Of course! How could I have forgotten the military-industrial complex! Now that I realize that they were really behind it all along, I understand that this war was, in fact, the product of a giant global conspiracy more than a decade in the making, and not the result of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the international politics that followed after all.
I haven't seen the appropriations for "fixing" Iraq yet
It's called a supplemental: $74.9 billion, and it went to Congress yesterday. While most of that is for the war effort itself, something on the order of $6 billion is for humanitarian aid and reconstruction.
judging by the pitiful quantities being spent on Afghanistan I won't hold my breath
and as I recall we are taking control of their fields to pay for rebuilding.
You recall incorrectly. No such plan has even been floated, must less approved. There's been talk of paying for the reconstruction out of unguaranteed loans against future Iraqi oil revenues, but that's just in the idea stages right now. At present, the plan is for the reconstruction to come out of the American taxpayer's pocket.
Have there ever been a post on Slashdot that say anything negative of the US that hasn't set you off into another raving rant in less than five minutes after it was posted?
I'm not perfect. I've probably let one or two slip through.;-)
Just forget for a moment that cell phones are probably the last thing on the Iraqi peoples minds for the next little while.
Quite the contrary. Mobile phones will be critically important for everyone from Red Cross workers to those distributing food aid to Doctors Without Borders to the firefighters who are already trying to cap the burning oil wells. Without this piece of infrastructure in place, the relief and reconstruction effort will be severely hampered.
The fact that people are such twits to actually think a damn blow job is a big deal while the patriot act is just swell demonstrates the perverse sense of morality my fellow Americans have.
Have you ever read the USA-PATRIOT act? Be honest, now. Have you ever read it, or have you just read a couple of op-eds about it and formed an opinion based on them?
Go ahead, call me a traitor.
You're not a traitor. You're an American citizen. The framers of our government recognized the necessity of keeping the actual decision making power out of your hands, and from here it's easy to see why.
When American death toll in this very *avoidable* war exceeds 1000, Bush may join blair at the Hague trial.
For what? We don't try people for war crimes just because we don't like them, you know. (Well, the people who wrote the Rome Treaty would disagree with this statement, but that's neither here nor there.)
Nevermind what is best for Iraq, it's what's best for American Companies that's important.
If we weren't thinking about what's best for Iraq, we wouldn't be bothering to plan for a postwar reconstruction at all. We'd just pack out our troops and leave the country in ruins. Instead, we're planning on spending up to more than a hundred billion dollars to rebuild the country's infrastructure and to help them establish their own government. That's a hundred billion dollars plus of American taxpayer money, friend. Money that we could spend on ourselves, but that we're spending on Iraq instead for no other reason than because it's the right thing to do.
So, in other words, yes. I call that having our priorities straight.
No, we're not getting food into Iraq because the priority for this war is the Oil.
Yes, that's right. It's all about oil. We want the oil, must have the oil. Got to have the oil.
Let me ask you a question, though. This war, including the postwar reconstruction, is probably going to cost us around 200 billion dollars, and that doesn't count the cost of the munitions we're using. We've used over a billion and a half dollars' worth of cruise missiles alone so far, and the war's only a week old. Two hundred billion dollars plus would have bought us practically all the Iraqi oil we could have hauled off. Why didn't we just buy it, and save everybody a lot of time, money, and trouble?
Why didn't the Coalition PLAN for the mines?
We did. That's why we thought to bring mine detection equipment-- not to mention a platoon of highly motivated bottlenose dolphins and sea lions-- to the party.
Second, Kuwait is right next door. Why can't we just land in Kuwait and deliver the food that way.
Autonomy is a keystone of responsible self-government.
Nobody is going to tell the Iraqis that they can't have GSM phones or towers. But the system they get from us, essentially for free, will be the system that we choose. And if we choose CMDA, then so be it.
