Western democratically elected governments have checks and balances put in place to prevent them from "being solely about war".
There is a reason why Hitler for instance put away with the Weimar republic before he engaged in war preparations.
Many of the numerous wars the US fights and fought since its inception are nothing but a testament to how much these checks and balances have been failing the US republic. To extrapolate from this example to all other governments is a fallacy.
But I give you that - if you limit yourself to dictatorships and absolute monarchies you're statement about these forms of governments being primarily about war is generally true.
If there were checks and balances where is the check and balance on tortures? On secret prisons? On assassinations? There are no "human rights" and there are no "checks and balances." The US government is a war machine whether it's a Republic or something else. It doesn't matter who you vote for, losing is never going to be an option and national security trumps all concerns.
You can have a Republic or even a Democracy and the military still is going to claim it needs to do certain things to win the war or in the interest of national security. This national security clause trumps everything else and it's like that in all governments that last.
How exactly is the UN immune to your notion of how governments all function as war machines?
It's not. It's in the position the US government was in when the US government was still new. Because it's young it seems like it wont be corrupted. Also because the UN has no real competitors there is no real need to have war in the classical sense anymore. Every nation will have war to see who controls the UN.
If another country took over the USA, I would wager that it would cause an influx of new words relating to government and politics and the new rulers would either learn English or get displaced by revolution or new invaders.
See Norman conquest.
Thats a possibility but it would still mean millions of Americans would have to die. And there is no guarantee that the new government will be better than the old government. The new government might see us all as slaves. The new government might be like Hitlers government, or Stalins.
Governments are war machines. They don't care about anything else. Rights can be used to help win wars but the purpose of all national governments is to function as a war machine. If you care about rights then you should support the UN.
When the UN decides that giving a monopoly on force to governments is a bad idea, I might consider supporting them more than I do. Right now, they look like they just want to be a bigger government (and hence, by your definition, a bigger war machine).
Thats a very good point. But the UN has no army so they aren't going to become a war machine anytime soon. The UN is more of a police agency combined with a charter. They don't really have power so nation states still control the UN and probably will for a long long time.
There is no real good and evil dollar. There is just dollars. In the end the team which has the most of them decides what is good and what is evil for the people who have the least of them.
The ignorance of some/. posters never ceases to amaze me. You give an opinion yet never state any proof or cite any references.
The USA has supported dictatorships which have abused human rights. The USA has used and will continue to use human rights abuses such as torture as a tactic to achieve victory. If you think my statements are made in ignorance, why don't you explain why the secret prisons where torture goes on exists at all? Why don't you explain why free speech doesn't really matter or why not even the Constitution is allowed to get in the war of military success?
Governments do not have principles. Governments are war machines. Corporations are profit machines. The employees and soldiers have principles but thats for their personal lives and not for their work life.
You can have principles, just keep them to yourself and share them in your private life. In your public life or corporate life principles don't really exist. It's all about winning.
Governments are war machines. They don't care about anything else. Rights can be used to help win wars but the purpose of all national governments is to function as a war machine. If you care about rights then you should support the UN.
Chinese influence around the globe concerns them. If China can control information in China then the USA can't control information in China. It's a matter of which country has the control not a matter of whether one country or another believes in having it. They both want it and are fighting over who controls information just as they fight over who controls land, sea, air, money, and everything else. And that is what governments were invented for.
The corporations and government go together as hand in glove. The corporation is merely the glove and the government the hand that controls the glove. The corporation's CEO very well could be a spy for some government. So you wonder why some corporations don't care about the American people? Maybe because they are owned and controlled by foreign powers.
The rest of what you say is correct. But it's economic espionage, economic warfare, corporate warfare, and the dollar is the ultimate weapon at this time.
The government is full of competitors, people who fight for their "right" to rule. The next logical step is to force your views on the playing field and try to protect the integrity of your memes.
Other politicians are risk enough, but it's the vast number of citizens who can cause real change if they wanted. That's why politicians want the people who take orders from them to be the only ones with guns. Now that the internet is a serious threat because of the power it gives to people that shadows the threat of guns.
At this point change is not an option and might not necessarily be for the better. Change usually requires civil war and then revolution. This usually requires millions of people to fight and die. This instability can lead to foreign countries like Russia and China and their agents taking over key stations in government. It could lead to a foreign country taking over the USA and then we'd really be in for a change when the national language is changed to mandarin or russian, even french.
So the Gulf oil spill was an inside job? Senator Robert Byrd threatened to talk, that's why he had to go. It's all starting to make sense now!
I don't have any evidence to support any of those conspiracies and neither do you. So why bring that up? To discredit me? Did I reveal too much of the truth?
