Good call, let us compare conservative billionaires to a man who killed millions of people for no reason other than their relgious backgroud, color of their skin, or personal beliefs
You perheaps did not notice but Hitler's racist views were separate from his socio-economic views, which are, for the most part, compatible with the musings of some of the prominent, present-day right-wingers. Pretending that because his evil is nearly universally accepted that it somehow means that the right-wingers could never, ever be even close to his ideas in these specific matters is a dishonest device designed to render any exposition of these positions impossible, lest one "sullies" himself with the comparisons that "bolster one's image amongst the fruitcakes". Whom then to compare the jolly support for unrestrained corporatism, phony "patriotism", "pre-emptive" wars based on lies and all the other striking and major similarities to Hitler? Mussollini? Would that make it more acceptable?
and whines about all their charitable donations not being to the charities The Nation prefers.
No it "whines" about these "charities" being stealth contributions to the "conservative" or "libertarian" causes, far outsripping the "official" contributions, made in order to hide them, and to create a misleading impression vs. someone like George Soros who does not play these dishonest games with his donations. If one gives a huge pile of money to Heritage Foundation or Cato Institute, even though they are not explicitely labelled "For Republicans" these donations are political and to right-wing causes. You can pretend and call them "charity" all you want but it fools noone.
That's not exactly the claimed 100 times what Soros spend politically every year. Soros spent 27 million just to try and defeat Bush in the last election.
Which is a puny fraction of money donated by the likes of Waltons, for example, to fund an effort to privatize education (to the tune of over $100 million per year to various anti-public school organizations alone).
Heck, liberal Bill Gates spends more on liberal causes than the whole family
Gates? Liberal? What causes? Last time I heard that weasel was desperately trying to appease everybody to create his "legacy" image of a great "phillantropist" (and to stuff his pockets some more in the process as a side effect of his "donations").
Recently, they've had around a 4:1 advantage in 527's. You know, the loop hole in BCRA.
And the "conservatives" and "libertarians" had a severe advantage in stealth donations outside of direct political contributions to institutions such as Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, Christian Right organizations and many, many others, completely hidden from these inane BCRA regulations. They also outright own the FOX TV network and Clear Channel, both explicitely tasked with "conservative" propaganda mission, which amounts to hundreds of radiostations thoughout USA and also have major editorial control over CNN and other "mainstream" media, which is doubly disturbing in the light of an incessent propaganda campaign by the right-wingers to label all media not completely controlled by them as "liberally biased". There is at this point no major media distribution network in the US which is not under "conservative" control (save the Internet) and that situation should be counted as an extreme case of campaing contributions by the owners of those networks (in billions of dollars per year). George Soros can't hold a candle to these people.
Also, your washington post article doesn't say what you said it does about 2002.
Quote:
In 2002, with the end-of-the-cycle reports still to be filed, the flow of cash to Democrats has fallen slightly to $121 million, while contributions to Republicans have ballooned to nearly $213 million.
That is nearly 2:1 advantage. (I made a typo saying 3:1, as 3:1 applies only to the drug industry).
And I just run across of this little piece of in-depth analysis of Waltons' activities to better illustrate the extensive efforts of the billionaire's in support of various etxreme right-wing causes and the fillantropic disguises they employ to do so.
However, I'm sure with your opinions, you'll be able to come up with a few
A few? Most of them do that, although their activities are usually marked "special interest", like, say, the Walton's anti-public-school campaigns which are both a "republican" and a "libertarian" cause. Speaking of Waltons, they alone comprise something like 20% of the list of billionaires and you cannot find more fanatical right-wingers then they are.
Back in reality, the Democratic party in the U.S. gets much more of it's contributions from large individual contributions than the Republican party does, both in terms of percentage of contributions and in terms of total contributions.
Yes, specially the likes of Howard Dean, no? Speaking of contributions, where do you pull your numbers out of, your ass as usual? Here is what Washington Post has on this, which mentions a 3:1 ratio of big businesses and their owners (read: billionaires and millionaires) support for Republicans vs Democrats (in 2002). Unless of course you consider organized labour being "a billionaire".
That way maybe people who aren't billionaire liberals like George Soros might be able to compete without having to hire a bunch of lawyers first to find the loopholes.
You mean to tell me that billionaires, as a rule, are liberals? Or perhaps, just perhaps most of them are priviledged former trust fund kids, or sociopathic worshippers of greed and who are so far to the right on the political spectrum that they rub shoulders with one Adolf. Selfish, arrogant and willing to claw their way to the top over the backs of others, willing to put their interests ahead of the society's, lacking of any scruples: those are basic pre-conditions to becoming a billionaire. George Soros probably has gotten a severe case of guilty conscience. Most of billionaires are far more viciously callous then he and they will not blink to outspend him 100 to 1 on their favourite, extreme-right-wing causes.
this is where i gloat that we canucks (err, that's Canadian, eh!?) don't suffer from useless, intrusive laws, and value our fair-use...
Yes, the corporatists are on the march here too. I despise both the Liberals (whose definition of "liberal" seems to be "corporatist-lite" and the Conservatives for being such corporate whores (the Conservatives are worse, because in addition to being corporate whores they are also catering to the rich and are on top of that theocratic and US-subservient). NDP is laughable both from the point of their viability and the wild, eclectic and completely far-out set of characters who inhabit it. So we are basically screwed, although less so then they are down there south of the border. What we need is some charismatic party which can see through the fog of corporate lies and propaganda, which is not slavishly subservient to one special-interest cause and which would stand up for Canada and not for WIPO or WTO. Perheaps we can get lucky and such saviour would emerge soon. This is the main difference between us and the USA. We get new parties all the time, our political landscape is reasonably fluid. We have a little more time yet before an economic and cultural catastrophy befalls us, alas, I fear that we will have to suffer it first before the sheeple of the electorate wake up and create a climate for an emergence of such a movment.
Point? I did it, and you can too. Easily. So do. Go out and do.
Do not you worry about me. I am harassing my MP about this regularly. But my problem is that our Canadian politicos are being influenced (read: bought) by the US corporate interests or are being cornered via the corporate's vicious WTO/WIPO instruments and what is happening in the US is merely a preview of what will happen here shortly afterwards. If you can stop it over there, it will significantly reduce the likelyhood of this crap making it across the border. But I do not believe you can, as at this point the US is nearly completely in the clutches of the corporatists and they are tightening their grip daily. They do have nearly all the adventages at this point.
We don't HAVE to buy drugs, nor do we HAVE to buy any of the crap from Hollywood. We are literally paying for the rope that will hang us.
While technically true, it does not work that way in practice. Both the drug pushers and the "enterntainment industry" managed to create a situation where vast hordes of people who do not know any better are addicted to their respective brain-damaging merchandise. The only, small, difference in favour of RIAA is that their "products" do not directly manipulate brain chemistry of the victims. The resulting effect though is nearly identical as the "enterntainment industry" managed to make itself an indispensable part of the "american lifestyle". Remove the TV and most supposedly wealthy "mainstream" Americans would find out the sad truth: their lives are miserable, meaningles and empty and the TV is the mesmerising "drug" to relieve that condition.
