do not be dismayed, it is the way it was meant to be
I'm curious. Do you ever, you know, actually read your own posts? Unpunctuated, case-mangled, non-sequitor-ish loony ramblings have the very subtle effect of, you know, making you look like a simpering, witless, theo-clown. Just sayin'. Other than that, have a great weekend!
Do I also shorten the life of this post by reading it?
Dammit! I already made that joke when I submitted the article, and Zonk edited it out of my summary. I thought the whole thing was just silly, but it was such a good opportunity to be a smartass that I submitted it anyway. And look what happens. YOU get all the comedic karma. Perhaps the humor couldn't manifest itself until AFTER the submission had been observed? My original headline was "Mankind damages universe by looking at it," which was far more fun. Oh well.
the "audiophile" market is a sham. cf: insulted speaker cable standoffs
Best. Freudian. Slip. Ever.
Now that you mention it, knitting some nice, 100% virgin wool speaker shams would obviously improve the warmth of the signal coming through those cables. I'll cut you in on the proceeds. This one is going to really take off, because it's designed to appeal to the wives of deranged audiophiles. Hmmm.. and then, there's Freudian Slip-Covers for those phallus-shaped surround sound speakers that are sticking up behind the couch. This market's still got all sorts of room in it.
and behold he found the pipe after a couple of days.
I believe you mean "lo" and behold, although "low" may be more appropriate in this case. But more to the point: if magic pipe-finding methods worked, wouldn't they work... right away? I mean, two days? What good is magic if you have use the same way you'd use luck and patience? Oh... right.
I can't even imagine the kind of imaginary world people with no scientific/technical formation live in.
And it's that attitude, sir, that prevents you from receiving quality information from the spirits around you. Trying drinking some more spirits, maybe it will help. Lack of imagination is often cured via an artifical suppression of inhibition. It also helps if there's a sexy druid you're trying to impress. Bonus: the more drink, the more any druid appears sexy.
The possibility is there to create their own incident to justify clamping down on things even more. This is an old concept, well documented in history.
Then, why, do you suppose, that the peaceful hippie-types don't go to enormous lengths to discredit the violent anarchist types that seem to want to be little tantrum-having parasites on their peaceful events? The type of events we're talking about are openly discussed online for months as places that self-described "militant" protestors are looking to flex their property destruction muscles. Why aren't the people who organize the events loudly talking these people down before the event? Why aren't they pointing TO those people, in advance, to say, "Look, here are people who are saying out loud that they want this event to become violent and to require law enforcement to act physically, and who say they actually want to see some 'corporate windows' smashed." Why aren't they saying that? Because they either agree that those people should act that way, and are willing to let them be good little vandalous foot soldiers while they stand back and maintain their hippie street cred, or because they're such moral relativists that they don't dare say anything that might suggest that it's OK to say that someone (um, besides whatever entity they're protesting) isn't operating under a valid moral framework. When your entire message is built on mixed premises, you don't usually have much room to complain, I suppose. Except about police doing their jobs, of course.
gives the uniformed officers an excuse to break up the protest
Except, peaceful protests go un-broken-up all the time. Even the idtiots being violent in DC the other day, ranting about how anarchy is better than banking etc, and "marching" without even bothering to obtain a permit to block the streets they decided to block, didn't get their protest broken up. Even after they destroyed property and wounded an innocent person, they didn't have their protest broken up. The people who organized that little bit of mayhem are crowing about perfectly they have things fine tuned so that they can block streets without the police stopping them. The specifically talk about how they've got law enforcement intimidated into inaction. Yes, those are some fine, peace-minded property-destroying anarchists, there. I can see why you're so anxious to defend their right to smash things. That sure reflects well on people who DO work in advance to peacably make use of public space.
Why the hysterically ironic "violent protestors for peace" don't just die of moral hypocrisy right where they're standing, I'll never know. But they're irrational, so it's silly worrying about them. It's the professional activists who defend them for the media that I really worry about.
Many that join peace groups and agitate for violence are actually undercover police in both Canada and the US. Some got caught on video at some summit in Ontario. The idiots had standard issue police boots, holding bottles and were shouted down but the regular (peaceful) protesters.
Well, then, when those people are violent, and get arrested, they probably won't have to worry about whether they're on a list of violent people that are regularly arrested, will they? And since they're actually cops, you won't care if they ARE arrested, right? Even stipulating the existence of such, why should you care? If that guy throws a bottle, does that mean that you have to one-up him and throw a brick at some poor woman walking by on the sidewalk? Of course not.
And I'm not sure what your larger point is. Is it that the peaceful protest types are such cattle that when they see the largely mythological undercover police officer-in-disguise-as-protester throw a bottle that they just can't stop themselves from busting up local merchants' businesses and burning things? You're saying that peaceful protesters shout down the "many" police plants that are trying to make protests violent. How many is "many?" Are you saying "most?" Are you saying "all?" If you're not, and are also saying that the peaceful people prevent the super-secret police plants from actually starting violence, then where does the violence come from? More specifically, why do people like the clown I linked to in my previous comment spend time doing analysis of how their own group's violence might be better tailored to present better to the audience they're trying to inflame?