When the Iraqis form a government-- one to two years hence, probably-- and are able to raise revenue and implement their own decisions, they will be able to replace whatever phone system we put in with whichever one they prefer. But until then, somebody's gotta make the decisions, and that somebody is going to be us.
Seriously folks, in percentage of population, the US Military has already killed more Iraqi civilians than 9/11 killed Americans.
The obvious response to this is: so what? Percentage of the population? That's a pretty meaningless metric.
However, it's worth noting that you're actually correct... or may be, depending on how the numbers turn out.
September 11 killed about 3,000 Americans, out of a population of about 280 million. (All figures are rounded, of course, because I'm just too lazy to look them up for an argument as ridiculous as this one.) That's 0.0011%.
The Iraqi government claims that about 350 civilians have died during the war. Of course, they claim to have destroyed dozens of our tanks, too, so we know their claims are far from perfect. But let's go with the Iraqi number, just for kicks. There are about 25 million people in Iraq. That comes to 0.0014%. So by those numbers, you're right.
However, we only have confirmation of about 25 civilian deaths in Iraq. That's going to be too low, obviously, because we don't have confirmation of every single civilian death, but just to put a bracket around the numbers, that comes to exactly 0.0001%.
So whether or not there have been more Iraqi civilians killed as a percentage of total population than were killed on 9/11 remains to be seen; the percentages could be quite close, or they could be off by a factor of 10, depending on how the final math turns out.
But this is all just an exercise in arithmetic. It means nothing. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, so we're not there to exercise vengance. And if we were, we would still have a long way to go, because Iraq would still be 2,650 civilians short of the mark.
Let's not worry about what cell phones the Iraqis will use after we win, and worry instead about whether or not it's possible for us to win.
Nobody has the slightest doubt that we'll win. This has been, by some interpretations, the most successful military campaign in history, and that includes the ratio of civilians killed per ton of ordinance employed. In other words, this has been the most benign war in history so far, and yet we're still virtually unopposed. Our biggest concern right now, apart from avoiding civilian casualties, is harassment from irregulars behind our front lines. The biggest campaign of resistance the Iraqi forces can mount against us right now qualifies as a nuisance, and not even a significant nuisance.
I can tell this esteemed Rep. has his priorities straight.
The generals fight the war. The engineers come in after the war and rebuild what was destroyed. The people who are presently planning for that rebuilding absolutely have their priorities straight.
Seriously, GSM phones are the local standard, and any attempt by the Americans to impose CSMA is nothing short than continued imperialism.
Oh, come off the high horse for just a minute and think rationally.
Here's a country with no effective mobile phone system. It needs a new one, and one's going to be put in place over the next few years. If you're a mobile phone company executive who is not slavering over this opportunity, you're not doing your job.
The Congressman's proposal is a perfectly valid one: here's an opportunity that has arisen (more accurately, that will arise) as a result of the war. Let's give American companies first swing at it.
Whether this proposal will ultimately be a good idea or not is up to the various House committees to decide.
Of course the purpose of government is not to govern efficiently (meaning governing with little work or waste), but to govern well resulting in a system that works efficiently (meaning little loss due to red tape, idleness, or civil unrest).
No, I don't quite agree with that. It's an old saw that "that which governs least governs best," but like most witticisms that's an oversimplification of the truth. But in context of the present discussion this is neither here nor there.
However, that fact, and the fact that we do have checks and balances, is not an excuse to abuse a leadership position to pursue self-interest.
We're not talking about making excuses here. It's all well and good to say that legislators should put greater good ahead of their own, but it hardly ever happens in the real world. It's like arguing that men should live without sin; a laudable goal, but not a very useful one.
Fortunately for us, the framers of our Consitution knew this well, and they designed a system whereby the very best thing a legislator can do for his constituents is to act completely selfishly. A selfish legislator-- assuming we stay strictly within the bounds of the law, of course-- will keep his electorate happy by promoting their agenda on the floor of the Congress, as will all the other legislators from all the other constituencies. The net result of all these separate agendas-- the vector sum, as it were-- is what we call progress.
