People have been arrested in europe for "supporting terrorists" for doing very similar things.
The links you provide are about people supporting a terrorist organization, including financial support, etc. etc..
I certainly hope you are able to see the difference between collecting information about an organization (something an academic might do) and endorsing and/or economically supporting things like antisemitic propaganda and terrorism?
That's what I thought, but keep in mind that in another EU country you can get arrested for publicly supporting certain political parties. Namely, in Germany it's against the law to be part of certain neo-nazi ideologies and holocaust denial.
And in fact, I'm not sure I'm opposed to that eevn though it's certainly a limitation of my right of free speech. But then, what gives me the right to tell the Turkish government which ideologies are "dangerous". I guess that's why this kind of legislation is never a good idea in the first place.
Since you bring up up germany; do you sincerely beleive that a law designed to stop antisemitic propaganda is just as bad as a law that, say, limits the civil liberties of an ethnic minority like jews (or kurds for that matter).
Kurds are an ethnic minority, like jews were in nazi germany - a Kurd cannot decide to stop being a kurd, no less than I can stop being a caucasean.
On another note I fail to see how the german laws you cite are any more stifling to free speech than laws prohibiting libel. Neonazism is tightly coupled to malicious defamation of jews - according to the laws of most countries that constitutes libel. Mentioning neonazism explicitly in the law just serves to simplify libel lawsuits.
Or do you beleive that libel laws in america are morally equivalent to limiting the civil liberties of an ethnic minority?
Yeah well... of course you are right.
There are a lot of anti-religious rants here, and the crux of the story (the slashdot interpretation of it anyway) is to show that creationism is wrong.
But my point is that we really shouldn't mix apples and oranges. The falsifiability is actually a pretty decent test for wether you've made the fault of mixing up science and faith.
Even the scientist who believes god created evolution, could not come up with an example of experimental evidence that could convince him he was wrong, so he should realise that he is no longer dealing in science.
mind you, I do not clam that the "creationists" are wrong, simply that it's not science. That's really the important issue... I don't care that religious people beleive that god created the world in 7 days... I really couldn't care less. As long as it's not considered science.
If it's accepted as science, it'll have to be accepted in the biology classes, and that's when things really start to go wrong. That's when my (imaginary) childrens education starts looking more like religious indoctrination in a theocracy than actual education.
Just because a lot of anti-religious slashdotters firmly beleive they can scientifically prove that god is dead, that doesn't mean that it is the important part of the discussion... (slashdot is rarely the place to go if you are looking to find that)
The important thing is that we are able to tell the difference between science and faith, that we can tell if someone put apple-cider in our orangeade or watered down our whisky.
And that's exactly why the whole creationism/evolution debate is pointless: You can never prove or disprove that one didn't precede the other. An argument can easily be made that God created all of it's creatures through evolution. To wit, that God created evolution.
Actually that's not quite what the creationism/evolution debate is about. Creationists are deluded people that think that what they do is science - the real point of the debate is to make these people understand that, yes, it is possible that they are right, but science is falsifiable - creationism is not. Ergo creationism has nothnig to do with science.
What these people have done is simply fill a hole that the creationists claimed couldn't be filled... that is of course interesting, but since creationism is not falsifiable it doesn't actually move anything.
Stories like this, where real scientists attack the claims made by creationists, are in my view a little dangerous... on one hand it tackles a relevant scientific question, but on the other hand the creationists might think that they are being taken serious as scientist, making them even more adamant in their delusion.
Exactly!
Where I live, we use pen and paper to vote.
There are representatives from different parties, that count the votes seperately, if they come up with the same number they can go home, if they come up with different numbers they all count them again.
voila! (no, I'm not french!)
100% accuracy... alright it might not be 100% accuracy, but since people agreed on the number you don't get eny lawsuits about the result.
Have you read the pages you linked to?
They haven't found 300,000 people in mass graves, the fox news article mentions 300 (that's three orders of magnitude off), the US department of state only mentions one number (100 skulls with bullet holes), BBC mentions 100, shia news doesn't have a number.
Fox news and BBC agree on the estimate of 300,000 for the entire 24 year period, so I'm willing to accept that number... If serious and faux news sites agree then it's probably not too far off.
Department of state throw out 1,000,000 but if you add their numbers you get between 200,000 and 300,000... the same numbers everyone else can agree to. (And don't tell me BBC, Fox news, and the human rights organizations are involved in the same conspiracy to make current administration look bad).
In spite of all this I'm not trying to make Saddam look good... he was definitely a terrible dictator.
And, yes, it should have worried someone that he was a torturer... If it had worried Donald Rumsfeld, maybe he wouldn't have sold Saddam the chemical weapons he used against Iran and his own people. Why you even care so much about Kuwait is beyond me, they are not any better than most of the regimes down there (you didn't think it was a democracy did you?).
