Your post is also grammatically incorrect. You said, "it's hard not to have this reflect poorly on the speaker and the claims they're making." In that sentence "speaker" is singular. Since we clearly know the person you are referring to, you should have said, "it's hard not to have this reflect poorly on the speaker and the claims he is making."
You refer to the subject of your critique repeatedly as "they", when in fact he is a "he". "They" is sometimes used as a politically correct way to avoid classifying a subject of unknown gender. It is still incorrect to do so. Further, because we know the gender of this person, you should have used "he" rather than "they".
(This is ripped off from a certain well-known British professor, but I'm not posting a link to save the poor guy's site from a Slashdotting)
(a) Japan: this is the only international treaty named after a Japanese city. You would thus think that Japan might wish to be seen to be leading the way. You would be lamentably wrong. The reality?
* Japan's Kyoto target: a 6% cut in CO2 emissions on 1990-levels by 2008-12;
* Japan's performance to date: CO2 emissions have risen by 8% on 1990-levels (and some authorities put this even higher at 12.1%).
(b) But what about the ever-moralistic and tub-thumping Europe? Complete embarrassment all round:
* Portugal is projected to be emitting a staggering 53.1% more CO2 on 1990-levels by 2010;
* Spain is projected to be emitting a massive 48.3% more CO2 on 1990-levels by 2010;
* Greece is projected to be emitting an Olympian 38.6% more CO2 on 1990-levels by 2010;
* Ireland is projected to be emitting an enormous 29.4% more CO2 on 1990-levels by 2010.....
* And so on, and so on, with even Germany, despite being rewarded with large carbon credits for taking on the former East Germany, failing.
* And, as for the ever self-righteous UK - Margaret Beckett, seemingly with Mr. Blair's full support, has just requested the EU to permit an increase in carbon dioxide allowances by 2.7% above the initial emissions-trading plan submitted last July.
(c) But what of 'ever-so-Green' Canada? Its emissions have risen by a whopping 20% on 1990-levels and it has proved impossible to devise any coherent Kyoto policies. Maple 'fig leaves' all round - just ask Alberta what it thinks of Kyoto.
(d) Then, who isn't in Kyoto, or who has no targets at all? Australia and the US (how very sensible of them), not to mention the new players on the world economic stage, above all China (now the second biggest user of energy in the world), India, and Brazil;
(e) Finally, emissions trading: it is at last dawning on the naif faithful that this spawn of Kyoto will actually increase overall CO2 emissions.
Excuse, but how exactly is Bush responsible for the 30 year history of programming behind TCP/IP, SMTP, POP, DNS, and all the other pieces of the internet that were designed completely insecure from the start? You think that can be "fixed" by the federal government in a few years?
Where is your backup that Clarke isn't a liar? My backup is simple, not one single coworker of any professional reputation has backed his story at all. His own recorded voice from 2001 contradicts what he put into his book.
Give me a break. You anti-American liberals will believe anything if it backs up your twisted world view. Go listen to your new messiah, Ward Churchill, for a while.
Bush did NOT demote him to cyberterror. Clarke was the one who kept pushing cyberterror as the "next front in terrorism" to the White House. Most of his coworkers thought he was a wacko. He then quit and rewrote his history when he didn't get a promotion he wanted, and the morons on Slashdot and at the New York Times didn't bother to even interview his coworkers.
The man is a liar. He is also utterly unqualified to be commenting on Microsoft security. What is his computer training exactly?
No scientists deny global warming? This is somewhat true. There is evidence that global warming is occuring, but there is almost no evidence that mankind has anything to do with it.
The problem is every global warming model done on a computer utterly fails to predict climate changes. In many cases, they get the opposite of real observed temperatures. On the other hand, solar emissions have been correlated very strongly to global temperatures. I don't think even the moronic liberal readership of Slashdot thinks mankind actually influences the Sun.
The bigget global warming study done by Mann has been destroyed as a total fraud.
