Um, hate to break it to ya, but ancient India produced some of the most kinkiest artworks known to man. In fact, pretty much all of Asia was, at one point in time, relatively sexually liberated. Some of them lost that liberation over time (I believe in India's case it had something to do with Muslim influence, both direct and indirect.), but many (most?) of them gained inhibitions after interacting with the West. As I understand it, Japan didn't have any porn taboo at all until the American occupation.
It might seem odd that these formerly-liberated countries now seem more prudish than we are, but you should realize that there's a difference between legal tolerance and social tolerance. I think that porn and prostitution (and other sexual "issues") tend to be more socially tolerated in many Asian countries, but they aren't legally tolerated. Over here, they're legally tolerated but (comparatively) not as socially tolerated. 100 years ago porn was illegal in the USA, and I believe we spread the porn = bad sentiment far and wide. Just because we've become less inhibited during that short century doesn't mean that the "values" we shared with (I'm tempted to say "inflicted upon") other nations will disappear just as quickly.
But anyway, long story short: you're a tad crazy to say that the West invented porn. The Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians, the Indians, the Japanese, and the Chinese all had works we'd label "hardcore pornography" by today's standards. We invented porn in the sense that we greatly popularized the idea that it was wrong, but the institution was thriving long before we arrived on the scene.
The problem with your line of reasoning is that the war on drugs is much much MUCH more expensive than the extra money we'd spend supporting junkies. Just realize what the war costs us:
1. Manhours. We could easily cut our police force in half if they didn't have to worry about drugs (see point #4.)
2. Imprisonment. It's DAMNED expensive. It includes welfare (food, shelter, medical care) and a whole lot more. You might be in favor of a more barbaric prison system, but some of us still believe in humane treatment of prisoners (especially seeing as how you never know if you'll wind up falsely convicted. It. Happens.)
3. Legal fees for the accused. You might think that this is absurd and should be abolished, but you'd want to have a few appeals, too, if you were falsely accused.
4. Creation of violent drug-related crime. Would drug dealers be shooting each other (and innocent bystanders) if you could get a pound of smack for $10 at your local Walmart? Hell no. And if you were a junkie, would you be robbing houses or holding people up at gunpoint in order to get your fix? Hell no. Well, you might do it ONCE and you'd be able to buy enough smack to last for the rest of your (VERY short) life. More likely you'd be able to get the money by begging or working odd jobs. It just wouldn't make sense to resort to crime to support your habit--hell, it wouldn't even be worth the cost of the gun.
5. "You can retire from life in the US and live off welfare, SSI and other state-funded programs."
Amongst western first-world nations, the USA has one of the weakest "safety nets" of all (you should see the state-funded programs--and unemployment rates--in Europe!) and yet we have by FAR one of the worst drug (and violent crime, and property crime) problems.
6. Taxes. Tobacco and alcohol are heavily taxed and yet they're still pretty damn cheap (someone on minimum wage can easily afford enough booze to stay in a drunken stupor most of the time.) While I'm not sure that the many, many ill health effects of tobacco are counterbalanced by the taxes, I think that the taxes from alcohol and other non-smoked drugs could easily pay for future medical treatment. (Drunk/high driving is another issue entirely and IMO it should be dealt with very severely.)
7. You're implying that this war on drugs waged by brute force is actually winnable. It isn't.
Yes, I understand how it offends your sensibilities that some people are moochers and live their lives in a "stupor", but realize that by outlawing their drugs we're all paying MUCH more in the long run. I don't think that's worth whatever sense of satisfaction you get knowing that the junkies are locked up. Why not err on the side of civil freedoms and less wasted money on the futile fucking war? Welfare is really another issue entirely; you don't have to be pro-welfare to be anti-war on drugs (and as a matter of fact, I tend to dislike the welfare state--though I'm not quite a libertarian about it.)
If you grow your own or otherwise possess a lot of it (e.g. if you smoke a LOT) then you could very well be charged with possession with intent to sell, and because of the way the laws are written there's nothing you can do to prove you weren't going to sell it. Once they manage to charge you as a drug dealer (instead of a user), you very well could be put away for a decade or more.
It also bears mentioning that shortly after 9/11 it was revealed that law enforcement agencies were holding seminars to illustrate how drug manufacturers could be charged under anti-terrorism laws, and I do believe that at least one meth producer was convicted of producing "chemical weapons." I'm not sure if the conviction was overturned or if these bullshit laws have been struck down yet or if marijuana growers were ever targeted, but it's worth mentioning to show the crazy extremes USA law enforcement is willing to go to in order to 'win' (ha) the war on drugs.
Um, yes, child porn is indeed "censored" in most western nations. "Censorship" means "suppression of stuff"... not "suppression of stuff I don't wish to see suppressed" or "suppression of stuff that is not illegal" or "suppression of stuff by someone other than the cops." This isn't about the legality or morality of porn (be it mainstream or child); the concept of censorship isn't concerned with such distinctions. All that matters is it's being suppressed.
What the hell kind of definition of "censorship" are you using? It doesn't matter whether law enforcement is involved or not; it's still censorship (in fact, I would argue that censorship enforced by the law is usually the worst type.)
The fact that they put their life on the line to protect other people doesn't give them the right to abuse their power, period. As the other guy said, police are given powers above and beyond those granted to ordinary citizens (including fry cooks), and if these guys aren't mature enough to deal with the occasional non-violent asshole without resorting to violence themselves, they should be stripped of that power.
That said, the details I've heard thus far are still a bit sketchy. If they tried to cuff him or drag/carry him out and he physically resisted then less-lethal subduing force may well have been justified. But if, as was implied, he was just sitting there being an ass and they shocked him with a potentially lethal device, then they crossed the line in a MAJOR way.
If MS has these patents, do we really believe that fear of alienating their customers is enough for them to refrain from suing people? Couldn't they sue IT companies -- linux companies, IBM, etc., without damaging their relationships with large corporate customers? And aren't those large customers so locked in that they really don't have anywhere to go if they're alienated, anyway?
Err, wouldn't Microsoft suing IBM over patent infringement be the legal equivalent of shooting themselves in the foot with a bazooka? IBM, according to their own website (http://www.ibm.com/news/us/en/2006/01/2006_01_10. html), has more patents than any other tech company and they've been around since long before Gates was in diapers--I would hazard a guess that Windows infringes on far more IBM patents than Linux infringes on Microsoft's. I'm not saying Microsoft wouldn't have the balls (and lack of brains) to try this, but the resulting shitstorm would likely take 10+ years to resolve and could very well result in the downfall of M$ or patent law reformation... and I'd be overjoyed to see either. And even if M$ somehow prevailed, I'm willing to bet a significant portion of the EU and Asia would say "fuck you!" if asked to pay royalties on Linux.
