Considering how you, I and others have been modded into oblivion in this article for daring to question Dear Leader or the operations of the US Military, I am wondering how the right-wingnuts got so many mod points. It seems like they have no real arguments, so they have to try to shut everyone up who dissents. Typical fascist behavior. That and about two or three posters are posting all friggin' day, not just today but a lot of other days. Makes you wonder what their day job is.
*Gosh* you mean we actually had the nerve to cross into their territory during a war?!?! The nerve!
The person I was responding to wrote:
Last I checked, Kuwait was not part of Iraq, as much as Saddam may have wanted it to be. If we had actually invaded, Saddam wouldn't have been in power after that.
I was correcting this clearly fallacious statement. Learn to read!
Care to show some proof? I haven't found anything that said we put him in power.
You're joking, right? Or are you really so willfully ignorant? This is something that has been so well established you would have to be totally immersed in your own little dream world to have not noticed it. But, here are a couple of quick links: here and here.
(2) invaded in the first Gulf war
Last I checked, Kuwait was not part of Iraq, as much as Saddam may have wanted it to be. If we had actually invaded, Saddam wouldn't have been in power after that.
*Boggles* Man, you really are a clueless one, aren't you? Saddam invaded Kuwait. We invaded Iraq in 1991. We did not invade Baghdad, take out Saddam, and completely conquer the country, but we did invade Iraq, set up things like No-Fly Zones, and occasionally conduct bombing campaigns (which generally did not get into the American press).
3) imposed strict sanctions, a no-fly zone, and bombed the country from time to time (and *why* did any of you stupid fuckers for a minute think there was the slightest chance he would have WMD? are you just stupid, or what?)
As did the UN and several other countries. Also, supposedly Saddam wanted others to think he had WMDs.Link
invaded again without any thought of the consequences
you mean, without thinking that foriegn fighters would be coming into the country with outside support?
You seem to have missed the part about it being Americans who were always pushing for the harshest sanctions and the part about it being American and British forces that were always bombing Iraq.
As for the foreign fighter, WTF is your point? There are domestic insurgents as well, as there have been from the beginning. Not counting on foreign fighters coming in as well as al-Qaeda (another American product since we set them up, armed them, and trained them to fight the Soviets) who were not even in Iraq or had anything to do with Iraq before the war is just another of many examples of Cheney et al sticking their heads in the sand (or trying to get us to) and insisting that we would be greeted as liberators. Anyone, including myself, who had been paying any attention to what was going on in Iraq before the war knew already that WMDs and "greeted as liberators" was a load of horse shit. How can a country that we keep bombing the fuck out of for over 10 years possibly have a WMD program and why would they greet us as liberators?
The South Koreans (at least all the ones I know) don't want us in South Korea.
And we don't want to be there. However, they'd prefer that we be there over getting invaded from the north.
Bullshit. First of all, our government *does* want us to be over there. They want an established U.S. troop presence in Asia. That's why we haven't left. And you must not know many South Koreans. Most of them hate us being there. They hate our involvement in the Korean war. The Korean War was a proxy war between the US and the Soviet Union. Their whole country got blasted to shit, three times over in some places (once going north, once going south after McArthur said "I wonder what's on the other side of this river", and once going north again). If they only have to worry about North Korea, they can take care of themselves.
The Japanese don't want us in Okinawa (soldiers habitually raping 12 year-old girls might have something to do with that).
habitual is an exaggeration at best. You make it sound like it happens daily, when the truth is that it is extremely rare, much rarer in fact than from the general population. I googled "Japan soldier rape" and came up with many cases of Japanese soldiers gang raping women and one case of a US Marine charged with raping a 14-yr old girl. The charges were dropped.
Okay, "habitual" might have been a little bit of an exaggeration, but try to use a real search, for example search for the terms american soldier okinawa rape. That would be more effective than doing a search that would largely bring up the Nanjing Massacre. Japanese women and girls get raped fairly often by American soldiers, more so than is in the news. Same thing in the Phillipines.
