- Prime Minister's office, Prime Minister speaking. - Greetings, this is the Secretary of War at the State Department of the United States... We have a problem. The companies want something done about this sluggish world economic situation... Profits have been running more than a little thin lately and we, we need to stimulate some growth. Now we know there's an alarmingly high number of young people roaming around in your country with nothing to do but stir up trouble for the police and damage private property... Doesn't look like they'll ever get a job. It's about time we did something constructive with these people... We've got thousands of 'em here too... They're crawling all over. The companies think it's time we all sit down, have a serious get-together and start another war... The President? Oh he loves the idea! All those missiles streaming overhead, to and fro... Napalm... People running down the road, skin on fire... The Soviets seem up for it... The Kremlin's been itching for the real thing for years. They want a little going-away-present for mister Brijnev Hell, Afghanistan's no fun... So whadya say?... We don't even have to win this war. We just want to cut down on some of this excess population... Now look. Just start up a draft; draft as many of those people as you can. We'll call up every last youngster we can get our hands on, give 'em an hour or two to learn how to use an automatic riffle and send 'em on their way... El Salvador? How 'bout Northern Ireland? Or a "moderately repressive regime" in South America? We'll just cook up a good Soviet threat story in the Middle East - we need that oil... We had Libya all ready to go and Colonel Khadafy's hit squad didn't even show up. I tell ya... that man is unreliable. The Russian had their fingers on the button just like we did for that one... Now just think for a minute - we can make this war so big, so BIG. The more people we kill in this war, the more the economy will prosper... We can get rid of practically everybody on your dole queues if we plan this right. Take every loafer on welfare right off our computer rolls... Now don't worry about those demonstrators, just pump up your drug supply. So many people have hooked themselves on heroin and amphetamines since we took over, it's just like Vietnam. We had everybody so busy with LSD they never got too strong. It kept the war functioning just fine... It's easy. We've got our college kids so interested in beer they don't even care if we start manufacturing germ bombs again. Put a nuclear stockpile in their back yard, they wouldn't even know what it looked like... So how 'bout it? I mean, look - war is money. The arms manufacturers tell me unless we get our bomb factories up to full production the whole economy is going to collapse... The Soviets are in the same boat. We all agree the time has come for the big one, so whadya say?!?... We all agree the time as come for the Big One! - It's marvelous! - That's excellent. We knew you'd agree... The companies will be very pleased.
Perhaps you ought to take some note of what a lot of people believe the bible says about things like the anti christ and the rapture and global apocolpyse, I believe the American president is a born again Christian as well like the people who believe this nonsense. However based on that alone I don't believe the US is likely to launch any pre-emptive nuclear strikes in order to bring about an apocalpyse and for the same reasons I don't think Iran will either.
So, your basic assumption is definitely flawed and doesn't seem to have any grounding in anything except some kind of anti Iranian paranoia.
Your last paragraph is basically nonsense.
Q) What if the weapon was made from material smuggled from somewhere else ?
A) If Iran could simply smuggle in nuclear weapons they probably wouldn't bother causing themselves so many problems continuing with their nuclear research.
Why would another country allow nuclear materials which could be traced back to it be used in an attack on the US ? Assuming they had the capability they'd be better off with a full scale all out pre-emptive strike, if they don't then will face immediate destruction. What would be the motivation for that ?
Why would Iran mix in it's own 100% identifiable nuclear materials with those of another country and bring on it's own certain destruction ?
Q) Even in the aftermath of a nuclear attack, the US won't rush to judgment, at least in a nuclear manner.
Given the reaction after a few skyscrapers were destroyed what do you think the reaction is going to be if a major city is destroyed in a pre-emptive nuclear attack ? An attack where you can be certain where the weaponary orignated from. Whoever was responsible would not have long before all hell was unleashed on them and the rest of the world would be fully supportive in the face of such an unprovoked atrocity.
See my reply below for details on why your shipping container idea won't work and please explain what Iran has to gain by initiating a nuclear attack in the US ?
