No, actually CNN does not work in a lot of configurations, even the ones supported by Flash, due to CNN's inane use of Flash/JavaScript combinations and its active attempts to discourage use of anything but IE. The site's behaviour is pretty random, based on the verison of Mozilla and/or combination of JavaScript options. On many of my systems the plug-in loads, but it times out connecting to CNN, even though the same plug-in works with some of the other Flash-insane sites like Youtube. One can manually parse the CNN site and try to reverse engineer the URLs for the Flash contents, which then can be played by pointing Mplayer at it, but this is far too much work for the results.
Proprietary video drivers are available for only small fractions of architechtures on which Linux runs, usually only the x86 compatible one. Furthermore, even on this most popular one, only the 32-bit versions of Flash and others are available.
Have you quite finished? Geez, it's a wonder multimedia-based services like YouTube even work on... just about every browser on the planet.
No, they don't. Try a 64-bit Linux, any distro, amongst many other examples. And no, writing entire 32-bit emulator plugins so that the stupidity which is Flash can run in them does not constitute "working" anymore than running VMWare makes Autocad work on Linux.
The Web-using public has proven itself quite capable of adopting new technologies that serve their purposes, and working on the basis of popular de facto standards. If any proprietary technology ceases to serve the needs of the Web-browsing public, that technology will most likely be replaced in fairly short order by another that does serve the public need. This sort of thing has been happening since the dawn of browsers and the old IE vs. Netscape browser wars.
Bullshit. The "web-using public's" 95%+ membership is comprised of people who would upon seeing "this website needs the The Up-Your-Ass Shit-o-Matic Plugin to Enhance Your Experience" would go "Duh, I better click OK!".
Quality or needs of the public have nothing to do with any of it. Needs of the various idiots attempting to control the public via means such as Flash-only sites have everything to do with it. That is why the public is not involved in protesting Ogg, corporations are.
There are advantages to having a truly open standard, but for something that evolves as fast as the Web, we've seen time and again that de facto standards that are technically sensible and practically useful are way more valuable than any formal document produced by a standards body.
More bullshit. If it weren't for open standards, the only "web" browser in existence would browse Microsoft "enhanced" HTML. The de-facto, secret, proprietary, patent-encumbered standards, with players available for only a small fraction of platforms are not "sensible" in any way, shape or form.
This whole discussion sounds a lot like people who like a relatively unpopular format bitching because they were hoping their preference would be forced on the rest of the world based on politics rather than technical merit, and they lost the argument.
Politics? Your entire argument can be summarized as "Everyone should use IE and commercial plugins on either Windows (or possibly, grudgingly, Mac)! Everyone who doesn't is a bitter, unpopular political loser!"
By being half-assed and not specifying a standard for a widely used aspect of the web browsing experience, what is in effect happening is a de-facto endorsement of all of those pet proprietary formats at the expense of clarity and allowing the various companies to rape the public with a million of buggy plug-ins, each with its own flavour of the week. The very anathema of a "standard".
It does not matter if Ogg/Theora were not the most advanced and efficient of technologies as neither is the whole concept of HTML. What mattered was estabilishment of an open standard which would cut down on the chaos of inane plug-ins and made it impossible for companies like CNN to purposefully block all web browsers other then IE from accessing their video contents, as is the case now.
You've just only come to the realization that copyright laws are by definition internally inconsistent and illogical?
This is because the whole notions of copyright and information as "private property" are at odds with the nature of information itself, which lacks the necessary attributes to be "private property".
And so convoluted, idiotic "laws" are made by greedy, deluded people to try to make the impossible happen. Exceptions upon self-contradictions upon stupidity.
The idea is akin to trying to make gravity illegal, followed by elaborate sets of rules about which objects you are alowed to lift and how high you feet are supposed to go when walking, all in the effort to maintain a silly illusion which pads someone's pockets.
There is also a side-effect, desirable by some powermongers, and that is the fact that such "laws" make everyone a criminal, subject to whim of "interpretation" by governmental agencies and politically appointed "justice" departaments. Such as the one the GP mentioned. Pictures in the cache of your web browser are definitely copies (amongst many other stages of processing in your computer) and are identical to pictures you saved yourself, differing only (possibly) in the location where they were saved. Yet the latter is, by definition, a copyright violation, while the first one is one of those, arbitrary, whimsical, "exceptions". "Yes, the gravity does not exist and to prove it you should maintain a state of floatation at least 17 inches off the ground! With the exception of 'Joy periods' whereby you are allowed to kick the planet Earth, but no more frequently then once a second!"
The sooner you realize that information, including thoughts in your head and large integer numbers, unlike physical objects does not fit the primitive, animalistic desire of some to fence it off and sit on it growling "Mine! All Mine! Back off!" with spittle flying, the better.
My theory is that we have an influx of wet-behind-the-ears IT "professionals", fresh out of a 3-month course at some diploma mill and now proud holders of a MSCE diploma or some such, and therefore knowing-- with absolute certainty -- that Microsoft is the be-all and end-all of all things IT and their ticket to success. And now here on Slashdot out to "show us" old farts.
Which reminds me of a guy I know who never used a computer for anything, tried starting various businesses ranging from candy dispenser machines to hot-dog stands, and eventually got one of those MSCEs or A+ or what not (in 3 months) following which he started an IT business whereby he "fixes" people's computers. The business is wildly successful in appearance, with big ads all over town and the clientele mostly consisting of people even less computer literate then him (of which there is a lot)... although there appears to be not much repeat business. Fear not, ads are big and flashy and one is born every... you get the idea. His selling point? "No computer gurus here!". I kid you not. It is of course impossible to talk to him now, since he "knows" the IT industry better then everyone, according to him and his wallet. Still hasn't seen a rack-mount server though. "Who uses those anyhow? (snicker)".
Needless to say he worships greed and sees Bill Gates as the living incarnation of some sort of God of Profit. But which does not stop him from selling copies of MS Office on CD-Rs to old ladies...
I would not be surprised to see him spouting some nonsense here.
Funding from the public: basic science 0.001% of budget, ways to develop new more toxic and disposable plastic garbage %9.999, new fancier versions of viagra an dick extension procedures 90%.
Funding from the governments: ways to wage war on everybody and everything while enriching one's cronies, 100% of the "science" budget.
Funding from the religious wackos: ways to prove science does not work and if it does, the Universe is 600 year old and the Earth is flat, 100% of the budget.
Apparently not. Their public institutions are becoming less "public" as time goes on, serving and defending the newly froming de-facto corporate aristocracy (complete with dynastical "presidencies") and court-jester "parties". Creation of new egalitarian institutions, or even repeairing of the once impressive existing ones, is apparently already out of the question. As are inheretance taxes, the last remaining obstacle between any pretense of meritocracy and the feudal order.
