You think this is funny. Let me tell you a little story.
I just took this past spring a course in "Network Security". The teacher got hold of a DARPA video on computer security and played it for us at one class session.
You wouldn't believe this crap. The scenario was a country suspiciously similar to Iraq who set up a computer center with a bunch of Arab terrorist hackers and tried to drop America's infrastructure.
So, of course, the brilliant and utterly boring (all these people looked like crew-cutted Republicans, it was unbelievable) used all sort of "cutting-edge technology" (that doesn't exist and won't for another two or three decades) to defeat the evil Arabs. It ended with them tracking the evil Arabs to their lair and a bunch of Special Forces guys busting in and shooting up the place (DIE, EVIL HACKERS! DIE!).
The tech they showed involved a lot of voice-command and voice-response computer systems, all sorts of fancy graphics stuff, and of course something very much like Total Information Awareness that allowed them to know who everybody was no matter who the hell they were. They also had the ability to search out the source of any virus or hacker penetration in minutes and then commandeer the entire US infrastructure to repel the attack.
Utter bullshit - and I told the teacher so at the end of the video.
This was a DARPA "wish-list" video with absolutely no relevance to current computer security technology.
At the end of the semester, I demo'd the Knoppix STD (Security Tools Distribution) to the class. One student asked if this stuff was "all command line". I said, well, it's all servers, and the servers all run UNIX, and servers usually are administered from the command line, so, yes, most of the tools (except for stuff like Ethereal and Nessus) was command line.
It's a long way from there to DARPA's fantasy land.
"What will happen when low-cost labor in China is combined with Microsoft technologies?"
How about this result:
1) The labor will get more expensive as they get pissed off working on crap and demand better wages and better working conditions - such as NOT working on crap.
2) Everything will be over-engineered and quality will drop through the floor.
Yes, it should NOT be made CRIMINALLY ILLEGAL to videotape movies in a theater.
Whether a theater can prohibit the practice or not is up to the theater. If they catch you doing it, they can throw your ass out. Why do we need a law? I'll tell you why.
Criminalizing the behavior is fucking STUPID and is merely another attempt by the state to create MORE "crime", more cops, more prisons, more law enforcement bureaucracy, etc. ad nauseum. And you gutless punks fall for it every time.
C'mon, morons, you don't get it yet? The purpose of "law" is to create "crime", and thus to create "criminals" and thus to create "prisoners" out of everybody - not the other way around. This is how the state operates and has operated for thousands of years. Who needs "law" to recognize that coercion is nonproductive and should not be done? Apparently everybody, since most human morons haven't figured this out.
You've got a "drug war" and thousands of people in prison and billions being wasted on a "problem" that doesn't exist. Now the state is taking the oxymoronic notion of "intellectual property" and creating a NEW "war" - which will jail even more people than drugs and cost even more money and wasted resources.
If this thing CAN IN FACT read all Excel commands and macros AND runs on Linux AND Windows, it offers companies a migration path from Windows to Linux, dealing with the Microsoft Office migration hassle.
If their TextMaker word processor can do the same for Word, that just leaves Access and PowerPoint to be trashed.
Now, there might be other issues vis-a-vis integration between their products vrs that of Office (or OpenOffice), and issues vis-a-vis file format (open or not). But having a product for Linux (free or not) that offers companies a migration path from Windows to Linux is a Good Thing for Linux.
The fact that it's not free is not relevant, either. Some companies won't migrate to free software like OO - they want to pay for support for a commercial product (why? Don't ask me! The usual excuses are weak.). This product satisfies that need for some companies.
You're connecting to their network (I assume we're talking direct connection via the dorms and not over the Internet). They have the right to control machines hard connected to their network from a security standpoint. Can't argue that.
Now, if the software can also scan your system (it is YOUR system, right, not one the college is giving you access to?) and report what you have installed or files you have (such as MP3's for the fucking RIAA), then you have a legitimate complaint.
Now if you're connecting to them via the Internet, that's a different story. They have the right to refuse your connection unless you're using AV, firewall, etc., but not to put software on your private machine at home.
Oh, yeah, Saddam shipped all his WMDs to Syria - or maybe it was his old enemies, Iran!
And that fake Sarin shell the US military just HAPPENED to find right in the middle of the torture scandal!
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!
