If they were so transparent, where was the political opposition? Oh, that's right, they were saying the same thing about Iraq and WMDs.
The Republicrat leadership fell for it very willingly. Especially the Republicans were deeply implicated going to great lengths to cherry pick intelligence and discredit (not factually but using smear and dirty politics) any actual credible sources on the matter. When there is going to be a war, all the politicians rejoice, because it consolidates their power. Democrats have only occasionally reluctantly opposed as they realized they were out of touch with a huge segment of their supporters and it might be an advantage, but they are generally still pro-war today. So what? That is a very unfortunate feature of our current political system, that hasn't provided credible candidates for years.
Using that WMD intel was a mistake, but it was an honest mistake. The notion that Bush knew about the intel being faulty beforehand is an unsubstantiated rumor. A crackpot conspiracy theory, on par with thinking the moon landings were faked.
If you hum with your fingers in your ears whenever the experts in the field try to bring anything to your attention, devoting departments to cherry-picking war justifications, villifying anyone, even former faithful Republican servants I have no doubt you will find a high-priced lawyer to excuse it as an Honest mistake, but there is nothing honest about it. It is a bald-faced lie, with incredible ulterior motives.
What any unbiased idiot standing on the sidelines could easily see was that Bush had decided to have a war, was not taking an unbiased look at intelligence, and there was absolutely nothing Sadaam could possibly do to satisfy Bush even though it was really Bush who was repeatedly responsible for inspectors being ejected (infiltrating them with spies, telling them to leave because the US was going to bomb, etc. and he never let them back in to safegard the materials or even observe the American absurdities there, but promptly gave it all into the hands of the insurgents there after Sadaam left power).
And the notion that we helped Saddam come to power, or keep power, or that we gave him WMD -- well, those are all false.
Some of what you claim, I never said, such as that we gave him his WMD or we helped him come to power (only our Allies may have been involved in that, and in fact, the first gassings in Iraq were performed in the '30s, I believe, by the British setting a shining example by reducing an inconvenient Iraqi population via poison gas).
The other parts, are a matter of record -- only false to someone with his head where the sun doesn't shine. We assisted him in ways that helped him overcome an initially-weaker grasp on power. It is not clear whether we were essential to his grasp on power, but we supported him. We certainly helped him pinpoint chemical attacks against Iranians and supplied him with the helicopters and other weaponry and items of importance he used to oppress the Kurds and keep himself in power, etc. because we liked his slaughter of the Iranians and felt we needed an ally in the area (not unlike our dealings with Pakistan today). The pictures of a smiling Rumsfeld shaking hands with Sadaam are not doctored but are part of an extensive history between the US and Sadaam that is also backed up by government documents.
You think this is somehow justified by the fact that we did the same with Russia in WWII? Both are criminal negligence (at least) on the part of the leaders and those who blindly supported them, as are our current pacts with Pakistan, Shiites, Uzbeckistan, etc. and the next war will be the result of the actions of the latest criminal-in-chief, all so innocent and honest to Republican/neocon collaborators.
According to a single flawed study. I'll believe the Red Cross numbers, thanks.
Again, before you make such outrageous claims (that it was a single flawed study), expose your head to some sunshine, a
I didn't realize it was the U.S. troops setting off those bombs at crowded intersections and recruiting lines. I should have known that the insurgents (read:terrorists) would never harm an innocent.
The fact is, most Iraqis killed by the Americans by far have been civillians. This is true in case after case. Often, there are no insurgents in sight. The US excuses civillian deaths as necessary collateral damage. Since when are American-government-recruited Iraqis not a legitimate military target. They are certainly being trained specifically to do nothing but shoot insurgents. This is not the only way Americans hide behind Iraqi civilians, and then blame the insurgents for deaths of those they put in harms way. I seriously doubt that Iraqi insurgents kill more innocents than Americans do, even with the much more advanced weapons systems available to Americans. This is even more obviously true if you seperate out the legitimate insurgency from the foreign terrorists the Americans have allowed to prosper there through sheer negligence etc. There never was a suicide bombing before the Americans came even though the foreign terrorists hated Sadaam almost as much as they hate Americans because he was a tribal power instead of a religious fanatic like those Iranian affiliates we are putting into power there.
What is this rubbish? War ended in 1945, Hitler died in 1945. Where is the 18 month period? And the Germans never wanted to 'return from the East Front'. They were beaten up there and pushed out by force.