300,000 in 24 years is bad, very bad in fact...
but americans are apparently responsible 100,000 deaths in this war, who knows how many in the last (the smart bombs probably weren't smarter in 1991 than they are now), and you sold Saddam chemical weapons you knew, full well, would be used against the iranians (you told him to fight the war), and probably on internal enemies as well... as you say yourself Saddam's CV should have worried people.
Ok, at least america is a democracy, so I should root for you right?
Of course I should, and for some reason I actually do... just don't give me any crap about saving human lives, because american presidents are (according to your sources) responsible for roughly the same amount of civilian deaths as Saddam was... and Saddam is finished now... you still haven't got the situation under control.
You don't get point though.
They looked at the rate at which people were dying under Saddam and that rate they are dying under the (lack of?) american leadership. It seems that Americans are more efficient than Saddam was. Of course the kurds you mention are probably already included in the study since they are iraqi's.
Oh, and of course you are right, there are other people that will be happy that Saddam is not there: the kurds definitely, kuwaitis probably feel OK about it. The Israelis are probably thrilled too (even though he never posed that much of a danger to them).
What's interesting about the number of dead iraqi's is that it gives us some estimate of the number of living discontent iraqi's.
Sure most of them are probably happy about Saddam falling, but if they get american bombs and chaos in stead, then it might not have been that good a tradeoff after all.
Discontent iraqis means more terrorists... I don't know how many terrorists have been killed in Iraq (there weren't any there to begin with), but if colateral damage means that you create terrorists (by killing civilians) at a higher rate than you kill them... you are bound to lose the war on terror.
It's a lesson you should probably have learned from Vietnam, every time you killed an north vietnamese you would piss off a civilian ho would be willing to take up arms against you. Sure you killed alot of VC's (app. 1,000,000 if I remember correctly), but you still wouldn't have won the war before you had depopulated vietnam.
+1,000,000 overrated (for every dead Iraqi by Saddam)
reference please?
Note that the 100,000 dead is not the number of people who died during US occupation, it's the number of people who would have lived if Saddam was still in power.
Re:I hate to clue you in...
on
Press freedom
·
· Score: 1
But its not just "American Christians" that are hypocrites, if you wanna throw out blanket statements...lets make it 50-60% of the world's population are hypocrites.
No, the overall number of hypocrites is probably a lot higher than 50-60%.
I was simply referring to the number of people who were hypocrites because they were republicans and claimed to be christian... that's only possible for an american christian.
Re:Americans talk about freedom
on
Press freedom
·
· Score: 1
No, of course you are right it's not free.
It works like any other insurance... the advantages is that it's cheaper than insurance.
It's bigger, meaning better deals with the medicinal industry, and because the state doesn't answer to anyone but the popoulation, unlike an insurance company that answer to investors.
What I never got about american christians is this: everyone can see that people suffer in the current system. There are plenty of people who can't get the treatment they need, old people getting arrested in Mexico because they can't afford the prices in america, etc. etc.
Yet, even though they can see it's not enough, they claim that aid for the poor should be strictly on a volunteer basis.
Ok, maybe they feel that they shouldn't press their christian belief system onto everyone else in america... I could respect that attitude. Granted, accepting the suffering and death of countless of fellow citizens should be an extreme thing for a christian, but I could understand the reasoning.
The only problem is that they have no problem forcing their belief system unto everyone else when it comes to abortion, stem cells, homosexual marriages, you name it.
In my eyes this makes the vast majority of christian republicans despicable hypocrites.
I'm sure they are not, though, they make up a large portion if the american population, and I don't beleive that 50-60% (I'm inventing this statisctic) of all american christians are hypocrites.
Maybe they have a really good reason for accepting the death of adults (who haven't got a job that pays well enough to have a health insurance), but protesting about the "death" of small blobs of cells that can hardly be considered human.
Maybe americans have a different bible than europeans - one where you shouldn't give to the poor or protect the weak, maybe I'm just missing the obvious argument.
please enlighten a dumb european.
I realize that you are probably not a christian republican, but the thread just got me thinking.
Re:Americans talk about freedom
on
Press freedom
·
· Score: 1
you said he said:
Contrast this to many European countries, where if you get into an accident, you walk into a hospital, and they fix it. Bume. You don't pay anything.
The word "many" means that you will be able to find a few examples to the contrary... Thank you for pointing that out, but you haven't really provided anything new to the discussion.
In many european countries they will cure your cancer and give you a quadruple bypass for free as well
Well yeah... you know the bible... when god created man he was fully dressed.
Wasn't untill the devil corrupted man (the part about the apple) that they got they idea that they could take their cloth off.
The bible is pretty clear on this, so showing pictures of naked skin is really waving a red cloth at the christian community.
Maybe they should make a new version of the background where they wore burkas.
Sounds alot like a conspiracy nut who got lucky in 2000, and is desperately trying to sell his next wacky theory.
granted he was right the first time, and it'll be easy to determine if he is right this time (you just have to ask the people on the list afterwards). If he is, I'll be glad to retract my statement about him being a conspiracy theorist.