Well my sound card isn't working at the moment, so let me ask you this: Did the cops attempt to arrest him before tazing him? Yelling at a cop isn't a crime(or rather, it shouldn't be more than ticketable "disturbing the peace" type offense.) Resisting arrest is, and depending on the type of resistance it *might* merit the use of less-lethal (NOT "non-lethal") force such as tazers. If they tried to arrest him and he *actively* refused to be put under arrest (physically resisted the handcuffs being put on), then I'd say they had the right to taze. If he was just sitting there passively resisting, the cops have absolutely no business using a potentially lethal device to physically subdue him. There were FIVE of them, for fucks' sake. The proper thing to do was have three of them move in, two of them with tazers drawn and one with handcuffs, and explain that they were putting him under arrest. The guy with the cuffs firmly takes the guys arms to cuff him, and if he violently tried to shake him off THEN you taze him.
There is never a justification for using painful and potentially lethal force to subdue someone who hasn't yet done more than resisted passively.
Again and again, the police apologists come out in droves saying "Oh, but you don't know how HARD it is being a cop!" and "The guy was definitely asking for it!" I'm just going to say what I said last time this came up (original post: http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=192848&cid =15830849) Full text:
The perfect reply to this argument (which comes up every time someone mentions that most cops are assholes) is this: a McDonald's employee has more accountability than a cop does. As a 16 year old burger-flipper, if a customer acts like a complete asshole--even going so far as to yelling and cussing you out--you are NOT allowed to verbally abuse the customer in return in any way, shape or form. At most you can ask him/her to leave the building, that's it.
Years ago, I worked at McDonald's for four months and a very good friend of mine was punched in the face. Through a plate glass window. A woman tried to order at the pickup window, was told she needed to drive around again, so she punched through the drive-through window, hitting my friend in the face. If she (my friend) had hit her back, there's not a doubt in my mind that she would have lost her job. Instead, she walked away calmly and called her supervisor and the police.
Now, I'm not implying that the police shouldn't use force when necessary. I'm also not denying that they're human too, that it's a nasty, dirty job and I'm sure it's really rough on them. But you know what? Working at McDonald's is in many was rougher (if you doubt this, I could tell you some more horror stories... absolutely the worst 4 months of my life, period.), and yet their workers are held to a much higher standard than the police. Why is that? Why do so many of us make allowances for the police to exercise HUGE leaps of personal discretion, to bend the law whenever it suits them? It's a tough job, but they chose it and we shouldn't let them bend the rules (or ignore them) whenever they feel like it. I saw a TON of asshole customers at McDonalds, yet I didn't say a foul word to any of them. I didn't spit in their food either (no one did--they would've been fired on the spot.) I did my job as professionally as I could, regardless of how shitty I was treated.
And I was a fucking fry cook!
Please please please please PLEASE tell me we can hold our police officers up to the same standards as our burger flippers.
Hitler was publicly Christian (though privately atheist) and I believe that the Nazi party at least paid lip service to Christianity. Besides, there are plenty of mostly-atheistic democracies out there--Japan, Estonia (along with many other countries in Northern Europe), etc. I think that totalitarianisms (which Nazi Germany, China, and the Soviet Union were/are) will always breed evil regardless of the official religion (or lack thereof.)
He's arguing that the morality we atheists enjoy and subscribe to was invented by monotheism and monotheism alone. That's not reasonable; that's flamebait. I'm pretty damn sure monotheism didn't invent morality. I'm pretty damn sure that some of the most moral people who've ever lived were deists or Hindus or Buddhists. I'm pretty damn sure that they have some pretty strict moral codes over in the Far East, and last time I checked they were polytheistic. Hell, last time I checked many far eastern countries like Japan and China are mostly atheistic, yet their crime rates are much lower than the USA or the UK. The USA in particular is pretty much the most religious first world western nation in the world, and yet our crime rate is the highest--we currently have the highest percentage of our population imprisoned out of any nation that's ever existed in the past 100 years (with the exception of those arrested after the Rwanda genocide), including Soviet Russia.
I'm sorry, but saying that modern morality is solely a Judeo-Christian-Islamic creation shows an extreme arrogance and ignorance that belies the pseudo-intellectual tone he uses. There is also this straw man:
True atheism rejects these concepts, as they deny that there is a higher power than the natural state of the world.
Atheism is a rejection of such power taking an objective form. Atheism does not preclude the possibility of morality and "higher purpose" built by the hearts and minds of men. If animals can be born from organic goo and men be born of animals, why can't men give birth to ideals greater than humanity? Indeed, I would argue that they already have in the form of religion--atheism merely argues that we should recognize these things as our creations, not the other way around. That our moral beliefs can change doesn't make them wishy-washy and useless; on the contrary, morality that is mutable allows us to focus on the morals that really matter while letting go of the stupid ideas. So you see, that's why most of us atheists agree that murder is wrong, yet we think that the whole OMFG, LIKE, LOBSTERS DONT HAVE SCALES AND WE THINK LOBSTERS ARE FISH AND THAT INVISIBLE DUDE YHWH SAID WE SHOULDNT EAT FISH THAT DONT HAVE SCALES EVEN IF THEYRE THOROUGHLY COOKED!!!11 thing is asinine.
I work in a group home for the mentally challenged. Everyone here is legally competent, but they're definitely not functional enough to live on their own (a couple of them might be able to do it if they had someone drop by DAILY to check on them.) Nevertheless, as legally competent adults they all have the right to vote. And, well, I'm not going to sugar-coat this: they know jack shit.
Seriously.
One guy in particular, let's call him Pete, spend the entire fucking day bragging about how he voted for all of these Republican guys. He didn't know they were Republicans, of course, he just knew that they were "good people" and their opponents were "bad." God knows where he got this idea from; probably his cousin or someone he met at work or (most likely) someone he met at church. He doesn't know a goddamned thing about "the issues." Hell, he's a free spirit--I doubt very much he would agree with the Republican's religious-based anti-sex attitudes. And I've heard him remark on several occasions that "we need to get the hell out of there [Iraq]."And for several years he was forced to live on the streets because he had nowhere to live--I doubt VERY much he would agree with the Republicans' tendency to cut our budget (which they do frequently, as we're partially government-supported.)
But it doesn't matter. Someone got ahold of his ear and filled his head with a bunch of horseshit, and he went out and voted before I had the chance to undo the damage.
So yeah, I guess if you wanna be pedantic about it, Pete was informed--he knew that some person (or people) he liked was a fan of these candidates, so that's who he voted for.
And while I hate to admit it, I really don't think that your average American voter is much better. The majority of their decision is based on peer pressure and highly misleading political advertisements, not any genuine analysis of the facts. In 2004, my own sister (definitely NOT a conservative) voted for Bush. Why? "Because Kerry is a flip-flopper." It boggles the mind. EVERY politician flip-flops like crazy, Bush and Kerry included, but the power of political advertising stuck that label firmly to Kerry's forehead alone. And gay marriage somehow got turned into a HUGE political issue in '04--How many people voted for Bush because they wanted to "defend marriage"? Did ANY of them take TWO GODDAMN SECONDS to check Google and find out that Kerry was against gay marriage as well? Did ANY of them ever stop and realize that the marriage issue was being decided on a state-by-state basis and that the constitutional amendment they were debating was completely unrelated to the presidential office?