All rules like this do is create a black market and more criminals.
That's the idea. In a society where breathing air is illegal, everyone, except the annointed "lawful inhalers" are criminals. Then tyrants have no difficulties in extracting obedience as all citizens are subject to arrests which are both a tool of control and "legal" at the same time. Such ubiquitous "criminality" is one of the basic components of tyranny.
"War" on drugs is a perfect example: a problem which is medical in nature has been criminalized, resulting in the US having the highest percentage of imprisoned citizens from all the nations in the world, beating places like China, USSR, Iran, North Corea or Cuba. As a bonus side effect, the drug profits have never been greater, related violent crimes never more deadly and the police apparatus never more aggressive, violent, domineering, encroaching on most basic civil rights and never better funded.
I suspect the "war" on "piracy" is heading in the same direction: total subjegation of citizenry to zealous special interests. Combine this with resurgence of retarded, violent, anti-intellectual theocracy in the USA and the trickle of scientists and others who depend on unresticted knowledge for their trade who are leaving the US now will become a deluge. USA is going the way most of the empires of the past have: self-destruction in the name of greed and religion.
And of course, you're wrong - even a wageless worker carries risk
I merely responded to your proposition of creating, quote, "flexible market, in which there is no risk to hiring someone". Clearly a $0 wage or enslavememt is one of the preconditions. I am sure there would be more, like state insurance to the slave owner for any damages a "defective" slave could inflict. But it is you who proposed creating a "no risk" situation to the employer and furthermore, prepostrously claimed that it would lead to increase in wages. I merely pointed out its chief required pre-conditions and the subsequent contradiction in your analysis. If you think you can retro-actively change your declarations, with such pathetic weaseling about as, quote: 'I did not advocate any particular goal of "reducing risk of labor"; I was just citing one thing that pulls down wages' then you are sorely mistaken. I assumed that you were serious about the issue but this first exchange presents you immediately as a clownish purveyor of hot air, who does not hesitate to recraft his "message" each time someone happens to point out its inherent illogic.
That happens in slavery, but it also happens with socialist states,
That is plainly a fabrication. Even in the Soviet Union, the workers were able to choose their place of employment (providing they were not politically active dissenters), unlike the scrip-paid workers of certain US companies who not only did not have a choice in the matter (the gigiantic company being one of the very few employers in the geographical area, "employing" whole families including children from young age) but once "employed" they were steadily getting more indebted to the company due to the very clever arrangement of the "company store" credit issued at an interest rate that would make a Mafia loan-shark blush. One could try to argue that all Soviet companies were ultimately owned by the state, which was true, but they all had their own managment and quite unique and different internal operation, including wages. Not to mention that a small number of overlapping groups of ultra-wealthy investors hold significant shares of most major companies today, creating disturbingly similar scenarios. That is right, a vile communist dictatorship offered more freedom to the workers then some of the crown achievements of the US Gilded Age, a time of indentured servitude or abject poverty for most and exorbitant riches for very few, a time to which you clearly pine to return to.
And again, to clarify, lowering wages does not reduce risk; the risk is still there, it's just hedged.
Ergo, reduced. You are constructing self-contradictory sentences. It is plainly obvious that $0 cost, no-rights, enslaved, government-bonded "employees" are as close to your, quote, "no risk to hiring someone" as one can possibly get. Yet your panicked flailing indicates that you do not like these, completely contrary to your assertions, implications of your own de-regulatory proposals.
If someone's not worth hiring at a price, they're not worth hiring at that price, no matter what the regulations are.
That may be true but the regulations prevent you from enslaving that desperate person at 1/5th going wage paid in scrip + 75% interest rate on the advance of food and baby formula from your "generous" company store. Yet you do not grasp this simple, plain to see, implication. This, combined with a social safety net, moderates the absolute power and leverage the employer has over employees in the vast oversupply of labour situation, which persisted for most of the human history but was never as accutely prominent as it is now.
If they are worth hiring, competition for workers drives their wage up to that price.
Competition for workers?! Minus points deducted for complete, numbskulled lack of even a smallest of modicums of understanding of the situation. Let me repeat: vast oversupply of labour is the present dominant condition
The best way, the opposition claims, to increase wages is to allow a flexible labor market in which there is no risk to hiring someone so employers will "take a chance" on anyone - disabled, female, minority, uneducated, single parent, whatever.
This condition will only exist when their wage is $0. For any non-zero wage there is a "risk". Therefore, logically, what you propose amounts to a reduction of wages towards $0 in order to reduce "risk" of hiring and corresponding increase in profits (note here that there is no provisions of those profits to be re-invested or redirected towards employees). One can also imagine a scenario whereby one owns his workers outright, like in the late 1800s, whereby they are paid in "scrip" redeemable only at the company store you also own. Which is quite consistent with your proposal, because this is precisely the logical, ultimate outcome of the process of "reducing risk" via lower wages brought on by complete de-regulation and globalization of the marketplace (i.e. return of feudalism, or more precisely, creation of a corporate feudalism). An indentured slave is the least "risky" proposition as he/she is in no position to refuse your bidding, well maybe perheaps by being petty about things and dying prematurely. This outcome we know with absolute certainty, as much of it already happened in the said Gilded Age of Robber Barrons, a response to which was the minimum wage regulation, preventing "scrip" and other sorts of evil "wage" schemes. But how easily do we forget, so that we can learn the same lessons over and over again.
They claim its only for energy, and they must be telling the truth, seeing how they sit on the worlds second largest oil supply.
Perhaps they know something about the state of their oil reserves that you don't. Perhaps they feel that in the upcoming peak oil scenario their best bet is to a) have alternate sources of energy for themselves as to make maximum use of exportable black gold, b) have nukes to defend themselves from the inevietable, desperate attempts at grabbing that oil by the addicted and suffering from severe withdrawal effects, junkie Western countries and China to boot, c) are afraid of their Israeli and US enemies who have both nukes and have been proven beyond any doubt to be regional aggressors, complete with use of the utterly prepostrous, Hitler-like excuse of "pre-emption". Not to mention the past history of US encouragement of Saddam's war on Iran and to begin with, CIA's destruction of the democratic government of Iran and replacement of thereof with the Shah. Just you ponder this wee, little, and quite incomplete list before you start calling people Jackasses, you uninformed troglodyte.
You know, if you're going to use a term like "corporatism", you should first learn what it actually means. Because you sure don't seem to be talking about rule by government-established councils consisting of representatives of businesses and labor unions.
