That's 30 posts in a row with no moderation! Fuck it, I'm burning off a little to say how come I get no mods? Is it the lameness of my.sig or the fact that I'm on a n00b distro?
Would you kill a chimpanzee if doing so would give you the knowledge needed to save a child from leukemia? How about 3 million children then? Medical and scientific researchers are human beings. They do in fact name their higher research subjects such as chimps. Rabbits aren't so lucky, but chimps are generally not mistreated for cruelty's sake. Higher animals such as pigs, chimps, bonobos, orangutans, horses, etc are generally well treated in research labs. Their lives are not deliberately wasted. Obviously there would be no scientific value in deliberately killing an animal with a known cause. Sometimes they are killed in order to complete the research with an autopsy, but even this is done painlessly. Nobody out there is injecting 500ccs of household bleach into a chimp to see if it kills him. Research in these animals is more similar to injecting a chimp with 4cc of a supposedly safe substance in order to find the largest safe exposure level. Chimps in these experiments are fed a varied diet of bananas, carrots, breads, meats etc. In order to reduce the effects of the confinement. It protects the experiment from unknowns. They're not kept in tiny cages in most labs. They're certainly worse off when some enviro-animal rights terrorist burns down their lab, drops them off in some more wild habitat and abandons them. I've seen clusters of white rabbits huddling in fear in the open near a highway because some eco-goof decided that they had magically become wild creatures. The poor rabbits had no idea what to do. The coyotes, cars, and owls picked them off. That was wonderful especially because several of these animals carried diseases. Diseases that may not be common in that area of the country yet. Brilliant wackos.
Are you unfamiliar with the fact that GNU/Linux distributions are maturing at a rate faster than other operating systems and software? Since an operating system contains more components than say, a web browser, it has a much greater chance of reaching a major revision than a minor revision. Consider the transition from win95--win98--wimME. None of these could be truly considered Major revisions from Win95. They should, therefore, been named Win95 1.0, Win95 1.2, Win95 1.3. Some people exhausted huge amounts of money "upgrading" from Win95 to Win98 just to get USB support. Then they screwed their systems up completely by installing winME. Lets not forget there were also TWO versions of Win98 , OSR2 should have been a free patch to Win98 OSR1 but M$ got greedy. Sure, some OSs go by kernel revision, but the kernel is, of course, only one component of a complete distro, so it has less chance of becoming incompatible with previous components. Mandrake has, in my opinion, brought Linux to the masses by making it feasable for a non-CS major to actually use a computer in conjunction with Linux to do WORK. Sometimes we all have to remember that the function of a computer is to retrieve, manipulate and send data. Everyone needs to be able to use their data, and isn't quite so interested in doing things the most difficult way possible.
I've used Suse 6.0, Mandrake 7.0, 7.2, 8.0, 8.2 and so far haven't found Mandrake to be crippled in any way that affects me. Why should I use Slackware if Mandrake's as easy as it is? Is it worth all that extra effort just to be more 1337? I also would like to know what slackware can do that MDK can't do. I've noticed quite a bit of elitism on the part of the users of the more difficult to implement distros. If I have 7 boxen to install and configure, why in the world would I want to do them all by hand? Sometimes it's nice to have a GUI frontend for common tasks. Or is it?
If all this is true, why can't you spell kernel? Oh, wait- I just got to the part where you describe yourself as a poor college student. Never mind. Mod this one +3 offtopic, -4 troll. Screw it, moderators ignore my posts anyway.
How can spoofing an email land you in Fed Prison? I do that all the time and wasn't aware it was illegal. Most of my friends get an occaisional email from president@whitehouse.gov or somesuch email. It's not like president@whitehouse.gov actually gets read by humans or used as an official channel. It's just an autoresponder. Sure, If you write I'm gonna k1ll the president, someone's gonna come by your house.
If the plural of ox is oxen then logically the plural of box should be boxen. Duh! Ongoing joke #330 still befuddles and amazes people. Boxen has been used on/. for quite a while. Most times it doesn't cause a fuss.