Of course, we can argue about the relative merits of selfishness all day and achieve nothing. One argument trumps all others: where other systems fail, either through being unable to support themselves or through descending into corruption, our works. And that's pretty much all there is to say about it.
If our leaders simply pursue their own self-interests, they will not be running our country as efficiently as they could be.
1. The purpose of government is not to govern efficiently. It's to govern well. These are not the same thing.
2. Leaders will pursue their own self interests. It is not possible for it to be otherwise.
I find idea that many people in government believe following the self-interest of our leaders is the best way to run our country really scary.
If you have a better idea, please share it. As yet, nobody has come up with a better system of governance than the representative democracy. And any system that assumes that leaders either can or will act contrary to their own interests is doomed to fail right out of the gate.
So if the US is now gone enforce UN sanctions unilatral, whats the next stop, Israel ? They have about 62 UN resolutions they are ignoring (some since the 70's)
Every time somebody repeats this old saw, I feel compelled to try to educate them. The short answer: the UN has never passed a binding, enforceable resolution against Israel. Those resolutions that the UN has passed have all been the diplomatic equivalent of gentle suggestions. To explain this, I will shamelessly copy-and-paste from an old post.
There are three kinds of resolutions that the UN can adopt: General Assembly resolutions, and two kinds of Security Council resolutions. All three of these are defined by the UN Charter.
The powers of the UN General Assembly are defined in chapter IV of the Charter, "The General Assembly." Article 14 says,
Subject to the provisions of Article 12, the General Assembly may recommend measures for the peaceful adjustment of any situation, regardless of origin, which it deems likely to impair the general welfare or friendly relations among nations, including situations resulting from a violation of the provisions of the present Charter setting forth the Purposes and Principles of the United Nations.
So the General Assembly can adopt resolutions that are essentially recommendations. These resolutions are not binding on the membership, and there is no authority granted in the UN Charter either to the membership or to any agency to enforce them. The most famous General Assembly resolution was 181, the resolution in which the UN proposed its partition plan for Israel and Palestine.
The Security Council has the power to pass two different types of resolution. The first is defined in chapter VI of the UN Charter, "Pacific Settlement of Disputes." Article 36 says, in relevant part,
The Security Council may, at any stage of a dispute of the nature referred to in Article 33 or of a situation of like nature, recommend appropriate procedures or methods of adjustment.
These resolutions are just like General Assembly resolutions: they're not binding, and no authority is granted to anyone to enforce them.
The other type of Security Council resolution is defined by chapter VII of the Charter, "Action with respect to threats to the peace, breaches of the peace, and acts of aggression." Article 39 says,
The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace and security.
Article 41 gives the Council the authority to impose non-military means to resolve threats to peace:
The Security Council may decide what measures not involving the use of armed force are to be employed to give effect to its decisions, and it may call upon the Members of the United Nations to apply such measures. These may include complete or partial interruption of economic relations and of rail, sea, air, postal, telegraphic, radio, and other means of communication, and the severance of diplomatic relations.
Article 42, the big one, gives the Council the authority to use military force to enforce its resolutions.
Should the Security Council consider that measures provided for in Article 41 would be inadequate or have proved to be inadequate, it may take such action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security. Such action may include demonstrations, blockade, and other operations by air, sea, or land forces of Members of the United Nations.
And, finally, Article 43 places on the membership of the UN the obligation to enforce Security Council resolutions when called upon.
All Members of the United Nations, in order to contribute to the maintenance of international peace
I don't want to vote to fill your position of power. I want to vote to *eliminate* your position of power. Under our current system, there's no way for me to do that.
Yes, that's absolutely right. The body politic does not have the power, through political means, to abolish the government. For obvious reasons.
I want a government which is strictly limited to protecting the people against force.