I probably got some facts wrong, but you statement about them being beaten up and pushed out by force is also quite wrong. I will have to find and reread his autobiography. Just the quick web search I did credits him for successfully bringing 1.2 German soldiers back from the Russian front instead of allowing them to be brutalized there. I don't blame generally German soldiers (some were quite blamable), I blame the leaders of the Nazi party and the blind followers who let it happen, just as I don't blame American soldiers for the atrocities generally (although many are individually blamable) but the leaders of the Democrat and Republican parties who made it happen and the many stupid followers who encouraged them bear significantly more blame.
If you're asking why German POWs were treated so harshly by the Russians, read up on the treatmen Soviet POWs got in German custody.
I never asked it nor justified it. It is you who is trying to whitewash the actions of Americans supporting their Russian proxies. So the war is just about who can brutalize the enemy, as well as their own populations and neighboring countries the most? Winning, so you don't get held accountable for your war crimes?
The Russians committed a lot of war crimes (Katyn comes to mind), but your whitewashing of the Nazis is just funny.
I am sure this is one of many ways you amuse yourself at your own expense, but I never excused any crime of our allies, enemies, or presidents.
If our actions are making terrorists, then Afghanistan and Iraq should be major exporters or terrorists. Yet that is not the case. Hell, Iraq can't produce enough "insurgents" to fight against U.S. forces in their own country. Most terrorism there is due to foreign interlopers.
When the scandal at Abu Ghraib broke out, I believe that fewer than 2% of the occupants were found to be foreigners.
In the many other cases I have seen, I have never seen the number even close to 10%. I have seen it approach 5% occasionally in specific operations. The vast majority of native freedom fighters hates them, but they hate Americans more and are content to watch them blow themselves up. The Iraqi resistance and Bin Laden are natural enemies, but Bin Laden's associates have also regained something they were losing in Afghanistan and didn't have in Iraq under Sadaam: a place to train terrorists for operations in many other places. The masses slaughtered in the name of American democracy are not generally foreign terrorists. You would find far higher numbers of foreigners if American freedom fighters were resisting an illegal and immoral occupation.
The nuclear bombs are on the verge of being exported all over the world to unstable regimes due to extreme incompetence on the part of the US with respect to North Korea. By the way, the Koreans got their nuclear technology from Pakistan, while we have been illegitimately fumbling around in Iraq.
But in a way, I am glad they are all getting nuclear weapons, because they seem to need them to legitimately defend themselves against the US. I don't think we would have attacked Iraq if they had had a real nuclear arsenal and not just an imaginary one.
As for four years of no American attacks, it was longer than four years (eight years) between the first and second attack on the towers by terrorists with no war on Iraq. It obviously takes a while to stage something like that. It seems to have worked so well now, too, for our allies, the British. Gee, no attacks in four years, kaboom, kaboom, kaboom, kaboom.
I am not from India. I just have met and talked extensively with people from many corners of the globe, including Iraq, Pakistan, and India. I am born and raised in the USA as were my ancestors for many generations. The actions in the middle east have not prevented terrorism by any stretch (and now a majority even of Americans believe they have increased the risk, not reduced it). By every reasonable analysis, they have greatly increased the risk of terrorism, lost us all sympathy of most of the world, etc. It is far scarier to fly internationally now than following 9/11 because the world holds us accountable for much evil when we use to have their sympathy and good will. Now they will start treating us like we treat them.
Your references to Pakistan are just the same thing people said about Iraq when the US supported dictator Hussein or even Russia in the second world war. Did you know that Pakistan has greater population than Russia? You suddenly care about Iraq because the neocons suddenly care to make another war. No principles, just stumbling blindly from one war to another, creating lots of terrorists along the way by our own terrorizing actions, arming more and more militias to attack us later and making more populations hate us. Its is great for those who profit from war, but not for civilizations.
I have read any number of good books on Japanese brutalities. That does not justify American-sponsored brutalities and mass targeting of civillians (or hiding behind them).
Speaking of WWII, there were extreme brutalities of Russians toward many innocent other countries, which we ignored. Even when the leadership of the Nazi party was gone, the allied commanders forced the German who took over after Hitler, who was a very decent German, to prolong the war for 18 months, just to try to bring his armies back from the Russian front to avoid surrender to the Russians, who had slaughtered millions long before the Nazi Party started exterminating the Jews.
