I'd say the hallucinations sound a lot more like DMT. That's not to say people can't have those types of hallucinations on Acid, but usually that's more visual. Even mushrooms can give you the feeling of disassociation, a separate presence in the room (or wherever you think you are at that time), etc. I mentioned DMT only because people have described it as being taken to other planets/dimensions/whatever and meeting otherworldly, intelligent beings. The body high that they talk about does sound a lot like Acid though. Or Ecstasy (with the right mix, of course). So basically the whole point of this exercise is to cause people to feel with a machine what, until now, they have only been able to feel with illicit drugs?
I agree with you that sometimes the behavior is not caused by the parents. However, I disagree as far as their culpability is concerned.
They are not necessarily responsible for their child's malevolent state, but at the same time a good, caring parent would recognize signs that their child is troubled and would do something about it. That is where they are at fault; they do not pay enough attention to their child and "parent" enough to notice if something is wrong.
Violent video games are a healthy outlet for the natural violent thoughts and feelings that occur in every human being. There IS a correlation between violent people and violent video games, but most people see this in the wrong light. It's a symptom, not a cause. Violent video games do not make people more violent, but one should be worried if observing an unnatural propensity to play violent video games that stretches beyond the game.
So I guess my point was that people, in general, have this completely backwards. It comes down to whether or not a person can see the difference between fantasy and reality violence. When one cannot tell the difference, it is indicative of something other than an overabundance of video gaming.
Hey! Don't you know that video games are the cause for the most tragic events in world history? Like the holocaust and both world wars! And the cold war! And let's not forget the Kennedy assassination, the colonial expansion period, Jack the Ripper, the Zodiac Killer, the belltower shootings, the race riots in 1968, the list goes on and on!
Oh wait.
Maybe it's just part of human existence. But how dare I say that! What am I thinking?! Obviously someone took a copy of Vice City back in time and made all these people play it. That MUST be what happened. Ban time travel!
That shouldn't be too far off. I don't have a link to it, but I do remember hearing from a researcher in the field that they were working on getting a reactor together that works off Boron fusion. Not the same type of radioactivity as fission creates, so the danger is much much less - that is, the shielding isn't needed. He was giving an example of how they could create a reactor the size of a standard refrigerator. Also, with the world's supply of Boron, we could run ten times the world's energy consumption for 1 billion years through this process. Now THAT'S something we should be investing in.
Hahaha it's so true. Apparently the pres and vp earning dividends off a company they give multibillion dollar no-bid contracts to doesn't bother some people.
Although I will say that the missile defense shield shouldn't just be abandoned because the enemy du jour is a bunch of international drug-dealing, murderous, criminal organizations. I think there is merit to realizing that there are still thousands of ICBMs aimed at this country. And the THAAD is also very useful against short to intermediate-range missiles, which is helpful against rogue nations who would like to shoot some of those at our troops or allies. And if they're tipped with nuclear warheads, that could get ugly.
But then again I work for Lockheed Martin, so maybe my view is a bit skewed. [i kid]
Why would we possibly put the onus on parents to take care of their own children? We can just have the government do it! Next up, the bill to transform all school systems into federal boarding schools.
"This isn't Russia. Is this Russia? This isn't Russia."
I agree completely. Believe me, you will find no one quicker to make fun of Americans than other Americans. I remember November 5th, 2004 waking up, reading the paper, and wondering how so many people could be so idiotic as to re-elect this moron. I apologize if I was a bit harsh, and I appreciate your apology. There is, indeed, dangerous 'patriotism' running rampant through our country right now. Unfortunately, the people who perpetuate it are not so intelligent as to realize that they are injuring our nation, completely ruining our relationships with other nations (relationships that I feel are tantamount to a successful republic and should be heavily valued), and are pushing us into an almost irreconcilable economic and political downfall. They are indeed a minority, but somehow they are incredibly vocal and powerful.
I just hope there are more people like me than are made visible through our government and various sources of media. I have no idea how we're going to go about fixing this situation, but hopefully my generation (those born around 1985) can do something about it. It almost seems like the good people of this nation are so busy working to put food on the table, and need to focus more on domestic issues (because if they don't, they will be run into the ground) that they have no time in order to work to be effective on an international scale.
