Well placed nukes might change the pattern of eruption slightly
Yeah, they'd make it radioactive lava, which would add an extra element of fun.
With a very few exceptions, we'd be king-hell fucked as a species.
Nah, not that bad. We'd survive quite happily. Our civilization might to hell in a handbasket, but our species would be just fine. As an aside; you know when people say "I couldn't possibly live without [insert technology]?"
1) End the Collusion Between Government and Large Corporations/Banks
How? The USA has instituted legal corruption (campaign contributions) and it's Supreme Court has defended that as "free speech". Short of a Constitutional Amendment, not going to happen.
2) Investigate Wall Street and Hold Senior Executives Accountable for the Destruction in Wealth that has Devastated Millions of People.
Really?!? It was all Wall Street's fault? Not perhaps because consumers ran up massive unsustainable debt? Not because people bought houses they knew they couldn't afford? Take some responsibility for your own culpability in this crisis.
3) Return the Power of Coining Money to the U.S. Treasury and Return to Sound Money
Gold standard I assume? Okay, well once we find a couple trillion tons of gold in order to back said money, then we can talk. Until then this is a pipe dream as there is vastly more money currently in circulation than any gold standard could back.
4) Limit the Size, Scope and Power of Banks so that None are Ever Again âoeToo Big to Failâ and in Need to Taxpayer Bailouts
Hey! A reasonable and achievable goal. Cool!
5) Eliminate âoePersonhoodâ Legal Status for Corporations
Not sure how that's going to pan out. This would mean that corporations would not be able to enter into contracts. Which would mean they couldn't operate. Which would mean they would cease to exist and you wouldn't be able to buy the latest iPhone to go with your faux-poor garb. The legal personhood thing is just a grant of some rights that people hold to corporations. We can debate which rights, sure, but some like ability to enter contracts are a neccesity. Maybe we should instead be talking about real corporate penalties for crimes.
6) Repeal the Patriot Act, End the War on Drugs and Protect Civil Liberties
I'm alongside all that.
7) End All Imperial Wars of Aggression, Bring the Troops Home from All Countries, Cut the Military Budget and Limit The Military Role to Protection of the Homeland
Yeah, you guys tried that. Twice. World War I, World War II anyone? Either that or kiss your world dominant status goodbye and become a bit player in global politics. Your economy is a disaster and your main strategic advantage is your military power and reach. Voluntarily limiting that is just plain stupid. It would be quite nice if you'd stop invading countries just because you've decided you don't like their leader though.
A cute screed thumped out by a student with no idea about economics, politics or history. Less uplifting than "Liberté, égalité, fraternité", less idealistic than "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.", and less practical than "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need". I despair of our protesters today. This is the best they could come up with? A half-baked list of stupid and introverted ideas which speak nothing to the human condition and basically boil down to the whine of "we wanted to get rich without working, we bought with money we didn't have, and now that our chickens have come home to roost we want to blame all the people who focused on making money rather than spending it."
Did I miss something? I seem to remember when I was being brought up that one should work hard, spend wisely and save for a rainy day. Apparently that's now a crime against humanity, whereas watching hours of reality TV and spending all the money you have is somehow noble? Nope. I think a lot of people made way too much money, yes. But it was your money, and you weren't watching it because you gave it to these unscrupulous crooks, because you couldn't be bothered to look after it yourself! A business owner who doesn't check his accountant's figures is a fool; and a private person who doesn't check up on his investments and funds is an even bigger one.
Banking should be a service to industry that facilitates socially useful capital and equity, not be an industry in its own right.
Absolutely agreed.
The social good derived from (say) derivatives shorting is vanishingly close to zero.
Hmmmm, not so much. Actually it helps increase liquidity in the market, making it more likely that when you want to sell your shares and exit the market, someone will be there to buy from you at a reasonable price. Without liquidity you could wait days or weeks for a buyer to appear, as the share price drops and drops. So, assuming that people being able to sell what they have decided to sell is a social good, then derivatives shorting helps accomplish that goal.
