What we have to worry about is hired mercenaries. Look at the Arab Spring movement right now. I keep seeing articles about governments like Libya that used mercenaries to perform actions that their own military would not go along with.
We also heard about the military being issued Viagra to go around raping the populace - which of course was complete bullshit. You're going to have a really hard time separating the marketing PR for the "Arab Spring" movements from what's actually going on there. It should be public knowledge by now that the Libyan ouster was orchestrated and supported by elements of the US and NATO black ops, and that the impetus was all about China, Libyan oil, and gas pipelines (which were blown up no less than 10 times in less than 2 months). Add to that the first official actions of the "rebel" government being to create a oil company and a central bank, and it's clear the official narrative reflect very little reality.
You didn't make a point. You seem to think misquoting someone is making a point. Hence, your sig is fitting, whatever purpose you had in mind for it.
Yea, okay, ignore the parts of the post you don't want to address. And ignore your own hypocrisy of defending the activities of someone engaged in a money-making and rent-seeking for personal gain when they match your ideology.
Gore depicted an unrealistic and frightening prediction of the future and has made money out of scamming idiots that buy into his tripe
I am a crackpot
Yup.
The sig is there as a convenience for people that can't argue my points, and so need to resort to ad hominems instead. Works great, doesn't it? You can continue to avoid thinking.
You took my post too literally. I'm not claiming that whites and Christians are persecuted, or that there is no need to discourage unfair discrimination, which is an issue. What's happening is the "political correct" codes of the last decade have a new meme that's being tied into "bullying", with the implication that if your speech isn't politically correct, you are bullying someone (cyber bullying takes this to a new level, but I won't go into that here).
And what you say about bigotry not being criminal completely misses the mark. I'm not claiming there's going to be law enforcement as bigot police (still a LONG way from that, I think). Rather, it's the implication that if the target of your criticism, regardless of how it's stated, is a member of some protected group, that the criticism is unfair, even if the same statement about someone else is okay. This happens all the time, when for instance if a policy of the President is criticized, there are those that will claim it's racially motivated. Anyone should be able to speak about problems with the President's decisions without be called a racist - yet it happens all the time.
And that may well be the case here. There was no indication that Ravi had any problem with his roommate's sexual orientation - in fact it seems he was okay with it. We aren't sure why he set up the web cam - it could have been curiosity (maybe Ravi is bi-curious), or a mild hazing incident. And that's the way it would have been taken if the he was heterosexual male with a girl. But since he was gay, people automatically assume it was a case of hate-motivated gay-bashing.
we do not cover 100% of CPI goods and services. The price of services, in particular, are not easy to find online and therefore are not included in our statistics.
Oh, my, and look how well they track the government's CPI. Pretty close. And they're "independent", so it must be true! Hmmm... no details on what they track though, and apparently it only includes stuff they find online. Say, do you know how money gets into the system? Do you get where inflation shows up first, how it flows down?
This pair of charts isn't from some conspiracy, it just shows the difference in today's CPI, and the same statistic the way the CPI was calculated in the 1980's. Interesting, if inflation were calculated consistently, it would be much higher. Actual inflation using non-cooked numbers is 10.5% in the year from Jan. 2011 to Jan 2012 People that work for a living and shop for their own groceries understand this. Why can't you?
We can't see inflation in agricultural commodities or base metals, both of which are cheaper than they were a year ago.
You're wikipedia posting is really clever. What you seem to have missed is who is behind most of it, and why it's happening.. Do you really think that some band of Libyan "rebels" were all about human rights when their first actions as they took over government was to create an oil company and a central bank?.
Might I suggest that perhaps your limited understanding of the global economy and the Federal Reserve fractional lending system could have a few blindspots?
You can suggest it, but you would be wrong. I think you're just buying the PR from the mainstream and avoiding doing any critical thinking for yourself. Understandable - that's how they train people in the public schools these days.
Seems a bit more likely that your "invisible inflation" theory.
I never said anything about "invisible inflation" - it's not invisible at all. It's just that you're blind or refuse to see.
The price of oil is near a record high in inflation-adjusted real terms, not nominal terms. Inflation, which has been running 2 to 3 percent annual for several years, has nothing to do with the skyrocketing oil prices.