And so the Republic crumbles to dust, proud, arrogant, jingoistic and belligerent to the end. But despeir not, chances are that before it vanishes into history books it will flare once more, like a star in its final death throes, as it goes out in a blaze of a nation's equivalent to a Supernova: the Imperial Hegemony.
I normally reply to these things with examples of well (or reasonably well) functioning universal medicare systems in pretty much all industrialized (and other) nations. However when faced with the continuing stream of total and utter fiascos authored by the US federal or state governments, who somehow mastered hereto before unattainable levels of incompetence, graft and general stupidity in anything even remotely relating to common good, I am beginning to lean towards another notion. It is the theory that America is truly unique in the quality of its sociopaths and the American public has grown so narcisstic, anti-social and greedy that it has become incapable of cooperating in anything not involving exploitation, theft, rape, murder or pillaging. Or some combination of thereof.
A truly unique American achievment which might become the national epitaph. Sort of like the bloodbaths in the Colliseum were for Rome.
In the USA (and Canada) the government regulation seems to be designed to achieve the exact opposite of what it is designed to do elsewhere.
In most regulated places, the government mandates that the cables and conduits (for which there is physically limited space and thus something akin to natural monopoly can develop) are operated by a government regulated entity (sometimes the government itself) and many (as in more then 2) companies coexist on the same cable+conduit system competing on delivery, service, price etc, while paying a small usage fee to the government run cable operator. This is virtually the same idea as with the electrical grid, where it is simply impractical to allow competition on the construction of power lines as a chaotic system would develop with multiple companies attempting to run inefficient, parallel sets of lines. That is why the government runs the power grid and private power companies use it to deliver their electricity to their customers.
This system asures maximum competition by lowering the barriers to entry for all players and putting the contested and difficult to manage area in the hands of an impartial entitiy (everyone gets charged the same usage fee) which is well equipped (financially and resource-wise) to deal with it.
Or to put it another way: think roads and cars. Roads are the responsiblity of governments but the cars on them are private.
In the US and Canada, the idea seems to be to fork over the entire pie (delivery+contents) to some "winner takes all" crony, thus assuring no competition of any kind. The term for this is "crony capitalism" and it is a disaster. It has the distinguishing feature of achieving nothing from the point of view of "socialists" and also from the point of view of free-marketeers. A complete fiasco on all accounts, except for the crony in question of course.
If you insist on being scared and finding excuses to ignore facts on the ground, then go have fun without me. I'm not going to waste time arguing with somebody uninterested in tne facts.
I can assume then that you have no counter arguments to present and are now withdrawing from the debate while attempting to maintan a pretense of aloof "superiority", without actually addressing the ponts presented.
I will warn you that people who pay attention to facts historically do better than people who don't.
And what "facts" would these be? You've presented none.
This is funny.
Not so to the denizens of those countries.
They're all experienced politicians from each country, openly aided by pro-democratic NGOs.
Which, by some cosmic coincidence, also means that they are nearly all exclusively returned expatriates with long-time, deep Western ties, having spent most of their lives, gathering "experience" I presume, in the West, and also, completely accidentally, those NGOs are also all financed from Western sources and likewise run by returned expatriates. A world is full of wacky confluences, no?
I guess you'll find some reason that couldn't possibly be true, though.
Its true all right, except that is only the paint-thin surface appearance of the affairs, one on which some truly naive people are supposed to focus, looking no deeper.
Based on analysis from who? If this is true, to which sect are they loyal? And are they overcounting or undercounting the number of dead bodies?
Based on the antics of the sectarian politicians who appointed them and militias which operate these facilities, for starters. Overcounting, undercounting and mis-attributing based on whatever political points can be scored at any given moment against their sectarian enemies.
They go to the cemetery, look for graves made after 2003, and then ask how they died.
Again, who does? And I do notice your attempts to dodge my points about the geographical distribution and the sheer numbers of cementeries versus the available "checkers" in this methodology, as well as the attribution of causes of death, particularly when delayed or if caused by war-time hardships versus actual bullet wounds. Your desperation to discount casualties of war reminds me of the equally reliable method the US forces have been using recently, whereby they count the dead based on the entry points of their bullet holes...
A Google search under '"shock and awe" O'Reilly civilians' did not return anything that supports your claims.
Oh for fuck's sake, here is a O'Reilly's quote on the Fallujah assault I found in literally 30 seconds flat: "Problems continue for the U.S. Military in Fallujah. Why doesn't the U.S. Military just go ahead and level it?". His great concern about the civilian population is just oozing from that statement! There are many more where that came from and no, I am not going to be your search engine.
It's easy to say they "insinuate", without having to provide actual proof that they do.
Its also easy to undertand the overall tone and attitude of these pundit's messages. Next you are going to pretend that they are "fair and balanced" at which point your credibility would reach absolute zero, if it weren't already there for a long time.
So O'Reilly advocates war on Islamic militants, and calls them 'Islamofascists'. Big deal
So the Hutu RTLM radio advocated war on the Tutsis and called then "cockroaches". Big deal. Right? RIGHT?!
I said 'accurate, in-context quotes', not handwringing by professional mudslingers. They don't even have anything quoting him on Iraq on the page you reference.
You are making me laugh at your stupidity. Since Media Matters provides whole sections of O'Reilly's ramblings verbatim, complete with transcripts and audio or video, the only conculsion one can draw from your inane demand is that by "accurate, in-context" you mean either entire shows and radio programs or, more likely, your fantasies in which whatever the voices in your head tell you is always "in-context and accurate", without any actual relationship to recorded data in this universe. You are just a classic delusional loon long separated from reality. As to "mudslingers", all the "mud" which is "slung" on that website is of O'Reilly's own manufacture and presented as he delivered it. Also the page I pointed you to is an index of hundreds of quotes. Do you own legwork.
Such as?
Such as what? Your question makes no sense in the context of the quote you selected.
To say that Saddam was "no more murderous" than the US, you have to count all Iraqi civilians killed since the start of the war as having been "murdered" by the US, which I've already demonstrated as false.
Again, you've demonstrated no such thing as the logic is simple and irrefutable: No invasion = no invasion casualties, direct or indirect. Period. No amount of your whining, posturing and misdirection will obscure this simple fact.
Really? Then why are you still around to be allowed to post? Why is slashdot being allowed to exist? Why were the Democrats allowed to take control of Congress? Did Bush get sick of those Republican faces and want a change? Maybe we still have a right or two left, huh?
You are confusing a disfunctional democracy with outright totalitarian state. These things are not a matter of black and white binary conditions, but rather a continuum of possibilities. An institutionalized, ritual "two-party in name, one party of estabilishment in practice" system which the USA has devolved into is a far cry from a vibrant markeptlace of ideas the Founding Fathers envisioned. That does not mean that the USA has descended as far as totalitarianism, although The Police State has arrived and has unpacked his luggage, got his torture rack installed in the basement and now is mounting his pictures on the wall, while listening to your calls on his scanner. When he makes himself really at home, then he is going to call one of his best buddies, The Tyranical Dictatorship or perheaps The Empire. But the landlord might yet come to his senses and kick this new tenant's ass out. Only time will tell.