Re-introduce the Glass-Steagall Act, impose a transaction tax (eg 0.01%) on every trade of any kind performed on the stock markets, and re-balance shareholders' interests against equity build using suitable regulatory legislation.
Agreed on all counts. Except....ummm, that actually won't solve many of the problems. Oh sure, it'll help with the boom-bust cycle of the financial industry; but it won't stop the Gordon Gekko "greed is good" philosophy; it won't reduce corporate influence on politicians and it won't create jobs.
A profound change in behaviour is needed. For too long there's been an "every man for himself" attitude. I'm not talking about socialism or anything like that; I'm talking about trying to create a society in which contributing to the overall benefit of society is lauded and held up as an example. Where stockbrokers are respectful to their child's teachers, where bankers tip their hats to the neighbourhood policeman. In short where money and fame are not seen as the sign of social worth.
Yes, I grasped that. Since there is more Homo Sapiens genetic variation IN Africa than out of it; that IMPLIES that Homo Sapiens evolved there. Any Eurasian Homo Erectus either:
Is not a direct ancestor
Moved back to Africa
Has older cousin fossils awaiting discovery in Africa
Hmmmm, let's see. There's more genetic variation IN Africa than out of it. Almost ALL major human ancestor fossils have been found IN Africa. Almost ALL major human cultural innovations have been found EARLIEST in Africa. The Out of Africa theory implied that the last African exodus would have moved through populations which were more primitive than us (e.g. Neanderthals) and we found 4% Neanderthal DNA in all non-Africans.
Sorry, WHICH weak foundation are you referring to?
A "purist" Out of Africa theory is indeed dead since there is evidence of SOME movement back and forth; but the needle is firmly on the "Africa" side of the clock. Oh, and BTW, the Multi-Regionalism theory is bunk. Not only is it outdated, but also based on an very poor understanding of how evolution and genetics works. Now is it possible that some particular fossil may have arisen first outside of Africa? Yes, but highly unlikely, and if so would not be likely to have been a direct ancestor of Homo Sapiens (although some of it's African cousins could have been).
As an aside, I didn't bother disputing the article you sent, since it's rubbish.
Xerox can copyright a shortening of the term Xerography ("dry printing").
Umm, no. In fact the original term was "Electro-photography". Xerox strenuously objected to the usage of "xerography" when it first surfaced in 1965 (13 years after Haloid became Xerox).
Microsoft copyrighted a network centric API called.Net and uses that suffix.
Nope, they've trademarked "Microsoft.NET". I'd balk at calling it a network centric API as well.
Microsoft copyright a window manager called Windows
Nope they've trademarked "Windows", and it's most likely an indefensible trademark which is why they're so damn careful to say "Microsoft Windows" everywhere.
So if Windows can bar Lindows
By "bar" you mean "buy for US$20 million", right? MS paid that money because the court was going to invalidate the "Windows" trademark on the grounds it was too generic, so they decided to settle.
Amazon could bar apple from calling one of it's regional stores Amazon
No, if it was in the Amazon I suspect they would not be able to bar this.
slang can't be copyrighted
Please, please, please read up on the differences between trademarks and copyright.
Go ask Yahoo if Yahoo is copyrighted.
It's TRADEMARKED!, and it's trademarked for specific purposes.
Likewise apple wins because App is a word invented like Xerox.
ALL words are invented. However you're not supposed to be able to trademark common parlance, especially in the context in which it's used. I guess I could go and trademark "App Store" for my coffee bar. It's not common parlance for a coffee bar, and might be okay. It could cause confusion though, which is something a trademark is not allowed to do. Apple is trying to enforce a trademark for a common term in it's usual context in a manner which could cause confusion. They will probably lose.
There was a brilliant short story by Arthur C. Clarke (I think) where the world population was in the trillions, and they were about to reach the point at which all the earth's resources were entirely dedicated to humanity. Accordingly the last zoo (comprising a couple guinea pigs and rabbits and a square meter or two of grass) was to be demolished to allow this milestone to be reached.