No, they don't rule by popular sovereignty, and even if they did, such governance would not preclude censorship. Democracy is, after all, tyranny by the majority. If a democratic country that is also totalitarian has a small group of dissidents from the minority, it may still supress information detrimental to the majority in power.
That's true. But with Micro$oft, Bill Gates IS your sysadmin!.(per EULA) This means you're correct on both supporting statements, but still incorrect in your conclusion that this is a double standard.
In this, I see no bias, since the controlling party of each system bears the blame for system insecurity. The difference is that with OSS, at least the owner of the equipment knows (or CAN know) what holes exist in the system. He is the controlling party. In MS windows, you are a USER with some root access. Microsoft becomes root.
The USA was the #1 polluter in 1970. Now it ranks #4. Get your numbers straight. The number one countries are China, India, Brazil. AND ALL THREE STILL USE COAL. The US has zero old style coal plants in operation. They use "clean coal" plants now which output less sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and methane (derived from soot).
It must be nice to be an environmentalist. I mean, you get to make up phony statistics, and the great thing is that everyone who disagrees is "in favor of dirty air and water". NO scientific debate! EVER!
Re:They are called "jarheads" for a reason...
on
Want Freedom?
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· Score: 1
You obviously have never served in the military. I will tell you from experience that the average serviceman WILL question orders that he thinks contradict established policy or that he finds morally abhorrent. Most servicemen wanted out of Vietnam. Most were FOR the war against Iraq because the United States had signed treaties promising assistance should they be invaded by Hussein. You obviously are either totally unfamiliar with the military in the US, or have been brainwashed by the type of people (professors) who use terms like "warmonger". NOBODY WANTS TO DIE FOR SOMETHING THEY DON'T BELIEVE IN! How fscking hard is that to understand? It's universal, for crying out loud! That's why the Iraqi soldiers surrendered to journalists! It wasn't that they were cowards, it was that they were unwilling to die for Saddam. Jeez, I would think educated types would at least understand the drives we all have in common.
Most military types actually are human beings, equipped with a moral compass, and a set of values. You apparently have a deep-seated hatred of the military-industrial complex. It's rather juvenile considering that right now, there are about 100 million people who really hate you. You're also basically defenseless without some form of national army. Sure, we, as a nation have had numerous bad times. Times when our leadership let us down. Threw us to the wolves, as it were, for nothing but anticommunist idealism. Don't make statements like yours without some sort of experience or at least some anecdotal evidence supporting your point. Your blatant generalizations without support show you as a small minded buffoon who's easily filled to the breaking point by beatnik propaganda. Comparison to nazi germany will not help your cause either. It's a common, and rather trite, tactic.
Re:"One issue" GWB voters are the reason.
on
Want Freedom?
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· Score: 1
I voted for him too, and still kinda like him but can't stand Ashcroft and Tom Ridge. Those types, we don't need in government. Ridge always looks totally lost and out of the loop. He's a mouthbreather. Ashcroft is a censorship mad freak of nature. Powell's a pussy. Rice has a spark of intelligence, but it's buried beneath 7 feet of beaurocratic political BS. Face it, Cheney and Rumsfeld are all we got worth a shit.
I say we decimate the federal government like the Romans did. If they fail to get bin Laden while still preserving our freedoms, kill every tenth one of them.
Re:And how many throw away their Second...
on
Want Freedom?
·
· Score: 1
I agree. If people as a majority become complacent and hand us a police state, what choice would a civilized man have but to take back what was stolen from him? I would die for my sons' freedoms to endure. I have two sons, and I think every parent wants a better world for their kids, even if it's a small improvement. I won't sit down for a repressive police state. I AM a right-wing wacko. I support your right to be a commie, a queer, a malcontent, a pornographer, a preacher, an imam, a liberal, a quaker, etc... even unto my death. That's what a conservative wacko should be. I don't support censorship. One man's gold is another's garbage. I may not like what you say, but I'll have words (or deeds) with anyone who tries to stop you from saying it.