And the deformities were caused by DEPLETED URANIUM dropped by the US and Britain in Gulf War 1 - and more are now being made sick - including US TROOPS - as a result of the even greater tonnage dropped in the latest war.
You're a total fucking moron! You haven't the slightest pig-witless fucking clue what you're talking about. Typical rightwing moron. You probably believe Rush Limbaugh is not a pill popper, too, right?
I regularly get half a dozen virus-laden emails a day from SBC Yahoo's email system even though they CLAIM they check for viruses.
They also claim they have removed virus-infected attachments from various emails but my AV shows the attachments are STILL THERE and STILL INFECTED. This is much worse than their AV just missing a few viruses - it is actively claiming to do something it isn't doing.
I'm not talking about "cheap labor". I'm talking about the US politicians wanting power and US CEOs wanting to strip other countries of their resources for THEIR profit, not for the CEOs - and certainly not the people - of those countries.
And there are damn few CEOs who can see any kind of "big picture" beyond next quarter's stock price. A few see a "big picture" of multinational dominance of an industry but that's as far as it goes.
Go here: http://www.free-definition.com/Militia.html and read.
While you're at it, read this one, too: http://www.sgaus.org/secamend.htm
There are plenty more on the Net.
The fact that there is more than one definition of militia is irrelevant. The definition used by the framers of the Constitution and the language so used clearly establish the individual right of all citizens to possess firearms and for the purpose of providing for a "common defense" against state tyranny - whether that defense is composed of "everybody" or only those *capable* of serving in a militia controlled by the states and/or the Federal government.
1) The UN did NOT sanction the US invasion and international law experts with considerably more knowledge of UN law than you say it was illegal to do so.
2) Paying a few tens of thousands of dollars to Palestinian bomber families is hardly conducting terrorist acts against the US. In fact, most analysts believe this was mostly a propaganda ploy with no significance.
3) There were NO significant links with Al-Qaeda. Intelligence analysts believe that all the alleged "contacts" were little more than the routine in intelligence circles for various groups and state agencies to check each other out and gain intel.
4) ALL the evidence since the original Gulf War indicates that Saddam either abandoned most of his WMD projects or was being lied to by the heads of those projects as to any progress being made. While no doubt Saddam would have LIKED to have had WMDs, the bottom line is:
a) He had NONE.
b) The US LIED about his having ANY.
c) NONE have been found.
"Wanting WMD's" is NOT an excuse to invade another country according to international law to which the US is a signatory. Even if the US were NOT a signatory to such laws, "wanting WMD's" - indeed HAVING WMD's - would be a total excuse for invading Israel RIGHT NOW. Not to mention North Korea which is currently threatening to test a nuclear weapon. Why aren't we invading North Korea? No oil, maybe?
You mention Hans Blix - have you even read anything Blix has said in the last year? Being "in breach" of WMD *reporting* requirements did not justify war regardless of any UN declarations.
Your arguments are the same specious crap dredged up by the neocons and their Zionist allies on a daily basis. They have been refuted unambiguously a thousand times.
There was NO justification for war in Iraq. There were only lies and neocon plots - and they continue to this day. And only fools like Rush and Ann and Bill and you still believe them.
You Want To Know What Iraq Is Like
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from an Iraqi IT worker perspective, read Riverbend's blog. She's an Iraqi programmer. Out of a job last I read, though - apparently because she's female and things are getting hard for females over there these days as far as civil rights.
Re:Free as in Beer not too useful an arguement the
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Given the fact that we're trucking in gasoline to the country with supposedly huge oil reserves, maybe "free as in gas" would be a good slogan.
Probably the most important thing is to make sure everybody knows Linus is Finnish, not American.
You should recommend an AK in every pot - it's working well in Iraq right now.
It doesn't matter how many heavy weapons you have. They're only good for beating a bunch of guys on a straight battlefield who have heavy weapons. They're useless against an insurgency, which has been demonstrated repeatedly and is current being proven again in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A tank driver can't drive a tank with his head shot off from ambush while he's off base. A well-aimed rifle trumps a tank every time in an insurgency.
And you want a heavy weapon? Shoot the guys who have one and take it - works every time - as long as it isn't something that requires a few hundred million bucks in infrastructure to support. And if it does, you shoot up the infrastructure and the heavy weapon is useless.
