The Hutton Enquiry is also related to the BBC scandal, where the BBC misreported information about the government "sexing up" the intelligence findings. Dr. Kelly was in the middle of it. The Beeb, whose world service I used to admire because of its vast coverage of international events, has become significantly more left wing in the last decade. This is not surprising, since it is a semiautonomous bureaucracy in a country where the intellectual elite tend to be leftists.
As far as WMD evidence, the US government had plenty of evidence about biological and chemical weapons capability, and some about attempts to restart the nuclear program (which has since been validated).
The questions are whether Iraq could immediately attack with WMD's. The US believed that they could, and the battlefield commanders believed that they could. It may even be that Saddam believed that they could. They didn't.
The best evidence at this point is that Saddam, knowing that he would be subject to UN inspection, hid his WMD capabilities before then, expecting the US to never invade (since he knew his *allies* France and Russia would veto a second resolution). He had learned after the first gulf war that keeping around large quantities of WMDs was not useful anyway - they decay. Because he didn't expect an invasion, he had no WMD's ready to use.
But the issue of WMD's is much fuzzed up in the debate. The real issue is whether he had the capability to produce them, or was working on such, and would potentially supply them to terrorists. Those who deny he had a WMD program must explain why he put up with UN sanctions for many years, rather than allow adequate inspections followed by business as usual.
Without an answer to that question, it is hard to condemn governments for strongly suspecting that he had either WMD's, the ability to produce them quickly, or was working on same. I think it was this, along with numerous reports by defectors, that convinced the US and UK that he was a WMD threat.
Under the previous inspection regime, no biological weapons were ever found by inspectors. Rather, Saddam's son-in-law revealed the existence of the weapons while out of the country, after which Saddam produced evidence of a vast and deadly biological weapons campaign, the products of which have never been confirmed to have been completely destroyed. Such an episode suggests that the likelihood of Hans Blix and his few inspectors actually finding an existing weapons program, if it existed, were virtually nonexistent.
Furthermore, Saddam's past history suggested that he would have and use WMD's, and the US military (with access to very high level intelligence) believed he had them. An Iraqi nuclear scientist has provided the US with parts of a uranium enrichment centrifuge and a number of plans, all of which had been recently buried by the Saddam government in this guy's rose garden! The rest of the argument is just nit picking (did he or did he not seek uranium from Niger as he had in the past, etc) - if he was a threat, he was a threat.
Thus the attacks on both Blair and Bush about "misleading people about Iraq's WMD programs" are very much irrelevant to what actually happened. They both had every reason to believe in the existence of the weapons, whether or not they had irrefutable hard evidence. Furthermore, the intelligence business is notoriously iffy, and the fact that certain intelligence officers' viewpoints were not accurately represented is quite irrelevant.
No, I have not been to Cuba. Have you been to Vietnam?
You obviously love the Potemkin village of Cuba, as do so many naive Europeans.
Listen up! Cuba is a totalitarian dictatorship. The "leader" is a brutal dictator who imprisons anyone he feels like. Dissent is not allowed. There is no free press. The economy is a disaster (and in the age of modern transport, you can't blame the US embargo for that... the Europeans and Canadians are perfectly happy to trade with Cubans). So, local administrators are elected. Are they free to criticize Castro? Can they act against his policies? If not, this is hardly democracy. And the secret police and the block watch are not elected, but you wouldn't see them, since they don't show themselves to foreigners.
I am not going to do your homework for you on the Sandinistas. If you don't know that they threw out the rest of the coalition, you probably also don't realize that a broad based coalition threw out Somoza in the first place. You probably think the Sandinistas won it all for themselves.
As far as refusing foreign aid, are you telling me that the people intentionally voted in an evil government rather than the saintly Sandinistas because they otherwise wouldn't get free money from the US? What does that say about the judgement of the people? To me, what it says is that leftists like yourself can always make up excuses for when democracy fails to achieve the desired result!
As far as the Mosquitos, if you knew anything about Central America, you would know that the privileged classes are almost always the whitest people - those with the most Spanish and the least Indian blood. This was true of the Sandinistas - did Daniel Ortega look like a Mestizo to you? The Sandinistas were the children of the privileged Spanish rulers. The Mosquitos were the underclass, and they were persecuted (as they had been under Somoza also).
You also deny that the rebels in El Salvador committed atrocities. Flatly deny it. That's remarkably ignorant of you, but telling.
Believe all the leftist myths you want, but the blood of Latin Americans is on the hands of Americans, Cubans, Russians, and most espeically Latin Americans!
As far as the UN deeming the US guilty of international terrorism, is that supposed to mean something to me? Isn't this the same UN that has Colonel Gadaffi, a country that practices slavery, as head of its Commision on Human Rights? The same UN that has repeatedly condemned Israel but never the Palestinian terrorists?
You wonder why Americans aren't so fond of the UN? Because we know it is a deeply flawed, non-democratic organization that serves mainly as a place for dictators of all stripes to justify their brutal reign. An organization that would work fine if it was composed of democratic states but which is worse than useless since it allows in non-democratic organizations.
No, actually I know the US version is closer to the truth from multiple sources.
And it is just one example.
Shall we look at the BBC scandals? Shall we consider the crew of the British warship that demanded that BBC be taken off the ship's internal stations and FOX News added because they were offended by the BBC bias?
Then there are the bloggers in Europe who are telling us what they hear in the European media.
Sorry, but Europe is getting propagandized.
And it isn't the only place. My brother lived many years in Japan. You would be shocked at the anti-US and anti-European propaganda that he regularly saw on their television.
Europeans just assume they are better informed than Americans because they have always assumed, and still assume, that they are smarter and more sophisticated and more moral than Americans.
But just the comments on Slashdot over the last few years show how uninformed that particular subset of Europeans is.
Yes, there are many Americans who don't pay much attention to international news unless it affects them. Today, much of it affects all of us, so a lot more Americans pay attention than in the past. There is nothing to focus the mind like an international religious movement which has sworn to kill as many Americans (and Europeans, btw) as possible, and has demonstrated the willingness and and capability to do so by directly attacking us.
Europeans, in this area, seem to be remarkably unsophisticated. They somehow imagine that business as usual is enough to avoid massive catastrophe. They seem to believe that appeasement and good will is enough to keep from being attacked by these fanatics. They don't seem to realize that in this century, unlike any previous time in human history, small groups or single individuals can obtain technology sufficient to kill enormous numbers of people, and are furthermore willing to do so.
So Europeans would rather live in the last century, debating events of a different era of mankind, than deal with the problems of today.
The only good thing in all of this is that European intelligence agencies are not nearly as foolish as their leaders or their people, and understand full well the dangers, which is why they are happily cooperating with the US in these efforts.