And who the hell decided that the Republicans were "tough on terror" and the Democrats were weak... goddamnit, they supported Iraq, which was and still is a goddamn travesty, and they unanimously supported Afghanistan--what the hell else do they want? And Kerry actually fought in a war, damnit, while Bush putzed around in the National Guard, doing coke and getting arrested for DUI in his spare time, but the magic of those Swift Boat Liars (only one of those assholes actually served under Kerry, and their commercials are filled will outright lies and one obscenely misleading splice of two separate Kerry quotes) somehow managed to completely destroy what should have been a massive feather in Kerry's cap, especially considering the ongoing Iraq war.
So yeah, I think Total Ignorance can exist, but it's more of a quasi-willful ignorance, a willingness to unquestioningly believe in the most ridiculous horseshit. You don't have to be a genius, you don't have to devote your life to researching the issues, but I don't see how an ignorant vote can possibly be a good thing. On the basis of the above points, I'd say that ignorant voters played a major part in getting Bush reelected (mods, if you voted for Bush please note that I'm NOT calling you ignorant. I'm saying that many, if not most of the people who voted for Bush that I talked to
Re:A lot more is necessary...
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AIDS Can Fight AIDS
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· Score: 4, Insightful
If a man cuts his finger off while slicing salami at work, he sues the restaurant. If you smoke three packs a day for 40 years and die of lung cancer, your family sues the tobacco company. If your neighbor crashes into a tree while driving home drunk, he sues the bartender. If your grandchildren are brats without manners, you sue producers of a video games. If your friend is shot by a deranged madman, you sue the gun manufacturer.
It really irks me when people talk about sue-happy America and pretend that the problem is all about individuals suing corporations. Yes, all of these lawsuits have likely occurred at one point in time, but in the VAST majority of these type cases they end up losing or they win, but only because the situation is significantly more complicated. For example, take the woman who sued McDonald's for spilling hot coffee on herself. On the face of it, as a quick little soundbite it sounds absurd and the perfect example of everything that's wrong about this country... but the details of the lawsuit changes everything. The McDonald's in question was running a "unlimited coffee" promotion, and they realized that by serving the coffee extremely hot (190+ degrees F, as I recall) people would wind up drinking less because they had to wait for it to cool off. They had health inspectors come by--the inspectors measured the temperature of the coffee, told them it was DANGEROUSLY hot and needed to be served at a lower temperature. They might have even warned them multiple times about it, I don't recall. The McDonald's management chose NOT to lower the temperature of the coffee. Then, an elderly woman spilled some on her lap. If the coffee was served at a reasonable temp, she would have been fine; maybe some slight irritation (mild first-degree burns.) But, because the coffee was so damn hot, she suffered THIRD DEGREE BURNS across her pelvic area, including her vulva. She required skin grafts and was in tremendous pain for quite some time. Imagine for a second spilling some hot coffee on your lap and getting third degree burns all over your genitals, then finding out that the restaurant was specifically warned by health inspectors that their coffee was dangerously hot and yet they decided to keep their coffee hot anyway because it was more profitable?
I don't recall how many millions of dollars she won, but I'd say that in this case, the "poor corporation" clearly deserved it. From what I've seen, most of the time when they lose, they do deserve it. Let's take your examples--the tobacco company ACTIVELY HID their own research that showed their product caused cancer. Maybe 30+ years ago people knew they weren't super-healthy, but they know that they increased their chances of getting lung cancer by (to pull a number out of my ass here) 10,000%? Big tobacco did, but they destroyed the research and hid the truth. Until that truth finally came to light (decades later, I think), most people didn't know that heavy, long-term smoking was a virtual death sentence. Big tobacco deserved to be hit with those billions of dollars' worth of punitive damages.
And let's say that salami slicer was missing a vital safety guard, but the owner was too cheap to replace it. Sorry, but he too deserves what he gets. Employers being motivated to take cheap, basic precautions to keep their employees safe can only be a good thing.
The bartender is a little more iffy--you have a link to the a *successful* lawsuit? I agree that he shouldn't be responsible for his patrons, but in very specific circumstances (like, if he somehow KNEW the guy was going to be driving home) you could make a case for reckless endangerment.
The video game thing has happened a few times, but I'm not aware of a single successful lawsuit (of this type) brought against a video game. Stupid lawsuits *generally* aren't successful, and corporations can almost always afford to defend themselves vs. an individual.
Contrast that with a corporation suing an individual. E
1. I'm pretty sure that I read (on/., actually) that they did a study and the amount of sunlight that actually reaches the surface of the earth has decreased by a whopping 10% since 1950. That alone puts a pretty huge dent in your theory. This is probably due to the fact that...
2. Life forms are surprisingly adaptive. You act as if plants are completely helpless in the face of a minor 2% change. I'm not saying there wouldn't be some long-term consequences (more to do with specific species thriving/suffering as opposed to planet-wide climate change) , but a permanent, perfectly linear/proportional drop in oxygen output is unrealistic.
3. Sunlight is only the energy source--plenty of other factors are involved in oxygen production.
4. I'm not at all sure that the greenhouse effect depends on gas proportions. You imply that the overall level of greenhouse gases could stay the same but if the relative amounts of other gases dropped, we would warm up. That's entirely possible, but that's not how I assumed it worked. Mars is pretty cold, and its thin atmosphere is composed (IIRC) mostly of CO2, so that seems to be another dent in your theory. Venus, on the other hand, has an extremely thick atmosphere of C02 and it's hotter than Mercury. From this, I would hazard a guess that raw quantities of greenhouse gasses are more important than percentages.
5. Even if greenhouse gases did have a proportional effect, the missing oxygen might very well be replaced by other inert gases. Plants aren't simple oxygen machines; they give and take in ways that I simply cannot recall (nor be bothered to Google) at 5:30 AM.
Oh, and personal responsibility doesn't work. Sorry. Wish it did... but it doesn't, so let's not completely neglect the worst-case-scenario plans, eh?
How the FUCK can you call the article FUD? Did you even RTFA, you knee-jerk twit?
Sorry, but I am SICK AND FUCKING TIRED of people throwing around the "FUD" label so easily. First it became a synonym of bullshit (newsflash: "FUD" is a malicious, systematic campaign of disinformation and misleading information. "Bullshit" is a much broader term. All FUD is can also be classified as bullshit, but the reverse is not true.) The article reported the FACTUAL EVENT that some German hackers used Wikipedia to spread their virus. Did the article say this was Wikipedia's fault? No. This is their closing (quoted) paragraph:
"The very openness of websites like Wikipedia--which allow anyone to edit pages--makes them terrific, but can also make them less trustworthy. In this case, it wasn't just that the information posted in Wikipedia's articles was misleading, it was downright malicious," continued Cluley. "Everyone should exercise caution and ensure they have appropriate defenses in place to protect their computer systems. Additionally, people should remember that if there really is a new threat on the internet, you're likely to hear about it first from the security companies, not an online encyclopedia."
which is essentially what YOU said. So just what the hell is your problem? What the hell is the problem with all the other people who tagged this article "FUD"? It's reasonable, unbiased reporting of factual events. I like Wikipedia too--hell, I LOVE it... other than gmail, it's probably my most frequented website by far. But the article isn't attacking Wikipedia AT ALL.