And you think a Revolutionary War era cannon loaded with grapeshot wasn't bad news for somebody with a musket?
The relative difference in destructive power of modern weapons versus older weapons is irrelevant to the basic principle: an armed citizenry cannot be defeated AND HELD by an army (at least if the citizenry is motivated. Unfortunately it looks like most of the US population isn't capable of that any more - if they ever were since the 1700's.)
The "bearded guy" is irrelevant to the bottom line of the Firdos story. The US promoted the myth that "hundreds" (if not thousands) of Iraqis were in on the pulling down of Saddam's statue, and that it was a "spontaneous Iraqi celebration".
It was bullshit, is what it was. The pullback picture of the scene shows the placed sealed off by US military vehicles and damn few Iraqis. And a US military PR guy shows up with an flag all ready to drap over the statue. And I'd say it was 50-50 that the guy in the picture WAS Chalabi's man - but who knows? The point is it was a staged photo-op - nothing "spontaneous" about it at all.
It was as true as the fiction spread about Jessica Lynch's "heroic" battle before being captured - and as true as her "heroic" rescue - another fake photo-op.
You want to know how far the US will go to pull a stunt, Google for the "Northwoods documents" and read what the Joint Chiefs of Staff were prepared to do in the 1960's to justify invading Cuba. You'll find a lot of conspiracy Web sites carrying those documents, but the documents themselves are quite real - there's an ABC news story which should come up in a Google about them.
Another clown who doesn't comprehend what a "militia" is.
Read up on it before braying. The Constitution and Federal law at the time and now define the "militia" as every able bodied man in the country (sorry, ladies, it should include you, but apparently doesn't - unfortunate historical fact that men before women's lib were assholes).
I believe it was Patrick Henry that made the specific point in a speech: "The great object is that every man be armed."
There are Web sites that provide the details about this issue - do a Google - it's quite clear that the intent was to arm the citizenry in general - not just those who were in a "National Guard" (which didn't exist at the time).
And the "selling assault rifles to convicts" is a ridiculous straw man argument. The intent was to sell "assault rifles" to the average citizen so he could both protect his family against the "land pirates" which existed in those days and especially to protect the country against both foreign invasion and specifically tyrannical government.
What, you think Jefferson and that lot meant that the only people who could own guns were members of the national army - reserve or not? Do you seriously believe that?
Saddam was NOT a "security concern" - especially after his military got that ass kicked in 1991. What part of this conclusion reached by EVERYONE except Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and George Bush don't you comprehend?
There were NO valid legal reasons for the war - this is the conclusion of dozens of international law experts. If the UN wanted the US to attack Saddam, THEY WOULD HAVE SAID SO! They did NOT!
As for Saddam using extremists against the US, he would have done so ONLY if he was fairly sure it would not backfire on him. And in any event, this is not justification for war.
Finally - you wanted Saddam out? You could have paid me, oh, a billion dollars, and I'd have had his ass out in thirty days and saved the US taxpayer a couple hundred billion and made a $900 million profit besides.
What cretin actually believes it was necessary to spend a couple hundred billion bucks to blow up a whole country, massacre thousands of civilians, occupy a country for years, get hundreds of US servicemen and others killed, all to get one guy out of office? Particularly the one guy we PUT in office and SUPPORTED in office for a decade - as long as he was killing other "ragheads" (Iranians) that the GOP President in power at the time didn't like.
Oh, wait, I was responding to YOUR post, wasn't I?
Ask the hundreds of thousands of Filipinos we murdered a few decades back about "dominant culture" versus "violence".
Moron.
Fucking idiots like YOU disgust me. Utterly ignorant of the violence the US has done to dozens of countries for over a hundred years in the name of US power and greed.
And you DARE compare a single terrorist act to THAT?
Cretin.
Re:Why not?
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"They're more stable, more sane, and would probably be great to do business with."
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!! You think the CEOs in THIS country are "stable", "sane" and "great to do business with"?
Jesus!
Even if they were not assholes, competitors is the LAST thing these morons want in this world.
Some people - mostly ignorant Objectivist libertarians - seem to think that being in business makes one a free market philosopher. Forget about it. The average CEO of any major corporation is an asshole who got where he is for office politics and financial connections reasons - not because he is a "capitalist statesman".