I never said that the media had integrity or intelligent. Notice how I put quotes around the word "profession."
The issue about FOX and conservative talk radio is that they are only so successful because they offer an alternative to NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, and PBS. When liberals try to start liberal talk radio shows, they universally fail except in big liberal cities. This is because they do not represent a significant alternative to what people are already hearing on the primary news networks.
As far as "real news" - only national news really qualifies there, but the big networks (NBC, CBS and ABC) have been spending less and less time giving news and more and more time giving "news analysis" - which is to say, editorializing, telling you what to think about the news rather than just giving you the facts.
But the beauty of the US system is that when demand exists, alternatives arise, and that alternative in TV news is FOX. CNN even recognized that their left-wing bias was losing them viewers, and they went to the Republicans asking how to regain some them. They didn't like the answer, which was to quit obsessing on all the latest liberal causes that most people could care less about, and just report the news.
Fox is a business. Thus it shows Jessica Lynch or the various celebrity trials or whatever, when the news is slow. When things happen, FOX has it right away (as does CNN). Fox also has a habit (I sort of like it) of running stories showing scantily clad young women.
But take a look at their anchors. The major networks use people with no experience or training other than "journalism." Fox uses lots of very smart people - often lawyers (and face it, lawyers giving the news are better than lawyers filing worthless lawsuits) or very experienced columnists. Their anchors can think on their feet and ask intelligent questions, rather than just read scripts.
Several of their embedded reporters during the war had significant military experience (Oliver North is a combat veteran, Kelly is a reserve marine pilot). It is not surprising that their reporting was often much more informed than many of the other embeds, who were loathed by the troops for their negative attitudes, their superiority (they couldn't identify with ordinary soldiers, because ordinary soldiers hadn't gone to elite universities), their cliquishness, and their constant complaints about the living conditions.
The following statement from the above post is sufficient to disqualify the rest of your comments, which I don't have time to deal with right now:
The real threat that Cuba, Chile and Nicaragua posed to the U.S. is that they risked showing that a non-authoritarian, democratic socialist government in fact could work
Cuba is a non-authoritarian, democratic socialist government?
ROFLMAO!
pardon me, could you say that again with a straight face?
Do you really believe that?
Oh, and the same comments apply to Nicaragua under the Sandinistas, who purged all the democratic forces who had joined them in fighting Somoza. The Sandinistas who seized the best houses in Managua to live in. The Sandinistas who brutally repressed the Mosquito Indians of eastern Nicaragua. The Sandinistas who were voted out of power in the first free elections after their coup, an election certified as free by all the usual leftists (like Carter and the leftist journalists).
Once again, ROFLMAO.
El Salvador and Chile were more complex. Both sides committed atrocities - especially in El Salvador, where a vicious communist insurgency used the same terrorist tactics as the Viet Cong had used in Vietnam.
It is a common myth that the corporate ownership skews the reporting of the major US networks. And yet those networks are to the left of center in reporting, hardly the mark of capitalist influence.
In fact, the primary impact ownership has (with the exception of Fox and CNN) is when a story directly impacts the company. Fox's policy is simply to announce that the story is related to the ownership of the network. Both Fox and CNN have been known to ignore or downplay stories critical of regimes which they have business interests with. CNN is especially notorious in this regard, having admitted spiking stories in order to maintain their ability to report from certain countries. Fox recently greatly downplayed the dramatic demonstrations in Hong Kong, probably because of Murdoch's business interests in China.
It is a common myth among the left that US network news organization ownership by giant corporations means that these organizations have a pro-capitalist bias. Quite the opposite is true.
The journalism "profession" in the United States is fiercly independent when it comes to ideological interference from owners and others. This would ordinarily be good news, except that that same profession is remarkably uniform in its views. These are internationalist, pro-Europe, pro-UN, anti-interventionalist, anti-military, and anti-corporatist. They almost all vote for Democrats. In other words, they are to the left. They, of course, vehemently deny this and claim objectivity, but it is spurious.
The proof of this can be seen in the editorial stances (and actual news editing) of the New York Times, ABC, CBS, and NBC. It is shown by the fact that FOX news and conservative talk radio are so successful: they provide an alternative to a monolithic viewpoint provided by the large news corporations.
Based on my reading of European press, Europeans are very badly informed about what happens in the United States. There is a large amount of selective editing that takes place, and frankly, quite a bit of anti-American propaganda.
For example, yesterday's Associated Press article about reaction to Bush's speech was significantly different [in German] / [in English] in the version sent to Germany than that distributed in the US.
This is normal. Europeans, who so proudly tell us about the undersophistication of the average american in his sources of information, have far fewer sources available than we do, and the sources are more biased.
In the US, the broadcast news networks are all anti-Bush and pro-internationalism in their coverage. The same is true of CNN. Only Fox and conservative talk radio present the other side.
Certainly the average america is less "international" in that he pays less attention to European issues, but Europe is far less important to world affairs than it used to be. Thus the average American is tuned in to events in Iraq more than, say, France.
It is easy in retrospect to ignore the forces at work in the world in the 1970s. The US knew that the USSR was sponsoring coups and otherwise undermining countries throughout the world, with the ultimate intent of world conquest. This has been solidly established with the information released since the fall of the USSR, although it was obvious as early as the 1930's (and eloquently described by Winston Churchill just after World War II).
The US (with the constant agreement and assistance of the UK, btw), had a policy developed in the late '40s called "containment" - which meant that it would use its means to stop the expansion of USSR power wherever possible. While leftists love to believe that the Allende regime was one of flowers and love and all that, in fact it had its own repressive and murderous side. It was also greatly helped by the communist bloc.
The reason investment dried up was that companies were not interested in putting money into a regime which confiscated property, as Allende had done. In fact, people in general would be pretty stupid doing so.
The CIA was active in the containment effort, and did indeed sponsor the coup. An interesting thing about this is that Pinochet, who came to power as a result, voluntarily returned the country to democracy some years later... unlike any communist nation except the USSR itself, which did so only after a total collapse of its economy and moral as a result of the inevitable corruption and inefficiencies of communist systems.
Furthermore, the US ceased its meddling after Jimmy Carter took office and congress, full of peaceniks, tore it apart. During that period, a number of communist revolutionary movements, all allied to the USSR or China, took power. Reagan revitalized (to some extend, always hobbled by a hostile congress) the US efforts to contain, and even roll back the communist hegemonic efforts. He was most successful in Nicaragua and El Salvador.
The overthrow of the Panamanian government was made after a number of hostile acts against America and Americans by the Noriega, and was not done by the CIA (contrary to other posters) but by main force military attacks. Since that time Panama has had an independent, democratic government and is doing fine.
