The politicians lead the religious right around as if the issue of "abortion" was a carrot on a stick. Even when the right get elected, they never follow through with making abortion illegal... they wouldn't able to use the same stick in the next election... but the democrats play the same trick, acting as if the right poses a real danger to choice. I'm not sure how I used the phrase incorrectly, so perhaps you can elaborate.
We need nukes because everybody who has nuclear weapons is in a sort of mexican standoff. It would be impossible to get everybody to put their "guns' down at once. The US wouldn't trust china to destroy every one (so they'd keep a few) and vice versa. It would also leave every country without nukes open to blackmale by those with nukes.
you wrote: "Who cares about traceable? So you know I nuked you. Big deal: I did it because your troops were already surrounding my palace and you were about to raid it anyway, and I know what happened to Saddam. I was dead anyway, so do I care that you can trace me?"
And if he didn't attack us, why would we do attack him? It' seems like you're arguing invading a country with nuclear weapons is a bad idea... in which case you make a good argument for nuclear deterrence being used to keep the peace.
Dilbert is funny and I have actually worked for a pretty incompetent government contractor, but this is *nothing* compared to what I saw in Romania. It's Dilbert to the nth degree. Defective products were more the rule than the exception. People got paid no matter what they did on the job, so they sat on their asses and did nothing half the time. Literally.
American, yes, and the right to bear arms is something I believe strongly in, and your "correlation" cited does not mean causality. Riddle me this: why is it that almost all shooting sprees take place in "gun free" zones while you never, ever, hear of one at a gun show. Seems to me that it was so simple that availabiliy = violence, areas with higher *legal* gun availability would have more crime, which is not the case. DC was the murder capital of the country for quite some time... all while there was a ban on handgun ownership (now overturned).
It's easy to call me brainwashed, but i'm not the one who has been trained to rely on the government for personal protection.
Look. It's like this: Whether it's guns or nuclear weapons, people are going to get them. If they are "illegal" only outlaws will have them. All denial of defense really does is deny law abiding citizens the right to defend themselves. People will get guns regardless, and countries will develop nukes no matter what we do. The trick is ensuring there is a stalemate based on deterrence and mutual assurance of destruction.
You wrote "I think the only way that communism can succeed is if the people in charge can manage to keep all outside influences from reaching their people."
Oh great. World police armed with nukes. Wonderful idea. Who gets to run this organization of decide who is mature and who is not? Good luck setting that up and getting everybody to agree. The way I see it, it's simple. You can have nukes, but if you use them, you will get annihilated. It's really that simple. A judgment in maturity is unnecessary. There are only actions and consequences. There is no need for what you're proposing.
Yeah, but in this case, you're not going to hear crazy larry unless you're listening for it. As long as crazy larry knows his neighbors have big guns too and his destruction is assured if he uses them, he'll keep in line. Realize that "Crazy Larry" is doing it to prove he has the cahones to his *family* most of all. I see this behavior as more theater for internal "national pride" than anything else.
Detonation blast radius? Ability to be detonated on it's own?
Here's a snip from wiki: The W48 was 846 mm long and weighed 58 kg; it could be fitted in a 155 mm M-45 AFAP (artillery fired atomic projectile) and used in a more standard 155 mm howitzer. The fission warhead was a linear implosion type, consisting of a long cylinder of subcritical mass which is compressed and shaped by explosive into a supercritical sphere. The W48 yielded just 72 tons TNT equivalent.
78 tons of TNT? That's hardly a fart in the scheme of things.
But the higher up you went in the respective organizations you would find that the leaders often had double standards for their own secret lives. The idealism was a front. Hitler allowed one of his closest people to be gay (Ernst RÃhm). He was, himself, part jewish. The jews and gays were scapegoats. Stalin's upper echelons were notoriously corrupt, and his reasons for putting people in the gulags were more to sustain an industry than from any ideological standpoint (read Solzhenitsyn). I look at dictators like cult leaders. They don't really believe the shit they spew. They just use it to control others. Even when they are "crazy", they're relatively predictable in that they're always and without question out for their own self interest.
