You surely jest. The investors being increasing a pile of sheeple morons, intermixed with a few PHBs are demanding not profits (although in their deluded perception that is probably what they are thinking) but a buzzword-spewing, mindless technophobes with acting abilites to play a "part" of a "visionary" CEO, because that makes them feel that they "understand" tech companies. Look up the./ article on buzzword bullshit just on the front page today, this is the same thing in different form. Hence Carly Fiorina, a total dumb-fuck whose claim to fame is revolving in the "right" circles of self-congratulatory aristocratic-born dimiwts. HP as a tech company is toast, but HP as yet-another mediocracy mass-consumerism crapola maker tied to fads and whims of "pop culture" and locked in endless "race to the bottom" against Chinese crap makers is just beginning.
I think Bush geniunely believed that he could make the world a better place by invading Iraq. I'm not saying oil interests weren't a factor, or a factor for those around him, I just don't think they were the prime motivation.
That is probably correct (although I would hesitate to put "Bush" and "thinking" in one sentence) but I was referring to Middle-east in generic terms, Iraq not being specifically mentioned. While oversimplification is always a danger, one can safely assume that most of the morass of problems would not exist there if it were not for the West and the USSR fighting it out for control of oil in that region for decades and before that the Western powers between themselves. Toss in a bunch of stark raving mad, batshit insane religious lunatics on all sides (Israeli Jews, Wahhabists, Fundamentalist Christians in the US) and you will get what we have now: a total crapfest.
As to Bush, I think that what he was believing is of far lesser consequence as compared to what his masters and handlers (Rove, Cheney, Wolfovitz, Pearle etc) were believing, a major part of which was insane, miltaristic, imperious, messianic, Israel-flavoured ideology comibned with a heavy dose of corporate greed.
Yeah, except the employees are free to move to another fiefdom any time they wish and when battles for territory errupt,
In the old way, you could also pack what you could of all your family's belongings and smuggle yourself to apply for refugee status in some other country. In case of many families today in many businesses the hardships involved are on a comparable scale. In some places in the 3rd world where the multi-nationals run the show (own the police and government) you do not have even that choice and you are simply an indentured slave.
there isn't a whole lot of bloodshed.
Unless we are talking oil (Middle-east) or diamonds (Africa) or some other resource in short supply such as geographical location (Panama, Suez).
In short the original poster was 100% correct, all that has changed are the names and the same ugly, vile and evil ways of some people only got a pretty, cheery wallpaper pasted over them to make them more pallatable for those who wish to ignore the facts as not to "clutter their beautiful minds" (quoting Barbara Bush) with such trivia so that they can keep on living in their McFantasy world.
The federal government maybe, but here in Manitoba we keep electing these extremely left leaning NDP idiots who have no idea how to balance their budget.
Your analysis is only partially correct. We just keep electing idiots, period. Filmon and his "balanced budget" was just as crooked and artificial as Doer's is. One was "balancing" by (amongst other nutty things) basically removing all the government functions, remember "Filmon fridays?" (only a complete nutjob anarcho-libertartian could ever consider that sort of abuse of citizens to be a good thing), and the other by simply cooking the books. And before that, the previous conservative government run up a huge deficit, only to be enlarged by the subsequent NDP one. What we need is people who are competent and firmly rooted in reality (I would even put up with an old-fashioned non-theocratic, non-militaristic conservative government even tho I am a "leftie") because that will necessarily make them do reasonable things instead of going nuts.
Re:Good luck building a military when you need it
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Our Iraq action has the legitimacy of being supported by the entire Coalition
.. of the bribed and cajoled. You know this probably comes as a shock but buying a few soldiers from your right-wing spiritual brothers in 5th-rate countries, "a coalition" does not make. The only semi-real player in that "coalition" is Britain, to the great embarrassment, annoyance and disbelief of the vast majority of British citizens.
in response to a war which had been going on for over a decade--which is true
Whoa there! Hold on for a moment. What war? With whom?! A decade? You mean there was this war going on with Saddam launching his WMDs at the shores of New Jersey? And there was nothing on TV? Or perheaps you mean a campaign of continuous harrassment by US and UK aircraft in the US and UK imposed "no-fly" zones, the only parts in the country where Al-Qeida affiliates such as Ansar Al-Islam, managed to thrive? So in your disturbing logic, if USA was lusting after Iraq for a decade but since its harassment failed to work, that justifies finally dropping any pretense and just going to murder your way in to get it?
Clinton's war was one of premeditated choice (he chose to intervene)
Yes it was, but at least that choice had a modicum of legitimacy.
based on ideology (that states should interfere in the internal affairs of other states)
Sure, although in his case he was being asked to do so by a lot of countries in the region.
whose authors attempted to deceive the world by ignoring evidence
And here you come out as a total right-wingnut: the people who were doing the deceiving were the ones who the NATO war was against as opposed to the ones who amongst lies and fabrications claim high moral ground and pretend to come to the aid of the Iraqi people while on an errand of conquest. The evidence being hidden was against the people who NATO went to war with. The deceit merely compounded the case against the Serbs, the Croats and the Albenians. It was not Clinton and NATO who were doing the fabrications. But I see now that you caught onto someting, lets compare the deceit in the two wars, one by the genocidal ethnic maniacs and the other by a villanous empire hellbent on aggression, yes in both cases the villains where doing the deceiving! And while we are on the subject of the NATO/Serbia war, the entire affair was revolting since the NATO behaved like a bunch of idiots and caused massive amounts of collateral damage while managing to violate even the most basic canons of humane behaviour, such as explictely targeting journalists and TV stations. And yet, they never managed to sink anywhere near as low as the current crew in Iraq.
If Clinton had invaded Iraq he'd be the great hero of the Left
Since you seem to think someone like Bill Clinton is a leftie, I have news for you: he is a representative of the Corporatist Party B, otherwise known as the "GOP lite", and so I will have to dissapoint you by not declaring a slightest sympathy for that career crook.
Re:How Israeli Companies Are Succeeding...
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I'm not talking about nomads... North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, India..Lots of other countries are trying, some will/may succeed
All of them have extensive state infrastructure and long term programs that allowed them to get there. None are even remotely likely or inclined to cooperate with the likes of Al-Qeida.