Then why don't you get involved in politics? You can't affect that kind of change by just sitting on your couch and complaining about the status quo. At some point you're either going to have to take some responsibility, or shut up.
If you ask me, the fact that most of the people don't vote represents a problem with government, not a problem with the people.
Sorry, but no. See, the fact is, people are not in the same boat no matter who they vote for. Those of us who participate in politics realize this, and exercise our franchise wisely (at least as wisely as we can, anyway) and often. Those who are under misapprehensions about the way the system works choose not to participate because they don't understand their own government. We try to correct this problem by teaching government classes to children, but that isn't a panacea. As the old saying goes, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him think."
We need to realize that government is in business to profit, just like any private corporation.
The government is legally prohibited from making a profit.
The fact that we get to choose who gets the power (however limited that choice may be) does not change the fact that individuals are motivated by self-interest.
Nor should it. Putting a bunch of people, each motivated only by his own self interest, in a big room with some checks and balances to keep things steady and letting them fight it out is the best form of government ever devised by mankind.
The Pentagon (or Whitehouse) is asking the media not to show this crap, because it is a violation of the Geneva Conventions for Iraq to even have done it, and to protect the families of the dead soldiers.
As I understand it, though my understand could be flawed, the airing of these pictures is not, in and of itself, a violation of the Geneva Convention. Nor could it be, because only nations are signatory to that treaty, not media companies.
The violation happened when the Iraqis holding the prisoners paraded them before the news cameras in the first place.
I'm not aware of the Pentagon's actually asking any of the news agencies not to air the photos; my information is that these agencies are choosing not to air the photos and the footage on their own, out of respect for the families of those shown in them.
On the rest of what you said: bravo. Keep refuting the lies and the misinformation.
George Bush is not an elected leader. He is appointed by the courts.
President Bush was elected according to the rules as set out by our Constitution. There were no irregularities in the 2000 election. It was an unusual election, but not a unique one; basically the same thing happened in both 1876 and 1888.
Democracy?
No: republic. Big difference.
Even ignoring this 'incident', you think voting for one monkey over another every 3-4 years gives you any say in what actually goes on?
Yes and no. Representative government removes the power of self-determination from the people themselves and places it in a body of elected leaders, but holds those leaders directly accountable to the people who elected them.
The main problem with representative government is, to put it bluntly, people like yourself. People who don't understand how the system works, and who therefore see themselves as disenfranchised, are less likely to vote and vote wisely. We haven't figured out how to solve this problem yet. Ideally, most people would be active participants in the political process, while a slim minority would choose to abstain. In reality, it is just the other way around: most people don't vote, and many of those who do don't vote wisely, and yet these same people feel entitled, almost compelled, to claim that their government is not representative of them.
Ironic, isn't it?
Your fine democracy is nothing but a corporation-run dictatorship, masquerading as a democracy.
I'm glad you've lived a life of such liberty and luxury that you are unable to distinguish between a republic and a dictatorship. If you'd ever lived under a true dictatorship, you'd know it when you saw it.
Here's a humble suggestion: excise the blatant flamebait.
Of course, we must remember Slashdot's purpose: to generate page loads. The more hits Slashdot gets, the better their revenue model works, and by extension the better they look on paper when the time comes to cash out. I'm not saying Slashdot editors, least of all you, Chris, post flamebait deliberately to generate hits. I'm just saying that if that were your plan, it would be a grand success.
What's your reasoning? That it's somehow better that consumers don't know what they're buying?
My reasoning is that unnecessary government regulation is a bad thing. When it comes to issues of health and safety, the benefits of government regulation outweigh the costs. But for frivilous issues such as this one, it's just the other way around. Passing this bill would just amount to more needless spending, bad at all times but most especially now when we can't balance the budget as it is.
As government spending and regulation goes, this is a grain of sand on a very large beach.
Does that mean it's okay to keep piling on grains of sand? Wasteful regulation is wasteful regulation, no matter the magnitude.