As soon as the Moral Majority actually sits down and studies the words of Jesus, they'll pretty much all be out of jobs. The guy was actually quite a tolerant and decent man. Not like these hysterical censorship maniacs that get all the press. Just a note to you all- some christians actually believe in tolerance and freedom of speech they find distasteful. I am one. Find more.
If ESD wasn't a critical issue with CMOS devices, the US DOD wouldn't insist so strongly on the use of ESD protection. In working on projects for the space program (International Space Station emergency lighting systems and ethernet hubs/gateways), I found that if the DCMA (Defense Contracts Management Agency) found that a unit had been handled at all without proper controls, they would refuse to purchase it. You can eat 3 million bucks if you're complacent about ESD with the US Federal Government. I recommend you take it seriously because it's cheap to implement, and adds a bit more reliability to your products. Most times you don't see an immediate failure, but even low voltage surface mount capacitors can get thin spots in the dielectric if you zap them. Transistors in ICs or discretes can get dimples in the gate oxides. This will change the interelectrode capacitance, and lead to premature failure or degredation of high-speed performance.
I have verified the results of this report. I added 1 US Gallon of H2O with 1 cup NaCl, and poured it into the case of my computer while running MS Outlook Express. Within 3 seconds, I stopped receiving the Klez virus.
I've been told I now need a solution to put the magic smoke back into the various components of my motherboard and power supply that caught on fire, probably as a result of their contamination with computer viruses.
1. Don't the Japanese build things in Malaysia and Vietnam for that very reason? Sh1t, it sounds like you'd prefer we let their economies dry up and go away. Maybe, the countries we're doing business with should establish a minimum legal wage on imported work? (BTW, I drove to a shop in Mexico to protest just this thing, but I digress). OK, lets just say that Texas Instruments and Intel shut down their foundries in Malaysia. Those people have no better opportunities than that factory. Would you have us stop employing them? Your idealism would say that we should pay them better wages. The problem there is that their inexpensive living conditions are what made that location so attractive for business in hte first place. I am opposed to sweatshops and unhealthy working conditions. I am against paying a worker below living wages. But living wages are lower in third world countries, and the US dollars flowing in in many cases is the only thing improving their economies. "Developing Countries" are developing because of industry. Otherwise they stay basically stone age. No jobs, no opportunities, no chance at a better life for your kids than the one you got. If you had your idealistic ways, that's exactly what would happen.
1. I made no claims that the adherence to the rule of law was an American invention. It actually began in Greek and Roman culture.
2. The ICC, as an international court, has member "judges" from places like China and North Korea, etc., who would simply use the ICC for political purposes. Most of those countries would see any U.S. aggression as an international war crime. Certainly you wouldn't expect the U.S. to place its servicemen under the jurisdiction of despotic dictators?
3. Am i (a) an isolationist, as you charge, or (b), involving my country in police actions all over the world to impose my policies on others? The two are mutually exclusive. Isolationism (which I subscribe to) means we worry only about those world issues which pose a threat to the U.S. or its interests. I opposed the actions in Vietnam, Bosnia, Yugoslavia for those reasons. However, Iraq invaded Kuwait, an ally of the United States. In circumstances where a nation has signed treatises promising the defense of an ally, to fail to live up to our promise would have cast serious doubts for other allies' promises. Many nations are happy with their aggreements with the U.S., and the reason is simply that we try to live up to our promises as a matter of policy. Would you prefer a president that bombs soveriegn nations like the Sudan simply to cover up a political scandal in his administration? For Christ's sake, Clinton ordered a cruise missile attack on an aspirin factory! I don't support every action that my country endeavors. I'm just not with you when you say my government is wholly corrupt and evil without offering evidence to support that.
