I don't agree with the US policies on censorship (and yes the US does have them the same way OZ does).
Um, no, it doesn't. Can you provide any reference to anything the US does which is like this?
I know that alot of libraries are forced to block certain content in the US.
Um, no, this was never the case. Congress had passed a law that they wouldn't federally fund public libraries which didn't use filtering software, and even this was overturned by the courts.
As for your call to use internet censorshop of your own to try to make the US change laws you don't like, go ahead -- I daresay the rest of the world would lose a lot more by losing access to US web sites then vice versa...
Do you have any reference to this? Can you provide any instance of the FBI `forcing' anyone to remove content? How would they do this, inasmuch as they would need a court to rule on anything of the sort?
Now, if we want to argue about whether or not the government should ask people to remove content such as video of the Pearl murder, we can. I myself feel that they shouldn't, as such things show very clearly the evil of the madmen we are fighting...
John Ashcroft and Fritz Hollings would like to get a copy of that from you. They thought it would be a nice template for the changes they have been making.
OK, I'll bite. Can you point me to anything Ashcroft has done which even resembles this?
The British constitution is not even written down, but the liberties of free speech (slander and libel notwithstanding) are enshrined in their constitution.
Not really. Official Secrets Act, anyone? Prior restraint of the press? RIP?
The UK has a pretty poor record on free speech, as it turns out...
I think this just shows the bankrupcy of `slippery slope' arguments. As
Jonah Goldberg likes to point out, we as a nation have been walking up slippery slopes for over 200 years, a fact which makes it hard to argue with a straight face that banning child pornography would inexorably lead to banning adult pornography or anything else.
So, I think you have to argue the case on its merits, not use a claim that banning child porn would put us on a `slippery slope'.
Where do you get this? How do you make the leap of illogic from `I own a gun, and believe in a right to self-defense' to `being willing to commit cold-blooded murder of someone, just because they disagree with you'?
Unfortunately, the UN declaration of human rights is an almost meaningless document in real life -- in particular, it places such qualifications as the following on the rights it provides:
Article 29. ...
(3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
in other words, none of its freedoms hold any weight if your government doesn't like how you use them...
If you have any doubts about the meaninglessness of this treaty, please note that some of the most cruel and repressive nations on earth are in principal bound by it...
Certainly the "you disagree with the government therefore you hate the country" mentality is fairly rampant these days in the US, though I'm not implying by any means that it's the only place.
Is it really? I haven't seen this (though I have seen a few people try to claim this). Maybe you can provide examples?
Now let me make sure I understand your argument. You are arguing that the fact that some porn sites in the US require a credit card for access is censorship? Really? If so, you're not too clear on what the term means. Nothing a business does to restrict access to their own site is censorship.
I think you're not too clear on the concept, especially since nothing is done (obviously) to filter US internet connectivity at the borders...
In much of the world, today's statesmen are today's terrorists. That this happens does not make it desirable, much less part of any sane `peace process'.
Hey, no argument there -- I'd love to see NORAID on the same list as the Holy Land Foundation and other Hamas front groups. But that's not likely to happen as long as Blair claims that the IRA/Sinn Fein is now a `partner in the peace process', now is it?
OK, I for one am not going to knock the British assistance during the cold war -- certainly no other European power was of any assistance. But you want to talk about pulling your weight? Why is it that there are 200 British soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan -- a number smaller than the UK government's own estimates of how many citizens of the realm are fighting for al Qaeda?
As for `defeating terror with politics', I'll tell you what -- when you actually do something about the IRA instead of handing them the keys to the city and washing your hands of the matter, maybe we'll come back to you for advice. The current mess of a `peace process' is an example to no one.
And if you're so self-sufficient when it comes to defense, how 'bout we start seeing some of that lend-lease paid back, eh?
As for everyone doing they're part for terrorism, the US' long history of support tyrannical dictatorships and also supporting the world's worst terrorist, Pol Pot [pbs.org], makes a me little hesitant to jump on any US foriegn policy bandwagon...
Care to back that up with a credible cite? And when you've done so, care to explain why it was the UN which forced the Cambodians to keep Pol Pot around when the US and others were calling for a war crimes tribunal>
Sadly, 1996 was one of the last times which London was safer than large cities in the US. In the years since then, their crime rate, especially violent crime has skyrocketed, topping out at 50% over New York City (and safely over US cities with larger crime problems) by 2000.
There are strong arguments that this is related to some of those incursions you say you welcome, including the ban on handguns -- which didn't even reduce the rate of gun crime, much less violent crime in general.
Well, as they say on the teevee, `we report, you decide'. Just as there are nutjobs who still maintain that the moon landing was faked, some people will still maintain the obviously false here to.