No, I speak of another form corporatism, that is a government by CEOs of corporations disguised as a representative democracy (note the absence of the labour unions). At this point, in most western democracies, it is impossible for a politician to get elected without some explicit help from corporations, both financial and direct (as for example corporate media access). Subsequently it is not a surprise that these politicians have little choice but to do corporate bidding. Furthermore, since at this point the corporations in some western countries (USA principally) have completely monopolized the access to information for majority of citizenry, they are now capable of directly influencing the mass preceptions and opinions of that public. Since dumb, easily led, public is the optimal, maleable form of "voters" for a corporation-friendly arrangement, most of the journalism which once afforded the populace the opportunity to participate meaningfully in politics has been replaced by "soft news", "infotainment" and a plethora of meaningless shouting heads.
This is the most dangerous form of corporatism because, unlike in that old example of yours, the corporations do not share any of the risks of direct participation in politics and subsequently its fallout, and yet, at the same time, hold all the cards, regardless of who gets "elected".
In fact, having companies like IBM, GE, Raytheon, Boeing, Haliburton, Intel, Microsoft, Exxon, Google, etc have done wonders for my wallet.
No, what has done wonders for your wallet is the tens of thousands of small businesses which employ, as they always have, 80% of US citizens.
We've had corporations and a stock market in America for 200 years... I fail to see how they hurt us.
Stock market is irrelevant to this, as I do not advocate abolishment of business but controls on large corporations. As to the excesses of those large corporations, try the activities of the Robber Barons or the 1929 market crash. If it were not for the fact that some people always opposed them, you would be by now an indentured, to some new Robber Baron, slave.
It is rather simple: The stated and exclusive purpose of a corporation is to generate profit. The optimal condition to generate maximum profit is a government-protected monopoly. Therefore most corporations, once they reach certain size, actively work to undermine democratic processes, by attempting to lobby, bribe politicians and influence public opinion via affiliated media in order to fulfill their purpose to its full extent. Furthermore, once a corporation unduly grows in size, via acquisitions and mergers, with each expansion it becomes less and less a construct of a free market and more and more an ingredient of an oligarchy, as at each stage of consolidation the overall level of free market competition is lessened. The optimal political system for these corporations, once they are large enough, is fascism. Today, some corporations have accumulated more wealth and power then entire nations.
All of the above, combined, simply means that the purposes of corporations are at odds of those of cirizenry. The capitalist free market as well as the democratic societies in general are simply not equipped to deal with artificial "persons" of immesurable power and wealth, rivalling those of the representative governments. Corporations were never intended to be this way, nor does Adam Smith's theory take their existence properly into account as his was a theory of socially beneficial side-effects of personal greed aided by inventiveness to be aggressively and efficiently counter-balanced by competition. Thus large (especially multi-national) corporations are contrary to both the democratic credo of representative govenance and capitalist marketplace. Thereofre it is a duty of every believer in democracy and personal freedoms to oppose those who believe in governance by corproations for corporations and to insist that severe limits and restrictions be placed on the size and political activities of corporations. As corporatists believe the exact opposite, it is therefore a duty of every democratically oriented citizen of every country to oppose corporatists.
To all slashdotters who want U.N. control of the internet- behold, internationalization and diversity prove inferior to plain old fashioned American ideals yet again.
What the fuck are you on about? These are foreign corporations that want to screw all the consumers, as usual, and as pioneered by the, oh-so-democratically great US corporations. It is the corporations which are the enemy here and the UN has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with this. Furthermore, corporate sponsored entities, the WTO and WIPO do have everything to do with this, and yet, somehow, I do see brainwashed tools shreeking at the top of their lungs about the UN and not them.
It is a democratic duty of every citizen of any democratic nation, be it US, Canada, France, Germany or any other to oppose corporatists at every turn, because corporatism and democracy are mutually exclusive.
Estonian authorities have confirmed that the e-voting was a complete success and their faith in this 21st century solution was completely justified.
"It was flawless", the Chief Election Commissioner said, and in apparent attempt to gloat over his critics, who were loudly warning of problems, he added: "And it proves that contrary to what those feeble Doomsayers were saying, we should not fear new technology, we should embrace it because it is new, shiny and made in America!".
In related news, some confusion persists of the proper procedure of swearing the new Estonian President, Barney "The Pink" Dinosaur, and his vice-president Wet Noodle, both of the party "All Your Base Belong To Us". Additional complications for the traditionalists is the suprising new discoverery at the polls that apparently most Estonians turned out to be of the Jedi religion.
There are terrorists there, and we knew they were.
Except I just demolished that bullshit. Saddam did not "harbour" any of his mortal enemies and killed them at the first opportunity. Osama called Saddam fondly an "apostate" or "infidel communist" and incited his followers to kill him, complete with a 1990 offer to the House of Saud to bring his Afghani mujahedeen to fight against Saddam so that the Saudis do not invite the US. At best, and that is playing the devil's advocate, Saddam provided medical help to some old, beat-up, out-of action PLO militants, as PLO and Saddam's Ba'ath were both secular movements (PLO is a great enemy of Hamas/Al-Queda, by the way, and the two are at each other's throats, with PLO losing, as you should know by now from the news from the Gaza strip). In other words no facts seem to make it to the planet Pluto where you live.
It was in the best interest of this country, and for that matter every country to get rid of them before they attack others.
It never was in the interest of the USA, but it was in the interest of some corporate crooks within. You are confusing the two, unless your oath of allegiance was to the Halliburton Inc.
We didn't make terrorists at all, it is every person's responcibility to decide how to act on a given occasion.
Which in the case of an unjustified foreign invasion is to take up arms.
If their choice is to become a terrorist, they shouldn't be on Earth anyway.
Right, they should have just rolled over and died so that you can have your way, even if you are patently doing them harm for your own selfish reasons, right?
If you think that the world is not composed of merely good people and bad people then YOU really are diluted as said before.
I have news for you: the world is composed of people of various goals in life, some of them conflicting drastically. What is a "good" guy for you is an "evil" one for most of the 2 billion Muslims. That is because your "hero" happens to be a murderous thug from their perspective. Likewise, those who probably deem themselves as, and are seen by their community as, "freedom fighters" are "terrorists" to you. Same as the Polish underground was to the Nazis in WW2. They too, officially, were called "terrorists" in the Nazi documents and were blowing up trains full of German civilian settlers heading for Silesia.
Therefore the only metric to be applied is that of aggressor doing harm to someone, and the defender defending himself from it, and on that score the US is doing more poorly then Al-Queda these days. And that is why "pre-emptive" wars are such a gigiantic mistake as they establish the initiator as objectively "evil".
I've never been outside this country, so I have never had the chance to wrong anyone out there bad enough to justify them deciding to wipe out me, my family, or my country. So if they do decide that, they are bad people.
Strange, and yet you advocate murdering those you suspect of not liking you, "pre-emptively", for "their own good". While you did not pull the trigger yourself, those 500lb bombs ripping children to shreds in Baghdad might have had your name stencilled on them just as well.
So if they do decide that, they are bad people.
No. After the "shock and awe" was finished with their families, they had all the rights under the sun to treat you like a mortal enemy. Yet another glorious effect of stupid "pre-emption". AL-Queada had no right to do 9/11 as the US, even though pissing them off politically, did not actually initiate the killing with them. They were the originators, hence they were the "evil" ones. The situation in Iraq is precisely the reverse, the US is the unquestionable, and unprovoked, aggressor.