The ICC treaty would have violated the U.S. laws that state the rights that human beings have under our jurisdictions. We just cannot sign on to a court that can try individuals of crimes that may not be illegal here in the US. Did you even read the specifics under the ICC? Genocide is in there and includes psychological damage to a specific race as GENOCIDE. Not bloody reasonable. The U.S. system has been good to me. I've been to many other countries and saw systems under which success is largely impossible. Just don't go bashing the US as the Great Satan while you type away into an internet system we largely fabricated, while running a computer designed in the U.S., across a transatlantic cable we built, or using satellites we launched, and tell us we're all fscked up. Really. I've dealt with enough socialists to know one when I see one. You may not be communist per se, but the hatred you have of power being wielded by corporations shows that you view them as inanimate objects. They are not. And don't tell me a French company is so much better. Europe has had its share of problems. Our system, because of its freedoms, is just more prone to abuse. So what.
Your "profit before people" comment goes over the top. In capitalism. one makes money by providing a product or service that people want. If you fail to please a significant number of consumers, you fail in business. It's that simple. Profit cannot come before people, because it is exactly people who purchase your product or service. I am always surprised so many people don't understand that. Unrestrained capitalism, when coupled by a lack of humanity, can be very awful. This situation of power and evil can be found wherever human beings exist. Unrestrained fascism, communism or any other system can be equally awful. Capitalism isn't perfect, but it's the only system that works. Some abuse power and privelege in every country. I just don't know where you get this idea that every corporation has meetings to sit down and discuss how to opress people in this fiscal quarter. The conspiracy mindset continues to elude me. Sure, when Rumsfeld conveniently announces that al Qaida has moved to Iraq, I get suspicious. I think, "maybe it's all getting too convenient.". But I have the right to take up arms. Even against my own country when it goes too far. I am not an unarmed serf working another man's land. Most Americans are complacent sheep. So are most Europeans. America also has quite a few dissidents. That demonstrates a healthy governmental ecosystem.
I voted for Bush. Gore wants me to buy an electric car that can only go 50 miles between 6 hour charge cycles. I'm a realistic environmentalist. When we can implement a technology effectively, I am all for it. However, most of the environmental wackos don't have a realistic grasp on the current state of technology. In addition, I believe that there are some things America CAN impose on other countries. We can impose the rule of law. Bomb us, get fscked. The difference between the European Dictators and Bush is that Bush has extremely limited power. Also, Bush didn't kill anyone in order to achieve his position. I'm sorry if you don't like him, but he was the best I was offered in the elections. I also have met his mother. Nice lady. BTW- I really don't mind if Europeans don't understand the U.S. . That's why so many of us left there in the first place. We're certainly not going to change because you either envy our successes, or disagree with our policies. America is currently the biggest boy in the class, and still manages to preserve its respect for law AND freedoms. We've made some mistakes, particularly in latin america in the early part of the last century (puppet governments for banana production), but our people constantly strive for improvement. As for your rant on corporations, who do you think owns them? We do. Why would you expect any country to actively seek out policy that benefits Europe at its own expense? That would be stupid. Just a reminder: the U.S. didn't strike first in this war we have to be in now. It sucks. Nobody likes war. You do it because this is an imperfect world and some people want to kill you and take what you have. You either kill them first or be reactionary and wait for them to annihilate you.
I would be interested to hear why you think the U.S. is so vastly inferior an environment. Millions move here for the opportunities. My grandfather was one of them.
Compare one more president to Hitler, you'll show what a mindless reactionary you are. They just don't compare at all well. Idealism has its place: Your twenties. After that you become pragmatic. Let me know when that happens, you might be interesting.
So you're against free speech. If I have a product and need to let people know it's now available and where, under your system my new device would never sell because you'd never know where you could get one, or that it even existed.
In addition, if I make laundry detergent and I invest X million dollars trying to find a better way to get stains out, I can't let people know the benefits of choosing my product over Brand Z?
With every company existing in this situation, product selection is done based on price and availability instead of features and benefits. Entire companies close down due to their manufacture of superior products that don't sell, and thousands are laid off. Good job.
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That's 30 posts in a row with no moderation! Fuck it, I'm burning off a little to say how come I get no mods? Is it the lameness of my .sig or the fact that I'm on a n00b distro?