OMG that was so ignorant it makes the rest of your post entirely irrelevant. That government statistic of 2 to 3 percent that you have quoted doesn't reflect any sort of reality, and certainly not even close to the case regarding the E3 and global commodity markets. The saber rattling over Iran is serving the same purpose as fake "uprisings" in the middle east that somehow seem to blow up natural gas pipelines multiple times: It's done intentionally to drive up prices. But the single most significant factor in the price of oil (and gold, silver, wheat, rice, coke, ore, etc., etc.,) is the decrease in purchasing power of the US dollar on the global commodity market. You simply cannot inject over $16 Trillion into the global finance system in such a short time (as the Federal Reserve did last year) and not experience a devaluation of the currency.
That's very interesting, but the main issue with that is "at the current levels". The trend is ever increasing energy consumption. Even if the US, Japan and Europe cut their energy consumption by 50%, there'd still be 6 billion people trying to get up to our levels of consumption.
Maybe, maybe not. It's not as clear-cut as you're making out, here. In fact, worldwide energy use actually decreased in 2009, by just over 1%, due to the economic downturn. And while the US population is growing, energy consumption per capita has actually decreased over the last 20 years.
We will have to find alternatives eventually, but it's doable, we have time, and the transition can happen over time. We don't need a New World Government to take control of everything to do it.
Nope, it's collectivist tyrants against everyone that values individual freedom and equal rights. You obviously don't see that, and have totally bought into the "protect the downtrodden" bullshit excuse that this crap is being sold under. And you perpetuate it yourself, pretending it's okay to be hurtful to anyone that's not a member of some group you view as protected. "Identified hate crime offenders" is a self-fulfilling definition.
I've never heard of a Christian committing suicide because of inflammatory rhetoric against Christianity.
Why do you think that is? Do you think it never happens? Or is it possible that it's not news to the people that report news?
In the real world people tend to look after people like themselves and aren't concerned with the problems of the "others".
Sort of. People tend to look after people generally, and vulnerable people more, and, yes, people close to them more than strangers and people less like their peers. Otherwise this movement would not be working, and Jim Crow laws would still be in place and women would still not be allowed to vote. But this whole movement paints groups of people as victims, and others (as you have clearly demonstrated) as perpetrators. And what that does is cause more division and hatred and when the victim groups get together and a non-protected finds himself in the minority the HE becomes the victim. And now the perpetrators aren't punished similarly, because the other guy isn't a protected group.
This is demonstrated in many places of the world many times - when peace between antagonistic groups is maintained, they tolerate each other. But when the rule of law breaks down, suddenly a group finds itself in power and begins to systematically kill or oppress the other group. It happened in Iraq when the Hussein regime was first brought down. It happened in Egypt. It has happened in many African countries.
And codifying "hate crime" will cause that same kind of dynamic in the US. It defines not "criminals" and "citizens", but whole groups as "victims" and "oppressors". In this way, it subverts the rule of law. It justifies violence against the oppressor group, since the victims are able to harass and bully and intimidate them with impunity. Or at least without the massively expanded punishment that would be imposed on the defined "oppressor" group. This is exactly that case, where a crime that would typically impose a misdemeanor fine ends up a threat of 10 years of jail. Without even a shred of evidence that what Ravi did had anything to do with the suicide.
if you don't bother to vote you have abandoned your right to have an opinion.
Conversely, If you vote, then you acknowledge the legitimacy of the broken system.
It's actually not broken, it mostly works the way it's supposed to. What's "broken" is that most people are too apathetic or bitter at the results that they don't participate at all - so the few that do participate get to make all the decisions. Truly "broken" systems (actually the majority of the systems on earth) forcibly keep the citizens out of the process at gunpoint. Be glad you're not in a country run like that.
Ravi would be facing these charges even without hate crime legislation
He would be facing some pretty minor charges, not a 10 year jail sentence. There was no evidence of any violence or fraud or harrassment by Ravi.
Giving a higher sentence to crimes due to various circumstances of the crime was already very common prior to Hate Crime laws.
There are no "special circumstances" - there is only "special groups", "protected groups", and "groups that are better" or something. That's not a circumstance. It's special privileges based on discrimination, and it violates equal protection under the law.
Bullying is typically a larger or stronger party attacking a smaller or weaker party.