The Declaration of Independence has no bearing on law in the US. It is not a legal document. In fact it was written well before the United States was formed, and I think you're forgetting that there was a failed period of government between the revolution and the forming of the Constitution. While it is a nice piece of paper with ideological writings, it is little more than an open letter explaining why the colonies were fighting for independence. It is not the reason for the constitution. The reason for the constitution was the need for a functional government based on the ideals of our founding fathers. Realistically, it is irresponsible to bring up the Declaration of Independence as having any relevance to law in the United States of America.
I am an American citizen and I do not use that phrase. I don't want my country to be called the leader of the free world. The garbage that comes along with it is not worth a useless title. So I agree, please stop using that phrase as it is not true and it brings the rest of us grief.
That being said, I would like you to stop generalizing about Americans. We are 300 million people. Some of us are stupid, some of us are smart, and the only thing we really share is that we live within the same boundaries of this country and utilize the same government. Epithets are used daily to refer to the American people, and they are unjustified stereotypes which certainly do not apply to every person in this country.
There is nothing wrong with having pride in your country. I love this country. I know it has made mistakes, pushed people's buttons, and done things that aren't right. That doesn't mean that I'm going to just lose pride in my homeland and not try to make it a better place.
PS - I'm not certain, but I think a lot of these labels for America and whatnot are just held over from the Cold War. We were the superpower that was holding the Soviet Union at bay, so it was perhaps a more apt title considering the world was basically split between Communism and Freedom - hence, being the most powerful, we were the "leader of the free world."
So basically we can have one party, republican or democrat I don't care, with a majority in congress and the executive branch "declaring" war on any group of people anywhere without a formal declaration of war, and that will ensure that they can oppress the people as much as they want?
Legal jargon and technicalities aside, the point is that this is a breach of the fundamental rights of American citizens. No American citizen should be okay with this. Sure, we're "at war" with a group of people who want to destroy our country. But short of a rebellion or invasion by enemy forces which could actually accomplish that, I do not think infringing American citizens' rights is appropriate. We were in a Cold War with the Soviet Union for the better part of a century and we had/have a War on Drugs, but apparently grappling with another superpower that is consistently exerting its influence over a large portion of the world with the capability to destroy us at any moment is not as dangerous as organizations of people who have been around for many years who are centered around eliminating Israel and destroying us in the process.
We definitely should do all we can to defeat them. I'll stay away from the obvious argument about this nonsensical war in Iraq. Any non-citizen can and should be treated without the protections of our Constitution. But start trodding upon the rights of the citizens when we're not in total war, and you're starting to lean towards a country that no true American would support.
In regards to the statement that everyone will be okay if they're not guilty, you should know the obvious repercussions of such a statement. Without even citing specific examples, I can tell you and you should know that there have been countless people in history who have been falsely accused of a crime, and only their constitutional rights have protected them from being wrongly punished. This is the same as the suspicion of connections to terrorists, and there are plenty of people who have been detained and released (and some who have not been released) who are not actually guilty. Some of them have been detained for the simple mistake of having the same name as someone else. I'm sure it doesn't concern you, since your name most likely isn't close to resembling a Middle Eastern name, but maybe you can do the right thing and imagine if it was.
I agree. He can speak his mind as he likes. What he cannot do is enact this sort of idea into policy or law. That has actually been done, as cited in the article, so those responsible should be held accountable. I believe you agree on that point.
I think there's a big assumption out there that aliens are only a couple hundred years beyond us, when in reality they could be millions of years beyond us in evolutionary terms and technology. So I doubt the ability of an astrophysicist to legitimately and accurately be able to determine the capabilities of an alien civilization with even so much as 1 billion years of advancement ahead of human civilization. Think of where we are now with our "understanding" of physics and the universe, and how far we will be if we continue to move forward (although granted, there are many forces out there that, for some reason, want to stop us from furthering human civilization) for say... 10 million years? Sorry, not buying his theory.
The press needs to lose its bias and present issues fairly and factually. It's not the government's job to make them do this. In fact, the government is the last organization that should be involved in this process, just due to the obvious hypocritical nature of such an involvement as per our constitution. We won't find the solution in the government, we will need to find it elsewhere. I cannot present an alternative, I can only point out what I view as a misunderstanding of the government's purpose.
