I missed one:-) ): in response to the point that the ICC is not acceptable because it would subject US citizens to a court not bound by the protections of the US Constitution, you say `Fine, let's make no one subject to it.'. I agree completely. So does the Bush administration, who have been calling for an end to the court from day one. So, by the way, do the British, to some extent, who while publicly castigating the US for opposing the court have been secretly negotiating to have their troops in Afghanistan not be subject to its jurisdiction.
So yes, the court must go. Far better that no such body exist than that US citizens be rounded up and subject to trials in which they cannot appeal to their constitutional rights, in front of judges not appointed by their elected officials, under a system of laws not their own.
Except that the only two times in recent history we have deployed troops to the middle east were once at the request of a local government which had been invaded, with UN backing, and once in response to the attacks of September 11. If you want us to believe that we are in Afghanistan for oil, you'll have to give us a reason to rule out the rather more obvious reason, which is to prevent a repeat of the attacks of September 11.
Colombia -- can you provide any reference to these `pesticides which kill other crops but not coca'? Why would the Colombians do such a thing? Are you supposing they want coca to be grown? Isn't it likely that that the fact that coca is more profitable than other crops is relevant?
Pinochet -- the problem is that with the cold war over, we now have access to a lot of declassified records which show that the truth about Pinochet's rise to power is rather less sinister, if perhaps as disappointing, as the standard eighties-era lefty myth. The truth is that the CIA was as surprised by the coup as anyone else. It's also worth noting that the comparison between Allende (who had suspended Chile's constitution, cancelled all future elections, and called for troops from Castro's Cuba to enforce martial law), and Pinochet (who after a decade and a half stepped down in favor of free elections, and surrendered power peacably when he lost the vote) is rather less black-and-white than the traditional view.
Ngo Dinh Diem -- likewise, we didn't create him, though we did back him. If you have any doubt that he was a better choice than Ho Chi Minh, consider the fact that Ho Chi Minh's thugs killed more Vietnamese in the first three years of peace than had been killed in the entire previous twenty-five years of fighting.
Japan -- but the point is that we didn't invade Japan in the early nineties, and there's no reason to believe that we would invade the next Japan. We just don't do that sort of thing.
So the point is, we already have the capability to fight a modern war without any significant number of casualties, and we already don't do so except with just cause. Likewise, we already seek to minimize civilian casualties when we do fight. Thus, I don't really buy the argument that a technology which would allow us to fight wars more quickly and more effectively, while improving even more our ability to avoid friendly or civilian casualties (and even reducing the number of enemy casualties we would need to inflict) would be a bad thing.
Actually, what we did is create democracies which could choose for themselves whether to be friendly to the US. In contrast, the Soviets gave the nations they took control of no such choice, as the Hungarians learned in 1956, the Czechs in 1968, and the Poles in 1980.
Try as you may, you can't actually credibly make it the America's fault if people are growing coke
No one has to work 16 (or 8, or 2) hours a day anywhere. Are you really suggesting that US companies are kidnapping people and forcing them to work? Really? For that matter, can you show me any country in the world where US companies aren't offering better working conditions than local employers?
Show me anywhere in the world where the US is replacing a democratically elected government with any dictator
Explain to me why you can argue against what you claim are violations of the Constitution here in the US and then turn around and argue that US citizens should be subject to the ICC which would have no responsibility to follow constitutional niceties like due process at all.
Japan? What is this, 1991? Are we stuck in a late-eighties Michael Keaton flick?
But even if you had credible points in any of these things, what's your point? If the US were the type of nation you describe, they could simply bomb the hell out of any and all of the above. The type of technology discussed in the article makes only one difference -- it allows this to be done without the colateral damage associated with attacks from the air. So just why do you think this is a bad thing?
How about `it will be easier to avoid civilian casualties in the first place, because we can get a target designator close enough to be extremely accurate without putting our men at even more risk than we did in Afghanistan?