I won't take your bait on this one, and don't really have to, since it doesn't have any bearing on the fact that people who are arrested for being violent at a protest march are still people who were being violent. I'm not sure what you think you're saying about peaceful protesters if your contention is that the only time they're violent is when they see someone else acting that way, and want to join in. These are the people who actually use the term "militant" to describe themselves. That's a bit at odds with "peaceful," per se.
too bad some rotten apples managed to take control of the country
Decisions by career law enforcement officials, on a case-by-case basis, about which person that's been arrested to put on which list may - but certainly not must - be influenced by whatever administration is in office at the time. But one thing is certain: the part that very loudly scolds, opposes, and certainly (if you listen to their press conferences) loathes Bush as a person and as C-in-C are running both houses of congress, and have all of the media access they could possibly dream of. If they thought there was some wretched abuse happening in this area, they're one piece of paper and a vote away from a law that changes the situation. And please, not all "bad apples" are in charge of law enforcement. Law enforcement has a lot of "bad apples" to deal with, including protesters that just can't seem to resist smashing up retail shops and injuring bystanders with thrown bricks as a way to show how their world view is more valid than someone else's. People who actually organize, in advance, the violent sub-groups within these larger professional protest organizations sure as hell SHOULD be considered dangerous. It's what they do. They want to be considered dangerous because they know that only that level of drama will buy them the television time they can't get by simply having a reasonable point to make in the first place.
That IMF protest is a perfect example: now they get to say, "See? The IMF is so bad that perfectly normal students couldn't stop themselves from hurling bricks at some shopkeeper's business, just from thinking about it! The IMF hates shopkeepers!" This crap isn't random: there are people that do it, and plan it, full time. Some of them actually are violent, or go to great lengths to inspire other people to become violent (that's a good read, complete with beaming pride over rocks thrown at "corporate windows," some hilarious hand-wringing over whether and how to describe sub-groups of militant marchers within the spectrum of a "variety of genders," etc). I've got no problem with those that specifically plan to, and actually do destroy private property to show how much they treasure their right to "protest" (oh, the irony) and get arrested doing it - and then do post-game analysis with an eye towards how to do more and better next time! - being listed with other people that do violent things to other people and their property. When a protester wrecks someone's business and hits a young woman in the head with a brick, it really doesn't matter what their point of view is... they've seen fit to use violence in a setting where it's completely inappropriate, and that says a lot about their world view, and a lot about whether, for example, Canada might want them to come for a visit, too.
How different agencies or other countries respond to your presence on that list is a different matter - should it simply be a binary response (fly, no-fly)? Probably not. Sounds like something that should be resolved legislatively, and since the party that's in control of the legislative process is also home to the vast majority of the "peace protester" profession, that would seem to be a pretty simple thing to tackle, right? Those in charge of Congress and the Senate seem to be pretty beholden to groups like MoveOn.org, so all they have to do is run a couple of their famously persuasive, insightful, discounted full-page NY Times ads, and problem solved!
Just caught a show the other day explaining how much harder the Soviets had it then they let on at the time. They had some really ugly launchpad accidents even as they were being characterized (by themselves, and the rest of the world) as being beyond that sort of thing. Other than the accidents - which aren't really surprising, especially with the 40+ engines they were trying to use on the N1! - the thing about their program that was the biggest surprise to me was their first manned flight. I had no idea that the way they got Yuri Gagarin back down from his first trip was to eject him from the spacecraft at 20,000 feet for a solo parachute ride down. His vehicle took its OWN ride down, but they didn't trust their ability to keep him alive all the way back down while in the vehicle. But they covered the event in terms of him "landing" the craft so that they could lay claim to a new record for manned flight that included consideration of whether or not the "pilot" survived and stayed with the craft all the way back to the ground. I had also forgotten about their three cosmonauts that died on re-entry when they opened their cabin's ventilation up to the atmosphere many thousands of feet too high (cabin air went out instead of fresh air coming in). Interesting show.
The problem with how memory is that it gives developers no incentive to optimize code to run it faster/better/smaller other then small speed boosts. 1 TB of storage would be nice, but if it means that I have to download 300 GB for a program or a Linux distribution with the same speed of 1 MB/second it would take forever or say a 7 MB web site. We need to see an increase in Internet speeds at affordable prices first before we go overboard with physical storage.
Um... there ARE other uses for lots of storage, you know? Say, backing up in the field after spending a week shooting a couple thousand images per day with a digital camera that writes 50mb files?
Still can't bring yourself to actually say it out loud, huh? Your contention is that, just like a suicide bomber who walks up to a crowd of families at a mosque specifically to kill innocent people, the administration's actual purpose is to kill innocent people? That is the goal of sending troops in? Come on, say it.