This (from TFA) is pretty scary though: In Jacksonville, to determine if Republicans were using the lists or other means of intimidating voters, we filmed a private detective filming every "early voter" - the majority of whom are black - from behind a vehicle with blacked-out windows.
The private detective claimed not to know who was paying for his all-day services.
On the scene, Democratic Congresswoman Corinne Brown said the surveillance operation was part of a campaign of intimidation tactics used by the Republican Party to intimate and scare off African American voters, almost all of whom are registered Democrats.
Hasn't florida got laws against stuff like this? Isn't there federal laws against this?
I can't see how non-state or non-government entities can be allowed to register voters without their consent? The potential for abuse definitely outweighs the chances that it can be used for anything good.
It sounds like something that you would expect to see in a third world or ex-communist country.
Oh yeah, and before you start spewing liberal media conspiracy theories, this is a BBC article. It is not an american news source!
I think you're really confused because our Electoral College can select a President other than what the Popular Vote selects.
When did I say that? I'm pretty sure I didn't say anything of the kind. I'm criticizing that if 50.1% of the flarida population votes democratic, then all the electoral votes go to the democrats. *Not* how many electoral votes florida has.
Quit whining about it! Its our Election Process, its not 'Winner-Take-All'.
I showed you the link, your system is winner takes all in all but two-states.... deal with it.
For congress it's winner-takes-all everywhere.
However, the purpose of our Presidential Election is to select the best President we can, from the list of those willing to take the job. As long as turnout is reasonable (say above 50% of eligible voters) turnout is not particularly relevant. There is an argument that high voter turnout has more to do with selecting the wrong candidate. We've got 160 million eligible voters here in the US. Its not necessary for all 160 million people to cast a vote to end up with a good President.
If you could explain to me why it's better that a majority of a population just doesn't care about politics or doesn't care enought to take the time off to vote, maybe you could move me... simply repeating previous arguments won't.
My point on comparing the EU with the US is that the EU has population, cultural and geologic diversity similar to the US. That's what leads to differences between states, just as it leads to differences between 'sovereign nations' in Europe. Get it? But, due to our superior political system, we get a whole lot done in the US, while the EU is so democratic... we'll leave the 'european arse' discussion for another time.
No, no... I'll try to put it in terms you might be able to understand. EU is like NATO (you know NATO, right?). Is NATO a democracy? I'll help you here... NATO is not a democracy.
Can the NATO member countries always agree on everything? I'll help you again... no, like with iraq, member countries sometimes disagree.
Is that because NATO's democracy is flawed?
Well, no, because we just agreed that NATO (like the EU) is NOT a democracy! see, not so complicated.
And finally, if your elected officials only serve the popular interest, then why go to the trouble to elect them?
Why would you wan't a leader that didn't serve your interest? You have democracy to make sure you get leaders that serves the nations interest... the alternative (in a dictatorship, or if only a small minority votes) is that your leader doesn't... and you have yet to show me why it's an advantage having a leader that doesn't serve it's countries population.
You have a winner-take-all system for senate and house of representatives as well... and thats even worse than the presidential election... this way you make sure that all minorities (anyone not pro-republican or pro-democrat) are completely disenfranchised...
Do you want me too look that up for you as well?
High voter turnout doesn't guarantee a good election result. Why is it prized so much?
ahhh... the mysteries of democracy:)
seriously haven't you got some kind of civics education in school? how old are you... oh well... here we go.
One good reason that having a large voter turnout is good is that it increases stability. People feel like they had some say in who rules over them .
Another good reason for having a high voter turnout is that it helps protect peoples rights. If people can make an informed decision they can vote for the people that will represent them and fight for their rights. If people don't make the effort to understand politics and the underlying reason they have the freedoms they do, they will be apt to lose their rights and freedom. People might one day wake up and find that their rights have been taken from them by a president only actively supported by 20% of the population.
Democracy is not something that is god given, it is something you have to fight for. If you are not willing to fight for your freedom (or just taking the small effort to make an informed decision and voting) you, in my mind, deserve to have it taken away... and you probably will.
essentially voter turn-out is a litmus test for determining if the american people (or indeed any people) understand and appreciate the rights and freedoms their ancestors fought and died to give them.
I'm willing to give the american people the benefit of the doubt and say that they are not ignorant and that they do understand the responsibilities that democracy stows upon them, but that they are merely unfortunate to live in a system that was the first of its kind, and therefore not able to learn from the mistakes of others.
You are right... the european leaders are not perfect, but at least they were elected in a democracy. I'm going out on a limb here, but I take it you are talking about the war on iraq when you talk about europeans "not being able to find their arse with both hands in the dark". You might think that Schroeder and Chirac were acting out of petty ecnomical concerns when they were against the war in Iraq, but the fact is that they were supported in their decisions (by a very large margin) by the people who elected them. You might disagree with the europeans on the war, but you can't claim that the french and german leaders had an ulterior motive.