We already go to great effort, including putting our own guys at great risk, to avoid hitting civilian targets. This will make that much easier (and safer) to do.
With due respect, the US hasn't lost any great number of casualties in any of our recent wars. I think you need to rethink your idea of why we don't fight many wars.
Nonsense. The only thing that has stopped America from `using its army for imposing is values/views to every other country' is that we Americans don't do that sort of thing. We've already shown quite well in the last few wars what we can do with basically no loss in American life. If we wanted to be a colonial power, we would be. We don't, because we believe that that is wrong. Any questions?
Re:It's interesting...
on
Robot Wars
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
This may have been true of many powers historically, but then how do you explain the US? We fought in every corner of the globe in the Second World War, kicked ass, and went home, leaving the war holding less territory than we entered it with (by giving the Philippines their independence at the war's end).
Again, I welcome you to provide links to any credible sources from the UN or anyone else which contradict what the statistics in the CIA factbook say. I would point out though that the US exceeds all other nations by many more measures than GDP -- try pre-tax income, post-tax income (median or mean in either case), consumption per capita, you name it.
As for `hearing both sides', one need only look at the stated aims of the UNHRC to see the absurdity of listening to `both sides'. In a committee allegedly dedicated to basic human rights, it is not sensible to hear the pro-human rights and anti-human rights side, as only one of these sides is in line with the aims of the comission, and the presence of the other undermines any credibility the comission may have held.
And finally, `what's wrong in one person's eyes is acceptable in [those of] another' tells us nothing. Some things are right and some are wrong. If the UN did not at least in principle believe that the types of torture, murder, and denial of liberty practiced in China, Syria, and the Sudan are unacceptable, they would not have a human rights committee in the first place. To have such a committee, and then place such nations on it is simply hypocrisy of the worst sort.
Interesting. You `trust more' a group which names Syria, China, and the Sudan to it's human rights committee? Well, I guess it takes all types...
At any rate, perhaps you can post a link to whatever part of the UN Fact Book you feel disagrees with the cited statistics?
As for the larger thread, I happen to feel the idea of `too fat for their own good' is just silly -- it stems from a basic misunderstanding of how economics works, namely the mistake of considering economics as a zero-sum game. Arguing that the US is not the fattest in the world is even sillier though, as even a basic look at the statistics will show you.
So let's get this straight: you can't do basic math, you can't spell, you insist loudly that you `don't trust the website' of anyone whose basic, well-documented statistics don't back your worldview, and you want us to believe that Sean23007 is the `stupid' one here?
Bzzzt, thanks for playing.
And while we're on the subject, if you're so sure that the US does not have the world's best standard of living, perhaps you'll tell us your criteria. The citizens of the US have the honor of living in the most free, the most democratic, and the most prosperous nation on the face of the Earth. Where are you arguing that they should prefer to live?
Umm, maybe because said Convention qualifies it's right to free speech as follows:
1.
2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.
(or in other words, nothing in these actions contravenes the Convention, as the Italians can always say that they were acting `for the protection of health or morals', thus getting a bye on the treaties protections.)
It is certainly true that the amount of ownership you can have in Microsoft is proportional to the amount of money you are willing to spend, just as the number of hamburgers you can eat tomorrow is proportional to the amount of money you are willing to spend. If you are willing and able to purchase as many shares as Mr. Gates owns, then you would own Microsoft as much as Mr. Gates does.
Put differently, to quote the standard spiel given on the visitor tour of the CANDU (Canadian National) nuclear plants, `a properly run coal mine produces a hell of a lot more background radiation than a properly runk nuclear plant'.
It doesn't make you as much an owner as Bill Gates, it makes you proportionally as much an owner as 100 shares is to the number of share Mr. Gates holds. Want more ownership? Buy more shares.