People hate the US because we are the most powerful nation on earth, economically and militarily, and they are envious. They hate us because our culture is displacing theirs in the mass media (which is their choice, not ours, since there is no US government pushing our pop music and movies and other crap down their throats). They hate us because we are willing to defend ourselves against those who would destroy us, rather than blindly trusting in a highly non-democratic, corrupt and illogically organized international organization (the UN) which succors dictators and tyrants. They hate us because we have an attitude which says that while we may listen to you, we will make up our own minds as to what is in our national interest. They hate us because we admit that we have a national interest of our own. They hate us because we support Israel, the only truly democratic nation in the middle east (with the exception of Turkey, which we also support).
They also hate us because we have been very generous, with the Marshall plan rebuilding Europe after WW-II, and vast amounts of foreign aid over the decades. We are currently spending billions to rebuild Iraq, and, as we always do, we will eventually leave Iraq to its own government.
If we act out of a generous motives, European "sophisticates" laugh at our naivette. If we act out of our own national interest, Europeans attack us for being selfish.
Europeans in partiocular hate us because their source of information tends to be highly biased (for example, the Guardian) and because our power and European lack of responsibility has left Europe almost irrelevant to international affairs, except when it can force us to obey the UN, where a minor country (France or Russia) can veto any action that it dislik
I built a bacterial fuel cell (from their description, identical except for the bacterial species) as a high school science project in 1964! We just used some bacteria from the Kansas River.
It worked... dump in sugar, get out current.
I think what is new here is the high level of efficiency.
You see why I say "left-leaning." I am aware that there are some who are much further left than NYT, which itself is to the left of center.
As far as Chomsky, I wouldn't believe anything he said (unless it was the mathematics of formal linguistics) because he is extremely far left and very biased. I hear his stuff all the time, and it is unadulterated BS rhetoric.
Of course, many liberals are fed up with the Dems like many conservatives are fed up with the Repubs. To make a party which can gain significant power, it must move towards the center, which is one of the good things about the two party system.
Re: Michael Moore's bowling for Columbine... I have a simple test. If my in-laws love it, it is left wing propaganda. They loved it. They even believed it! And bowling for Columbine, loaded with inaccurate editing and even, in one case, a phoney Bush ad (removed in the CD version), is pure baloney. His cutting and slicing of Charlton Heston's speech, for example, gave one completely false impressions. The Nazis also had outstanding propagandists that impressed people with their artistic ability, but that didn't mean that their stuff was right. See this for a few highlights of the nonsense in that "documentary."
I don't think you will find such a liberal movement, because you are farther left than you think. Many liberals have tried talk radio, and with the exception of liberal markets, they fail totally. There's a reason for that: they are to the left of center!
For people far to the left, there's always Indymedia.
As far as media control mechanisms and left wing propaganda, I was listening to Radio Moscow and Radio Havana in the '60s. I know propaganda when I hear it. What shocked me was that by the '80s, Radio Moscow was as close to the truth as CBS News!
BTW... as far as "real liberals" - the real liberals believed in most of what are now called "conservative" values in the US. They were displaced by the '60s radicals who were far to the left.
And yes, my blog is conservative. It's also got a lot of facts that you won't hear on NBC,CNN, or read in the New York Times. Not tin-foil conspiracy theory stuff (the right has plenty of those folks too), but just simple facts. Check it out.
Murdoch does not own the New York Times or the LA Times, both left-leaning papers. Murdoch does not own any major broadcast networks which produce news, and those networks are the primary source of news for almost half of all Americans. Murdoch doesn't own left-leaning CNN.
I used to watch a lot of CNN or CNNH because it was the only cable news outlet. It was disgustingly biased. Now I have choices - Fox, CNN, MSNBC.
Murdoch saw a market opportunity with Fox news because the vast bulk of the media in the US is to the left of center. Thus he launched Fox news, a right-leaning network (ignore the "fair and balanced stuff" - all the media implies that it is fair and balanced, when it is not), and it became the dominant cable news network - BECAUSE IT HAD A DIFFERENT IDEOLOGICAL BIAS from the rest of the news.
This is the same reason for the success of conservative talk radio in America, and the failure of liberal talk radio - liberals are adequately represented by the biases New York Times, NPR, CNN and the major TV networks. Conservatives get tired of them and tune to alternatives - originally Rush Limbaugh, and now many successful conservative hosts, and Fox News. We still have no major conservative newspaper (NY Post is a tabloid, and Washington Times is not a major paper).
If you want stuff further left than the New York Times or NBC and CNN, you are out of luck for major networks. In that case, you know how conservatives felt until Limbaugh and Fox News came along.
In other words.... listen to me play the world's smallest violin for the poor left wing in the US.
As for Britain, the once reliable and objective BBC has become an anti-American, anti-conservative, anti-semitic left wing propaganda operation. It is a shame, because it used to be possible for us Americans to listen to the Beeb when we wanted to hear reliable and detailed international news. Now all we hear is propaganda spew. During the Iraq war, a British warship asked that the news channel be changed permanently from BBC to Fox because they were so disgusted with the war coverage from BBC.
Publishing a list which identifies my ISP as a spammer is slandering my ISP unless it is true. Facilitating others in blocking my email by intentionally inflicting harm on ME is a tort. Filing one suit when I have been harmed is NOT barratry.
And as far as chosing an ISP, perhaps you should try to understand that many people have exactly ONE choice in a high speed ISP.
In other words, my choice is to cease practicing my profession from my current office, or use this ISP.
Some choice.
Perhaps if people who are so fondly in favor of this realized that not everyone has a choice in ISP's, they would grow up and recognize that inflicting mass harm on others to enforce their cause is about as effective as terrorism, because it is a similar sort of behavior.
I lost more time due to this SPEWS thing than I lose in many months of spam, and there is no evidence that SPEWS does any good.
I think it can be equally argued that SPEWS denying innocents access to email is also a criminal act! It is certainly a tort that could result in substantial damage settlements.
I was in the middle of a crisis at work (and I telecommute) when SPEWS suddenly cut off my email. This cost my company several hours of critical time.
If I knew who was behind SPEWS, I'd sue the bastards myself.
There are lots of ways to deal with spam. Harming innocent people is a pretty crappy way to do with it... and yes, I read all the analogies in this discussion.
RUAL? Do you have professional information on this subject or a reference, or is this this just your opinion?
I personally think that that many of their provisions (such as the hold harmless nonsense) should not be legally binding, but I have yet to see any *demonstrably knowledgable* person say that shrinkwraps are just FUD.
Since you have paid a consideration for the shrinkwrapped thing, have been notified of an obligation if you unshrinkwrap it, and they have provided you goods that you can use if you unshrinkwrap it, I see no reason whatsoever that shrinkwrap is not a way of creating a binding contract!