Note also the disfunctional mass media, the conglomeration of channels of information (with the exception of the Internet) and the consolidation of financial power in fewer and fewer hands. Then also note the increasing disparity of ownership of assets between the majority of Americans and the top 1% elite, now at the levels not seen since 1929.
So please do not dismiss these events by proclaiming that the Brown Shirts are not marching yet, because history never repeats itself precisely the same way. Yet when the modern equivalents of the most prominent excesses of the tyrants past arrive, it will be far too late to complain then.
Now, you're right about Palestine, but the last Iraqi and Afghan opinion polls I saw said they still want this democracy thing.
Please be very careful with data from Afghanistan because while the Western ideals might indeed be somewhat popular in Kabul and posisbly in Khandahar, they are definitely not so in the countryside, where the pollsters dare not go. Afghanistan is a (probably hopelessly for a foreseeable future) tribalized country to the point that every few villages have their own warlord. Allegiances are of the utmost tricky and fickle nature and depend usually on the amount of bribes various sides can offer. All people under the control of the warlord dare not "vote" in any silly elections in any contradictory to his will way. In short, the whole thing is far too medieval for any Enlightenment concept such as "democracy" to take hold outside of the major centers where the "government" is wholly dependent on NATO forces to keep it in power. The situation is actually laughably similar to the state of affairs during the Soviet occupation, except with the Commie Afghan government in the starring role back then who proudly exhibited polls showing that just about everyone in Afghanistan, with the exception of some few religious lunatics called the Taliban, wants Socialism. And we all know how that turned out in the long term.
And, when did the mass coups in Eastern Europe happen?
Mass movements of change always come from within societies when they become ready for them. The West fostered dissent for 40 or so years in the Soviet sphere by incessant propaganda effort via multiple modalities and it finally succeeded... when the lure of consumer goods and supposed riches to be had by "everybody" became too great. Sad but true. The Gdansk Shipyard strikes which started the whole thing were about money, not "freedom" or "democracy". Carefuly cultivated and encouraged greed finally succeeded where all other means failed. That is why I mentioned jokingly the 2-apartament riches of the Commie bureaucrats, because that was the actual
But the real reason people tough it out, of course, is because they know their kids'll have it much better, and their grandkids will have it good.
If only.
The goings on in the USA demonstrate clearly to anyone who is paying attention that supposedly advanced democracies and reasonably free market systems are extremely fragile and more often then not all the "freedoms" are nothing but a thin veneer covering totalitarian forces, de-facto dynastical aristocracy or skillfully manipulated by demagouges mob rule within. If the recent drastic political changes within the USA and the belligerent behaviour of various supposedly freedom-loving Western governments would have not occured, the chances of convincing people within the former Soviet sphere or in Iraq or Palestine to "tough it out" would have been much greater. As it is, I do not think the words "democracy" or "capitalism" have the purchasing power they used to, not by a long shot. Add to this a long standing, abusive, one-sided and hypocritical attitdue the US had towards the Arab world for the last 50+ years and the USA becomes the very anti-thesis of justice and freedom in the eyes of Arab (and Persian) audiences.
So as a result those people do not see the light at the end of the tunnel, or if they do it is a much much dimmer one. And so they are ready to cut their own paths through the jungle of politics no longer heeding any "advice" from the discredited in their eyes Western pundits. Accusations of being "undemocratic" from those who they now see as duplicitous, hypocritcal and ill meaning only spur them on in the opposite direction.
The problem is that things were actually getting better by the end of 90s.
Well, a lage part of the problems occured right at the outset of transition from communism because the most vile of Western charlatans, whose "theories" are widely derided and opposed by most sane people in their own native lands, got to shape the fate of the formerly communist nations, where people greeted them as "experts" and gave them the benefit of the doubt. And the denisens of those places are still paying for that bit of naivette, having only too late discovered that they have invited wolves and foxes into their chickenhouse. Putin and his band of merry authocrats is a response to the wholesale thievery of pretty much an entire nation by Yeltsin's (mostly Israeli) cronies while Geoffrey Sachs' of the world were prescribing "belt tightening" and "starvation shock therapy" for the average Russian. "Things getting better" were a result of a massive pushback by the populace against the "dog-eat-dog", "winner takes all", "steal everything not nailed down" "capitalism" as it was being instituted by these "experts" (although not necessarily against the bureaucrats who were complicit in the whole affair).
But the people who played that card to get themselves into power didn't really combat any of the core issues, and in many cases even aggravated them (e.g. the number of bureaucrats under Putin is higher than it ever was under Yeltsin, and their salaries have grown disproportionally higher than those of the rest of the population).
Well the problem with democracy is that the number of vicious wolves attempting to rip the society apart is no less in it then in any other system. After hundreds of years, the most visible and frequently held up as the gold standard example of Constitutional Democracy in the US is still barely functional, highly corruptible and constantly teetering on the edge of collapse. Just witness the antics of GW Bush and his pals and what they did with the supposedly democratic nation under their control. I think a lot of people in the former Soviet sphere realized, only too late, that the "democracy" and "capitalism" as it was sold to them (and boy was it ever a fevered sales pitch!) were in actuality nowhere near resembling their depictions on the glossy sales brochures, and that their old communist system had some few features they actually liked better. Many are starting to feel cheated and duped. The term for this is "buyer's remorse".
What will come of all of this I do not know, but to blame the denizes of the former USSR for being somehow "impatient" when asking for the promised results to be delivered as promised is the very height of hypocrisy. I fear that their anger will only grow with time as now they are also discovering that their supposed new "friends" are also busy expanding their military presence everywhere around them in an effort to consolidate their de-facto Imperial power and that the old USSR was the only force holding back the expansion of the said Empire. Suspicions of duplicitous intent are only natural in light of such developments.
You are confusing logic with sales. The point of this excercise is to sell a bunch $50,000 anti-alien-mind-control-ray tin foil hats. "100% Guaranteed and Tested! No Space Aliens have ever penetrated our ReflectoBeanie! Its a real bargain!"
Never you mind that practicality of manipulating takns into shooting each other or their own troops is beyond ridiculous from the perspective of logistics on the battlefield and return on investment for the attacker who would have to be just in the right place in the right time with a complete understanding of the internal workings of the enemy's command and control systems and procedures, relative tank positions and in respect to their true targets and also to be able to plausibly override voice communications when one tank commander goes on his radio to ask "Sir, why are we prorized to shoot a target 90 degrees from the direction towards the enemy positions?".
But thats Military Industrial complex for ya. Next up, $500 military-grade anti-vampire garlic patches.
So thank you. If you ever want to start a country somewhere, let me know!