Slashdot Mirror
We might be reminded that nationals of dozens of other countries were killed on 9/11.
You're absolutely right. I spoke carelessly, and I apologize for it.
Of course! How could I have forgotten the military-industrial complex! Now that I realize that they were really behind it all along, I understand that this war was, in fact, the product of a giant global conspiracy more than a decade in the making, and not the result of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the international politics that followed after all.
Thanks for clearing that up for me.
But - is Bush by any chance into the Oil business? Yes?
;-)
No. Before becoming governor of Texas he managed a major league baseball team.
Yet another insidious conspiracy theory impaled on the pointy sticks of truth.
I haven't seen the appropriations for "fixing" Iraq yet
It's called a supplemental: $74.9 billion, and it went to Congress yesterday. While most of that is for the war effort itself, something on the order of $6 billion is for humanitarian aid and reconstruction.
judging by the pitiful quantities being spent on Afghanistan I won't hold my breath
Nearly a billion dollars is "pitiful quantities?"
and as I recall we are taking control of their fields to pay for rebuilding.
You recall incorrectly. No such plan has even been floated, must less approved. There's been talk of paying for the reconstruction out of unguaranteed loans against future Iraqi oil revenues, but that's just in the idea stages right now. At present, the plan is for the reconstruction to come out of the American taxpayer's pocket.
Have there ever been a post on Slashdot that say anything negative of the US that hasn't set you off into another raving rant in less than five minutes after it was posted?
;-)
I'm not perfect. I've probably let one or two slip through.
Um. I think I speak for all of us Slashdotters when I say... huh?
Just forget for a moment that cell phones are probably the last thing on the Iraqi peoples minds for the next little while.
Quite the contrary. Mobile phones will be critically important for everyone from Red Cross workers to those distributing food aid to Doctors Without Borders to the firefighters who are already trying to cap the burning oil wells. Without this piece of infrastructure in place, the relief and reconstruction effort will be severely hampered.
The fact that people are such twits to actually think a damn blow job is a big deal while the patriot act is just swell demonstrates the perverse sense of morality my fellow Americans have.
Have you ever read the USA-PATRIOT act? Be honest, now. Have you ever read it, or have you just read a couple of op-eds about it and formed an opinion based on them?
Go ahead, call me a traitor.
You're not a traitor. You're an American citizen. The framers of our government recognized the necessity of keeping the actual decision making power out of your hands, and from here it's easy to see why.
When American death toll in this very *avoidable* war exceeds 1000, Bush may join blair at the Hague trial.
For what? We don't try people for war crimes just because we don't like them, you know. (Well, the people who wrote the Rome Treaty would disagree with this statement, but that's neither here nor there.)
Nevermind what is best for Iraq, it's what's best for American Companies that's important.
If we weren't thinking about what's best for Iraq, we wouldn't be bothering to plan for a postwar reconstruction at all. We'd just pack out our troops and leave the country in ruins. Instead, we're planning on spending up to more than a hundred billion dollars to rebuild the country's infrastructure and to help them establish their own government. That's a hundred billion dollars plus of American taxpayer money, friend. Money that we could spend on ourselves, but that we're spending on Iraq instead for no other reason than because it's the right thing to do.
So, in other words, yes. I call that having our priorities straight.
No, we're not getting food into Iraq because the priority for this war is the Oil.
Yes, that's right. It's all about oil. We want the oil, must have the oil. Got to have the oil.
Let me ask you a question, though. This war, including the postwar reconstruction, is probably going to cost us around 200 billion dollars, and that doesn't count the cost of the munitions we're using. We've used over a billion and a half dollars' worth of cruise missiles alone so far, and the war's only a week old. Two hundred billion dollars plus would have bought us practically all the Iraqi oil we could have hauled off. Why didn't we just buy it, and save everybody a lot of time, money, and trouble?
Why didn't the Coalition PLAN for the mines?