You obviously don't realise that it's extremely easy to determine the source of a nuclear weapon by analysing the fall out and radiation. The US would know in a matter of days where the weapon originated from and a matter of minutes later, where it came from - in your implausible scenario this is Iran, would be reduced to a heap of smoking rubble.
So, if you can demonstrate any scenario at all in which Iran is plausibly going to initiate a nuclear attack on the US please go ahead...
You think the Iranians are building nuclear weapons in order to carry out a nuclear strike on America. Are you stupid ?
You realise the Iranians are probably perfectly well aware of how many nuclear warheads the US has and what would happen to them if they even thought about launching anything towards America.
No, the Iranians are doing their best to build nuclear weapons because once they have them the US is far less likely to invade them - which is something they the US has been making low level threats to do for quite a while now. If I was Iran I'd want a nuclear capability too.
This isn't too say I'm happy to see the spread of nuclear weapons to somewhat less than well balanced countries, in fact it's really worrying, but perhaps if people weren't afraid they were facing the imminent invasion by US "Freedom Fighters" they wouldn't be so desperate to develop them.
And you're certainly going to find yourself in a lot of hassle turning up at any UK airport with a loaded weapon so any sensible terrorist will just hijack international flights.
Here's an idea, why not stop wasting time on this sort of, headline grabbing, nonsense and sort out the existing agencies who are supposed to be responsible for this sort of thing so they can gain some actual intelligence about what the terrorists are actually planning and actually do something to stop that.
If Homeland Security really are trying to think of more innovative solutions they might consider putting a stop to some of the activities the US is or has been involved in which tend to increase the number of available terrorists wanting to attack it. This might involve stopping the CIA kidnapping people and taking them off to be tortured, stop starting pointless wars and stop interfering in other countries in order to install regimes that suit your own purposes.
A friend of friend was complaining about the Scots the while ago and seemed to be under the impression they were all violent thugs, eventually I discovered the reason for this was that he'd been in a bar, in his words, minding his own business having a quiet drink when some Scots thugs accosted him and threw him out of the bar. During the scuffle he was annoyed that they knocked his large curly red wig and tartan bonnet off. He'd also been trying to blend in by calling everyone "Jimmy".
I know the answer to this one because I heard the guy from the BPI explain it thoroughly on the radio a few weeks ago.
"Records cost an enourmous amount of money to make, a vast, huge amount and we need to make that money back when we sell the records. Different countries have different exchange rates and it costs different amounts to make records in different places therefore we, quite properly, charge a fair amount in both Britan and Hong Kong and when a company like CD-WOW illegally breaks our contracts they are robbing the artists and, basically, killing their children"
Basically they do it because they have been able to get away with doing it in the past and they will do what they can to make sure they carry on getting away with it. I really can't see any difference at all between importing plastic toys from Hong Kong and CD's. There is really no difference.
By the time the Americans entered the War all the exisiting players; British, French and German had learned their lessons and were fighting much more effectively than they had been at the start of the war.
The tragedy was that the US didn't want any advice from Britain or France and ended up making exactly the same mistakes as had been made by others years earlier which resulted in a huge uneccessary loss of life from the sort of frontal assaults everyone else had learnt long ago were a silly idea.
That might well explain Abu Graib but it doesn't explain why the US is kidnapping people and ferrying them around the world to be tortured by professionals.
Exactly, if you thought life was bad under Saddam how much do you like it when you have no job, unreliable electricity and water supplies, are governed by a huge mob of corrupt no hopers, are being attacked by the militia of neighbouring districts and are certain that once the foreign troops ( who brought you this mess ) leave all hell is going to break loose.
I imagine if people had confidence the country was being run well, felt safe and secure, had jobs and could see the country being rebuilt around them they might not feel quite so enthusiastic about taking up arms to protect themselves.
We have this problem in the UK as well now, people move from the city to countryside because they're fairly wealthy and want to "escape" the city to a beautiful idyllic life in the countryside.