Would you kill a chimpanzee if doing so would give you the knowledge needed to save a child from leukemia? How about 3 million children then? Medical and scientific researchers are human beings. They do in fact name their higher research subjects such as chimps. Rabbits aren't so lucky, but chimps are generally not mistreated for cruelty's sake. Higher animals such as pigs, chimps, bonobos, orangutans, horses, etc are generally well treated in research labs. Their lives are not deliberately wasted. Obviously there would be no scientific value in deliberately killing an animal with a known cause. Sometimes they are killed in order to complete the research with an autopsy, but even this is done painlessly. Nobody out there is injecting 500ccs of household bleach into a chimp to see if it kills him. Research in these animals is more similar to injecting a chimp with 4cc of a supposedly safe substance in order to find the largest safe exposure level. Chimps in these experiments are fed a varied diet of bananas, carrots, breads, meats etc. In order to reduce the effects of the confinement. It protects the experiment from unknowns. They're not kept in tiny cages in most labs. They're certainly worse off when some enviro-animal rights terrorist burns down their lab, drops them off in some more wild habitat and abandons them. I've seen clusters of white rabbits huddling in fear in the open near a highway because some eco-goof decided that they had magically become wild creatures. The poor rabbits had no idea what to do. The coyotes, cars, and owls picked them off. That was wonderful especially because several of these animals carried diseases. Diseases that may not be common in that area of the country yet. Brilliant wackos.
There was a movie called Project X that had exactly this plotline. Wierd. You remember, Ferris Beuller was in that one.
Are you unfamiliar with the fact that GNU/Linux distributions are maturing at a rate faster than other operating systems and software? Since an operating system contains more components than say, a web browser, it has a much greater chance of reaching a major revision than a minor revision. Consider the transition from win95--win98--wimME. None of these could be truly considered Major revisions from Win95. They should, therefore, been named Win95 1.0, Win95 1.2, Win95 1.3. Some people exhausted huge amounts of money "upgrading" from Win95 to Win98 just to get USB support. Then they screwed their systems up completely by installing winME. Lets not forget there were also TWO versions of Win98 , OSR2 should have been a free patch to Win98 OSR1 but M$ got greedy. Sure, some OSs go by kernel revision, but the kernel is, of course, only one component of a complete distro, so it has less chance of becoming incompatible with previous components. Mandrake has, in my opinion, brought Linux to the masses by making it feasable for a non-CS major to actually use a computer in conjunction with Linux to do WORK. Sometimes we all have to remember that the function of a computer is to retrieve, manipulate and send data. Everyone needs to be able to use their data, and isn't quite so interested in doing things the most difficult way possible.
I've used Suse 6.0, Mandrake 7.0, 7.2, 8.0, 8.2 and so far haven't found Mandrake to be crippled in any way that affects me. Why should I use Slackware if Mandrake's as easy as it is? Is it worth all that extra effort just to be more 1337? I also would like to know what slackware can do that MDK can't do. I've noticed quite a bit of elitism on the part of the users of the more difficult to implement distros. If I have 7 boxen to install and configure, why in the world would I want to do them all by hand? Sometimes it's nice to have a GUI frontend for common tasks. Or is it?
If all this is true, why can't you spell kernel? Oh, wait- I just got to the part where you describe yourself as a poor college student. Never mind. Mod this one +3 offtopic, -4 troll. Screw it, moderators ignore my posts anyway.
How can spoofing an email land you in Fed Prison? I do that all the time and wasn't aware it was illegal. Most of my friends get an occaisional email from president@whitehouse.gov or somesuch email. It's not like president@whitehouse.gov actually gets read by humans or used as an official channel. It's just an autoresponder. Sure, If you write I'm gonna k1ll the president, someone's gonna come by your house.
If the plural of ox is oxen then logically the plural of box should be boxen. Duh! Ongoing joke #330 still befuddles and amazes people. Boxen has been used on /. for quite a while. Most times it doesn't cause a fuss.