When we cast our eyes to the ground all we eat is dust, when we look to the heavens our feast is the stars.
Every society which has focused on their navels as the idiot above suggests has failed. Every single one. No exceptions. Only societies which explore and question and try for audacious goals succeed. By all means, encourage your politician-critters to drive your society to follow the Mayans to extinction. I'll applaud the net loss of stupidity, ignorance and cowardice.
Ummm, which home calling? Are you talking about those "Improve your XYZ Experience"; because those are opt-in.
...number of security holes in Windows enabling a breach of privacy...
These days most such holes are in IE, drivers and third party software. Not excusing them; just pointing out that the situation is vastly better than it was a few years ago.
But keep in mind that your second point talks to an inadvertent loss of privacy which MS usually does it's best to fix quickly. Unlike the Sony debacle, normally only a small subset of customers are affected before the patch is put in place. Unlike Google and the others, MS doesn't have a policy of denying you privacy, quite the reverse.
Umm, I did not, and neither did anyone else in this discussion.
As a user, I don't really give two...
Yes, but you see the context of the discussion was why Linux isn't a popular desktop OS. My point was that it has little to do with technology and a lot to do with familiarity and marketing. The old saw that Linux is too difficult for the end user is bunk with modern distros; so we're discussing other barriers to it's adoption on the desktop. Going on about how Linux has conquered everything else is an interesting tangent; but not really germane to the discussion. Although I appreciate your insight that the "desktop is morphing into mobile": certainly true, it will be interesting to see where (or if) that trend slows, stops or reverses.
Microsoft has come out and said they are ignoring the mobile computing market
I agree that Linux is not difficult for the ordinary home user; yet nonetheless they stay away from it in droves. It's been the Year of the Linux Desktop for over a decade now. You see, the problem is that people just don't CARE. They don't give a flying stuff; so they use Windows because they've always used Windows - it's familiar and all their apps work on it, and all their devices work.
Ironically this works in favor of companies like Apple which can convince people to care by creating a branding experience that customers respond to. It was always the mantra of the Linux fanbois that the only reason people used Windows is marketing.
Newsflash: do your marketing better and you will outpace Windows.
As a 3 dimensional creature in a 3 dimensional space observing a curved 2 dimensional space you can easily see the boundaries which are not as apparent to any 2 dimensional creatures. If you were similarly able to observe the universe from "outside", a higher dimensional space, you would perceive it as a 4 dimensional surface which curves back on itself.
So you're quite right, it isn't infinite; and if you could travel in a straight line for long enough you would end up back where you started.
To speak of "outside" the universe is meaningless. Space, dimensions, time, none of them exist "outside" the universe, all of them are functions of this universe. It's like asking what was "before" the Big Bang. Time didn't exist, so asking about time before it began makes no sense.
Pro-business dictators in Latin America and the Middle East (installed by the United States) have caused more suffering than the worst of Stalin's purges.
Don't be ridiculous; Stalin's purges resulted in about 1,000 executions a day, the deportation of about 10 million people, and resulted in the deaths of about 15 million people. It is unlikely that all the wars, dictators and oppression since WWII added together have caused as much suffering as that. To then turn around and claim that the US-installed dictators were worse is just ridiculous. They killed maybe just over a million together at a push, which would be less than a fifteenth of the amount killed by Stalin.
Well, if found guilty of something in an EU court, they could be levied with a fine. Said fine could be served on any subsidiaries or offices they may have in the EU. Should they not have any such offices (they do), any EU assets they may have could be seized, their directors and/or staff could be constrained from travelling to the EU. A "nuclear option" would be a court order requiring all EU ISPs to block Twitter. For global companies these days, they generally have to abide to some degree to all sorts of laws beyond those of their home country.
At what point did I get snippy about grammar? I made an entirely justified assumption you were talking about the Anglo American company, I explained why I made that assumption.