When they arrive the house prices rise so the children of the original inhabitants of the village can no longer afford to live there, they oppose new housing estates being built because it ruins their view, they don't want agricultural factories built near them because of the smell. Essentially what they're after is a rural idyll frozen in time without any of the irritating poor people who used to live their around to interfere.
An example is a village in Cornwall somewhere where the local fishermen are having a hard enough time surviving anyway are trying to build a wharf to protect their boats and an access way to get their vehicles down to the boats to unload them etc. This is being blocked by the wealthy, new arrivals because the wharf will ruin the picturesque quality of the beach.
Not all England, you'd need to watch Emmerdale, Hollyoaks and Coronation St to get a fuller picture but I'm sure Eastenders is a pretty accurate depiction of life dahn the east end, isn't it ?
I thought Hitler and the Nazis were devout christians ( fair enough they may not have justified their actions in terms of religion ) and that it was a Muslim school which has decided to take these teaching options.
From the looks of it they are really talking about 1 school, out of the thousands in the UK that has decided not to teach, what are, optional subjects. From next year teaching the holocaust will apparently become compulsory. I wasn't taught about the crusades at school either but I don't think that had anything to do with offending the 2 muslims in the class and was more about their being other things to teach.
I wasn't aware that holocaust denial was a part of the Muslim religion, especially since their holy books etc were written long before it actually happened and I'm not sure exactly what teaching about the Crusades goes on inside mosques but if this teaching is correct then teaching it in schools as well will just re-enforce the lessons and lead to better exam grades for Muslims.
Bang on, in ( most of ) my dealings with the UK police they've always been really pleasant and demonstrated an lot of common sense and discretion.
The one exception was where I was innocently walking down the road with some friends around midnight and 3 or 4 cop cars swooped down on us because they were looking for similar sized group of lads. All but 1 of them were pleasant people except 1 who did a lot of shouting and threatening until another officer took him to the side and sent him away from the scene.
I don't know if COPS is a good general indication of American policing but if it's even anywhere near close it's absolutely dreadful, I would not want one of those cops anywhere near me.
It's very simple, if they ticket my car then I'm going to kick their heads in. That's the rule and if they can't understand that then they shouldn't even be employed in the first place. I have no time for people who can't follow simple rules.
Not only that but as someone above just pointed out they're actually employed by NCP rather than the council and I'm sure NCP is going to be getting a cut of their now widened powers of extortion.
It's obvious to everyone, except apparently the wardens themselves, that they're being used in this manner because for the most part you will find they couldn't give a toss about traffic or allowing to people to park efficiently they are soley concerned about whether or not they have the right to ticket you.
Any sensible system would realise that the world is dynamic and one set of fixed rules about parking cannot create the best road or street environmnent at all times of the day and in all conditions. Wardens should therefore be charged with making sure things are running smoothly and allowed to use their discretion applying fines only as a last resort.
I agree entirely, traffic wardens in many places are primarily employed to make money rather than regulate parking.
For example our local council was very keen on imposing a scheme on my road and the roads around it whereby we have to pay to park outside our own houses and anyone else parking there would be ticketed and charged as well. This was apparently for our benefit and to help fund putting in speed bumps, parking bays, mini islands and a one way system which no one wants.
The thing is that there is no problem parking in our roads currently but one would have been created if they had put in the "parking bays" they wanted to make. Luckily they got booted out and didn't go through with it because it was nothing but an out and out money grabbing excercise.
Allowing wardens to fine people as well is just a way for them to earn revenue whilst there are no cars around ticket and you bet the wardens will have daily targets to hit on the amount of fines they've collected. I think the wardens are currently employed by NCP so no doubt they'll be getting a cut of the fine too.
Slashdot Mirror
- Prime Minister's office, Prime Minister speaking.