That's it! I'm gonna KILL you, you liberal motherfscker! Run like hell, you Berkely faggot! Guns don't kill people, I kill people.
No, they don't rule by popular sovereignty, and even if they did, such governance would not preclude censorship. Democracy is, after all, tyranny by the majority. If a democratic country that is also totalitarian has a small group of dissidents from the minority, it may still supress information detrimental to the majority in power.
Why didn't you just do that after TNG? tsk tsk.
Original Superman actor: George Reeves 1970s Superman actor: Christopher Reeve Current Superman actor: Keanu Reeves Notice anything creepy about this?
That's true. But with Micro$oft, Bill Gates IS your sysadmin!.(per EULA) This means you're correct on both supporting statements, but still incorrect in your conclusion that this is a double standard. In this, I see no bias, since the controlling party of each system bears the blame for system insecurity. The difference is that with OSS, at least the owner of the equipment knows (or CAN know) what holes exist in the system. He is the controlling party. In MS windows, you are a USER with some root access. Microsoft becomes root.
The USA was the #1 polluter in 1970. Now it ranks #4. Get your numbers straight. The number one countries are China, India, Brazil. AND ALL THREE STILL USE COAL. The US has zero old style coal plants in operation. They use "clean coal" plants now which output less sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and methane (derived from soot). It must be nice to be an environmentalist. I mean, you get to make up phony statistics, and the great thing is that everyone who disagrees is "in favor of dirty air and water". NO scientific debate! EVER!
You obviously have never served in the military. I will tell you from experience that the average serviceman WILL question orders that he thinks contradict established policy or that he finds morally abhorrent. Most servicemen wanted out of Vietnam. Most were FOR the war against Iraq because the United States had signed treaties promising assistance should they be invaded by Hussein. You obviously are either totally unfamiliar with the military in the US, or have been brainwashed by the type of people (professors) who use terms like "warmonger". NOBODY WANTS TO DIE FOR SOMETHING THEY DON'T BELIEVE IN! How fscking hard is that to understand? It's universal, for crying out loud! That's why the Iraqi soldiers surrendered to journalists! It wasn't that they were cowards, it was that they were unwilling to die for Saddam. Jeez, I would think educated types would at least understand the drives we all have in common. Most military types actually are human beings, equipped with a moral compass, and a set of values. You apparently have a deep-seated hatred of the military-industrial complex. It's rather juvenile considering that right now, there are about 100 million people who really hate you. You're also basically defenseless without some form of national army. Sure, we, as a nation have had numerous bad times. Times when our leadership let us down. Threw us to the wolves, as it were, for nothing but anticommunist idealism. Don't make statements like yours without some sort of experience or at least some anecdotal evidence supporting your point. Your blatant generalizations without support show you as a small minded buffoon who's easily filled to the breaking point by beatnik propaganda. Comparison to nazi germany will not help your cause either. It's a common, and rather trite, tactic.
I voted for him too, and still kinda like him but can't stand Ashcroft and Tom Ridge. Those types, we don't need in government. Ridge always looks totally lost and out of the loop. He's a mouthbreather. Ashcroft is a censorship mad freak of nature. Powell's a pussy. Rice has a spark of intelligence, but it's buried beneath 7 feet of beaurocratic political BS. Face it, Cheney and Rumsfeld are all we got worth a shit. I say we decimate the federal government like the Romans did. If they fail to get bin Laden while still preserving our freedoms, kill every tenth one of them.
I agree. If people as a majority become complacent and hand us a police state, what choice would a civilized man have but to take back what was stolen from him? I would die for my sons' freedoms to endure. I have two sons, and I think every parent wants a better world for their kids, even if it's a small improvement. I won't sit down for a repressive police state. I AM a right-wing wacko. I support your right to be a commie, a queer, a malcontent, a pornographer, a preacher, an imam, a liberal, a quaker, etc... even unto my death. That's what a conservative wacko should be. I don't support censorship. One man's gold is another's garbage. I may not like what you say, but I'll have words (or deeds) with anyone who tries to stop you from saying it. As soon as the Moral Majority actually sits down and studies the words of Jesus, they'll pretty much all be out of jobs. The guy was actually quite a tolerant and decent man. Not like these hysterical censorship maniacs that get all the press. Just a note to you all- some christians actually believe in tolerance and freedom of speech they find distasteful. I am one. Find more.