You seem completely unable to understand that and seem determined to somehow make it MY fault that your intent wasn't clear.
The underlying problem is not your poor communication skills, the problem is your stupidity. I tried to given you the benefit of doubt on that one, but you walked into proving it.
Uhhh, no. You don't capitalize at all; making it impossible to determine if anglo american is an adjective or a proper name. Since Anglo American is the largest mining company operating in Zimbabwe, I was entirely justified in assuming you were referring to it.
I also find it ironic that you're insultingly trying to denigrate my knowledge of Africa, when in fact that is the topic originally under discussion. You've shown that to go with your woeful inability to communicate you appear to have difficulties in thinking too.
Now run away snotling, the adult is bored of arguing pointless semantics with someone incapable of grasping their readily apparent limitations.
Ironic that the guy with the spelling mistakes, punctuation mistakes, and grammar mistakes is telling me to learn English. Let me guess, English isn't your first language?
There can't be a war crime when the war isn't being conducted between signatories of the Geneva Convention.
For starters it's the Geneva Conventions, plural, there are four treaties and three protocols. The USA and Iraq are both signatories to the First Convention, but it is the Third which explicitly outlaws torture. The USA signed it, but is has not been ratified. That would seem to let the USA off the hook. Except that torture is considered a grave breach (i.e. war crime) by the Third Convention, and has universal jurisdiction. So, any nation which has ratified the Third Convention could prosecute US politicians and personnel for their illegal actions.
But the Conventions are kinda moot (since the USA and Iraq are not signatories, along with a who's who list of detestable, tyrannical regimes and a few others). However, the USA did ratify the UN Convention against Torture. This means that the USA is obligated to prosecute those who commit and condone torture. They're not, so we can clearly see that the rule of law does not apply in the USA.
Did you know that Anglo American is a South African company, and has NOTHING to do with the US? Probably not, since you're clearly ignorant of so much relating to Zim.
As I recall the bee deaths have been linked to the EPA approving fertilizers/pesticides known to cause bee deaths despite regulations stopping them from doing so. Nothing to do with cellphones.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, they'd make it radioactive lava, which would add an extra element of fun.
Nah, not that bad. We'd survive quite happily. Our civilization might to hell in a handbasket, but our species would be just fine. As an aside; you know when people say "I couldn't possibly live without [insert technology]?"
They're wrong.
How? The USA has instituted legal corruption (campaign contributions) and it's Supreme Court has defended that as "free speech". Short of a Constitutional Amendment, not going to happen.
Really?!? It was all Wall Street's fault? Not perhaps because consumers ran up massive unsustainable debt? Not because people bought houses they knew they couldn't afford? Take some responsibility for your own culpability in this crisis.
Gold standard I assume? Okay, well once we find a couple trillion tons of gold in order to back said money, then we can talk. Until then this is a pipe dream as there is vastly more money currently in circulation than any gold standard could back.
Hey! A reasonable and achievable goal. Cool!
Not sure how that's going to pan out. This would mean that corporations would not be able to enter into contracts. Which would mean they couldn't operate. Which would mean they would cease to exist and you wouldn't be able to buy the latest iPhone to go with your faux-poor garb. The legal personhood thing is just a grant of some rights that people hold to corporations. We can debate which rights, sure, but some like ability to enter contracts are a neccesity. Maybe we should instead be talking about real corporate penalties for crimes.
I'm alongside all that.
Yeah, you guys tried that. Twice. World War I, World War II anyone? Either that or kiss your world dominant status goodbye and become a bit player in global politics. Your economy is a disaster and your main strategic advantage is your military power and reach. Voluntarily limiting that is just plain stupid. It would be quite nice if you'd stop invading countries just because you've decided you don't like their leader though.
A cute screed thumped out by a student with no idea about economics, politics or history. Less uplifting than "Liberté, égalité, fraternité", less idealistic than "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.", and less practical than "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need". I despair of our protesters today. This is the best they could come up with? A half-baked list of stupid and introverted ideas which speak nothing to the human condition and basically boil down to the whine of "we wanted to get rich without working, we bought with money we didn't have, and now that our chickens have come home to roost we want to blame all the people who focused on making money rather than spending it."