- Greetings, this is the Secretary of War at the State Department of the United States... We have a problem. The companies want something done about this sluggish world economic situation... Profits have been running more than a little thin lately and we, we need to stimulate some growth. Now we know there's an alarmingly high number of young people roaming around in your country with nothing to do but stir up trouble for the police and damage private property... Doesn't look like they'll ever get a job. It's about time we did something constructive with these people... We've got thousands of 'em here too... They're crawling all over. The companies think it's time we all sit down, have a serious get-together and start another war... The President? Oh he loves the idea! All those missiles streaming overhead, to and fro... Napalm... People running down the road, skin on fire... The Soviets seem up for it... The Kremlin's been itching for the real thing for years. They want a little going-away-present for mister Brijnev Hell, Afghanistan's no fun... So whadya say?... We don't even have to win this war. We just want to cut down on some of this excess population... Now look. Just start up a draft; draft as many of those people as you can. We'll call up every last youngster we can get our hands on, give 'em an hour or two to learn how to use an automatic riffle and send 'em on their way... El Salvador? How 'bout Northern Ireland? Or a "moderately repressive regime" in South America? We'll just cook up a good Soviet threat story in the Middle East - we need that oil... We had Libya all ready to go and Colonel Khadafy's hit squad didn't even show up. I tell ya... that man is unreliable. The Russian had their fingers on the button just like we did for that one... Now just think for a minute - we can make this war so big, so BIG. The more people we kill in this war, the more the economy will prosper... We can get rid of practically everybody on your dole queues if we plan this right. Take every loafer on welfare right off our computer rolls... Now don't worry about those demonstrators, just pump up your drug supply. So many people have hooked themselves on heroin and amphetamines since we took over, it's just like Vietnam. We had everybody so busy with LSD they never got too strong. It kept the war functioning just fine... It's easy. We've got our college kids so interested in beer they don't even care if we start manufacturing germ bombs again. Put a nuclear stockpile in their back yard, they wouldn't even know what it looked like... So how 'bout it? I mean, look - war is money. The arms manufacturers tell me unless we get our bomb factories up to full production the whole economy is going to collapse... The Soviets are in the same boat. We all agree the time has come for the big one, so whadya say?!?... We all agree the time as come for the Big One!
- It's marvelous!
- That's excellent. We knew you'd agree... The companies will be very pleased.
Dead Kennedys - 1987.
Perhaps you ought to take some note of what a lot of people believe the bible says about things like the anti christ and the rapture and global apocolpyse, I believe the American president is a born again Christian as well like the people who believe this nonsense. However based on that alone I don't believe the US is likely to launch any pre-emptive nuclear strikes in order to bring about an apocalpyse and for the same reasons I don't think Iran will either.
So, your basic assumption is definitely flawed and doesn't seem to have any grounding in anything except some kind of anti Iranian paranoia.
Your last paragraph is basically nonsense.
Q) What if the weapon was made from material smuggled from somewhere else ?
A) If Iran could simply smuggle in nuclear weapons they probably wouldn't bother causing themselves so many problems continuing with their nuclear research.
Why would another country allow nuclear materials which could be traced back to it be used in an attack on the US ? Assuming they had the capability they'd be better off with a full scale all out pre-emptive strike, if they don't then will face immediate destruction. What would be the motivation for that ?
Why would Iran mix in it's own 100% identifiable nuclear materials with those of another country and bring on it's own certain destruction ?
Q) Even in the aftermath of a nuclear attack, the US won't rush to judgment, at least in a nuclear manner.
Given the reaction after a few skyscrapers were destroyed what do you think the reaction is going to be if a major city is destroyed in a pre-emptive nuclear attack ? An attack where you can be certain where the weaponary orignated from. Whoever was responsible would not have long before all hell was unleashed on them and the rest of the world would be fully supportive in the face of such an unprovoked atrocity.
See my reply below for details on why your shipping container idea won't work and please explain what Iran has to gain by initiating a nuclear attack in the US ?