If you were realy trying to compare the EU with the US then you have probably misunderstood one or two things about europe... the EU is a collection of sovereign nations, that sovereign nations often disagree has NOTHING to do with the failings of democracies.
before you go criticize democracies outside of the united states, maybe you should try to understand how your own country works.
c'mon... Most people in America don't vote because the american winner takes all election system is sub-moronic.
If you don't happen to live in a swing-state voting is verifiably a waste of time... You would have to be very dedicated indeed to take time off from work to go vote when you know your vote won't even be counted.
If voter turnout in europe dips below 80% its a cause of massive introspection... typically it's around 90%
There are two possible reasons for the much lower turnout in america...
Either you can say, like you do, that the average american is more ignorant than the average european - or you could acknowledge the fact that your dated system encourages people to stay home instead of voting.
You don't need a lottery to make people vote... you just have to make your country a true democracy like the rest of the western world.
Adjusting for purchasing power and THEN comparing to the price in american dollars has to be wrong in this case.
I mean, buying a 15$ cd deprives the russian (with an equivalent of 570$ monthly income) of 42$ equivalents of purchasing power.
Besides, you should probably use the average russian wage with caution... russian wages are more polarized than even the american. I'm sure the median wage is far lower than 160 euroes.
I'm european, so maybe that's why I don't get this, but my question is this:
Would the democratic party allow Nader to run in their primaries?
I mean the democratic and republican "parties" are not as much meant as political parties as they are meant as frameworks for selecting two candidates, right?
Or did your founding fathers actually select two political alternatives that would have to work for all eternity?
But sure... if Nader's not allowed to run in the democratic primaries I can see your point.
I know what it is (I still prefer "proportional", though... I feel it's more descriptive)... I've mentioned it in several posts before. I'm simply commenting on the fact that a majority of americans refuse to accept that democratic theory has moved on since the constitution was written, and that *maybe* it was time america moved with it.
You can have party based systems like they have in Europe (ick!).
I'm not sure anyone who lives in a country with a voter turnout in the low fourties (for congress) has the right to disrespect a system that consistently rack up voter turnouts in the high eighties to low nineties.
No offense.
I was going to post something about proportional representation, and why it would stop gerrymandering... but, heck, I know the answers I'll be getting:
The founding fathers designed the system, they knew what they were doing yadda yadda.
sure... it 's not perfect, but it's served us pretty well... yadda yadda
We're the most stable democracy in the world yadda yadda.
That Carter is being partisan?
This is actually a great example why monitoring is necessary... apparently the election HAS to be monitored, or things like this will get through.
I've read the rest of your posts and nothing there convinces me that it Carter isn't telling the truth.
RTFA he's only able to monitor a small number of election; any way you put it Florida has attracted the most headlines, which makes it the best state to monitor.. very simple.
How come this post is modded insightful?
The only claim is that Carter is being partisan?
That isn't insightful, that's ridiculous.
Attack his claims first, if you can convince me that he's not telling the truth or doesn't understand how democracies work - *then* I'll beleive you when you say he's partisan.
I never got why Gore's small anecdotes attracted so much negative attention in the US... sure he didn't "create" the web, but he was in a small comitee that had enough foresight to fund the project.
It was obviously not an attempt to convince the voters that he was an engineer - but simply an anecdote with no malintent.
However bush blatantly lied about his support for healthcare in texas... but for some reason Gore was stamped as untrustworthy while Bush's lie was explained as incompetence on Bush's part (he didn't remember what he himself had voted for).
For some reason incompetence is not enough to disqualify you from becoming president of the United States of America.. well obviously everything will be okay as long as his admnistration is incompetent... That was the reasoning whenever Bush said something dumb during the campaign...
Funny how that election could have told you a lot about things to come...
Re:Why do we /still/ have the Electoral College?
on
Nader off Florida Ballot
·
· Score: 0, Redundant
The US is a federal government, made up (in theory) of several sovereign states. The USA was formed by actions of the state governments. The President must not only be the leader of the people, but the leader of the states - and in many ways being the leader of the state federation (having a majority of states supporting him) is more important than capturing a majority of the popular vote.
yes, I know the history of your system very well - and it all made *perfect* sense in 1789.
But what carachterizes you as a person? the state you live in or your religion or your skin color, political oberservance, attitude towards gays , etc.?
Can you really tell me that it's more important to you that you are represented by someone from your state than wether that person is a homophobic, KKK member or a soft hearted, weak assed, peace loving democrat? (I hope I've insulted both sides now).
Besides it would actually be possible to represent all states equally (as demanded by the constitution) and still represent other parties than the democrats and republican... it is not mutually exclusive requirements.
Just because a system made sense 300 years ago and led to some good things doesn't mean you can't change it when the world changes.
The EC as an institution makes sense, its just the current implementation that's a little whacked.
I've made it clear that I disagree with the first statement, but at least we can agree on the second.
This makes the rather racist assumption that all blacks thing alike, at least enough alike to vote the same way. America was built on the idea of individual freedom. It's only the past 75 years or so that politicians began pandering to blocs and special interest groups.