A dirty bomb is even easier.
I already mentioned that experts believe a "dirty bomb" to be a great scarecrow to be used on unsuspecting public to whip them up into a wild apoplectic panic, to strip them of their civil rights and to give further rise to an already insanely overgrown "homeland" securocracy police-state complex. Not to mention the usual military-industrial one. But it is nowhere near as useful for the terrorists though.
May I also add that all opposition was systematically murdered over the course of a half century. There was little left to instigate... Iraq had been broken. A commando team would be similarly ineffective considering no one ever knew where SH was. I think they tried to drop the bomb on him many times over the years, but never succeeded.
That is only speaking to the incompetemce of the CIA and the associated institutions. Instead running wild and invading countries, purposes of which have nothing to do with helping Iraqis and everything to do withe neo-con utopias, feeding the military-industrial pig, dominion over natural resources and intersests of Isreal, USA should be cooperating with UN to create a comprehensive system to allow for decapitate with maximum efficency such rouge regimes. Think of it as anti-cancer mechanism of nations. I am certain that the very existence of such a mechanism would frighten a lot of tin-pot dictators into seeing the light. But most importantly USA should stop creating, financing and encouraging ruthless strong-men and then, when they refuse to go with the selfish, imperialistic agenda, turn on them. The cost of human life of the subjects in those countries seem to play no part in the vicious equasion of the White House. Only when they need the world's support for re-taking the control of some poor nation so that they can abuse it further, the contemptuous, deceitful cry of "human rights" and "poor Iraqis" is heard. In light of the US political modus-operandi and loong history of corporate agendas superceeding those of its citizens I have no respect whatsover for the "we did it to help Iraqis" argument made by anyone in USA, a position reinforced by the despicable con-artistry leading up to the war.
Perhaps, but the cure isn't _much_ worse than the disease, and the sooner it gets started the sooner it'll be over. It's like ripping the band-aid off instead of pulling it slowly. That's the only point I am trying to make here.
Anyone but the most hard-line ideologues whose view of the world is heavilly filtered to admit only the facts which reinforce their opinion would believe this. Iraq is at this point derstroyed. It is no more. What is left is a twitching corpse of a state, one that will, and mark my words here, be a place of genocide, mayhem and a hatching ground for terrorists for decades to come. Saddam with all of his evil, was far better, yes better, for Iraq then what is occuring now and he is already regarded by many Iraqis with nostalgy in light of what they sense is to come.
Re:Good luck building a military when you need it
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How is that any different from Clinton's unprovoked war on and occupation of Serbia?
That war at least had a modicum of legitimacy by being authorized by the entire NATO, in response to an immediate need to stop a genocide being commited. This was a charge that was true. The war was thus justified, although some would argue some of the methods deployed were questionable and it was executed prior to exaustion of other means of stopping the carnage.
Iraq on the other hand is a war of premeditated choice, based on ideology, whose authors attempted to decieve the world by fabricated evidence and which was ultimately not authorized by the UN or NATO.
I cant even fathom what sort of twisted logic would make anyone to even put these two in the same category.
Re:How Israeli Companies Are Succeeding...
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Uh, right. If your idea of freedom is executing homosexuals, putting women in burkas and keeping them from an education, executing anyone with a different interpretation of religion, etc. etc.
No. The only "freedom" in "freedom-fighter" is freedom from foreign occupation. All the other things you described have to do with religious fanaticism. You probably do not realise that during WWII in occupied Europe, various groups of freedom-fighters, partisans etc fought the Germans... and amongst themselves, since they represented views as divergent as far-right, communism and ethnic nationalism. That is the nature of wars of liberation. Once US leaves, then you can start ranking them by all the other criteria.
Most of those 100,000 deaths you cite, by the way, are being caused by those same freedom fighters
False. They are mostly the "collateral" damage from the wholesale destruction of Iraqi state infrastructure caused by the war, including medical and social services. Iraq as poor and authocratic as it was, had strong social institutions which supported vast majority of its poverty striken population. These institutions were obliterated when the state was essentially destroyed. The casaulties result from actual damage from bombardment, troops opening fire at checkpoints and yes the guerilla activity.
Re:How Israeli Companies Are Succeeding...
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And you're, um, proud of this? This means that Canada as a nation has ceased to exist. It has been replaced by a bunch of little theistic states.
Sigh. This is a proposed recommendation which applies only to marriage counseling and only if both parties choose to do so. Traditional marriage arbitration is still available and would be rendered if requested. The idea was to make new immigrants more comfortable by accommodating their religious traditions. This has absolutely nothing with Canada marching towards theism, mono, multi or otherwise.
Re:How Israeli Companies Are Succeeding...
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the "next in line" would have been one of his sons,
That was by no means a certainty as a sudden upheaval such as a death of Saddam would introduce an opportunity for some other high ranking Baath member (specially with secret support of the West) to make his move. But I already said that this was an extremely risky proposition. However, if one failed, the repercussions in loss of human life would have been far lesser then any sort of military action and there would be no quagmires.
As to Arab world polarization, you are mis-reading this. Saddam had virtually no popular support, and merely marginal sympathy for his anti-Israel stance. His assasination, specially if followed by a more liberal and less murderous successor would have been received largely with some empty rethoric, followed by a shrug and in private a sigh of relief amongst most Iraqis. Note that there would be no further aggrevations in the form of obnoxious yahoos in tanks leveling your house and killing your children. That is what is polarizing Arab opinion today.
arguably very out-of-touch with Canadian's overall viewpoint editorially. Canada is markedly to the left of the US, but not outright socialist as often the CBC's editorial stance seems to be
Ah yes! The "liberal media" conspiracy, led by CBC all to get you, poor, misunderstood right-wingnuts who would only wish for more "balanced" media (i.e. 10 right wing comments to every centrist and 0 left wing ones). I have news for you, neither CBC nor NDP for that matter are "socialist", try USSR.