How about, when you have a job and get paid the same no matter what you do, you don't try very hard and industry stagnates. I lived in a former communist country for a while. I know how it is. Tire factories producing tires with bolts in them... horrible quality and service everywhere.
Hint: they're extremely expensive to manufactuer and not really portable. The smallest ones are footlocker or reftigerator size and have a yield of ~1 kiloton, which is practically nothing at all. It could take out a building, yes, but so could a truck full of fertilizer, and horseshit is a lot easier to smuggle then nuclear munitions that give off radiation that's easy to detect.
This isn't 24. Nukes aren't suitcase size. There needs to be a delivery method and that's pretty much impossible to pull off without it being traceable. *Worst* case scenario: it's not traceable, and there is no retaliation.
Dictators pose for the people. They use religion and the whole "we hate israel" crap (or we hate capitalism of whoever...) to get the support of their religious right... sort of like abortion is a carrot on the stick in the states. They'll never actually do anything. They would lose their leverage (and ensure self annihilation). Dictators look out for themselves first. They're after power, not idealism. Because of this, they're predictable. Insane? Irrelevant. So long as they're predictable they're controllable.
Yes the insane or otherwise unpredictable... It's easy to label the "enemy" as such, but the fact is that they have to be somewhat competent and predictable to run a country... if not a bit paranoid.
You want to avoid disaster? Don't push their backs to the wall and make sure their enemies all have nukes too so they don't have an unfair advantage. Balance is the key.
what? you got a better alternative? Harsh language and UN sanctions that hurt nobody but the people?
Sometimes technologies inevitably, if deployed, will be abused. Some technologies are too powerful to be in anybody's hands. Power corrupts, and all that.
Slashdot Mirror
Funny. I thought it came from a cartoon.
The politicians lead the religious right around as if the issue of "abortion" was a carrot on a stick. Even when the right get elected, they never follow through with making abortion illegal... they wouldn't able to use the same stick in the next election... but the democrats play the same trick, acting as if the right poses a real danger to choice. I'm not sure how I used the phrase incorrectly, so perhaps you can elaborate.
You ever buy a Trabant or a Dacia? You'll never complain about an American car again.
We need nukes because everybody who has nuclear weapons is in a sort of mexican standoff. It would be impossible to get everybody to put their "guns' down at once. The US wouldn't trust china to destroy every one (so they'd keep a few) and vice versa. It would also leave every country without nukes open to blackmale by those with nukes.
you wrote: "Who cares about traceable? So you know I nuked you. Big deal: I did it because your troops were already surrounding my palace and you were about to raid it anyway, and I know what happened to Saddam. I was dead anyway, so do I care that you can trace me?"
And if he didn't attack us, why would we do attack him? It' seems like you're arguing invading a country with nuclear weapons is a bad idea... in which case you make a good argument for nuclear deterrence being used to keep the peace.
Dilbert is funny and I have actually worked for a pretty incompetent government contractor, but this is *nothing* compared to what I saw in Romania. It's Dilbert to the nth degree. Defective products were more the rule than the exception. People got paid no matter what they did on the job, so they sat on their asses and did nothing half the time. Literally.
Sociopath perhaps, but not irrational. It all depends on your concept of "nutjob".
Exactly. It's all theater, and, IMO, so is this business with the nukes.
American, yes, and the right to bear arms is something I believe strongly in, and your "correlation" cited does not mean causality. Riddle me this: why is it that almost all shooting sprees take place in "gun free" zones while you never, ever, hear of one at a gun show. Seems to me that it was so simple that availabiliy = violence, areas with higher *legal* gun availability would have more crime, which is not the case. DC was the murder capital of the country for quite some time... all while there was a ban on handgun ownership (now overturned).
It's easy to call me brainwashed, but i'm not the one who has been trained to rely on the government for personal protection.
Look. It's like this: Whether it's guns or nuclear weapons, people are going to get them. If they are "illegal" only outlaws will have them. All denial of defense really does is deny law abiding citizens the right to defend themselves. People will get guns regardless, and countries will develop nukes no matter what we do. The trick is ensuring there is a stalemate based on deterrence and mutual assurance of destruction.