You come dangerously close to calling me a nazi here:)
All minorities have special interest, while there are republican blacks, I'm sure that even they agree that blacks and whites should be treated as equals. An attitude that is not going to be heard in the current system. Fact is that blacks are underrepresented in senate and house of representatives because they are a minority, just as libertarians are underrepresented for being a minority. That makes it a flawed system.
But you are right, maybe I should have said that all libertarians
should move to the same state to be heard... It would have been more palatable for the more PC minded.
Slashdot Mirror
The links you provide are about people supporting a terrorist organization, including financial support, etc. etc..
I certainly hope you are able to see the difference between collecting information about an organization (something an academic might do) and endorsing and/or economically supporting things like antisemitic propaganda and terrorism?
I sincerely hope you can see the distinction.
Since you bring up up germany; do you sincerely beleive that a law designed to stop antisemitic propaganda is just as bad as a law that, say, limits the civil liberties of an ethnic minority like jews (or kurds for that matter).
Kurds are an ethnic minority, like jews were in nazi germany - a Kurd cannot decide to stop being a kurd, no less than I can stop being a caucasean.
On another note I fail to see how the german laws you cite are any more stifling to free speech than laws prohibiting libel. Neonazism is tightly coupled to malicious defamation of jews - according to the laws of most countries that constitutes libel. Mentioning neonazism explicitly in the law just serves to simplify libel lawsuits.
Or do you beleive that libel laws in america are morally equivalent to limiting the civil liberties of an ethnic minority?
Yeah well... of course you are right.
There are a lot of anti-religious rants here, and the crux of the story (the slashdot interpretation of it anyway) is to show that creationism is wrong.
But my point is that we really shouldn't mix apples and oranges. The falsifiability is actually a pretty decent test for wether you've made the fault of mixing up science and faith.
Even the scientist who believes god created evolution, could not come up with an example of experimental evidence that could convince him he was wrong, so he should realise that he is no longer dealing in science.
mind you, I do not clam that the "creationists" are wrong, simply that it's not science. That's really the important issue... I don't care that religious people beleive that god created the world in 7 days... I really couldn't care less. As long as it's not considered science.
If it's accepted as science, it'll have to be accepted in the biology classes, and that's when things really start to go wrong. That's when my (imaginary) childrens education starts looking more like religious indoctrination in a theocracy than actual education.
Just because a lot of anti-religious slashdotters firmly beleive they can scientifically prove that god is dead, that doesn't mean that it is the important part of the discussion... (slashdot is rarely the place to go if you are looking to find that) The important thing is that we are able to tell the difference between science and faith, that we can tell if someone put apple-cider in our orangeade or watered down our whisky.
Actually that's not quite what the creationism/evolution debate is about. Creationists are deluded people that think that what they do is science - the real point of the debate is to make these people understand that, yes, it is possible that they are right, but science is falsifiable - creationism is not. Ergo creationism has nothnig to do with science.
What these people have done is simply fill a hole that the creationists claimed couldn't be filled... that is of course interesting, but since creationism is not falsifiable it doesn't actually move anything.
Stories like this, where real scientists attack the claims made by creationists, are in my view a little dangerous... on one hand it tackles a relevant scientific question, but on the other hand the creationists might think that they are being taken serious as scientist, making them even more adamant in their delusion.
Exactly!
Where I live, we use pen and paper to vote. There are representatives from different parties, that count the votes seperately, if they come up with the same number they can go home, if they come up with different numbers they all count them again.
voila! (no, I'm not french!)
100% accuracy... alright it might not be 100% accuracy, but since people agreed on the number you don't get eny lawsuits about the result.
Have you read the pages you linked to?
They haven't found 300,000 people in mass graves, the fox news article mentions 300 (that's three orders of magnitude off), the US department of state only mentions one number (100 skulls with bullet holes), BBC mentions 100, shia news doesn't have a number.
Fox news and BBC agree on the estimate of 300,000 for the entire 24 year period, so I'm willing to accept that number... If serious and faux news sites agree then it's probably not too far off.
Department of state throw out 1,000,000 but if you add their numbers you get between 200,000 and 300,000... the same numbers everyone else can agree to. (And don't tell me BBC, Fox news, and the human rights organizations are involved in the same conspiracy to make current administration look bad).
In spite of all this I'm not trying to make Saddam look good... he was definitely a terrible dictator.
And, yes, it should have worried someone that he was a torturer... If it had worried Donald Rumsfeld, maybe he wouldn't have sold Saddam the chemical weapons he used against Iran and his own people. Why you even care so much about Kuwait is beyond me, they are not any better than most of the regimes down there (you didn't think it was a democracy did you?). 300,000 in 24 years is bad, very bad in fact... but americans are apparently responsible 100,000 deaths in this war, who knows how many in the last (the smart bombs probably weren't smarter in 1991 than they are now), and you sold Saddam chemical weapons you knew, full well, would be used against the iranians (you told him to fight the war), and probably on internal enemies as well... as you say yourself Saddam's CV should have worried people.
Ok, at least america is a democracy, so I should root for you right?