What's the justification for jailing someone for spying on an intimate encounter, then? He's not "smaller or weaker", and the spy had no significant power over him. Why is the perpetrator facing 10 years in jail for this offense? It seems far out of proportion, and the only mitigating circumstance seems to be that the victim committed suicide. Somehow the spying incident is being linked to the motivation for suicide. Would that have happened if he was heterosexual and was caught in an encounter with a girl? Somehow I doubt it. So being gay seems to have afforded him some special standing.
Sure, and that's the goal. This whole "cyberbullying" / "hate crime" meme is all about an attempt to off-limit certain types of speech. The fact that the subject killed himself makes this the perfect storm of a way to promote this idea. And the idea is: "You're not allowed to criticize certain people." Sexual orientation minorities are one of those protected classes that are to get this kind of special dispensation. Heterosexuals and fat people are fair game (as Michelle Obama's campaign has made clear), as are pretty much all white people, and old people, too (ageism is never criticized as hateful or bullying, for instance).
So in spite of the portrayal of anti-bullying (and especially "cyber bullying") campaigns as an effort to end reduce suffering of the young and adolescent, the rather obvious true goal is only to protect certain groups against criticism. Note that criticism of Christian beliefs, and those of Mormons, Catholics, and often even Jews is defended as legitimate and never considered "bullying", no matter how inflammatory and hurtful the rhetoric used against them.
Even politicians and law enforcement have started using the terms, claiming that they are being "bullied" by citizens simply for criticizing their public policy actions and decision, and initiating law suits to stop them. This latest movement, to conflate any criticism of government overreach with "anti-government" anarchists or even "paper terrorists".
This is a truly frightening development, that will lead inevitably to the erosion of free speech to such a degree that the only thing recognized as "free speech" will be a narrowly-defined set of "approved speech".
I don't accept that those schools are going to be bad, but what you have to accept is that they are bad, and all the social experimentation in the world are not going to make them better for the kids that are trapped there right now.
So the way out may be to bring in more opportunity for the youngest generation in those areas. Vouchers can provide that ticket to opportunity for many in that community, and that raises the prospects for the entire area. That doesn't mean we're throwing away the culture - it just means we're bringing in the good parts of a nearby culture (a quality education). It almost sound like you're conflating ignorance and poor education as a cultural component that needs to be preserved. It's not - and neither is any cultural influence that denigrates knowledge and academic abilities.
As a side-note, I would contend that letting students run is more of a social indoctrination, because it leads to ignorance of others, and maintains the current status quo.
I really don't know how you arrive at that conclusion. The current status quo is that there are a lot of schools that simply do not serve their community or students in any positive way, and the administration, the school system, and sometimes even the teachers want to keep the students trapped in that negative environment with no other options. As long as we accept that these schools must be preserved, we will not be able to provide the impetus for improvement.
A particular scientific theory can be both well-proven and NP-Hard to determine.
Yea, but I was referring to the AGW theory, not theories that can make consistent predictions. Before you can even derive a reliable equation, you need to understand and include factors in all the underlying equations and their ultimate effects.
So social indoctrination is the primary role of public schools, and academic education should always take a back seat to that? It's more important to ensure a mix of skin color than allow individuals free choices? Got it.
There are exceptions to this, of course. Earth's climate, for instance, has all been figured out. We have consensus. The science is in!. It's incontrovertible!
Since you have no problem with violating human rights, why not just kill addicts?
That might be considered cruel and unusual. But note the OP was talking about people convicted of a crime. When that happens, your rights are forfeit by having violated the rights of others, being provided due process to prove that, and you are subject to sanctions. Human rights are afforded only to people that respect others' rights.
Slashdot Mirror
What we have to worry about is hired mercenaries. Look at the Arab Spring movement right now. I keep seeing articles about governments like Libya that used mercenaries to perform actions that their own military would not go along with.
We also heard about the military being issued Viagra to go around raping the populace - which of course was complete bullshit. You're going to have a really hard time separating the marketing PR for the "Arab Spring" movements from what's actually going on there. It should be public knowledge by now that the Libyan ouster was orchestrated and supported by elements of the US and NATO black ops, and that the impetus was all about China, Libyan oil, and gas pipelines (which were blown up no less than 10 times in less than 2 months). Add to that the first official actions of the "rebel" government being to create a oil company and a central bank, and it's clear the official narrative reflect very little reality.