The class will notice this standard trick applied by right-wingnuts in the USA so successfully: call everything but Rush Limbaugh "leftist", "commie" etc and soon you will get the media move so far right that there is no outlet for the left in the whole main-stream media. But the trick is to keep whining about them being "liberal" so that the general population of sheep (formerly citizens) are indoctrinated in thinking so and develop Pavlovian reflexes. Do it long enough and presto: fundamentalist Christian right gets to run the country.
Sigh. Goebbels was right.
Re:How Israeli Companies Are Succeeding...
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Maybe it's not so easy to deliver one of these weapons, but acquiring one isn't so, in this world of poor nuclear powers and rich scumbags.
If that were so, every Afgani warlord and African dictator would have one. The fact remains that only reasonably well-to-do nations dedicated to decades long programs have succeeded in doing so. Even Quaddafi has given up on the thing. Al-Qeida might manage a "dirty" bomb with some medical grade radioactive source, but experts do not believe such a weapon is terribly effective due to technical difficulties of constructing it. Lets face it, a nuke is a pipe-dream for Al-Queida for foreseeable future but a bonanza for various US "anti-terrorism" industries and politicians.
You act like Saddam's Iraq was some kind of fucking paradise on earth.
No he wasnt, in fact he was a particularly crappy middle-eastern dictator. But that in no way, shape or form justifies the actions US took. If you want to get rid of an idiot like that the only two sane options are: instigate and support via comprehenive international effort an internal uprising or send a commando team and take him out hoping the next dude in line gets a clue. Starting a war of conquest in an Arab country is just about the stupidest thing one can possibly do. And again, lets cut all the crap about Big Bad Saddam with his army of 1960 equipment and untrained conscripts. This was not about him or "democracy" or any other crap you hear from the White House. Dominion over Middle-East and neo-con free-market utopias were the goal over which cities get leveled and 100,000 civilians are dead. It is at this point estimated that the sanctions and the invasion has killed more Iraqis then Saddam ever managed in his wars and purges. So the "liberators" have surpassed the Butcher of Bagdad. And this is just a beginning with joyous prospects of civil war and genocidal mayhem just on the horizon.
In light of this anyone who claims high moral ground for the US/UK invasion can only be classified as jingoistic, bigoted drooling moron.
Where was your outrage then?
Many of us argued against the idiotic sanction regime which killed something like 500,000 people and advocated attempts at introducing a revolt from within Baath party, while being weary even that was an extremely dangerous proposition. In short, nothing could be done unless Iraqis themselves wished so. Just like the USSR, there was simply no rational, feasible way to bring Saddam down from outside without the cure ending up being worse then the desease. I guess some people never learn.
It's just this kind of European do-nothing attitude
No this is European wisdom of knowing that doing "something" is frequently resulting in making things far, far worse. Only idiots rush into things without a plan and any understanding of what is going on. You clearly prefer a moron who tries to "fix" a TV-set by emptying his six-shooter at it to an electronics technician who is telling you that he needs to wait 2 weeks for the right parts and then after trying them he will be able do diagnose the fault further but not yet promise a fix until the next stage. That is what is really going on. A clash between Gung-ho, shoot first ask questions later, damn the torpedoes bunch of yahoos and people who can appreciate complexity of the task and understand that it sometimes, sadly, takes decades to achieve a result.
I think that about summarizes the reasons for 95% of the current goings on in the world. People seem to think democracies are somehow immune to lunacy, but one only has to take a look at the views held by American public to see the frightening fallacy of this idea.
Re:How Israeli Companies Are Succeeding...
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As a counter point, it's a tough call - as an American I sometimes wished we just said fuck you to the world and stopped playing cop.
This would have been a wise choice. Times when US was revered and greatly admired by most of the planet resulted from the US acting on the bequest of many other nations, such as involvement in the European theatre of WWII. And that is the recipe for success, was it Quincy Adams going "America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy"? The man was onto something. You should be a hard nation to talk into any war and go there with most solemn introspection and somber sense of the great cost that will be paid. Not with all the trappings of a football game. And if a true rouge state arises, one truly malignant and threatning, you will find that others, peaceniks and comfortable ones and just plain self-interested nations will get together and you can be certain that they will do their best to assist. As they did in Afganistan or in the first Gulf War.
On balance, I think we have done as good as others would have in our situation.
On balance I am afraid you have done considerably worse then some others would do, but then again there are those who would be worse yet. But what is special and unique about USA failing is that it is you who have build up decades long marketing campaign getting people to grudgingly start buying "brand America the beautiful, land of the brave and free" only to their shock and horror them discovering that the package contains some decidedly 1930s looking visage of certain middle-european country early in grips of a horrible disease.
If you create a derivative work, you have zero choice about whether to release it into the public domain or not. You aren't even given the option.
Good grief man, yes you were given the option of contributing to some other non-GPL licensed project. The moment the Gestapo shows up and makes all other licenses illegal, you will be right. Until then, go forth and contribute to X11, Apache, BSD, Public domain, Microsft Shared Source or what have you.
Say I want my software to perform some function --it doesn't matter what, for purposes of discussion. Let's say that somebody's already written a module that performs that function, and rather than taking the time to write it myself, I decide I want to just incorporate that module into my program.
So far so good. So you look at the program and.. Oops! It is GPL licensed. "I disagree with this on phillosophical grounds" you say to yourself and go find a BSD licensed project. Next.
So that means I'm forced to clean-room the whole module, finding somebody who's never seen the Gnu code to write it for me from scratch!
This applies to nearly all licences, although some of them will hound you down for "attribution and advertising" clauses only while some others (such as Microsoft Shared Source) will have your testicles and your first born. Untill the whole system of Intellectual Property is reformed to bring some sanity into it, I am afraid there is no escape from this other then pure Public Domain. But precisely because of easy to abuse nature of public domain, most people are not willing to contribute. In case of GPL we work for the good of the community of like minded people. In case of public domain we do work for large corporations who use our stuff with no compensation and in most cases not even attribution.
How can it be stolen? It's community property, available to all. That's the purpose of the public domain. Everybody has equal property rights over works that are in the public domain. By definition, they can't be stolen.