Of course I should, and for some reason I actually do... just don't give me any crap about saving human lives, because american presidents are (according to your sources) responsible for roughly the same amount of civilian deaths as Saddam was... and Saddam is finished now... you still haven't got the situation under control.
references to the 300,000 please.
You don't get point though.
They looked at the rate at which people were dying under Saddam and that rate they are dying under the (lack of?) american leadership. It seems that Americans are more efficient than Saddam was. Of course the kurds you mention are probably already included in the study since they are iraqi's.
Oh, and of course you are right, there are other people that will be happy that Saddam is not there: the kurds definitely, kuwaitis probably feel OK about it. The Israelis are probably thrilled too (even though he never posed that much of a danger to them).
What's interesting about the number of dead iraqi's is that it gives us some estimate of the number of living discontent iraqi's.
Sure most of them are probably happy about Saddam falling, but if they get american bombs and chaos in stead, then it might not have been that good a tradeoff after all.
Discontent iraqis means more terrorists... I don't know how many terrorists have been killed in Iraq (there weren't any there to begin with), but if colateral damage means that you create terrorists (by killing civilians) at a higher rate than you kill them... you are bound to lose the war on terror.
It's a lesson you should probably have learned from Vietnam, every time you killed an north vietnamese you would piss off a civilian ho would be willing to take up arms against you. Sure you killed alot of VC's (app. 1,000,000 if I remember correctly), but you still wouldn't have won the war before you had depopulated vietnam.
reference please?
Note that the 100,000 dead is not the number of people who died during US occupation, it's the number of people who would have lived if Saddam was still in power.
No, the overall number of hypocrites is probably a lot higher than 50-60%.
I was simply referring to the number of people who were hypocrites because they were republicans and claimed to be christian... that's only possible for an american christian.
No, of course you are right it's not free. It works like any other insurance... the advantages is that it's cheaper than insurance.
What I never got about american christians is this: everyone can see that people suffer in the current system. There are plenty of people who can't get the treatment they need, old people getting arrested in Mexico because they can't afford the prices in america, etc. etc.It's bigger, meaning better deals with the medicinal industry, and because the state doesn't answer to anyone but the popoulation, unlike an insurance company that answer to investors.
Yet, even though they can see it's not enough, they claim that aid for the poor should be strictly on a volunteer basis.
Ok, maybe they feel that they shouldn't press their christian belief system onto everyone else in america... I could respect that attitude. Granted, accepting the suffering and death of countless of fellow citizens should be an extreme thing for a christian, but I could understand the reasoning.
The only problem is that they have no problem forcing their belief system unto everyone else when it comes to abortion, stem cells, homosexual marriages, you name it.
In my eyes this makes the vast majority of christian republicans despicable hypocrites.
I'm sure they are not, though, they make up a large portion if the american population, and I don't beleive that 50-60% (I'm inventing this statisctic) of all american christians are hypocrites.
Maybe they have a really good reason for accepting the death of adults (who haven't got a job that pays well enough to have a health insurance), but protesting about the "death" of small blobs of cells that can hardly be considered human.
Maybe americans have a different bible than europeans - one where you shouldn't give to the poor or protect the weak, maybe I'm just missing the obvious argument.
please enlighten a dumb european.
I realize that you are probably not a christian republican, but the thread just got me thinking.
The word "many" means that you will be able to find a few examples to the contrary... Thank you for pointing that out, but you haven't really provided anything new to the discussion.
In many european countries they will cure your cancer and give you a quadruple bypass for free as well
definitely looks interesting
Well yeah... you know the bible... when god created man he was fully dressed.
Wasn't untill the devil corrupted man (the part about the apple) that they got they idea that they could take their cloth off.
The bible is pretty clear on this, so showing pictures of naked skin is really waving a red cloth at the christian community.
Maybe they should make a new version of the background where they wore burkas.
Sounds alot like a conspiracy nut who got lucky in 2000, and is desperately trying to sell his next wacky theory.
granted he was right the first time, and it'll be easy to determine if he is right this time (you just have to ask the people on the list afterwards). If he is, I'll be glad to retract my statement about him being a conspiracy theorist.
This (from TFA) is pretty scary though:
In Jacksonville, to determine if Republicans were using the lists or other means of intimidating voters, we filmed a private detective filming every "early voter" - the majority of whom are black - from behind a vehicle with blacked-out windows.
The private detective claimed not to know who was paying for his all-day services.
On the scene, Democratic Congresswoman Corinne Brown said the surveillance operation was part of a campaign of intimidation tactics used by the Republican Party to intimate and scare off African American voters, almost all of whom are registered Democrats.
Hasn't florida got laws against stuff like this?
Isn't there federal laws against this?
I can't see how non-state or non-government entities can be allowed to register voters without their consent? The potential for abuse definitely outweighs the chances that it can be used for anything good.
It sounds like something that you would expect to see in a third world or ex-communist country.
Oh yeah, and before you start spewing liberal media conspiracy theories, this is a BBC article. It is not an american news source!