You might reconsider that after you discover that "Peter's Country" will be a freezing puddle of mud where you get to subsist on tree bark and wear scraps of tires for shoes until you die. After all, "patience" would be required and the results not expected for, oh somewhere around 200 year mark from the date of the glorious foundation of that visionary nation.
People simply need to be more patient, and work on democracy to achieve it best.
Which people? The children of their children? The recipe you've just described is for a whole life of misery, pain, destitution for whole generations of people who will never get to see the supposed results of their sacrifices before they die. That is what your version of "patience" means.
I do not blame them in the slightest that upon discovering that the goods they have been sold with great fanfare come with a fine, fine print saying "You the buyer, do not dare to expect results for 100 years after you are dead. We, the sellers, can expect the results immediately. By the way if you are of an older generations, everything you have worked for is now null and void. Have a nice day."
I too would have been somewhat miffed at this attitude. Note that none of this "wait 200 years" bullshit was ever mentioned in the rosy stories by the Voice of America before the Soviet Union fell, was it? Amongst all the song and dance and innuendo about how streets are pretty much paved with gold and rivers run with honey in the Capitalist Paradise, there were strong suggestions that the West is oh-so equitable and that everyone is if not a millionaire, then at least has a mansion and 2 cars, and that you can be that way too if you only got rid of these horrible, unjust Commie bureaucrats who lord over you with their unheard of excesses of having two, count em: Two!, rooms more in their apartament then you. That would have never happened in the Capitalist Paradise! And then of course there was all that unjust political stuff like the horrible, unthinkable demands of these tyrannical Commies to see your papers when you travel to check you against that abomination of "dissident no-travel list" and having your phones bugged, or maybe even to haul you away to a Gulag - plain impossible, we say, impossible in the Glorious Freedom Loving America. Etc and so on.
Having had experience with these types of sales in the West, people have coined a term for them: "bait and switch".
You are an insane fanatic. I, on the other hand, am not.
This coming from a dude who thinks something to the effect of "Islam is Taking Over The World! Panic Now!" and that Christianity is a cuddly, wholly harmless pasttime.
I hate religious fanatics of all kinds, but that doesn't mean I'm delusional enough to think that all religions are suddenly equally bad, and teach the same things.
Wee things like empirical evidence of vast attrocities by most religions (Christianity in particular) do not seem to register with you in arriving at your pre-determined self-serving outcome.
You concentrate on a handful of American fanatics (who are nowhere near as dangerous as Jihadists)
I repeatedly demonstrated why they are more dangerous, to which you responded with insinuations of "secret knowledge" of plots vast and dastardly to which I am not privvy.
and completely ignore everything else, because if you didn't do so you would be forced to admit that almost all Christians are actually very mellow.
True, most people who identify themselves as "Christians" are very mellow as most do not realize what the actual tenets of Christianity as contained in its holy books actually are. But so it is also with the followers of Islam, of whom there are a billion, most not engaged in any sort of warfare of any kind!
Europe is Christian, and is partly founded on Judeo-Christian culture, yet it's not a theocratic hellhole.
Poland and Ireland are decidedly theocratic, in Poland you cannot graduate from high-school without receiving a passing grade from a Catholic priest (a recently passed law has that effect).
And then if you rewind the clock some centuries back...
Also note that the most prominent of the fundamentalist Christianst movements in the USA are aiming precisely at that: rollback to medieval times.
You may have missed the announcement, but Christianity has changed and adapted over the centuries.
See above.
But in your fanatical desire to believe that all religions are completely evil and worthless, you simply ignore all that.
They are evil, irrational and worthless. The fact that some of them were defanged (temporarily) does not change that.
You ignore all the good things that Christianity has done for Western civilization
Err, like? Do enumerate achievements not otherwise possible by, say, secular means. I am all ears!
Your views on Islam are probably not based on any real information or observations, but are rather the foregone conclusion of your ideology. You certainly don't know much about the subject.
You know, this shit whereby you try to pretend some great hidden knowledge without actually spelling your supposed evidence out is getting old fast.
I can simultaneously condemn fanatics while recognizing the benefits and importance of some religions (such as Christianity and Buddhism).
This does not go well with your demonstated anti-Islam zeal combined with your defense of Christianity as somehow superior. Also, I repeat my request, do enumerate achievements of civilization which could not be otherwise possible without apriori brain damage from religious mumbo-jumbo.
My distaste towards religious fanatics often puts me at odds with some Christians who I otherwise agree with about Islam.
So far you have demonstated visceral hatred of all things Islamic and more then friendly ambivalence about Christianity. Given that, I fear to even try to imagine the levels of biggotry those "Christians" must exhibit.
My liberals views make me unpopular with many conservatives, while my conservative v
O'Reilly never called for targeting civilians in Iraq,
Search under "shock and awe".
nor does he say that America is "Divenely Chosen", "Always Right By Definition", "Gloriously Supreme" or "Perpetually Unjustly Victimized".
He (and his fellow demagouges all over the media) constantly insinuate all of this, although even they are not bold enough to actually use these terms directly, as is the case with many other propagandists advocating violence under the guise of "justice" or "peace".
If O'Reilly advocated war with Iraq, he was advocating for the removal of a murderous totalitarian government, which is different from calling for the murder of people who refuse to submit to theocratic rule.
No, he did advocate, and still does, warfare with "Islamofascists" (the actual ridiculous term he uses) whom he claimed Saddam was in cahoots with (amongst many, many other lies and distortions) and war on all those who refuse to submit to America-centric rule of "democracy", as defined by American and Zionist Neo-cons. Not to mention his anti-Islam innuendo (which alone is a dead giveway about his true ideas about the predominantly Muslim population of Iraq). The religion is different, the bloody results similar.
Also that "murderous totalitarian government" appears to have been no more murderous then the "liberators" and was at any rate less disastrous to the state of daily lives of average Iraqis. At the worst of Saddam times Baghdad at least had drinkable water and semi-operational sewage.
The worms cannot be blamed because the worms do not have free will. Humans do have free will, and if they won't restrain themselves from behaving like sub-human savages, that's their own fault.
Oh I see, so according to this logic the culpabilty for your actions always belongs to other people because no matter what you have done, they have free will! Thus you are automatically blameless for anything that happens as a result of your activities, even if the behaviour of those other people is easily predictable far in advance! How so very neo-conservative of you! I believe you call that idea "Personal Responsibility" and you cherish it very much.
Also, the entire point of religious brainwashing is to achieve the replacement of higher brain functions with uncritical religious zeal. One can easily see that this is true by a very simple test: all religious doctrines are patently absurd, irrational, internally inconsistent and lack any empircial evidence whatsoever, thus brain disfunction is a pre-requisite to acceptance of such dogmas. This makes the True Believer religious zealots of all stripes no more free willed (nor smarter) then the worms I mentioned.
So you reject news reports, and the fact that actual counts of dead bodies more or less falls within the same order of magnitude. What sources do you use to substantiate your assertion of "hundreds of thousands" dead?
