This comes from highly intelligent people not having an outlet for their intelligence
What a load of crap.
They guy is a painter that lives in a world where paint has been banned. Of COURSE he is a criminal.
Yeah, if only this guy had lived in a world where it's OK to steal from other people's bank accounts. That would be a great world, wouldn't it? Just think how much would get done if nobody could trust a bank! Why, it would be a grand new society! And people who desparately need the "outlet" of stealing things from other people in order to feel good about themselves would finally be able to live a more peaceful, happy life.
Um, unless the fact that there's no risk, and no longer any chance to be the guy weilding technology with malice makes it no fun anymore, right? How many vandals would there be if there was no cultural care about destruction of property? Without the thrill of screwing someone else out of their time, property, and efforts, what's the point? Right. The point is the power trip and the pleasure from destruction and getting away with something. That's why guys like this would still be rotten even if there weren't computers and networks. You think he's highly intelligent and just being kept by his evil school from using it? Are you really one of these people that thinks it's up to the schools to amuse everybody according to their own individual tastes, level of boredom, and lack of enough imagination to do something outside of school to keep busy and interested?
Now they have given him an reason to have "classified/unclassified conversations".
The reason for that is the law. Not only are his official communications something that involve archival issues, don't forget that he's a politician, too, and the head of the Democratic Party. He will have to have election/campaign-related communications that involve fundraising, support for other politicians at political events, etc. Those communications MUST (by law) be handled outside of the infrastructure that supports his official duties. You'll recall all of the bitching on this web site when it appeared that people they don't like (or their aides) were crossing that line. I'll be well and truly nauseated if Obama gets a pass from this audience on that subject, just because he's not someone else.
Also: would you really like the short e-mail from your wife about how your daughter just got a particular grade on her homework to be part of the national archives records? Private life, political life, and official duty life all need to be kept at arm's length as much as possible. But he and his staff will screw it up sometimes, just like everyone that's come before him did.
There is no one defending justice for these people
You mean, other than the lawyers that have been assigned to them, the judicial panels that have freed many of them, and the Red Cross observers who have a permanent presence at the facility.
...closing gitmo might just be a belated attempt to...
Gitmo is a place. The place has nothing to do with why the people detained there were taken out the environments in which they were attacking people, or supporting and financing those that were. You'll notice that even the incoming administration's spin-masters are making a big point of how problematic the actual bad guys are, just like they were for the Bush administration. None of the European countries who have complained about the place called Gitmo have offered to hold those prisoners instead. Some countries to which these guys would be released will torture and kill them, right away. Others have sworn that the minute they're released, they will resume attempting to kill coalition troops and supporting civilians anywhere they can get to them.
Over 50 of the released detainees have returned to the same militant jihadism they were practicing when they were captured. Many of their still-detained buddies are determined to do the same. They promise that that's what they'll do.
If a US soldier is captured and tortured in future...
This has nothing to do with soldiers, as you know. These aren't uniformed soldiers, fighting for and reporting to a uniformed hierarchy that acts on behalf a signatory to the Geneva Convention. These are un-uniformed, privately funded, non-military attackers and terrorists who do not answer to a military chain of command or a government body. Of course you already know all of that, and you're just trolling.
No. The point of closing Gitmo is to throw at least one bone to the MoveOn.org and Barbara Streisand types. He made a big stink in the campaign about closing the facility, while being slippery and never mentioning what he planned on doing with the actual bad guys. His supporters in the media never pressed him on it, and it became one of the very, very few specific, concrete things he actually said he'd do. So, he's going to do it. Eventually. And it will be meaningless.
Just like quickly acting to "ban" waterboarding - which already stopped being used in 2003. Just like his bold new plan to get behind a "surge" type action in Afghanistan - which is already under way. It's OK, though - his fans don't care about reality, and most of the media will ignore it too.
the problem with your viewpoint is that you assume that Hamas is the will of the Palestinian people
No, read what I actually said. The Palestinian people are scared of Hamas. And the Palestinians that aren't too scared of Hamas to act in a more civilized way? Hamas has them killed, regularly. Hamas is no more the expression of the will of the Palestinian people than Saddam and his twisted sons were the expression of the will of the average Iraqi.
Because Hamas takes those supplies at gunpoint as soon as they're in Gaza, and then uses them to control the people who live there. All Hamas has to do is approve international oversight, on the ground... and they refuse to do that (because they want to be in charge of the food, and thereby in charge of the people who need it... and who might turn against them).
I think it's wrong to try to force someone to live (or not live) within some arbitrary geographical region
And plenty of Arabs (and every other culture) live in Israel. The point of the Israelis is that Jews needed (historically - um, just look it up) a place where they can go live without being slaughtered for being Jewish. Enough of the world agreed with that proposition to actually set it up that way half a century ago.
The Israelis aren't saying who may or may not live in Palestine - they're only saying that whoever it is, or whatever mix of people it is, can't be allowed to shoot thousands of missiles across the border and into residential areas for the specific purpose of randomly killing civilians, for years on end, without a response that finally ends it. The Palestinians have shown that they cannot even form a coherent voice and functioning government within their own population - even when dozens of other countries pay for and help to run their elections. How can Israel have a sustained, peaceful relationship with a neighbor when half of that neighbor's elected government body is willing to shoot the other half down in the street in order to preserve the latitude to act on one of their stated, foundational tenets: that Israel should be destroyed, and its Jewish residents all killed.