Oh come on! UCS is not even remotely well-respected. The majority of their membership is are not even scientists. (Simply because they can't find enough scientists willing to sacrifice their integrity to the degree necessary to support UCS ultra-stupid pronouncements). They have skewed and lied about "scientific studies" for years, and been busted for it by their own fellow scientists.
Anyone who listens to a single word coming from UCS should just have the lobotomy done now to get it over with.
North Korea had nukes long before the U.S. invaded Iraq. They were sharing that technology before the U.S. invaded Iraq. Note that some European nations have been complicit, particulary France, in aiding these rogue nations developing these weapons.
Nice try blaming the U.S., but unless North Korea travelled in time, going to the future, to see the 2nd Iraq war, you can hardly say they accelerated their Nuke program because of it. Iran had a nuke program long before the U.S. invasion. Libya had a nuke program before the invasion.
Irony- you should look stop making it so easy for me.
This is utterly unproven hogwash. Any idiot can accuse the US of anything he wants, and you anti-American morons will shout it as fact. What about the hundreds of thousands of rapes, tortures, beheadings and mutilations perpetrated by Saddam's soldiers, WITH FULL GOVERNMENT BACKING?
You America-haters just need to get a clue. The U.S. may not be perfect, but there is absolutely NO moral comparison to these brutal regimes. Europe has exponentially supported more dictators and torturers than the U.S. has. Sure, the U.S. has some shameful, foolish foreign policy decisions in its past, but our current President, like him or hate him, will not kneel and service dictators the way Europe will for financial gain.
What was it I just read, the EU wants to start selling WEAPONS to CHINA? Who is opposing them? Oh, the horrible, militaristic U.S.A. So the peace-loving, tree-hugging, tolerant EU is going to sell weapons to a brutal regime because their economy is in the toilet. (Don't tell me 10% unemployment isn't in the toilet).
If somebody is too stupid to save, then the primary cost of caring for them should fall on their family. Once upon a time, before Communism, families stuck together and helped each other.
I wonder how nice the world would be if that was the norm again?
I had the luxury of having a Political Science professor who was a long-time employee of the Federal Reserve. If you look at the real numbers, the data that comes right from the Congressional Budget Office, you would be scared to death. Social Security and Medicare will bankrupt the system. Why? Because the law states that as soon as the money runs out the funding for these programs must come from the general tax fund BEFORE any other spending. Yes, you heard me. As soon as there's a shortage, the money comes straight from the general tax fund. There is no real legal separation between Social Security and other taxes revenue.
You can debate whether the crisis hits in 18 years or 40 years, but the fact is, it will be harder to fix this the longer we wait. If this is hard to do now, when the program is still in the black, how much HARDER will it be in 10 years when it starts going into the red?
You might be surprised, but I agree with you that the U.S.A. has gone over the line in some foreign policy issues like you illustrate (although I might dispute the ones you chose).
IR imaging systems are NOT the same as anti-aircraft missiles.
If France sells anti-aircraft missiles on the open market, and those weapons end up in Iraq, France is still 100% responsible for it. If I sell nuclear missiles on the open market, and those "somehow" end up in Osama Bin-Laden's hands, I'm 100% responsible for it. Besides, it is well-documented that France has been making direct weapons sales to terrorist nations all over the world for decades. Maybe they can build another nuclear reactor that is specifically designed to produce weapons-grade uranium like they did for Iraq back in 1980? This time they can build it for Iran, or North Korea, or Syria.
Everyone keep in mind one fact: France's military-industrial complex at times in the 80's got 50% of its entire revenue from Iraq. Chirac has been getting kickbacks and bribes from Iraq and other terrorist nations for decades (all the way back to 1975). Everyone in France knows this, they just don't like to talk about it.
"Those 15 billion were almost exclusively intended to buy drugs from U.S. companies who manufacture them at less than 1% of that price. So this was only a thinly disguised attempt to subsidize the US pharma business and look like benefactors at the cost of the millions dying in Africa. "
Really? Talk to Bono, from U2, about it and find out how the money is going to be used. He designed that program with George Bush.