I already explained that one has to take into account all studies as all their methodologies are prone to error and use an average of their results. You prefer to pretend that only the lowest estimates have some validity because this is consistent with your pre-conceived notions about the state of affairs and you are not actually interested in any evidence which could contradict them.
You know, argument-less idiots who are reduced to feigning getting vapours at their opponent's audacity to beat their half-baked ideas into a bloody pulp are really tiresome after a while, even though they can provide some short-term amusement. Go back to spewing spittle while screaming about The Evils Of Everything-Non-Christianist while warning the passer-bys of The Islamist Boogeyman Who Cometh on your street corner. You will have more success there. And bonus, if you put a hat out some people might throw coins in it.
I am afraid he would since many of his "morality" proposals require wide-spread governmental powers. Same for his militaristic (which he denies while actively foting for them) and many other aspirations. He simply wants the big governmental powers in places different from where they are now. This is in actuality the same problem most of the "small government" conservatives have, they all come with pet wacko social dogmas, enforcement of which is completely at odds with their espoused views on the mechanics of governance.
he would not continue to take our civil rights and privacy
Only if it came to abortion... or sex between people he does not approve of... or racial segregation... or religious persecution... or corporate excesses such as trusts and monopolies... or basic social safety nets... etc and so on
He would not continue to raise the cost of government
See above. His practical, deeply cherished by him beliefs are at odds with his overall proclamations.
he would do what he says he would and has a long voting record showing he does do what he says.
Err, it is not a good thing. Let me repost this link from another poster's post. Go see yourself.
Right now- all other republican and democratic are lying so badly that we are literally voting for mystery men owned by the corporations.
Unfortunately Ron Paul is no panacea for this.
Ron Paul may not win, but he has a chance to shift the republicans back to being a small government party. Right now they are like a bunch of pro business, fascist, drunken sailors.
And is a faux-Libertarian, nationalistic religious racist zealot any better? This straregy of trying to elect a patently disturbed individual so to "upset" the staus quo of corrupt fat fascists does not strike me as a particularly wise one. There are some wee unintended consequences possible that I can see, even if you don't.
Slashdot Mirror
Try that on a 64-bit Ubuntu. Or any Linux distro running on, say, MIPS platform. Then let us know how it goes.
No, actually CNN does not work in a lot of configurations, even the ones supported by Flash, due to CNN's inane use of Flash/JavaScript combinations and its active attempts to discourage use of anything but IE. The site's behaviour is pretty random, based on the verison of Mozilla and/or combination of JavaScript options. On many of my systems the plug-in loads, but it times out connecting to CNN, even though the same plug-in works with some of the other Flash-insane sites like Youtube. One can manually parse the CNN site and try to reverse engineer the URLs for the Flash contents, which then can be played by pointing Mplayer at it, but this is far too much work for the results.
Proprietary video drivers are available for only small fractions of architechtures on which Linux runs, usually only the x86 compatible one. Furthermore, even on this most popular one, only the 32-bit versions of Flash and others are available.
No, they don't. Try a 64-bit Linux, any distro, amongst many other examples. And no, writing entire 32-bit emulator plugins so that the stupidity which is Flash can run in them does not constitute "working" anymore than running VMWare makes Autocad work on Linux.
Bullshit. The "web-using public's" 95%+ membership is comprised of people who would upon seeing "this website needs the The Up-Your-Ass Shit-o-Matic Plugin to Enhance Your Experience" would go "Duh, I better click OK!".
Quality or needs of the public have nothing to do with any of it. Needs of the various idiots attempting to control the public via means such as Flash-only sites have everything to do with it. That is why the public is not involved in protesting Ogg, corporations are.
More bullshit. If it weren't for open standards, the only "web" browser in existence would browse Microsoft "enhanced" HTML. The de-facto, secret, proprietary, patent-encumbered standards, with players available for only a small fraction of platforms are not "sensible" in any way, shape or form.
Politics? Your entire argument can be summarized as "Everyone should use IE and commercial plugins on either Windows (or possibly, grudgingly, Mac)! Everyone who doesn't is a bitter, unpopular political loser!"
I have news for you: HTML is a format!
By being half-assed and not specifying a standard for a widely used aspect of the web browsing experience, what is in effect happening is a de-facto endorsement of all of those pet proprietary formats at the expense of clarity and allowing the various companies to rape the public with a million of buggy plug-ins, each with its own flavour of the week. The very anathema of a "standard".
It does not matter if Ogg/Theora were not the most advanced and efficient of technologies as neither is the whole concept of HTML. What mattered was estabilishment of an open standard which would cut down on the chaos of inane plug-ins and made it impossible for companies like CNN to purposefully block all web browsers other then IE from accessing their video contents, as is the case now.
You've just only come to the realization that copyright laws are by definition internally inconsistent and illogical?
This is because the whole notions of copyright and information as "private property" are at odds with the nature of information itself, which lacks the necessary attributes to be "private property".
And so convoluted, idiotic "laws" are made by greedy, deluded people to try to make the impossible happen. Exceptions upon self-contradictions upon stupidity.
The idea is akin to trying to make gravity illegal, followed by elaborate sets of rules about which objects you are alowed to lift and how high you feet are supposed to go when walking, all in the effort to maintain a silly illusion which pads someone's pockets.
There is also a side-effect, desirable by some powermongers, and that is the fact that such "laws" make everyone a criminal, subject to whim of "interpretation" by governmental agencies and politically appointed "justice" departaments. Such as the one the GP mentioned. Pictures in the cache of your web browser are definitely copies (amongst many other stages of processing in your computer) and are identical to pictures you saved yourself, differing only (possibly) in the location where they were saved. Yet the latter is, by definition, a copyright violation, while the first one is one of those, arbitrary, whimsical, "exceptions". "Yes, the gravity does not exist and to prove it you should maintain a state of floatation at least 17 inches off the ground! With the exception of 'Joy periods' whereby you are allowed to kick the planet Earth, but no more frequently then once a second!"
The sooner you realize that information, including thoughts in your head and large integer numbers, unlike physical objects does not fit the primitive, animalistic desire of some to fence it off and sit on it growling "Mine! All Mine! Back off!" with spittle flying, the better.
courtesy of Burns' Atomic Power! "We light you up!" is our motto!
Smithers, pay the good Scientists for their efforts!
My theory is that we have an influx of wet-behind-the-ears IT "professionals", fresh out of a 3-month course at some diploma mill and now proud holders of a MSCE diploma or some such, and therefore knowing-- with absolute certainty -- that Microsoft is the be-all and end-all of all things IT and their ticket to success. And now here on Slashdot out to "show us" old farts.