As for me, when we have someone who had the ability to make the attacks, who claims he made the attacks, and who all the available evidence points back to -- well, you do the math.
As to whether we catch him personally, I'm not too concerned about that, as long as we effectively dismantle the infrastructure which made September 11 possible, and which would make another attack possible -- another attack which with the aid of nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons could be much deadlier than the last.
Which is to say some American people wanted to elect Gore, but not as many as would have been needed to elect him. But then, we could say the same about Nader and Buchanan, too.
Democracy means not getting the candidate you want. Deal.
With due respect, unless you consider al-Jazeera and a dozen other Arab media outlets to be a branch of the US government, there's been plenty of evidence. Mr. Bin Laden says he was behind September 11. Do you know something he doesn't?
Hmmm, The crime rates I see, especially deadly crimes are way higher in the USA then in European countries.
Again, you're working from old data. Britain, France, and many parts of Germany have had higer violent crime rates than the US for several years now.
The murder of Fortuyn was a horrible case, offcourse it is possible to get a gun, it also was the first ever political murder in the netherlands, I just hope it doesn't set an example in any way.
I hope the same, but I think it shows an important point: even in countries which do have gun control, thugs like Mr. Fortuyn's assassin will get their hands on guns. All gun control accomplishes is to keep guns out of the hands of those who would use them responsibly.
But i'm talking more about gang shootouts, intermariage murder and other violent (deadly) crimes, which are way less than in the US.
Can you provide statistics on this? Keep in mind that hollywood is producing entertainment, not giving you a real picture of life in the US.:-)
On the other hand, crime rates in NYC very dramatically declined when the mayor changed the policing policies (but without changing the very strict gun laws). Although some argue that that was just a demographic effect
Absolutely -- I don't think anyone is claiming that concealed carry is the only thing which lowers crime rates, just that it is one thing which does. However, I think it is fair to expect those claiming that legalizing handguns or concealed carry increases crime to provide at least one instance of a locality where this has been the effect. So far they have not done so.
So, in short, 82% of statistics are made up on the spot, and you can can use them to argue the position you want to.
Well, that's a cute expression, but if you are arguing for leaving aside statistics as a field or attempts to gather objective quantitative data on crime or other areas, I think you're barking up the wrong tree. We should be demanding that statistics be treated with the same rigor as other scientific inquiries. Mr. Lott, for example, in his book spends a great deal of time explaining his sources and methods, so that his work can be reproduced by anyone seeking to confirm or dispute his conclusions.
But this is not a useful comparison. What is a useful comparison is to consider whether crime rates go up or down in the same place when concealed carry of handguns (for instance) is legalized.
And here, we find that all accross the US, counties which have legalized concealed carry have seen the rates of violent crime of all sorts go down. Correlation does not show causation in and of itself, but such a consistent correlation is very suggestive.
The problem with this argument is that if you want to use crime rates accross countries as your basis, you have to explain why England and France have both surpassed the US for violent crime rates in the past decade -- indeed Paris is more dangerous than any large US city at the moment.
More to the point, you have to explain why within the same country banning guns doesn't reduce crime, but the opposite. For example, the UK finally banned handguns several years ago, and violent crime (including gun crime!) has skyrocketed since then.
Also, if the Netherlands is your example, perhaps you can explain the murder of Pim Fortuyn? With a gun?
Laws are only as good as their enforcement. Unless there is a credible threat of force then sooner or later laws will be ignored.
Which is why our system is both democratic in nature and establishes a balance of power between local and federal, and between the branches of government.
So when was the last time the US government was fought?
This ground (restoring the limitations on government set in the Constitution) was at the heart of the `Republican Revolution' of the mid-nineties.
Groups like the Institute for Justice, the Mountain States Legal Foundation and the Heritage Foundation are out there working to preserve the constitution's limitations on government every day. What are you doing to this end?
With due respect, far from being `democracy in action', this is the opposite -- an insulated elite within a publicly funded and run education system using their position to push a sort of `education' which has nothing to do with the desires of society as a whole in establishing and funding these schools. This is a completely seperate issue from whether there should be public schools and if so, how they should be funded.
There are a couple of problems with this analysis, most notably the fact that candidates do spend a fair amount of time campaigning in smaller states. Notably, had Gore won in his own state of Tenessee, he would have had enough electoral votes to make Florida irrelevant. What conclusions should be drawn from the fact that the state which new him best voted for Bush is, of course, left as an exercise for the reader.
In the absence of the electoral college, Whoever took New Yorkifornia would need a very small minority of the other states to take the election in the usual case.
As for Bush v. Gore, leaving aside that there were far from `5' justices appointed by Bush Sr. (try one, Thomas), the court did the only thing it could do. The constitution very clearly makes election policies a federal matter, delegated to the legislature, not the courts of each state (see Article 2). At the point where SCOFLA stepped in and began rewriting election policies, SCOTUS had no choice under the constitution but to get involved. Note that seven Judges ruled that this was the case, even if only five agreed on the specific remedy to be assigned.