The flaw in so many neocon moral judgements is that the outcome of the judgement is really based upon who they are allied with at the time, which was never more apparent than with Japan, Russia, Iraq, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, etc. All war crimes are bad, even those the current white house and its current allies are guilty of. Just ask Vietnamese, Iraqis, citizens of American WMD, shock and awe, fire storm, etc. terror-based attacks, etc.
I might read it if I knew more about the author. What credentials does he have? Does he present a fair informed picture or only the deeply-flawed Neocon side ignoring all the inconvenient facts of the region and its occupiers and dictators.
Cause the Japanese war machine was a good thing for the region and the world. And the Soviet Union in the 60s was a force for good. And Saddam was a great guy to party with.
I never said they were. There is the issue of consistency on the topic of weapons of mass destruction, and vaporizing relatively-innocent populations in the name of democracy, while condemning others for the same sorts of actions.
Bush I and Rumsfeld thought Sadaam was a great guy to party with, not I. The pictures and government documents establish that, but you keep ignoring it. Now they think the dictator in Pakistan, whose people proliferated real (not phantom) WMD all over the middle east is the great guy to support against popular overthrow and "party with" even though his country is the one most-likely harboring Bin Laden and who helped support the Taliban and is repeatedly shown to oppose democracy and export terrorism into Kashmir and India. How is he different from Sadaam the dictator when they supported him? Perhaps he has a bit more of a conscience toward Arabs, since he opposed the American intervention in Iraq instead of being such an American tool of slaughter.
First, your assertions do nothing to salvage the original claim that these countries somehow attacked America.
America tried to defend South Vietnam against North Vietnam.
When did they join the Union?
America successfully defended Kuwait against Iraq in the Gulf War. The current Iraq war is supposedly due to violations of the treaty ending the Gulf War.
The key word here here being "supposedly", yet even if it were true, which it is not, it was not an attack on America, and the WMD claims were lies by the Bush administration that were nearly as transparent at the time as they were now. The US was far more responsible than Iraq for kicking out weapons inspectors by infiltrating them with spies, which was never part of the deal, telling them they had to leave because the US was going to attack again, and forbidding them from ever reentering to resecure the real weapons sites that they had secured much more effectively than the Americans did (demonstrating that that was never the real intent of the American aggression). As incompetent as the UN was, it was not nearly as incompetent or vicious towards civilians as American operations there are today and Kofi Annan correctly judged the war as an unfounded, illegal war by the US.
I'm not a big fan of the current conflict, BTW. As an aside, claiming any dictator has the right to rule a country by force, which is what you did by talking about Iraq's sovereignty, is a strange belief.
Claiming that Sadaam had a right to rule by force was what the US administrations did repeatedly when Sadaam was still weak enough that he might have been overthown, but the US loved him because he was so good at slaughtering Iranians and we were helping him keep power and even target his chemical attacks.
If he had been universally opposed, he would have easily been overthrown and there would not be such a large opposing the US rule. Now, the US is the one ruling by force, responsible for at least a hundred thousand deaths and much more maiming, etc. You cannot impose democracy at the barrel of a gun. Taking sides in civil wars is silly. Disarming and declaring war on one army which basically had terrorism under control just to train a whole other set of army troops for the other side and hand victory to the Iranians is silly and has nothing to do with Democracy. Sadaam was our dictator, just as Bin Laden was our man in Afghanistan and most of the new, improved trained police there are just another dimension for another civil religious war and they are turning loose the same type of death squads that Sadaam had, initiated by American action which has not generally advanced rights at all, as many now-oppressed groups will readily tell you.
Bush is also a dictator over those who oppose his illegal immoral actions taken in the name of America. Just because the political process allows him to take power in an election where there were no credible alternatives does not mean he and his party should have absolute power to lie, cheat, steal, etc. as they do, without fear of any responsibility. Iran is also a democracy, which Bush ironically finds to be illegitimate for similar reasons. There is not as much a difference as you would like to pretend.
Vietnam and Iraq clearly did not attack America first (only in the alternate universe of the criminal-in-chief where the truth is spun of a web of lies). Their sovereignty was first invaded by America, and neither launched an offense against America, except as part of a regional civil war or protecting their own homeland.
How was the American way of life exported to Hiroshima and Nagasaki by using weapons of mass destruction to vaporize large numbers of civilians? I guess that would justify Iraq or Iran using weapons of mass destruction against us since we attacked Iraq and materially supported Iraq's slaughter of Iranians?
And DEC VMS and the many other acquisitions would have succeeded at HP, if only they had found a way to make them cause the customer to need more ink cartridges.