You didn't make a point. You seem to think misquoting someone is making a point. Hence, your sig is fitting, whatever purpose you had in mind for it.
Yea, okay, ignore the parts of the post you don't want to address. And ignore your own hypocrisy of defending the activities of someone engaged in a money-making and rent-seeking for personal gain when they match your ideology.
Like I said - it's easier than thinking.
Gore depicted an unrealistic and frightening prediction of the future and has made money out of scamming idiots that buy into his tripe
I am a crackpot
Yup.
The sig is there as a convenience for people that can't argue my points, and so need to resort to ad hominems instead. Works great, doesn't it? You can continue to avoid thinking.
Gore depicted an unrealistic and frightening prediction of the future and has made money out of scamming idiots that buy into his tripe
FTFY
Oh, oops - never mind we won't take responsibility for that failed prediction! Obviously there's a lot of money to be made, considering a tiny nation like the Maldives is worth a $50 million payment just to get them to go along with the scam.
You took my post too literally. I'm not claiming that whites and Christians are persecuted, or that there is no need to discourage unfair discrimination, which is an issue. What's happening is the "political correct" codes of the last decade have a new meme that's being tied into "bullying", with the implication that if your speech isn't politically correct, you are bullying someone (cyber bullying takes this to a new level, but I won't go into that here).
And what you say about bigotry not being criminal completely misses the mark. I'm not claiming there's going to be law enforcement as bigot police (still a LONG way from that, I think). Rather, it's the implication that if the target of your criticism, regardless of how it's stated, is a member of some protected group, that the criticism is unfair, even if the same statement about someone else is okay. This happens all the time, when for instance if a policy of the President is criticized, there are those that will claim it's racially motivated. Anyone should be able to speak about problems with the President's decisions without be called a racist - yet it happens all the time.
And that may well be the case here. There was no indication that Ravi had any problem with his roommate's sexual orientation - in fact it seems he was okay with it. We aren't sure why he set up the web cam - it could have been curiosity (maybe Ravi is bi-curious), or a mild hazing incident. And that's the way it would have been taken if the he was heterosexual male with a girl. But since he was gay, people automatically assume it was a case of hate-motivated gay-bashing.
From the "BPP Project":
Oh, my, and look how well they track the government's CPI. Pretty close. And they're "independent", so it must be true! Hmmm... no details on what they track though, and apparently it only includes stuff they find online. Say, do you know how money gets into the system? Do you get where inflation shows up first, how it flows down?
This pair of charts isn't from some conspiracy, it just shows the difference in today's CPI, and the same statistic the way the CPI was calculated in the 1980's. Interesting, if inflation were calculated consistently, it would be much higher. Actual inflation using non-cooked numbers is 10.5% in the year from Jan. 2011 to Jan 2012 People that work for a living and shop for their own groceries understand this. Why can't you?
We can't see inflation in agricultural commodities or base metals, both of which are cheaper than they were a year ago.
We can, you're just not looking. This looks like some pretty hefty inflation to me. You can also go here to draw your own chart. Pick anything traded on the global market. Prices on wheat, grain, and many other commodities are rising right in step with gold and crude oil
You're wikipedia posting is really clever. What you seem to have missed is who is behind most of it, and why it's happening.. Do you really think that some band of Libyan "rebels" were all about human rights when their first actions as they took over government was to create an oil company and a central bank?.
Might I suggest that perhaps your limited understanding of the global economy and the Federal Reserve fractional lending system could have a few blindspots?
You can suggest it, but you would be wrong. I think you're just buying the PR from the mainstream and avoiding doing any critical thinking for yourself. Understandable - that's how they train people in the public schools these days.
Seems a bit more likely that your "invisible inflation" theory.
I never said anything about "invisible inflation" - it's not invisible at all. It's just that you're blind or refuse to see.
Wow Republicans need 9 steps? What a bunch of idiots. Al Gore did it in only 3:
The price of oil is near a record high in inflation-adjusted real terms, not nominal terms. Inflation, which has been running 2 to 3 percent annual for several years, has nothing to do with the skyrocketing oil prices.