There is only one party in the conflict between Israel and the militant, missile-lobbing terrorists in Gaza that operate on a principle of race- and culture-based segregation and extermination: that would be Hamas and its Islmaist backers.
There are millions of people in the region and each of those millions of people has their own unique world view.
So what? Some world views are objectively better than others. Hamas wants to cling to a world view that embraces a backwards-looking, mysoginistic, medievalist militant theocracy-by-sword. They get cash and weapons from groups that think women shouldn't be able to read, or which would stone them to death for having been raped by a stranger. La la la, just another world view, right?
If the Palestinians put down their weapons there would be no Palestine.
Israel pulled every last resident and military person out of Gaza explicitly on the Palestinian promise that the attacks out of Gaza would end, and that Gaza wouldn't be a base camp for Hamas terrorism and violence. The Palestinians never had a better chance to simply take control of that territory through a peaceful and democratic government that wanted to actually become the nation that everyone wants to see. But instead, Hamas took control of it, and the Palestinian people are too scared to put them out of power. Just like the majority of Iraqis were too worn down and scared to death of the Baathists and of Saddam to get rid of him - even when his actions brought more and more sanctions and hardship and death. Israel (and the rest of the world, if they weren't so chickenshit about the faux diplomatic issues) must do to Hamas in Gaza what the coalition did to Saddam. Make them go away so that a working civic society has a chance to take hold, just as it gradually is in Iraq, only a few years later.
Hamas can't survive unless they can posture themselves as the defiant heros, fighting off Israel. But ever since Israel removed everything of theirs from Gaza, Hamas has had no enemy there to valiantly fight. So what do they do? Spend months making thousands of cowardly missiles launches at random civilian targets in order to provoke the military response they need in order to have some way to prove their worth. They're getting more than they asked for, and have mis-interpretted what happened recently with Hezbollah in Beirut. If the Palestinians force Hamas to stop attacking Israel, the conflict will stop. But Hamas kills Palestinians who want it to stop, don't they? So Israel's hand has been forced, and they're doing it the hard way. And they still send out leaflets telling Palestinian civilians to get away from areas wh
but also food and preventing the importing of non-free supplies
Non-free supplies, like the weapons that Hamas then shoots at Israel? Well, they're paid for by Iran and Syria (there is no free lunch, after all), but they're free to Hamas. So, maybe that doesn't figure in?
Then there's that truck full of "humanitarian" aid that was stopped at a border crossing the other day, during a 3-hour window of cooled-down fighting. Right in there with the food were bundles of disguised military uniforms (various types of camo, black fatigues, etc) hidden in food bags. Gee. I wonder why border crossing checks matter?
So, are you willing to tolerate those that would not tolerate your being here? Is your tolerance so far-reaching that it includes a loving, tolerant embrace of people that think you should be killed for your tolerance? You seem to want an environment in which tolerance is the norm... but don't seem to be getting your head around the fact that there are entire nations run by people who drag "the tolerant" out back and shoot them for being that way. How do you reconcile your tolerance for those people? You're breathing in the second hand smoke of their intolerance, even as you piously proclaim your moral superiority for tolerating anyone and any thing that others might do.
The liberty to sit here and chit-chat about this wasn't born out of passive, blissful tolerance exuded while in the lotus position and singing Kumbaya. It was purchased through blood and treasure in drawing a line against those that would not tolerate it, and were willing to use force to back up that position. The murderous, liberty-squelching European fascists of the last century (who would never have tolerated this forum) didn't go away because they were tolerated out of existence. Are you somehow of the mind that the systematic rape and killings going on in Somalia will be reduced if only the world could find a way to better tolerate the people doing it? Would North Korea's squalid labor camps and starving peasants live a better life if the world were only to muster up a little more tolerance for Kim Jong Il's continual threatening of his neighbors? Is some little girl in Afghanistan really going to have a better life if you can talk everyone into tolerating the Taliban's policy of and frequent actions in dragging her school teacher out into the road and shooting her before they burn down her school? Yes, I'm sure those fine fellows would join you in that chorus of Kumbaya if only they thought that the rest of the world was more tolerant of their happily medieval, mysoginistic, retrograde vision for a world in which no girls can read, and all women are chattal.
not tolerating bad ideas will eventually lead to a fight. Thank you for showing a good example of that
But you're ignoring the fact that the fight was necessary, and had the result of ending the applicability of the bad idea. The bad idea wasn't tolerated, and now it's gone. Tolerating the bad idea is tacit approval of it.
I don't think anyone's argued that you should tolerate people trying to kill you.
How about tolerating them moving into your neighborhood, and changing the laws under which you live such that the women in your family are no longer allowed to go to work, at the risk of being stoned to death? After all, it's just an idea. And if the majority of people in your neighborhood begin to hold that idea, why... tolerance dictates that you allow them to, right?
but getting the hell away from people trying to kill me has worked just fine for me this far
Would you say that it has worked for everyone in London? In Madrid? In Bali? In New York?
Actually, believing that the world is 6000 years old is unlikely to have any consequences.