And the POLITICIANS who run this country DAMN sure don't want any free-market countries in existence - not even the US!
"Capitalism" (in the common sense of people with money running everything) and the state can work together - the true free market and the state cannot.
"Zionism is simply the belief that there needs to be a sovreign jewish state. that's it"
You've never read any Ben-Gurion, have you?
I've seen enough quotes - from him and many other high-ranking Israeli politicians - to know what "Greater Israel" means - it means domination of the entire Middle East and screw the Arabs. Which is exactly where Israel started two thousand years ago until the Romans - who were better at it than the Jews - came down and ran all their asses out of their own country.
I'm against the Jewish religion (because I'm an atheist), I'm against Jewish politicians because I'm an anarchist, I'm against Zionism because it is racist bullshit - I'm not against Jews (hell, Winona Ryder is one of my favorite babes and like the Adam Sandler song says, she "drinks Maneshewitz" -or however that's spelled).
In fact, for the last year or so, my court-mandated psych therapist has been Jewish and has been agreeing with me about everything that's wrong with Israel.
Recently I posted an article on an Iraq war Web site from a Jewish Rabbi who attended a protest meeting in Massachusetts against the Palestinian occupation - he denounced Zionism thoroughly as the sole cause of Israel's problems! So you should know that many Jews in Israel denounce Zionism and the policies of the Israeli government both for religious and political reasons.
So it's ludicrous to claim that Israel's policies are innocent reactions against Palestinian "terrorism". Just as the true "terrorists" in Iraq are US troops, so are the Israelis the true "terrorists" in the Middle East.
(Not to mention the fact that they are the only Middle Eastern country with KNOWN "weapons of mass destruction" which they have threatened to use against their neighbors and for which the IAEA has been reluctant to call them to account.)
So forget the old "Jews are hardworking immigrants" crap - it's not relevant to the current issues. And forget chalking everything up to the Holocaust - that excuse for everything Israel does is wearing thin.
Technically a Nazi is a member of the National Socialist party (which doesn't exist any more) - period. Practically, a "Nazi" is as a "Nazi" does - and Ariel Sharon qualifies. So does George Bush.
I was just in the Federal Court Clerk's office here in San Francisco around the first of the month paying my restitution as I do every month.
I happened to notice the clerk was keying a document in using WORDPERFECT - which STILL dominates the legal field. I even mentioned it to her, saying that too many legal WordPerfect macros exist to switch to Word. She laughed.
A better comparison would be Himmler and Heydrich to Ariel Sharon who is a Zionist butcher just as much as Himmler was a Nazi butcher.
As for Ashcroft, he would be running concentration camps just as much as the Nazis did IF he thought he could get away with it - and he's working for the day when he can.
So the comparison is entirely apt. Any denunciation of that comparison is motivated by Jewish propaganda that continues to make the rest of the world "guilty" of genocide by association.
There is no such thing as "classic free market economics" giving rise to monopolies. A monopoly by definition has to be coercive - which means in some manner supported by the state - in order to ward off competitors. The railroads are in particular a classic example IIRC.
Secondly, there has never BEEN "classic free market economics" anywhere on the planet that I know of - at least not on the scale of any modern nation (maybe some tribes or something have done it).
You can't pass ten thousand regulatory laws and then claim to have "deregulated" when the market has already been so distorted that it would take decades to recover - particularly when most of said laws remain on the books and the "deregulation" is in name only AND the "deregulation" is limited to certain areas of commerce within a given industry.
Distortion is distortion - the first law passed regulating an economy distorts it. Period.
There is no such thing as "mostly free" any more than there is "partly pregnant". You're either obeying somebody else or you're not. Practically, of course, one can discuss what you can get away with which is a different issue. Evading coercion is not freedom unless you are 100% successful at it - which I don't know anybody is on this planet.
Slashdot Mirror
Too late.
I got that email this morning - via SBC Yahoo email who claims they spam and virus filter.
By God, their programmers - or the ones who wrote the stuff they bought to run on their servers - sure know how to code.
"turn it into something at a 5th grade reading level (that's the bar for tabloid news, I shit you not)"
/.? /.'s bar is actually LOWER?
You mean, like, oh wow, it's not the bar for
Like, oh wow, man.
You think this is funny. Let me tell you a little story.
