Do you honestly believe that political problems exist only in the middle-east? Don't you know that nations like India (hindu-dominated) have a lot of problems but don't use the same tactics used by the muslims from the middle-east to solve their problems?
Many regions have problems but the Middle East is a particular hotbed, for the reasons I have mentioned. As you rightly pointed out, India is Hindu-dominated, and if you take a look at the history, there has been Sikh terrorism in India for a variety of reasons. The Hindu dominated government can of course use the military and has used it quite brutally in Kashmir on occasion. Terrorism is not unique to Muslim groups and any cursory glance at world history will indicate that quite clearly.
I am quite frankly sick and tired of how the muslim world justifies the terrorism it perpetrates under the excuse of "circumstances"... they have just the same responsibility as the rest of the world to solve their problems peacefully rather than going around killing every dissenting voice in sight.
You are generalizing far too much in referring to the "Muslim world". Al Qaeda are from the Wahhabi branch of Islam and they certainly have some support from Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia for reasons I talked about, but they are not much liked or supported by the vast majority of Muslims. I don't for one moment condone the tactics of terrorists but I can see that they are drawing on a broad base of anger, particularly in places like Saudi Arabia. You mention peaceful solutions. I'm curious, how would you propose that oppressed people in Saudi Arabia solve the issue of their oppression peacefully? Do you think they have a right to be angry with the Saudi Government and those countries who support it?
The truth of the matter is that - not all muslims are terrorists, but pretty much all suicide-bomber type terrorists are muslims.
It does seem to be a tactic extremist Muslim groups have adopted, for a number of reasons. Actually the first real suicide attack in Israel was probably the Japanese Red Army attack in 1972. They were allied with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Japanese attackers took the guards by surprise. Many people think this inspired the Palestinians to adopt suicide attack tactics.
I don't think that is going to work with a disc though. On a disc you will have a little beam being scanned over the surface. At any one time only a tiny fraction of all the data will be hit by the beam. For this automatic holographic search ability you would have to illuminate everything at once. I seem to remember the Scientific American article was talking about a sort of cube being illuminated rather than a disc.
It's a bit like saying "Why are most air-strikes which kill civilians carried out by Christians and Jews?"
The answer has little to do with Christianity or Judasim and more to do with the fact that the US and Israel happen to have formidable air power and regularly use it. If the US did not have a huge well-equipped military and it wanted to attack in some way, it might well turn to using terror tactics (although would probably call it guerilla warfare). In fact on occasion it has indeed turned to terror tactics such as the Beirut car bombing in 1985, where air strikes were not really an option. If the Palestinians had jets, they would use them, as would Alqaeda.
I think suicide bombing has more to do with circumstance and opportunity than Islam. If by accident of history the Middle East had become Hindu, you would today be asking why there is so much Hindu terrorism. It would stem from things like the Israeli domination of the once Hindu dominated Palestine, and the oppressive totalitarian regime in Hindu Saudi Arabia being supported by the west. Angry oppressed Saudi Hindus would hate the people who support their oppressors as much as the oppressive government itself.
In the Middle East there is a lot of anger with the west over many issues, particularly the toppling of democracies and installing and supporting dictators and repressive regimes. Practices which continue to this very day. The channel for this anger happens to be Islamic fundamentalism, but without that channel it would find another. If we had been promoting democracy in the Middle East instead of supporting and installing dictators for the last 50 years, perhaps that channel would have been a lot less violent. I'm not excusing their behviour but all of this isn't coming out of a vaccum and it's not really due to Islam. Islam is just the channel.
This is exactly the kind of crap that could get passed though. People will just see the words "extreme porn" and nod in agreement. They won't realise that they could be incarserated due to possession of a clip from some mainstream film, or a naughty home video they made with their wife.
I'm sure I've got a clip somewhere from Mr and Mrs Smith where Angelina Jolie is undercover as a dominatrix. Does that mean I'm now a sex offender? Should I wait for the law to be passed or just hand myself in now before I commit heinous crimes?
It seems to me that all Presidents do is pardon their friends and business associates (particularly Clinton). Since Presidents keep totally misusing the power, it is a power that should be totally removed. If the majority of people in the US have to face the justice system, then the rich, powerful and friends of Presidents should have to face it too, with no get out clause.