Or is it possible that just like police chases, shootouts with bank robbers, and of course with war, bystanders can be accidentally or mistakenly killed.
There are tapes of Dick Cheney saying right after the first gulf war why they didn't invade Iraq, and it was because they knew the destabilization would be worse than what was currently the case under Saddam.
Uh huh. Of course, we DID invade Iraq. You're confusing (among other things) the city of Baghdad with the wider Iraqi territory. And the period you're referring to was right after Saddam had signed a surrender that indicated he'd follow some important new rules... like, not blocking and lying to UN inspectors, not building long-range missles, and not shooting at our tne aircraft patrolling the no-fly zones to which he agreed. All of which he then proceeded to do, non-stop, right up until the subsequent invasion that finally shut him down. Why destabilize a country run by a regime that has just had its military badly wounded and which has agreed to finally adhere to UN sanction? Because he spent the next several years skimming money off of the UN programs to rebuild his military (and we using some of it to shoot at our pilots) and spent all of that time blocking the inspections he signed onto. That makes an assessment in 2003 significantly different than one made right after Saddam was kicked out of Kuwait.
The firefighter isn't intent going in on killing anyone.
So even though you can't seem to make yourself say it out loud, your contention is that that US troops ARE deliberately seeking to kill innocent people? That, like a suicide bomber taking out a vegetable market full of civilians, that is the specific purpose of US military action?
I'm sure the families of all those killed that was feel much better about their deaths because they weren't killed by wheelbarrow and taxi bombs...
So, if a firefighter trips on a baby in the dark while trying to save the family, the fact that that sucks for the family should make the firefighter skip the whole firefighting mission from here on out? The firefighter and the arsonist who start the fire are morally equal to you? Incredible.
Way to destroy any credibility you had remaining with this little non sequitur.
You're right. As long as the outstanding parking ticket tab stays under $20-million or so, I guess we should consider that a sign of complete respect from the consular community to that host city.
why is it better to have innocents killed in Iraq by people other than Saddam?
And YOU'RE the one complaining about straw man arguments? Who said it's bette? I've said exactly the opposite. My point is that it would be better to allow Iraq to become peaceful than it is to allow outside entities like Iran specifically act to inflame violence there. US soldiers don't blow up mosques. And mosques aren't blown up because OF the US soldiers. Things like that are done in a very calculated way by groups who wish to destabilize that country and stoke conflict. The parties that want to do that the most are from OUTSIDE of that country, with Iran appearing now to have the heaviest hand in it, through the auspices of the local Al Queda franchise office. Deliberate attacks on things like markets, or funerals, or mosques are the product not of a "better, post-Saddam" scenraio, but of third parties that think they have a vested interest in trying to drive a wedge between the Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish demographics. Violence is DOWN from a month ago, and two months ago, and so on.
How are the victims any better off because it happens under US occupation, than under Saddam's rule?
Because to the extent that it IS happening, it's happening because some outside party is doing it, and the population is figuring that out, and providing intelligence and action to stop it. Meaning, their fate is more in their own hands, now, rather than the no-end-in-site tyrranical rule of a only-loyal-to-his-own-tribe torturer and murderer.
I presume you're referring to the post to which I replied, which was trite and was a cliche, and was also - as I pointed out - wrong on so many levels. I don't care how my comments are rated. So what. But I do care, at least a little, when someone spouts such obvious nonsense about media spin - or, tries to hide it when it's on "their" side, while bitching about a far smaller sample of it on the side they so dislike. The hypocrisy bears pointing out, sometimes.
I'm trying to understand why you seem to think it's somehow better for the US to do this than Saddam.
Yes, yes, you're right. The US just marches in and blows up restaurants and vegetable markets using wheelbarrow and taxi bombs in an attempt to win hearts and minds, and the insurgents using those armor-piercing remote-control bombs made in Iran or blowing up mosques using Wahabbist suicide bombers from other countries are actually just swell guys who just want the good old days when Saddam's sons took care of daily operations. You are SO tuned into things, I can see.
You do realize they had been under going economic sanctions and occasional aerial bombardment since the first desert storm.
Of course. The economic sanctions continued because of Saddam's refusal to actually perform in accordance with the surrender he signed after being chased out of Kuwait. He flagrantly violated every UN sanction that was placed on him, thus triggering the economic ones that followed. The bombardments were a direct result of Saddam's routinely testing the will of the few UN members that were bothering to enforce the sanctions - he fired artillery at UN facilities, and attempted on pretty much a weekly basis to shoot down the aircraft patroling the no-fly zones that HE agreed to.
status of Iraq circa 2003 was the consequence of the decades of economic and military warfare.
Which were the direct consequence of Saddam's continued violence and directo undermining, for years, of the UN inspection regime following his failed takeover of a neighboring country.
You should also realize the US spearheaded those measures.