Put differently, if the entire population of earth were to be relocated to North America, they could live at a population density no higher than that in Manhattan. Also, completely independently of government birth control programs (whether brutal, as in China, or merely pushy, as in India) , families in better-off countries tend to have fewer kids. This suggests that as countries modernize and free up their economies to produce general improvements in standards of living, population growth will solve itself...
Unfortunately, the `injustice' of the situation is that while Israel has been willing to meet all of the demands made by the Palestinian leadership, and has asked only for an end to the murder-suicide bombings in return, Arafat has turned down offer after offer because it suits him more to force Israel into action in order to strengthen his own grip on power. Likewise, the only thing the Palestinians have `accomplished' in their `intifada' is to torpedo the very nation they claim they are trying to build, in the name of having more. In the process, they have adopted a rhetoric of genocide, and a level of brutality against enemy civilians unprecedented in the modern world.
Remember, if the Palestinians really just wanted the West Bank and Gaza, they've had that since Oslo. 98% of the West Bank hasn't been occupied at all since then, and none of the Gaza strip has. Unfortunately, they have adopted a rhetoric by which they claim that Israel has no right to exist, and have launched more and more brutal attacks on civilians in Israel in pursuit of this aim.
Thus, if you really support the Palestinians, you should be pushing for Arafat to go, for the murder-suicide bombings to cease, and for the PA to actually build something in the country it has had for a decade now, instead of basing themselves on calls for genocidal attacks on Israel.
You should also drop the absurd rhetoric of the site you link to in your sig, a site which makes analogies which are as absurd as they are racist.
Certainly more so, inasmuch as Sharon is the elected head of a republican form of government which has checks and balances on the power of the executive.
This means that even if we take a very low opinion of Sharon (and I'd still expect cites if you want us to), the fact that he is in power means that that's what the Israeli electorate wanted.
In contrast, although Arafat was initially `elected', in an election which would make Robert Mugabe proud (hint: opposition newspapers were shut down months before the election, and the only serious opposition candidate was in one of Arafat's jails at the time of the election), he has long since cancelled all future elections (the next one was supposed to be held in 1998), and taken absolute power for himself.
So, in my take, in any honest appraisal of the situation, if you really support the Palestinian people, you should be pushing for Arafat to go, for the murder-suicide bombings to cease, and for a free and democratic system of government to be established.
`This guy' finds your.sig absurd on its face, and as a firm believer that the answer to bad speech is more speech, responds to such silliness whenever he stumbles across it.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, okay. Given that the Chinese government doesn't deny any of the things I just said (saying instead that they are justified), perhaps you can explain why I should believe that they are not happening?
We're talking about a country which imprisons tens of thousands of its citizens for political crimes ranging from belonging to a non-state-approved religion to wanting to have a second child, from calling for elections to buying or selling a bible, and you think I have to go there to know for sure I don't like the place? C'mon...
Are you against smart bombs too, then?
And do you hold this position even given the obvious fact that some wars, like this one, will be necessary in any case, so that if you make wars more dangerous for civilians, the end result will be more civilian deaths no matter how you slice it...
For the rest, there's the Laogai.
But then, your sig gives away the real point of your post. It must really burn you up to see Russia coming into it's own as a Western power, eh?
For a source on the origins of the `America created AIDS' myth as a Soviet Active-Measures propaganda program, check out The Sword and the Shield: the Mitrokhin archive and the secret history of the KGB by Christopher Andrew and Vasily Mitrokhin, which is one of the best histories of the KGB written since declassified records have become available with the end of the cold war (including the Mitrokhin archive, which is a collection of copies of KGB archival material smuggled over the Finish border by a defecting KGB archivist as the USSR crumbled), and can be purchased here.
So yes, the court must go. Far better that no such body exist than that US citizens be rounded up and subject to trials in which they cannot appeal to their constitutional rights, in front of judges not appointed by their elected officials, under a system of laws not their own.
Any questions?