I just took this past spring a course in "Network Security". The teacher got hold of a DARPA video on computer security and played it for us at one class session.
You wouldn't believe this crap. The scenario was a country suspiciously similar to Iraq who set up a computer center with a bunch of Arab terrorist hackers and tried to drop America's infrastructure.
So, of course, the brilliant and utterly boring (all these people looked like crew-cutted Republicans, it was unbelievable) used all sort of "cutting-edge technology" (that doesn't exist and won't for another two or three decades) to defeat the evil Arabs. It ended with them tracking the evil Arabs to their lair and a bunch of Special Forces guys busting in and shooting up the place (DIE, EVIL HACKERS! DIE!).
The tech they showed involved a lot of voice-command and voice-response computer systems, all sorts of fancy graphics stuff, and of course something very much like Total Information Awareness that allowed them to know who everybody was no matter who the hell they were. They also had the ability to search out the source of any virus or hacker penetration in minutes and then commandeer the entire US infrastructure to repel the attack.
Utter bullshit - and I told the teacher so at the end of the video.
This was a DARPA "wish-list" video with absolutely no relevance to current computer security technology.
At the end of the semester, I demo'd the Knoppix STD (Security Tools Distribution) to the class. One student asked if this stuff was "all command line". I said, well, it's all servers, and the servers all run UNIX, and servers usually are administered from the command line, so, yes, most of the tools (except for stuff like Ethereal and Nessus) was command line.
It's a long way from there to DARPA's fantasy land.
"What will happen when low-cost labor in China is combined with Microsoft technologies?"
How about this result:
1) The labor will get more expensive as they get pissed off working on crap and demand better wages and better working conditions - such as NOT working on crap.
2) Everything will be over-engineered and quality will drop through the floor.
3) Security will become even worse than it was.
4) China will nuke Redmond in retaliation.
Oh, okay, everything is fine.
Yes, it should NOT be made CRIMINALLY ILLEGAL to videotape movies in a theater.
Whether a theater can prohibit the practice or not is up to the theater. If they catch you doing it, they can throw your ass out. Why do we need a law? I'll tell you why.
Criminalizing the behavior is fucking STUPID and is merely another attempt by the state to create MORE "crime", more cops, more prisons, more law enforcement bureaucracy, etc. ad nauseum. And you gutless punks fall for it every time.
C'mon, morons, you don't get it yet? The purpose of "law" is to create "crime", and thus to create "criminals" and thus to create "prisoners" out of everybody - not the other way around. This is how the state operates and has operated for thousands of years. Who needs "law" to recognize that coercion is nonproductive and should not be done? Apparently everybody, since most human morons haven't figured this out.
You've got a "drug war" and thousands of people in prison and billions being wasted on a "problem" that doesn't exist. Now the state is taking the oxymoronic notion of "intellectual property" and creating a NEW "war" - which will jail even more people than drugs and cost even more money and wasted resources.
Get your head out of your ass.
If this thing CAN IN FACT read all Excel commands and macros AND runs on Linux AND Windows, it offers companies a migration path from Windows to Linux, dealing with the Microsoft Office migration hassle.
If their TextMaker word processor can do the same for Word, that just leaves Access and PowerPoint to be trashed.
Now, there might be other issues vis-a-vis integration between their products vrs that of Office (or OpenOffice), and issues vis-a-vis file format (open or not). But having a product for Linux (free or not) that offers companies a migration path from Windows to Linux is a Good Thing for Linux.
The fact that it's not free is not relevant, either. Some companies won't migrate to free software like OO - they want to pay for support for a commercial product (why? Don't ask me! The usual excuses are weak.). This product satisfies that need for some companies.
You're connecting to their network (I assume we're talking direct connection via the dorms and not over the Internet). They have the right to control machines hard connected to their network from a security standpoint. Can't argue that.
Now, if the software can also scan your system (it is YOUR system, right, not one the college is giving you access to?) and report what you have installed or files you have (such as MP3's for the fucking RIAA), then you have a legitimate complaint.
Now if you're connecting to them via the Internet, that's a different story. They have the right to refuse your connection unless you're using AV, firewall, etc., but not to put software on your private machine at home.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!! Talk about lame!
Oh, yeah, Saddam shipped all his WMDs to Syria - or maybe it was his old enemies, Iran!