The Germans are happy we are there. Ask anyone who lived in East Germany what they think of the US presence there. It may not be needed there as much as it used to be, but those that used to live under Soviet control are quite happy to see soldiers with American flags on their shoulders.
The Cold War is over. Why are we still there? Let Germany take care of Germany.
Our job there is to help stop all the shit from getting blown up. Do you think that if we left, all the violence would stop? It would actually get much worse. Eventually, it would stop, once everyone is dead or under the uber-strict control we went there to break.
We *caused* all this violence, you Kool-aid drinking half-wit! We (1) put Saddam in power, (2) invaded in the first Gulf war, (3) imposed strict sanctions, a no-fly zone, and bombed the country from time to time (and *why* did any of you stupid fuckers for a minute think there was the slightest chance he would have WMD? are you just stupid, or what?), and (4) invaded again without any thought of the consequences (and this is assuming that Cheney wanted to do a good job of it, which I doubt - chaos, violence and death is more profitable for that reptile).
He then went on to note that we've had soldiers in Germany, Italy, Britain, Japan, South Korea and other places for over 50 years. If you are going to bitch about American soldiers being station over seas, you should start with these places where US forces have been stationed over 10X longer.
Why can't we bitch about all of them? The South Koreans (at least all the ones I know) don't want us in South Korea. The Japanese don't want us in Okinawa (soldiers habitually raping 12 year-old girls might have something to do with that). We aren't wanted in the Philippines (again, gang-raping women while sporting a large array of weaponry might make us less than welcome there). I imagine the Germans would like us to leave straight away. Where else do we have bases? I can't seem to keep up with all of them. But we aren't wanted any of those places either.
Of course, one difference between all of those places and Iraq is that we are actually blowing the shit out of Iraq. That might make for a greater sense of urgency, don't you think?
Dude, wtf? I *am* from Germany, and I can tell you that it's nowhere even *near* the "land of the free" or "home of the brave". It's turning into a damn police state, Sam (yet again... you'd think we'd learn after a few times), and the fact that there's occasionally some good news doesn't mean shit in the long run.
Well, it's just that stuff like this is more in line with America's founding fathers (Tea Party and all that sort of thing). Those in charge need to get a taste of their own medicine from time to time instead of crafting laws that only affect others. But, you are right. Germany and most of Europe (along with other places) is rapidly becoming a police state because those in power want it that way and don't give a flying fuck in a rolling donut about the rest of us. We need more people doing what these hackers are doing. What if Merkel's biometric data or George W Bush's bank account information were put online for all to see? What if random stalkers could look up information on politicians and celebrities on all these internet people search sites (at least in the States, only "little people" can be stalked that way, "important people" are intentionally kept off such lists)? The laws on things like privacy would change in a flash.
Look at the big picture; if you want a free(r) nation, go to Switzerland or maybe Scandinavia. Those are pretty much the last places on the planet where you'll still have *some* freedom. (And in Switzerland, you're legally allowed to make and keep your own gunpowder, too. Woo!)
That's only a short term solution. It's like fighting a defensive war. You will eventually lose.
Believe it or not, I would not marry her. Hell, I would hardly be able to be in the same room with her for any length of time, especially if she actually spoke.
No kidding. Apart from being rich, she looks and acts like trailer park trash. The people who think she is hot are probably also the ones who think Ann Coulter is hot. Ye Gods! What is the world coming to?
Bzzzttt! Try again. If you read MPEP 120, which you linked to, you will note that it is the notice of allowance that is kept from being sent out. Action is suspended until the secrecy order is lifted. In other words, there is no patent until the secrecy order is lifted. So, the one in the NPR article which was filed in 1944 and became a patent in 1955 would have expired in 1972. I guess it took 11 years to become a patent since there was a secrecy order preventing that. The patent itself would not be a secret. And considering that the patent I am referring to is published on NPR and is a patent you can find publicly: [linky], it is obviously not classified anymore.