Because policing Saddam was a requirement, and most other UN members are more than happy - along with not paying their parking tickets in New York City - to allow a small handful of countries to do the work and risk their lives in air operations over a country with a sanctioned military that's busy shooting at airplanes.
If they break other laws (disturbing the peace, etc.), arrest them for that. "Free speech zones" are prior restraint and should be abolished.
And that's the whole point that these professional/full-time protester types love so much. Given the opportunity to disruptively protest an event or moment that they know can only last for a short period of time, it doesn't matter if they get arrested, they've already shouted down that moment, and taken over the event. That sort of media monopolizing is what they're after, not debate.
If YOU book a venue, including for example a park, you DO have some say in how those grounds are used during your event. If you invite political supporters to that event, it's because you want them to be there. You've arranged for use of a space to assemble and have YOUR opportunity to speak and have a message come out of that assembly. Is it your contention that it's cool to trash such event with drum banging, screaming, etc., to the point where the event's scheduled timing (say, for broadcast, or because of limited traffic access, etc) means that it has now been shut down, because the person who's screaming or banging the drum has the same rights at the organizing group's event as the organizing group? Why should you accomodate people that have said in advance that their purpose is to gain access to this event specifically to disrupt it?
while his supporters are allowed to line his motorcade route
Right, that's called freedom of assembly. A political party arranges for a parade, and they have the right to have that parade. They have the right not to have that parade shut down by someone else who doesn't think they should be allowed to have it. If Hillary Clinton, or B. Obama gets elected, should their political opponents be allowed to block that party's parade? Should someone be able to shout down John Edwards just because they think he's an oily car salesman of a politician? No. If his supporters book a venue, they should be allowed to hold their event without it being shut down by people who hate him. Hey, I thoroughly dislike him, but he and his supporters are certainly welcome to have whatever parades they arrange for without fear that someone looking to turn it into a media circus will try an organized rush into the road.
Are you seriously suggesting that the best solution is to allow the large organized groups that specifically say that their agenda is to disrupt someone else's assembly to do just that? Or, are you suggesting that there's no need to worry about it, because surely the police can keep them from actually blocking, say, a parade? And, how would they do that? Remember: we're talking about people who organize for months in advance, explaining how their intention is to shut down roads, block vehicles, and - as just happened in Georgetown - smash windows of businesses, etc., to make some vague point. How should your candidate's public event handle that sort of deliberate disruption in a venue that your candidate booked specifically for a peaceful assembly?
You can protest the president any time you want. You can even book the exact same venue that his own party books, and hold an entire event specifically and only to berate him. People do that all the time. Right now. When someone holds just such an event, should an organized group that doesn't like them be able to muscle in and shut it down by blocking the roads in and out? No? Then, should your group perhaps arrange for some law enforcement to prevent that disruption from happening? Or, do you prefer giant shouting matches, brawls, and unpoliced riots as your form of expression?
The shrill groups that complain about not getting to monopolize the parade route booked by their political opponents are essentially complaining that they're not being allowed to take over and shut down speech and assembly among people they don't like.
Killed by gas paid for and provided by the Reagan administration.
No, I'm talking about the good old fashioned line-'em-up and shoot 'em in front of the ditch while the bulldozer is still idling nearby. That stuff happened, and continued to, YEARS after the slaughters farther north.
Didn't we invade them somewhere around 10 years after they invaded a neighboring country? I'm not sure how this fits in at all, really...
That pretty well explains your perspective then, doesn't it? A refresher:
Saddam invaded Kuwait and made lame attempt to explain his position on annexing it (it was always part of Iraq, etc). He started lining up armor and troops as though seriously considering doing the exact same thing across Saudi Arabia's northern border. Many countries around the world formed an alliance and pushed him back out of Kuwait. As he was being pushed out, he did things like lob scud missles at Israel.
Perhaps unwisely, the alliance countries allowed him and his regime to live, provided they sign substantial agreements with regard to future behavior, and specifically with regard to his bigger and nastier weapons. For the next ten years, he pretty much universally violated every agreement he had signed. He did everything he could to stop investigations into his weapons programs/disposal, and continued to build ballistic missiles right up until the end. His military regularly shot at aircraft enforcing the no-fly zones over the areas where his regime had been slaughtering his own countrymen. He loudly talked about the checks he was writing to the families of suicide bombers elsewhere in the region. The UN's sanctions were being laughed at, and he actually personally set out to rake in a ton of cash from the sanctions' 'oil-for-food' program, even while he diverted most of that money into building up the very same military that he'd already squandered once while attacking Iran, and again while invading Kuwait.
So, what you're saying is that we should have done it sooner? That we were too patient in the face of his continued sanctions violations and lashing out? I agree with you there: he should have been taken out a lot sooner.