I think you're really confused because our Electoral College can select a President other than what the Popular Vote selects.
When did I say that? I'm pretty sure I didn't say anything of the kind. I'm criticizing that if 50.1% of the flarida population votes democratic, then all the electoral votes go to the democrats. *Not* how many electoral votes florida has.
Quit whining about it! Its our Election Process, its not 'Winner-Take-All'.
I showed you the link, your system is winner takes all in all but two-states.... deal with it. For congress it's winner-takes-all everywhere.
However, the purpose of our Presidential Election is to select the best President we can, from the list of those willing to take the job. As long as turnout is reasonable (say above 50% of eligible voters) turnout is not particularly relevant. There is an argument that high voter turnout has more to do with selecting the wrong candidate. We've got 160 million eligible voters here in the US. Its not necessary for all 160 million people to cast a vote to end up with a good President.
If you could explain to me why it's better that a majority of a population just doesn't care about politics or doesn't care enought to take the time off to vote, maybe you could move me... simply repeating previous arguments won't.
My point on comparing the EU with the US is that the EU has population, cultural and geologic diversity similar to the US. That's what leads to differences between states, just as it leads to differences between 'sovereign nations' in Europe. Get it? But, due to our superior political system, we get a whole lot done in the US, while the EU is so democratic ... we'll leave the 'european arse' discussion for another time.
No, no... I'll try to put it in terms you might be able to understand. EU is like NATO (you know NATO, right?). Is NATO a democracy? I'll help you here... NATO is not a democracy.
Can the NATO member countries always agree on everything? I'll help you again... no, like with iraq, member countries sometimes disagree.
Is that because NATO's democracy is flawed?
Well, no, because we just agreed that NATO (like the EU) is NOT a democracy! see, not so complicated.
And finally, if your elected officials only serve the popular interest, then why go to the trouble to elect them?
Why would you wan't a leader that didn't serve your interest? You have democracy to make sure you get leaders that serves the nations interest... the alternative (in a dictatorship, or if only a small minority votes) is that your leader doesn't... and you have yet to show me why it's an advantage having a leader that doesn't serve it's countries population.
We don't have a 'winner takes all' system. You must be in that 99%!
Sure kiddoFlorida should be able to split its votes, as only Maine and Nebraska can now.
The flaw, however, was not Florida's but the winner-take-all electoral system used by 48 of the 50 states in presidential elections
Florida is a good example of what I'm talking about -- not because that state turned out to make the decisive difference in this week's election, but because more than 2 million voters -- nearly as many as will go to the winning candidate -- had no say in the outcome. All of Florida's 25 electoral votes will go to the other guy.
You have a winner-take-all system for senate and house of representatives as well... and thats even worse than the presidential election... this way you make sure that all minorities (anyone not pro-republican or pro-democrat) are completely disenfranchised...
Do you want me too look that up for you as well?High voter turnout doesn't guarantee a good election result. Why is it prized so much?
ahhh... the mysteries of democracy :)
seriously haven't you got some kind of civics education in school? how old are you... oh well... here we go.
One good reason that having a large voter turnout is good is that it increases stability. People feel like they had some say in who rules over them . Another good reason for having a high voter turnout is that it helps protect peoples rights. If people can make an informed decision they can vote for the people that will represent them and fight for their rights. If people don't make the effort to understand politics and the underlying reason they have the freedoms they do, they will be apt to lose their rights and freedom. People might one day wake up and find that their rights have been taken from them by a president only actively supported by 20% of the population.
Democracy is not something that is god given, it is something you have to fight for. If you are not willing to fight for your freedom (or just taking the small effort to make an informed decision and voting) you, in my mind, deserve to have it taken away... and you probably will.
essentially voter turn-out is a litmus test for determining if the american people (or indeed any people) understand and appreciate the rights and freedoms their ancestors fought and died to give them.
I'm willing to give the american people the benefit of the doubt and say that they are not ignorant and that they do understand the responsibilities that democracy stows upon them, but that they are merely unfortunate to live in a system that was the first of its kind, and therefore not able to learn from the mistakes of others.
You are right... the european leaders are not perfect, but at least they were elected in a democracy. I'm going out on a limb here, but I take it you are talking about the war on iraq when you talk about europeans "not being able to find their arse with both hands in the dark". You might think that Schroeder and Chirac were acting out of petty ecnomical concerns when they were against the war in Iraq, but the fact is that they were supported in their decisions (by a very large margin) by the people who elected them. You might disagree with the europeans on the war, but you can't claim that the french and german leaders had an ulterior motive.
If you were realy trying to compare the EU with the US then you have probably misunderstood one or two things about europe... the EU is a collection of sovereign nations, that sovereign nations often disagree has NOTHING to do with the failings of democracies.
before you go criticize democracies outside of the united states, maybe you should try to understand how your own country works.
c'mon... Most people in America don't vote because the american winner takes all election system is sub-moronic. If you don't happen to live in a swing-state voting is verifiably a waste of time... You would have to be very dedicated indeed to take time off from work to go vote when you know your vote won't even be counted.
