Spending a large part of one's GDP in the military may be the only chance they have at maintaining their territorial integrity. You know how expansive the US has been latelly. Not that i defend it above feeding one's population. I am not very fond of dictatorships at all, and please don't mistake my position regarding nukes with some sort of simpathy for N. Korea.
One could also go into messy distinctions between the starving population and the decision-making governing elite. Let's just consider the government, then.
They blast their money away on weaponry, causing starvation. Then the US comes with an offer of food in exchange for abandoning the nuke program. Now they take and eat the food, but lie and keep the nukes anyway. Nasty, nasty people.
You have associated their starvation to lack of resources which were invested in the military. Now tell me ANY other sequence of decisions that could have allowed N. Korea to have a nuke program. It's not pretty, but it's their (government) only choice if they want to, well, exist.
The grey areas surrounding fooling the US for food and (keeping the) nukes, the fact that starving countries will probably be offered help, all those are things a US citizen doesn't usually come in contact with. I was born in a much poorer country and I know how wide the grey areas grow once you feel a pain in your belly. When you're on the bottom of the pit, with great enemies, you juggle a lot of ifs and hope-for's. The N. Korean government outsmarted the US, which is exactly what they must do being the underdogs.
Regarding your "sell the car" example, i believe it would become clearer if you replaced the car with a gun. We know how the US treats prisioners, so you can thing of the gun as the only thing standing between your daughter and the rape gangs. There, light!
You just don't get it. If the US somehow weaseled their way into making a starving people promise to abandon their only significant defense against an admittedly hostile government (the US never was very fond of communism), then of course the starving people will say yes. And then they'll screw you and make nukes anyway. The thing is, you can't expect some far away goverment to follow the rules you set (and they agreed) if those rules mean they will be defenseless. If they are starving, they will just agree and take advantage of US naivety and lazyness.
Imagine your daughter is dying in pain and you can't save her. Imagine I arrive with exactly what she needs to recover, but i demand that you become my property in exchange, as in slavery. You, or at least many people, would probably accept, but later you woulnd't comply. And any court of law would agree with you: some contracts just can't be obeyed, no matter what both parties said or wrote at some other time.
And yes, defenselessness is slavery. True Freedom must include safety, as in freedom from fear.
I got a bit carried away because it seemed your post could acidentally be applied to either side, and you hadn't even noticed. I guess that was your point all along.
They won't negotiate with us and they certainly won't give up their nuclear weapons.
Why is it that americans always feel the other countries should give up their nukes? Is the USA willing to give up its nukes? The way americans suggest this with a straight face over and over again is beyond disgusting. Nobody trusts you anymore. I am personally less threatned by North Korea than by the USA themselves, if only because you are ruining your economy and it will end up costing me too. N. Korea, like most of the big scary enemies of FreedomTM, would never be heard from again if left alone.
Nobody in their right mind can doubt the existence of Jesus. The Roman Empire records are very clear about not only his existance but also regarding his interactions with the government (well, getting crucified). The question of wether he was a man like me or the son of some deity is another matter which did not concern the Empire.
Better than to always use cash is to use it only when you're gonna buy the bomb ingredients or whatever they are looking for now.
Like any predictable system, this one can be exploited by a motivated attacker. Buy all your eggs, meat and milk with the discount card and buy your fertilizer and detonating garage door opener with cash, at a different shop. This way you game the system to make you seem inocent, and they'll end up arresting some poor schmuck, like, well, the article in this story.
Between these "forbidden" links, the dude that got arrested for using lynx and the CowboyNeal's battery-life-extending diarrhea, i think it is clearly time to evacuate the planet. How many more horsemen of the apocalypse do you really need?
Sygate Personal Firewall used to be my favourite but recently i've been finding it crashing randomly on fresh win2k installs. The failure mode is to allow all traffic, which renders that fresh win2k install into a pile of sh*t in seconds.
Can anyone suggest a replacement? What i'd like is something akin to the XP firewall, that blocks all incoming connections and doesn't nag about applications wanting to connect to the internet.
Seriously: putting that much transmitting power into a phone cannot be healthy now can it ?
Seriously, going faster than 15 mph on these fancy new steam engines can't be healthy now can it?
There were actually "scientific" studies showing how the human body would desintegrate if travelling faster than 30mph or so. If we were dealing in witchcraft, or some fancy new alien-imported tecnology, correlation such as the one provided by the "scientific" studies that warn about cell phone usage would suffice. However, RF tecnology is too well understood for us to be impressed by some self-serving statistics. It will take causation and a clear mechanism of damage for those allegations to be taken seriously.
Slashdot Mirror
Spending a large part of one's GDP in the military may be the only chance they have at maintaining their territorial integrity. You know how expansive the US has been latelly. Not that i defend it above feeding one's population. I am not very fond of dictatorships at all, and please don't mistake my position regarding nukes with some sort of simpathy for N. Korea.
One could also go into messy distinctions between the starving population and the decision-making governing elite. Let's just consider the government, then.