All shrinkwrap does is guarantee that you have been provided an unmistakeble opportunity to learn the terms of the contract before you take an action (opening the shrinkwrap) that brings the contract into effect. It allows the software maker to assert that you knew what you were getting into once you used the software or copied it or whatever.
You could do exactly the same thing with a new car... wrap it up and tie a contract to the zipper on the wrap with a big warning that unzipping it binds you to the contract (an allowing you to return it if it is never unzipped)!
I have already said that IANAL and cannot guarantee that my suppositions are correct. Would you please provide equivalent definition of your qualifications of your *opinion*?
I don't know if it has been tested in court. However, it would be extremely surprising to me if Microsoft and all other software manufacturers used the EULA's, nobody has even challenged them, and they are no good.
In other words, Occam's Razor says that they work.
Both are property. When you execute a transaction regarding the property, the terms of the transaction control the usage.
If you go out and rent a bed from a furniture rental place, you don't have full control of it. It may even be a patented bed. Makes no difference. When you rent a car, there are lots of terms and conditions regarding the use thereof.
If you go out and "buy" a box at a computer store, the transaction is identical whether it is hardware or software. If the box has a wrapper inside with a big warning that opening the wrapper binds you to a contract, and you can take it back unwrapped for a refund, this contract is the same whether it is copyrighted or not. If, on the other hand, you open the wrapper, you are bound to the contract.
After all, many of the terms in the EULA have nothing to do with copyright. Rather they are "hold harmless" clauses so you can't sue when the software destroys your data. You could certainly put the same clauses on a shrink-wrapped disk drive, with the same legal effect.
If Microsoft sold the XBOX with a EULA on it, they could say and enforce whatever they wanted as long as it was not illegal, and you would have to go along with it or return the box.
A contract is a contract.
IANAL although I studied a little contract law. If there is a real lawyer out there who can shed any more light on this, please (metaphorically) speak up!
My point is not that the XBOX has a EULA, but that, contrary to what the original poster said, it *could* have one in the future that could be just as obnoxious as a software EULA.
And this differs from a software EULA how? I buy Windoze, and I have to open an envelope with the "signify acceptance" phrase - after I have purchased the item.
I buy a piece of hardware. Inside the box is another box with the same sort of sticker, which has to be cut to get at the hardware.
Seriously, what's the difference?
For that matter, I have never quite understood how software EULA's work, since you don't see the EULA until after you have bought the software.
The lack of hardware EULA's is not automatic. AFAIK it is just a matter of standard practice.
If you rent a widget, you can't mess with it legally. Software EULA's are sort of a rental agreement.
There is nothing to keep hardware manufacturers from putting similar EULA's on their devices. Of course, enforcing them could be a bit difficult, although I suppose they could sue anyone who sent in a modded box for repair.
It always amazes me when people read military documents and then badly misinterpret them. The document didn't say it planned to deny other countries access to space. It wants the *capability* to deny future *adversaries* access to space. It wants to stop future Saddams or North Koreans (or French?) from attacking GPS systems or deploying orbiting nuclear weapons. Well, I guess we are just bad guys for having such intentions!
The US military already has systems to deny access to land, air, sea and undersea. Does that mean that nobody can use these? Of course not. Furthermore, these systems, like any military system, are not perfect.
Capabilities to deny adversaries access to space is the natural successor and is of course necessary to a country which is highly dependent on space based technology.
It simply means that space command is doing what it should be doing: developing the capability to fight successfully in its area of operations, and to vitally defend national assets in that area.
For example, as has also been mentioned in this thread, the military is highly dependent on GPS. If, during the Iraq war, the GPS systems had been knocked out, we would have had to use a lot more "dumb bombs" - with the result that many more people, mostly Iraqi's, would have died, and we still would have won. Future adversaries, of course, will want to take out GPS, so it would be beyond stupid for the US not work on systems to protect it!
This isn't stupid and it isn't arrogant and it doesn't mean that the US doesn't need allies. We know we need allies and we wish some who did so well under our protection were a little more loyal now that we are under attack by the Islamofascists. We already have over half of our army tied up just in Iraq, and North Korea is threatening to nuke Japan (talk about a bad attitude!). Contrary to world opinion, we are not militarily omnipotent and we know it.
There have been similar knee-jerk reactions to the DARPA idea to develop hypersonic drones. Guess what... DARPA works on future projects, and these hypersonic drones are obvious weapon systems of the future, IF the engineering is practical. Furthermore, don't kid yourself that future adversaries (China in particular) aren't working on the same sorts of things.
Finally, DARPA projects produce lots of technological spin-offs. As others have pointed out, the internet was one of these.
It would seem that since the US has developed its military superiority, and has used it in the war on terrorism (after the worst terrorist attack in history) to destroy two vicious regimes that nobody on Slashdot would ever want to live under, the rest of the world suddenly imagines that we are going to use it arbitrarily and capriciously. It also seems that the minute we act in our own self defense without getting permission from actual adversaries, we are arrogant and evil and need to be boycotted.
One of these adversaries is France, which has proclaimed its desire to obstruct US efforts and set up an opposite "pole" of power - apparently in the belief that the old 19th century European polar theories produced an ideal world! This same France colluded for decades with a vicious dictator (Saddam) and even gave him our diplomatic intelligence prior to the war. The good news is that France is so busy spending its money on labor unions and welfare that its military is a joke, suitable only for interfering in its former African colonies when French economic interests are threatened, or for launching one of its 449 thermonuclear warheads at anyone who speaks improper French (I don't see France giving up its force de frappe to the UN!). Also fortunate is that the French are so laughable that they provide a new source of humor for Americans.
When the rapidly occurring demographic collapse of non-muslim France (look at the trends - France will be a muslim country in a few decades), those weapons may very well be in the hands of Islamofascists.
Yes. In fact, the estimates are for ozone depletion vastly greater than that caused by CFC's [Science Mag last week], just from leakage hydrogen.
Stop the leaks? Hah! Hydrogen leaks better than any other substance known (except maybe supercooled helium?). It goes right through steel (in the process, embrittling the steel).
If you bury the stuff produced by recently living organisms (and do so in a way that the carbon stays buried for a long time), it offsets the carbon produced by burning other stuff.
So if you are worried about global warming, you should still bury the garbage.
There is no shortage of room to bury stuff. That is a myth promulgated by the recycling industry and various environuts.
Slashdot Mirror
The Hutton Enquiry is also related to the BBC scandal, where the BBC misreported information about the government "sexing up" the intelligence findings. Dr. Kelly was in the middle of it. The Beeb, whose world service I used to admire because of its vast coverage of international events, has become significantly more left wing in the last decade. This is not surprising, since it is a semiautonomous bureaucracy in a country where the intellectual elite tend to be leftists.