This is the problem. We hide the truth to maintain a false reality. We maintain the false reality to keep young naive kids believing, hoping, having faith in government and it's power. Government does not exist to for any reason other than to gain power just as corporations only exist to profit. Accept it.
If you accept it you can still recognize that governments are essential. Let's just not kid ourselves and lie to ourselves to convince ourselves that our government is perfect, or that our government has some sort of divine ideology, or that it's anything more than an entity that was created for, designed for the sole purpose of winning wars. It's essentially a war machine.
Governments have military objectives. These objectives could be to secure the middle east. To win the war in Afganastan, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan etc. To protect Isreal. To isolate and defeat North Korea. To beat the Soviets.
It has nothing to do with principles. Principles are useful to help you win. Principles are a tactic, a means to an end rather than an end in itself. The only principle is to win. Winning means to protection national security. To maintain super power status. To protect the national interest. This usually means to control global resources, to control information, to control land, sea, air, and to maintain control over all assets.
It's fine if the government thinks this way but it's not right for the government to lie to it's own people, even it's own soldiers about why they fight. It's only the exceptionally smart or exceptionally experienced who figure out how it really works. It's not about principles and all about power. Nationalist vs Nationalist is what it's about. The US Nation against the Russian or Iran or North Korea or China or whomever challenges US global dominance. It's that simple.
The US Government must win. Lives are on the line. If the US Government loses than many people protected by the US Government could be killed. The US Government therefore cares only about winning wars and battles. The easiest way to win is to maximize control over land, sea, air, information, human resources, etc.
I don't particularly like this fact but it's just how it is. Winning the war is all they care about and in some cases they don't even care about that. Winning is defined as winning militarily which means having the most power. This is not the same thing as having the most liberty or protecting the Constitution. Politics are about power distribution, war is about power distribution, money is about power distribution, and to win you must have might.
Have you invented a time travel device that allows you to post from 1955?
Most women with masters degrees don't look like super models. That goes for 1955, 1995, 2005 and probably 2055 too. Look at most of the women you see running businesses with masters degrees. Look at most of the women you know, have known, have met, do they look as good?
Sure maybe 1 or 2 women and they very well could be spies. You never know who is what.
Yeah, the Ruskis are laughable at penetrating US institutions!
Wiki quotes: "By 1985, Aldrich was heavily in debt. He owed money because of the divorce, and Maria was spending freely. After exceeding his credit limit on different credit cards, Aldrich considered robbing a bank. Realising he had no experience in performing such a caper, he instead decided to pursue the less hazardous option of selling information to the Soviets."
"Hanssen never indicated any political or ideological motive for his activities, telling the FBI after he was caught that his only motivation was the money."... Rather proves my point: They both approached the KGB, not the other way around.
Wrong. Hansen approached the KGB. He literally walked into the embassy and threw intel at them. The reason the FBI couldn't catch him is because he worked for the FBI.
It's illegal to act as the agent of a foreign government on US soil without declaring yourself as such. I believe most of them are being charged for conspiracy to do just that, while some are being charged with money laundering, which humorously enough carries a much longer maximum sentence.
What is the point of the charges? If the FBI would have let them leave or arrested them what difference would it make?
Well, you could argue that most actresses essentially run their own business, they have assistants to a greater or lesser extent but in the end they are selling a product. Everyone always assumes that actresses are stupid, the reality is that while they are doubtlessly attractive, even if they're in the top.01% of women that still leaves an awful lot of competition. Look at Pamela Anderson, how much money has she made over the years selling what basically amounts to her personality and appearance? That does in fact take a kind of intelligence, maybe different from a PHD in economics kind of intelligence, but certainly still intelligence.
Anyone that hot, that smart and that successful is automatically suspect. Most successful actresses may very well be spies, but the same could be said about most successful actors. They do fit the profile.
Somebody better lock up Winnie Cooper before she steals all our secrets then. (Not to mention a host of other beautiful women who just happen to be highly educated).
There aren't very many of them. Also the spy woman was over the top, she ran her own business too. How many models are smart and run successful businesses? If it's less than 1% of the people you've met then when you meet one thats probably the spy.
The FSU is flooded with the US spies. All these NGOs, Peace Corps, Human Rights Groups, etc. But they will not be expeled as they pay people good salaries and hardly do any damage.
Much worse is when people are without jobs and without an income. Such people are even more dangerous.
Now when a lot of people in the USA are without jobs does it make sense to take away this too? Production moved overseas, so what people have to do?
Any woman who looks like that and who has a masters degree in economics is almost certainly a spy. No ordinary woman looks that good and is that smart.
They were acting as "agents of Russia" which is against the law in itself since they aren't registered. Why the FBI chose to arrest them now is the mystery because the FBI knew for over a decade.
Slashdot Mirror
Western democratically elected governments have checks and balances put in place to prevent them from "being solely about war".