We did. That's why we thought to bring mine detection equipment-- not to mention a platoon of highly motivated bottlenose dolphins and sea lions-- to the party.
Second, Kuwait is right next door. Why can't we just land in Kuwait and deliver the food that way.
We are. Read the article.
Autonomy is a keystone of responsible self-government.
Nobody is going to tell the Iraqis that they can't have GSM phones or towers. But the system they get from us, essentially for free, will be the system that we choose. And if we choose CMDA, then so be it.
When the Iraqis form a government-- one to two years hence, probably-- and are able to raise revenue and implement their own decisions, they will be able to replace whatever phone system we put in with whichever one they prefer. But until then, somebody's gotta make the decisions, and that somebody is going to be us.
Imperialism? No, just pragmatism.
Seriously folks, in percentage of population, the US Military has already killed more Iraqi civilians than 9/11 killed Americans.
The obvious response to this is: so what? Percentage of the population? That's a pretty meaningless metric.
However, it's worth noting that you're actually correct... or may be, depending on how the numbers turn out.
September 11 killed about 3,000 Americans, out of a population of about 280 million. (All figures are rounded, of course, because I'm just too lazy to look them up for an argument as ridiculous as this one.) That's 0.0011%.
The Iraqi government claims that about 350 civilians have died during the war. Of course, they claim to have destroyed dozens of our tanks, too, so we know their claims are far from perfect. But let's go with the Iraqi number, just for kicks. There are about 25 million people in Iraq. That comes to 0.0014%. So by those numbers, you're right.
However, we only have confirmation of about 25 civilian deaths in Iraq. That's going to be too low, obviously, because we don't have confirmation of every single civilian death, but just to put a bracket around the numbers, that comes to exactly 0.0001%.
So whether or not there have been more Iraqi civilians killed as a percentage of total population than were killed on 9/11 remains to be seen; the percentages could be quite close, or they could be off by a factor of 10, depending on how the final math turns out.
But this is all just an exercise in arithmetic. It means nothing. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, so we're not there to exercise vengance. And if we were, we would still have a long way to go, because Iraq would still be 2,650 civilians short of the mark.
Let's not worry about what cell phones the Iraqis will use after we win, and worry instead about whether or not it's possible for us to win.
Nobody has the slightest doubt that we'll win. This has been, by some interpretations, the most successful military campaign in history, and that includes the ratio of civilians killed per ton of ordinance employed. In other words, this has been the most benign war in history so far, and yet we're still virtually unopposed. Our biggest concern right now, apart from avoiding civilian casualties, is harassment from irregulars behind our front lines. The biggest campaign of resistance the Iraqi forces can mount against us right now qualifies as a nuisance, and not even a significant nuisance.
There's no question that we're going to win.
what about FOOD, WATER, MEDICINE?
We're doing the best we can. Getting humanitarian aid into the middle of a war zone is harder than it sounds, as the linked article can attest.
I can tell this esteemed Rep. has his priorities straight.
The generals fight the war. The engineers come in after the war and rebuild what was destroyed. The people who are presently planning for that rebuilding absolutely have their priorities straight.
Seriously, GSM phones are the local standard, and any attempt by the Americans to impose CSMA is nothing short than continued imperialism.
Oh, come off the high horse for just a minute and think rationally.
Here's a country with no effective mobile phone system. It needs a new one, and one's going to be put in place over the next few years. If you're a mobile phone company executive who is not slavering over this opportunity, you're not doing your job.
The Congressman's proposal is a perfectly valid one: here's an opportunity that has arisen (more accurately, that will arise) as a result of the war. Let's give American companies first swing at it.
Whether this proposal will ultimately be a good idea or not is up to the various House committees to decide.
Of course the purpose of government is not to govern efficiently (meaning governing with little work or waste), but to govern well resulting in a system that works efficiently (meaning little loss due to red tape, idleness, or civil unrest).