Well first of all, I do vote against the self-destructive policies of this administration, and against any politician who would tarnish the reputation of the US. So you're really pushing a moot point. I never tried to "wash my hands" of my government's actions. In all reality, I never denied any of your accusations against my country, nor did I say it was okay to do certain things. I'm simply making it a point to say that there's a lot of hypocrisy from European nations who have no "moral highground" to lecture us on what's right and wrong. I agree my country and its actions are hugely less than perfect, and no one here believes that we're always right or always morally superior, etc. No one should expect us to be, either. We're just another country out here trying to do what we can. That doesn't mean we can't have pride in our nation. Oh, and how long ago was the Falkland/Malvinas incident? Do you not consider that to be a throwback to colonial England? Because that's not exactly ancient history. Seems like they didn't learn their lesson exactly, but they are just not powerful enough to push that agenda today. Not to mention that England also invaded Iraq with the US, so really I don't know exactly where you get your facts, but it seems quite obvious to me that the European nations are still serving their own interests and profiteering in other nations, just to a lesser scale.
You're trying to insist that the US will reneg on its deals. Well we're still with Taiwan, we defended Vietnam for (too many) years in order to keep that deal, we still have troops in South Korea on-call for their protection, and we have always defended and will always defend our allies. If you do not consider that to be holding to our agreements, then you have your priorities messed up.
I can't say I see any fact-based arguments in your post. All I see is, "no, you're bad" and then no rebuttal to the points that I've made. You want some examples? Well the US took a lot of flack for not doing enough in Darfur, or even when the Tsunami hit, or maybe even when Ethiopia is attacking Islamists in Somalia, it gets tied in and blamed on the US. Well I know it's real popular to hate the US, but my point is that no other country in this world could possibly pass judgment on us when their history is rife with even worse actions.
I laugh wholeheartedly at your claim that the US needs to pay its overdue UN fees. I'm sorry, but fighting every battle for the UN throughout its history is more than enough. You'll notice that now that the US cannot commit as many troops (usually a staggering 80-99%) that the UN becomes little more than a bureacratic forum for international politics. It is weak and ineffective. Hell, people can't even agree to sanction a country that is developing nuclear weapons, even while the international community has been calling for it to stop and negotiate for months and months.
How about France's intervention in Africa recently? I notice you're not harassing French people out there for getting involved in other countries. You have made no point whatsoever to support your cla... wait, what was your claim again? Oh yeah, it was just a rant about how terrible the US is. So what is your solution exactly? We should go back to isolationism and let the rest of the world do what it wants? Yeah, that worked real well in the past (see World War I and II). When Europe is left to its own devices, it takes what it wants and kills whoever it wants, and then each country tries to destroy the others in order to get more power. Seriously, maybe you should realize that the only reason Europe hasn't been doing what the US is doing is because they can't; the US is a much more effective, powerful country that can keep Europe in check. You even need to unite the entire continent to come close to matching our economic power. Maybe it's just jealousy at the fact that we can do it and you can't.
By the way, I'm still waiting for the 'thank you' to my ancestors who fought to free your country from oppression (or the threat of it). People like you are simply ungrateful, jealous little meaningless peasants with blinders on.
Your representatives act on yrou behalf. You cannot wash yoru hands of it so easily. Do somethign about it or deal with the stigma. I do. I vote. What else would you like me to do, rebel against the government? Sorry, not happening.
Your forgetting that it's rarely in the interests of the american people in general these things are done. Iraq, the soft wood lumber tarrifs, and Corn crop subsidies are polcies and actions that hurt americans in general while enrching a few individuals. I would agree, but that's not exactly what you said to begin with. You said there were self-serving policies, and to that I replied that there's no reason why a government wouldn't be self-serving. And you cannot even try to say that European governments have not done this in the past, do not do it in the present, will not do it in the future, or would not do it to a greater extent if they had the power. to say that would be incredibly foolish.
I haven't heard much about people thinking america should have helped. The general concensus is that most of the world would rather not take your heavily conditional help. America did rebuild/build several nations, Germany, Japan, and Isreal partly but the last 40 years or so, you have not been able or willing to do that. I really hope this isn't what they teach in history books where you come from. First of all, whenever a problem arises somewhere in the world, we ALWAYS hear European countries complaining that the US doesn't do enough to help. I'm sorry if your media doesn't expose you to such things, or maybe it does and you don't listen, but it always happens. Secondly, America rebuilt/built _several_ nations? Okay, so we come and defeat your enemy TWICE when Europe has been the cause of near global annihilation (hmm, both world wars), then rebuilt all of Europe and protected you from the Soviets. No, there's no need to thank us or anything. Instead you should just stab us in the back and complain all the time. That's a great way to treat the people who died for you.