Slashdot Mirror
do not be dismayed, it is the way it was meant to be
I'm curious. Do you ever, you know, actually read your own posts? Unpunctuated, case-mangled, non-sequitor-ish loony ramblings have the very subtle effect of, you know, making you look like a simpering, witless, theo-clown. Just sayin'. Other than that, have a great weekend!
for your credit, from the firehose
How sporting of you!
Do I also shorten the life of this post by reading it?
Dammit! I already made that joke when I submitted the article, and Zonk edited it out of my summary. I thought the whole thing was just silly, but it was such a good opportunity to be a smartass that I submitted it anyway. And look what happens. YOU get all the comedic karma. Perhaps the humor couldn't manifest itself until AFTER the submission had been observed? My original headline was "Mankind damages universe by looking at it," which was far more fun. Oh well.
the "audiophile" market is a sham. cf: insulted speaker cable standoffs
Best. Freudian. Slip. Ever.
Now that you mention it, knitting some nice, 100% virgin wool speaker shams would obviously improve the warmth of the signal coming through those cables. I'll cut you in on the proceeds. This one is going to really take off, because it's designed to appeal to the wives of deranged audiophiles. Hmmm.. and then, there's Freudian Slip-Covers for those phallus-shaped surround sound speakers that are sticking up behind the couch. This market's still got all sorts of room in it.
and behold he found the pipe after a couple of days.
I believe you mean "lo" and behold, although "low" may be more appropriate in this case. But more to the point: if magic pipe-finding methods worked, wouldn't they work... right away? I mean, two days? What good is magic if you have use the same way you'd use luck and patience? Oh... right.
I can't even imagine the kind of imaginary world people with no scientific/technical formation live in.
And it's that attitude, sir, that prevents you from receiving quality information from the spirits around you. Trying drinking some more spirits, maybe it will help. Lack of imagination is often cured via an artifical suppression of inhibition. It also helps if there's a sexy druid you're trying to impress. Bonus: the more drink, the more any druid appears sexy.
The possibility is there to create their own incident to justify clamping down on things even more. This is an old concept, well documented in history.
Then, why, do you suppose, that the peaceful hippie-types don't go to enormous lengths to discredit the violent anarchist types that seem to want to be little tantrum-having parasites on their peaceful events? The type of events we're talking about are openly discussed online for months as places that self-described "militant" protestors are looking to flex their property destruction muscles. Why aren't the people who organize the events loudly talking these people down before the event? Why aren't they pointing TO those people, in advance, to say, "Look, here are people who are saying out loud that they want this event to become violent and to require law enforcement to act physically, and who say they actually want to see some 'corporate windows' smashed." Why aren't they saying that? Because they either agree that those people should act that way, and are willing to let them be good little vandalous foot soldiers while they stand back and maintain their hippie street cred, or because they're such moral relativists that they don't dare say anything that might suggest that it's OK to say that someone (um, besides whatever entity they're protesting) isn't operating under a valid moral framework. When your entire message is built on mixed premises, you don't usually have much room to complain, I suppose. Except about police doing their jobs, of course.
gives the uniformed officers an excuse to break up the protest
Except, peaceful protests go un-broken-up all the time. Even the idtiots being violent in DC the other day, ranting about how anarchy is better than banking etc, and "marching" without even bothering to obtain a permit to block the streets they decided to block, didn't get their protest broken up. Even after they destroyed property and wounded an innocent person, they didn't have their protest broken up. The people who organized that little bit of mayhem are crowing about perfectly they have things fine tuned so that they can block streets without the police stopping them. The specifically talk about how they've got law enforcement intimidated into inaction. Yes, those are some fine, peace-minded property-destroying anarchists, there. I can see why you're so anxious to defend their right to smash things. That sure reflects well on people who DO work in advance to peacably make use of public space.
Why the hysterically ironic "violent protestors for peace" don't just die of moral hypocrisy right where they're standing, I'll never know. But they're irrational, so it's silly worrying about them. It's the professional activists who defend them for the media that I really worry about.
Many that join peace groups and agitate for violence are actually undercover police in both Canada and the US. Some got caught on video at some summit in Ontario. The idiots had standard issue police boots, holding bottles and were shouted down but the regular (peaceful) protesters.
Well, then, when those people are violent, and get arrested, they probably won't have to worry about whether they're on a list of violent people that are regularly arrested, will they? And since they're actually cops, you won't care if they ARE arrested, right? Even stipulating the existence of such, why should you care? If that guy throws a bottle, does that mean that you have to one-up him and throw a brick at some poor woman walking by on the sidewalk? Of course not.
And I'm not sure what your larger point is. Is it that the peaceful protest types are such cattle that when they see the largely mythological undercover police officer-in-disguise-as-protester throw a bottle that they just can't stop themselves from busting up local merchants' businesses and burning things? You're saying that peaceful protesters shout down the "many" police plants that are trying to make protests violent. How many is "many?" Are you saying "most?" Are you saying "all?" If you're not, and are also saying that the peaceful people prevent the super-secret police plants from actually starting violence, then where does the violence come from? More specifically, why do people like the clown I linked to in my previous comment spend time doing analysis of how their own group's violence might be better tailored to present better to the audience they're trying to inflame?