No, I don't quite agree with that. It's an old saw that "that which governs least governs best," but like most witticisms that's an oversimplification of the truth. But in context of the present discussion this is neither here nor there.
However, that fact, and the fact that we do have checks and balances, is not an excuse to abuse a leadership position to pursue self-interest.
We're not talking about making excuses here. It's all well and good to say that legislators should put greater good ahead of their own, but it hardly ever happens in the real world. It's like arguing that men should live without sin; a laudable goal, but not a very useful one.
Fortunately for us, the framers of our Consitution knew this well, and they designed a system whereby the very best thing a legislator can do for his constituents is to act completely selfishly. A selfish legislator-- assuming we stay strictly within the bounds of the law, of course-- will keep his electorate happy by promoting their agenda on the floor of the Congress, as will all the other legislators from all the other constituencies. The net result of all these separate agendas-- the vector sum, as it were-- is what we call progress.
Of course, we can argue about the relative merits of selfishness all day and achieve nothing. One argument trumps all others: where other systems fail, either through being unable to support themselves or through descending into corruption, our works. And that's pretty much all there is to say about it.
If our leaders simply pursue their own self-interests, they will not be running our country as efficiently as they could be.
1. The purpose of government is not to govern efficiently. It's to govern well. These are not the same thing.
2. Leaders will pursue their own self interests. It is not possible for it to be otherwise.
I find idea that many people in government believe following the self-interest of our leaders is the best way to run our country really scary.
If you have a better idea, please share it. As yet, nobody has come up with a better system of governance than the representative democracy. And any system that assumes that leaders either can or will act contrary to their own interests is doomed to fail right out of the gate.
Every time somebody repeats this old saw, I feel compelled to try to educate them. The short answer: the UN has never passed a binding, enforceable resolution against Israel. Those resolutions that the UN has passed have all been the diplomatic equivalent of gentle suggestions. To explain this, I will shamelessly copy-and-paste from an old post.
There are three kinds of resolutions that the UN can adopt: General Assembly resolutions, and two kinds of Security Council resolutions. All three of these are defined by the UN Charter.
The powers of the UN General Assembly are defined in chapter IV of the Charter, "The General Assembly." Article 14 says,
So the General Assembly can adopt resolutions that are essentially recommendations. These resolutions are not binding on the membership, and there is no authority granted in the UN Charter either to the membership or to any agency to enforce them. The most famous General Assembly resolution was 181, the resolution in which the UN proposed its partition plan for Israel and Palestine.
The Security Council has the power to pass two different types of resolution. The first is defined in chapter VI of the UN Charter, "Pacific Settlement of Disputes." Article 36 says, in relevant part,
These resolutions are just like General Assembly resolutions: they're not binding, and no authority is granted to anyone to enforce them.
The other type of Security Council resolution is defined by chapter VII of the Charter, "Action with respect to threats to the peace, breaches of the peace, and acts of aggression." Article 39 says,
Article 41 gives the Council the authority to impose non-military means to resolve threats to peace:
Article 42, the big one, gives the Council the authority to use military force to enforce its resolutions.
And, finally, Article 43 places on the membership of the UN the obligation to enforce Security Council resolutions when called upon.
I don't want to vote to fill your position of power. I want to vote to *eliminate* your position of power. Under our current system, there's no way for me to do that.
Yes, that's absolutely right. The body politic does not have the power, through political means, to abolish the government. For obvious reasons.
I want a government which is strictly limited to protecting the people against force.
Then why don't you get involved in politics? You can't affect that kind of change by just sitting on your couch and complaining about the status quo. At some point you're either going to have to take some responsibility, or shut up.
If you ask me, the fact that most of the people don't vote represents a problem with government, not a problem with the people.