And that fake Sarin shell the US military just HAPPENED to find right in the middle of the torture scandal!
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!
And the deformities were caused by DEPLETED URANIUM dropped by the US and Britain in Gulf War 1 - and more are now being made sick - including US TROOPS - as a result of the even greater tonnage dropped in the latest war.
You're a total fucking moron! You haven't the slightest pig-witless fucking clue what you're talking about. Typical rightwing moron. You probably believe Rush Limbaugh is not a pill popper, too, right?
Cretin.
I regularly get half a dozen virus-laden emails a day from SBC Yahoo's email system even though they CLAIM they check for viruses.
They also claim they have removed virus-infected attachments from various emails but my AV shows the attachments are STILL THERE and STILL INFECTED. This is much worse than their AV just missing a few viruses - it is actively claiming to do something it isn't doing.
I'm not talking about "cheap labor". I'm talking about the US politicians wanting power and US CEOs wanting to strip other countries of their resources for THEIR profit, not for the CEOs - and certainly not the people - of those countries.
And there are damn few CEOs who can see any kind of "big picture" beyond next quarter's stock price. A few see a "big picture" of multinational dominance of an industry but that's as far as it goes.
Go here: http://www.free-definition.com/Militia.html and read.
While you're at it, read this one, too:
http://www.sgaus.org/secamend.htm
There are plenty more on the Net.
The fact that there is more than one definition of militia is irrelevant. The definition used by the framers of the Constitution and the language so used clearly establish the individual right of all citizens to possess firearms and for the purpose of providing for a "common defense" against state tyranny - whether that defense is composed of "everybody" or only those *capable* of serving in a militia controlled by the states and/or the Federal government.
None of which alters the bottom line:
1) The UN did NOT sanction the US invasion and international law experts with considerably more knowledge of UN law than you say it was illegal to do so.
2) Paying a few tens of thousands of dollars to Palestinian bomber families is hardly conducting terrorist acts against the US. In fact, most analysts believe this was mostly a propaganda ploy with no significance.
3) There were NO significant links with Al-Qaeda. Intelligence analysts believe that all the alleged "contacts" were little more than the routine in intelligence circles for various groups and state agencies to check each other out and gain intel.
4) ALL the evidence since the original Gulf War indicates that Saddam either abandoned most of his WMD projects or was being lied to by the heads of those projects as to any progress being made. While no doubt Saddam would have LIKED to have had WMDs, the bottom line is:
a) He had NONE.
b) The US LIED about his having ANY.
c) NONE have been found.
"Wanting WMD's" is NOT an excuse to invade another country according to international law to which the US is a signatory. Even if the US were NOT a signatory to such laws, "wanting WMD's" - indeed HAVING WMD's - would be a total excuse for invading Israel RIGHT NOW. Not to mention North Korea which is currently threatening to test a nuclear weapon. Why aren't we invading North Korea? No oil, maybe?
You mention Hans Blix - have you even read anything Blix has said in the last year? Being "in breach" of WMD *reporting* requirements did not justify war regardless of any UN declarations.
Your arguments are the same specious crap dredged up by the neocons and their Zionist allies on a daily basis. They have been refuted unambiguously a thousand times.
There was NO justification for war in Iraq. There were only lies and neocon plots - and they continue to this day. And only fools like Rush and Ann and Bill and you still believe them.
from an Iraqi IT worker perspective, read Riverbend's blog. She's an Iraqi programmer. Out of a job last I read, though - apparently because she's female and things are getting hard for females over there these days as far as civil rights.
Given the fact that we're trucking in gasoline to the country with supposedly huge oil reserves, maybe "free as in gas" would be a good slogan.
Probably the most important thing is to make sure everybody knows Linus is Finnish, not American.
You should recommend an AK in every pot - it's working well in Iraq right now.
It doesn't matter how many heavy weapons you have. They're only good for beating a bunch of guys on a straight battlefield who have heavy weapons. They're useless against an insurgency, which has been demonstrated repeatedly and is current being proven again in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A tank driver can't drive a tank with his head shot off from ambush while he's off base. A well-aimed rifle trumps a tank every time in an insurgency.