Actually the critisism is more along the lines of "leave us the fuck alone" as opposed to "why aren't you helping". Now this is my favorite part. Where did you learn this "leave us the fuck alone" attitude from? Was it from the Africans whose continent Europe split up between the major powers? Or maybe the South Africans who were massacred (men, women, and children) by the British? Or perhaps the native Indians whose country was persecuted by the British for many years? Oh, I got it, maybe it was from the Americans who got sick of your self-serving policies, unfair trading practices, and incredible taxes and then threw you out to establish our own nation. Really sucks to see us doing so well, doesn't it?
I think what you're forgetting is that every country works towards its own interests, and all European nations have gone through the same things, including tremendous amounts of genocide, splitting up continents into parts of their domain, and ridiculous import taxes as well as unfair trading policies. The only difference is that the US is the one with the power now, so the US can better do these things now, as compared with how the old European empires used to be able to, but now cannot (without creating the EU).
People forget that its not our job to take care of the rest of the world just because we have the most power. It wasn't given to us by the rest of the world, we took it. So sorry, but that's capitalism/nature. Imagine that... a country that is more interested in the needs of its people and its own survival than it is the survival of the rest of the planet who, coincidentally, hate it.
You wanna talk about hypocrisy? Every country out there is hypocritical. A lot of European nations yell at America for not doing enough when something goes wrong somewhere on the planet, but then get all pissy when America actually does step in and do something. Well you can't have it both ways. Not to mention we give more to help other countries than any other place in the world.
By the way, the existence of Gitmo is not a crime, and it was created a long time ago, it's not something new. The way they treat prisoners and the abuses of freedom that go on are crimes, and you may be surprised to know that a lot of Americans disapprove of these policies. In fact, there are millions of Americans who hate the policies of the government that have gotten us into so much trouble, but our frustration and anger are directed at the right place: the people who are responsible for these actions. Not a whole country in general, stereotyping 300 million people.
I don't think anyone is arguing the fact that the current CCTVs are able to perform to the capabilities of our greatest fears. If they are, then they are misinformed. What most of us don't like is that this opens the door for the future, where there will be much better monitoring systems, and we can no longer feel safe from the lacking technology. It may not even be in our lifetime, but something like this should never be able to force oppression onto any of our children or grandchildren. If you let it in now, then when it has the ability it will use it.
Also, you're not saying you should "also" protect the information in other ways, you're saying that you cannot trust encryption ever in any circumstance. See, if you have it in a super-safe place, and then another place trusted to encryption, then someone can just look at the encrypted information and they don't need to see what's in the "super-safe" area. So what you're stating is simply what the law does, makes it so that you can no longer store anything you want 'private' using encryption.
Actually, what that shows us is that you are a knee-jerk reactionist who, instead of defending their country, wants to shove the blame on the easiest target: America. I know it's sooooooooooooo popular to hate America. I think you forget where it stems from: that jealous, self-hating, rage that is inside some Europeans for seeing their empires fall down and die out, as well as having to realize what atrocities were committed under its rule, then seeing this new young country with all this power, making decisions that they don't like. And to make things worse, they're better than you and they know it.
So this PhD in Computer Science says, "Imagine you're landing on an aeroplane and the automatic pilot's working," he suggests. "If it divides by zero and the computer stops working - you're in big trouble. If your heart pacemaker divides by zero, you're dead."
Where did he get his degree, exactly, that he doesn't know how to catch exceptions? Hell, I learned that in CS1!
But that's what I'm saying. We shouldn't be afraid and have an emotional reaction to something that won't realistically affect our assets. If they take down the website, there will be no real consequences, only a fearful reaction that isn't warranted.
Like I said, we're agreeing with each other here. Something like this happening will have no impact on financial assets and the like, so we should not be afraid and possibly have a knee-jerk reaction, like massively selling off, to such an attack (if it happens). Because then we're just helping the terrorists.
Did you see what happened to the Market after 9/11? The markets infrastructure was just fine on the day the markets re-opened. Is it just me, or does this sound like you're now agreeing with what we're saying? That we should not be so effected by this fear-mongering because it will not have any real impact on our economy.
Also, you said that if the websites went down then the market could not respond to a rally. That is wholly false. Are you trying to say that before we had the internet the stock market never responded to a rally? I think that's a silly conclusion.
How do you get modded up when you're just spewing nonsense through your keyboard? It's like saying that smashing the executive's car is going to crash the stock market. If they were successful with their claims, it would be completely incapable of hurting anyone. They're talking about websites being threatened, not that the internal infrastructure of the firm would be penetrated by someone who would upload a virus that could debilitate the entire financial holdings of the firm. If they started saying that kind of thing, then we would be worried and expect more security.