I won't take your bait on this one, and don't really have to, since it doesn't have any bearing on the fact that people who are arrested for being violent at a protest march are still people who were being violent. I'm not sure what you think you're saying about peaceful protesters if your contention is that the only time they're violent is when they see someone else acting that way, and want to join in. These are the people who actually use the term "militant" to describe themselves. That's a bit at odds with "peaceful," per se.
too bad some rotten apples managed to take control of the country
Decisions by career law enforcement officials, on a case-by-case basis, about which person that's been arrested to put on which list may - but certainly not must - be influenced by whatever administration is in office at the time. But one thing is certain: the part that very loudly scolds, opposes, and certainly (if you listen to their press conferences) loathes Bush as a person and as C-in-C are running both houses of congress, and have all of the media access they could possibly dream of. If they thought there was some wretched abuse happening in this area, they're one piece of paper and a vote away from a law that changes the situation. And please, not all "bad apples" are in charge of law enforcement. Law enforcement has a lot of "bad apples" to deal with, including protesters that just can't seem to resist smashing up retail shops and injuring bystanders with thrown bricks as a way to show how their world view is more valid than someone else's. People who actually organize, in advance, the violent sub-groups within these larger professional protest organizations sure as hell SHOULD be considered dangerous. It's what they do. They want to be considered dangerous because they know that only that level of drama will buy them the television time they can't get by simply having a reasonable point to make in the first place.
That IMF protest is a perfect example: now they get to say, "See? The IMF is so bad that perfectly normal students couldn't stop themselves from hurling bricks at some shopkeeper's business, just from thinking about it! The IMF hates shopkeepers!" This crap isn't random: there are people that do it, and plan it, full time. Some of them actually are violent, or go to great lengths to inspire other people to become violent (that's a good read, complete with beaming pride over rocks thrown at "corporate windows," some hilarious hand-wringing over whether and how to describe sub-groups of militant marchers within the spectrum of a "variety of genders," etc). I've got no problem with those that specifically plan to, and actually do destroy private property to show how much they treasure their right to "protest" (oh, the irony) and get arrested doing it - and then do post-game analysis with an eye towards how to do more and better next time! - being listed with other people that do violent things to other people and their property. When a protester wrecks someone's business and hits a young woman in the head with a brick, it really doesn't matter what their point of view is... they've seen fit to use violence in a setting where it's completely inappropriate, and that says a lot about their world view, and a lot about whether, for example, Canada might want them to come for a visit, too.
How different agencies or other countries respond to your presence on that list is a different matter - should it simply be a binary response (fly, no-fly)? Probably not. Sounds like something that should be resolved legislatively, and since the party that's in control of the legislative process is also home to the vast majority of the "peace protester" profession, that would seem to be a pretty simple thing to tackle, right? Those in charge of Congress and the Senate seem to be pretty beholden to groups like MoveOn.org, so all they have to do is run a couple of their famously persuasive, insightful, discounted full-page NY Times ads, and problem solved!
Shows just how tough it really is.
Just caught a show the other day explaining how much harder the Soviets had it then they let on at the time. They had some really ugly launchpad accidents even as they were being characterized (by themselves, and the rest of the world) as being beyond that sort of thing. Other than the accidents - which aren't really surprising, especially with the 40+ engines they were trying to use on the N1! - the thing about their program that was the biggest surprise to me was their first manned flight. I had no idea that the way they got Yuri Gagarin back down from his first trip was to eject him from the spacecraft at 20,000 feet for a solo parachute ride down. His vehicle took its OWN ride down, but they didn't trust their ability to keep him alive all the way back down while in the vehicle. But they covered the event in terms of him "landing" the craft so that they could lay claim to a new record for manned flight that included consideration of whether or not the "pilot" survived and stayed with the craft all the way back to the ground. I had also forgotten about their three cosmonauts that died on re-entry when they opened their cabin's ventilation up to the atmosphere many thousands of feet too high (cabin air went out instead of fresh air coming in). Interesting show.
The problem with how memory is that it gives developers no incentive to optimize code to run it faster/better/smaller other then small speed boosts. 1 TB of storage would be nice, but if it means that I have to download 300 GB for a program or a Linux distribution with the same speed of 1 MB/second it would take forever or say a 7 MB web site. We need to see an increase in Internet speeds at affordable prices first before we go overboard with physical storage.
Um... there ARE other uses for lots of storage, you know? Say, backing up in the field after spending a week shooting a couple thousand images per day with a digital camera that writes 50mb files?
Video?
Multi-track digital audio?
It isn't always about Linux distros, you know?
The administration sent the troops in
Still can't bring yourself to actually say it out loud, huh? Your contention is that, just like a suicide bomber who walks up to a crowd of families at a mosque specifically to kill innocent people, the administration's actual purpose is to kill innocent people? That is the goal of sending troops in? Come on, say it.