Just type multitouch into youtube and you will see a lot of products from different companies. Apple is just first in the consumer market (as far as I know).
The whole point of sanctions is to have the population put political pressure on the government.
Any sanctions that deliberately restrict vitals such as fresh water are criminal in the extreme. Inflicting death upon the population in the hope of achieving political change is commonly called terrorism. Here's what Madelaine Albright had to say on the issue.
CBS Reporter Lesley Stahl (speaking of post-war sanctions against Iraq):
"We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And - and you know, is the price worth it?"
Madeleine Albright (at that time, US Ambassador to the UN):
"I think this is a very hard choice, but the price - we think the price is worth it."
An unbelievable statement to make. If only they had direct and clear evidence like that against Milosevic, his trial would have been over in a week. Of course this kind of terrorism/collective punishment goes on all the time, although not on the genocidal scale of the Iraq sanctions. A similar practice has been going on recently with suspension of aid to the Palestinians (and also taxes owed to them). We're not talking about preventing them from buying widescreen TVs and DVD Players, this is essential aid like food and water. They know full well that withholding hundreds of millions of dollars (and more recently restricting aid vehicles entering Gaza) will hurt the population severely.
Unfortunately the French, Germans and Russians were more than happy to sell Saddam what HE wanted under the table.
Considering the terrible suffering of the Iraqi people, I'm very glad people were bypassing the sanctions, even if their motives were greed. Maybe someone even managed to sell some vital water-treatment supplies and save a few people. Just picture the whole thing from the point of view of an ordinary Iraqi. For years the US, UK et al, is supporting the dictator who is oppressing you and killing your friends and family. They even encourage and support his war on Iran which is killing so many of the people you know. Then they decide they don't like him anymore and impose sanctions which result in the deaths of some 500,000 children, possibly including some of your own. I can't imagine the rage that so many Iraqis must feel towards the west.
Putting supercomputers to an innovative use, the military is simulating our planet in an effort to predict the outcome of different scenarios.
They've been doing that for a long time with or without computers. For example, during the first gulf war, Iraq's water treatment facilities were deliberately targeted. Later the DIA assessed the effect that sanctions restricting replacement parts and vital chemicals would have on the population.
Iraq depends on importing specialized equipment and some chemicals to purify its water supply, most of which is heavily mineralized and frequently brackish to saline. With no domestic sources of both water treatment replacement parts and some essential chemicals, Iraq will continue attempts to circumvent United Nations Sanctions to import these vital commodities. Failing to secure supplies will result in a shortage of pure drinking water for much of the population. This could lead to increased incidences, if not epidemics, of disease.
So they accurately predicted that Iraqis would die because of the sanctions, and indeed they did, in droves. Denis Halliday who was running the humanitarian operation resigned, calling the sanctions "genocidal". His successor, Hans von Sponeck also resigned and condemned the sanctions and the effect they were having on the people.
I think the idea is to say, "Oh we were bad back then up until 1975, but since then we've been really nice.". Sadly that isn't true at all. Maybe in 30 years they will be explaining how they were bad up until 2007 with involvement with the murderous contras in the 80s and secret prisons and torture in the "War on Terror" in the 2000s etc.
I'm not exactly a virus expert, but I've always thought that countries might try to attack each others economies with targeted viruses. For example, the virus checks something simple like the regional settings and can see that it is a US computer and therefore delivers its nasty payload. It may be difficult to determine exactly where it came from and even if you could, you could never really prove such a thing was a government sponsored action at all. China could just arrest and shoot one of the usual suspects if they are put under any pressure.
It's a good idea to use different user names for different things to prevent people building up a huge picture about you. Certainly don't use a contraction of your real name as your userID.
By setting up a business in a country that commits human rights violations, and then participating in them (e.g. turning over the names of dissidents when you know how political prisoners are treated), surely you can't just use the excuse that you are complying with local laws.
When I first saw the IPhone, I was reminded of the Onyx concept phone which I believe pre-dates it a bit. They have some fancy touch sensitive technology which they are licensing out. Their transparent thin film not only detects position, but also pressure. You can expect to see loads of phones which are just one big touch sensitive screen before long, probably with some kind of low power OLED screen.
I just wish they'd fix the memory situation. I shouldn't have to jump through hoops to stop Firefox consuming 200 megs of memory when I only have one tab open. It's been that way for as long as I can remember and I've used it on several different machines.