But let's just attack one statement of mine and be completely wrong, and let every other one of my arguments remain unrebutted.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd say the hallucinations sound a lot more like DMT. That's not to say people can't have those types of hallucinations on Acid, but usually that's more visual. Even mushrooms can give you the feeling of disassociation, a separate presence in the room (or wherever you think you are at that time), etc. I mentioned DMT only because people have described it as being taken to other planets/dimensions/whatever and meeting otherworldly, intelligent beings. The body high that they talk about does sound a lot like Acid though. Or Ecstasy (with the right mix, of course). So basically the whole point of this exercise is to cause people to feel with a machine what, until now, they have only been able to feel with illicit drugs?
I agree with you that sometimes the behavior is not caused by the parents. However, I disagree as far as their culpability is concerned.
They are not necessarily responsible for their child's malevolent state, but at the same time a good, caring parent would recognize signs that their child is troubled and would do something about it. That is where they are at fault; they do not pay enough attention to their child and "parent" enough to notice if something is wrong.
Violent video games are a healthy outlet for the natural violent thoughts and feelings that occur in every human being. There IS a correlation between violent people and violent video games, but most people see this in the wrong light. It's a symptom, not a cause. Violent video games do not make people more violent, but one should be worried if observing an unnatural propensity to play violent video games that stretches beyond the game.
So I guess my point was that people, in general, have this completely backwards. It comes down to whether or not a person can see the difference between fantasy and reality violence. When one cannot tell the difference, it is indicative of something other than an overabundance of video gaming.
Hey! Don't you know that video games are the cause for the most tragic events in world history? Like the holocaust and both world wars! And the cold war! And let's not forget the Kennedy assassination, the colonial expansion period, Jack the Ripper, the Zodiac Killer, the belltower shootings, the race riots in 1968, the list goes on and on!
Oh wait.
Maybe it's just part of human existence. But how dare I say that! What am I thinking?! Obviously someone took a copy of Vice City back in time and made all these people play it. That MUST be what happened. Ban time travel!
Further evidence to support Darwin's theory of Natural Selection.
That shouldn't be too far off. I don't have a link to it, but I do remember hearing from a researcher in the field that they were working on getting a reactor together that works off Boron fusion. Not the same type of radioactivity as fission creates, so the danger is much much less - that is, the shielding isn't needed. He was giving an example of how they could create a reactor the size of a standard refrigerator. Also, with the world's supply of Boron, we could run ten times the world's energy consumption for 1 billion years through this process. Now THAT'S something we should be investing in.
Hahaha it's so true. Apparently the pres and vp earning dividends off a company they give multibillion dollar no-bid contracts to doesn't bother some people.
Although I will say that the missile defense shield shouldn't just be abandoned because the enemy du jour is a bunch of international drug-dealing, murderous, criminal organizations. I think there is merit to realizing that there are still thousands of ICBMs aimed at this country. And the THAAD is also very useful against short to intermediate-range missiles, which is helpful against rogue nations who would like to shoot some of those at our troops or allies. And if they're tipped with nuclear warheads, that could get ugly.
But then again I work for Lockheed Martin, so maybe my view is a bit skewed. [i kid]
Why would we possibly put the onus on parents to take care of their own children? We can just have the government do it! Next up, the bill to transform all school systems into federal boarding schools.
"This isn't Russia. Is this Russia? This isn't Russia."
I agree completely. Believe me, you will find no one quicker to make fun of Americans than other Americans. I remember November 5th, 2004 waking up, reading the paper, and wondering how so many people could be so idiotic as to re-elect this moron. I apologize if I was a bit harsh, and I appreciate your apology. There is, indeed, dangerous 'patriotism' running rampant through our country right now. Unfortunately, the people who perpetuate it are not so intelligent as to realize that they are injuring our nation, completely ruining our relationships with other nations (relationships that I feel are tantamount to a successful republic and should be heavily valued), and are pushing us into an almost irreconcilable economic and political downfall. They are indeed a minority, but somehow they are incredibly vocal and powerful.
I just hope there are more people like me than are made visible through our government and various sources of media. I have no idea how we're going to go about fixing this situation, but hopefully my generation (those born around 1985) can do something about it. It almost seems like the good people of this nation are so busy working to put food on the table, and need to focus more on domestic issues (because if they don't, they will be run into the ground) that they have no time in order to work to be effective on an international scale.