You obviously don't realise that it's extremely easy to determine the source of a nuclear weapon by analysing the fall out and radiation. The US would know in a matter of days where the weapon originated from and a matter of minutes later, where it came from - in your implausible scenario this is Iran, would be reduced to a heap of smoking rubble.
...
So, if you can demonstrate any scenario at all in which Iran is plausibly going to initiate a nuclear attack on the US please go ahead
Is there an US version of Rab C Nesbitt yet ? I know some of the episodes were specifically subtitled for English speakers.
You think the Iranians are building nuclear weapons in order to carry out a nuclear strike on America. Are you stupid ?
You realise the Iranians are probably perfectly well aware of how many nuclear warheads the US has and what would happen to them if they even thought about launching anything towards America.
No, the Iranians are doing their best to build nuclear weapons because once they have them the US is far less likely to invade them - which is something they the US has been making low level threats to do for quite a while now. If I was Iran I'd want a nuclear capability too.
This isn't too say I'm happy to see the spread of nuclear weapons to somewhat less than well balanced countries, in fact it's really worrying, but perhaps if people weren't afraid they were facing the imminent invasion by US "Freedom Fighters" they wouldn't be so desperate to develop them.
And you're certainly going to find yourself in a lot of hassle turning up at any UK airport with a loaded weapon so any sensible terrorist will just hijack international flights.
Here's an idea, why not stop wasting time on this sort of, headline grabbing, nonsense and sort out the existing agencies who are supposed to be responsible for this sort of thing so they can gain some actual intelligence about what the terrorists are actually planning and actually do something to stop that.
If Homeland Security really are trying to think of more innovative solutions they might consider putting a stop to some of the activities the US is or has been involved in which tend to increase the number of available terrorists wanting to attack it. This might involve stopping the CIA kidnapping people and taking them off to be tortured, stop starting pointless wars and stop interfering in other countries in order to install regimes that suit your own purposes.
A friend of friend was complaining about the Scots the while ago and seemed to be under the impression they were all violent thugs, eventually I discovered the reason for this was that he'd been in a bar, in his words, minding his own business having a quiet drink when some Scots thugs accosted him and threw him out of the bar. During the scuffle he was annoyed that they knocked his large curly red wig and tartan bonnet off. He'd also been trying to blend in by calling everyone "Jimmy".
I know the answer to this one because I heard the guy from the BPI explain it thoroughly on the radio a few weeks ago.
"Records cost an enourmous amount of money to make, a vast, huge amount and we need to make that money back when we sell the records. Different countries have different exchange rates and it costs different amounts to make records in different places therefore we, quite properly, charge a fair amount in both Britan and Hong Kong and when a company like CD-WOW illegally breaks our contracts they are robbing the artists and, basically, killing their children"
Basically they do it because they have been able to get away with doing it in the past and they will do what they can to make sure they carry on getting away with it. I really can't see any difference at all between importing plastic toys from Hong Kong and CD's. There is really no difference.
By the time the Americans entered the War all the exisiting players; British, French and German had learned their lessons and were fighting much more effectively than they had been at the start of the war.
The tragedy was that the US didn't want any advice from Britain or France and ended up making exactly the same mistakes as had been made by others years earlier which resulted in a huge uneccessary loss of life from the sort of frontal assaults everyone else had learnt long ago were a silly idea.
That might well explain Abu Graib but it doesn't explain why the US is kidnapping people and ferrying them around the world to be tortured by professionals.
Exactly, if you thought life was bad under Saddam how much do you like it when you have no job, unreliable electricity and water supplies, are governed by a huge mob of corrupt no hopers, are being attacked by the militia of neighbouring districts and are certain that once the foreign troops ( who brought you this mess ) leave all hell is going to break loose.
I imagine if people had confidence the country was being run well, felt safe and secure, had jobs and could see the country being rebuilt around them they might not feel quite so enthusiastic about taking up arms to protect themselves.
Rude boy SCO, I sentence you to 100 Years ! Don't cry, rude boys don't cry.
I hope that doesn't happen, I want to see SCO lose in court on everything they have claimed.