As far as WMD evidence, the US government had plenty of evidence about biological and chemical weapons capability, and some about attempts to restart the nuclear program (which has since been validated).
The questions are whether Iraq could immediately attack with WMD's. The US believed that they could, and the battlefield commanders believed that they could. It may even be that Saddam believed that they could. They didn't.
The best evidence at this point is that Saddam, knowing that he would be subject to UN inspection, hid his WMD capabilities before then, expecting the US to never invade (since he knew his *allies* France and Russia would veto a second resolution). He had learned after the first gulf war that keeping around large quantities of WMDs was not useful anyway - they decay. Because he didn't expect an invasion, he had no WMD's ready to use.
But the issue of WMD's is much fuzzed up in the debate. The real issue is whether he had the capability to produce them, or was working on such, and would potentially supply them to terrorists. Those who deny he had a WMD program must explain why he put up with UN sanctions for many years, rather than allow adequate inspections followed by business as usual.
Without an answer to that question, it is hard to condemn governments for strongly suspecting that he had either WMD's, the ability to produce them quickly, or was working on same. I think it was this, along with numerous reports by defectors, that convinced the US and UK that he was a WMD threat.
Under the previous inspection regime, no biological weapons were ever found by inspectors. Rather, Saddam's son-in-law revealed the existence of the weapons while out of the country, after which Saddam produced evidence of a vast and deadly biological weapons campaign, the products of which have never been confirmed to have been completely destroyed. Such an episode suggests that the likelihood of Hans Blix and his few inspectors actually finding an existing weapons program, if it existed, were virtually nonexistent.
Furthermore, Saddam's past history suggested that he would have and use WMD's, and the US military (with access to very high level intelligence) believed he had them. An Iraqi nuclear scientist has provided the US with parts of a uranium enrichment centrifuge and a number of plans, all of which had been recently buried by the Saddam government in this guy's rose garden! The rest of the argument is just nit picking (did he or did he not seek uranium from Niger as he had in the past, etc) - if he was a threat, he was a threat.
Thus the attacks on both Blair and Bush about "misleading people about Iraq's WMD programs" are very much irrelevant to what actually happened. They both had every reason to believe in the existence of the weapons, whether or not they had irrefutable hard evidence. Furthermore, the intelligence business is notoriously iffy, and the fact that certain intelligence officers' viewpoints were not accurately represented is quite irrelevant.
No, I have not been to Cuba. Have you been to Vietnam?
You obviously love the Potemkin village of Cuba, as do so many naive Europeans.
Listen up! Cuba is a totalitarian dictatorship. The "leader" is a brutal dictator who imprisons anyone he feels like. Dissent is not allowed. There is no free press. The economy is a disaster (and in the age of modern transport, you can't blame the US embargo for that... the Europeans and Canadians are perfectly happy to trade with Cubans). So, local administrators are elected. Are they free to criticize Castro? Can they act against his policies? If not, this is hardly democracy. And the secret police and the block watch are not elected, but you wouldn't see them, since they don't show themselves to foreigners.
I am not going to do your homework for you on the Sandinistas. If you don't know that they threw out the rest of the coalition, you probably also don't realize that a broad based coalition threw out Somoza in the first place. You probably think the Sandinistas won it all for themselves.
As far as refusing foreign aid, are you telling me that the people intentionally voted in an evil government rather than the saintly Sandinistas because they otherwise wouldn't get free money from the US? What does that say about the judgement of the people? To me, what it says is that leftists like yourself can always make up excuses for when democracy fails to achieve the desired result!
As far as the Mosquitos, if you knew anything about Central America, you would know that the privileged classes are almost always the whitest people - those with the most Spanish and the least Indian blood. This was true of the Sandinistas - did Daniel Ortega look like a Mestizo to you? The Sandinistas were the children of the privileged Spanish rulers. The Mosquitos were the underclass, and they were persecuted (as they had been under Somoza also).
You also deny that the rebels in El Salvador committed atrocities. Flatly deny it. That's remarkably ignorant of you, but telling.
Believe all the leftist myths you want, but the blood of Latin Americans is on the hands of Americans, Cubans, Russians, and most espeically Latin Americans!
As far as the UN deeming the US guilty of international terrorism, is that supposed to mean something to me? Isn't this the same UN that has Colonel Gadaffi, a country that practices slavery, as head of its Commision on Human Rights? The same UN that has repeatedly condemned Israel but never the Palestinian terrorists?
You wonder why Americans aren't so fond of the UN? Because we know it is a deeply flawed, non-democratic organization that serves mainly as a place for dictators of all stripes to justify their brutal reign. An organization that would work fine if it was composed of democratic states but which is worse than useless since it allows in non-democratic organizations.
No, actually I know the US version is closer to the truth from multiple sources.
And it is just one example.
Shall we look at the BBC scandals? Shall we consider the crew of the British warship that demanded that BBC be taken off the ship's internal stations and FOX News added because they were offended by the BBC bias?
Then there are the bloggers in Europe who are telling us what they hear in the European media.
Sorry, but Europe is getting propagandized.
And it isn't the only place. My brother lived many years in Japan. You would be shocked at the anti-US and anti-European propaganda that he regularly saw on their television.
Europeans just assume they are better informed than Americans because they have always assumed, and still assume, that they are smarter and more sophisticated and more moral than Americans.
But just the comments on Slashdot over the last few years show how uninformed that particular subset of Europeans is.
Yes, there are many Americans who don't pay much attention to international news unless it affects them. Today, much of it affects all of us, so a lot more Americans pay attention than in the past. There is nothing to focus the mind like an international religious movement which has sworn to kill as many Americans (and Europeans, btw) as possible, and has demonstrated the willingness and and capability to do so by directly attacking us.
Europeans, in this area, seem to be remarkably unsophisticated. They somehow imagine that business as usual is enough to avoid massive catastrophe. They seem to believe that appeasement and good will is enough to keep from being attacked by these fanatics. They don't seem to realize that in this century, unlike any previous time in human history, small groups or single individuals can obtain technology sufficient to kill enormous numbers of people, and are furthermore willing to do so.
So Europeans would rather live in the last century, debating events of a different era of mankind, than deal with the problems of today.
The only good thing in all of this is that European intelligence agencies are not nearly as foolish as their leaders or their people, and understand full well the dangers, which is why they are happily cooperating with the US in these efforts.
I never said that the media had integrity or intelligent. Notice how I put quotes around the word "profession."
The issue about FOX and conservative talk radio is that they are only so successful because they offer an alternative to NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, and PBS. When liberals try to start liberal talk radio shows, they universally fail except in big liberal cities. This is because they do not represent a significant alternative to what people are already hearing on the primary news networks.