It can if you take it away and lock it away and then proceed to charge people for it. So for example you create a hardware interface that constitutes 0.001% of the project's code, make a deal with some major hardware maker, and now out of a sudden, the public project is being sold back to everyone of its authors because it is now closed source coupled with a piece of hardware they have no way to avoid since it is being pimped by a major maker and becomes ubiquitous in the industry. This is just one example of many possibilites.
The premise of GPL is "share and share-alike". The only constraint it places on you, if and only if you choose to join the community, is that you add your contributions under a guarantee that you will not renag on them in the future. It even alows you to keep them secret as long as you do not distribute the altered code to others. That is all. The only purpose is to ensure that once shared, something stays shared and public. BSD on the other hand has no such guarantee. So you choose to take part with the understanding of the rules. If you do not, you are free to ignore us all the GPL commies and proceed to join many other alternative communities whose rules are different. More power to you. But no, you choose to try to attack our way by attempting to effectively break in, smash our system and run away with the spoils, even if you do not realize that it is what you are doing.
There's only us. We're all in this together
Yes indeed! Why, the very existence of GPL is a response to what some of "us" were doing "together" to do the rest of us "in". You forgive me if I am immediately suspicious of motives if someone assaults the GPL for I have met a great number of those who would "share" our work for their exclusive profit and were thus very irrate upon finding out that we have outmanouvered them.
Re:How Israeli Companies Are Succeeding...
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Death toll: please post a follow up here after they detonate "the bomb".
OMFG! NOOOO! They... they... they.. they'v got the bomb!
Duck and cover now! Run! Panic! Give up all your rights! Setup concentration camps! Torture people! Invade random countries! Because they.. how dare they... they've got da bomb!
Never you mind that the chances of them getting one are hundreds of millions to one and they have no way to smuggle it in even if somehow they managed to get it, you know radiation signature and all that, specially that those who they stole it from would be crying foul and alerting everyone. And you can put to rest wild ideas like North Korea or Iran giving one to the al-Queida, all that with making themselves targets for retaliation and Iran being great enemy of the Wahhabbists. But who cares for details when the mindless panic is getting whipped up so good?
Wait, werent the previous boogeyman crew equipped with like thousands of them? Nuclear sumbarines, satellites and all?
You know this is just plain pathetic. I never knew that people are so irresponsible, no wonder US democracy is in trouble. All one has to do to make all US citizens act like a bunch of panicked chickens is to create an implausible but telegenic evil boogeyman and voila: you got unchecked, unlimited power complete with a blank check. It must be nice. I always wondered what will the industrial-military complex do when their previous stawman fell apart prematurely, my faith in their greed and lust for power was not in vain! They just reinvented themselves as the Homeland Security, War On Terror troopers, mercenaries etc. You just gotta love the sheer hutzpa.
That's just a proof of greater firepower of the U.S. forces and the figures aren't comparable because of different nature of conflicts (terrorist attacks vs. war).
Most of those victims were largely military personnel while terrorists' victims were civilians.
Err, wasn't(isn't? was meant to be? will be if it is politically convenient?) Iraq part of the War On Terror(tm)? And no that 100,000 according to the Lancet medical journal are mostly civilians, women, children and elderly. Note also that US casaulties in War On Terror(tm) prior to Afganistan were below 4000 mark which makes the tens of thousands killed in Afganistan combined with the 100,000 in Iraq a particulary grusome testimony as to who is terrorizing whom. And if Afganistan was at least nominally justifiable since the Taliban did indeed shelter Usama, Iraq is pure venomous aggression for profit... which in most of the Middle East retroactively justified Al-Qeida and thus compounded the nuissance of crazed maniacs with dynamite strapped to their asses. All I can say, Nice Job Mr. President! With friends like you, who needs enemies?
The GPL, on the other hand, takes the normal property rights that people would enjoy from creating new works based on old ones. It preemptively abolishes those rights...or rather it tries to
You are trying, desperately, and failing to create an impression that GPL somehow obliges you to contribute. Ignoring completely the fact that contribution is a voluntary chocie. But I fully understand your real view, perverted and deseased as it is: you object to the fact that GPL prevents you from stealing community work and using it for your exclusive profit. I know it must hurt. Your "unalienable right" to profit from other people's work is being violated. And I have only this to say to your selfish, greedy, narcistic self: tough luck asshole, go find youself some other victim, GPLed projects can defend themselves from the likes of you.
Huh? Whaaaa? You mean there is that GPL NKVD/KGB crew in black leather trenchcoats running around in black Volga cars with tinted windows who will whisk you away to some Gulag if you do not, and I mean now!, give up all your code to for the good of the State? Am I missing something here or are you off the deep end along with Mr.Gates? Say hello to the pink dancing elephants for me then.
Just in case you lapse back onto the mundane planet Earth: GPL is applied to code you chose voluntarily to insert into GPL licensed project. You can just as well insert your contribution into a BSD, Apache, Public-domain or any other project. But BSD on the other hand allows you to take all of the project's code and close it and incorporate it into a commecrial product and then charge for it. So in your little chart it is: BSD allows taking; GPL: ensures sharing....
Re:How Israeli Companies Are Succeeding...
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China consciously takes/negotiates what it needs and want
Oh I dont doubt that in the slightest. But one cannot take what one is not given other then by military force (I dont think that would be an option for China in regards to any nuclear-armed countries). They can maniuplate their borders all they want but if Chinese goods have 1000% tariff on them in the entire industrialized world and investment in China is forbidden, they will not be able to "take what they want". The truth is that they were handed things on the silver platter by the greed blinded West, a condition the Chinese induced of course by being clever and playing the Western fools like a flute.
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Wow, you are remarkably short-sighted, after all the boogey man was busy blowing up night clubs in Bali
The muslim fundamentalist extremists are a law enforcement problem not a military one. Furthermore lets tally things up here so we have clear understanding: total deaths due to terrorism, combining PLO, Hamas, IRA, Al-Qeida, and every other terrorist on the planet, including Iraqi resistance (most of whom are freedom-fighters), years 1950-2005 = less then 10,000. On the other hand: 2 years of US anti-terrorism operations: 100,000 deaths and counting. A yearly deathtoll due to car accidents in USA: over 40,000.
You were saying something about Bali and boogeymen, no?