For me, one of the most important aspects of the design is making it so that the two cats in our house cannot block the fans, who for some reason love to lay up against the fans if they are accessible (such as where there are two fans on the side) or otherwise interfere or they can push other things off the rack to make them accessible.
They have been the cause of much hardware failure if there is any way they can stretch or squeeze into an opening that has a fan, often after I believed that the configuration now was catproof after reacting to a previous incident.
What a world we live now, devoid of a basic understanding or appreciation of freedom. Some think it means slaughter and otherwise suppressing, one way or another, everyone who doesn't agree to bow and conform to the powers that be.
As to whether the individual clueless are unwashed or readily climb into cattle trucks, I doubt you can validly make such a generalization, whatever may be true of your own personal situation. Citizens often need something slightly flashier. Marketing by government-backed oligarchies has generally been more effective with the citizenry than explicit coercion reserved for the untermenschen chosen for vilification.
The corporations are forced to lower their prices to compete, not so much with the ones selling it at a huge profit, as with the ones giving it away for free. Who in his right mind would pay for warez that he is already taking a risk using? Not that it is never harmful to the company, but compared to those who give it away...
"Just business" is a lame excuse for supporting criminality, and I am sure you wouldn't tell the justice department to stop shutting down warez sites because "it is just software".
I happen to care deeply about software, and the criminality of the current marketplace makes the world a much worse place.
I oppose carmakers who would effectively weld the hood shut or drug companies whose research is primarily how to create a government-enforced health-care monopoly, all consistent with my principles with respect to software.
For a person who behaves like he never heard that free software is not principally about cost, or ignores it being personally a complete sellout, why would I expected him to be anything but the biggest part of the problem?
I pay for and support free (as in freedom) software all the time, just as surely as you support its enemies. Support of its enemies is not responsible behavior by software professionals, even if customers from the clueless masses will never know the difference.
You can hide behind moderation and calling people trolls.
I'm no martyr.
Nor am I, except with respect to the knee-jerk slashdot censors.
I'd use linux if I could but my customers use software that only runs on windows.
And will continue to be Windows-only as long as you support it that way.
This is the way it is with many embedded systems tools.
And you are doing what to change the situation?
You can nail yourself to a tree for your principles if you wish but I'm gonna take a holiday at the end of the year with the money I've earned using *immoral* software.
As will, no doubt, Bill Gates and many others.
I prefer to earn my holidays making the world a better place.
Just because copyright may not ethically be a legitimate reason not to copy these companies works, does not mean that there are not plenty of others. Every time you use the works of an immoral company like Microsoft, you are strongly supporting them. This is true even if you didn't pay them and they would prosecute you if they found out. There are no legitimate reasons for running their software, whether you pay them or not.
I suspect more slashdot readers get this than you may think. Just because I never run the sort of software they happen to prosecute for does today not mean I find the enforcement by the thought police a good thing. Tomorrow they will likely be prosecuting people for running Linux and free software. This sort of censorship, driven by corporations, will happen first in America.
How does that contribute profit to MS? If they use it as a price discrimination tool and raise the price in high priracy areas (presumably thinking that "low Linux penetration" means less competition), more people will pirate it!
Two words: market share. Get market share now, crack down later. Piracy is a thing which they publicly oppose and denounce, but if they are copying anyone's work for free, they would much rather have it be Windows than Linux.
Sure... except for all the time and money Intel invested to develop the technology behind those patents in the first place!
That is what all the worst violators say. The truth is Intel like Microsoft, has done little innovation, and the ones who did are all broke while Intel now owns their patents and many others of less merit and controls the market. The patents are just another boost to their unwarranted monopoly.
It is all non-competetive, non-merit-based monopoly.
Even covered by the neocon press. Second hit is an article referencing the Wall Street Journal talking about her suit against the Justice department for banning her book. Her book being banned is just one of many types of things banned from print in America.
While she might obtain an exception due to her stature, he, correctly, stands on principle against this sort of American censorship.
Even covered by the neocon press. Second hit is an article referencing the Wall Street Journal talking about her suit against the Justice department for banning her book. Her book being banned is just one of many types of things banned from print in America.
While she might obtain an exception due to her stature, he, correctly, stands on principle against this sort of American censorship.
Slashdot Mirror
by the Iraqi government
This was not the Iraqi government study, but one by an Iraqi humanitarian organization.
If they were so transparent, where was the political opposition? Oh, that's right, they were saying the same thing about Iraq and WMDs.