It doesn't even qualify as "bullshit", let alone "FUD." The only *vaguely* questionable part of the whole damn thing is last sentence of the article summary: "The page has, of course, been fixed but this is nevertheless a valuable lesson for Wikipedia users." but even that's mostly OK. Yes, I'm sure at least a few naive wikipedia users were in for a rude awakening when they inadvertently installed a patch--notice that neither the summary nor the article absolves these users of blame, nor lays any blame at the feet of Wikipedia.
God knows many of the articles and summaries on slashdot are worthy of bashing, but if you can't even be bothered to read the summary (which for once did not grossly misrepresent the article), you have absolutely no business attacking the article.
"It appears that the FBI considered William Moulton Marston (1893-1947), who invented the lie detector and created the comic book character Wonder Woman under the pseudonym Charles Moulton, to be a 'phony' and a 'crackpot."
Am I the only one who got a mental image of Marston excitedly waving around a piece of yellow rope, trying to convince the FBI agents that it was the Lasso of Truth?
I've just about stopped buying PC games entirely due to the anti-pirating software. You want to bitch and moan that I'm running Daemon-tools? Fine! I WON'T give you any money and instead I'll go out and download a copy that does NOT refuse to run from a faster virtual drive (which saves me time, eletricity, and wear-and-tear on my real CD-ROM drive.)
By "annihilate" I meant "annihilate" (as in "utterly wipe out"), not "kill some of." The only way to effectively secure a victory against such milita using large bombs (many have even mentioned nukes when talking about the alleged uselessness of the second amendment, though the GP didn't) is to destroy ALL the civilians right along with them. Now, you might make limited use of large bombs in a fear campaign against the people, but it must be used in combination with an effective propaganda campaign and even then it is not guaranteed to work--indeed, it could easily backfire and inspire more civilians to join the milita. Thus, in a guerilla-war type situation where truly annhilating the populace is not an option, you cannot rely on bombs alone to carry the day.
But they haven't wiped them out, have they? They can bomb and bomb and bomb and Hamas and Hezbollah have yet to be wiped out. For all we know. the bombing campaigns may have inspired enough hatred to replace every fallen with two new recruits.
This is slashdot, not your local country club. I happen to think that they do things right, here--better to be right than it is to be polite (or politically correct.)
This particular argument I am fighting against is so widespread even the ACLU uses it as an excuse for not supporting the second amendment. The time for politeness in fighting this horseshit has long since past--it's a completely wrong line of logic and it's being used to support the disarmament of the American people.
Oh you are missing something alright--you completely ignored the post I was replying to. The discussion is about army weapontry vs. civilian weapontry in a miltary-coupe type situation, not "do governments ever commit genocide?" Yes, governments can commit racial genocide, but that's hardly relevant to the hypothetical situation where the president uses martial law as a power grab and there is a covert, armed civilian resistance. In a guerilla campaign, the government/army pretty much CANNOT win through brute force alone (assuming the non-rebel population is rebel-sympathetic.) They can burn and kill all they want, but the fact remains they cannot destroy all civilians because that would leave them with no one left to rule (and more importantly, no one left to support them.) You might suggest that if the military starts attacking on non-rebel civilian targets that might bully enough civilians into helping to root out the rebels, but the opposite could very easily occur and the military might alienate those civilian loyalists that remain.
But that's all tangential--the point you failed to grasp was, the guy I replied to was claiming that civilian guns were completely ineffective against bombs and guided missiles so therefore the second amendment (for the purposes of keeping the government in check) is pointless, and I countered that that's an incredibly stupid argument because you can't win a war against guerilla rebels with bombs (at least, not with bombs and missiles alone, though they might have a limited role.)
Did Stalin really kill 20% of his populace? I'm pretty sure that he didn't imprison nearly that many people, because I've often heard it said that the United States currently has a larger percentage of its population in prison (around 1%) than any other country in the past 100 years, including Soviet Russia,
And in any case, I don't think Stalin carpet-bombed his own cities (perhaps the cities of countries he wanted to invade.) The point wasn't whether a government could bully its own people into submission, it was whether that government could effectively use cruise missiles and bombs to do so. I think that there's a limit to the level of collateral damage citizens will tolerate. Tanks can work, but bombs?
I also wouldn't mind knowing what kind of weapontry your average non-government Russian had access to back in the 30s-50s. Did Stalin ban privately-owned firearms like Hitler did? What kind of weapon did your average Soviet hunter own? A muzzle-loading black powder rifle would've been nigh-useless against the Soviet army, but even in this day and age a decent bolt-action can be very effective... however, again, even if the firearms existed, I must wonder whether Stalin allowed the sale of the shells to private individuals.
The poster I was replying to was alluding to that oft-repeated "well, the right to bear arms in order to overthrow a tyranical government is really outdated and useless, because nothing can stop the military's weapons" horseshit. If you're going to bring up Stalin as a counterexample, I think you must first give me some links that show the Soviets had the right to bear arms under his rule.
What a load of bullshit. Every single person who's used this retarded line of thinking needs to be rounded up and forced to watch every single Vietnam movie ever made (or hell, as someone else pointed out, footage from Iraq.) There is a big big BIG difference between fighting to control and fighting to annihilate. A government will never desire to annihilate its own population. Yes, they might "make examples" on occasion, but on the whole the populace must be not be annihilated, otherwise who will they rule? Who will pay their salaries, who will build their weapons?
Seems like there are millions of people who've simply never heard of guerilla (or asymmetrical) warfare. The point is, there would be no centralized locations to drop your bombs on. The point is, most of the time there would be no visible difference between the militia and the civilians. The milita would blend in with the population--the only reliable way to find them and destroy them is on foot, on their terms. On those terms, most of the military's advantages evaporate. They might have better tech and training, but they will be severely vulnerable to ambush. Even if they outnumber the (armed) rebels by a great deal, if the majority of the populace is willing to support and shelter those rebells I would venture a guess that the military would *eventually* be compelled to withdraw after repeated harassment attacks. If the armed rebels are few in number and the majority of the populace cooperates with the military, I would venture a guess that the rebels would either be wiped out or ignored as irrelevant. The military's infrastructure and tech do make a difference, but their most potent weapons are simply inapplicable in a war where indiscriminately annihilating civilians isn't a viable option.
Creation of non-radioactive gold via nuclear transmutation is waaaay too expensive to be worth it, and will remain so for the forseeable future. However, there are some other, less-sexy possibilies (such as the extraction of gold from seawater) which might be feasible in the future.