If voter turnout in europe dips below 80% its a cause of massive introspection... typically it's around 90%
There are two possible reasons for the much lower turnout in america...
Either you can say, like you do, that the average american is more ignorant than the average european - or you could acknowledge the fact that your dated system encourages people to stay home instead of voting.
You don't need a lottery to make people vote... you just have to make your country a true democracy like the rest of the western world.
Adjusting for purchasing power and THEN comparing to the price in american dollars has to be wrong in this case.
I mean, buying a 15$ cd deprives the russian (with an equivalent of 570$ monthly income) of 42$ equivalents of purchasing power.
Besides, you should probably use the average russian wage with caution... russian wages are more polarized than even the american. I'm sure the median wage is far lower than 160 euroes.
I'm european, so maybe that's why I don't get this, but my question is this:
Would the democratic party allow Nader to run in their primaries?
I mean the democratic and republican "parties" are not as much meant as political parties as they are meant as frameworks for selecting two candidates, right?
Or did your founding fathers actually select two political alternatives that would have to work for all eternity?
But sure... if Nader's not allowed to run in the democratic primaries I can see your point.
I know what it is (I still prefer "proportional", though... I feel it's more descriptive)... I've mentioned it in several posts before. I'm simply commenting on the fact that a majority of americans refuse to accept that democratic theory has moved on since the constitution was written, and that *maybe* it was time america moved with it.
You can have party based systems like they have in Europe (ick!).
I'm not sure anyone who lives in a country with a voter turnout in the low fourties (for congress) has the right to disrespect a system that consistently rack up voter turnouts in the high eighties to low nineties.
No offense.
I was going to post something about proportional representation, and why it would stop gerrymandering... but, heck, I know the answers I'll be getting:
The founding fathers designed the system, they knew what they were doing yadda yadda. sure... it 's not perfect, but it's served us pretty well... yadda yadda We're the most stable democracy in the world yadda yadda.
What are you trying to say?
That Carter is being partisan?
This is actually a great example why monitoring is necessary... apparently the election HAS to be monitored, or things like this will get through.
I've read the rest of your posts and nothing there convinces me that it Carter isn't telling the truth.
RTFA he's only able to monitor a small number of election; any way you put it Florida has attracted the most headlines, which makes it the best state to monitor.. very simple.
How come this post is modded insightful?
The only claim is that Carter is being partisan?
That isn't insightful, that's ridiculous.
Attack his claims first, if you can convince me that he's not telling the truth or doesn't understand how democracies work - *then* I'll beleive you when you say he's partisan.
I never got why Gore's small anecdotes attracted so much negative attention in the US... sure he didn't "create" the web, but he was in a small comitee that had enough foresight to fund the project.
It was obviously not an attempt to convince the voters that he was an engineer - but simply an anecdote with no malintent.
However bush blatantly lied about his support for healthcare in texas... but for some reason Gore was stamped as untrustworthy while Bush's lie was explained as incompetence on Bush's part (he didn't remember what he himself had voted for).
For some reason incompetence is not enough to disqualify you from becoming president of the United States of America.. well obviously everything will be okay as long as his admnistration is incompetent... That was the reasoning whenever Bush said something dumb during the campaign...
Funny how that election could have told you a lot about things to come...
The US is a federal government, made up (in theory) of several sovereign states. The USA was formed by actions of the state governments. The President must not only be the leader of the people, but the leader of the states - and in many ways being the leader of the state federation (having a majority of states supporting him) is more important than capturing a majority of the popular vote.
yes, I know the history of your system very well - and it all made *perfect* sense in 1789.
But what carachterizes you as a person? the state you live in or your religion or your skin color, political oberservance, attitude towards gays , etc.?
Can you really tell me that it's more important to you that you are represented by someone from your state than wether that person is a homophobic, KKK member or a soft hearted, weak assed, peace loving democrat? (I hope I've insulted both sides now).
Besides it would actually be possible to represent all states equally (as demanded by the constitution) and still represent other parties than the democrats and republican... it is not mutually exclusive requirements.
Just because a system made sense 300 years ago and led to some good things doesn't mean you can't change it when the world changes.
The EC as an institution makes sense, its just the current implementation that's a little whacked.
I've made it clear that I disagree with the first statement, but at least we can agree on the second.
This makes the rather racist assumption that all blacks thing alike, at least enough alike to vote the same way. America was built on the idea of individual freedom. It's only the past 75 years or so that politicians began pandering to blocs and special interest groups.
You come dangerously close to calling me a nazi here :)
All minorities have special interest, while there are republican blacks, I'm sure that even they agree that blacks and whites should be treated as equals. An attitude that is not going to be heard in the current system. Fact is that blacks are underrepresented in senate and house of representatives because they are a minority, just as libertarians are underrepresented for being a minority. That makes it a flawed system.
But you are right, maybe I should have said that all libertarians should move to the same state to be heard... It would have been more palatable for the more PC minded.