Of course, now that all the independent institutions have gone and done their own vote counts, including groups like the New York Times and the University of Chicago who went in with the stated belief that Gore won, and all we know the truth -- every single recount performed, by every single different recount strategy Gore demanded yielded the same or a larger or a larger margin than the official count.
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I don't agree with the US policies on censorship (and yes the US does have them the same way OZ does).
Um, no, it doesn't. Can you provide any reference to anything the US does which is like this?
I know that alot of libraries are forced to block certain content in the US.
Um, no, this was never the case. Congress had passed a law that they wouldn't federally fund public libraries which didn't use filtering software, and even this was overturned by the courts.
As for your call to use internet censorshop of your own to try to make the US change laws you don't like, go ahead -- I daresay the rest of the world would lose a lot more by losing access to US web sites then vice versa...
Do you have any reference to this? Can you provide any instance of the FBI `forcing' anyone to remove content? How would they do this, inasmuch as they would need a court to rule on anything of the sort?
Now, if we want to argue about whether or not the government should ask people to remove content such as video of the Pearl murder, we can. I myself feel that they shouldn't, as such things show very clearly the evil of the madmen we are fighting...
John Ashcroft and Fritz Hollings would like to get a copy of that from you. They thought it would be a nice template for the changes they have been making.
OK, I'll bite. Can you point me to anything Ashcroft has done which even resembles this?
The British constitution is not even written down, but the liberties of free speech (slander and libel notwithstanding) are enshrined in their constitution.
Not really. Official Secrets Act, anyone? Prior restraint of the press? RIP?
The UK has a pretty poor record on free speech, as it turns out...
I think this just shows the bankrupcy of `slippery slope' arguments. As Jonah Goldberg likes to point out, we as a nation have been walking up slippery slopes for over 200 years, a fact which makes it hard to argue with a straight face that banning child pornography would inexorably lead to banning adult pornography or anything else.
So, I think you have to argue the case on its merits, not use a claim that banning child porn would put us on a `slippery slope'.
in the US today i can go to jail for agreeing with Al Quada
Um, no, you can't. Where do you get this?
Where do you get this? How do you make the leap of illogic from `I own a gun, and believe in a right to self-defense' to `being willing to commit cold-blooded murder of someone, just because they disagree with you'?
Unfortunately, the UN declaration of human rights is an almost meaningless document in real life -- in particular, it places such qualifications as the following on the rights it provides:
in other words, none of its freedoms hold any weight if your government doesn't like how you use them...If you have any doubts about the meaninglessness of this treaty, please note that some of the most cruel and repressive nations on earth are in principal bound by it...
Certainly the "you disagree with the government therefore you hate the country" mentality is fairly rampant these days in the US, though I'm not implying by any means that it's the only place.
Is it really? I haven't seen this (though I have seen a few people try to claim this). Maybe you can provide examples?
Now let me make sure I understand your argument. You are arguing that the fact that some porn sites in the US require a credit card for access is censorship? Really? If so, you're not too clear on what the term means. Nothing a business does to restrict access to their own site is censorship.
I think you're not too clear on the concept, especially since nothing is done (obviously) to filter US internet connectivity at the borders...
In much of the world, today's statesmen are today's terrorists. That this happens does not make it desirable, much less part of any sane `peace process'.
Hey, no argument there -- I'd love to see NORAID on the same list as the Holy Land Foundation and other Hamas front groups. But that's not likely to happen as long as Blair claims that the IRA/Sinn Fein is now a `partner in the peace process', now is it?
As for `defeating terror with politics', I'll tell you what -- when you actually do something about the IRA instead of handing them the keys to the city and washing your hands of the matter, maybe we'll come back to you for advice. The current mess of a `peace process' is an example to no one.
And if you're so self-sufficient when it comes to defense, how 'bout we start seeing some of that lend-lease paid back, eh?
As for everyone doing they're part for terrorism, the US' long history of support tyrannical dictatorships and also supporting the world's worst terrorist, Pol Pot [pbs.org], makes a me little hesitant to jump on any US foriegn policy bandwagon...
Care to back that up with a credible cite? And when you've done so, care to explain why it was the UN which forced the Cambodians to keep Pol Pot around when the US and others were calling for a war crimes tribunal>
There are strong arguments that this is related to some of those incursions you say you welcome, including the ban on handguns -- which didn't even reduce the rate of gun crime, much less violent crime in general.
Well, as they say on the teevee, `we report, you decide'. Just as there are nutjobs who still maintain that the moon landing was faked, some people will still maintain the obviously false here to.