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Um, hate to break it to ya, but ancient India produced some of the most kinkiest artworks known to man. In fact, pretty much all of Asia was, at one point in time, relatively sexually liberated. Some of them lost that liberation over time (I believe in India's case it had something to do with Muslim influence, both direct and indirect.), but many (most?) of them gained inhibitions after interacting with the West. As I understand it, Japan didn't have any porn taboo at all until the American occupation.
It might seem odd that these formerly-liberated countries now seem more prudish than we are, but you should realize that there's a difference between legal tolerance and social tolerance. I think that porn and prostitution (and other sexual "issues") tend to be more socially tolerated in many Asian countries, but they aren't legally tolerated. Over here, they're legally tolerated but (comparatively) not as socially tolerated. 100 years ago porn was illegal in the USA, and I believe we spread the porn = bad sentiment far and wide. Just because we've become less inhibited during that short century doesn't mean that the "values" we shared with (I'm tempted to say "inflicted upon") other nations will disappear just as quickly.
But anyway, long story short: you're a tad crazy to say that the West invented porn. The Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians, the Indians, the Japanese, and the Chinese all had works we'd label "hardcore pornography" by today's standards. We invented porn in the sense that we greatly popularized the idea that it was wrong, but the institution was thriving long before we arrived on the scene.
The problem with your line of reasoning is that the war on drugs is much much MUCH more expensive than the extra money we'd spend supporting junkies. Just realize what the war costs us:
1. Manhours. We could easily cut our police force in half if they didn't have to worry about drugs (see point #4.)
2. Imprisonment. It's DAMNED expensive. It includes welfare (food, shelter, medical care) and a whole lot more. You might be in favor of a more barbaric prison system, but some of us still believe in humane treatment of prisoners (especially seeing as how you never know if you'll wind up falsely convicted. It. Happens.)
3. Legal fees for the accused. You might think that this is absurd and should be abolished, but you'd want to have a few appeals, too, if you were falsely accused.
4. Creation of violent drug-related crime. Would drug dealers be shooting each other (and innocent bystanders) if you could get a pound of smack for $10 at your local Walmart? Hell no. And if you were a junkie, would you be robbing houses or holding people up at gunpoint in order to get your fix? Hell no. Well, you might do it ONCE and you'd be able to buy enough smack to last for the rest of your (VERY short) life. More likely you'd be able to get the money by begging or working odd jobs. It just wouldn't make sense to resort to crime to support your habit--hell, it wouldn't even be worth the cost of the gun.
5. "You can retire from life in the US and live off welfare, SSI and other state-funded programs."
Amongst western first-world nations, the USA has one of the weakest "safety nets" of all (you should see the state-funded programs--and unemployment rates--in Europe!) and yet we have by FAR one of the worst drug (and violent crime, and property crime) problems.
6. Taxes. Tobacco and alcohol are heavily taxed and yet they're still pretty damn cheap (someone on minimum wage can easily afford enough booze to stay in a drunken stupor most of the time.) While I'm not sure that the many, many ill health effects of tobacco are counterbalanced by the taxes, I think that the taxes from alcohol and other non-smoked drugs could easily pay for future medical treatment. (Drunk/high driving is another issue entirely and IMO it should be dealt with very severely.)
7. You're implying that this war on drugs waged by brute force is actually winnable. It isn't.
Yes, I understand how it offends your sensibilities that some people are moochers and live their lives in a "stupor", but realize that by outlawing their drugs we're all paying MUCH more in the long run. I don't think that's worth whatever sense of satisfaction you get knowing that the junkies are locked up. Why not err on the side of civil freedoms and less wasted money on the futile fucking war? Welfare is really another issue entirely; you don't have to be pro-welfare to be anti-war on drugs (and as a matter of fact, I tend to dislike the welfare state--though I'm not quite a libertarian about it.)
If you grow your own or otherwise possess a lot of it (e.g. if you smoke a LOT) then you could very well be charged with possession with intent to sell, and because of the way the laws are written there's nothing you can do to prove you weren't going to sell it. Once they manage to charge you as a drug dealer (instead of a user), you very well could be put away for a decade or more.
It also bears mentioning that shortly after 9/11 it was revealed that law enforcement agencies were holding seminars to illustrate how drug manufacturers could be charged under anti-terrorism laws, and I do believe that at least one meth producer was convicted of producing "chemical weapons." I'm not sure if the conviction was overturned or if these bullshit laws have been struck down yet or if marijuana growers were ever targeted, but it's worth mentioning to show the crazy extremes USA law enforcement is willing to go to in order to 'win' (ha) the war on drugs.
Um, yes, child porn is indeed "censored" in most western nations. "Censorship" means "suppression of stuff"... not "suppression of stuff I don't wish to see suppressed" or "suppression of stuff that is not illegal" or "suppression of stuff by someone other than the cops." This isn't about the legality or morality of porn (be it mainstream or child); the concept of censorship isn't concerned with such distinctions. All that matters is it's being suppressed.
What the hell kind of definition of "censorship" are you using? It doesn't matter whether law enforcement is involved or not; it's still censorship (in fact, I would argue that censorship enforced by the law is usually the worst type.)
The fact that they put their life on the line to protect other people doesn't give them the right to abuse their power, period. As the other guy said, police are given powers above and beyond those granted to ordinary citizens (including fry cooks), and if these guys aren't mature enough to deal with the occasional non-violent asshole without resorting to violence themselves, they should be stripped of that power.
That said, the details I've heard thus far are still a bit sketchy. If they tried to cuff him or drag/carry him out and he physically resisted then less-lethal subduing force may well have been justified. But if, as was implied, he was just sitting there being an ass and they shocked him with a potentially lethal device, then they crossed the line in a MAJOR way.
If MS has these patents, do we really believe that fear of alienating their customers is enough for them to refrain from suing people? Couldn't they sue IT companies -- linux companies, IBM, etc., without damaging their relationships with large corporate customers? And aren't those large customers so locked in that they really don't have anywhere to go if they're alienated, anyway?
. html), has more patents than any other tech company and they've been around since long before Gates was in diapers--I would hazard a guess that Windows infringes on far more IBM patents than Linux infringes on Microsoft's. I'm not saying Microsoft wouldn't have the balls (and lack of brains) to try this, but the resulting shitstorm would likely take 10+ years to resolve and could very well result in the downfall of M$ or patent law reformation... and I'd be overjoyed to see either. And even if M$ somehow prevailed, I'm willing to bet a significant portion of the EU and Asia would say "fuck you!" if asked to pay royalties on Linux.
Err, wouldn't Microsoft suing IBM over patent infringement be the legal equivalent of shooting themselves in the foot with a bazooka? IBM, according to their own website (http://www.ibm.com/news/us/en/2006/01/2006_01_10
Well my sound card isn't working at the moment, so let me ask you this: Did the cops attempt to arrest him before tazing him? Yelling at a cop isn't a crime(or rather, it shouldn't be more than ticketable "disturbing the peace" type offense.) Resisting arrest is, and depending on the type of resistance it *might* merit the use of less-lethal (NOT "non-lethal") force such as tazers. If they tried to arrest him and he *actively* refused to be put under arrest (physically resisted the handcuffs being put on), then I'd say they had the right to taze. If he was just sitting there passively resisting, the cops have absolutely no business using a potentially lethal device to physically subdue him. There were FIVE of them, for fucks' sake. The proper thing to do was have three of them move in, two of them with tazers drawn and one with handcuffs, and explain that they were putting him under arrest. The guy with the cuffs firmly takes the guys arms to cuff him, and if he violently tried to shake him off THEN you taze him.