And you want a heavy weapon? Shoot the guys who have one and take it - works every time - as long as it isn't something that requires a few hundred million bucks in infrastructure to support. And if it does, you shoot up the infrastructure and the heavy weapon is useless.
And you think a Revolutionary War era cannon loaded with grapeshot wasn't bad news for somebody with a musket?
The relative difference in destructive power of modern weapons versus older weapons is irrelevant to the basic principle: an armed citizenry cannot be defeated AND HELD by an army (at least if the citizenry is motivated. Unfortunately it looks like most of the US population isn't capable of that any more - if they ever were since the 1700's.)
The "bearded guy" is irrelevant to the bottom line of the Firdos story. The US promoted the myth that "hundreds" (if not thousands) of Iraqis were in on the pulling down of Saddam's statue, and that it was a "spontaneous Iraqi celebration".
It was bullshit, is what it was. The pullback picture of the scene shows the placed sealed off by US military vehicles and damn few Iraqis. And a US military PR guy shows up with an flag all ready to drap over the statue. And I'd say it was 50-50 that the guy in the picture WAS Chalabi's man - but who knows? The point is it was a staged photo-op - nothing "spontaneous" about it at all.
It was as true as the fiction spread about Jessica Lynch's "heroic" battle before being captured - and as true as her "heroic" rescue - another fake photo-op.
You want to know how far the US will go to pull a stunt, Google for the "Northwoods documents" and read what the Joint Chiefs of Staff were prepared to do in the 1960's to justify invading Cuba. You'll find a lot of conspiracy Web sites carrying those documents, but the documents themselves are quite real - there's an ABC news story which should come up in a Google about them.
Another clown who doesn't comprehend what a "militia" is.
Read up on it before braying. The Constitution and Federal law at the time and now define the "militia" as every able bodied man in the country (sorry, ladies, it should include you, but apparently doesn't - unfortunate historical fact that men before women's lib were assholes).
I believe it was Patrick Henry that made the specific point in a speech: "The great object is that every man be armed."
There are Web sites that provide the details about this issue - do a Google - it's quite clear that the intent was to arm the citizenry in general - not just those who were in a "National Guard" (which didn't exist at the time).
And the "selling assault rifles to convicts" is a ridiculous straw man argument. The intent was to sell "assault rifles" to the average citizen so he could both protect his family against the "land pirates" which existed in those days and especially to protect the country against both foreign invasion and specifically tyrannical government.
What, you think Jefferson and that lot meant that the only people who could own guns were members of the national army - reserve or not? Do you seriously believe that?
You'd better do a lot more research about that.
There were NO "valid national security concerns".
Saddam was NOT a "security concern" - especially after his military got that ass kicked in 1991. What part of this conclusion reached by EVERYONE except Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and George Bush don't you comprehend?
There were NO valid legal reasons for the war - this is the conclusion of dozens of international law experts. If the UN wanted the US to attack Saddam, THEY WOULD HAVE SAID SO! They did NOT!
As for Saddam using extremists against the US, he would have done so ONLY if he was fairly sure it would not backfire on him. And in any event, this is not justification for war.
Finally - you wanted Saddam out? You could have paid me, oh, a billion dollars, and I'd have had his ass out in thirty days and saved the US taxpayer a couple hundred billion and made a $900 million profit besides.
What cretin actually believes it was necessary to spend a couple hundred billion bucks to blow up a whole country, massacre thousands of civilians, occupy a country for years, get hundreds of US servicemen and others killed, all to get one guy out of office? Particularly the one guy we PUT in office and SUPPORTED in office for a decade - as long as he was killing other "ragheads" (Iranians) that the GOP President in power at the time didn't like.
Oh, wait, I was responding to YOUR post, wasn't I?
Ask the hundreds of thousands of Filipinos we murdered a few decades back about "dominant culture" versus "violence".
Moron.
Fucking idiots like YOU disgust me. Utterly ignorant of the violence the US has done to dozens of countries for over a hundred years in the name of US power and greed.
And you DARE compare a single terrorist act to THAT?
Cretin.
"They're more stable, more sane, and would probably be great to do business with."
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!! You think the CEOs in THIS country are "stable", "sane" and "great to do business with"?
Jesus!
Even if they were not assholes, competitors is the LAST thing these morons want in this world.