The Republicrat leadership fell for it very willingly. Especially the Republicans were deeply implicated going to great lengths to cherry pick intelligence and discredit (not factually but using smear and dirty politics) any actual credible sources on the matter. When there is going to be a war, all the politicians rejoice, because it consolidates their power. Democrats have only occasionally reluctantly opposed as they realized they were out of touch with a huge segment of their supporters and it might be an advantage, but they are generally still pro-war today. So what? That is a very unfortunate feature of our current political system, that hasn't provided credible candidates for years.
Using that WMD intel was a mistake, but it was an honest mistake. The notion that Bush knew about the intel being faulty beforehand is an unsubstantiated rumor. A crackpot conspiracy theory, on par with thinking the moon landings were faked.
If you hum with your fingers in your ears whenever the experts in the field try to bring anything to your attention, devoting departments to cherry-picking war justifications, villifying anyone, even former faithful Republican servants I have no doubt you will find a high-priced lawyer to excuse it as an Honest mistake, but there is nothing honest about it. It is a bald-faced lie, with incredible ulterior motives.
What any unbiased idiot standing on the sidelines could easily see was that Bush had decided to have a war, was not taking an unbiased look at intelligence, and there was absolutely nothing Sadaam could possibly do to satisfy Bush even though it was really Bush who was repeatedly responsible for inspectors being ejected (infiltrating them with spies, telling them to leave because the US was going to bomb, etc. and he never let them back in to safegard the materials or even observe the American absurdities there, but promptly gave it all into the hands of the insurgents there after Sadaam left power).
And the notion that we helped Saddam come to power, or keep power, or that we gave him WMD -- well, those are all false.
Some of what you claim, I never said, such as that we gave him his WMD or we helped him come to power (only our Allies may have been involved in that, and in fact, the first gassings in Iraq were performed in the '30s, I believe, by the British setting a shining example by reducing an inconvenient Iraqi population via poison gas).
The other parts, are a matter of record -- only false to someone with his head where the sun doesn't shine. We assisted him in ways that helped him overcome an initially-weaker grasp on power. It is not clear whether we were essential to his grasp on power, but we supported him. We certainly helped him pinpoint chemical attacks against Iranians and supplied him with the helicopters and other weaponry and items of importance he used to oppress the Kurds and keep himself in power, etc. because we liked his slaughter of the Iranians and felt we needed an ally in the area (not unlike our dealings with Pakistan today). The pictures of a smiling Rumsfeld shaking hands with Sadaam are not doctored but are part of an extensive history between the US and Sadaam that is also backed up by government documents.
You think this is somehow justified by the fact that we did the same with Russia in WWII? Both are criminal negligence (at least) on the part of the leaders and those who blindly supported them, as are our current pacts with Pakistan, Shiites, Uzbeckistan, etc. and the next war will be the result of the actions of the latest criminal-in-chief, all so innocent and honest to Republican/neocon collaborators.
According to a single flawed study. I'll believe the Red Cross numbers, thanks.
Again, before you make such outrageous claims (that it was a single flawed study), expose your head to some sunshine, a
I didn't realize it was the U.S. troops setting off those bombs at crowded intersections and recruiting lines. I should have known that the insurgents (read:terrorists) would never harm an innocent.
The fact is, most Iraqis killed by the Americans by far have been civillians. This is true in case after case. Often, there are no insurgents in sight. The US excuses civillian deaths as necessary collateral damage. Since when are American-government-recruited Iraqis not a legitimate military target. They are certainly being trained specifically to do nothing but shoot insurgents. This is not the only way Americans hide behind Iraqi civilians, and then blame the insurgents for deaths of those they put in harms way. I seriously doubt that Iraqi insurgents kill more innocents than Americans do, even with the much more advanced weapons systems available to Americans. This is even more obviously true if you seperate out the legitimate insurgency from the foreign terrorists the Americans have allowed to prosper there through sheer negligence etc. There never was a suicide bombing before the Americans came even though the foreign terrorists hated Sadaam almost as much as they hate Americans because he was a tribal power instead of a religious fanatic like those Iranian affiliates we are putting into power there.
What is this rubbish? War ended in 1945, Hitler died in 1945. Where is the 18 month period? And the Germans never wanted to 'return from the East Front'. They were beaten up there and pushed out by force.