The Declaration of Independence has no bearing on law in the US. It is not a legal document. In fact it was written well before the United States was formed, and I think you're forgetting that there was a failed period of government between the revolution and the forming of the Constitution. While it is a nice piece of paper with ideological writings, it is little more than an open letter explaining why the colonies were fighting for independence. It is not the reason for the constitution. The reason for the constitution was the need for a functional government based on the ideals of our founding fathers. Realistically, it is irresponsible to bring up the Declaration of Independence as having any relevance to law in the United States of America.
I am an American citizen and I do not use that phrase. I don't want my country to be called the leader of the free world. The garbage that comes along with it is not worth a useless title. So I agree, please stop using that phrase as it is not true and it brings the rest of us grief.
That being said, I would like you to stop generalizing about Americans. We are 300 million people. Some of us are stupid, some of us are smart, and the only thing we really share is that we live within the same boundaries of this country and utilize the same government. Epithets are used daily to refer to the American people, and they are unjustified stereotypes which certainly do not apply to every person in this country.
There is nothing wrong with having pride in your country. I love this country. I know it has made mistakes, pushed people's buttons, and done things that aren't right. That doesn't mean that I'm going to just lose pride in my homeland and not try to make it a better place.
PS - I'm not certain, but I think a lot of these labels for America and whatnot are just held over from the Cold War. We were the superpower that was holding the Soviet Union at bay, so it was perhaps a more apt title considering the world was basically split between Communism and Freedom - hence, being the most powerful, we were the "leader of the free world."
So basically we can have one party, republican or democrat I don't care, with a majority in congress and the executive branch "declaring" war on any group of people anywhere without a formal declaration of war, and that will ensure that they can oppress the people as much as they want?
Legal jargon and technicalities aside, the point is that this is a breach of the fundamental rights of American citizens. No American citizen should be okay with this. Sure, we're "at war" with a group of people who want to destroy our country. But short of a rebellion or invasion by enemy forces which could actually accomplish that, I do not think infringing American citizens' rights is appropriate. We were in a Cold War with the Soviet Union for the better part of a century and we had/have a War on Drugs, but apparently grappling with another superpower that is consistently exerting its influence over a large portion of the world with the capability to destroy us at any moment is not as dangerous as organizations of people who have been around for many years who are centered around eliminating Israel and destroying us in the process.
We definitely should do all we can to defeat them. I'll stay away from the obvious argument about this nonsensical war in Iraq. Any non-citizen can and should be treated without the protections of our Constitution. But start trodding upon the rights of the citizens when we're not in total war, and you're starting to lean towards a country that no true American would support.
In regards to the statement that everyone will be okay if they're not guilty, you should know the obvious repercussions of such a statement. Without even citing specific examples, I can tell you and you should know that there have been countless people in history who have been falsely accused of a crime, and only their constitutional rights have protected them from being wrongly punished. This is the same as the suspicion of connections to terrorists, and there are plenty of people who have been detained and released (and some who have not been released) who are not actually guilty. Some of them have been detained for the simple mistake of having the same name as someone else. I'm sure it doesn't concern you, since your name most likely isn't close to resembling a Middle Eastern name, but maybe you can do the right thing and imagine if it was.
I agree. He can speak his mind as he likes. What he cannot do is enact this sort of idea into policy or law. That has actually been done, as cited in the article, so those responsible should be held accountable. I believe you agree on that point.
I wonder if putting the tank in the ground would be helpful.
I think there's a big assumption out there that aliens are only a couple hundred years beyond us, when in reality they could be millions of years beyond us in evolutionary terms and technology. So I doubt the ability of an astrophysicist to legitimately and accurately be able to determine the capabilities of an alien civilization with even so much as 1 billion years of advancement ahead of human civilization. Think of where we are now with our "understanding" of physics and the universe, and how far we will be if we continue to move forward (although granted, there are many forces out there that, for some reason, want to stop us from furthering human civilization) for say... 10 million years? Sorry, not buying his theory.
The press needs to lose its bias and present issues fairly and factually. It's not the government's job to make them do this. In fact, the government is the last organization that should be involved in this process, just due to the obvious hypocritical nature of such an involvement as per our constitution. We won't find the solution in the government, we will need to find it elsewhere. I cannot present an alternative, I can only point out what I view as a misunderstanding of the government's purpose.