There is never a justification for using painful and potentially lethal force to subdue someone who hasn't yet done more than resisted passively.
Again and again, the police apologists come out in droves saying "Oh, but you don't know how HARD it is being a cop!" and "The guy was definitely asking for it!" I'm just going to say what I said last time this came up (original post: http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=192848&cid =15830849) Full text:
The perfect reply to this argument (which comes up every time someone mentions that most cops are assholes) is this: a McDonald's employee has more accountability than a cop does. As a 16 year old burger-flipper, if a customer acts like a complete asshole--even going so far as to yelling and cussing you out--you are NOT allowed to verbally abuse the customer in return in any way, shape or form. At most you can ask him/her to leave the building, that's it.
Years ago, I worked at McDonald's for four months and a very good friend of mine was punched in the face. Through a plate glass window. A woman tried to order at the pickup window, was told she needed to drive around again, so she punched through the drive-through window, hitting my friend in the face. If she (my friend) had hit her back, there's not a doubt in my mind that she would have lost her job. Instead, she walked away calmly and called her supervisor and the police.
Now, I'm not implying that the police shouldn't use force when necessary. I'm also not denying that they're human too, that it's a nasty, dirty job and I'm sure it's really rough on them. But you know what? Working at McDonald's is in many was rougher (if you doubt this, I could tell you some more horror stories... absolutely the worst 4 months of my life, period.), and yet their workers are held to a much higher standard than the police. Why is that? Why do so many of us make allowances for the police to exercise HUGE leaps of personal discretion, to bend the law whenever it suits them? It's a tough job, but they chose it and we shouldn't let them bend the rules (or ignore them) whenever they feel like it. I saw a TON of asshole customers at McDonalds, yet I didn't say a foul word to any of them. I didn't spit in their food either (no one did--they would've been fired on the spot.) I did my job as professionally as I could, regardless of how shitty I was treated.
And I was a fucking fry cook!
Please please please please PLEASE tell me we can hold our police officers up to the same standards as our burger flippers.
Hitler was publicly Christian (though privately atheist) and I believe that the Nazi party at least paid lip service to Christianity. Besides, there are plenty of mostly-atheistic democracies out there--Japan, Estonia (along with many other countries in Northern Europe), etc. I think that totalitarianisms (which Nazi Germany, China, and the Soviet Union were/are) will always breed evil regardless of the official religion (or lack thereof.)
He's arguing that the morality we atheists enjoy and subscribe to was invented by monotheism and monotheism alone. That's not reasonable; that's flamebait. I'm pretty damn sure monotheism didn't invent morality. I'm pretty damn sure that some of the most moral people who've ever lived were deists or Hindus or Buddhists. I'm pretty damn sure that they have some pretty strict moral codes over in the Far East, and last time I checked they were polytheistic. Hell, last time I checked many far eastern countries like Japan and China are mostly atheistic, yet their crime rates are much lower than the USA or the UK. The USA in particular is pretty much the most religious first world western nation in the world, and yet our crime rate is the highest--we currently have the highest percentage of our population imprisoned out of any nation that's ever existed in the past 100 years (with the exception of those arrested after the Rwanda genocide), including Soviet Russia. I'm sorry, but saying that modern morality is solely a Judeo-Christian-Islamic creation shows an extreme arrogance and ignorance that belies the pseudo-intellectual tone he uses. There is also this straw man:
True atheism rejects these concepts, as they deny that there is a higher power than the natural state of the world.
Atheism is a rejection of such power taking an objective form. Atheism does not preclude the possibility of morality and "higher purpose" built by the hearts and minds of men. If animals can be born from organic goo and men be born of animals, why can't men give birth to ideals greater than humanity? Indeed, I would argue that they already have in the form of religion--atheism merely argues that we should recognize these things as our creations, not the other way around. That our moral beliefs can change doesn't make them wishy-washy and useless; on the contrary, morality that is mutable allows us to focus on the morals that really matter while letting go of the stupid ideas. So you see, that's why most of us atheists agree that murder is wrong, yet we think that the whole OMFG, LIKE, LOBSTERS DONT HAVE SCALES AND WE THINK LOBSTERS ARE FISH AND THAT INVISIBLE DUDE YHWH SAID WE SHOULDNT EAT FISH THAT DONT HAVE SCALES EVEN IF THEYRE THOROUGHLY COOKED!!!11 thing is asinine.
I work in a group home for the mentally challenged. Everyone here is legally competent, but they're definitely not functional enough to live on their own (a couple of them might be able to do it if they had someone drop by DAILY to check on them.) Nevertheless, as legally competent adults they all have the right to vote. And, well, I'm not going to sugar-coat this: they know jack shit.
Seriously.
One guy in particular, let's call him Pete, spend the entire fucking day bragging about how he voted for all of these Republican guys. He didn't know they were Republicans, of course, he just knew that they were "good people" and their opponents were "bad." God knows where he got this idea from; probably his cousin or someone he met at work or (most likely) someone he met at church. He doesn't know a goddamned thing about "the issues." Hell, he's a free spirit--I doubt very much he would agree with the Republican's religious-based anti-sex attitudes. And I've heard him remark on several occasions that "we need to get the hell out of there [Iraq]."And for several years he was forced to live on the streets because he had nowhere to live--I doubt VERY much he would agree with the Republicans' tendency to cut our budget (which they do frequently, as we're partially government-supported.)
But it doesn't matter. Someone got ahold of his ear and filled his head with a bunch of horseshit, and he went out and voted before I had the chance to undo the damage.
So yeah, I guess if you wanna be pedantic about it, Pete was informed--he knew that some person (or people) he liked was a fan of these candidates, so that's who he voted for.
And while I hate to admit it, I really don't think that your average American voter is much better. The majority of their decision is based on peer pressure and highly misleading political advertisements, not any genuine analysis of the facts. In 2004, my own sister (definitely NOT a conservative) voted for Bush. Why? "Because Kerry is a flip-flopper." It boggles the mind. EVERY politician flip-flops like crazy, Bush and Kerry included, but the power of political advertising stuck that label firmly to Kerry's forehead alone. And gay marriage somehow got turned into a HUGE political issue in '04--How many people voted for Bush because they wanted to "defend marriage"? Did ANY of them take TWO GODDAMN SECONDS to check Google and find out that Kerry was against gay marriage as well? Did ANY of them ever stop and realize that the marriage issue was being decided on a state-by-state basis and that the constitutional amendment they were debating was completely unrelated to the presidential office?