I probably got some facts wrong, but you statement about them being beaten up and pushed out by force is also quite wrong. I will have to find and reread his autobiography. Just the quick web search I did credits him for successfully bringing 1.2 German soldiers back from the Russian front instead of allowing them to be brutalized there. I don't blame generally German soldiers (some were quite blamable), I blame the leaders of the Nazi party and the blind followers who let it happen, just as I don't blame American soldiers for the atrocities generally (although many are individually blamable) but the leaders of the Democrat and Republican parties who made it happen and the many stupid followers who encouraged them bear significantly more blame.
If you're asking why German POWs were treated so harshly by the Russians, read up on the treatmen Soviet POWs got in German custody.
I never asked it nor justified it. It is you who is trying to whitewash the actions of Americans supporting their Russian proxies. So the war is just about who can brutalize the enemy, as well as their own populations and neighboring countries the most? Winning, so you don't get held accountable for your war crimes?
The Russians committed a lot of war crimes (Katyn comes to mind), but your whitewashing of the Nazis is just funny.
I am sure this is one of many ways you amuse yourself at your own expense, but I never excused any crime of our allies, enemies, or presidents.
If our actions are making terrorists, then Afghanistan and Iraq should be major exporters or terrorists. Yet that is not the case. Hell, Iraq can't produce enough "insurgents" to fight against U.S. forces in their own country. Most terrorism there is due to foreign interlopers.
When the scandal at Abu Ghraib broke out, I believe that fewer than 2% of the occupants were found to be foreigners.
In the many other cases I have seen, I have never seen the number even close to 10%. I have seen it approach 5% occasionally in specific operations. The vast majority of native freedom fighters hates them, but they hate Americans more and are content to watch them blow themselves up. The Iraqi resistance and Bin Laden are natural enemies, but Bin Laden's associates have also regained something they were losing in Afghanistan and didn't have in Iraq under Sadaam: a place to train terrorists for operations in many other places. The masses slaughtered in the name of American democracy are not generally foreign terrorists. You would find far higher numbers of foreigners if American freedom fighters were resisting an illegal and immoral occupation.
The nuclear bombs are on the verge of being exported all over the world to unstable regimes due to extreme incompetence on the part of the US with respect to North Korea. By the way, the Koreans got their nuclear technology from Pakistan, while we have been illegitimately fumbling around in Iraq.
But in a way, I am glad they are all getting nuclear weapons, because they seem to need them to legitimately defend themselves against the US. I don't think we would have attacked Iraq if they had had a real nuclear arsenal and not just an imaginary one.
As for four years of no American attacks, it was longer than four years (eight years) between the first and second attack on the towers by terrorists with no war on Iraq. It obviously takes a while to stage something like that. It seems to have worked so well now, too, for our allies, the British. Gee, no attacks in four years, kaboom, kaboom, kaboom, kaboom.
I am not from India. I just have met and talked extensively with people from many corners of the globe, including Iraq, Pakistan, and India. I am born and raised in the USA as were my ancestors for many generations. The actions in the middle east have not prevented terrorism by any stretch (and now a majority even of Americans believe they have increased the risk, not reduced it). By every reasonable analysis, they have greatly increased the risk of terrorism, lost us all sympathy of most of the world, etc. It is far scarier to fly internationally now than following 9/11 because the world holds us accountable for much evil when we use to have their sympathy and good will. Now they will start treating us like we treat them.
Your references to Pakistan are just the same thing people said about Iraq when the US supported dictator Hussein or even Russia in the second world war. Did you know that Pakistan has greater population than Russia? You suddenly care about Iraq because the neocons suddenly care to make another war. No principles, just stumbling blindly from one war to another, creating lots of terrorists along the way by our own terrorizing actions, arming more and more militias to attack us later and making more populations hate us. Its is great for those who profit from war, but not for civilizations.
I have read any number of good books on Japanese brutalities. That does not justify American-sponsored brutalities and mass targeting of civillians (or hiding behind them).
Speaking of WWII, there were extreme brutalities of Russians toward many innocent other countries, which we ignored. Even when the leadership of the Nazi party was gone, the allied commanders forced the German who took over after Hitler, who was a very decent German, to prolong the war for 18 months, just to try to bring his armies back from the Russian front to avoid surrender to the Russians, who had slaughtered millions long before the Nazi Party started exterminating the Jews.
The flaw in so many neocon moral judgements is that the outcome of the judgement is really based upon who they are allied with at the time, which was never more apparent than with Japan, Russia, Iraq, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, etc. All war crimes are bad, even those the current white house and its current allies are guilty of. Just ask Vietnamese, Iraqis, citizens of American WMD, shock and awe, fire storm, etc. terror-based attacks, etc.