Which reminds me of a guy I know who never used a computer for anything, tried starting various businesses ranging from candy dispenser machines to hot-dog stands, and eventually got one of those MSCEs or A+ or what not (in 3 months) following which he started an IT business whereby he "fixes" people's computers. The business is wildly successful in appearance, with big ads all over town and the clientele mostly consisting of people even less computer literate then him (of which there is a lot) ... although there appears to be not much repeat business. Fear not, ads are big and flashy and one is born every ... you get the idea. His selling point? "No computer gurus here!". I kid you not. It is of course impossible to talk to him now, since he "knows" the IT industry better then everyone, according to him and his wallet. Still hasn't seen a rack-mount server though. "Who uses those anyhow? (snicker)".
Needless to say he worships greed and sees Bill Gates as the living incarnation of some sort of God of Profit. But which does not stop him from selling copies of MS Office on CD-Rs to old ladies ...
I would not be surprised to see him spouting some nonsense here.
Brillant!
Under your proposal:
Funding from the public: basic science 0.001% of budget, ways to develop new more toxic and disposable plastic garbage %9.999, new fancier versions of viagra an dick extension procedures 90%.
Funding from the governments: ways to wage war on everybody and everything while enriching one's cronies, 100% of the "science" budget.
Funding from the religious wackos: ways to prove science does not work and if it does, the Universe is 600 year old and the Earth is flat, 100% of the budget.
I can't wait for your proposal to be adopted.
Not.
Apparently not. Their public institutions are becoming less "public" as time goes on, serving and defending the newly froming de-facto corporate aristocracy (complete with dynastical "presidencies") and court-jester "parties". Creation of new egalitarian institutions, or even repeairing of the once impressive existing ones, is apparently already out of the question. As are inheretance taxes, the last remaining obstacle between any pretense of meritocracy and the feudal order.
And so the Republic crumbles to dust, proud, arrogant, jingoistic and belligerent to the end. But despeir not, chances are that before it vanishes into history books it will flare once more, like a star in its final death throes, as it goes out in a blaze of a nation's equivalent to a Supernova: the Imperial Hegemony.
I normally reply to these things with examples of well (or reasonably well) functioning universal medicare systems in pretty much all industrialized (and other) nations. However when faced with the continuing stream of total and utter fiascos authored by the US federal or state governments, who somehow mastered hereto before unattainable levels of incompetence, graft and general stupidity in anything even remotely relating to common good, I am beginning to lean towards another notion. It is the theory that America is truly unique in the quality of its sociopaths and the American public has grown so narcisstic, anti-social and greedy that it has become incapable of cooperating in anything not involving exploitation, theft, rape, murder or pillaging. Or some combination of thereof.
A truly unique American achievment which might become the national epitaph. Sort of like the bloodbaths in the Colliseum were for Rome.
That is missing the point.
In the USA (and Canada) the government regulation seems to be designed to achieve the exact opposite of what it is designed to do elsewhere.
In most regulated places, the government mandates that the cables and conduits (for which there is physically limited space and thus something akin to natural monopoly can develop) are operated by a government regulated entity (sometimes the government itself) and many (as in more then 2) companies coexist on the same cable+conduit system competing on delivery, service, price etc, while paying a small usage fee to the government run cable operator. This is virtually the same idea as with the electrical grid, where it is simply impractical to allow competition on the construction of power lines as a chaotic system would develop with multiple companies attempting to run inefficient, parallel sets of lines. That is why the government runs the power grid and private power companies use it to deliver their electricity to their customers.
This system asures maximum competition by lowering the barriers to entry for all players and putting the contested and difficult to manage area in the hands of an impartial entitiy (everyone gets charged the same usage fee) which is well equipped (financially and resource-wise) to deal with it.
Or to put it another way: think roads and cars. Roads are the responsiblity of governments but the cars on them are private.
In the US and Canada, the idea seems to be to fork over the entire pie (delivery+contents) to some "winner takes all" crony, thus assuring no competition of any kind. The term for this is "crony capitalism" and it is a disaster. It has the distinguishing feature of achieving nothing from the point of view of "socialists" and also from the point of view of free-marketeers. A complete fiasco on all accounts, except for the crony in question of course.
At the rate things are going, I am beginning to fear that your sig is correct.
I can assume then that you have no counter arguments to present and are now withdrawing from the debate while attempting to maintan a pretense of aloof "superiority", without actually addressing the ponts presented.
And what "facts" would these be? You've presented none.
Not so to the denizens of those countries.
Which, by some cosmic coincidence, also means that they are nearly all exclusively returned expatriates with long-time, deep Western ties, having spent most of their lives, gathering "experience" I presume, in the West, and also, completely accidentally, those NGOs are also all financed from Western sources and likewise run by returned expatriates. A world is full of wacky confluences, no?
Its true all right, except that is only the paint-thin surface appearance of the affairs, one on which some truly naive people are supposed to focus, looking no deeper.
Based on the antics of the sectarian politicians who appointed them and militias which operate these facilities, for starters. Overcounting, undercounting and mis-attributing based on whatever political points can be scored at any given moment against their sectarian enemies.
Again, who does? And I do notice your attempts to dodge my points about the geographical distribution and the sheer numbers of cementeries versus the available "checkers" in this methodology, as well as the attribution of causes of death, particularly when delayed or if caused by war-time hardships versus actual bullet wounds. Your desperation to discount casualties of war reminds me of the equally reliable method the US forces have been using recently, whereby they count the dead based on the entry points of their bullet holes ...
Oh for fuck's sake, here is a O'Reilly's quote on the Fallujah assault I found in literally 30 seconds flat: "Problems continue for the U.S. Military in Fallujah. Why doesn't the U.S. Military just go ahead and level it?". His great concern about the civilian population is just oozing from that statement! There are many more where that came from and no, I am not going to be your search engine.
Its also easy to undertand the overall tone and attitude of these pundit's messages. Next you are going to pretend that they are "fair and balanced" at which point your credibility would reach absolute zero, if it weren't already there for a long time.
So the Hutu RTLM radio advocated war on the Tutsis and called then "cockroaches". Big deal. Right? RIGHT?!
You are making me laugh at your stupidity. Since Media Matters provides whole sections of O'Reilly's ramblings verbatim, complete with transcripts and audio or video, the only conculsion one can draw from your inane demand is that by "accurate, in-context" you mean either entire shows and radio programs or, more likely, your fantasies in which whatever the voices in your head tell you is always "in-context and accurate", without any actual relationship to recorded data in this universe. You are just a classic delusional loon long separated from reality. As to "mudslingers", all the "mud" which is "slung" on that website is of O'Reilly's own manufacture and presented as he delivered it. Also the page I pointed you to is an index of hundreds of quotes. Do you own legwork.
Such as what? Your question makes no sense in the context of the quote you selected.
Again, you've demonstrated no such thing as the logic is simple and irrefutable: No invasion = no invasion casualties, direct or indirect. Period. No amount of your whining, posturing and misdirection will obscure this simple fact.