Oh, and get your fingers out of your ears before you do that.
1. Gorbachev was asked what brought down the Soviet Union. His answer: "SDI" (Star Wars for all you who don't actually study your own history).
2. The KGB's own files indicated that the economic pressure brought by U.S. military spending was the primary factor that pushed the U.S.S.R. over the edge.
3. Remember, before 1980, the prevailing "wisdom" from America's talking heads and academic elite was that the U.S.S.R.'s economy was a juggernaut that would never fall. Reagan was one of the very few AT THAT TIME who said it was teetering on the brink of destruction. He knew he could push it over the edge. Historical revisionists now say, "Oh, we were saying all along it would fall apart."
4. The carrot DOES NOT WORK with North Korea. Jimmy friggin Carter and Bill Clinton tried it and what happened? North Korea spent all the money and started blackmailing the world again. North Korea is willing starve its entire population if necessary to maintain their communist regime.
Look at the facts. The U.S. has by far the most powerful military in the world. All of Europe combined can't even touch the U.S. military-- I don't mean this to question Europeans' bravery. It is really an economic and technological division.
Given that fact: it is hard to dispute that the U.S. is the LEAST imperialistic country in the modern world. Just look at the last century and compare the U.S. to England, France, Germany, Russia in terms of invading and then KEEPING POSSESSION OF other countries. There is no comparison. All of you anti-American Europeans should look at your own countries (particularly the incredibly corrupt and vile France government) before casting aspersions at mine. It is a FACT that the French, Russians, and Germans were selling huge amounts of military weapons and systems to Iraq in direct violation of the arms embargo after the first Gulf war. How do you explain the French anti-aircraft missiles with manufacturing stamps dated 2002 used in the second war?
I am so tired of the U.S.-bashing I'm losing faith in humanity. Despite one of the largest deficits in our history, the U.S. came up with 15 billion to fight AIDS in Africa. We went to Europe and asked them to add to that commitment. The vaunted, compassionate Europeans REFUSED to come up with a single dollar, saying they couldn't afford it. Give me a break.
The UN is a joke. Don't even PRETEND it has any legitimacy. Has anyone forgotten the massive bribery scandal that permeates the U.N.-- the Oil-for-Food scandal? Of course Europe has, because it doesn't fit into their America-Is-The-Source-Of-All-Evil world view.
Haven't you people heard of the Non-proliferation Treaty?
North Korea is led by a schizophrenic, unstable, sociopathic government, which has freely sold weapon and missile technology all around the world. If anyone out there thinks they won't sell nukes to terrorists if the money is right, I've got a bridge to sell you in New York.
Military action against North Korea is not only justified, it is a moral imperative. Remember all the loud-mouth peaceniks that didn't want Reagan (at NATO's request) to defend Europe against Soviet nuclear missiles? History has proven they were wrong, as they are wrong in this case. Ignoring threats like North Korea, or coddling them as Europe did to Germany and the U.S.S.R. in the last century, has been consistently proven to be a foolish and suicidal policy.
My direct message to Jimmy Carter-- biggest single contributor to North Korea's continued recalcitrance:
Flowers and hugs are not viable foreign policies and defense strategies. North Korea will continue to threaten and blackmail the world until we do something about it.
Slashdot Mirror
The "then" is completely incorrect.
Your post is also grammatically incorrect. You said, "it's hard not to have this reflect poorly on the speaker and the claims they're making." In that sentence "speaker" is singular. Since we clearly know the person you are referring to, you should have said, "it's hard not to have this reflect poorly on the speaker and the claims he is making."
You refer to the subject of your critique repeatedly as "they", when in fact he is a "he".
"They" is sometimes used as a politically correct way to avoid classifying a subject of unknown gender. It is still incorrect to do so. Further, because we know the gender of this person, you should have used "he" rather than "they".
Sorry, but you asked for it.