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My bad, it was Turkey where the initial missile deployment was. Appologies for the confusion.
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China will do just fine, western ideals not withstanding.
Ying-yang mumbo-jumbo not withstanding, noone can credibly claim that trillions upon trillions of dollars of investments complete with high-technology transfers and ready-made wealthy markets for product manufactured there are not driving the transformation of China.
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Ah, like the Cuban missile crisis, during JFK's administration!
Clearly the U.S. was being belligerant and arrogant when Russia put its nukes on Cuba. Silly Americans.
Of course they were. The Cuban missile crisis was initiated when USA placed short-range missiles in Western Germany, giving Soviet defenses virtually no warning and reaction time in case their were launched. In retaliation, Khrushchev sent his to Cuba. Note that USSR lost that exchange: Soviet missiles left Cuba but the US ones stayed in Germany.
Am I getting some facts wrong? Arafat walked away from the negotiating table at Camp David even when he was offered 95 % of the land from the 1967 war.
... and you cleverly neglected to mention that this land was divdied into hundreds of "bantustans" criss-crossed with Israeli roads and settlements, some of them completely isolated from each other, that this "sovereign" state was to be subject to israeli military "border" patrols and that some people would have to cross the border to go to school or a grocery store. Other then that, it was a steal of a deal and that nasty old Arafat was just a party pooper.
Slashdot Mirror
You surely jest. The investors being increasing a pile of sheeple morons, intermixed with a few PHBs are demanding not profits (although in their deluded perception that is probably what they are thinking) but a buzzword-spewing, mindless technophobes with acting abilites to play a "part" of a "visionary" CEO, because that makes them feel that they "understand" tech companies. Look up the ./ article on buzzword bullshit just on the front page today, this is the same thing in different form. Hence Carly Fiorina, a total dumb-fuck whose claim to fame is revolving in the "right" circles of self-congratulatory aristocratic-born dimiwts. HP as a tech company is toast, but HP as yet-another mediocracy mass-consumerism crapola maker tied to fads and whims of "pop culture" and locked in endless "race to the bottom" against Chinese crap makers is just beginning.
That is probably correct (although I would hesitate to put "Bush" and "thinking" in one sentence) but I was referring to Middle-east in generic terms, Iraq not being specifically mentioned. While oversimplification is always a danger, one can safely assume that most of the morass of problems would not exist there if it were not for the West and the USSR fighting it out for control of oil in that region for decades and before that the Western powers between themselves. Toss in a bunch of stark raving mad, batshit insane religious lunatics on all sides (Israeli Jews, Wahhabists, Fundamentalist Christians in the US) and you will get what we have now: a total crapfest.
As to Bush, I think that what he was believing is of far lesser consequence as compared to what his masters and handlers (Rove, Cheney, Wolfovitz, Pearle etc) were believing, a major part of which was insane, miltaristic, imperious, messianic, Israel-flavoured ideology comibned with a heavy dose of corporate greed.
In the old way, you could also pack what you could of all your family's belongings and smuggle yourself to apply for refugee status in some other country. In case of many families today in many businesses the hardships involved are on a comparable scale. In some places in the 3rd world where the multi-nationals run the show (own the police and government) you do not have even that choice and you are simply an indentured slave.
there isn't a whole lot of bloodshed.
Unless we are talking oil (Middle-east) or diamonds (Africa) or some other resource in short supply such as geographical location (Panama, Suez).
In short the original poster was 100% correct, all that has changed are the names and the same ugly, vile and evil ways of some people only got a pretty, cheery wallpaper pasted over them to make them more pallatable for those who wish to ignore the facts as not to "clutter their beautiful minds" (quoting Barbara Bush) with such trivia so that they can keep on living in their McFantasy world.
Your analysis is only partially correct. We just keep electing idiots, period. Filmon and his "balanced budget" was just as crooked and artificial as Doer's is. One was "balancing" by (amongst other nutty things) basically removing all the government functions, remember "Filmon fridays?" (only a complete nutjob anarcho-libertartian could ever consider that sort of abuse of citizens to be a good thing), and the other by simply cooking the books. And before that, the previous conservative government run up a huge deficit, only to be enlarged by the subsequent NDP one. What we need is people who are competent and firmly rooted in reality (I would even put up with an old-fashioned non-theocratic, non-militaristic conservative government even tho I am a "leftie") because that will necessarily make them do reasonable things instead of going nuts.
Both the zSeries and S/390 series.
.. of the bribed and cajoled. You know this probably comes as a shock but buying a few soldiers from your right-wing spiritual brothers in 5th-rate countries, "a coalition" does not make. The only semi-real player in that "coalition" is Britain, to the great embarrassment, annoyance and disbelief of the vast majority of British citizens.
in response to a war which had been going on for over a decade--which is true
Whoa there! Hold on for a moment. What war? With whom?! A decade? You mean there was this war going on with Saddam launching his WMDs at the shores of New Jersey? And there was nothing on TV? Or perheaps you mean a campaign of continuous harrassment by US and UK aircraft in the US and UK imposed "no-fly" zones, the only parts in the country where Al-Qeida affiliates such as Ansar Al-Islam, managed to thrive? So in your disturbing logic, if USA was lusting after Iraq for a decade but since its harassment failed to work, that justifies finally dropping any pretense and just going to murder your way in to get it?
Clinton's war was one of premeditated choice (he chose to intervene)
Yes it was, but at least that choice had a modicum of legitimacy.
based on ideology (that states should interfere in the internal affairs of other states)
Sure, although in his case he was being asked to do so by a lot of countries in the region.
whose authors attempted to deceive the world by ignoring evidence
And here you come out as a total right-wingnut: the people who were doing the deceiving were the ones who the NATO war was against as opposed to the ones who amongst lies and fabrications claim high moral ground and pretend to come to the aid of the Iraqi people while on an errand of conquest. The evidence being hidden was against the people who NATO went to war with. The deceit merely compounded the case against the Serbs, the Croats and the Albenians. It was not Clinton and NATO who were doing the fabrications. But I see now that you caught onto someting, lets compare the deceit in the two wars, one by the genocidal ethnic maniacs and the other by a villanous empire hellbent on aggression, yes in both cases the villains where doing the deceiving! And while we are on the subject of the NATO/Serbia war, the entire affair was revolting since the NATO behaved like a bunch of idiots and caused massive amounts of collateral damage while managing to violate even the most basic canons of humane behaviour, such as explictely targeting journalists and TV stations. And yet, they never managed to sink anywhere near as low as the current crew in Iraq.