As an aside though, I didn't instigate a dang thing! I merely said that going to war was the right thing and still is.
Yea right. "I only said that 'skinning children to make lamp shades' was a good business opportunity. I never expected a backlash, that was nothing personal you know, just business, why all that hostility? Sheesh!"
Thus, we always have a remedy if the laws are defective
Wrong on two counts: first in the case of a death sentence, it can be too late for a remedy and second, the current neo-con movement in the US is explicitely working to establish a single-party system in the disguise of democracy, or were you perheaps asleep for the last 15 years?
Your political system is already dangeroulsy tilted towards consolidation, you are the only one of major industrialized countries with a two party system, slowly becoming a one party system. That is why the last remaining safeguard is the courts which should attempt to interpret the Constitution to prevent further detertioration of the already very tenuous grasp the voters have of the process.
Your first hypothetical is absurd as the SCOTUS would certainly deem a law banning someone from being a Muslim as unconstitutional on any number of grounds - there is no need for doing anything but rigorously applying the Constitution here.
Except that then they would be labelled as "legislating from the bench" by those who would soooo love to see a Theocratic Fascism of sorts to come to be, and who are getting closer to that goal by the minute.
In the second case, if the Constitution gives the President powers to detain people and hold secret trials, I disagree that the SCOTUS should do anything about it.
Except it clearly does not. The Founding Fathers would be mortified and aghast at the very notion. And yet the executive branch has managed to circumvent that so far.
You appear to believe the SCOTUS should be able to ignore the law just because at least five elderly folks in black robes who were potentially appointed decades earlier believe it's "unjust".
They should be able to suspend it if it conflicts with the Constitution, as most of these "unjust" laws do. But the constitution is not omni-prescient and misses a lot of things the Founding Fathers could not foresee. SCOTUS should be able to extend the spirit of the constitution onto those "laws".
Suppose the Supreme Court, in some vaguely related case, declares that in order to "insure a just outcome", online postings that criticize the President constitute treason and are not protected by the first amendment?
That would go directly against the Constitution and its spirit.
Look I do not argue that SCOTUS must have absolute freedom, only that it should have the lattitude to follow the spirit of the Consititution, rather then its two centuries old letter.
Go read all of the relevant U.N. resolutions. You'll find that the United States was perfectly within its rights to invade Iraq.
Why do I somehow attract illiterate cretins to the discussion? The resolution 1441 did not authorize any war, merely offered "serious consequences" as a threat, consequences to be determined at the next session on the subject. It was a direct equivalent of 1990 resolution 660, which also did similarly for the Kuwait war. But not until resolution 678 the authorization was given which specifically states "all necessary means" which is the standard dimplomatic way of declaring war. That is from 660 via 661, 662, 664, 665, 666, 667, 669, 670, 674 and 677 and finally 678 where an actual authorization is given to use "all necessary means". You go read the resolutions before sticking your ignorant snout into this. And get off Limbaugh and O'Rilley before you come back here claiming the sky is green.
It IS a legal war, despite what you want to believe.
See above, retard.
Of course, I don't expect the average slashdot reader to understand or believe the truth when they read it.
This wasn't really pre-emptive, we knew they were harboring the enemy, and it's like the old saying goes, "Your either with us or against us".
You are a special kind of a brainless turd. Of course they were not harbouring any "enemy". The closest you can get is the Kurds who, under US protection, harboured the predescessor to the Ansar Al-Islam, the The Islamic Movement of Iraqi Kurdistan, who were mortal enemies of Saddam, as all of Al-Queda was. But the other part is true, you are eager to murder tens of thousands of people in foreign lands because their bully in chief refused to lick Busheviks' assholes, thus not being "with you". So when is the bombing campaign of France to start as they are also "not with you", you mental midget?
How about the several hundred terrorists, and terrorist helpers that are now six feet under. Frankly, that alone justifies the action.
You mean the "terrorists and terrorist helpers" whom you created out of regular Iraqis by the invasion? How about hundreds if not thousands of those who you merely decided to kill pre-emptively and whose sons will become terrorists? The Iraq war has markedly increased the number of terrorists and terror attacks, dumbass, not decreased it. Al-Queda calls Iraq its "greatest recruitment boom".
It's not my fault you are too diluted to notice who the bad guys are. Perhaps I am not the one in a "make-believe never-never land".
Thanks for proving my point, you simpleton. The world is not composed of "good guys" and "bad guys" like in some cheesy western. But you are far to dense to grasp that.
Its no skin off my back should you choose to ignore reality.
I could not help but notice that you failed to provide any coherent arguments for the war, and the only two examples of "research" and "gain" you spouted were so patently false that a 10 year old would know that by now. Now what was that you were mumbling about reality?
If YOU choose to have offtopic posts spewing from YOUR account, that's your deal.
The same could also be said of your position of course
Really? List one, genuine, positive outcome of this clusterfuck which is not wholly cancelled by the negative ones, either for Iraq or for struggle against terrorist extermists. And no, you can skip both the the "democracy" bullshit (as they are set for a Burka-loving Islamic Republic/civil war combo) as well as the "Saddam killed/tortured people" crap as the US is doing admirably in both of these catagories.
Wow, a predictable fiasco eh? I bet that can't be said of EVERY OTHER WAR!!!!!
That is precisely why "pre-emptive" wars are pursued only by villains or complete imbeciles.
Of course, i'm not sure why I would even need to prove my point considering your username.
Looking for easy ways out, aren't we?
It seems to me that all the people against the war are either not from the US, or are the same people that want to disarm us anyway (which is part of the democratic platform).
Experiencing an out-of-control band of idiots at the helm of a powerful military does that to people. And there is nothing to be proud of claiming that all the ignorant morons are your citizens (falsely actually, but thats par for the course for the likes of you).
In my opinion, anyone who has done their research would not be against the war.
Research?! The pre-condition of this whole fuckup was fabricating intelligence and propagandizing neo-con fantasies. Anyone who has done any research was against the war, covnersly only those who despise reasearch and knowledge and who are instead wholly based in make-believe never-never lands of apocalyptic "evil versus good" crusades were for the war. And now he has the audacity to speak of "research", trying to project his utter denial of reality onto others.
This is all getting very off topic though, if you care to take it further, e-mail me or something...
Ah, yes the classic "I will have the last word, rebutt me where noone can see it" trick. You must think me new to this online forum gig. It isn't happening. You brought this into this public discussion, I will follow where it leads.
Regular people would have trouble defending things like rape fantasy and pedophilia, but the ACLU has no such qualms.