Some people - mostly ignorant Objectivist libertarians - seem to think that being in business makes one a free market philosopher. Forget about it. The average CEO of any major corporation is an asshole who got where he is for office politics and financial connections reasons - not because he is a "capitalist statesman".
And the POLITICIANS who run this country DAMN sure don't want any free-market countries in existence - not even the US!
"Capitalism" (in the common sense of people with money running everything) and the state can work together - the true free market and the state cannot.
"I can't event count the number of UN resolutions relating to Iraq's illegal weapons programs on my hands."
You can't count the number of "WMD's" actually FOUND on your hands either (assuming you HAVE hands, of course) - for a different reason.
"Zionism is simply the belief that there needs to be a sovreign jewish state. that's it"
You've never read any Ben-Gurion, have you?
I've seen enough quotes - from him and many other high-ranking Israeli politicians - to know what "Greater Israel" means - it means domination of the entire Middle East and screw the Arabs. Which is exactly where Israel started two thousand years ago until the Romans - who were better at it than the Jews - came down and ran all their asses out of their own country.
I'm against the Jewish religion (because I'm an atheist), I'm against Jewish politicians because I'm an anarchist, I'm against Zionism because it is racist bullshit - I'm not against Jews (hell, Winona Ryder is one of my favorite babes and like the Adam Sandler song says, she "drinks Maneshewitz" -or however that's spelled).
In fact, for the last year or so, my court-mandated psych therapist has been Jewish and has been agreeing with me about everything that's wrong with Israel.
Recently I posted an article on an Iraq war Web site from a Jewish Rabbi who attended a protest meeting in Massachusetts against the Palestinian occupation - he denounced Zionism thoroughly as the sole cause of Israel's problems! So you should know that many Jews in Israel denounce Zionism and the policies of the Israeli government both for religious and political reasons.
So it's ludicrous to claim that Israel's policies are innocent reactions against Palestinian "terrorism". Just as the true "terrorists" in Iraq are US troops, so are the Israelis the true "terrorists" in the Middle East.
(Not to mention the fact that they are the only Middle Eastern country with KNOWN "weapons of mass destruction" which they have threatened to use against their neighbors and for which the IAEA has been reluctant to call them to account.)
So forget the old "Jews are hardworking immigrants" crap - it's not relevant to the current issues. And forget chalking everything up to the Holocaust - that excuse for everything Israel does is wearing thin.
Technically a Nazi is a member of the National Socialist party (which doesn't exist any more) - period. Practically, a "Nazi" is as a "Nazi" does - and Ariel Sharon qualifies. So does George Bush.
Oh, no, they DON'T have Word.
I was just in the Federal Court Clerk's office here in San Francisco around the first of the month paying my restitution as I do every month.
I happened to notice the clerk was keying a document in using WORDPERFECT - which STILL dominates the legal field. I even mentioned it to her, saying that too many legal WordPerfect macros exist to switch to Word. She laughed.
Nonsense.
A better comparison would be Himmler and Heydrich to Ariel Sharon who is a Zionist butcher just as much as Himmler was a Nazi butcher.
As for Ashcroft, he would be running concentration camps just as much as the Nazis did IF he thought he could get away with it - and he's working for the day when he can.
So the comparison is entirely apt. Any denunciation of that comparison is motivated by Jewish propaganda that continues to make the rest of the world "guilty" of genocide by association.
And it's wearing thin given Israel's policies.
There is no such thing as "classic free market economics" giving rise to monopolies. A monopoly by definition has to be coercive - which means in some manner supported by the state - in order to ward off competitors. The railroads are in particular a classic example IIRC.
Secondly, there has never BEEN "classic free market economics" anywhere on the planet that I know of - at least not on the scale of any modern nation (maybe some tribes or something have done it).
You can't pass ten thousand regulatory laws and then claim to have "deregulated" when the market has already been so distorted that it would take decades to recover - particularly when most of said laws remain on the books and the "deregulation" is in name only AND the "deregulation" is limited to certain areas of commerce within a given industry.
Distortion is distortion - the first law passed regulating an economy distorts it. Period.
There is no such thing as "mostly free" any more than there is "partly pregnant". You're either obeying somebody else or you're not. Practically, of course, one can discuss what you can get away with which is a different issue. Evading coercion is not freedom unless you are 100% successful at it - which I don't know anybody is on this planet.