I might read it if I knew more about the author. What credentials does he have? Does he present a fair informed picture or only the deeply-flawed Neocon side ignoring all the inconvenient facts of the region and its occupiers and dictators.
Cause the Japanese war machine was a good thing for the region and the world. And the Soviet Union in the 60s was a force for good. And Saddam was a great guy to party with.
I never said they were. There is the issue of consistency on the topic of weapons of mass destruction, and vaporizing relatively-innocent populations in the name of democracy, while condemning others for the same sorts of actions.
Bush I and Rumsfeld thought Sadaam was a great guy to party with, not I. The pictures and government documents establish that, but you keep ignoring it. Now they think the dictator in Pakistan, whose people proliferated real (not phantom) WMD all over the middle east is the great guy to support against popular overthrow and "party with" even though his country is the one most-likely harboring Bin Laden and who helped support the Taliban and is repeatedly shown to oppose democracy and export terrorism into Kashmir and India. How is he different from Sadaam the dictator when they supported him? Perhaps he has a bit more of a conscience toward Arabs, since he opposed the American intervention in Iraq instead of being such an American tool of slaughter.
First, your assertions do nothing to salvage the original claim that these countries somehow attacked America.
America tried to defend South Vietnam against North Vietnam.
When did they join the Union?
America successfully defended Kuwait against Iraq in the Gulf War. The current Iraq war is supposedly due to violations of the treaty ending the Gulf War.
The key word here here being "supposedly", yet even if it were true, which it is not, it was not an attack on America, and the WMD claims were lies by the Bush administration that were nearly as transparent at the time as they were now. The US was far more responsible than Iraq for kicking out weapons inspectors by infiltrating them with spies, which was never part of the deal, telling them they had to leave because the US was going to attack again, and forbidding them from ever reentering to resecure the real weapons sites that they had secured much more effectively than the Americans did (demonstrating that that was never the real intent of the American aggression). As incompetent as the UN was, it was not nearly as incompetent or vicious towards civilians as American operations there are today and Kofi Annan correctly judged the war as an unfounded, illegal war by the US.
I'm not a big fan of the current conflict, BTW. As an aside, claiming any dictator has the right to rule a country by force, which is what you did by talking about Iraq's sovereignty, is a strange belief.
Claiming that Sadaam had a right to rule by force was what the US administrations did repeatedly when Sadaam was still weak enough that he might have been overthown, but the US loved him because he was so good at slaughtering Iranians and we were helping him keep power and even target his chemical attacks.
If he had been universally opposed, he would have easily been overthrown and there would not be such a large opposing the US rule. Now, the US is the one ruling by force, responsible for at least a hundred thousand deaths and much more maiming, etc. You cannot impose democracy at the barrel of a gun. Taking sides in civil wars is silly. Disarming and declaring war on one army which basically had terrorism under control just to train a whole other set of army troops for the other side and hand victory to the Iranians is silly and has nothing to do with Democracy. Sadaam was our dictator, just as Bin Laden was our man in Afghanistan and most of the new, improved trained police there are just another dimension for another civil religious war and they are turning loose the same type of death squads that Sadaam had, initiated by American action which has not generally advanced rights at all, as many now-oppressed groups will readily tell you.
Bush is also a dictator over those who oppose his illegal immoral actions taken in the name of America. Just because the political process allows him to take power in an election where there were no credible alternatives does not mean he and his party should have absolute power to lie, cheat, steal, etc. as they do, without fear of any responsibility. Iran is also a democracy, which Bush ironically finds to be illegitimate for similar reasons. There is not as much a difference as you would like to pretend.
Ask the Vietnamese, the Iraqis, the residents of Nagasaki, Hiroshima, etc. how much they benefitted from the American slaughter.
Vietnam and Iraq clearly did not attack America first (only in the alternate universe of the criminal-in-chief where the truth is spun of a web of lies). Their sovereignty was first invaded by America, and neither launched an offense against America, except as part of a regional civil war or protecting their own homeland.
How was the American way of life exported to Hiroshima and Nagasaki by using weapons of mass destruction to vaporize large numbers of civilians? I guess that would justify Iraq or Iran using weapons of mass destruction against us since we attacked Iraq and materially supported Iraq's slaughter of Iranians?
And DEC VMS and the many other acquisitions would have succeeded at HP, if only they had found a way to make them cause the customer to need more ink cartridges.