You're kidding, right? You can't imagine the consequences to a child's life for having been raised believing in magic and nonsense? You can't see how that might impact the way they vote, the manner in which they relate to other people, or the chances that they'll become - by virtue of having been convinced that a plainly irrational world view is accurate - the very sort of intolerant, narrow-minded people you so dislike? No consequences for trapping your mind in the middle ages? Here's a consequence of that: the middle ages. And another: whole religious movements, which run whole countries and their militaries, that prefer the way they had things in the middle ages. The young earth loonies aren't any different than the "our prophet flew to heaven on a winged horse" loonies.
I'm saying that "using social pressure to suppress memes" sounds suspiciously like Stalinism
No. "Killing tens millions of people who didn't conveniently get with the program" sounds like Stalinism. Using your voice to shame parents into teaching their kids that the world isn't flat and that dinosaur bones weren't cleverly planted in the back yard as a humorous test of faith from On High - that's hardly Stalinism. It's getting people to grow up and stop with the Magical Thinking, already.
Not to mention it might be a lot harder to find a large-ish metal rock in Lake Michigan, amongst all of the sunken barges, idiot-driven snowmobiles, and so on.
Similarly, not tolerating bad ideas will eventually lead to a fight
You mean, like slavery? One group decides to continue to tolerate it, and another group decides not to. A big bloody fight ensues. One side wins. The intolerable idea becomes insignificantly present in the resulting, altered culture. Or are you suggesting that we should tolerate it, because it's gosh darn socially awkward to tell someone that they're wrong?
Liberal policy of live and let live is really all about the first part. You will never be left to live in peace unless you're willing to do the same to others
Yeah, except for the part where there are some people who consider the very act of you living the way you want to, peacefully, with things like daughters who are allowed to read and write, and marry who they choose... to be sufficient grounds to kill you. And your family. Can you really find moral comfort in that scenario by just physically removing yourself far enough away from the person who considers the nature of your day to day life to be an abomination requiring your death? Does your eager embrace of tolerance for every point of view include tolerating someone who doesn't tolerate you, and feels a religious duty to erase you from the planet?
You do realize that suppressing a meme requires oppressing the people who would pick it up or keep it
Or simply demonstrating in very plain, obvious ways that it's wrong. Or that embracing and pushing an incorrect world view or bad piece of information has consequences. Are you really equating a solid science curriculum that actively looks to shut down absurd superstitions in its students with Stalinism? Man, it must be exhausting to work so hard at moral relativism.
the poor and the elderly and the sick of New Orleans who didn't have the resources to leave
Of course they had the resources. There was a fleet of school buses sitting right there, and it could have spent three days shuttling most of the city's population above sea level. The federal government doesn't control those city resources, and doesn't need to. The MAYOR of the city is in charge of that sort of thing, and was (and remains) an idiot. He also lacked the courage to simply call upon his own state's governor to help with the same activity. Preparedness for storms in cities and states that see hurricanes every year is the responsibility of the people who choose to live there, and the local governments that they elect. The people of New Orleans and the useless people they had elected to manage their cities and emergency preparedness are to blame. Period.
So, we can use your definition of "habit" to also say that Pakistanis have a habit of murdering school teachers for teaching, a habit of blinding women with battery acid for having the audacity to turn down a the sexual advances of an old man who already has three other wives? Ah yes, the Pakistani Habit of sending religious zealots into other countries where they take over villages by force and then march women into what used to be soccer fields and shoot them in the head at lunch time in front of a crowd for... teaching their daughters to read?
What? Those aren't reasonable descriptions of the "habits" of all Pakistanis?
Do you suppose that any Pakistani military operation (say, in the middle of shooting people while arguing over who owns Kasmir, for example) has ever involved the death of anyone other than their intended targets? Ah, so Pakistanis are in the habit of killing innocent people? Or is it that you're just in the habit of being a breathless troll with no perspective whatsoever?
But you sure like to make one of yourself. Why should anyone consider your rantings to be in any way credible when you can't manage to deliver them without acting like a spoiled, jerky grade school punk? Do you even read your own posts?
If what you claim is true, what is happening now would've happened a long time ago.
Wrong. The risk was accumulating (which is why the representatives from the administration are seen in congressional hearings, in front of Franks, telling him there's a serious problem looming). The only thing that delayed the results was the unusually long period of time that property values continued to go up on the market. When that stopped, as it always does, the empty loan values - the ones backed up by vague government promises and pressure on the market - came home to roost.
The "power" of capitalism is what caused the current financial crisis, not teh evil government. Banking institutions collapsed after regulations were removed, not whilst they were in place.
You mean, when the congress (see Barney Frank's ranting assurances that Fannie and Freddie were no risk at all, and perfectly well capitalized, etc) - for entirely political reasons, essentially forces the capital market to make irrational loans to people who cannot possibly afford them, that's regulations being removed? Hardly. Those institutions would never had made those loans, or invested in them, without that heavy dose of wrong-headed government involvement in the market.
That tax should be a Money transfer Tax, for example 15% when you get paid, buy something, transfer money. etc.