Except that the only two times in recent history we have deployed troops to the middle east were once at the request of a local government which had been invaded, with UN backing, and once in response to the attacks of September 11. If you want us to believe that we are in Afghanistan for oil, you'll have to give us a reason to rule out the rather more obvious reason, which is to prevent a repeat of the attacks of September 11.
- Colombia -- can you provide any reference to these `pesticides which kill other crops but not coca'? Why would the Colombians do such a thing? Are you supposing they want coca to be grown? Isn't it likely that that the fact that coca is more profitable than other crops is relevant?
- Pinochet -- the problem is that with the cold war over, we now have access to a lot of declassified records which show that the truth about Pinochet's rise to power is rather less sinister, if perhaps as disappointing, as the standard eighties-era lefty myth. The truth is that the CIA was as surprised by the coup as anyone else. It's also worth noting that the comparison between Allende (who had suspended Chile's constitution, cancelled all future elections, and called for troops from Castro's Cuba to enforce martial law), and Pinochet (who after a decade and a half stepped down in favor of free elections, and surrendered power peacably when he lost the vote) is rather less black-and-white than the traditional view.
- Ngo Dinh Diem -- likewise, we didn't create him, though we did back him. If you have any doubt that he was a better choice than Ho Chi Minh, consider the fact that Ho Chi Minh's thugs killed more Vietnamese in the first three years of peace than had been killed in the entire previous twenty-five years of fighting.
- Japan -- but the point is that we didn't invade Japan in the early nineties, and there's no reason to believe that we would invade the next Japan. We just don't do that sort of thing.
So the point is, we already have the capability to fight a modern war without any significant number of casualties, and we already don't do so except with just cause. Likewise, we already seek to minimize civilian casualties when we do fight. Thus, I don't really buy the argument that a technology which would allow us to fight wars more quickly and more effectively, while improving even more our ability to avoid friendly or civilian casualties (and even reducing the number of enemy casualties we would need to inflict) would be a bad thing.Actually, what we did is create democracies which could choose for themselves whether to be friendly to the US. In contrast, the Soviets gave the nations they took control of no such choice, as the Hungarians learned in 1956, the Czechs in 1968, and the Poles in 1980.
- Try as you may, you can't actually credibly make it the America's fault if people are growing coke
- No one has to work 16 (or 8, or 2) hours a day anywhere. Are you really suggesting that US companies are kidnapping people and forcing them to work? Really? For that matter, can you show me any country in the world where US companies aren't offering better working conditions than local employers?
- Show me anywhere in the world where the US is replacing a democratically elected government with any dictator
- Explain to me why you can argue against what you claim are violations of the Constitution here in the US and then turn around and argue that US citizens should be subject to the ICC which would have no responsibility to follow constitutional niceties like due process at all.
- Japan? What is this, 1991? Are we stuck in a late-eighties Michael Keaton flick?
But even if you had credible points in any of these things, what's your point? If the US were the type of nation you describe, they could simply bomb the hell out of any and all of the above. The type of technology discussed in the article makes only one difference -- it allows this to be done without the colateral damage associated with attacks from the air. So just why do you think this is a bad thing?We already go to great effort, including putting our own guys at great risk, to avoid hitting civilian targets. This will make that much easier (and safer) to do.
What's your objection?
With due respect, the US hasn't lost any great number of casualties in any of our recent wars. I think you need to rethink your idea of why we don't fight many wars.
Nonsense. The only thing that has stopped America from `using its army for imposing is values/views to every other country' is that we Americans don't do that sort of thing. We've already shown quite well in the last few wars what we can do with basically no loss in American life. If we wanted to be a colonial power, we would be. We don't, because we believe that that is wrong. Any questions?
This may have been true of many powers historically, but then how do you explain the US? We fought in every corner of the globe in the Second World War, kicked ass, and went home, leaving the war holding less territory than we entered it with (by giving the Philippines their independence at the war's end).