As for me, when we have someone who had the ability to make the attacks, who claims he made the attacks, and who all the available evidence points back to -- well, you do the math.
As to whether we catch him personally, I'm not too concerned about that, as long as we effectively dismantle the infrastructure which made September 11 possible, and which would make another attack possible -- another attack which with the aid of nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons could be much deadlier than the last.
Democracy means not getting the candidate you want. Deal.
With due respect, unless you consider al-Jazeera and a dozen other Arab media outlets to be a branch of the US government, there's been plenty of evidence. Mr. Bin Laden says he was behind September 11. Do you know something he doesn't?
Hmmm, The crime rates I see, especially deadly crimes are way higher in the USA then in European countries.
Again, you're working from old data. Britain, France, and many parts of Germany have had higer violent crime rates than the US for several years now.
The murder of Fortuyn was a horrible case, offcourse it is possible to get a gun, it also was the first ever political murder in the netherlands, I just hope it doesn't set an example in any way.
I hope the same, but I think it shows an important point: even in countries which do have gun control, thugs like Mr. Fortuyn's assassin will get their hands on guns. All gun control accomplishes is to keep guns out of the hands of those who would use them responsibly.
But i'm talking more about gang shootouts, intermariage murder and other violent (deadly) crimes, which are way less than in the US.
Can you provide statistics on this? Keep in mind that hollywood is producing entertainment, not giving you a real picture of life in the US. :-)
On the other hand, crime rates in NYC very dramatically declined when the mayor changed the policing policies (but without changing the very strict gun laws). Although some argue that that was just a demographic effect
Absolutely -- I don't think anyone is claiming that concealed carry is the only thing which lowers crime rates, just that it is one thing which does. However, I think it is fair to expect those claiming that legalizing handguns or concealed carry increases crime to provide at least one instance of a locality where this has been the effect. So far they have not done so.
So, in short, 82% of statistics are made up on the spot, and you can can use them to argue the position you want to.
Well, that's a cute expression, but if you are arguing for leaving aside statistics as a field or attempts to gather objective quantitative data on crime or other areas, I think you're barking up the wrong tree. We should be demanding that statistics be treated with the same rigor as other scientific inquiries. Mr. Lott, for example, in his book spends a great deal of time explaining his sources and methods, so that his work can be reproduced by anyone seeking to confirm or dispute his conclusions.
And here, we find that all accross the US, counties which have legalized concealed carry have seen the rates of violent crime of all sorts go down. Correlation does not show causation in and of itself, but such a consistent correlation is very suggestive.
See John Lott's More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws for more details.
The problem with this argument is that if you want to use crime rates accross countries as your basis, you have to explain why England and France have both surpassed the US for violent crime rates in the past decade -- indeed Paris is more dangerous than any large US city at the moment.
More to the point, you have to explain why within the same country banning guns doesn't reduce crime, but the opposite. For example, the UK finally banned handguns several years ago, and violent crime (including gun crime!) has skyrocketed since then.
Also, if the Netherlands is your example, perhaps you can explain the murder of Pim Fortuyn? With a gun?
Laws are only as good as their enforcement. Unless there is a credible threat of force then sooner or later laws will be ignored.
Which is why our system is both democratic in nature and establishes a balance of power between local and federal, and between the branches of government.
So when was the last time the US government was fought?
This ground (restoring the limitations on government set in the Constitution) was at the heart of the `Republican Revolution' of the mid-nineties. Groups like the Institute for Justice, the Mountain States Legal Foundation and the Heritage Foundation are out there working to preserve the constitution's limitations on government every day. What are you doing to this end?
With due respect, far from being `democracy in action', this is the opposite -- an insulated elite within a publicly funded and run education system using their position to push a sort of `education' which has nothing to do with the desires of society as a whole in establishing and funding these schools. This is a completely seperate issue from whether there should be public schools and if so, how they should be funded.
In the absence of the electoral college, Whoever took New Yorkifornia would need a very small minority of the other states to take the election in the usual case.
As for Bush v. Gore, leaving aside that there were far from `5' justices appointed by Bush Sr. (try one, Thomas), the court did the only thing it could do. The constitution very clearly makes election policies a federal matter, delegated to the legislature, not the courts of each state (see Article 2). At the point where SCOFLA stepped in and began rewriting election policies, SCOTUS had no choice under the constitution but to get involved. Note that seven Judges ruled that this was the case, even if only five agreed on the specific remedy to be assigned.
Of course, now that all the independent institutions have gone and done their own vote counts, including groups like the New York Times and the University of Chicago who went in with the stated belief that Gore won, and all we know the truth -- every single recount performed, by every single different recount strategy Gore demanded yielded the same or a larger or a larger margin than the official count.