If Clinton had invaded Iraq he'd be the great hero of the Left
Since you seem to think someone like Bill Clinton is a leftie, I have news for you: he is a representative of the Corporatist Party B, otherwise known as the "GOP lite", and so I will have to dissapoint you by not declaring a slightest sympathy for that career crook.
All of them have extensive state infrastructure and long term programs that allowed them to get there. None are even remotely likely or inclined to cooperate with the likes of Al-Qeida.
A dirty bomb is even easier.
I already mentioned that experts believe a "dirty bomb" to be a great scarecrow to be used on unsuspecting public to whip them up into a wild apoplectic panic, to strip them of their civil rights and to give further rise to an already insanely overgrown "homeland" securocracy police-state complex. Not to mention the usual military-industrial one. But it is nowhere near as useful for the terrorists though.
May I also add that all opposition was systematically murdered over the course of a half century. There was little left to instigate... Iraq had been broken. A commando team would be similarly ineffective considering no one ever knew where SH was. I think they tried to drop the bomb on him many times over the years, but never succeeded.
That is only speaking to the incompetemce of the CIA and the associated institutions. Instead running wild and invading countries, purposes of which have nothing to do with helping Iraqis and everything to do withe neo-con utopias, feeding the military-industrial pig, dominion over natural resources and intersests of Isreal, USA should be cooperating with UN to create a comprehensive system to allow for decapitate with maximum efficency such rouge regimes. Think of it as anti-cancer mechanism of nations. I am certain that the very existence of such a mechanism would frighten a lot of tin-pot dictators into seeing the light. But most importantly USA should stop creating, financing and encouraging ruthless strong-men and then, when they refuse to go with the selfish, imperialistic agenda, turn on them. The cost of human life of the subjects in those countries seem to play no part in the vicious equasion of the White House. Only when they need the world's support for re-taking the control of some poor nation so that they can abuse it further, the contemptuous, deceitful cry of "human rights" and "poor Iraqis" is heard. In light of the US political modus-operandi and loong history of corporate agendas superceeding those of its citizens I have no respect whatsover for the "we did it to help Iraqis" argument made by anyone in USA, a position reinforced by the despicable con-artistry leading up to the war.
Perhaps, but the cure isn't _much_ worse than the disease, and the sooner it gets started the sooner it'll be over. It's like ripping the band-aid off instead of pulling it slowly. That's the only point I am trying to make here.
Anyone but the most hard-line ideologues whose view of the world is heavilly filtered to admit only the facts which reinforce their opinion would believe this. Iraq is at this point derstroyed. It is no more. What is left is a twitching corpse of a state, one that will, and mark my words here, be a place of genocide, mayhem and a hatching ground for terrorists for decades to come. Saddam with all of his evil, was far better, yes better, for Iraq then what is occuring now and he is already regarded by many Iraqis with nostalgy in light of what they sense is to come.
That war at least had a modicum of legitimacy by being authorized by the entire NATO, in response to an immediate need to stop a genocide being commited. This was a charge that was true. The war was thus justified, although some would argue some of the methods deployed were questionable and it was executed prior to exaustion of other means of stopping the carnage.
Iraq on the other hand is a war of premeditated choice, based on ideology, whose authors attempted to decieve the world by fabricated evidence and which was ultimately not authorized by the UN or NATO.
I cant even fathom what sort of twisted logic would make anyone to even put these two in the same category.
No. The only "freedom" in "freedom-fighter" is freedom from foreign occupation. All the other things you described have to do with religious fanaticism. You probably do not realise that during WWII in occupied Europe, various groups of freedom-fighters, partisans etc fought the Germans ... and amongst themselves, since they represented views as divergent as far-right, communism and ethnic nationalism. That is the nature of wars of liberation. Once US leaves, then you can start ranking them by all the other criteria.
Most of those 100,000 deaths you cite, by the way, are being caused by those same freedom fighters
False. They are mostly the "collateral" damage from the wholesale destruction of Iraqi state infrastructure caused by the war, including medical and social services. Iraq as poor and authocratic as it was, had strong social institutions which supported vast majority of its poverty striken population. These institutions were obliterated when the state was essentially destroyed. The casaulties result from actual damage from bombardment, troops opening fire at checkpoints and yes the guerilla activity.
Sigh. This is a proposed recommendation which applies only to marriage counseling and only if both parties choose to do so. Traditional marriage arbitration is still available and would be rendered if requested. The idea was to make new immigrants more comfortable by accommodating their religious traditions. This has absolutely nothing with Canada marching towards theism, mono, multi or otherwise.
That was by no means a certainty as a sudden upheaval such as a death of Saddam would introduce an opportunity for some other high ranking Baath member (specially with secret support of the West) to make his move. But I already said that this was an extremely risky proposition. However, if one failed, the repercussions in loss of human life would have been far lesser then any sort of military action and there would be no quagmires.
As to Arab world polarization, you are mis-reading this. Saddam had virtually no popular support, and merely marginal sympathy for his anti-Israel stance. His assasination, specially if followed by a more liberal and less murderous successor would have been received largely with some empty rethoric, followed by a shrug and in private a sigh of relief amongst most Iraqis. Note that there would be no further aggrevations in the form of obnoxious yahoos in tanks leveling your house and killing your children. That is what is polarizing Arab opinion today.
Ah yes! The "liberal media" conspiracy, led by CBC all to get you, poor, misunderstood right-wingnuts who would only wish for more "balanced" media (i.e. 10 right wing comments to every centrist and 0 left wing ones). I have news for you, neither CBC nor NDP for that matter are "socialist", try USSR.