They blast their money away on weaponry, causing starvation. Then the US comes with an offer of food in exchange for abandoning the nuke program. Now they take and eat the food, but lie and keep the nukes anyway. Nasty, nasty people.
You have associated their starvation to lack of resources which were invested in the military. Now tell me ANY other sequence of decisions that could have allowed N. Korea to have a nuke program. It's not pretty, but it's their (government) only choice if they want to, well, exist.
The grey areas surrounding fooling the US for food and (keeping the) nukes, the fact that starving countries will probably be offered help, all those are things a US citizen doesn't usually come in contact with. I was born in a much poorer country and I know how wide the grey areas grow once you feel a pain in your belly. When you're on the bottom of the pit, with great enemies, you juggle a lot of ifs and hope-for's. The N. Korean government outsmarted the US, which is exactly what they must do being the underdogs.
Regarding your "sell the car" example, i believe it would become clearer if you replaced the car with a gun. We know how the US treats prisioners, so you can thing of the gun as the only thing standing between your daughter and the rape gangs. There, light!
You just don't get it. If the US somehow weaseled their way into making a starving people promise to abandon their only significant defense against an admittedly hostile government (the US never was very fond of communism), then of course the starving people will say yes. And then they'll screw you and make nukes anyway. The thing is, you can't expect some far away goverment to follow the rules you set (and they agreed) if those rules mean they will be defenseless. If they are starving, they will just agree and take advantage of US naivety and lazyness.
Imagine your daughter is dying in pain and you can't save her. Imagine I arrive with exactly what she needs to recover, but i demand that you become my property in exchange, as in slavery. You, or at least many people, would probably accept, but later you woulnd't comply. And any court of law would agree with you: some contracts just can't be obeyed, no matter what both parties said or wrote at some other time.
And yes, defenselessness is slavery. True Freedom must include safety, as in freedom from fear.
I got a bit carried away because it seemed your post could acidentally be applied to either side, and you hadn't even noticed. I guess that was your point all along.
Why is it that americans always feel the other countries should give up their nukes? Is the USA willing to give up its nukes? The way americans suggest this with a straight face over and over again is beyond disgusting. Nobody trusts you anymore. I am personally less threatned by North Korea than by the USA themselves, if only because you are ruining your economy and it will end up costing me too. N. Korea, like most of the big scary enemies of FreedomTM, would never be heard from again if left alone.
Blah blah blah I have a girlfriend too!
Nobody in their right mind can doubt the existence of Jesus. The Roman Empire records are very clear about not only his existance but also regarding his interactions with the government (well, getting crucified). The question of wether he was a man like me or the son of some deity is another matter which did not concern the Empire.
Better than to always use cash is to use it only when you're gonna buy the bomb ingredients or whatever they are looking for now.
Like any predictable system, this one can be exploited by a motivated attacker. Buy all your eggs, meat and milk with the discount card and buy your fertilizer and detonating garage door opener with cash, at a different shop. This way you game the system to make you seem inocent, and they'll end up arresting some poor schmuck, like, well, the article in this story.
Look where that got us...
Because the morons are such a huge majority that the planet would lose too much mass and the orbit would destabilize.
Between these "forbidden" links, the dude that got arrested for using lynx and the CowboyNeal's battery-life-extending diarrhea, i think it is clearly time to evacuate the planet. How many more horsemen of the apocalypse do you really need?
So that emacs can write fiction about collaborative fiction writing using collaborative fiction writing tools on its own?
DVD player makers from China are suing the 3C DVD Patent Group over royalties on patents held by the consortium. The suit accuses 3C alliance for
- price-fixing,
- unlawful tying of essential and non-essential patents together,
- group boycott and conspiracy to monopolize.
Are these the patents they are refering to?
He c(l)ocked it.
This is not obvious to me, could you please explain? Thanks.
Sygate Personal Firewall used to be my favourite but recently i've been finding it crashing randomly on fresh win2k installs. The failure mode is to allow all traffic, which renders that fresh win2k install into a pile of sh*t in seconds.
Can anyone suggest a replacement? What i'd like is something akin to the XP firewall, that blocks all incoming connections and doesn't nag about applications wanting to connect to the internet.
Thanks for any reply.
I had a white christmas and it never snows around here.
Still it would only take a single change.
Seriously, going faster than 15 mph on these fancy new steam engines can't be healthy now can it?
There were actually "scientific" studies showing how the human body would desintegrate if travelling faster than 30mph or so. If we were dealing in witchcraft, or some fancy new alien-imported tecnology, correlation such as the one provided by the "scientific" studies that warn about cell phone usage would suffice. However, RF tecnology is too well understood for us to be impressed by some self-serving statistics. It will take causation and a clear mechanism of damage for those allegations to be taken seriously.
If you think the solution is to pay instructors even less, you are headed down on that list, buddy.
I got the joke and it's very suitable to the context.
I think you misspelled "DoubleStandard".
And then you PROFIT!
They can't.
I believe you mispelled "Ha Ha Ha"...
I have one url for you:
www.allofmp3.com