Yeah if someone tried this with a high ranking government official in America, China or somewhere, they would indeed mysteriously 'disappear' in 60 seconds.
There, fixed that for you. I guess now it's Germany, Land of the Free, Home of the Brave (WTF?)
Building it in a country which doesn't have patent treaties with nuclear weapon producing countries would do the job.
Well, there is also the fact that the patents have loooong since expired. Unlike copyrights, patents still have sane terms. It's 20 years from filing now. I think it was 17 years from the time of the patent grant back in 1955, which was when the patent shown on the NPR site was granted.
Lafayette Ronald Hubbard (March 13, 1911 - January 24, 1986)
Not sure about you, but I am pretty impressed that this guy was writing bad sci-fi years before he was born...
Actually, on a more serious note, I remember Harlan Ellison explaining on the NPR radio show "Beyond 2000" how Elron wrote so prolifically. He said that Elron got so tired of having to take the paper out of the typewriter that he would buy a roll of butcher's paper, set it up behind the typewriter, put it into the roller, and then type away. When the page got too long, he would use a t-square to cut the page and throw it behind him, and that is what he would submit.
It does go a long way towards explaining why his books royally sucked.
This would be more true of Sweden, where there is one month (I think it is August), where everybody goes on holiday. I went to stockholm, and it was like a deserted town, whole businesses shut down during this month.
That's odd. I thought Swedes in general took vacation in the Winter. I guess that might be just the richer people who take vacation in Thailand and Indonesia in the Winter. Any Swedes (or at least Northern Europeans) care to comment? I'd like to know a bit more since I'm planning to move there eventually.
One of my complaints about patents as they currently are.
Either they are violating your patents (sue), or they're not (don't sue).
You dont get to sit there and wait and wait until they make gobs of money in case 1.
So seagate, are they violating your patent? If so, proof please, if not, you yield all rights in case they are found to at a later date
Indeed. I would think they could apply to concept of laches to defeat any claims of infringement. Of course, IANAL, so I don't know why this is not invoked.
Yeah, those of us above school age also get a statutory 28 days paid holiday. Which seems a lot compared to the US 11 or 12(?)
I think 11 or 12 days is about what Americans in the professional class wind up getting on average, but *statutorily* we get somewhere between jack and shit.
To take it to the extreme the French are forced to work at most on 35 hours and get four weeks but have to take them in August.
So basically, if you want to invade France make sure to do it in August. That way, they won't notice until they come back from vacation:-).
Slashdot Mirror
Considering how you, I and others have been modded into oblivion in this article for daring to question Dear Leader or the operations of the US Military, I am wondering how the right-wingnuts got so many mod points. It seems like they have no real arguments, so they have to try to shut everyone up who dissents. Typical fascist behavior. That and about two or three posters are posting all friggin' day, not just today but a lot of other days. Makes you wonder what their day job is.
As for the foreign fighter, WTF is your point? There are domestic insurgents as well, as there have been from the beginning. Not counting on foreign fighters coming in as well as al-Qaeda (another American product since we set them up, armed them, and trained them to fight the Soviets) who were not even in Iraq or had anything to do with Iraq before the war is just another of many examples of Cheney et al sticking their heads in the sand (or trying to get us to) and insisting that we would be greeted as liberators. Anyone, including myself, who had been paying any attention to what was going on in Iraq before the war knew already that WMDs and "greeted as liberators" was a load of horse shit. How can a country that we keep bombing the fuck out of for over 10 years possibly have a WMD program and why would they greet us as liberators?
Of course, one difference between all of those places and Iraq is that we are actually blowing the shit out of Iraq. That might make for a greater sense of urgency, don't you think?
It does go a long way towards explaining why his books royally sucked.
"Yeah, bartender, pour me a big glass of maple syrup, eh!"
One recipient of a new prosthetic hand crushed his pewter goblet and proclaimed that the new prosthetic hand was "Groovy!"