The class will notice this standard trick applied by right-wingnuts in the USA so successfully: call everything but Rush Limbaugh "leftist", "commie" etc and soon you will get the media move so far right that there is no outlet for the left in the whole main-stream media. But the trick is to keep whining about them being "liberal" so that the general population of sheep (formerly citizens) are indoctrinated in thinking so and develop Pavlovian reflexes. Do it long enough and presto: fundamentalist Christian right gets to run the country.
Sigh. Goebbels was right.
If that were so, every Afgani warlord and African dictator would have one. The fact remains that only reasonably well-to-do nations dedicated to decades long programs have succeeded in doing so. Even Quaddafi has given up on the thing. Al-Qeida might manage a "dirty" bomb with some medical grade radioactive source, but experts do not believe such a weapon is terribly effective due to technical difficulties of constructing it. Lets face it, a nuke is a pipe-dream for Al-Queida for foreseeable future but a bonanza for various US "anti-terrorism" industries and politicians.
You act like Saddam's Iraq was some kind of fucking paradise on earth.
No he wasnt, in fact he was a particularly crappy middle-eastern dictator. But that in no way, shape or form justifies the actions US took. If you want to get rid of an idiot like that the only two sane options are: instigate and support via comprehenive international effort an internal uprising or send a commando team and take him out hoping the next dude in line gets a clue. Starting a war of conquest in an Arab country is just about the stupidest thing one can possibly do. And again, lets cut all the crap about Big Bad Saddam with his army of 1960 equipment and untrained conscripts. This was not about him or "democracy" or any other crap you hear from the White House. Dominion over Middle-East and neo-con free-market utopias were the goal over which cities get leveled and 100,000 civilians are dead. It is at this point estimated that the sanctions and the invasion has killed more Iraqis then Saddam ever managed in his wars and purges. So the "liberators" have surpassed the Butcher of Bagdad. And this is just a beginning with joyous prospects of civil war and genocidal mayhem just on the horizon.
In light of this anyone who claims high moral ground for the US/UK invasion can only be classified as jingoistic, bigoted drooling moron.
Where was your outrage then?
Many of us argued against the idiotic sanction regime which killed something like 500,000 people and advocated attempts at introducing a revolt from within Baath party, while being weary even that was an extremely dangerous proposition. In short, nothing could be done unless Iraqis themselves wished so. Just like the USSR, there was simply no rational, feasible way to bring Saddam down from outside without the cure ending up being worse then the desease. I guess some people never learn.
It's just this kind of European do-nothing attitude
No this is European wisdom of knowing that doing "something" is frequently resulting in making things far, far worse. Only idiots rush into things without a plan and any understanding of what is going on. You clearly prefer a moron who tries to "fix" a TV-set by emptying his six-shooter at it to an electronics technician who is telling you that he needs to wait 2 weeks for the right parts and then after trying them he will be able do diagnose the fault further but not yet promise a fix until the next stage. That is what is really going on. A clash between Gung-ho, shoot first ask questions later, damn the torpedoes bunch of yahoos and people who can appreciate complexity of the task and understand that it sometimes, sadly, takes decades to achieve a result.
I think that about summarizes the reasons for 95% of the current goings on in the world. People seem to think democracies are somehow immune to lunacy, but one only has to take a look at the views held by American public to see the frightening fallacy of this idea.
This would have been a wise choice. Times when US was revered and greatly admired by most of the planet resulted from the US acting on the bequest of many other nations, such as involvement in the European theatre of WWII. And that is the recipe for success, was it Quincy Adams going "America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy"? The man was onto something. You should be a hard nation to talk into any war and go there with most solemn introspection and somber sense of the great cost that will be paid. Not with all the trappings of a football game. And if a true rouge state arises, one truly malignant and threatning, you will find that others, peaceniks and comfortable ones and just plain self-interested nations will get together and you can be certain that they will do their best to assist. As they did in Afganistan or in the first Gulf War.
On balance, I think we have done as good as others would have in our situation.
On balance I am afraid you have done considerably worse then some others would do, but then again there are those who would be worse yet. But what is special and unique about USA failing is that it is you who have build up decades long marketing campaign getting people to grudgingly start buying "brand America the beautiful, land of the brave and free" only to their shock and horror them discovering that the package contains some decidedly 1930s looking visage of certain middle-european country early in grips of a horrible disease.
Good grief man, yes you were given the option of contributing to some other non-GPL licensed project. The moment the Gestapo shows up and makes all other licenses illegal, you will be right. Until then, go forth and contribute to X11, Apache, BSD, Public domain, Microsft Shared Source or what have you.
Say I want my software to perform some function --it doesn't matter what, for purposes of discussion. Let's say that somebody's already written a module that performs that function, and rather than taking the time to write it myself, I decide I want to just incorporate that module into my program.
So far so good. So you look at the program and .. Oops! It is GPL licensed. "I disagree with this on phillosophical grounds" you say to yourself and go find a BSD licensed project. Next.
So that means I'm forced to clean-room the whole module, finding somebody who's never seen the Gnu code to write it for me from scratch!
This applies to nearly all licences, although some of them will hound you down for "attribution and advertising" clauses only while some others (such as Microsoft Shared Source) will have your testicles and your first born. Untill the whole system of Intellectual Property is reformed to bring some sanity into it, I am afraid there is no escape from this other then pure Public Domain. But precisely because of easy to abuse nature of public domain, most people are not willing to contribute. In case of GPL we work for the good of the community of like minded people. In case of public domain we do work for large corporations who use our stuff with no compensation and in most cases not even attribution.
How can it be stolen? It's community property, available to all. That's the purpose of the public domain. Everybody has equal property rights over works that are in the public domain. By definition, they can't be stolen.
It can if you take it away and lock it away and then proceed to charge people for it. So for example you create a hardware interface that constitutes 0.001% of the project's code, make a deal with some major hardware maker, and now out of a sudden, the public project is being sold back to everyone of its authors because it is now closed source coupled with a piece of hardware they have no way to avoid since it is being pimped by a major maker and becomes ubiquitous in the industry. This is just one example of many possibilites.