Yessiree, that will keep capital circulating! Nothing inspires a person to move funds into a position to better fund a promising new company or other investment than to take 15% of that money away from you for seeing the opportunity. Yes! Punish investment! That should get some new companies and jobs under way.
when I bought my HP laptop, there was a sticker just under the top flap begging me to go through warranty rather than return the laptop to the store
Right - because the VAST majority of those returns are from people who simply don't RTFM, and don't understand that Teh Interwebs don't come free in the box... or that WiFi involved other hardware, too. HP would rather take those phone calls and preserve the sale. That's part of their agreement with the retailers. Different products - especially computers - involved different levels of support.
Just bought an HP Mini netbook at Costco. I have NO expectation of Costco providing technical support (though they add a year to the warranty, and will take it back no questions asked), but HP is happy to push those items out through dealers of that kind because HP already has a well-oiled directi support infrastructure in place, and they want to move hardware to compete with Asus and the rest. How they choose to divide the support labor between them and their dealers is and should be up to them. And with that comes the baggage of other contractual terms that define that relationship. If the dealer doesn't like it, they can just choose from a jillion other things to sell. That deal seems to have served HP and Costco both very well - I saw an entire skid of those units sell in less than an hour.
If Sony doesn't want to handle complaints, then create a good product
This isn't about "good" products. This is about increasingly complex products. Sony doesn't want to have to run an 800 number to field calls from shoppers who were handed the wrong (or no) cables by a no-margin retailer that refuses to answer questions from the person to whom they just sold a DVR. The retailer can prevent all of that by taking five minutes with the customer during the sale, or by having adequate signage and display info that makes sure the customer understands how the device they're thinking of buying will fit into a 200-variables A/V configuration. The "lowest price on the internet" guys do NOT do such things. But then, they usually aren't legit dealers, either. Sony can just hang up the phone after checking the serial number and advising the shopper to take it back and go instead to real retailer instead of one that refuses to provide support and is dealing in grey market stuff. But Sony won't want to hang up the phone because even though some third party just ripped somebody off (by not providing the support a real dealer is expected to provide along with a Sony product), Sony doesn't want to taint their brand - since the shopper doesn't want to hear about dealer agreements and retail import zones... they just want to record the last episode of Stargate, which is coming on in 30 minutes.
Plenty of people WANT to be Sony dealers. There's no force involved in such dealer agreements. Sony has to turn DOWN the retailers that they don't think are up to the task. If a retailer doesn't like it, they can sell Panasonic instead. Or Brand X from China. And if not a single consumer liked Sony products enough to pay what they are asking for their items, Sony would adjust. But they don't have to, and don't want to. And the government shouldn't step in between them and they retailers that want to sign those dealer agreements just because somebody else wants to have their cake (a Sony product line to sell) and eat it, too (by whoring it out for 5% margins, and skipping out on supporting customers).
So you're saying: This is a roundabout way of making sure fly-by-night dealers don't make a quick buck
No, I'm saying that it's a very direct way for manufacturers to help prevent erosion of their reputation. Retailers that don't make enough on the sale to be able to handle the job of selling the product, or who sell the brand without any commitment to supporting the sale afterwards... if they're still part of the public face of "Sony" as a brand, it hurts Sony.
this is basically job protection for legit dealers and milking a minimum amount of money from consumers
No, it's contract between the manufacturer and the business that wants to represent them by selling their wares. And, not treating a maker's goods as loss leaders and unsupported bad-will sales items isn't "milking" consumers - it's keeping a viable dealer network functioning. That's less expensive for Sony than opening a bunch of Sony stores to replace the work that all of their retail partners are doing, and it's a lot less expensive than what happens to their reputation when more and more of their sales start coming from boiler-room con-man shops in Brooklyn running twenty dodgy web sites.
Nobody has to purchase anything made by Sony. And no retailer has to carry Sony products. If Sony can't offer legit dealers a rational contract, then dealers won't want to touch them. But Sony doesn't want to be Bang & Olufsen, so they approach it differently. And it's up to them. It's all about every party in the picture choosing to be involved with each other. And if you'd prefer to take your business to retailers that don't have a warranty channel available, and which lie about things like which batteries ship with a product, etc., then go for it... but I can tell you who actually gets "milked" when that's how the retail landscape takes over a particular brand... and it's the consumer. Sony doesn't want to swim in those waters, and who can blame them.
If you don't allow a manufacturer to strike a voluntary agreement with the dealers they choose to use, then they'll eventually just move to a "company store" model. The whole point of a dealer agreement is to support the manufacturer's choices about who they will have supporting, and representing their products to their end users. You are NOT obligated to support MAP prices... as long as you're also not interested in being able to tell your customers that you're an authorized dealer that supports warranties, etc. You can purchase a nice shiny Nikon D700 DSLR from a US dealer, or you can get a cheaper one that's gray-market... and you'll never get Nikon USA to service it, period.
They manufacturer doesn't want to have to take up the slack for the work that legit dealers are supposed to be doing. Legit dealers usually make most of their money off of accessories anyway (HDMI cables, for example), and like having a big name-brand item as an anchor/draw in order to do that accessory business. Companies like Sony don't want to have to wear a bunch of customer service complaints about a retail outlet that "can't afford" to take a lot of time taking care of a customer's problem because they gave away all of the margin on the sale.
Slashdot Mirror
This comes from highly intelligent people not having an outlet for their intelligence
What a load of crap.
They guy is a painter that lives in a world where paint has been banned. Of COURSE he is a criminal.