Well first of all, I do vote against the self-destructive policies of this administration, and against any politician who would tarnish the reputation of the US. So you're really pushing a moot point. I never tried to "wash my hands" of my government's actions. In all reality, I never denied any of your accusations against my country, nor did I say it was okay to do certain things. I'm simply making it a point to say that there's a lot of hypocrisy from European nations who have no "moral highground" to lecture us on what's right and wrong. I agree my country and its actions are hugely less than perfect, and no one here believes that we're always right or always morally superior, etc. No one should expect us to be, either. We're just another country out here trying to do what we can. That doesn't mean we can't have pride in our nation. Oh, and how long ago was the Falkland/Malvinas incident? Do you not consider that to be a throwback to colonial England? Because that's not exactly ancient history. Seems like they didn't learn their lesson exactly, but they are just not powerful enough to push that agenda today. Not to mention that England also invaded Iraq with the US, so really I don't know exactly where you get your facts, but it seems quite obvious to me that the European nations are still serving their own interests and profiteering in other nations, just to a lesser scale.
You're trying to insist that the US will reneg on its deals. Well we're still with Taiwan, we defended Vietnam for (too many) years in order to keep that deal, we still have troops in South Korea on-call for their protection, and we have always defended and will always defend our allies. If you do not consider that to be holding to our agreements, then you have your priorities messed up.
I can't say I see any fact-based arguments in your post. All I see is, "no, you're bad" and then no rebuttal to the points that I've made. You want some examples? Well the US took a lot of flack for not doing enough in Darfur, or even when the Tsunami hit, or maybe even when Ethiopia is attacking Islamists in Somalia, it gets tied in and blamed on the US. Well I know it's real popular to hate the US, but my point is that no other country in this world could possibly pass judgment on us when their history is rife with even worse actions.
I laugh wholeheartedly at your claim that the US needs to pay its overdue UN fees. I'm sorry, but fighting every battle for the UN throughout its history is more than enough. You'll notice that now that the US cannot commit as many troops (usually a staggering 80-99%) that the UN becomes little more than a bureacratic forum for international politics. It is weak and ineffective. Hell, people can't even agree to sanction a country that is developing nuclear weapons, even while the international community has been calling for it to stop and negotiate for months and months.
How about France's intervention in Africa recently? I notice you're not harassing French people out there for getting involved in other countries. You have made no point whatsoever to support your cla... wait, what was your claim again? Oh yeah, it was just a rant about how terrible the US is. So what is your solution exactly? We should go back to isolationism and let the rest of the world do what it wants? Yeah, that worked real well in the past (see World War I and II). When Europe is left to its own devices, it takes what it wants and kills whoever it wants, and then each country tries to destroy the others in order to get more power. Seriously, maybe you should realize that the only reason Europe hasn't been doing what the US is doing is because they can't; the US is a much more effective, powerful country that can keep Europe in check. You even need to unite the entire continent to come close to matching our economic power. Maybe it's just jealousy at the fact that we can do it and you can't.
By the way, I'm still waiting for the 'thank you' to my ancestors who fought to free your country from oppression (or the threat of it). People like you are simply ungrateful, jealous little meaningless peasants with blinders on.
Your forgetting that it's rarely in the interests of the american people in general these things are done. Iraq, the soft wood lumber tarrifs, and Corn crop subsidies are polcies and actions that hurt americans in general while enrching a few individuals. I would agree, but that's not exactly what you said to begin with. You said there were self-serving policies, and to that I replied that there's no reason why a government wouldn't be self-serving. And you cannot even try to say that European governments have not done this in the past, do not do it in the present, will not do it in the future, or would not do it to a greater extent if they had the power. to say that would be incredibly foolish.
I haven't heard much about people thinking america should have helped. The general concensus is that most of the world would rather not take your heavily conditional help. America did rebuild/build several nations, Germany, Japan, and Isreal partly but the last 40 years or so, you have not been able or willing to do that. I really hope this isn't what they teach in history books where you come from. First of all, whenever a problem arises somewhere in the world, we ALWAYS hear European countries complaining that the US doesn't do enough to help. I'm sorry if your media doesn't expose you to such things, or maybe it does and you don't listen, but it always happens. Secondly, America rebuilt/built _several_ nations? Okay, so we come and defeat your enemy TWICE when Europe has been the cause of near global annihilation (hmm, both world wars), then rebuilt all of Europe and protected you from the Soviets. No, there's no need to thank us or anything. Instead you should just stab us in the back and complain all the time. That's a great way to treat the people who died for you.