OMG that was so ignorant it makes the rest of your post entirely irrelevant. That government statistic of 2 to 3 percent that you have quoted doesn't reflect any sort of reality, and certainly not even close to the case regarding the E3 and global commodity markets. The saber rattling over Iran is serving the same purpose as fake "uprisings" in the middle east that somehow seem to blow up natural gas pipelines multiple times: It's done intentionally to drive up prices. But the single most significant factor in the price of oil (and gold, silver, wheat, rice, coke, ore, etc., etc.,) is the decrease in purchasing power of the US dollar on the global commodity market. You simply cannot inject over $16 Trillion into the global finance system in such a short time (as the Federal Reserve did last year) and not experience a devaluation of the currency.
And with our demand growing exponentially we have a problem.
It's not, AC. Not even close. In fact in the US, it growing slower than the population.
That's very interesting, but the main issue with that is "at the current levels". The trend is ever increasing energy consumption. Even if the US, Japan and Europe cut their energy consumption by 50%, there'd still be 6 billion people trying to get up to our levels of consumption.
Maybe, maybe not. It's not as clear-cut as you're making out, here. In fact, worldwide energy use actually decreased in 2009, by just over 1%, due to the economic downturn. And while the US population is growing, energy consumption per capita has actually decreased over the last 20 years.
We will have to find alternatives eventually, but it's doable, we have time, and the transition can happen over time. We don't need a New World Government to take control of everything to do it.
Those damn Mayans just couldn't give up their SUVs. And it killed them. Let that be a lesson to you, denialists!
Note that this isn't "minorities vs whites".
Nope, it's collectivist tyrants against everyone that values individual freedom and equal rights. You obviously don't see that, and have totally bought into the "protect the downtrodden" bullshit excuse that this crap is being sold under. And you perpetuate it yourself, pretending it's okay to be hurtful to anyone that's not a member of some group you view as protected. "Identified hate crime offenders" is a self-fulfilling definition.
I've never heard of a Christian committing suicide because of inflammatory rhetoric against Christianity.
Why do you think that is? Do you think it never happens? Or is it possible that it's not news to the people that report news?
In the real world people tend to look after people like themselves and aren't concerned with the problems of the "others".
Sort of. People tend to look after people generally, and vulnerable people more, and, yes, people close to them more than strangers and people less like their peers. Otherwise this movement would not be working, and Jim Crow laws would still be in place and women would still not be allowed to vote. But this whole movement paints groups of people as victims, and others (as you have clearly demonstrated) as perpetrators. And what that does is cause more division and hatred and when the victim groups get together and a non-protected finds himself in the minority the HE becomes the victim. And now the perpetrators aren't punished similarly, because the other guy isn't a protected group.
This is demonstrated in many places of the world many times - when peace between antagonistic groups is maintained, they tolerate each other. But when the rule of law breaks down, suddenly a group finds itself in power and begins to systematically kill or oppress the other group. It happened in Iraq when the Hussein regime was first brought down. It happened in Egypt. It has happened in many African countries.
And codifying "hate crime" will cause that same kind of dynamic in the US. It defines not "criminals" and "citizens", but whole groups as "victims" and "oppressors". In this way, it subverts the rule of law. It justifies violence against the oppressor group, since the victims are able to harass and bully and intimidate them with impunity. Or at least without the massively expanded punishment that would be imposed on the defined "oppressor" group. This is exactly that case, where a crime that would typically impose a misdemeanor fine ends up a threat of 10 years of jail. Without even a shred of evidence that what Ravi did had anything to do with the suicide.
if you don't bother to vote you have abandoned your right to have an opinion.
Conversely, If you vote, then you acknowledge the legitimacy of the broken system.
It's actually not broken, it mostly works the way it's supposed to. What's "broken" is that most people are too apathetic or bitter at the results that they don't participate at all - so the few that do participate get to make all the decisions. Truly "broken" systems (actually the majority of the systems on earth) forcibly keep the citizens out of the process at gunpoint. Be glad you're not in a country run like that.
The damages in this case would be the ad revenue that went to Rumblefish instead of the rightful owner of the video.
Ravi would be facing these charges even without hate crime legislation
He would be facing some pretty minor charges, not a 10 year jail sentence. There was no evidence of any violence or fraud or harrassment by Ravi.