Yeah, if only this guy had lived in a world where it's OK to steal from other people's bank accounts. That would be a great world, wouldn't it? Just think how much would get done if nobody could trust a bank! Why, it would be a grand new society! And people who desparately need the "outlet" of stealing things from other people in order to feel good about themselves would finally be able to live a more peaceful, happy life.
Um, unless the fact that there's no risk, and no longer any chance to be the guy weilding technology with malice makes it no fun anymore, right? How many vandals would there be if there was no cultural care about destruction of property? Without the thrill of screwing someone else out of their time, property, and efforts, what's the point? Right. The point is the power trip and the pleasure from destruction and getting away with something. That's why guys like this would still be rotten even if there weren't computers and networks. You think he's highly intelligent and just being kept by his evil school from using it? Are you really one of these people that thinks it's up to the schools to amuse everybody according to their own individual tastes, level of boredom, and lack of enough imagination to do something outside of school to keep busy and interested?
Now they have given him an reason to have "classified/unclassified conversations".
The reason for that is the law. Not only are his official communications something that involve archival issues, don't forget that he's a politician, too, and the head of the Democratic Party. He will have to have election/campaign-related communications that involve fundraising, support for other politicians at political events, etc. Those communications MUST (by law) be handled outside of the infrastructure that supports his official duties. You'll recall all of the bitching on this web site when it appeared that people they don't like (or their aides) were crossing that line. I'll be well and truly nauseated if Obama gets a pass from this audience on that subject, just because he's not someone else.
Also: would you really like the short e-mail from your wife about how your daughter just got a particular grade on her homework to be part of the national archives records? Private life, political life, and official duty life all need to be kept at arm's length as much as possible. But he and his staff will screw it up sometimes, just like everyone that's come before him did.
There is no one defending justice for these people
You mean, other than the lawyers that have been assigned to them, the judicial panels that have freed many of them, and the Red Cross observers who have a permanent presence at the facility.
...closing gitmo might just be a belated attempt to...
Gitmo is a place. The place has nothing to do with why the people detained there were taken out the environments in which they were attacking people, or supporting and financing those that were. You'll notice that even the incoming administration's spin-masters are making a big point of how problematic the actual bad guys are, just like they were for the Bush administration. None of the European countries who have complained about the place called Gitmo have offered to hold those prisoners instead. Some countries to which these guys would be released will torture and kill them, right away. Others have sworn that the minute they're released, they will resume attempting to kill coalition troops and supporting civilians anywhere they can get to them.
Over 50 of the released detainees have returned to the same militant jihadism they were practicing when they were captured. Many of their still-detained buddies are determined to do the same. They promise that that's what they'll do.
If a US soldier is captured and tortured in future...
This has nothing to do with soldiers, as you know. These aren't uniformed soldiers, fighting for and reporting to a uniformed hierarchy that acts on behalf a signatory to the Geneva Convention. These are un-uniformed, privately funded, non-military attackers and terrorists who do not answer to a military chain of command or a government body. Of course you already know all of that, and you're just trolling.
Isn't that sort of the point of closing gitmo?
No. The point of closing Gitmo is to throw at least one bone to the MoveOn.org and Barbara Streisand types. He made a big stink in the campaign about closing the facility, while being slippery and never mentioning what he planned on doing with the actual bad guys. His supporters in the media never pressed him on it, and it became one of the very, very few specific, concrete things he actually said he'd do. So, he's going to do it. Eventually. And it will be meaningless.
Just like quickly acting to "ban" waterboarding - which already stopped being used in 2003. Just like his bold new plan to get behind a "surge" type action in Afghanistan - which is already under way. It's OK, though - his fans don't care about reality, and most of the media will ignore it too.
the problem with your viewpoint is that you assume that Hamas is the will of the Palestinian people
No, read what I actually said. The Palestinian people are scared of Hamas. And the Palestinians that aren't too scared of Hamas to act in a more civilized way? Hamas has them killed, regularly. Hamas is no more the expression of the will of the Palestinian people than Saddam and his twisted sons were the expression of the will of the average Iraqi.
why they turn away UN trucks of food
Because Hamas takes those supplies at gunpoint as soon as they're in Gaza, and then uses them to control the people who live there. All Hamas has to do is approve international oversight, on the ground... and they refuse to do that (because they want to be in charge of the food, and thereby in charge of the people who need it... and who might turn against them).
I think it's wrong to try to force someone to live (or not live) within some arbitrary geographical region
And plenty of Arabs (and every other culture) live in Israel. The point of the Israelis is that Jews needed (historically - um, just look it up) a place where they can go live without being slaughtered for being Jewish. Enough of the world agreed with that proposition to actually set it up that way half a century ago.
The Israelis aren't saying who may or may not live in Palestine - they're only saying that whoever it is, or whatever mix of people it is, can't be allowed to shoot thousands of missiles across the border and into residential areas for the specific purpose of randomly killing civilians, for years on end, without a response that finally ends it. The Palestinians have shown that they cannot even form a coherent voice and functioning government within their own population - even when dozens of other countries pay for and help to run their elections. How can Israel have a sustained, peaceful relationship with a neighbor when half of that neighbor's elected government body is willing to shoot the other half down in the street in order to preserve the latitude to act on one of their stated, foundational tenets: that Israel should be destroyed, and its Jewish residents all killed.