Or is it possible that just like police chases, shootouts with bank robbers, and of course with war, bystanders can be accidentally or mistakenly killed.
There are tapes of Dick Cheney saying right after the first gulf war why they didn't invade Iraq, and it was because they knew the destabilization would be worse than what was currently the case under Saddam.
Uh huh. Of course, we DID invade Iraq. You're confusing (among other things) the city of Baghdad with the wider Iraqi territory. And the period you're referring to was right after Saddam had signed a surrender that indicated he'd follow some important new rules... like, not blocking and lying to UN inspectors, not building long-range missles, and not shooting at our tne aircraft patrolling the no-fly zones to which he agreed. All of which he then proceeded to do, non-stop, right up until the subsequent invasion that finally shut him down. Why destabilize a country run by a regime that has just had its military badly wounded and which has agreed to finally adhere to UN sanction? Because he spent the next several years skimming money off of the UN programs to rebuild his military (and we using some of it to shoot at our pilots) and spent all of that time blocking the inspections he signed onto. That makes an assessment in 2003 significantly different than one made right after Saddam was kicked out of Kuwait.
The firefighter isn't intent going in on killing anyone.
So even though you can't seem to make yourself say it out loud, your contention is that that US troops ARE deliberately seeking to kill innocent people? That, like a suicide bomber taking out a vegetable market full of civilians, that is the specific purpose of US military action?
I'm sure the families of all those killed that was feel much better about their deaths because they weren't killed by wheelbarrow and taxi bombs...
So, if a firefighter trips on a baby in the dark while trying to save the family, the fact that that sucks for the family should make the firefighter skip the whole firefighting mission from here on out? The firefighter and the arsonist who start the fire are morally equal to you? Incredible.
Way to destroy any credibility you had remaining with this little non sequitur.
You're right. As long as the outstanding parking ticket tab stays under $20-million or so , I guess we should consider that a sign of complete respect from the consular community to that host city.
why is it better to have innocents killed in Iraq by people other than Saddam?
And YOU'RE the one complaining about straw man arguments? Who said it's bette? I've said exactly the opposite. My point is that it would be better to allow Iraq to become peaceful than it is to allow outside entities like Iran specifically act to inflame violence there. US soldiers don't blow up mosques. And mosques aren't blown up because OF the US soldiers. Things like that are done in a very calculated way by groups who wish to destabilize that country and stoke conflict. The parties that want to do that the most are from OUTSIDE of that country, with Iran appearing now to have the heaviest hand in it, through the auspices of the local Al Queda franchise office. Deliberate attacks on things like markets, or funerals, or mosques are the product not of a "better, post-Saddam" scenraio, but of third parties that think they have a vested interest in trying to drive a wedge between the Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish demographics. Violence is DOWN from a month ago, and two months ago, and so on.
How are the victims any better off because it happens under US occupation, than under Saddam's rule?
Because to the extent that it IS happening, it's happening because some outside party is doing it, and the population is figuring that out, and providing intelligence and action to stop it. Meaning, their fate is more in their own hands, now, rather than the no-end-in-site tyrranical rule of a only-loyal-to-his-own-tribe torturer and murderer.
It's nothing more than trite cliches.
I presume you're referring to the post to which I replied, which was trite and was a cliche, and was also - as I pointed out - wrong on so many levels. I don't care how my comments are rated. So what. But I do care, at least a little, when someone spouts such obvious nonsense about media spin - or, tries to hide it when it's on "their" side, while bitching about a far smaller sample of it on the side they so dislike. The hypocrisy bears pointing out, sometimes.
I'm trying to understand why you seem to think it's somehow better for the US to do this than Saddam.
Yes, yes, you're right. The US just marches in and blows up restaurants and vegetable markets using wheelbarrow and taxi bombs in an attempt to win hearts and minds, and the insurgents using those armor-piercing remote-control bombs made in Iran or blowing up mosques using Wahabbist suicide bombers from other countries are actually just swell guys who just want the good old days when Saddam's sons took care of daily operations. You are SO tuned into things, I can see.
You do realize they had been under going economic sanctions and occasional aerial bombardment since the first desert storm.
Of course. The economic sanctions continued because of Saddam's refusal to actually perform in accordance with the surrender he signed after being chased out of Kuwait. He flagrantly violated every UN sanction that was placed on him, thus triggering the economic ones that followed. The bombardments were a direct result of Saddam's routinely testing the will of the few UN members that were bothering to enforce the sanctions - he fired artillery at UN facilities, and attempted on pretty much a weekly basis to shoot down the aircraft patroling the no-fly zones that HE agreed to.
status of Iraq circa 2003 was the consequence of the decades of economic and military warfare.
Which were the direct consequence of Saddam's continued violence and directo undermining, for years, of the UN inspection regime following his failed takeover of a neighboring country.