For me, one of the most important aspects of the design is making it so that the two cats in our house cannot block the fans, who for some reason love to lay up against the fans if they are accessible (such as where there are two fans on the side) or otherwise interfere or they can push other things off the rack to make them accessible.
They have been the cause of much hardware failure if there is any way they can stretch or squeeze into an opening that has a fan, often after I believed that the configuration now was catproof after reacting to a previous incident.
What a world we live now, devoid of a basic understanding or appreciation of freedom. Some think it means slaughter and otherwise suppressing, one way or another, everyone who doesn't agree to bow and conform to the powers that be.
As to whether the individual clueless are unwashed or readily climb into cattle trucks, I doubt you can validly make such a generalization, whatever may be true of your own personal situation. Citizens often need something slightly flashier. Marketing by government-backed oligarchies has generally been more effective with the citizenry than explicit coercion reserved for the untermenschen chosen for vilification.
The corporations are forced to lower their prices to compete, not so much with the ones selling it at a huge profit, as with the ones giving it away for free. Who in his right mind would pay for warez that he is already taking a risk using? Not that it is never harmful to the company, but compared to those who give it away...
"Just business" is a lame excuse for supporting criminality, and I am sure you wouldn't tell the justice department to stop shutting down warez sites because "it is just software".
I happen to care deeply about software, and the criminality of the current marketplace makes the world a much worse place.
I oppose carmakers who would effectively weld the hood shut or drug companies whose research is primarily how to create a government-enforced health-care monopoly, all consistent with my principles with respect to software.
For a person who behaves like he never heard that free software is not principally about cost, or ignores it being personally a complete sellout, why would I expected him to be anything but the biggest part of the problem?
I pay for and support free (as in freedom) software all the time, just as surely as you support its enemies. Support of its enemies is not responsible behavior by software professionals, even if customers from the clueless masses will never know the difference.
You can hide behind moderation and calling people trolls.
I'm no martyr.
Nor am I, except with respect to the knee-jerk slashdot censors.
I'd use linux if I could but my customers use software that only runs on windows.
And will continue to be Windows-only as long as you support it that way.
This is the way it is with many embedded systems tools.
And you are doing what to change the situation?
You can nail yourself to a tree for your principles if you wish but I'm gonna take a holiday at the end of the year with the money I've earned using *immoral* software.
As will, no doubt, Bill Gates and many others.
I prefer to earn my holidays making the world a better place.
Just because copyright may not ethically be a legitimate reason not to copy these companies works, does not mean that there are not plenty of others. Every time you use the works of an immoral company like Microsoft, you are strongly supporting them. This is true even if you didn't pay them and they would prosecute you if they found out. There are no legitimate reasons for running their software, whether you pay them or not.
I suspect more slashdot readers get this than you may think. Just because I never run the sort of software they happen to prosecute for does today not mean I find the enforcement by the thought police a good thing. Tomorrow they will likely be prosecuting people for running Linux and free software. This sort of censorship, driven by corporations, will happen first in America.
When the allies after the Second World War delivered / dropped large numbers of packages for children, etc. marked "Gift"?
How does that contribute profit to MS? If they use it as a price discrimination tool and raise the price in high priracy areas (presumably thinking that "low Linux penetration" means less competition), more people will pirate it!
Two words: market share. Get market share now, crack down later. Piracy is a thing which they publicly oppose and denounce, but if they are copying anyone's work for free, they would much rather have it be Windows than Linux.
Sure... except for all the time and money Intel invested to develop the technology behind those patents in the first place!
That is what all the worst violators say. The truth is Intel like Microsoft, has done little innovation, and the ones who did are all broke while Intel now owns their patents and many others of less merit and controls the market. The patents are just another boost to their unwarranted monopoly.
It is all non-competetive, non-merit-based monopoly.
Simple google search: iranian nobel ban.
Even covered by the neocon press. Second hit is an article referencing the Wall Street Journal talking about her suit against the Justice department for banning her book. Her book being banned is just one of many types of things banned from print in America.
While she might obtain an exception due to her stature, he, correctly, stands on principle against this sort of American censorship.
Simple google search: iranian nobel ban.
Even covered by the neocon press. Second hit is an article referencing the Wall Street Journal talking about her suit against the Justice department for banning her book. Her book being banned is just one of many types of things banned from print in America.
While she might obtain an exception due to her stature, he, correctly, stands on principle against this sort of American censorship.