Bullshit. You made a
You are confusing a disfunctional democracy with outright totalitarian state. These things are not a matter of black and white binary conditions, but rather a continuum of possibilities. An institutionalized, ritual "two-party in name, one party of estabilishment in practice" system which the USA has devolved into is a far cry from a vibrant markeptlace of ideas the Founding Fathers envisioned. That does not mean that the USA has descended as far as totalitarianism, although The Police State has arrived and has unpacked his luggage, got his torture rack installed in the basement and now is mounting his pictures on the wall, while listening to your calls on his scanner. When he makes himself really at home, then he is going to call one of his best buddies, The Tyranical Dictatorship or perheaps The Empire. But the landlord might yet come to his senses and kick this new tenant's ass out. Only time will tell.
Note also the disfunctional mass media, the conglomeration of channels of information (with the exception of the Internet) and the consolidation of financial power in fewer and fewer hands. Then also note the increasing disparity of ownership of assets between the majority of Americans and the top 1% elite, now at the levels not seen since 1929.
So please do not dismiss these events by proclaiming that the Brown Shirts are not marching yet, because history never repeats itself precisely the same way. Yet when the modern equivalents of the most prominent excesses of the tyrants past arrive, it will be far too late to complain then.
Please be very careful with data from Afghanistan because while the Western ideals might indeed be somewhat popular in Kabul and posisbly in Khandahar, they are definitely not so in the countryside, where the pollsters dare not go. Afghanistan is a (probably hopelessly for a foreseeable future) tribalized country to the point that every few villages have their own warlord. Allegiances are of the utmost tricky and fickle nature and depend usually on the amount of bribes various sides can offer. All people under the control of the warlord dare not "vote" in any silly elections in any contradictory to his will way. In short, the whole thing is far too medieval for any Enlightenment concept such as "democracy" to take hold outside of the major centers where the "government" is wholly dependent on NATO forces to keep it in power. The situation is actually laughably similar to the state of affairs during the Soviet occupation, except with the Commie Afghan government in the starring role back then who proudly exhibited polls showing that just about everyone in Afghanistan, with the exception of some few religious lunatics called the Taliban, wants Socialism. And we all know how that turned out in the long term.
Mass movements of change always come from within societies when they become ready for them. The West fostered dissent for 40 or so years in the Soviet sphere by incessant propaganda effort via multiple modalities and it finally succeeded ... when the lure of consumer goods and supposed riches to be had by "everybody" became too great. Sad but true. The Gdansk Shipyard strikes which started the whole thing were about money, not "freedom" or "democracy". Carefuly cultivated and encouraged greed finally succeeded where all other means failed. That is why I mentioned jokingly the 2-apartament riches of the Commie bureaucrats, because that was the actual
If only.
The goings on in the USA demonstrate clearly to anyone who is paying attention that supposedly advanced democracies and reasonably free market systems are extremely fragile and more often then not all the "freedoms" are nothing but a thin veneer covering totalitarian forces, de-facto dynastical aristocracy or skillfully manipulated by demagouges mob rule within. If the recent drastic political changes within the USA and the belligerent behaviour of various supposedly freedom-loving Western governments would have not occured, the chances of convincing people within the former Soviet sphere or in Iraq or Palestine to "tough it out" would have been much greater. As it is, I do not think the words "democracy" or "capitalism" have the purchasing power they used to, not by a long shot. Add to this a long standing, abusive, one-sided and hypocritical attitdue the US had towards the Arab world for the last 50+ years and the USA becomes the very anti-thesis of justice and freedom in the eyes of Arab (and Persian) audiences.
So as a result those people do not see the light at the end of the tunnel, or if they do it is a much much dimmer one. And so they are ready to cut their own paths through the jungle of politics no longer heeding any "advice" from the discredited in their eyes Western pundits. Accusations of being "undemocratic" from those who they now see as duplicitous, hypocritcal and ill meaning only spur them on in the opposite direction.
Well, a lage part of the problems occured right at the outset of transition from communism because the most vile of Western charlatans, whose "theories" are widely derided and opposed by most sane people in their own native lands, got to shape the fate of the formerly communist nations, where people greeted them as "experts" and gave them the benefit of the doubt. And the denisens of those places are still paying for that bit of naivette, having only too late discovered that they have invited wolves and foxes into their chickenhouse. Putin and his band of merry authocrats is a response to the wholesale thievery of pretty much an entire nation by Yeltsin's (mostly Israeli) cronies while Geoffrey Sachs' of the world were prescribing "belt tightening" and "starvation shock therapy" for the average Russian. "Things getting better" were a result of a massive pushback by the populace against the "dog-eat-dog", "winner takes all", "steal everything not nailed down" "capitalism" as it was being instituted by these "experts" (although not necessarily against the bureaucrats who were complicit in the whole affair).
Well the problem with democracy is that the number of vicious wolves attempting to rip the society apart is no less in it then in any other system. After hundreds of years, the most visible and frequently held up as the gold standard example of Constitutional Democracy in the US is still barely functional, highly corruptible and constantly teetering on the edge of collapse. Just witness the antics of GW Bush and his pals and what they did with the supposedly democratic nation under their control. I think a lot of people in the former Soviet sphere realized, only too late, that the "democracy" and "capitalism" as it was sold to them (and boy was it ever a fevered sales pitch!) were in actuality nowhere near resembling their depictions on the glossy sales brochures, and that their old communist system had some few features they actually liked better. Many are starting to feel cheated and duped. The term for this is "buyer's remorse".
What will come of all of this I do not know, but to blame the denizes of the former USSR for being somehow "impatient" when asking for the promised results to be delivered as promised is the very height of hypocrisy. I fear that their anger will only grow with time as now they are also discovering that their supposed new "friends" are also busy expanding their military presence everywhere around them in an effort to consolidate their de-facto Imperial power and that the old USSR was the only force holding back the expansion of the said Empire. Suspicions of duplicitous intent are only natural in light of such developments.
You are confusing logic with sales. The point of this excercise is to sell a bunch $50,000 anti-alien-mind-control-ray tin foil hats. "100% Guaranteed and Tested! No Space Aliens have ever penetrated our ReflectoBeanie! Its a real bargain!"
Never you mind that practicality of manipulating takns into shooting each other or their own troops is beyond ridiculous from the perspective of logistics on the battlefield and return on investment for the attacker who would have to be just in the right place in the right time with a complete understanding of the internal workings of the enemy's command and control systems and procedures, relative tank positions and in respect to their true targets and also to be able to plausibly override voice communications when one tank commander goes on his radio to ask "Sir, why are we prorized to shoot a target 90 degrees from the direction towards the enemy positions?".
But thats Military Industrial complex for ya. Next up, $500 military-grade anti-vampire garlic patches.
You might reconsider that after you discover that "Peter's Country" will be a freezing puddle of mud where you get to subsist on tree bark and wear scraps of tires for shoes until you die. After all, "patience" would be required and the results not expected for, oh somewhere around 200 year mark from the date of the glorious foundation of that visionary nation.