There is only one party in the conflict between Israel and the militant, missile-lobbing terrorists in Gaza that operate on a principle of race- and culture-based segregation and extermination: that would be Hamas and its Islmaist backers.
There are millions of people in the region and each of those millions of people has their own unique world view.
So what? Some world views are objectively better than others. Hamas wants to cling to a world view that embraces a backwards-looking, mysoginistic, medievalist militant theocracy-by-sword. They get cash and weapons from groups that think women shouldn't be able to read, or which would stone them to death for having been raped by a stranger. La la la, just another world view, right?
If the Palestinians put down their weapons there would be no Palestine.
Israel pulled every last resident and military person out of Gaza explicitly on the Palestinian promise that the attacks out of Gaza would end, and that Gaza wouldn't be a base camp for Hamas terrorism and violence. The Palestinians never had a better chance to simply take control of that territory through a peaceful and democratic government that wanted to actually become the nation that everyone wants to see. But instead, Hamas took control of it, and the Palestinian people are too scared to put them out of power. Just like the majority of Iraqis were too worn down and scared to death of the Baathists and of Saddam to get rid of him - even when his actions brought more and more sanctions and hardship and death. Israel (and the rest of the world, if they weren't so chickenshit about the faux diplomatic issues) must do to Hamas in Gaza what the coalition did to Saddam. Make them go away so that a working civic society has a chance to take hold, just as it gradually is in Iraq, only a few years later.
Hamas can't survive unless they can posture themselves as the defiant heros, fighting off Israel. But ever since Israel removed everything of theirs from Gaza, Hamas has had no enemy there to valiantly fight. So what do they do? Spend months making thousands of cowardly missiles launches at random civilian targets in order to provoke the military response they need in order to have some way to prove their worth. They're getting more than they asked for, and have mis-interpretted what happened recently with Hezbollah in Beirut. If the Palestinians force Hamas to stop attacking Israel, the conflict will stop. But Hamas kills Palestinians who want it to stop, don't they? So Israel's hand has been forced, and they're doing it the hard way. And they still send out leaflets telling Palestinian civilians to get away from areas wh
but also food and preventing the importing of non-free supplies
Non-free supplies, like the weapons that Hamas then shoots at Israel? Well, they're paid for by Iran and Syria (there is no free lunch, after all), but they're free to Hamas. So, maybe that doesn't figure in?
Then there's that truck full of "humanitarian" aid that was stopped at a border crossing the other day, during a 3-hour window of cooled-down fighting. Right in there with the food were bundles of disguised military uniforms (various types of camo, black fatigues, etc) hidden in food bags. Gee. I wonder why border crossing checks matter?
Just as it's tolerance that allows you to be here
So, are you willing to tolerate those that would not tolerate your being here? Is your tolerance so far-reaching that it includes a loving, tolerant embrace of people that think you should be killed for your tolerance? You seem to want an environment in which tolerance is the norm... but don't seem to be getting your head around the fact that there are entire nations run by people who drag "the tolerant" out back and shoot them for being that way. How do you reconcile your tolerance for those people? You're breathing in the second hand smoke of their intolerance, even as you piously proclaim your moral superiority for tolerating anyone and any thing that others might do.
The liberty to sit here and chit-chat about this wasn't born out of passive, blissful tolerance exuded while in the lotus position and singing Kumbaya. It was purchased through blood and treasure in drawing a line against those that would not tolerate it, and were willing to use force to back up that position. The murderous, liberty-squelching European fascists of the last century (who would never have tolerated this forum) didn't go away because they were tolerated out of existence. Are you somehow of the mind that the systematic rape and killings going on in Somalia will be reduced if only the world could find a way to better tolerate the people doing it? Would North Korea's squalid labor camps and starving peasants live a better life if the world were only to muster up a little more tolerance for Kim Jong Il's continual threatening of his neighbors? Is some little girl in Afghanistan really going to have a better life if you can talk everyone into tolerating the Taliban's policy of and frequent actions in dragging her school teacher out into the road and shooting her before they burn down her school? Yes, I'm sure those fine fellows would join you in that chorus of Kumbaya if only they thought that the rest of the world was more tolerant of their happily medieval, mysoginistic, retrograde vision for a world in which no girls can read, and all women are chattal.
Your tolerance is truly inspirational. To them.
not tolerating bad ideas will eventually lead to a fight. Thank you for showing a good example of that
But you're ignoring the fact that the fight was necessary, and had the result of ending the applicability of the bad idea. The bad idea wasn't tolerated, and now it's gone. Tolerating the bad idea is tacit approval of it.
I don't think anyone's argued that you should tolerate people trying to kill you.
How about tolerating them moving into your neighborhood, and changing the laws under which you live such that the women in your family are no longer allowed to go to work, at the risk of being stoned to death? After all, it's just an idea. And if the majority of people in your neighborhood begin to hold that idea, why... tolerance dictates that you allow them to, right?
but getting the hell away from people trying to kill me has worked just fine for me this far
Would you say that it has worked for everyone in London? In Madrid? In Bali? In New York?
Actually, believing that the world is 6000 years old is unlikely to have any consequences.