There is a reason why Hitler for instance put away with the Weimar republic before he engaged in war preparations.
Many of the numerous wars the US fights and fought since its inception are nothing but a testament to how much these checks and balances have been failing the US republic. To extrapolate from this example to all other governments is a fallacy.
But I give you that - if you limit yourself to dictatorships and absolute monarchies you're statement about these forms of governments being primarily about war is generally true.
If there were checks and balances where is the check and balance on tortures? On secret prisons? On assassinations? There are no "human rights" and there are no "checks and balances." The US government is a war machine whether it's a Republic or something else. It doesn't matter who you vote for, losing is never going to be an option and national security trumps all concerns.
You can have a Republic or even a Democracy and the military still is going to claim it needs to do certain things to win the war or in the interest of national security. This national security clause trumps everything else and it's like that in all governments that last.
How exactly is the UN immune to your notion of how governments all function as war machines?
It's not. It's in the position the US government was in when the US government was still new. Because it's young it seems like it wont be corrupted. Also because the UN has no real competitors there is no real need to have war in the classical sense anymore. Every nation will have war to see who controls the UN.
If another country took over the USA, I would wager that it would cause an influx of new words relating to government and politics and the new rulers would either learn English or get displaced by revolution or new invaders.
See Norman conquest.
Thats a possibility but it would still mean millions of Americans would have to die. And there is no guarantee that the new government will be better than the old government. The new government might see us all as slaves. The new government might be like Hitlers government, or Stalins.
When the UN decides that giving a monopoly on force to governments is a bad idea, I might consider supporting them more than I do. Right now, they look like they just want to be a bigger government (and hence, by your definition, a bigger war machine).
Thats a very good point. But the UN has no army so they aren't going to become a war machine anytime soon. The UN is more of a police agency combined with a charter. They don't really have power so nation states still control the UN and probably will for a long long time.
There is no real good and evil dollar. There is just dollars. In the end the team which has the most of them decides what is good and what is evil for the people who have the least of them.
The ignorance of some /. posters never ceases to amaze me. You give an opinion yet never state any proof or cite any references.
The USA has supported dictatorships which have abused human rights. The USA has used and will continue to use human rights abuses such as torture as a tactic to achieve victory. If you think my statements are made in ignorance, why don't you explain why the secret prisons where torture goes on exists at all? Why don't you explain why free speech doesn't really matter or why not even the Constitution is allowed to get in the war of military success?
Governments do not have principles. Governments are war machines. Corporations are profit machines. The employees and soldiers have principles but thats for their personal lives and not for their work life.
You can have principles, just keep them to yourself and share them in your private life. In your public life or corporate life principles don't really exist. It's all about winning.
Governments are war machines. They don't care about anything else. Rights can be used to help win wars but the purpose of all national governments is to function as a war machine. If you care about rights then you should support the UN.
Chinese influence around the globe concerns them. If China can control information in China then the USA can't control information in China. It's a matter of which country has the control not a matter of whether one country or another believes in having it. They both want it and are fighting over who controls information just as they fight over who controls land, sea, air, money, and everything else. And that is what governments were invented for.
Governments are war machines.
The corporations and government go together as hand in glove. The corporation is merely the glove and the government the hand that controls the glove. The corporation's CEO very well could be a spy for some government. So you wonder why some corporations don't care about the American people? Maybe because they are owned and controlled by foreign powers.
The rest of what you say is correct. But it's economic espionage, economic warfare, corporate warfare, and the dollar is the ultimate weapon at this time.
The government is full of competitors, people who fight for their "right" to rule. The next logical step is to force your views on the playing field and try to protect the integrity of your memes.
Other politicians are risk enough, but it's the vast number of citizens who can cause real change if they wanted. That's why politicians want the people who take orders from them to be the only ones with guns. Now that the internet is a serious threat because of the power it gives to people that shadows the threat of guns.
At this point change is not an option and might not necessarily be for the better. Change usually requires civil war and then revolution. This usually requires millions of people to fight and die. This instability can lead to foreign countries like Russia and China and their agents taking over key stations in government. It could lead to a foreign country taking over the USA and then we'd really be in for a change when the national language is changed to mandarin or russian, even french.
"stop tourists"
So the Gulf oil spill was an inside job? Senator Robert Byrd threatened to talk, that's why he had to go. It's all starting to make sense now!
I don't have any evidence to support any of those conspiracies and neither do you. So why bring that up? To discredit me? Did I reveal too much of the truth?
This is the problem. We hide the truth to maintain a false reality. We maintain the false reality to keep young naive kids believing, hoping, having faith in government and it's power. Government does not exist to for any reason other than to gain power just as corporations only exist to profit. Accept it.