And who the hell decided that the Republicans were "tough on terror" and the Democrats were weak... goddamnit, they supported Iraq, which was and still is a goddamn travesty, and they unanimously supported Afghanistan--what the hell else do they want? And Kerry actually fought in a war, damnit, while Bush putzed around in the National Guard, doing coke and getting arrested for DUI in his spare time, but the magic of those Swift Boat Liars (only one of those assholes actually served under Kerry, and their commercials are filled will outright lies and one obscenely misleading splice of two separate Kerry quotes) somehow managed to completely destroy what should have been a massive feather in Kerry's cap, especially considering the ongoing Iraq war.
So yeah, I think Total Ignorance can exist, but it's more of a quasi-willful ignorance, a willingness to unquestioningly believe in the most ridiculous horseshit. You don't have to be a genius, you don't have to devote your life to researching the issues, but I don't see how an ignorant vote can possibly be a good thing. On the basis of the above points, I'd say that ignorant voters played a major part in getting Bush reelected (mods, if you voted for Bush please note that I'm NOT calling you ignorant. I'm saying that many, if not most of the people who voted for Bush that I talked to
If a man cuts his finger off while slicing salami at work, he sues the restaurant. If you smoke three packs a day for 40 years and die of lung cancer, your family sues the tobacco company. If your neighbor crashes into a tree while driving home drunk, he sues the bartender. If your grandchildren are brats without manners, you sue producers of a video games. If your friend is shot by a deranged madman, you sue the gun manufacturer.
It really irks me when people talk about sue-happy America and pretend that the problem is all about individuals suing corporations. Yes, all of these lawsuits have likely occurred at one point in time, but in the VAST majority of these type cases they end up losing or they win, but only because the situation is significantly more complicated. For example, take the woman who sued McDonald's for spilling hot coffee on herself. On the face of it, as a quick little soundbite it sounds absurd and the perfect example of everything that's wrong about this country... but the details of the lawsuit changes everything. The McDonald's in question was running a "unlimited coffee" promotion, and they realized that by serving the coffee extremely hot (190+ degrees F, as I recall) people would wind up drinking less because they had to wait for it to cool off. They had health inspectors come by--the inspectors measured the temperature of the coffee, told them it was DANGEROUSLY hot and needed to be served at a lower temperature. They might have even warned them multiple times about it, I don't recall. The McDonald's management chose NOT to lower the temperature of the coffee. Then, an elderly woman spilled some on her lap. If the coffee was served at a reasonable temp, she would have been fine; maybe some slight irritation (mild first-degree burns.) But, because the coffee was so damn hot, she suffered THIRD DEGREE BURNS across her pelvic area, including her vulva. She required skin grafts and was in tremendous pain for quite some time. Imagine for a second spilling some hot coffee on your lap and getting third degree burns all over your genitals, then finding out that the restaurant was specifically warned by health inspectors that their coffee was dangerously hot and yet they decided to keep their coffee hot anyway because it was more profitable?
I don't recall how many millions of dollars she won, but I'd say that in this case, the "poor corporation" clearly deserved it. From what I've seen, most of the time when they lose, they do deserve it. Let's take your examples--the tobacco company ACTIVELY HID their own research that showed their product caused cancer. Maybe 30+ years ago people knew they weren't super-healthy, but they know that they increased their chances of getting lung cancer by (to pull a number out of my ass here) 10,000%? Big tobacco did, but they destroyed the research and hid the truth. Until that truth finally came to light (decades later, I think), most people didn't know that heavy, long-term smoking was a virtual death sentence. Big tobacco deserved to be hit with those billions of dollars' worth of punitive damages.
And let's say that salami slicer was missing a vital safety guard, but the owner was too cheap to replace it. Sorry, but he too deserves what he gets. Employers being motivated to take cheap, basic precautions to keep their employees safe can only be a good thing.
The bartender is a little more iffy--you have a link to the a *successful* lawsuit? I agree that he shouldn't be responsible for his patrons, but in very specific circumstances (like, if he somehow KNEW the guy was going to be driving home) you could make a case for reckless endangerment.
The video game thing has happened a few times, but I'm not aware of a single successful lawsuit (of this type) brought against a video game. Stupid lawsuits *generally* aren't successful, and corporations can almost always afford to defend themselves vs. an individual.
Contrast that with a corporation suing an individual. E
Um...
/., actually) that they did a study and the amount of sunlight that actually reaches the surface of the earth has decreased by a whopping 10% since 1950. That alone puts a pretty huge dent in your theory. This is probably due to the fact that...
1. I'm pretty sure that I read (on
2. Life forms are surprisingly adaptive. You act as if plants are completely helpless in the face of a minor 2% change. I'm not saying there wouldn't be some long-term consequences (more to do with specific species thriving/suffering as opposed to planet-wide climate change) , but a permanent, perfectly linear/proportional drop in oxygen output is unrealistic.
3. Sunlight is only the energy source--plenty of other factors are involved in oxygen production.
4. I'm not at all sure that the greenhouse effect depends on gas proportions. You imply that the overall level of greenhouse gases could stay the same but if the relative amounts of other gases dropped, we would warm up. That's entirely possible, but that's not how I assumed it worked. Mars is pretty cold, and its thin atmosphere is composed (IIRC) mostly of CO2, so that seems to be another dent in your theory. Venus, on the other hand, has an extremely thick atmosphere of C02 and it's hotter than Mercury. From this, I would hazard a guess that raw quantities of greenhouse gasses are more important than percentages.
5. Even if greenhouse gases did have a proportional effect, the missing oxygen might very well be replaced by other inert gases. Plants aren't simple oxygen machines; they give and take in ways that I simply cannot recall (nor be bothered to Google) at 5:30 AM.
Oh, and personal responsibility doesn't work. Sorry. Wish it did... but it doesn't, so let's not completely neglect the worst-case-scenario plans, eh?
How the FUCK can you call the article FUD? Did you even RTFA, you knee-jerk twit?
Sorry, but I am SICK AND FUCKING TIRED of people throwing around the "FUD" label so easily. First it became a synonym of bullshit (newsflash: "FUD" is a malicious, systematic campaign of disinformation and misleading information. "Bullshit" is a much broader term. All FUD is can also be classified as bullshit, but the reverse is not true.) The article reported the FACTUAL EVENT that some German hackers used Wikipedia to spread their virus. Did the article say this was Wikipedia's fault? No. This is their closing (quoted) paragraph:
"The very openness of websites like Wikipedia--which allow anyone to edit pages--makes them terrific, but can also make them less trustworthy. In this case, it wasn't just that the information posted in Wikipedia's articles was misleading, it was downright malicious," continued Cluley. "Everyone should exercise caution and ensure they have appropriate defenses in place to protect their computer systems. Additionally, people should remember that if there really is a new threat on the internet, you're likely to hear about it first from the security companies, not an online encyclopedia."
which is essentially what YOU said. So just what the hell is your problem? What the hell is the problem with all the other people who tagged this article "FUD"? It's reasonable, unbiased reporting of factual events. I like Wikipedia too--hell, I LOVE it... other than gmail, it's probably my most frequented website by far. But the article isn't attacking Wikipedia AT ALL.