Here's some more info for you:
(This is ripped off from a certain well-known British professor, but I'm not posting a link to save the poor guy's site from a Slashdotting)
(a) Japan: this is the only international treaty named after a Japanese city. You would thus think that Japan might wish to be seen to be leading the way. You would be lamentably wrong. The reality?
* Japan's Kyoto target: a 6% cut in CO2 emissions on 1990-levels by 2008-12;
* Japan's performance to date: CO2 emissions have risen by 8% on 1990-levels (and some authorities put this even higher at 12.1%).
(b) But what about the ever-moralistic and tub-thumping Europe? Complete embarrassment all round:
* Portugal is projected to be emitting a staggering 53.1% more CO2 on 1990-levels by 2010;
* Spain is projected to be emitting a massive 48.3% more CO2 on 1990-levels by 2010;
* Greece is projected to be emitting an Olympian 38.6% more CO2 on 1990-levels by 2010;
* Ireland is projected to be emitting an enormous 29.4% more CO2 on 1990-levels by 2010.....
* And so on, and so on, with even Germany, despite being rewarded with large carbon credits for taking on the former East Germany, failing.
* And, as for the ever self-righteous UK - Margaret Beckett, seemingly with Mr. Blair's full support, has just requested the EU to permit an increase in carbon dioxide allowances by 2.7% above the initial emissions-trading plan submitted last July.
(c) But what of 'ever-so-Green' Canada? Its emissions have risen by a whopping 20% on 1990-levels and it has proved impossible to devise any coherent Kyoto policies. Maple 'fig leaves' all round - just ask Alberta what it thinks of Kyoto.
(d) Then, who isn't in Kyoto, or who has no targets at all? Australia and the US (how very sensible of them), not to mention the new players on the world economic stage, above all China (now the second biggest user of energy in the world), India, and Brazil;
(e) Finally, emissions trading: it is at last dawning on the naif faithful that this spawn of Kyoto will actually increase overall CO2 emissions.
I was going to post this, but keep in mind there have been several separate debunkings of the hockey stick by different researchers.
Excuse, but how exactly is Bush responsible for the 30 year history of programming behind TCP/IP, SMTP, POP, DNS, and all the other pieces of the internet that were designed completely insecure from the start? You think that can be "fixed" by the federal government in a few years?
Where is your backup that Clarke isn't a liar? My backup is simple, not one single coworker of any professional reputation has backed his story at all. His own recorded voice from 2001 contradicts what he put into his book.
Give me a break. You anti-American liberals will believe anything if it backs up your twisted world view. Go listen to your new messiah, Ward Churchill, for a while.
Bush did NOT demote him to cyberterror. Clarke was the one who kept pushing cyberterror as the "next front in terrorism" to the White House. Most of his coworkers thought he was a wacko. He then quit and rewrote his history when he didn't get a promotion he wanted, and the morons on Slashdot and at the New York Times didn't bother to even interview his coworkers.
The man is a liar. He is also utterly unqualified to be commenting on Microsoft security. What is his computer training exactly?
No scientists deny global warming? This is somewhat true. There is evidence that global warming is occuring, but there is almost no evidence that mankind has anything to do with it.
The problem is every global warming model done on a computer utterly fails to predict climate changes. In many cases, they get the opposite of real observed temperatures. On the other hand, solar emissions have been correlated very strongly to global temperatures. I don't think even the moronic liberal readership of Slashdot thinks mankind actually influences the Sun.
The bigget global warming study done by Mann has been destroyed as a total fraud.
Nice try. Move along. Nothing to see here.
Oh come on! UCS is not even remotely well-respected. The majority of their membership is are not even scientists. (Simply because they can't find enough scientists willing to sacrifice their integrity to the degree necessary to support UCS ultra-stupid pronouncements). They have skewed and lied about "scientific studies" for years, and been busted for it by their own fellow scientists.
Anyone who listens to a single word coming from UCS should just have the lobotomy done now to get it over with.
Slashdot has become a purely Bush-bashing site.
In general it's just a liberal, anti-American, diatribe-screeching socialist enclave of imbeciles who have forgotten the last 100 years of history.