That is because ACLU comes from an absolute (and quite valid) assumption that there are no "illegal" thoughts. Only once someone attempts to implement them, the consequences should kick in. In case of child porn, the actual making of it, involving childen is the illegal act. Making up fantasies, however vile, is not, and only reflects poorly on the author. Some radical religious fundamentalist
"moralists", like you, would like to see some thoughts they do not like to be punishable, by death preferrably. You will start with easy to attack subjects like pedophillia and proceed to more esoteric ones like being "un-Christian" etc. By using the term "regular people" you attempt to implicitely include the bulk of the population in your thought-control crusade. "Think of the children" is a classic slogan people like you use to achieve the means of rallying the clueless behind your thought policing. ACLU and others like it stand in your path to that homogenous thought control utopia and thus you despise them with a hatred so deep as to create childlish acronyms cum slogans and include them in your sig. Truly pathetic.
Even if following the Constitution results in a horrible outcome for society, they should follow the Constitution (hopefully, in their opinions, they would point out that the other branches could get off their butts and fix the law in question).
That is the very approach the Nazi judges took. Newsflash: if something is horribly unjust, the duty of the judges is to at least suspend the sentencing until the law is fixed. Otherwise people could just easilly be sent to death when some band of idiot Republicans passes a law forbidding anyone from being Muslim on the pain of death, or some such idiocy. Or perhaps maybe just mandating indefinte imprisonment of anyone whom some secret agents deem dangerous, based on secret evidence, to be verified by secret tribunals. Sounds familiar, no?
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You perheaps did not notice but Hitler's racist views were separate from his socio-economic views, which are, for the most part, compatible with the musings of some of the prominent, present-day right-wingers. Pretending that because his evil is nearly universally accepted that it somehow means that the right-wingers could never, ever be even close to his ideas in these specific matters is a dishonest device designed to render any exposition of these positions impossible, lest one "sullies" himself with the comparisons that "bolster one's image amongst the fruitcakes". Whom then to compare the jolly support for unrestrained corporatism, phony "patriotism", "pre-emptive" wars based on lies and all the other striking and major similarities to Hitler? Mussollini? Would that make it more acceptable?
No it "whines" about these "charities" being stealth contributions to the "conservative" or "libertarian" causes, far outsripping the "official" contributions, made in order to hide them, and to create a misleading impression vs. someone like George Soros who does not play these dishonest games with his donations. If one gives a huge pile of money to Heritage Foundation or Cato Institute, even though they are not explicitely labelled "For Republicans" these donations are political and to right-wing causes. You can pretend and call them "charity" all you want but it fools noone.
That's not exactly the claimed 100 times what Soros spend politically every year. Soros spent 27 million just to try and defeat Bush in the last election.
Which is a puny fraction of money donated by the likes of Waltons, for example, to fund an effort to privatize education (to the tune of over $100 million per year to various anti-public school organizations alone).
Heck, liberal Bill Gates spends more on liberal causes than the whole family
Gates? Liberal? What causes? Last time I heard that weasel was desperately trying to appease everybody to create his "legacy" image of a great "phillantropist" (and to stuff his pockets some more in the process as a side effect of his "donations").
And the "conservatives" and "libertarians" had a severe advantage in stealth donations outside of direct political contributions to institutions such as Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, Christian Right organizations and many, many others, completely hidden from these inane BCRA regulations. They also outright own the FOX TV network and Clear Channel, both explicitely tasked with "conservative" propaganda mission, which amounts to hundreds of radiostations thoughout USA and also have major editorial control over CNN and other "mainstream" media, which is doubly disturbing in the light of an incessent propaganda campaign by the right-wingers to label all media not completely controlled by them as "liberally biased". There is at this point no major media distribution network in the US which is not under "conservative" control (save the Internet) and that situation should be counted as an extreme case of campaing contributions by the owners of those networks (in billions of dollars per year). George Soros can't hold a candle to these people.
Also, your washington post article doesn't say what you said it does about 2002.
Quote:
That is nearly 2:1 advantage. (I made a typo saying 3:1, as 3:1 applies only to the drug industry).
And I just run across of this little piece of in-depth analysis of Waltons' activities to better illustrate the extensive efforts of the billionaire's in support of various etxreme right-wing causes and the fillantropic disguises they employ to do so.
A few? Most of them do that, although their activities are usually marked "special interest", like, say, the Walton's anti-public-school campaigns which are both a "republican" and a "libertarian" cause. Speaking of Waltons, they alone comprise something like 20% of the list of billionaires and you cannot find more fanatical right-wingers then they are.
Back in reality, the Democratic party in the U.S. gets much more of it's contributions from large individual contributions than the Republican party does, both in terms of percentage of contributions and in terms of total contributions.
Yes, specially the likes of Howard Dean, no? Speaking of contributions, where do you pull your numbers out of, your ass as usual? Here is what Washington Post has on this, which mentions a 3:1 ratio of big businesses and their owners (read: billionaires and millionaires) support for Republicans vs Democrats (in 2002). Unless of course you consider organized labour being "a billionaire".
You mean to tell me that billionaires, as a rule, are liberals? Or perhaps, just perhaps most of them are priviledged former trust fund kids, or sociopathic worshippers of greed and who are so far to the right on the political spectrum that they rub shoulders with one Adolf. Selfish, arrogant and willing to claw their way to the top over the backs of others, willing to put their interests ahead of the society's, lacking of any scruples: those are basic pre-conditions to becoming a billionaire. George Soros probably has gotten a severe case of guilty conscience. Most of billionaires are far more viciously callous then he and they will not blink to outspend him 100 to 1 on their favourite, extreme-right-wing causes.
Yes, the corporatists are on the march here too. I despise both the Liberals (whose definition of "liberal" seems to be "corporatist-lite" and the Conservatives for being such corporate whores (the Conservatives are worse, because in addition to being corporate whores they are also catering to the rich and are on top of that theocratic and US-subservient). NDP is laughable both from the point of their viability and the wild, eclectic and completely far-out set of characters who inhabit it. So we are basically screwed, although less so then they are down there south of the border. What we need is some charismatic party which can see through the fog of corporate lies and propaganda, which is not slavishly subservient to one special-interest cause and which would stand up for Canada and not for WIPO or WTO. Perheaps we can get lucky and such saviour would emerge soon. This is the main difference between us and the USA. We get new parties all the time, our political landscape is reasonably fluid. We have a little more time yet before an economic and cultural catastrophy befalls us, alas, I fear that we will have to suffer it first before the sheeple of the electorate wake up and create a climate for an emergence of such a movment.
Do not you worry about me. I am harassing my MP about this regularly. But my problem is that our Canadian politicos are being influenced (read: bought) by the US corporate interests or are being cornered via the corporate's vicious WTO/WIPO instruments and what is happening in the US is merely a preview of what will happen here shortly afterwards. If you can stop it over there, it will significantly reduce the likelyhood of this crap making it across the border. But I do not believe you can, as at this point the US is nearly completely in the clutches of the corporatists and they are tightening their grip daily. They do have nearly all the adventages at this point.