We have this problem in the UK as well now, people move from the city to countryside because they're fairly wealthy and want to "escape" the city to a beautiful idyllic life in the countryside.
When they arrive the house prices rise so the children of the original inhabitants of the village can no longer afford to live there, they oppose new housing estates being built because it ruins their view, they don't want agricultural factories built near them because of the smell. Essentially what they're after is a rural idyll frozen in time without any of the irritating poor people who used to live their around to interfere.
An example is a village in Cornwall somewhere where the local fishermen are having a hard enough time surviving anyway are trying to build a wharf to protect their boats and an access way to get their vehicles down to the boats to unload them etc. This is being blocked by the wealthy, new arrivals because the wharf will ruin the picturesque quality of the beach.
BOSH ! It's wang time Baby and I'm ready for a bit of man fun !
Not all England, you'd need to watch Emmerdale, Hollyoaks and Coronation St to get a fuller picture but I'm sure Eastenders is a pretty accurate depiction of life dahn the east end, isn't it ?
Eh - Lest we forget . . . what ?
I thought Hitler and the Nazis were devout christians ( fair enough they may not have justified their actions in terms of religion ) and that it was a Muslim school which has decided to take these teaching options.
From the looks of it they are really talking about 1 school, out of the thousands in the UK that has decided not to teach, what are, optional subjects. From next year teaching the holocaust will apparently become compulsory. I wasn't taught about the crusades at school either but I don't think that had anything to do with offending the 2 muslims in the class and was more about their being other things to teach.
I wasn't aware that holocaust denial was a part of the Muslim religion, especially since their holy books etc were written long before it actually happened and I'm not sure exactly what teaching about the Crusades goes on inside mosques but if this teaching is correct then teaching it in schools as well will just re-enforce the lessons and lead to better exam grades for Muslims.
Bang on, in ( most of ) my dealings with the UK police they've always been really pleasant and demonstrated an lot of common sense and discretion.
The one exception was where I was innocently walking down the road with some friends around midnight and 3 or 4 cop cars swooped down on us because they were looking for similar sized group of lads. All but 1 of them were pleasant people except 1 who did a lot of shouting and threatening until another officer took him to the side and sent him away from the scene.
I don't know if COPS is a good general indication of American policing but if it's even anywhere near close it's absolutely dreadful, I would not want one of those cops anywhere near me.
It's very simple, if they ticket my car then I'm going to kick their heads in. That's the rule and if they can't understand that then they shouldn't even be employed in the first place. I have no time for people who can't follow simple rules.
Not only that but as someone above just pointed out they're actually employed by NCP rather than the council and I'm sure NCP is going to be getting a cut of their now widened powers of extortion.
It's obvious to everyone, except apparently the wardens themselves, that they're being used in this manner because for the most part you will find they couldn't give a toss about traffic or allowing to people to park efficiently they are soley concerned about whether or not they have the right to ticket you.
Any sensible system would realise that the world is dynamic and one set of fixed rules about parking cannot create the best road or street environmnent at all times of the day and in all conditions. Wardens should therefore be charged with making sure things are running smoothly and allowed to use their discretion applying fines only as a last resort.
I agree entirely, traffic wardens in many places are primarily employed to make money rather than regulate parking.
For example our local council was very keen on imposing a scheme on my road and the roads around it whereby we have to pay to park outside our own houses and anyone else parking there would be ticketed and charged as well. This was apparently for our benefit and to help fund putting in speed bumps, parking bays, mini islands and a one way system which no one wants.
The thing is that there is no problem parking in our roads currently but one would have been created if they had put in the "parking bays" they wanted to make. Luckily they got booted out and didn't go through with it because it was nothing but an out and out money grabbing excercise.
Allowing wardens to fine people as well is just a way for them to earn revenue whilst there are no cars around ticket and you bet the wardens will have daily targets to hit on the amount of fines they've collected. I think the wardens are currently employed by NCP so no doubt they'll be getting a cut of the fine too.