Coddling and appeasement do not work when dealing with maniacal dictators and radical fundamentalist racists. For more information, see World War II.
North Korea had nukes long before the U.S. invaded Iraq. They were sharing that technology before the U.S. invaded Iraq. Note that some European nations have been complicit, particulary France, in aiding these rogue nations developing these weapons.
Nice try blaming the U.S., but unless North Korea travelled in time, going to the future, to see the 2nd Iraq war, you can hardly say they accelerated their Nuke program because of it. Iran had a nuke program long before the U.S. invasion. Libya had a nuke program before the invasion.
Irony- you should look stop making it so easy for me.
Hello??? North Korea blackmails the rest of the world. Jimmy Carter responds by giving them, what was the number again, $10 billion?
You celebrate this as victory for diplomacy.
Now North Korea is back blackmailing again, and people like you are gonna just keep bending over for them.
This is utterly unproven hogwash. Any idiot can accuse the US of anything he wants, and you anti-American morons will shout it as fact. What about the hundreds of thousands of rapes, tortures, beheadings and mutilations perpetrated by Saddam's soldiers, WITH FULL GOVERNMENT BACKING?
You America-haters just need to get a clue. The U.S. may not be perfect, but there is absolutely NO moral comparison to these brutal regimes. Europe has exponentially supported more dictators and torturers than the U.S. has. Sure, the U.S. has some shameful, foolish foreign policy decisions in its past, but our current President, like him or hate him, will not kneel and service dictators the way Europe will for financial gain.
What was it I just read, the EU wants to start selling WEAPONS to CHINA? Who is opposing them? Oh, the horrible, militaristic U.S.A. So the peace-loving, tree-hugging, tolerant EU is going to sell weapons to a brutal regime because their economy is in the toilet. (Don't tell me 10% unemployment isn't in the toilet).
Give me a break.
If somebody is too stupid to save, then the primary cost of caring for them should fall on their family. Once upon a time, before Communism, families stuck together and helped each other.
I wonder how nice the world would be if that was the norm again?
Nice try. Go compare unemployment in Europe to unemployment in the U.S.
I had the luxury of having a Political Science professor who was a long-time employee of the Federal Reserve. If you look at the real numbers, the data that comes right from the Congressional Budget Office, you would be scared to death. Social Security and Medicare will bankrupt the system. Why? Because the law states that as soon as the money runs out the funding for these programs must come from the general tax fund BEFORE any other spending. Yes, you heard me. As soon as there's a shortage, the money comes straight from the general tax fund. There is no real legal separation between Social Security and other taxes revenue.
You can debate whether the crisis hits in 18 years or 40 years, but the fact is, it will be harder to fix this the longer we wait. If this is hard to do now, when the program is still in the black, how much HARDER will it be in 10 years when it starts going into the red?
Funny, France tried this. Now their economy has collapsed, and their own labor unions are asking for MORE WORK HOURS again.
Yep, I'm not kidding.
Is it not the leader that determines how a system is used that determines whether that instance of it is good or bad. -- what a horrible sentence.
It is the PEOPLE who live in a system that determine whether it is good or bad.
nuff said
You might be surprised, but I agree with you that the U.S.A. has gone over the line in some foreign policy issues like you illustrate (although I might dispute the ones you chose).
IR imaging systems are NOT the same as anti-aircraft missiles.
If France sells anti-aircraft missiles on the open market, and those weapons end up in Iraq, France is still 100% responsible for it. If I sell nuclear missiles on the open market, and those "somehow" end up in Osama Bin-Laden's hands, I'm 100% responsible for it. Besides, it is well-documented that France has been making direct weapons sales to terrorist nations all over the world for decades. Maybe they can build another nuclear reactor that is specifically designed to produce weapons-grade uranium like they did for Iraq back in 1980? This time they can build it for Iran, or North Korea, or Syria.