Mossadegh actually had big disagreements with the Communists. Britain was trying to convince the US that Mossadegh was becoming more and more communist to get them "on board". The reason for the coup was that he kicked out the AIOC (later to be re-branded BP). In a similar way, the reason for the coup in Guatemala was the threat to United Fruits, not that it was going to become a "Soviet beachhead" (which was just propaganda). The problem in Mossadegh's last days was that he knew there was a foreign-backed coup being organised (which there was) which is why he started doing extreme things like expelling all the UK diplomats. You can't expect everything to go along as normal in those extreme circumstances. Amongst other things, we were conducting false flag operations against him using gangs of thugs who pretended to be pro-Mossadegh.
If the US government felt there was a coup plot, it would also start doing quite extreme things I would imagine.
As for Godwin's law, I find it quite inane that people pounce on you for making a Hitler comparison. Mossadegh was hardly Hitler though. The Shah was far more of a "Hitler" than Mossadegh and he of course had US backing.
USA has never really been expanisionist in the same sense
I'm not so sure about that. Russia controlled Eastern European states via Puppet governments. The US (and the UK) has done a very similar thing. For example, removing the democratically elected leader of Iran and replacing him with the Shah. Then there is US control over Cuba via various leaders which came to an end with Castro. There can be no doubt that the US has tried to control governments in Central and South America and this has lead to violent backlashes, e.g. the Sandinistas in Nacaragua.
Perhaps one difference is that US control tends to have more of an economic drive to it. For example, when the government of Guatemala was considering policies that the United Fruit Company didn't like, they went to the US government for help. This culminated in a huge propaganda campaign and an eventual coup against the Guatemalan government. Yes, a government was overthrown by a US company worried about its bananas. It's not always about oil, but it's usually about greed in some way.
True. Debate is obviously better. Few South American countries meet the standards of checks and balances of Europe or the US. However, if the US media is concerned about dictators, surely it would make more sense to attack people who are actually dictators. e.g. The Saudi Government or Musharaf or any of the other dictatorial regimes currently being supported.
Slashdot Mirror
Many regions have problems but the Middle East is a particular hotbed, for the reasons I have mentioned. As you rightly pointed out, India is Hindu-dominated, and if you take a look at the history, there has been Sikh terrorism in India for a variety of reasons. The Hindu dominated government can of course use the military and has used it quite brutally in Kashmir on occasion. Terrorism is not unique to Muslim groups and any cursory glance at world history will indicate that quite clearly.
I am quite frankly sick and tired of how the muslim world justifies the terrorism it perpetrates under the excuse of "circumstances"... they have just the same responsibility as the rest of the world to solve their problems peacefully rather than going around killing every dissenting voice in sight.
You are generalizing far too much in referring to the "Muslim world". Al Qaeda are from the Wahhabi branch of Islam and they certainly have some support from Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia for reasons I talked about, but they are not much liked or supported by the vast majority of Muslims. I don't for one moment condone the tactics of terrorists but I can see that they are drawing on a broad base of anger, particularly in places like Saudi Arabia. You mention peaceful solutions. I'm curious, how would you propose that oppressed people in Saudi Arabia solve the issue of their oppression peacefully? Do you think they have a right to be angry with the Saudi Government and those countries who support it?
The truth of the matter is that - not all muslims are terrorists, but pretty much all suicide-bomber type terrorists are muslims.
It does seem to be a tactic extremist Muslim groups have adopted, for a number of reasons. Actually the first real suicide attack in Israel was probably the Japanese Red Army attack in 1972. They were allied with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Japanese attackers took the guards by surprise. Many people think this inspired the Palestinians to adopt suicide attack tactics.
I don't think that is going to work with a disc though. On a disc you will have a little beam being scanned over the surface. At any one time only a tiny fraction of all the data will be hit by the beam. For this automatic holographic search ability you would have to illuminate everything at once. I seem to remember the Scientific American article was talking about a sort of cube being illuminated rather than a disc.
It's a bit like saying "Why are most air-strikes which kill civilians carried out by Christians and Jews?" The answer has little to do with Christianity or Judasim and more to do with the fact that the US and Israel happen to have formidable air power and regularly use it. If the US did not have a huge well-equipped military and it wanted to attack in some way, it might well turn to using terror tactics (although would probably call it guerilla warfare). In fact on occasion it has indeed turned to terror tactics such as the Beirut car bombing in 1985, where air strikes were not really an option. If the Palestinians had jets, they would use them, as would Alqaeda.