If ESD wasn't a critical issue with CMOS devices, the US DOD wouldn't insist so strongly on the use of ESD protection. In working on projects for the space program (International Space Station emergency lighting systems and ethernet hubs/gateways), I found that if the DCMA (Defense Contracts Management Agency) found that a unit had been handled at all without proper controls, they would refuse to purchase it. You can eat 3 million bucks if you're complacent about ESD with the US Federal Government. I recommend you take it seriously because it's cheap to implement, and adds a bit more reliability to your products. Most times you don't see an immediate failure, but even low voltage surface mount capacitors can get thin spots in the dielectric if you zap them. Transistors in ICs or discretes can get dimples in the gate oxides. This will change the interelectrode capacitance, and lead to premature failure or degredation of high-speed performance.
I have verified the results of this report. I added 1 US Gallon of H2O with 1 cup NaCl, and poured it into the case of my computer while running MS Outlook Express. Within 3 seconds, I stopped receiving the Klez virus. I've been told I now need a solution to put the magic smoke back into the various components of my motherboard and power supply that caught on fire, probably as a result of their contamination with computer viruses.
Them's SPACE peanuts.
1. Don't the Japanese build things in Malaysia and Vietnam for that very reason? Sh1t, it sounds like you'd prefer we let their economies dry up and go away. Maybe, the countries we're doing business with should establish a minimum legal wage on imported work? (BTW, I drove to a shop in Mexico to protest just this thing, but I digress). OK, lets just say that Texas Instruments and Intel shut down their foundries in Malaysia. Those people have no better opportunities than that factory. Would you have us stop employing them? Your idealism would say that we should pay them better wages. The problem there is that their inexpensive living conditions are what made that location so attractive for business in hte first place. I am opposed to sweatshops and unhealthy working conditions. I am against paying a worker below living wages. But living wages are lower in third world countries, and the US dollars flowing in in many cases is the only thing improving their economies. "Developing Countries" are developing because of industry. Otherwise they stay basically stone age. No jobs, no opportunities, no chance at a better life for your kids than the one you got. If you had your idealistic ways, that's exactly what would happen.
1. I made no claims that the adherence to the rule of law was an American invention. It actually began in Greek and Roman culture. 2. The ICC, as an international court, has member "judges" from places like China and North Korea, etc., who would simply use the ICC for political purposes. Most of those countries would see any U.S. aggression as an international war crime. Certainly you wouldn't expect the U.S. to place its servicemen under the jurisdiction of despotic dictators? 3. Am i (a) an isolationist, as you charge, or (b), involving my country in police actions all over the world to impose my policies on others? The two are mutually exclusive. Isolationism (which I subscribe to) means we worry only about those world issues which pose a threat to the U.S. or its interests. I opposed the actions in Vietnam, Bosnia, Yugoslavia for those reasons. However, Iraq invaded Kuwait, an ally of the United States. In circumstances where a nation has signed treatises promising the defense of an ally, to fail to live up to our promise would have cast serious doubts for other allies' promises. Many nations are happy with their aggreements with the U.S., and the reason is simply that we try to live up to our promises as a matter of policy. Would you prefer a president that bombs soveriegn nations like the Sudan simply to cover up a political scandal in his administration? For Christ's sake, Clinton ordered a cruise missile attack on an aspirin factory! I don't support every action that my country endeavors. I'm just not with you when you say my government is wholly corrupt and evil without offering evidence to support that. The ICC treaty would have violated the U.S. laws that state the rights that human beings have under our jurisdictions. We just cannot sign on to a court that can try individuals of crimes that may not be illegal here in the US. Did you even read the specifics under the ICC? Genocide is in there and includes psychological damage to a specific race as GENOCIDE. Not bloody reasonable. The U.S. system has been good to me. I've been to many other countries and saw systems under which success is largely impossible. Just don't go bashing the US as the Great Satan while you type away into an internet system we largely fabricated, while running a computer designed in the U.S., across a transatlantic cable we built, or using satellites we launched, and tell us we're all fscked up. Really. I've dealt with enough socialists to know one when I see one. You may not be communist per se, but the hatred you have of power being wielded by corporations shows that you view them as inanimate objects. They are not. And don't tell me a French company is so much better. Europe has had its share of problems. Our system, because of its freedoms, is just more prone to abuse. So what.