The premise of GPL is "share and share-alike". The only constraint it places on you, if and only if you choose to join the community, is that you add your contributions under a guarantee that you will not renag on them in the future. It even alows you to keep them secret as long as you do not distribute the altered code to others. That is all. The only purpose is to ensure that once shared, something stays shared and public. BSD on the other hand has no such guarantee. So you choose to take part with the understanding of the rules. If you do not, you are free to ignore us all the GPL commies and proceed to join many other alternative communities whose rules are different. More power to you. But no, you choose to try to attack our way by attempting to effectively break in, smash our system and run away with the spoils, even if you do not realize that it is what you are doing.
There's only us. We're all in this together
Yes indeed! Why, the very existence of GPL is a response to what some of "us" were doing "together" to do the rest of us "in". You forgive me if I am immediately suspicious of motives if someone assaults the GPL for I have met a great number of those who would "share" our work for their exclusive profit and were thus very irrate upon finding out that we have outmanouvered them.
OMFG! NOOOO! They ... they... they.. they'v got the bomb!
Duck and cover now! Run! Panic! Give up all your rights! Setup concentration camps! Torture people! Invade random countries! Because they.. how dare they... they've got da bomb!
Never you mind that the chances of them getting one are hundreds of millions to one and they have no way to smuggle it in even if somehow they managed to get it, you know radiation signature and all that, specially that those who they stole it from would be crying foul and alerting everyone. And you can put to rest wild ideas like North Korea or Iran giving one to the al-Queida, all that with making themselves targets for retaliation and Iran being great enemy of the Wahhabbists. But who cares for details when the mindless panic is getting whipped up so good?
Wait, werent the previous boogeyman crew equipped with like thousands of them? Nuclear sumbarines, satellites and all?
You know this is just plain pathetic. I never knew that people are so irresponsible, no wonder US democracy is in trouble. All one has to do to make all US citizens act like a bunch of panicked chickens is to create an implausible but telegenic evil boogeyman and voila: you got unchecked, unlimited power complete with a blank check. It must be nice. I always wondered what will the industrial-military complex do when their previous stawman fell apart prematurely, my faith in their greed and lust for power was not in vain! They just reinvented themselves as the Homeland Security, War On Terror troopers, mercenaries etc. You just gotta love the sheer hutzpa.
That's just a proof of greater firepower of the U.S. forces and the figures aren't comparable because of different nature of conflicts (terrorist attacks vs. war). Most of those victims were largely military personnel while terrorists' victims were civilians.
Err, wasn't(isn't? was meant to be? will be if it is politically convenient?) Iraq part of the War On Terror(tm)? And no that 100,000 according to the Lancet medical journal are mostly civilians, women, children and elderly. Note also that US casaulties in War On Terror(tm) prior to Afganistan were below 4000 mark which makes the tens of thousands killed in Afganistan combined with the 100,000 in Iraq a particulary grusome testimony as to who is terrorizing whom. And if Afganistan was at least nominally justifiable since the Taliban did indeed shelter Usama, Iraq is pure venomous aggression for profit ... which in most of the Middle East retroactively justified Al-Qeida and thus compounded the nuissance of crazed maniacs with dynamite strapped to their asses. All I can say, Nice Job Mr. President! With friends like you, who needs enemies?
You are trying, desperately, and failing to create an impression that GPL somehow obliges you to contribute. Ignoring completely the fact that contribution is a voluntary chocie. But I fully understand your real view, perverted and deseased as it is: you object to the fact that GPL prevents you from stealing community work and using it for your exclusive profit. I know it must hurt. Your "unalienable right" to profit from other people's work is being violated. And I have only this to say to your selfish, greedy, narcistic self: tough luck asshole, go find youself some other victim, GPLed projects can defend themselves from the likes of you.
Huh? Whaaaa? You mean there is that GPL NKVD/KGB crew in black leather trenchcoats running around in black Volga cars with tinted windows who will whisk you away to some Gulag if you do not, and I mean now!, give up all your code to for the good of the State? Am I missing something here or are you off the deep end along with Mr.Gates? Say hello to the pink dancing elephants for me then.
Just in case you lapse back onto the mundane planet Earth: GPL is applied to code you chose voluntarily to insert into GPL licensed project. You can just as well insert your contribution into a BSD, Apache, Public-domain or any other project. But BSD on the other hand allows you to take all of the project's code and close it and incorporate it into a commecrial product and then charge for it. So in your little chart it is: BSD allows taking; GPL: ensures sharing....
Oh I dont doubt that in the slightest. But one cannot take what one is not given other then by military force (I dont think that would be an option for China in regards to any nuclear-armed countries). They can maniuplate their borders all they want but if Chinese goods have 1000% tariff on them in the entire industrialized world and investment in China is forbidden, they will not be able to "take what they want". The truth is that they were handed things on the silver platter by the greed blinded West, a condition the Chinese induced of course by being clever and playing the Western fools like a flute.
The muslim fundamentalist extremists are a law enforcement problem not a military one. Furthermore lets tally things up here so we have clear understanding: total deaths due to terrorism, combining PLO, Hamas, IRA, Al-Qeida, and every other terrorist on the planet, including Iraqi resistance (most of whom are freedom-fighters), years 1950-2005 = less then 10,000. On the other hand: 2 years of US anti-terrorism operations: 100,000 deaths and counting. A yearly deathtoll due to car accidents in USA: over 40,000.
You were saying something about Bali and boogeymen, no?
My bad, it was Turkey where the initial missile deployment was. Appologies for the confusion.
Ying-yang mumbo-jumbo not withstanding, noone can credibly claim that trillions upon trillions of dollars of investments complete with high-technology transfers and ready-made wealthy markets for product manufactured there are not driving the transformation of China.
Of course they were. The Cuban missile crisis was initiated when USA placed short-range missiles in Western Germany, giving Soviet defenses virtually no warning and reaction time in case their were launched. In retaliation, Khrushchev sent his to Cuba. Note that USSR lost that exchange: Soviet missiles left Cuba but the US ones stayed in Germany.
... and you cleverly neglected to mention that this land was divdied into hundreds of "bantustans" criss-crossed with Israeli roads and settlements, some of them completely isolated from each other, that this "sovereign" state was to be subject to israeli military "border" patrols and that some people would have to cross the border to go to school or a grocery store. Other then that, it was a steal of a deal and that nasty old Arafat was just a party pooper.