While technically true, it does not work that way in practice. Both the drug pushers and the "enterntainment industry" managed to create a situation where vast hordes of people who do not know any better are addicted to their respective brain-damaging merchandise. The only, small, difference in favour of RIAA is that their "products" do not directly manipulate brain chemistry of the victims. The resulting effect though is nearly identical as the "enterntainment industry" managed to make itself an indispensable part of the "american lifestyle". Remove the TV and most supposedly wealthy "mainstream" Americans would find out the sad truth: their lives are miserable, meaningles and empty and the TV is the mesmerising "drug" to relieve that condition.
That's the idea. In a society where breathing air is illegal, everyone, except the annointed "lawful inhalers" are criminals. Then tyrants have no difficulties in extracting obedience as all citizens are subject to arrests which are both a tool of control and "legal" at the same time. Such ubiquitous "criminality" is one of the basic components of tyranny.
"War" on drugs is a perfect example: a problem which is medical in nature has been criminalized, resulting in the US having the highest percentage of imprisoned citizens from all the nations in the world, beating places like China, USSR, Iran, North Corea or Cuba. As a bonus side effect, the drug profits have never been greater, related violent crimes never more deadly and the police apparatus never more aggressive, violent, domineering, encroaching on most basic civil rights and never better funded.
I suspect the "war" on "piracy" is heading in the same direction: total subjegation of citizenry to zealous special interests. Combine this with resurgence of retarded, violent, anti-intellectual theocracy in the USA and the trickle of scientists and others who depend on unresticted knowledge for their trade who are leaving the US now will become a deluge. USA is going the way most of the empires of the past have: self-destruction in the name of greed and religion.
I merely responded to your proposition of creating, quote, "flexible market, in which there is no risk to hiring someone". Clearly a $0 wage or enslavememt is one of the preconditions. I am sure there would be more, like state insurance to the slave owner for any damages a "defective" slave could inflict. But it is you who proposed creating a "no risk" situation to the employer and furthermore, prepostrously claimed that it would lead to increase in wages. I merely pointed out its chief required pre-conditions and the subsequent contradiction in your analysis. If you think you can retro-actively change your declarations, with such pathetic weaseling about as, quote: 'I did not advocate any particular goal of "reducing risk of labor"; I was just citing one thing that pulls down wages' then you are sorely mistaken. I assumed that you were serious about the issue but this first exchange presents you immediately as a clownish purveyor of hot air, who does not hesitate to recraft his "message" each time someone happens to point out its inherent illogic.
That happens in slavery, but it also happens with socialist states,
That is plainly a fabrication. Even in the Soviet Union, the workers were able to choose their place of employment (providing they were not politically active dissenters), unlike the scrip-paid workers of certain US companies who not only did not have a choice in the matter (the gigiantic company being one of the very few employers in the geographical area, "employing" whole families including children from young age) but once "employed" they were steadily getting more indebted to the company due to the very clever arrangement of the "company store" credit issued at an interest rate that would make a Mafia loan-shark blush. One could try to argue that all Soviet companies were ultimately owned by the state, which was true, but they all had their own managment and quite unique and different internal operation, including wages. Not to mention that a small number of overlapping groups of ultra-wealthy investors hold significant shares of most major companies today, creating disturbingly similar scenarios. That is right, a vile communist dictatorship offered more freedom to the workers then some of the crown achievements of the US Gilded Age, a time of indentured servitude or abject poverty for most and exorbitant riches for very few, a time to which you clearly pine to return to.
And again, to clarify, lowering wages does not reduce risk; the risk is still there, it's just hedged.
Ergo, reduced. You are constructing self-contradictory sentences. It is plainly obvious that $0 cost, no-rights, enslaved, government-bonded "employees" are as close to your, quote, "no risk to hiring someone" as one can possibly get. Yet your panicked flailing indicates that you do not like these, completely contrary to your assertions, implications of your own de-regulatory proposals.
If someone's not worth hiring at a price, they're not worth hiring at that price, no matter what the regulations are.
That may be true but the regulations prevent you from enslaving that desperate person at 1/5th going wage paid in scrip + 75% interest rate on the advance of food and baby formula from your "generous" company store. Yet you do not grasp this simple, plain to see, implication. This, combined with a social safety net, moderates the absolute power and leverage the employer has over employees in the vast oversupply of labour situation, which persisted for most of the human history but was never as accutely prominent as it is now.
If they are worth hiring, competition for workers drives their wage up to that price.
Competition for workers?! Minus points deducted for complete, numbskulled lack of even a smallest of modicums of understanding of the situation. Let me repeat: vast oversupply of labour is the present dominant condition
This condition will only exist when their wage is $0. For any non-zero wage there is a "risk". Therefore, logically, what you propose amounts to a reduction of wages towards $0 in order to reduce "risk" of hiring and corresponding increase in profits (note here that there is no provisions of those profits to be re-invested or redirected towards employees). One can also imagine a scenario whereby one owns his workers outright, like in the late 1800s, whereby they are paid in "scrip" redeemable only at the company store you also own. Which is quite consistent with your proposal, because this is precisely the logical, ultimate outcome of the process of "reducing risk" via lower wages brought on by complete de-regulation and globalization of the marketplace (i.e. return of feudalism, or more precisely, creation of a corporate feudalism). An indentured slave is the least "risky" proposition as he/she is in no position to refuse your bidding, well maybe perheaps by being petty about things and dying prematurely. This outcome we know with absolute certainty, as much of it already happened in the said Gilded Age of Robber Barrons, a response to which was the minimum wage regulation, preventing "scrip" and other sorts of evil "wage" schemes. But how easily do we forget, so that we can learn the same lessons over and over again.
Perhaps they know something about the state of their oil reserves that you don't. Perhaps they feel that in the upcoming peak oil scenario their best bet is to a) have alternate sources of energy for themselves as to make maximum use of exportable black gold, b) have nukes to defend themselves from the inevietable, desperate attempts at grabbing that oil by the addicted and suffering from severe withdrawal effects, junkie Western countries and China to boot, c) are afraid of their Israeli and US enemies who have both nukes and have been proven beyond any doubt to be regional aggressors, complete with use of the utterly prepostrous, Hitler-like excuse of "pre-emption". Not to mention the past history of US encouragement of Saddam's war on Iran and to begin with, CIA's destruction of the democratic government of Iran and replacement of thereof with the Shah. Just you ponder this wee, little, and quite incomplete list before you start calling people Jackasses, you uninformed troglodyte.
No, I speak of another form corporatism, that is a government by CEOs of corporations disguised as a representative democracy (note the absence of the labour unions). At this point, in most western democracies, it is impossible for a politician to get elected without some explicit help from corporations, both financial and direct (as for example corporate media access). Subsequently it is not a surprise that these politicians have little choice but to do corporate bidding. Furthermore, since at this point the corporations in some western countries (USA principally) have completely monopolized the access to information for majority of citizenry, they are now capable of directly influencing the mass preceptions and opinions of that public. Since dumb, easily led, public is the optimal, maleable form of "voters" for a corporation-friendly arrangement, most of the journalism which once afforded the populace the opportunity to participate meaningfully in politics has been replaced by "soft news", "infotainment" and a plethora of meaningless shouting heads.