You're kidding, right? You can't imagine the consequences to a child's life for having been raised believing in magic and nonsense? You can't see how that might impact the way they vote, the manner in which they relate to other people, or the chances that they'll become - by virtue of having been convinced that a plainly irrational world view is accurate - the very sort of intolerant, narrow-minded people you so dislike? No consequences for trapping your mind in the middle ages? Here's a consequence of that: the middle ages. And another: whole religious movements, which run whole countries and their militaries, that prefer the way they had things in the middle ages. The young earth loonies aren't any different than the "our prophet flew to heaven on a winged horse" loonies.
I'm saying that "using social pressure to suppress memes" sounds suspiciously like Stalinism
No. "Killing tens millions of people who didn't conveniently get with the program" sounds like Stalinism. Using your voice to shame parents into teaching their kids that the world isn't flat and that dinosaur bones weren't cleverly planted in the back yard as a humorous test of faith from On High - that's hardly Stalinism. It's getting people to grow up and stop with the Magical Thinking, already.
Not to mention it might be a lot harder to find a large-ish metal rock in Lake Michigan, amongst all of the sunken barges, idiot-driven snowmobiles, and so on.
Similarly, not tolerating bad ideas will eventually lead to a fight
You mean, like slavery? One group decides to continue to tolerate it, and another group decides not to. A big bloody fight ensues. One side wins. The intolerable idea becomes insignificantly present in the resulting, altered culture. Or are you suggesting that we should tolerate it, because it's gosh darn socially awkward to tell someone that they're wrong?
Liberal policy of live and let live is really all about the first part. You will never be left to live in peace unless you're willing to do the same to others
Yeah, except for the part where there are some people who consider the very act of you living the way you want to, peacefully, with things like daughters who are allowed to read and write, and marry who they choose... to be sufficient grounds to kill you. And your family. Can you really find moral comfort in that scenario by just physically removing yourself far enough away from the person who considers the nature of your day to day life to be an abomination requiring your death? Does your eager embrace of tolerance for every point of view include tolerating someone who doesn't tolerate you, and feels a religious duty to erase you from the planet?
You do realize that suppressing a meme requires oppressing the people who would pick it up or keep it
Or simply demonstrating in very plain, obvious ways that it's wrong. Or that embracing and pushing an incorrect world view or bad piece of information has consequences. Are you really equating a solid science curriculum that actively looks to shut down absurd superstitions in its students with Stalinism? Man, it must be exhausting to work so hard at moral relativism.
the poor and the elderly and the sick of New Orleans who didn't have the resources to leave
Of course they had the resources. There was a fleet of school buses sitting right there, and it could have spent three days shuttling most of the city's population above sea level. The federal government doesn't control those city resources, and doesn't need to. The MAYOR of the city is in charge of that sort of thing, and was (and remains) an idiot. He also lacked the courage to simply call upon his own state's governor to help with the same activity. Preparedness for storms in cities and states that see hurricanes every year is the responsibility of the people who choose to live there, and the local governments that they elect. The people of New Orleans and the useless people they had elected to manage their cities and emergency preparedness are to blame. Period.
habit of bombing things like wedding parties
Really? A habit of it?
So, we can use your definition of "habit" to also say that Pakistanis have a habit of murdering school teachers for teaching, a habit of blinding women with battery acid for having the audacity to turn down a the sexual advances of an old man who already has three other wives? Ah yes, the Pakistani Habit of sending religious zealots into other countries where they take over villages by force and then march women into what used to be soccer fields and shoot them in the head at lunch time in front of a crowd for... teaching their daughters to read?
What? Those aren't reasonable descriptions of the "habits" of all Pakistanis?
Do you suppose that any Pakistani military operation (say, in the middle of shooting people while arguing over who owns Kasmir, for example) has ever involved the death of anyone other than their intended targets? Ah, so Pakistanis are in the habit of killing innocent people? Or is it that you're just in the habit of being a breathless troll with no perspective whatsoever?
I do not suffer fools gladly.
But you sure like to make one of yourself. Why should anyone consider your rantings to be in any way credible when you can't manage to deliver them without acting like a spoiled, jerky grade school punk? Do you even read your own posts?
If what you claim is true, what is happening now would've happened a long time ago.
Wrong. The risk was accumulating (which is why the representatives from the administration are seen in congressional hearings, in front of Franks, telling him there's a serious problem looming). The only thing that delayed the results was the unusually long period of time that property values continued to go up on the market. When that stopped, as it always does, the empty loan values - the ones backed up by vague government promises and pressure on the market - came home to roost.
The "power" of capitalism is what caused the current financial crisis, not teh evil government. Banking institutions collapsed after regulations were removed, not whilst they were in place.
You mean, when the congress (see Barney Frank's ranting assurances that Fannie and Freddie were no risk at all, and perfectly well capitalized, etc) - for entirely political reasons, essentially forces the capital market to make irrational loans to people who cannot possibly afford them, that's regulations being removed? Hardly. Those institutions would never had made those loans, or invested in them, without that heavy dose of wrong-headed government involvement in the market.
That tax should be a Money transfer Tax, for example 15% when you get paid, buy something, transfer money. etc.
Yessiree, that will keep capital circulating! Nothing inspires a person to move funds into a position to better fund a promising new company or other investment than to take 15% of that money away from you for seeing the opportunity. Yes! Punish investment! That should get some new companies and jobs under way.