I think suicide bombing has more to do with circumstance and opportunity than Islam. If by accident of history the Middle East had become Hindu, you would today be asking why there is so much Hindu terrorism. It would stem from things like the Israeli domination of the once Hindu dominated Palestine, and the oppressive totalitarian regime in Hindu Saudi Arabia being supported by the west. Angry oppressed Saudi Hindus would hate the people who support their oppressors as much as the oppressive government itself.
In the Middle East there is a lot of anger with the west over many issues, particularly the toppling of democracies and installing and supporting dictators and repressive regimes. Practices which continue to this very day. The channel for this anger happens to be Islamic fundamentalism, but without that channel it would find another. If we had been promoting democracy in the Middle East instead of supporting and installing dictators for the last 50 years, perhaps that channel would have been a lot less violent. I'm not excusing their behviour but all of this isn't coming out of a vaccum and it's not really due to Islam. Islam is just the channel.
not the funders!
This is exactly the kind of crap that could get passed though. People will just see the words "extreme porn" and nod in agreement. They won't realise that they could be incarserated due to possession of a clip from some mainstream film, or a naughty home video they made with their wife.
I'm sure I've got a clip somewhere from Mr and Mrs Smith where Angelina Jolie is undercover as a dominatrix. Does that mean I'm now a sex offender? Should I wait for the law to be passed or just hand myself in now before I commit heinous crimes?
This is why we should be using open formats, particularly for things that are really complex like video codecs.
It seems to me that all Presidents do is pardon their friends and business associates (particularly Clinton). Since Presidents keep totally misusing the power, it is a power that should be totally removed. If the majority of people in the US have to face the justice system, then the rich, powerful and friends of Presidents should have to face it too, with no get out clause.
It's much more fun to hide them in the linings of coats of people you don't like :)
Just type multitouch into youtube and you will see a lot of products from different companies. Apple is just first in the consumer market (as far as I know).
Any sanctions that deliberately restrict vitals such as fresh water are criminal in the extreme. Inflicting death upon the population in the hope of achieving political change is commonly called terrorism. Here's what Madelaine Albright had to say on the issue.
CBS Reporter Lesley Stahl (speaking of post-war sanctions against Iraq):
"We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And - and you know, is the price worth it?"
Madeleine Albright (at that time, US Ambassador to the UN):
"I think this is a very hard choice, but the price - we think the price is worth it."
An unbelievable statement to make. If only they had direct and clear evidence like that against Milosevic, his trial would have been over in a week. Of course this kind of terrorism/collective punishment goes on all the time, although not on the genocidal scale of the Iraq sanctions. A similar practice has been going on recently with suspension of aid to the Palestinians (and also taxes owed to them). We're not talking about preventing them from buying widescreen TVs and DVD Players, this is essential aid like food and water. They know full well that withholding hundreds of millions of dollars (and more recently restricting aid vehicles entering Gaza) will hurt the population severely.
Unfortunately the French, Germans and Russians were more than happy to sell Saddam what HE wanted under the table.
Considering the terrible suffering of the Iraqi people, I'm very glad people were bypassing the sanctions, even if their motives were greed. Maybe someone even managed to sell some vital water-treatment supplies and save a few people. Just picture the whole thing from the point of view of an ordinary Iraqi. For years the US, UK et al, is supporting the dictator who is oppressing you and killing your friends and family. They even encourage and support his war on Iran which is killing so many of the people you know. Then they decide they don't like him anymore and impose sanctions which result in the deaths of some 500,000 children, possibly including some of your own. I can't imagine the rage that so many Iraqis must feel towards the west.
They've been doing that for a long time with or without computers. For example, during the first gulf war, Iraq's water treatment facilities were deliberately targeted. Later the DIA assessed the effect that sanctions restricting replacement parts and vital chemicals would have on the population.
Iraq depends on importing specialized equipment and some chemicals to purify its water supply, most of which is heavily mineralized and frequently brackish to saline. With no domestic sources of both water treatment replacement parts and some essential chemicals, Iraq will continue attempts to circumvent United Nations Sanctions to import these vital commodities. Failing to secure supplies will result in a shortage of pure drinking water for much of the population. This could lead to increased incidences, if not epidemics, of disease.