As far as "real news" - only national news really qualifies there, but the big networks (NBC, CBS and ABC) have been spending less and less time giving news and more and more time giving "news analysis" - which is to say, editorializing, telling you what to think about the news rather than just giving you the facts.
But the beauty of the US system is that when demand exists, alternatives arise, and that alternative in TV news is FOX. CNN even recognized that their left-wing bias was losing them viewers, and they went to the Republicans asking how to regain some them. They didn't like the answer, which was to quit obsessing on all the latest liberal causes that most people could care less about, and just report the news.
Fox is a business. Thus it shows Jessica Lynch or the various celebrity trials or whatever, when the news is slow. When things happen, FOX has it right away (as does CNN). Fox also has a habit (I sort of like it) of running stories showing scantily clad young women.
But take a look at their anchors. The major networks use people with no experience or training other than "journalism." Fox uses lots of very smart people - often lawyers (and face it, lawyers giving the news are better than lawyers filing worthless lawsuits) or very experienced columnists. Their anchors can think on their feet and ask intelligent questions, rather than just read scripts.
Several of their embedded reporters during the war had significant military experience (Oliver North is a combat veteran, Kelly is a reserve marine pilot). It is not surprising that their reporting was often much more informed than many of the other embeds, who were loathed by the troops for their negative attitudes, their superiority (they couldn't identify with ordinary soldiers, because ordinary soldiers hadn't gone to elite universities), their cliquishness, and their constant complaints about the living conditions.
The following statement from the above post is sufficient to disqualify the rest of your comments, which I don't have time to deal with right now:
The real threat that Cuba, Chile and Nicaragua posed to the U.S. is that they risked showing that a non-authoritarian, democratic socialist government in fact could work
Cuba is a non-authoritarian, democratic socialist government?
ROFLMAO!
pardon me, could you say that again with a straight face?
Do you really believe that?
Oh, and the same comments apply to Nicaragua under the Sandinistas, who purged all the democratic forces who had joined them in fighting Somoza. The Sandinistas who seized the best houses in Managua to live in. The Sandinistas who brutally repressed the Mosquito Indians of eastern Nicaragua. The Sandinistas who were voted out of power in the first free elections after their coup, an election certified as free by all the usual leftists (like Carter and the leftist journalists).
Once again, ROFLMAO.
El Salvador and Chile were more complex. Both sides committed atrocities - especially in El Salvador, where a vicious communist insurgency used the same terrorist tactics as the Viet Cong had used in Vietnam.
It is a common myth that the corporate ownership skews the reporting of the major US networks. And yet those networks are to the left of center in reporting, hardly the mark of capitalist influence.
In fact, the primary impact ownership has (with the exception of Fox and CNN) is when a story directly impacts the company. Fox's policy is simply to announce that the story is related to the ownership of the network. Both Fox and CNN have been known to ignore or downplay stories critical of regimes which they have business interests with. CNN is especially notorious in this regard, having admitted spiking stories in order to maintain their ability to report from certain countries. Fox recently greatly downplayed the dramatic demonstrations in Hong Kong, probably because of Murdoch's business interests in China.
It is a common myth among the left that US network news organization ownership by giant corporations means that these organizations have a pro-capitalist bias. Quite the opposite is true.
The journalism "profession" in the United States is fiercly independent when it comes to ideological interference from owners and others. This would ordinarily be good news, except that that same profession is remarkably uniform in its views. These are internationalist, pro-Europe, pro-UN, anti-interventionalist, anti-military, and anti-corporatist. They almost all vote for Democrats. In other words, they are to the left. They, of course, vehemently deny this and claim objectivity, but it is spurious.
The proof of this can be seen in the editorial stances (and actual news editing) of the New York Times, ABC, CBS, and NBC. It is shown by the fact that FOX news and conservative talk radio are so successful: they provide an alternative to a monolithic viewpoint provided by the large news corporations.
Based on my reading of European press, Europeans are very badly informed about what happens in the United States. There is a large amount of selective editing that takes place, and frankly, quite a bit of anti-American propaganda.
For example, yesterday's Associated Press article about reaction to Bush's speech was significantly different [in German] / [in English] in the version sent to Germany than that distributed in the US.
This is normal. Europeans, who so proudly tell us about the undersophistication of the average american in his sources of information, have far fewer sources available than we do, and the sources are more biased.
In the US, the broadcast news networks are all anti-Bush and pro-internationalism in their coverage. The same is true of CNN. Only Fox and conservative talk radio present the other side.
Certainly the average america is less "international" in that he pays less attention to European issues, but Europe is far less important to world affairs than it used to be. Thus the average American is tuned in to events in Iraq more than, say, France.
It is easy in retrospect to ignore the forces at work in the world in the 1970s. The US knew that the USSR was sponsoring coups and otherwise undermining countries throughout the world, with the ultimate intent of world conquest. This has been solidly established with the information released since the fall of the USSR, although it was obvious as early as the 1930's (and eloquently described by Winston Churchill just after World War II).
The US (with the constant agreement and assistance of the UK, btw), had a policy developed in the late '40s called "containment" - which meant that it would use its means to stop the expansion of USSR power wherever possible. While leftists love to believe that the Allende regime was one of flowers and love and all that, in fact it had its own repressive and murderous side. It was also greatly helped by the communist bloc.
The reason investment dried up was that companies were not interested in putting money into a regime which confiscated property, as Allende had done. In fact, people in general would be pretty stupid doing so.
The CIA was active in the containment effort, and did indeed sponsor the coup. An interesting thing about this is that Pinochet, who came to power as a result, voluntarily returned the country to democracy some years later... unlike any communist nation except the USSR itself, which did so only after a total collapse of its economy and moral as a result of the inevitable corruption and inefficiencies of communist systems.
Furthermore, the US ceased its meddling after Jimmy Carter took office and congress, full of peaceniks, tore it apart. During that period, a number of communist revolutionary movements, all allied to the USSR or China, took power. Reagan revitalized (to some extend, always hobbled by a hostile congress) the US efforts to contain, and even roll back the communist hegemonic efforts. He was most successful in Nicaragua and El Salvador.
The overthrow of the Panamanian government was made after a number of hostile acts against America and Americans by the Noriega, and was not done by the CIA (contrary to other posters) but by main force military attacks. Since that time Panama has had an independent, democratic government and is doing fine.
People hate the US because we are the most powerful nation on earth, economically and militarily, and they are envious. They hate us because our culture is displacing theirs in the mass media (which is their choice, not ours, since there is no US government pushing our pop music and movies and other crap down their throats). They hate us because we are willing to defend ourselves against those who would destroy us, rather than blindly trusting in a highly non-democratic, corrupt and illogically organized international organization (the UN) which succors dictators and tyrants. They hate us because we have an attitude which says that while we may listen to you, we will make up our own minds as to what is in our national interest. They hate us because we admit that we have a national interest of our own. They hate us because we support Israel, the only truly democratic nation in the middle east (with the exception of Turkey, which we also support).