As for `hearing both sides', one need only look at the stated aims of the UNHRC to see the absurdity of listening to `both sides'. In a committee allegedly dedicated to basic human rights, it is not sensible to hear the pro-human rights and anti-human rights side, as only one of these sides is in line with the aims of the comission, and the presence of the other undermines any credibility the comission may have held.
And finally, `what's wrong in one person's eyes is acceptable in [those of] another' tells us nothing. Some things are right and some are wrong. If the UN did not at least in principle believe that the types of torture, murder, and denial of liberty practiced in China, Syria, and the Sudan are unacceptable, they would not have a human rights committee in the first place. To have such a committee, and then place such nations on it is simply hypocrisy of the worst sort.
At any rate, perhaps you can post a link to whatever part of the UN Fact Book you feel disagrees with the cited statistics?
As for the larger thread, I happen to feel the idea of `too fat for their own good' is just silly -- it stems from a basic misunderstanding of how economics works, namely the mistake of considering economics as a zero-sum game. Arguing that the US is not the fattest in the world is even sillier though, as even a basic look at the statistics will show you.
Bzzzt, thanks for playing.
And while we're on the subject, if you're so sure that the US does not have the world's best standard of living, perhaps you'll tell us your criteria. The citizens of the US have the honor of living in the most free, the most democratic, and the most prosperous nation on the face of the Earth. Where are you arguing that they should prefer to live?
It is certainly true that the amount of ownership you can have in Microsoft is proportional to the amount of money you are willing to spend, just as the number of hamburgers you can eat tomorrow is proportional to the amount of money you are willing to spend. If you are willing and able to purchase as many shares as Mr. Gates owns, then you would own Microsoft as much as Mr. Gates does.
Put differently, to quote the standard spiel given on the visitor tour of the CANDU (Canadian National) nuclear plants, `a properly run coal mine produces a hell of a lot more background radiation than a properly runk nuclear plant'.
It doesn't make you as much an owner as Bill Gates, it makes you proportionally as much an owner as 100 shares is to the number of share Mr. Gates holds. Want more ownership? Buy more shares.
Put differently, if the entire population of earth were to be relocated to North America, they could live at a population density no higher than that in Manhattan. Also, completely independently of government birth control programs (whether brutal, as in China, or merely pushy, as in India) , families in better-off countries tend to have fewer kids. This suggests that as countries modernize and free up their economies to produce general improvements in standards of living, population growth will solve itself...
Remember, if the Palestinians really just wanted the West Bank and Gaza, they've had that since Oslo. 98% of the West Bank hasn't been occupied at all since then, and none of the Gaza strip has. Unfortunately, they have adopted a rhetoric by which they claim that Israel has no right to exist, and have launched more and more brutal attacks on civilians in Israel in pursuit of this aim.
Thus, if you really support the Palestinians, you should be pushing for Arafat to go, for the murder-suicide bombings to cease, and for the PA to actually build something in the country it has had for a decade now, instead of basing themselves on calls for genocidal attacks on Israel.
You should also drop the absurd rhetoric of the site you link to in your sig, a site which makes analogies which are as absurd as they are racist.
This means that even if we take a very low opinion of Sharon (and I'd still expect cites if you want us to), the fact that he is in power means that that's what the Israeli electorate wanted.
In contrast, although Arafat was initially `elected', in an election which would make Robert Mugabe proud (hint: opposition newspapers were shut down months before the election, and the only serious opposition candidate was in one of Arafat's jails at the time of the election), he has long since cancelled all future elections (the next one was supposed to be held in 1998), and taken absolute power for himself.
So, in my take, in any honest appraisal of the situation, if you really support the Palestinian people, you should be pushing for Arafat to go, for the murder-suicide bombings to cease, and for a free and democratic system of government to be established.
Any questions? Your stance against the prevailing hard-left nutjob position on abortion-on-demand suggests that you are capable of thinking through some of your positions. Too bad you feel the need to resort to racist tripe in the case of Israel, instead of presenting a reasoned argument.