So they accurately predicted that Iraqis would die because of the sanctions, and indeed they did, in droves. Denis Halliday who was running the humanitarian operation resigned, calling the sanctions "genocidal". His successor, Hans von Sponeck also resigned and condemned the sanctions and the effect they were having on the people.
The Arecibo dish is not parabolic though.
If it's spinning liquid, it will be a parabola, which is what you want, but it will only point in one direction. How can you get around that?
I think the idea is to say, "Oh we were bad back then up until 1975, but since then we've been really nice.". Sadly that isn't true at all. Maybe in 30 years they will be explaining how they were bad up until 2007 with involvement with the murderous contras in the 80s and secret prisons and torture in the "War on Terror" in the 2000s etc.
If only that were true with an indoor aerial. A thin piece of paper can stop the signal!
I'm not exactly a virus expert, but I've always thought that countries might try to attack each others economies with targeted viruses. For example, the virus checks something simple like the regional settings and can see that it is a US computer and therefore delivers its nasty payload. It may be difficult to determine exactly where it came from and even if you could, you could never really prove such a thing was a government sponsored action at all. China could just arrest and shoot one of the usual suspects if they are put under any pressure.
It's a good idea to use different user names for different things to prevent people building up a huge picture about you. Certainly don't use a contraction of your real name as your userID.
By setting up a business in a country that commits human rights violations, and then participating in them (e.g. turning over the names of dissidents when you know how political prisoners are treated), surely you can't just use the excuse that you are complying with local laws.
When I first saw the IPhone, I was reminded of the Onyx concept phone which I believe pre-dates it a bit. They have some fancy touch sensitive technology which they are licensing out. Their transparent thin film not only detects position, but also pressure. You can expect to see loads of phones which are just one big touch sensitive screen before long, probably with some kind of low power OLED screen.
I just wish they'd fix the memory situation. I shouldn't have to jump through hoops to stop Firefox consuming 200 megs of memory when I only have one tab open. It's been that way for as long as I can remember and I've used it on several different machines.
Doesn't it mean "sight" in Portuguese? How can you sue someone for using a normal everyday word which is useful to describe a product?
Mossadegh actually had big disagreements with the Communists. Britain was trying to convince the US that Mossadegh was becoming more and more communist to get them "on board". The reason for the coup was that he kicked out the AIOC (later to be re-branded BP). In a similar way, the reason for the coup in Guatemala was the threat to United Fruits, not that it was going to become a "Soviet beachhead" (which was just propaganda). The problem in Mossadegh's last days was that he knew there was a foreign-backed coup being organised (which there was) which is why he started doing extreme things like expelling all the UK diplomats. You can't expect everything to go along as normal in those extreme circumstances. Amongst other things, we were conducting false flag operations against him using gangs of thugs who pretended to be pro-Mossadegh.
If the US government felt there was a coup plot, it would also start doing quite extreme things I would imagine. As for Godwin's law, I find it quite inane that people pounce on you for making a Hitler comparison. Mossadegh was hardly Hitler though. The Shah was far more of a "Hitler" than Mossadegh and he of course had US backing.
I'm not so sure about that. Russia controlled Eastern European states via Puppet governments. The US (and the UK) has done a very similar thing. For example, removing the democratically elected leader of Iran and replacing him with the Shah. Then there is US control over Cuba via various leaders which came to an end with Castro. There can be no doubt that the US has tried to control governments in Central and South America and this has lead to violent backlashes, e.g. the Sandinistas in Nacaragua.
Perhaps one difference is that US control tends to have more of an economic drive to it. For example, when the government of Guatemala was considering policies that the United Fruit Company didn't like, they went to the US government for help. This culminated in a huge propaganda campaign and an eventual coup against the Guatemalan government. Yes, a government was overthrown by a US company worried about its bananas. It's not always about oil, but it's usually about greed in some way.
True. Debate is obviously better. Few South American countries meet the standards of checks and balances of Europe or the US. However, if the US media is concerned about dictators, surely it would make more sense to attack people who are actually dictators. e.g. The Saudi Government or Musharaf or any of the other dictatorial regimes currently being supported.