They also hate us because we have been very generous, with the Marshall plan rebuilding Europe after WW-II, and vast amounts of foreign aid over the decades. We are currently spending billions to rebuild Iraq, and, as we always do, we will eventually leave Iraq to its own government.
If we act out of a generous motives, European "sophisticates" laugh at our naivette. If we act out of our own national interest, Europeans attack us for being selfish.
Europeans in partiocular hate us because their source of information tends to be highly biased (for example, the Guardian) and because our power and European lack of responsibility has left Europe almost irrelevant to international affairs, except when it can force us to obey the UN, where a minor country (France or Russia) can veto any action that it dislik
I built a bacterial fuel cell (from their description, identical except for the bacterial species) as a high school science project in 1964! We just used some bacteria from the Kansas River.
It worked... dump in sugar, get out current.
I think what is new here is the high level of efficiency.
You see why I say "left-leaning." I am aware that there are some who are much further left than NYT, which itself is to the left of center.
As far as Chomsky, I wouldn't believe anything he said (unless it was the mathematics of formal linguistics) because he is extremely far left and very biased. I hear his stuff all the time, and it is unadulterated BS rhetoric.
Of course, many liberals are fed up with the Dems like many conservatives are fed up with the Repubs. To make a party which can gain significant power, it must move towards the center, which is one of the good things about the two party system.
Re: Michael Moore's bowling for Columbine... I have a simple test. If my in-laws love it, it is left wing propaganda. They loved it. They even believed it! And bowling for Columbine, loaded with inaccurate editing and even, in one case, a phoney Bush ad (removed in the CD version), is pure baloney. His cutting and slicing of Charlton Heston's speech, for example, gave one completely false impressions. The Nazis also had outstanding propagandists that impressed people with their artistic ability, but that didn't mean that their stuff was right. See this for a few highlights of the nonsense in that "documentary."
I don't think you will find such a liberal movement, because you are farther left than you think. Many liberals have tried talk radio, and with the exception of liberal markets, they fail totally. There's a reason for that: they are to the left of center!
For people far to the left, there's always Indymedia.
As far as media control mechanisms and left wing propaganda, I was listening to Radio Moscow and Radio Havana in the '60s. I know propaganda when I hear it. What shocked me was that by the '80s, Radio Moscow was as close to the truth as CBS News!
BTW... as far as "real liberals" - the real liberals believed in most of what are now called "conservative" values in the US. They were displaced by the '60s radicals who were far to the left.
And yes, my blog is conservative. It's also got a lot of facts that you won't hear on NBC,CNN, or read in the New York Times. Not tin-foil conspiracy theory stuff (the right has plenty of those folks too), but just simple facts. Check it out.
Murdoch does not own the New York Times or the LA Times, both left-leaning papers. Murdoch does not own any major broadcast networks which produce news, and those networks are the primary source of news for almost half of all Americans. Murdoch doesn't own left-leaning CNN.
I used to watch a lot of CNN or CNNH because it was the only cable news outlet. It was disgustingly biased. Now I have choices - Fox, CNN, MSNBC.
Murdoch saw a market opportunity with Fox news because the vast bulk of the media in the US is to the left of center. Thus he launched Fox news, a right-leaning network (ignore the "fair and balanced stuff" - all the media implies that it is fair and balanced, when it is not), and it became the dominant cable news network - BECAUSE IT HAD A DIFFERENT IDEOLOGICAL BIAS from the rest of the news.
This is the same reason for the success of conservative talk radio in America, and the failure of liberal talk radio - liberals are adequately represented by the biases New York Times, NPR, CNN and the major TV networks. Conservatives get tired of them and tune to alternatives - originally Rush Limbaugh, and now many successful conservative hosts, and Fox News. We still have no major conservative newspaper (NY Post is a tabloid, and Washington Times is not a major paper).
If you want stuff further left than the New York Times or NBC and CNN, you are out of luck for major networks. In that case, you know how conservatives felt until Limbaugh and Fox News came along.
In other words.... listen to me play the world's smallest violin for the poor left wing in the US.
As for Britain, the once reliable and objective BBC has become an anti-American, anti-conservative, anti-semitic left wing propaganda operation. It is a shame, because it used to be possible for us Americans to listen to the Beeb when we wanted to hear reliable and detailed international news. Now all we hear is propaganda spew. During the Iraq war, a British warship asked that the news channel be changed permanently from BBC to Fox because they were so disgusted with the war coverage from BBC.
Publishing a list which identifies my ISP as a spammer is slandering my ISP unless it is true. Facilitating others in blocking my email by intentionally inflicting harm on ME is a tort. Filing one suit when I have been harmed is NOT barratry.
And as far as chosing an ISP, perhaps you should try to understand that many people have exactly ONE choice in a high speed ISP.
In other words, my choice is to cease practicing my profession from my current office, or use this ISP.
Some choice.
Perhaps if people who are so fondly in favor of this realized that not everyone has a choice in ISP's, they would grow up and recognize that inflicting mass harm on others to enforce their cause is about as effective as terrorism, because it is a similar sort of behavior.
I lost more time due to this SPEWS thing than I lose in many months of spam, and there is no evidence that SPEWS does any good.
I think it can be equally argued that SPEWS denying innocents access to email is also a criminal act! It is certainly a tort that could result in substantial damage settlements.
I was in the middle of a crisis at work (and I telecommute) when SPEWS suddenly cut off my email. This cost my company several hours of critical time.
If I knew who was behind SPEWS, I'd sue the bastards myself.
There are lots of ways to deal with spam. Harming innocent people is a pretty crappy way to do with it... and yes, I read all the analogies in this discussion.
Nothing like an aircraft carrier and a jet carrying a HARM (High Speed Anti-Radiation Missile) to take care of that problem.
Read your own examples. All of them that apply to shrinkwrap were upheld. The indications are completely clear.
What was unclear was "clickwrap" which is very different.
So thank for some authoritative info. As Occam's Razor suggests, shrinkwrap is binding.
RUAL? Do you have professional information on this subject or a reference, or is this this just your opinion?
I personally think that that many of their provisions (such as the hold harmless nonsense) should not be legally binding, but I have yet to see any *demonstrably knowledgable* person say that shrinkwraps are just FUD.
Since you have paid a consideration for the shrinkwrapped thing, have been notified of an obligation if you unshrinkwrap it, and they have provided you goods that you can use if you unshrinkwrap it, I see no reason whatsoever that shrinkwrap is not a way of creating a binding contract!