Your "profit before people" comment goes over the top. In capitalism. one makes money by providing a product or service that people want. If you fail to please a significant number of consumers, you fail in business. It's that simple. Profit cannot come before people, because it is exactly people who purchase your product or service. I am always surprised so many people don't understand that. Unrestrained capitalism, when coupled by a lack of humanity, can be very awful. This situation of power and evil can be found wherever human beings exist. Unrestrained fascism, communism or any other system can be equally awful. Capitalism isn't perfect, but it's the only system that works. Some abuse power and privelege in every country. I just don't know where you get this idea that every corporation has meetings to sit down and discuss how to opress people in this fiscal quarter. The conspiracy mindset continues to elude me. Sure, when Rumsfeld conveniently announces that al Qaida has moved to Iraq, I get suspicious. I think, "maybe it's all getting too convenient.". But I have the right to take up arms. Even against my own country when it goes too far. I am not an unarmed serf working another man's land. Most Americans are complacent sheep. So are most Europeans. America also has quite a few dissidents. That demonstrates a healthy governmental ecosystem.
I voted for Bush. Gore wants me to buy an electric car that can only go 50 miles between 6 hour charge cycles. I'm a realistic environmentalist. When we can implement a technology effectively, I am all for it. However, most of the environmental wackos don't have a realistic grasp on the current state of technology. In addition, I believe that there are some things America CAN impose on other countries. We can impose the rule of law. Bomb us, get fscked. The difference between the European Dictators and Bush is that Bush has extremely limited power. Also, Bush didn't kill anyone in order to achieve his position. I'm sorry if you don't like him, but he was the best I was offered in the elections. I also have met his mother. Nice lady. BTW- I really don't mind if Europeans don't understand the U.S. . That's why so many of us left there in the first place. We're certainly not going to change because you either envy our successes, or disagree with our policies. America is currently the biggest boy in the class, and still manages to preserve its respect for law AND freedoms. We've made some mistakes, particularly in latin america in the early part of the last century (puppet governments for banana production), but our people constantly strive for improvement. As for your rant on corporations, who do you think owns them? We do. Why would you expect any country to actively seek out policy that benefits Europe at its own expense? That would be stupid. Just a reminder: the U.S. didn't strike first in this war we have to be in now. It sucks. Nobody likes war. You do it because this is an imperfect world and some people want to kill you and take what you have. You either kill them first or be reactionary and wait for them to annihilate you. I would be interested to hear why you think the U.S. is so vastly inferior an environment. Millions move here for the opportunities. My grandfather was one of them. Compare one more president to Hitler, you'll show what a mindless reactionary you are. They just don't compare at all well. Idealism has its place: Your twenties. After that you become pragmatic. Let me know when that happens, you might be interesting.
So you're against free speech. If I have a product and need to let people know it's now available and where, under your system my new device would never sell because you'd never know where you could get one, or that it even existed. In addition, if I make laundry detergent and I invest X million dollars trying to find a better way to get stains out, I can't let people know the benefits of choosing my product over Brand Z? With every company existing in this situation, product selection is done based on price and availability instead of features and benefits. Entire companies close down due to their manufacture of superior products that don't sell, and thousands are laid off. Good job.