It doesn't even qualify as "bullshit", let alone "FUD." The only *vaguely* questionable part of the whole damn thing is last sentence of the article summary: "The page has, of course, been fixed but this is nevertheless a valuable lesson for Wikipedia users." but even that's mostly OK. Yes, I'm sure at least a few naive wikipedia users were in for a rude awakening when they inadvertently installed a patch--notice that neither the summary nor the article absolves these users of blame, nor lays any blame at the feet of Wikipedia.
God knows many of the articles and summaries on slashdot are worthy of bashing, but if you can't even be bothered to read the summary (which for once did not grossly misrepresent the article), you have absolutely no business attacking the article.
"It appears that the FBI considered William Moulton Marston (1893-1947), who invented the lie detector and created the comic book character Wonder Woman under the pseudonym Charles Moulton, to be a 'phony' and a 'crackpot."
Am I the only one who got a mental image of Marston excitedly waving around a piece of yellow rope, trying to convince the FBI agents that it was the Lasso of Truth?
I've just about stopped buying PC games entirely due to the anti-pirating software. You want to bitch and moan that I'm running Daemon-tools? Fine! I WON'T give you any money and instead I'll go out and download a copy that does NOT refuse to run from a faster virtual drive (which saves me time, eletricity, and wear-and-tear on my real CD-ROM drive.)
By "annihilate" I meant "annihilate" (as in "utterly wipe out"), not "kill some of." The only way to effectively secure a victory against such milita using large bombs (many have even mentioned nukes when talking about the alleged uselessness of the second amendment, though the GP didn't) is to destroy ALL the civilians right along with them. Now, you might make limited use of large bombs in a fear campaign against the people, but it must be used in combination with an effective propaganda campaign and even then it is not guaranteed to work--indeed, it could easily backfire and inspire more civilians to join the milita. Thus, in a guerilla-war type situation where truly annhilating the populace is not an option, you cannot rely on bombs alone to carry the day.
But they haven't wiped them out, have they? They can bomb and bomb and bomb and Hamas and Hezbollah have yet to be wiped out. For all we know. the bombing campaigns may have inspired enough hatred to replace every fallen with two new recruits.
This is slashdot, not your local country club. I happen to think that they do things right, here--better to be right than it is to be polite (or politically correct.)
This particular argument I am fighting against is so widespread even the ACLU uses it as an excuse for not supporting the second amendment. The time for politeness in fighting this horseshit has long since past--it's a completely wrong line of logic and it's being used to support the disarmament of the American people.
Oh you are missing something alright--you completely ignored the post I was replying to. The discussion is about army weapontry vs. civilian weapontry in a miltary-coupe type situation, not "do governments ever commit genocide?" Yes, governments can commit racial genocide, but that's hardly relevant to the hypothetical situation where the president uses martial law as a power grab and there is a covert, armed civilian resistance. In a guerilla campaign, the government/army pretty much CANNOT win through brute force alone (assuming the non-rebel population is rebel-sympathetic.) They can burn and kill all they want, but the fact remains they cannot destroy all civilians because that would leave them with no one left to rule (and more importantly, no one left to support them.) You might suggest that if the military starts attacking on non-rebel civilian targets that might bully enough civilians into helping to root out the rebels, but the opposite could very easily occur and the military might alienate those civilian loyalists that remain.
m ples_of_countries_and_wars_where_guerrilla_campaig ns_were_successful
But that's all tangential--the point you failed to grasp was, the guy I replied to was claiming that civilian guns were completely ineffective against bombs and guided missiles so therefore the second amendment (for the purposes of keeping the government in check) is pointless, and I countered that that's an incredibly stupid argument because you can't win a war against guerilla rebels with bombs (at least, not with bombs and missiles alone, though they might have a limited role.)
And if you disagree with this, then you are indeed a dumbass. Just look at Iraq and try to tell me with a straight face that those guerillas are completely ineffective. Also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerilla_warfare#Exa
Did Stalin really kill 20% of his populace? I'm pretty sure that he didn't imprison nearly that many people, because I've often heard it said that the United States currently has a larger percentage of its population in prison (around 1%) than any other country in the past 100 years, including Soviet Russia,
And in any case, I don't think Stalin carpet-bombed his own cities (perhaps the cities of countries he wanted to invade.) The point wasn't whether a government could bully its own people into submission, it was whether that government could effectively use cruise missiles and bombs to do so. I think that there's a limit to the level of collateral damage citizens will tolerate. Tanks can work, but bombs?
I also wouldn't mind knowing what kind of weapontry your average non-government Russian had access to back in the 30s-50s. Did Stalin ban privately-owned firearms like Hitler did? What kind of weapon did your average Soviet hunter own? A muzzle-loading black powder rifle would've been nigh-useless against the Soviet army, but even in this day and age a decent bolt-action can be very effective... however, again, even if the firearms existed, I must wonder whether Stalin allowed the sale of the shells to private individuals.
The poster I was replying to was alluding to that oft-repeated "well, the right to bear arms in order to overthrow a tyranical government is really outdated and useless, because nothing can stop the military's weapons" horseshit. If you're going to bring up Stalin as a counterexample, I think you must first give me some links that show the Soviets had the right to bear arms under his rule.
So Stalin bombed his own cities, did he?
Link? Oh yeah, and bombing OTHER nation's cities (such as the areas that were NOT originally part of the USSR) don't count.
What a load of bullshit. Every single person who's used this retarded line of thinking needs to be rounded up and forced to watch every single Vietnam movie ever made (or hell, as someone else pointed out, footage from Iraq.) There is a big big BIG difference between fighting to control and fighting to annihilate. A government will never desire to annihilate its own population. Yes, they might "make examples" on occasion, but on the whole the populace must be not be annihilated, otherwise who will they rule? Who will pay their salaries, who will build their weapons?
Seems like there are millions of people who've simply never heard of guerilla (or asymmetrical) warfare. The point is, there would be no centralized locations to drop your bombs on. The point is, most of the time there would be no visible difference between the militia and the civilians. The milita would blend in with the population--the only reliable way to find them and destroy them is on foot, on their terms. On those terms, most of the military's advantages evaporate. They might have better tech and training, but they will be severely vulnerable to ambush. Even if they outnumber the (armed) rebels by a great deal, if the majority of the populace is willing to support and shelter those rebells I would venture a guess that the military would *eventually* be compelled to withdraw after repeated harassment attacks. If the armed rebels are few in number and the majority of the populace cooperates with the military, I would venture a guess that the rebels would either be wiped out or ignored as irrelevant. The military's infrastructure and tech do make a difference, but their most potent weapons are simply inapplicable in a war where indiscriminately annihilating civilians isn't a viable option.
Creation of non-radioactive gold via nuclear transmutation is waaaay too expensive to be worth it, and will remain so for the forseeable future. However, there are some other, less-sexy possibilies (such as the extraction of gold from seawater) which might be feasible in the future.