This is the most dangerous form of corporatism because, unlike in that old example of yours, the corporations do not share any of the risks of direct participation in politics and subsequently its fallout, and yet, at the same time, hold all the cards, regardless of who gets "elected".
No, what has done wonders for your wallet is the tens of thousands of small businesses which employ, as they always have, 80% of US citizens.
We've had corporations and a stock market in America for 200 years... I fail to see how they hurt us.
Stock market is irrelevant to this, as I do not advocate abolishment of business but controls on large corporations. As to the excesses of those large corporations, try the activities of the Robber Barons or the 1929 market crash. If it were not for the fact that some people always opposed them, you would be by now an indentured, to some new Robber Baron, slave.
It is rather simple: The stated and exclusive purpose of a corporation is to generate profit. The optimal condition to generate maximum profit is a government-protected monopoly. Therefore most corporations, once they reach certain size, actively work to undermine democratic processes, by attempting to lobby, bribe politicians and influence public opinion via affiliated media in order to fulfill their purpose to its full extent. Furthermore, once a corporation unduly grows in size, via acquisitions and mergers, with each expansion it becomes less and less a construct of a free market and more and more an ingredient of an oligarchy, as at each stage of consolidation the overall level of free market competition is lessened. The optimal political system for these corporations, once they are large enough, is fascism. Today, some corporations have accumulated more wealth and power then entire nations.
All of the above, combined, simply means that the purposes of corporations are at odds of those of cirizenry. The capitalist free market as well as the democratic societies in general are simply not equipped to deal with artificial "persons" of immesurable power and wealth, rivalling those of the representative governments. Corporations were never intended to be this way, nor does Adam Smith's theory take their existence properly into account as his was a theory of socially beneficial side-effects of personal greed aided by inventiveness to be aggressively and efficiently counter-balanced by competition. Thus large (especially multi-national) corporations are contrary to both the democratic credo of representative govenance and capitalist marketplace. Thereofre it is a duty of every believer in democracy and personal freedoms to oppose those who believe in governance by corproations for corporations and to insist that severe limits and restrictions be placed on the size and political activities of corporations. As corporatists believe the exact opposite, it is therefore a duty of every democratically oriented citizen of every country to oppose corporatists.
Is this the amusing explanation you wanted?
What the fuck are you on about? These are foreign corporations that want to screw all the consumers, as usual, and as pioneered by the, oh-so-democratically great US corporations. It is the corporations which are the enemy here and the UN has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with this. Furthermore, corporate sponsored entities, the WTO and WIPO do have everything to do with this, and yet, somehow, I do see brainwashed tools shreeking at the top of their lungs about the UN and not them.
It is a democratic duty of every citizen of any democratic nation, be it US, Canada, France, Germany or any other to oppose corporatists at every turn, because corporatism and democracy are mutually exclusive.
"It was flawless", the Chief Election Commissioner said, and in apparent attempt to gloat over his critics, who were loudly warning of problems, he added: "And it proves that contrary to what those feeble Doomsayers were saying, we should not fear new technology, we should embrace it because it is new, shiny and made in America!".
In related news, some confusion persists of the proper procedure of swearing the new Estonian President, Barney "The Pink" Dinosaur, and his vice-president Wet Noodle, both of the party "All Your Base Belong To Us". Additional complications for the traditionalists is the suprising new discoverery at the polls that apparently most Estonians turned out to be of the Jedi religion.
Except I just demolished that bullshit. Saddam did not "harbour" any of his mortal enemies and killed them at the first opportunity. Osama called Saddam fondly an "apostate" or "infidel communist" and incited his followers to kill him, complete with a 1990 offer to the House of Saud to bring his Afghani mujahedeen to fight against Saddam so that the Saudis do not invite the US. At best, and that is playing the devil's advocate, Saddam provided medical help to some old, beat-up, out-of action PLO militants, as PLO and Saddam's Ba'ath were both secular movements (PLO is a great enemy of Hamas/Al-Queda, by the way, and the two are at each other's throats, with PLO losing, as you should know by now from the news from the Gaza strip). In other words no facts seem to make it to the planet Pluto where you live.
It was in the best interest of this country, and for that matter every country to get rid of them before they attack others.
It never was in the interest of the USA, but it was in the interest of some corporate crooks within. You are confusing the two, unless your oath of allegiance was to the Halliburton Inc.
We didn't make terrorists at all, it is every person's responcibility to decide how to act on a given occasion.
Which in the case of an unjustified foreign invasion is to take up arms.
If their choice is to become a terrorist, they shouldn't be on Earth anyway.
Right, they should have just rolled over and died so that you can have your way, even if you are patently doing them harm for your own selfish reasons, right?
If you think that the world is not composed of merely good people and bad people then YOU really are diluted as said before.
I have news for you: the world is composed of people of various goals in life, some of them conflicting drastically. What is a "good" guy for you is an "evil" one for most of the 2 billion Muslims. That is because your "hero" happens to be a murderous thug from their perspective. Likewise, those who probably deem themselves as, and are seen by their community as, "freedom fighters" are "terrorists" to you. Same as the Polish underground was to the Nazis in WW2. They too, officially, were called "terrorists" in the Nazi documents and were blowing up trains full of German civilian settlers heading for Silesia.
Therefore the only metric to be applied is that of aggressor doing harm to someone, and the defender defending himself from it, and on that score the US is doing more poorly then Al-Queda these days. And that is why "pre-emptive" wars are such a gigiantic mistake as they establish the initiator as objectively "evil".
I've never been outside this country, so I have never had the chance to wrong anyone out there bad enough to justify them deciding to wipe out me, my family, or my country. So if they do decide that, they are bad people.
Strange, and yet you advocate murdering those you suspect of not liking you, "pre-emptively", for "their own good". While you did not pull the trigger yourself, those 500lb bombs ripping children to shreds in Baghdad might have had your name stencilled on them just as well.
So if they do decide that, they are bad people.
No. After the "shock and awe" was finished with their families, they had all the rights under the sun to treat you like a mortal enemy. Yet another glorious effect of stupid "pre-emption". AL-Queada had no right to do 9/11 as the US, even though pissing them off politically, did not actually initiate the killing with them. They were the originators, hence they were the "evil" ones. The situation in Iraq is precisely the reverse, the US is the unquestionable, and unprovoked, aggressor.
As an aside though, I didn't instigate a dang thing! I merely said that going to war was the right thing and still is.
Yea right. "I only said that 'skinning children to make lamp shades' was a good business opportunity. I never expected a backlash, that was nothing personal you know, just business, why all that hostility? Sheesh!"
Wrong on two counts: first in the case of a death sentence, it can be too late for a remedy and second, the current neo-con movement in the US is explicitely working to establish a single-party system in the disguise of democracy, or were you perheaps asleep for the last 15 years?