You wrote "I think the only way that communism can succeed is if the people in charge can manage to keep all outside influences from reaching their people."
Very insightful and perceptive. It's Lifton's first condition.
somebody mod parent insightful and/or informative.
Oh great. World police armed with nukes. Wonderful idea. Who gets to run this organization of decide who is mature and who is not? Good luck setting that up and getting everybody to agree. The way I see it, it's simple. You can have nukes, but if you use them, you will get annihilated. It's really that simple. A judgment in maturity is unnecessary. There are only actions and consequences. There is no need for what you're proposing.
Yeah, but in this case, you're not going to hear crazy larry unless you're listening for it. As long as crazy larry knows his neighbors have big guns too and his destruction is assured if he uses them, he'll keep in line. Realize that "Crazy Larry" is doing it to prove he has the cahones to his *family* most of all. I see this behavior as more theater for internal "national pride" than anything else.
Detonation blast radius? Ability to be detonated on it's own?
Here's a snip from wiki: The W48 was 846 mm long and weighed 58 kg; it could be fitted in a 155 mm M-45 AFAP (artillery fired atomic projectile) and used in a more standard 155 mm howitzer. The fission warhead was a linear implosion type, consisting of a long cylinder of subcritical mass which is compressed and shaped by explosive into a supercritical sphere. The W48 yielded just 72 tons TNT equivalent.
78 tons of TNT? That's hardly a fart in the scheme of things.
But the higher up you went in the respective organizations you would find that the leaders often had double standards for their own secret lives. The idealism was a front. Hitler allowed one of his closest people to be gay (Ernst RÃhm). He was, himself, part jewish. The jews and gays were scapegoats. Stalin's upper echelons were notoriously corrupt, and his reasons for putting people in the gulags were more to sustain an industry than from any ideological standpoint (read Solzhenitsyn). I look at dictators like cult leaders. They don't really believe the shit they spew. They just use it to control others. Even when they are "crazy", they're relatively predictable in that they're always and without question out for their own self interest.
How about, when you have a job and get paid the same no matter what you do, you don't try very hard and industry stagnates. I lived in a former communist country for a while. I know how it is. Tire factories producing tires with bolts in them... horrible quality and service everywhere.
Hint: they're extremely expensive to manufactuer and not really portable. The smallest ones are footlocker or reftigerator size and have a yield of ~1 kiloton, which is practically nothing at all. It could take out a building, yes, but so could a truck full of fertilizer, and horseshit is a lot easier to smuggle then nuclear munitions that give off radiation that's easy to detect.
Why can't they have nukes? Why is it even our business?
This isn't 24. Nukes aren't suitcase size. There needs to be a delivery method and that's pretty much impossible to pull off without it being traceable. *Worst* case scenario: it's not traceable, and there is no retaliation.
Dictators pose for the people. They use religion and the whole "we hate israel" crap (or we hate capitalism of whoever...) to get the support of their religious right... sort of like abortion is a carrot on the stick in the states. They'll never actually do anything. They would lose their leverage (and ensure self annihilation). Dictators look out for themselves first. They're after power, not idealism. Because of this, they're predictable. Insane? Irrelevant. So long as they're predictable they're controllable.
Yes the insane or otherwise unpredictable... It's easy to label the "enemy" as such, but the fact is that they have to be somewhat competent and predictable to run a country... if not a bit paranoid.
You want to avoid disaster? Don't push their backs to the wall and make sure their enemies all have nukes too so they don't have an unfair advantage. Balance is the key.
what? you got a better alternative? Harsh language and UN sanctions that hurt nobody but the people?
But since they must exist, it's better if everybody have them. Deterrence.
Wacist!
Yeah, but they later removed the workaround without removing the root cause of the problem (Win ME). Of course they called it an "upgrade".
Sometimes technologies inevitably, if deployed, will be abused. Some technologies are too powerful to be in anybody's hands. Power corrupts, and all that.