Everyone keep in mind one fact: France's military-industrial complex at times in the 80's got 50% of its entire revenue from Iraq. Chirac has been getting kickbacks and bribes from Iraq and other terrorist nations for decades (all the way back to 1975). Everyone in France knows this, they just don't like to talk about it.
"Those 15 billion were almost exclusively intended to buy drugs from U.S. companies who manufacture them at less than 1% of that price. So this was only a thinly disguised attempt to subsidize the US pharma business and look like benefactors at the cost of the millions dying in Africa.
"
Really? Talk to Bono, from U2, about it and find out how the money is going to be used. He designed that program with George Bush.
Oh, and get your fingers out of your ears before you do that.
1. Gorbachev was asked what brought down the Soviet Union. His answer: "SDI" (Star Wars for all you who don't actually study your own history).
2. The KGB's own files indicated that the economic pressure brought by U.S. military spending was the primary factor that pushed the U.S.S.R. over the edge.
3. Remember, before 1980, the prevailing "wisdom" from America's talking heads and academic elite was that the U.S.S.R.'s economy was a juggernaut that would never fall. Reagan was one of the very few AT THAT TIME who said it was teetering on the brink of destruction. He knew he could push it over the edge. Historical revisionists now say, "Oh, we were saying all along it would fall apart."
4. The carrot DOES NOT WORK with North Korea. Jimmy friggin Carter and Bill Clinton tried it and what happened? North Korea spent all the money and started blackmailing the world again. North Korea is willing starve its entire population if necessary to maintain their communist regime.
Great post. Thanks for your insight. I greatly appreciated it.
Deny them to your own people, but make sure you sell them to the Saddam Hussein.
Don't forget to ban Muslim children from wearing head scarves while you're at it.
Look at the facts. The U.S. has by far the most powerful military in the world. All of Europe combined can't even touch the U.S. military-- I don't mean this to question Europeans' bravery. It is really an economic and technological division.
Given that fact: it is hard to dispute that the U.S. is the LEAST imperialistic country in the modern world. Just look at the last century and compare the U.S. to England, France, Germany, Russia in terms of invading and then KEEPING POSSESSION OF other countries. There is no comparison. All of you anti-American Europeans should look at your own countries (particularly the incredibly corrupt and vile France government) before casting aspersions at mine. It is a FACT that the French, Russians, and Germans were selling huge amounts of military weapons and systems to Iraq in direct violation of the arms embargo after the first Gulf war. How do you explain the French anti-aircraft missiles with manufacturing stamps dated 2002 used in the second war?
I am so tired of the U.S.-bashing I'm losing faith in humanity. Despite one of the largest deficits in our history, the U.S. came up with 15 billion to fight AIDS in Africa. We went to Europe and asked them to add to that commitment. The vaunted, compassionate Europeans REFUSED to come up with a single dollar, saying they couldn't afford it. Give me a break.
The UN is a joke. Don't even PRETEND it has any legitimacy. Has anyone forgotten the massive bribery scandal that permeates the U.N.-- the Oil-for-Food scandal? Of course Europe has, because it doesn't fit into their America-Is-The-Source-Of-All-Evil world view.
Haven't you people heard of the Non-proliferation Treaty?
North Korea is led by a schizophrenic, unstable, sociopathic government, which has freely sold weapon and missile technology all around the world. If anyone out there thinks they won't sell nukes to terrorists if the money is right, I've got a bridge to sell you in New York.
Military action against North Korea is not only justified, it is a moral imperative. Remember all the loud-mouth peaceniks that didn't want Reagan (at NATO's request) to defend Europe against Soviet nuclear missiles? History has proven they were wrong, as they are wrong in this case. Ignoring threats like North Korea, or coddling them as Europe did to Germany and the U.S.S.R. in the last century, has been consistently proven to be a foolish and suicidal policy.
My direct message to Jimmy Carter-- biggest single contributor to North Korea's continued recalcitrance:
Flowers and hugs are not viable foreign policies and defense strategies. North Korea will continue to threaten and blackmail the world until we do something about it.