Chrome is light-years better
Yeah, but is mo better ?
when I bought my HP laptop, there was a sticker just under the top flap begging me to go through warranty rather than return the laptop to the store
Right - because the VAST majority of those returns are from people who simply don't RTFM, and don't understand that Teh Interwebs don't come free in the box... or that WiFi involved other hardware, too. HP would rather take those phone calls and preserve the sale. That's part of their agreement with the retailers. Different products - especially computers - involved different levels of support.
Just bought an HP Mini netbook at Costco. I have NO expectation of Costco providing technical support (though they add a year to the warranty, and will take it back no questions asked), but HP is happy to push those items out through dealers of that kind because HP already has a well-oiled directi support infrastructure in place, and they want to move hardware to compete with Asus and the rest. How they choose to divide the support labor between them and their dealers is and should be up to them. And with that comes the baggage of other contractual terms that define that relationship. If the dealer doesn't like it, they can just choose from a jillion other things to sell. That deal seems to have served HP and Costco both very well - I saw an entire skid of those units sell in less than an hour.
BTW, the HP is a nice little device.
If Sony doesn't want to handle complaints, then create a good product
This isn't about "good" products. This is about increasingly complex products. Sony doesn't want to have to run an 800 number to field calls from shoppers who were handed the wrong (or no) cables by a no-margin retailer that refuses to answer questions from the person to whom they just sold a DVR. The retailer can prevent all of that by taking five minutes with the customer during the sale, or by having adequate signage and display info that makes sure the customer understands how the device they're thinking of buying will fit into a 200-variables A/V configuration. The "lowest price on the internet" guys do NOT do such things. But then, they usually aren't legit dealers, either. Sony can just hang up the phone after checking the serial number and advising the shopper to take it back and go instead to real retailer instead of one that refuses to provide support and is dealing in grey market stuff. But Sony won't want to hang up the phone because even though some third party just ripped somebody off (by not providing the support a real dealer is expected to provide along with a Sony product), Sony doesn't want to taint their brand - since the shopper doesn't want to hear about dealer agreements and retail import zones... they just want to record the last episode of Stargate, which is coming on in 30 minutes.
Plenty of people WANT to be Sony dealers. There's no force involved in such dealer agreements. Sony has to turn DOWN the retailers that they don't think are up to the task. If a retailer doesn't like it, they can sell Panasonic instead. Or Brand X from China. And if not a single consumer liked Sony products enough to pay what they are asking for their items, Sony would adjust. But they don't have to, and don't want to. And the government shouldn't step in between them and they retailers that want to sign those dealer agreements just because somebody else wants to have their cake (a Sony product line to sell) and eat it, too (by whoring it out for 5% margins, and skipping out on supporting customers).
So you're saying: This is a roundabout way of making sure fly-by-night dealers don't make a quick buck
... if they're still part of the public face of "Sony" as a brand, it hurts Sony.
No, I'm saying that it's a very direct way for manufacturers to help prevent erosion of their reputation. Retailers that don't make enough on the sale to be able to handle the job of selling the product, or who sell the brand without any commitment to supporting the sale afterwards
this is basically job protection for legit dealers and milking a minimum amount of money from consumers
No, it's contract between the manufacturer and the business that wants to represent them by selling their wares. And, not treating a maker's goods as loss leaders and unsupported bad-will sales items isn't "milking" consumers - it's keeping a viable dealer network functioning. That's less expensive for Sony than opening a bunch of Sony stores to replace the work that all of their retail partners are doing, and it's a lot less expensive than what happens to their reputation when more and more of their sales start coming from boiler-room con-man shops in Brooklyn running twenty dodgy web sites.
Nobody has to purchase anything made by Sony. And no retailer has to carry Sony products. If Sony can't offer legit dealers a rational contract, then dealers won't want to touch them. But Sony doesn't want to be Bang & Olufsen, so they approach it differently. And it's up to them. It's all about every party in the picture choosing to be involved with each other. And if you'd prefer to take your business to retailers that don't have a warranty channel available, and which lie about things like which batteries ship with a product, etc., then go for it... but I can tell you who actually gets "milked" when that's how the retail landscape takes over a particular brand... and it's the consumer. Sony doesn't want to swim in those waters, and who can blame them.
If you don't allow a manufacturer to strike a voluntary agreement with the dealers they choose to use, then they'll eventually just move to a "company store" model. The whole point of a dealer agreement is to support the manufacturer's choices about who they will have supporting, and representing their products to their end users. You are NOT obligated to support MAP prices... as long as you're also not interested in being able to tell your customers that you're an authorized dealer that supports warranties, etc. You can purchase a nice shiny Nikon D700 DSLR from a US dealer, or you can get a cheaper one that's gray-market... and you'll never get Nikon USA to service it, period. They manufacturer doesn't want to have to take up the slack for the work that legit dealers are supposed to be doing. Legit dealers usually make most of their money off of accessories anyway (HDMI cables, for example), and like having a big name-brand item as an anchor/draw in order to do that accessory business. Companies like Sony don't want to have to wear a bunch of customer service complaints about a retail outlet that "can't afford" to take a lot of time taking care of a customer's problem because they gave away all of the margin on the sale.
Another few million years and Sol will just be a lump of cold nuclear waste.
Hey, don't sugar-coat it, OK?