All shrinkwrap does is guarantee that you have been provided an unmistakeble opportunity to learn the terms of the contract before you take an action (opening the shrinkwrap) that brings the contract into effect. It allows the software maker to assert that you knew what you were getting into once you used the software or copied it or whatever.
You could do exactly the same thing with a new car... wrap it up and tie a contract to the zipper on the wrap with a big warning that unzipping it binds you to the contract (an allowing you to return it if it is never unzipped)!
I have already said that IANAL and cannot guarantee that my suppositions are correct. Would you please provide equivalent definition of your qualifications of your *opinion*?
I don't know if it has been tested in court. However, it would be extremely surprising to me if Microsoft and all other software manufacturers used the EULA's, nobody has even challenged them, and they are no good.
In other words, Occam's Razor says that they work.
Both are property. When you execute a transaction regarding the property, the terms of the transaction control the usage.
If you go out and rent a bed from a furniture rental place, you don't have full control of it. It may even be a patented bed. Makes no difference. When you rent a car, there are lots of terms and conditions regarding the use thereof.
If you go out and "buy" a box at a computer store, the transaction is identical whether it is hardware or software. If the box has a wrapper inside with a big warning that opening the wrapper binds you to a contract, and you can take it back unwrapped for a refund, this contract is the same whether it is copyrighted or not. If, on the other hand, you open the wrapper, you are bound to the contract.
After all, many of the terms in the EULA have nothing to do with copyright. Rather they are "hold harmless" clauses so you can't sue when the software destroys your data. You could certainly put the same clauses on a shrink-wrapped disk drive, with the same legal effect.
If Microsoft sold the XBOX with a EULA on it, they could say and enforce whatever they wanted as long as it was not illegal, and you would have to go along with it or return the box.
A contract is a contract.
IANAL although I studied a little contract law. If there is a real lawyer out there who can shed any more light on this, please (metaphorically) speak up!
I would assume a hardware EULA would do the same.
My point is not that the XBOX has a EULA, but that, contrary to what the original poster said, it *could* have one in the future that could be just as obnoxious as a software EULA.
And this differs from a software EULA how? I buy Windoze, and I have to open an envelope with the "signify acceptance" phrase - after I have purchased the item.
I buy a piece of hardware. Inside the box is another box with the same sort of sticker, which has to be cut to get at the hardware.
Seriously, what's the difference?
For that matter, I have never quite understood how software EULA's work, since you don't see the EULA until after you have bought the software.
Obviously IANAL either.
The lack of hardware EULA's is not automatic. AFAIK it is just a matter of standard practice.
If you rent a widget, you can't mess with it legally. Software EULA's are sort of a rental agreement.
There is nothing to keep hardware manufacturers from putting similar EULA's on their devices. Of course, enforcing them could be a bit difficult, although I suppose they could sue anyone who sent in a modded box for repair.
It always amazes me when people read military documents and then badly misinterpret them. The document didn't say it planned to deny other countries access to space. It wants the *capability* to deny future *adversaries* access to space. It wants to stop future Saddams or North Koreans (or French?) from attacking GPS systems or deploying orbiting nuclear weapons. Well, I guess we are just bad guys for having such intentions!
The US military already has systems to deny access to land, air, sea and undersea. Does that mean that nobody can use these? Of course not. Furthermore, these systems, like any military system, are not perfect.
Capabilities to deny adversaries access to space is the natural successor and is of course necessary to a country which is highly dependent on space based technology.
It simply means that space command is doing what it should be doing: developing the capability to fight successfully in its area of operations, and to vitally defend national assets in that area.
For example, as has also been mentioned in this thread, the military is highly dependent on GPS. If, during the Iraq war, the GPS systems had been knocked out, we would have had to use a lot more "dumb bombs" - with the result that many more people, mostly Iraqi's, would have died, and we still would have won. Future adversaries, of course, will want to take out GPS, so it would be beyond stupid for the US not work on systems to protect it!
This isn't stupid and it isn't arrogant and it doesn't mean that the US doesn't need allies. We know we need allies and we wish some who did so well under our protection were a little more loyal now that we are under attack by the Islamofascists. We already have over half of our army tied up just in Iraq, and North Korea is threatening to nuke Japan (talk about a bad attitude!). Contrary to world opinion, we are not militarily omnipotent and we know it.
There have been similar knee-jerk reactions to the DARPA idea to develop hypersonic drones. Guess what... DARPA works on future projects, and these hypersonic drones are obvious weapon systems of the future, IF the engineering is practical. Furthermore, don't kid yourself that future adversaries (China in particular) aren't working on the same sorts of things.
Finally, DARPA projects produce lots of technological spin-offs. As others have pointed out, the internet was one of these.
It would seem that since the US has developed its military superiority, and has used it in the war on terrorism (after the worst terrorist attack in history) to destroy two vicious regimes that nobody on Slashdot would ever want to live under, the rest of the world suddenly imagines that we are going to use it arbitrarily and capriciously. It also seems that the minute we act in our own self defense without getting permission from actual adversaries, we are arrogant and evil and need to be boycotted.
One of these adversaries is France, which has proclaimed its desire to obstruct US efforts and set up an opposite "pole" of power - apparently in the belief that the old 19th century European polar theories produced an ideal world! This same France colluded for decades with a vicious dictator (Saddam) and even gave him our diplomatic intelligence prior to the war. The good news is that France is so busy spending its money on labor unions and welfare that its military is a joke, suitable only for interfering in its former African colonies when French economic interests are threatened, or for launching one of its 449 thermonuclear warheads at anyone who speaks improper French (I don't see France giving up its force de frappe to the UN!). Also fortunate is that the French are so laughable that they provide a new source of humor for Americans.
When the rapidly occurring demographic collapse of non-muslim France (look at the trends - France will be a muslim country in a few decades), those weapons may very well be in the hands of Islamofascists.
In addition, these are not accurate weapons. With a nuclear payload, 10 miles off target is close enough.
The published circular error probability of a Minuteman is 100 METERS, not 10 miles. In other words, they are pretty accurate.
10 miles is nowhere near enough for a nuclear weapon. Depending on the target, 100 meters is what you need.
See here for some more reasonable data on nuclear damage.
Oh, btw... otherwise I agree that Minutemen aren't the right thing for this job - too expensive.
Yes. In fact, the estimates are for ozone depletion vastly greater than that caused by CFC's [Science Mag last week], just from leakage hydrogen.
Stop the leaks? Hah! Hydrogen leaks better than any other substance known (except maybe supercooled helium?). It goes right through steel (in the process, embrittling the steel).
If you bury the stuff produced by recently living organisms (and do so in a way that the carbon stays buried for a long time), it offsets the carbon produced by burning other stuff.
So if you are worried about global warming, you should still bury the garbage.
There is no shortage of room to bury stuff. That is a myth promulgated by the recycling industry and various environuts.