You should also realize the US spearheaded those measures.
Because policing Saddam was a requirement, and most other UN members are more than happy - along with not paying their parking tickets in New York City - to allow a small handful of countries to do the work and risk their lives in air operations over a country with a sanctioned military that's busy shooting at airplanes.
And in fact, it's still going on right now.
And the difference is that it's Taliban-esque types being funded and staffed mostly from outside the that country doing it.
If they break other laws (disturbing the peace, etc.), arrest them for that. "Free speech zones" are prior restraint and should be abolished.
And that's the whole point that these professional/full-time protester types love so much. Given the opportunity to disruptively protest an event or moment that they know can only last for a short period of time, it doesn't matter if they get arrested, they've already shouted down that moment, and taken over the event. That sort of media monopolizing is what they're after, not debate.
If YOU book a venue, including for example a park, you DO have some say in how those grounds are used during your event. If you invite political supporters to that event, it's because you want them to be there. You've arranged for use of a space to assemble and have YOUR opportunity to speak and have a message come out of that assembly. Is it your contention that it's cool to trash such event with drum banging, screaming, etc., to the point where the event's scheduled timing (say, for broadcast, or because of limited traffic access, etc) means that it has now been shut down, because the person who's screaming or banging the drum has the same rights at the organizing group's event as the organizing group? Why should you accomodate people that have said in advance that their purpose is to gain access to this event specifically to disrupt it?
while his supporters are allowed to line his motorcade route
Right, that's called freedom of assembly. A political party arranges for a parade, and they have the right to have that parade. They have the right not to have that parade shut down by someone else who doesn't think they should be allowed to have it. If Hillary Clinton, or B. Obama gets elected, should their political opponents be allowed to block that party's parade? Should someone be able to shout down John Edwards just because they think he's an oily car salesman of a politician? No. If his supporters book a venue, they should be allowed to hold their event without it being shut down by people who hate him. Hey, I thoroughly dislike him, but he and his supporters are certainly welcome to have whatever parades they arrange for without fear that someone looking to turn it into a media circus will try an organized rush into the road.
Are you seriously suggesting that the best solution is to allow the large organized groups that specifically say that their agenda is to disrupt someone else's assembly to do just that? Or, are you suggesting that there's no need to worry about it, because surely the police can keep them from actually blocking, say, a parade? And, how would they do that? Remember: we're talking about people who organize for months in advance, explaining how their intention is to shut down roads, block vehicles, and - as just happened in Georgetown - smash windows of businesses, etc., to make some vague point. How should your candidate's public event handle that sort of deliberate disruption in a venue that your candidate booked specifically for a peaceful assembly?
You can protest the president any time you want. You can even book the exact same venue that his own party books, and hold an entire event specifically and only to berate him. People do that all the time. Right now. When someone holds just such an event, should an organized group that doesn't like them be able to muscle in and shut it down by blocking the roads in and out? No? Then, should your group perhaps arrange for some law enforcement to prevent that disruption from happening? Or, do you prefer giant shouting matches, brawls, and unpoliced riots as your form of expression?
The shrill groups that complain about not getting to monopolize the parade route booked by their political opponents are essentially complaining that they're not being allowed to take over and shut down speech and assembly among people they don't like.
Killed by gas paid for and provided by the Reagan administration.
No, I'm talking about the good old fashioned line-'em-up and shoot 'em in front of the ditch while the bulldozer is still idling nearby. That stuff happened, and continued to, YEARS after the slaughters farther north.
Didn't we invade them somewhere around 10 years after they invaded a neighboring country? I'm not sure how this fits in at all, really...
That pretty well explains your perspective then, doesn't it? A refresher:
Saddam invaded Kuwait and made lame attempt to explain his position on annexing it (it was always part of Iraq, etc). He started lining up armor and troops as though seriously considering doing the exact same thing across Saudi Arabia's northern border. Many countries around the world formed an alliance and pushed him back out of Kuwait. As he was being pushed out, he did things like lob scud missles at Israel.
Perhaps unwisely, the alliance countries allowed him and his regime to live, provided they sign substantial agreements with regard to future behavior, and specifically with regard to his bigger and nastier weapons. For the next ten years, he pretty much universally violated every agreement he had signed. He did everything he could to stop investigations into his weapons programs/disposal, and continued to build ballistic missiles right up until the end. His military regularly shot at aircraft enforcing the no-fly zones over the areas where his regime had been slaughtering his own countrymen. He loudly talked about the checks he was writing to the families of suicide bombers elsewhere in the region. The UN's sanctions were being laughed at, and he actually personally set out to rake in a ton of cash from the sanctions' 'oil-for-food' program, even while he diverted most of that money into building up the very same military that he'd already squandered once while attacking Iran, and again while invading Kuwait.
So, what you're saying is that we should have done it sooner? That we were too patient in the face of his continued sanctions violations and lashing out? I agree with you there: he should have been taken out a lot sooner.