Actually the critisism is more along the lines of "leave us the fuck alone" as opposed to "why aren't you helping". Now this is my favorite part. Where did you learn this "leave us the fuck alone" attitude from? Was it from the Africans whose continent Europe split up between the major powers? Or maybe the South Africans who were massacred (men, women, and children) by the British? Or perhaps the native Indians whose country was persecuted by the British for many years? Oh, I got it, maybe it was from the Americans who got sick of your self-serving policies, unfair trading practices, and incredible taxes and then threw you out to establish our own nation. Really sucks to see us doing so well, doesn't it?
I think what you're forgetting is that every country works towards its own interests, and all European nations have gone through the same things, including tremendous amounts of genocide, splitting up continents into parts of their domain, and ridiculous import taxes as well as unfair trading policies. The only difference is that the US is the one with the power now, so the US can better do these things now, as compared with how the old European empires used to be able to, but now cannot (without creating the EU).
People forget that its not our job to take care of the rest of the world just because we have the most power. It wasn't given to us by the rest of the world, we took it. So sorry, but that's capitalism/nature. Imagine that... a country that is more interested in the needs of its people and its own survival than it is the survival of the rest of the planet who, coincidentally, hate it.
You wanna talk about hypocrisy? Every country out there is hypocritical. A lot of European nations yell at America for not doing enough when something goes wrong somewhere on the planet, but then get all pissy when America actually does step in and do something. Well you can't have it both ways. Not to mention we give more to help other countries than any other place in the world.
By the way, the existence of Gitmo is not a crime, and it was created a long time ago, it's not something new. The way they treat prisoners and the abuses of freedom that go on are crimes, and you may be surprised to know that a lot of Americans disapprove of these policies. In fact, there are millions of Americans who hate the policies of the government that have gotten us into so much trouble, but our frustration and anger are directed at the right place: the people who are responsible for these actions. Not a whole country in general, stereotyping 300 million people.
I don't think anyone is arguing the fact that the current CCTVs are able to perform to the capabilities of our greatest fears. If they are, then they are misinformed. What most of us don't like is that this opens the door for the future, where there will be much better monitoring systems, and we can no longer feel safe from the lacking technology. It may not even be in our lifetime, but something like this should never be able to force oppression onto any of our children or grandchildren. If you let it in now, then when it has the ability it will use it.
Also, you're not saying you should "also" protect the information in other ways, you're saying that you cannot trust encryption ever in any circumstance. See, if you have it in a super-safe place, and then another place trusted to encryption, then someone can just look at the encrypted information and they don't need to see what's in the "super-safe" area. So what you're stating is simply what the law does, makes it so that you can no longer store anything you want 'private' using encryption.
Actually, what that shows us is that you are a knee-jerk reactionist who, instead of defending their country, wants to shove the blame on the easiest target: America. I know it's sooooooooooooo popular to hate America. I think you forget where it stems from: that jealous, self-hating, rage that is inside some Europeans for seeing their empires fall down and die out, as well as having to realize what atrocities were committed under its rule, then seeing this new young country with all this power, making decisions that they don't like. And to make things worse, they're better than you and they know it.
So this PhD in Computer Science says, "Imagine you're landing on an aeroplane and the automatic pilot's working," he suggests. "If it divides by zero and the computer stops working - you're in big trouble. If your heart pacemaker divides by zero, you're dead."
Where did he get his degree, exactly, that he doesn't know how to catch exceptions? Hell, I learned that in CS1!
But that's what I'm saying. We shouldn't be afraid and have an emotional reaction to something that won't realistically affect our assets. If they take down the website, there will be no real consequences, only a fearful reaction that isn't warranted.
Like I said, we're agreeing with each other here. Something like this happening will have no impact on financial assets and the like, so we should not be afraid and possibly have a knee-jerk reaction, like massively selling off, to such an attack (if it happens). Because then we're just helping the terrorists.
Also, you said that if the websites went down then the market could not respond to a rally. That is wholly false. Are you trying to say that before we had the internet the stock market never responded to a rally? I think that's a silly conclusion.
How do you get modded up when you're just spewing nonsense through your keyboard? It's like saying that smashing the executive's car is going to crash the stock market. If they were successful with their claims, it would be completely incapable of hurting anyone. They're talking about websites being threatened, not that the internal infrastructure of the firm would be penetrated by someone who would upload a virus that could debilitate the entire financial holdings of the firm. If they started saying that kind of thing, then we would be worried and expect more security.
But let's just attack one statement of mine and be completely wrong, and let every other one of my arguments remain unrebutted.