If you accept it you can still recognize that governments are essential. Let's just not kid ourselves and lie to ourselves to convince ourselves that our government is perfect, or that our government has some sort of divine ideology, or that it's anything more than an entity that was created for, designed for the sole purpose of winning wars. It's essentially a war machine.
Governments have military objectives. These objectives could be to secure the middle east. To win the war in Afganastan, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan etc. To protect Isreal. To isolate and defeat North Korea. To beat the Soviets.
It has nothing to do with principles. Principles are useful to help you win. Principles are a tactic, a means to an end rather than an end in itself. The only principle is to win. Winning means to protection national security. To maintain super power status. To protect the national interest. This usually means to control global resources, to control information, to control land, sea, air, and to maintain control over all assets.
It's fine if the government thinks this way but it's not right for the government to lie to it's own people, even it's own soldiers about why they fight. It's only the exceptionally smart or exceptionally experienced who figure out how it really works. It's not about principles and all about power. Nationalist vs Nationalist is what it's about. The US Nation against the Russian or Iran or North Korea or China or whomever challenges US global dominance. It's that simple.
The US Government must win. Lives are on the line. If the US Government loses than many people protected by the US Government could be killed. The US Government therefore cares only about winning wars and battles. The easiest way to win is to maximize control over land, sea, air, information, human resources, etc.
I don't particularly like this fact but it's just how it is. Winning the war is all they care about and in some cases they don't even care about that. Winning is defined as winning militarily which means having the most power. This is not the same thing as having the most liberty or protecting the Constitution. Politics are about power distribution, war is about power distribution, money is about power distribution, and to win you must have might.
As far as I know the E programming language is designed for this problem.
Why wouldnt E scale up to a billion cores?
Have you invented a time travel device that allows you to post from 1955?
Most women with masters degrees don't look like super models. That goes for 1955, 1995, 2005 and probably 2055 too. Look at most of the women you see running businesses with masters degrees. Look at most of the women you know, have known, have met, do they look as good?
Sure maybe 1 or 2 women and they very well could be spies. You never know who is what.
Yeah, the Ruskis are laughable at penetrating US institutions!
Wiki quotes:
"By 1985, Aldrich was heavily in debt. He owed money because of the divorce, and Maria was spending freely. After exceeding his credit limit on different credit cards, Aldrich considered robbing a bank. Realising he had no experience in performing such a caper, he instead decided to pursue the less hazardous option of selling information to the Soviets."
"Hanssen never indicated any political or ideological motive for his activities, telling the FBI after he was caught that his only motivation was the money." ... Rather proves my point: They both approached the KGB, not the other way around.
Wrong. Hansen approached the KGB. He literally walked into the embassy and threw intel at them. The reason the FBI couldn't catch him is because he worked for the FBI.
It's illegal to act as the agent of a foreign government on US soil without declaring yourself as such. I believe most of them are being charged for conspiracy to do just that, while some are being charged with money laundering, which humorously enough carries a much longer maximum sentence.
What is the point of the charges? If the FBI would have let them leave or arrested them what difference would it make?
Well, you could argue that most actresses essentially run their own business, they have assistants to a greater or lesser extent but in the end they are selling a product. Everyone always assumes that actresses are stupid, the reality is that while they are doubtlessly attractive, even if they're in the top .01% of women that still leaves an awful lot of competition. Look at Pamela Anderson, how much money has she made over the years selling what basically amounts to her personality and appearance? That does in fact take a kind of intelligence, maybe different from a PHD in economics kind of intelligence, but certainly still intelligence.
Anyone that hot, that smart and that successful is automatically suspect. Most successful actresses may very well be spies, but the same could be said about most successful actors. They do fit the profile.
Too hot and too smart to be real.
Somebody better lock up Winnie Cooper before she steals all our secrets then. (Not to mention a host of other beautiful women who just happen to be highly educated).
There aren't very many of them. Also the spy woman was over the top, she ran her own business too. How many models are smart and run successful businesses? If it's less than 1% of the people you've met then when you meet one thats probably the spy.
The FSU is flooded with the US spies. All these NGOs, Peace Corps, Human Rights Groups, etc. But they will not be expeled as they pay people good salaries and hardly do any damage.
Much worse is when people are without jobs and without an income. Such people are even more dangerous.
Now when a lot of people in the USA are without jobs does it make sense to take away this too? Production moved overseas, so what people have to do?
Huh? LOL your post made no sense.
Too good looking and too smart.
Any woman who looks like that and who has a masters degree in economics is almost certainly a spy. No ordinary woman looks that good and is that smart.
They were acting as "agents of Russia" which is against the law in itself since they aren't registered. Why the FBI chose to arrest them now is the mystery because the FBI knew for over a decade.