Sorry, but no. See, the fact is, people are not in the same boat no matter who they vote for. Those of us who participate in politics realize this, and exercise our franchise wisely (at least as wisely as we can, anyway) and often. Those who are under misapprehensions about the way the system works choose not to participate because they don't understand their own government. We try to correct this problem by teaching government classes to children, but that isn't a panacea. As the old saying goes, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him think."
We need to realize that government is in business to profit, just like any private corporation.
The government is legally prohibited from making a profit.
The fact that we get to choose who gets the power (however limited that choice may be) does not change the fact that individuals are motivated by self-interest.
Nor should it. Putting a bunch of people, each motivated only by his own self interest, in a big room with some checks and balances to keep things steady and letting them fight it out is the best form of government ever devised by mankind.
The Pentagon (or Whitehouse) is asking the media not to show this crap, because it is a violation of the Geneva Conventions for Iraq to even have done it, and to protect the families of the dead soldiers.
As I understand it, though my understand could be flawed, the airing of these pictures is not, in and of itself, a violation of the Geneva Convention. Nor could it be, because only nations are signatory to that treaty, not media companies.
The violation happened when the Iraqis holding the prisoners paraded them before the news cameras in the first place.
I'm not aware of the Pentagon's actually asking any of the news agencies not to air the photos; my information is that these agencies are choosing not to air the photos and the footage on their own, out of respect for the families of those shown in them.
On the rest of what you said: bravo. Keep refuting the lies and the misinformation.
George Bush is not an elected leader. He is appointed by the courts.
President Bush was elected according to the rules as set out by our Constitution. There were no irregularities in the 2000 election. It was an unusual election, but not a unique one; basically the same thing happened in both 1876 and 1888.
Democracy?
No: republic. Big difference.
Even ignoring this 'incident', you think voting for one monkey over another every 3-4 years gives you any say in what actually goes on?
Yes and no. Representative government removes the power of self-determination from the people themselves and places it in a body of elected leaders, but holds those leaders directly accountable to the people who elected them.
The main problem with representative government is, to put it bluntly, people like yourself. People who don't understand how the system works, and who therefore see themselves as disenfranchised, are less likely to vote and vote wisely. We haven't figured out how to solve this problem yet. Ideally, most people would be active participants in the political process, while a slim minority would choose to abstain. In reality, it is just the other way around: most people don't vote, and many of those who do don't vote wisely, and yet these same people feel entitled, almost compelled, to claim that their government is not representative of them.
Ironic, isn't it?
Your fine democracy is nothing but a corporation-run dictatorship, masquerading as a democracy.
I'm glad you've lived a life of such liberty and luxury that you are unable to distinguish between a republic and a dictatorship. If you'd ever lived under a true dictatorship, you'd know it when you saw it.
It's always tricky knowing what to excise.
Here's a humble suggestion: excise the blatant flamebait.
Of course, we must remember Slashdot's purpose: to generate page loads. The more hits Slashdot gets, the better their revenue model works, and by extension the better they look on paper when the time comes to cash out. I'm not saying Slashdot editors, least of all you, Chris, post flamebait deliberately to generate hits. I'm just saying that if that were your plan, it would be a grand success.
Just like a single machine gun (an AK47, say) with unlimitted ammunition
;-)
You've been playing too many shoot-em-ups. Repeat after me: real life has no cheat codes.
What's your reasoning? That it's somehow better that consumers don't know what they're buying?
My reasoning is that unnecessary government regulation is a bad thing. When it comes to issues of health and safety, the benefits of government regulation outweigh the costs. But for frivilous issues such as this one, it's just the other way around. Passing this bill would just amount to more needless spending, bad at all times but most especially now when we can't balance the budget as it is.
As government spending and regulation goes, this is a grain of sand on a very large beach.
Does that mean it's okay to keep piling on grains of sand? Wasteful regulation is wasteful regulation, no matter the magnitude.
If it looks like a cd then it probably works like a cd.
Indeed, these copy-protected CD's do work just like non-copy-protected CD's, within the tolerances defined by Philips.