Giving a higher sentence to crimes due to various circumstances of the crime was already very common prior to Hate Crime laws.
There are no "special circumstances" - there is only "special groups", "protected groups", and "groups that are better" or something. That's not a circumstance. It's special privileges based on discrimination, and it violates equal protection under the law.
Bullying is typically a larger or stronger party attacking a smaller or weaker party.
What's the justification for jailing someone for spying on an intimate encounter, then? He's not "smaller or weaker", and the spy had no significant power over him. Why is the perpetrator facing 10 years in jail for this offense? It seems far out of proportion, and the only mitigating circumstance seems to be that the victim committed suicide. Somehow the spying incident is being linked to the motivation for suicide. Would that have happened if he was heterosexual and was caught in an encounter with a girl? Somehow I doubt it. So being gay seems to have afforded him some special standing.
Sure, and that's the goal. This whole "cyberbullying" / "hate crime" meme is all about an attempt to off-limit certain types of speech. The fact that the subject killed himself makes this the perfect storm of a way to promote this idea. And the idea is: "You're not allowed to criticize certain people." Sexual orientation minorities are one of those protected classes that are to get this kind of special dispensation. Heterosexuals and fat people are fair game (as Michelle Obama's campaign has made clear), as are pretty much all white people, and old people, too (ageism is never criticized as hateful or bullying, for instance).
So in spite of the portrayal of anti-bullying (and especially "cyber bullying") campaigns as an effort to end reduce suffering of the young and adolescent, the rather obvious true goal is only to protect certain groups against criticism. Note that criticism of Christian beliefs, and those of Mormons, Catholics, and often even Jews is defended as legitimate and never considered "bullying", no matter how inflammatory and hurtful the rhetoric used against them.
Even politicians and law enforcement have started using the terms, claiming that they are being "bullied" by citizens simply for criticizing their public policy actions and decision, and initiating law suits to stop them. This latest movement, to conflate any criticism of government overreach with "anti-government" anarchists or even "paper terrorists".
This is a truly frightening development, that will lead inevitably to the erosion of free speech to such a degree that the only thing recognized as "free speech" will be a narrowly-defined set of "approved speech".
What's fun is seeing how people react when you point out the flaws in their religion. They can't even take a joke!
Clearly you don't understand how science works.
Right, because I think that it has nothing to do with popular opinion, PR, and consensus.
I don't accept that those schools are going to be bad, but what you have to accept is that they are bad, and all the social experimentation in the world are not going to make them better for the kids that are trapped there right now.
So the way out may be to bring in more opportunity for the youngest generation in those areas. Vouchers can provide that ticket to opportunity for many in that community, and that raises the prospects for the entire area. That doesn't mean we're throwing away the culture - it just means we're bringing in the good parts of a nearby culture (a quality education). It almost sound like you're conflating ignorance and poor education as a cultural component that needs to be preserved. It's not - and neither is any cultural influence that denigrates knowledge and academic abilities.
As a side-note, I would contend that letting students run is more of a social indoctrination, because it leads to ignorance of others, and maintains the current status quo.
I really don't know how you arrive at that conclusion. The current status quo is that there are a lot of schools that simply do not serve their community or students in any positive way, and the administration, the school system, and sometimes even the teachers want to keep the students trapped in that negative environment with no other options. As long as we accept that these schools must be preserved, we will not be able to provide the impetus for improvement.
A particular scientific theory can be both well-proven and NP-Hard to determine.
Yea, but I was referring to the AGW theory, not theories that can make consistent predictions. Before you can even derive a reliable equation, you need to understand and include factors in all the underlying equations and their ultimate effects.
Oops! Missed another one.
So social indoctrination is the primary role of public schools, and academic education should always take a back seat to that? It's more important to ensure a mix of skin color than allow individuals free choices? Got it.
Better to just keep it all secret, then.
There are exceptions to this, of course. Earth's climate, for instance, has all been figured out. We have consensus. The science is in!. It's incontrovertible!
Since you have no problem with violating human rights, why not just kill addicts?
That might be considered cruel and unusual. But note the OP was talking about people convicted of a crime. When that happens, your rights are forfeit by having violated the rights of others, being provided due process to prove that, and you are subject to sanctions. Human rights are afforded only to people that respect others' rights.