Which people? The children of their children? The recipe you've just described is for a whole life of misery, pain, destitution for whole generations of people who will never get to see the supposed results of their sacrifices before they die. That is what your version of "patience" means.
I do not blame them in the slightest that upon discovering that the goods they have been sold with great fanfare come with a fine, fine print saying "You the buyer, do not dare to expect results for 100 years after you are dead. We, the sellers, can expect the results immediately. By the way if you are of an older generations, everything you have worked for is now null and void. Have a nice day."
I too would have been somewhat miffed at this attitude. Note that none of this "wait 200 years" bullshit was ever mentioned in the rosy stories by the Voice of America before the Soviet Union fell, was it? Amongst all the song and dance and innuendo about how streets are pretty much paved with gold and rivers run with honey in the Capitalist Paradise, there were strong suggestions that the West is oh-so equitable and that everyone is if not a millionaire, then at least has a mansion and 2 cars, and that you can be that way too if you only got rid of these horrible, unjust Commie bureaucrats who lord over you with their unheard of excesses of having two, count em: Two!, rooms more in their apartament then you. That would have never happened in the Capitalist Paradise! And then of course there was all that unjust political stuff like the horrible, unthinkable demands of these tyrannical Commies to see your papers when you travel to check you against that abomination of "dissident no-travel list" and having your phones bugged, or maybe even to haul you away to a Gulag - plain impossible, we say, impossible in the Glorious Freedom Loving America. Etc and so on.
Having had experience with these types of sales in the West, people have coined a term for them: "bait and switch".
And its a type of a scam.
This coming from a dude who thinks something to the effect of "Islam is Taking Over The World! Panic Now!" and that Christianity is a cuddly, wholly harmless pasttime.
Wee things like empirical evidence of vast attrocities by most religions (Christianity in particular) do not seem to register with you in arriving at your pre-determined self-serving outcome.
I repeatedly demonstrated why they are more dangerous, to which you responded with insinuations of "secret knowledge" of plots vast and dastardly to which I am not privvy.
True, most people who identify themselves as "Christians" are very mellow as most do not realize what the actual tenets of Christianity as contained in its holy books actually are. But so it is also with the followers of Islam, of whom there are a billion, most not engaged in any sort of warfare of any kind!
Poland and Ireland are decidedly theocratic, in Poland you cannot graduate from high-school without receiving a passing grade from a Catholic priest (a recently passed law has that effect).
And then if you rewind the clock some centuries back...
Also note that the most prominent of the fundamentalist Christianst movements in the USA are aiming precisely at that: rollback to medieval times.
See above.
They are evil, irrational and worthless. The fact that some of them were defanged (temporarily) does not change that.
Err, like? Do enumerate achievements not otherwise possible by, say, secular means. I am all ears!
You know, this shit whereby you try to pretend some great hidden knowledge without actually spelling your supposed evidence out is getting old fast.
This does not go well with your demonstated anti-Islam zeal combined with your defense of Christianity as somehow superior. Also, I repeat my request, do enumerate achievements of civilization which could not be otherwise possible without apriori brain damage from religious mumbo-jumbo.
So far you have demonstated visceral hatred of all things Islamic and more then friendly ambivalence about Christianity. Given that, I fear to even try to imagine the levels of biggotry those "Christians" must exhibit.
Which are some of the least reliable, sectarian-run sources.
Who does? Are you suggesting that LA Times or UN agents attended all funerals everywhere in Iraq for some period of time?!
See here.
Search under "shock and awe".
He (and his fellow demagouges all over the media) constantly insinuate all of this, although even they are not bold enough to actually use these terms directly, as is the case with many other propagandists advocating violence under the guise of "justice" or "peace".
No, he did advocate, and still does, warfare with "Islamofascists" (the actual ridiculous term he uses) whom he claimed Saddam was in cahoots with (amongst many, many other lies and distortions) and war on all those who refuse to submit to America-centric rule of "democracy", as defined by American and Zionist Neo-cons. Not to mention his anti-Islam innuendo (which alone is a dead giveway about his true ideas about the predominantly Muslim population of Iraq). The religion is different, the bloody results similar.
Also that "murderous totalitarian government" appears to have been no more murderous then the "liberators" and was at any rate less disastrous to the state of daily lives of average Iraqis. At the worst of Saddam times Baghdad at least had drinkable water and semi-operational sewage.
Oh I see, so according to this logic the culpabilty for your actions always belongs to other people because no matter what you have done, they have free will! Thus you are automatically blameless for anything that happens as a result of your activities, even if the behaviour of those other people is easily predictable far in advance! How so very neo-conservative of you! I believe you call that idea "Personal Responsibility" and you cherish it very much.
Also, the entire point of religious brainwashing is to achieve the replacement of higher brain functions with uncritical religious zeal. One can easily see that this is true by a very simple test: all religious doctrines are patently absurd, irrational, internally inconsistent and lack any empircial evidence whatsoever, thus brain disfunction is a pre-requisite to acceptance of such dogmas. This makes the True Believer religious zealots of all stripes no more free willed (nor smarter) then the worms I mentioned.
I already explained that one has to take into account all studies as all their methodologies are prone to error and use an average of their results. You prefer to pretend that only the lowest estimates have some validity because this is consistent with your pre-conceived notions about the state of affairs and you are not actually interested in any evidence which could contradict them.
You know, argument-less idiots who are reduced to feigning getting vapours at their opponent's audacity to beat their half-baked ideas into a bloody pulp are really tiresome after a while, even though they can provide some short-term amusement. Go back to spewing spittle while screaming about The Evils Of Everything-Non-Christianist while warning the passer-bys of The Islamist Boogeyman Who Cometh on your street corner. You will have more success there. And bonus, if you put a hat out some people might throw coins in it.
I am afraid he would since many of his "morality" proposals require wide-spread governmental powers. Same for his militaristic (which he denies while actively foting for them) and many other aspirations. He simply wants the big governmental powers in places different from where they are now. This is in actuality the same problem most of the "small government" conservatives have, they all come with pet wacko social dogmas, enforcement of which is completely at odds with their espoused views on the mechanics of governance.
Only if it came to abortion ... or sex between people he does not approve of ... or racial segregation ... or religious persecution ... or corporate excesses such as trusts and monopolies ... or basic social safety nets ... etc and so on
See above. His practical, deeply cherished by him beliefs are at odds with his overall proclamations.
Err, it is not a good thing. Let me repost this link from another poster's post. Go see yourself.
Unfortunately Ron Paul is no panacea for this.
And is a faux-Libertarian, nationalistic religious racist zealot any better? This straregy of trying to elect a patently disturbed individual so to "upset" the staus quo of corrupt fat fascists does not strike me as a particularly wise one. There are some wee unintended consequences possible that I can see, even if you don't.