Your political system is already dangeroulsy tilted towards consolidation, you are the only one of major industrialized countries with a two party system, slowly becoming a one party system. That is why the last remaining safeguard is the courts which should attempt to interpret the Constitution to prevent further detertioration of the already very tenuous grasp the voters have of the process.
Your first hypothetical is absurd as the SCOTUS would certainly deem a law banning someone from being a Muslim as unconstitutional on any number of grounds - there is no need for doing anything but rigorously applying the Constitution here.
Except that then they would be labelled as "legislating from the bench" by those who would soooo love to see a Theocratic Fascism of sorts to come to be, and who are getting closer to that goal by the minute.
In the second case, if the Constitution gives the President powers to detain people and hold secret trials, I disagree that the SCOTUS should do anything about it.
Except it clearly does not. The Founding Fathers would be mortified and aghast at the very notion. And yet the executive branch has managed to circumvent that so far.
You appear to believe the SCOTUS should be able to ignore the law just because at least five elderly folks in black robes who were potentially appointed decades earlier believe it's "unjust".
They should be able to suspend it if it conflicts with the Constitution, as most of these "unjust" laws do. But the constitution is not omni-prescient and misses a lot of things the Founding Fathers could not foresee. SCOTUS should be able to extend the spirit of the constitution onto those "laws".
Suppose the Supreme Court, in some vaguely related case, declares that in order to "insure a just outcome", online postings that criticize the President constitute treason and are not protected by the first amendment?
That would go directly against the Constitution and its spirit.
Look I do not argue that SCOTUS must have absolute freedom, only that it should have the lattitude to follow the spirit of the Consititution, rather then its two centuries old letter.
Why do I somehow attract illiterate cretins to the discussion? The resolution 1441 did not authorize any war, merely offered "serious consequences" as a threat, consequences to be determined at the next session on the subject. It was a direct equivalent of 1990 resolution 660, which also did similarly for the Kuwait war. But not until resolution 678 the authorization was given which specifically states "all necessary means" which is the standard dimplomatic way of declaring war. That is from 660 via 661, 662, 664, 665, 666, 667, 669, 670, 674 and 677 and finally 678 where an actual authorization is given to use "all necessary means". You go read the resolutions before sticking your ignorant snout into this. And get off Limbaugh and O'Rilley before you come back here claiming the sky is green.
It IS a legal war, despite what you want to believe.
See above, retard.
Of course, I don't expect the average slashdot reader to understand or believe the truth when they read it.
Speaking of yourself, aren't you?
You are a special kind of a brainless turd. Of course they were not harbouring any "enemy". The closest you can get is the Kurds who, under US protection, harboured the predescessor to the Ansar Al-Islam, the The Islamic Movement of Iraqi Kurdistan, who were mortal enemies of Saddam, as all of Al-Queda was. But the other part is true, you are eager to murder tens of thousands of people in foreign lands because their bully in chief refused to lick Busheviks' assholes, thus not being "with you". So when is the bombing campaign of France to start as they are also "not with you", you mental midget?
How about the several hundred terrorists, and terrorist helpers that are now six feet under. Frankly, that alone justifies the action.
You mean the "terrorists and terrorist helpers" whom you created out of regular Iraqis by the invasion? How about hundreds if not thousands of those who you merely decided to kill pre-emptively and whose sons will become terrorists? The Iraq war has markedly increased the number of terrorists and terror attacks, dumbass, not decreased it. Al-Queda calls Iraq its "greatest recruitment boom".
It's not my fault you are too diluted to notice who the bad guys are. Perhaps I am not the one in a "make-believe never-never land".
Thanks for proving my point, you simpleton. The world is not composed of "good guys" and "bad guys" like in some cheesy western. But you are far to dense to grasp that.
Its no skin off my back should you choose to ignore reality.
I could not help but notice that you failed to provide any coherent arguments for the war, and the only two examples of "research" and "gain" you spouted were so patently false that a 10 year old would know that by now. Now what was that you were mumbling about reality?
If YOU choose to have offtopic posts spewing from YOUR account, that's your deal.
I am merely a responder, you are the instigator.
Really? List one, genuine, positive outcome of this clusterfuck which is not wholly cancelled by the negative ones, either for Iraq or for struggle against terrorist extermists. And no, you can skip both the the "democracy" bullshit (as they are set for a Burka-loving Islamic Republic/civil war combo) as well as the "Saddam killed/tortured people" crap as the US is doing admirably in both of these catagories.
Wow, a predictable fiasco eh? I bet that can't be said of EVERY OTHER WAR!!!!!
That is precisely why "pre-emptive" wars are pursued only by villains or complete imbeciles.
Of course, i'm not sure why I would even need to prove my point considering your username.
Looking for easy ways out, aren't we?
It seems to me that all the people against the war are either not from the US, or are the same people that want to disarm us anyway (which is part of the democratic platform).
Experiencing an out-of-control band of idiots at the helm of a powerful military does that to people. And there is nothing to be proud of claiming that all the ignorant morons are your citizens (falsely actually, but thats par for the course for the likes of you).
In my opinion, anyone who has done their research would not be against the war.
Research?! The pre-condition of this whole fuckup was fabricating intelligence and propagandizing neo-con fantasies. Anyone who has done any research was against the war, covnersly only those who despise reasearch and knowledge and who are instead wholly based in make-believe never-never lands of apocalyptic "evil versus good" crusades were for the war. And now he has the audacity to speak of "research", trying to project his utter denial of reality onto others.
This is all getting very off topic though, if you care to take it further, e-mail me or something...
Ah, yes the classic "I will have the last word, rebutt me where noone can see it" trick. You must think me new to this online forum gig. It isn't happening. You brought this into this public discussion, I will follow where it leads.
That is because ACLU comes from an absolute (and quite valid) assumption that there are no "illegal" thoughts. Only once someone attempts to implement them, the consequences should kick in. In case of child porn, the actual making of it, involving childen is the illegal act. Making up fantasies, however vile, is not, and only reflects poorly on the author. Some radical religious fundamentalist "moralists", like you, would like to see some thoughts they do not like to be punishable, by death preferrably. You will start with easy to attack subjects like pedophillia and proceed to more esoteric ones like being "un-Christian" etc. By using the term "regular people" you attempt to implicitely include the bulk of the population in your thought-control crusade. "Think of the children" is a classic slogan people like you use to achieve the means of rallying the clueless behind your thought policing. ACLU and others like it stand in your path to that homogenous thought control utopia and thus you despise them with a hatred so deep as to create childlish acronyms cum slogans and include them in your sig. Truly pathetic.
That is the very approach the Nazi judges took. Newsflash: if something is horribly unjust, the duty of the judges is to at least suspend the sentencing until the law is fixed. Otherwise people could just easilly be sent to death when some band of idiot Republicans passes a law forbidding anyone from being Muslim on the pain of death, or some such idiocy. Or perhaps maybe just mandating indefinte imprisonment of anyone whom some secret agents deem dangerous, based on secret evidence, to be verified by secret tribunals. Sounds familiar, no?