Did I miss something? I seem to remember when I was being brought up that one should work hard, spend wisely and save for a rainy day. Apparently that's now a crime against humanity, whereas watching hours of reality TV and spending all the money you have is somehow noble? Nope. I think a lot of people made way too much money, yes. But it was your money, and you weren't watching it because you gave it to these unscrupulous crooks, because you couldn't be bothered to look after it yourself! A business owner who doesn't check his accountant's figures is a fool; and a private person who doesn't check up on his investments and funds is an even bigger one.
Absolutely agreed.
Hmmmm, not so much. Actually it helps increase liquidity in the market, making it more likely that when you want to sell your shares and exit the market, someone will be there to buy from you at a reasonable price. Without liquidity you could wait days or weeks for a buyer to appear, as the share price drops and drops. So, assuming that people being able to sell what they have decided to sell is a social good, then derivatives shorting helps accomplish that goal.
Agreed on all counts. Except....ummm, that actually won't solve many of the problems. Oh sure, it'll help with the boom-bust cycle of the financial industry; but it won't stop the Gordon Gekko "greed is good" philosophy; it won't reduce corporate influence on politicians and it won't create jobs.
A profound change in behaviour is needed. For too long there's been an "every man for himself" attitude. I'm not talking about socialism or anything like that; I'm talking about trying to create a society in which contributing to the overall benefit of society is lauded and held up as an example. Where stockbrokers are respectful to their child's teachers, where bankers tip their hats to the neighbourhood policeman. In short where money and fame are not seen as the sign of social worth.
Really? You think that automatically follows?
How exactly? Do they have some strange sense that science hasn't yet discovered and for which no plausible mechanism has been proposed?
Hmmmm, let's see. There's more genetic variation IN Africa than out of it. Almost ALL major human ancestor fossils have been found IN Africa. Almost ALL major human cultural innovations have been found EARLIEST in Africa. The Out of Africa theory implied that the last African exodus would have moved through populations which were more primitive than us (e.g. Neanderthals) and we found 4% Neanderthal DNA in all non-Africans.
Sorry, WHICH weak foundation are you referring to?
A "purist" Out of Africa theory is indeed dead since there is evidence of SOME movement back and forth; but the needle is firmly on the "Africa" side of the clock. Oh, and BTW, the Multi-Regionalism theory is bunk. Not only is it outdated, but also based on an very poor understanding of how evolution and genetics works. Now is it possible that some particular fossil may have arisen first outside of Africa? Yes, but highly unlikely, and if so would not be likely to have been a direct ancestor of Homo Sapiens (although some of it's African cousins could have been).
As an aside, I didn't bother disputing the article you sent, since it's rubbish.
Umm, no. In fact the original term was "Electro-photography". Xerox strenuously objected to the usage of "xerography" when it first surfaced in 1965 (13 years after Haloid became Xerox).
Nope, they've trademarked "Microsoft .NET". I'd balk at calling it a network centric API as well.
Nope they've trademarked "Windows", and it's most likely an indefensible trademark which is why they're so damn careful to say "Microsoft Windows" everywhere.
By "bar" you mean "buy for US$20 million", right? MS paid that money because the court was going to invalidate the "Windows" trademark on the grounds it was too generic, so they decided to settle.
No, if it was in the Amazon I suspect they would not be able to bar this.
Please, please, please read up on the differences between trademarks and copyright.
It's TRADEMARKED!, and it's trademarked for specific purposes.
ALL words are invented. However you're not supposed to be able to trademark common parlance, especially in the context in which it's used. I guess I could go and trademark "App Store" for my coffee bar. It's not common parlance for a coffee bar, and might be okay. It could cause confusion though, which is something a trademark is not allowed to do. Apple is trying to enforce a trademark for a common term in it's usual context in a manner which could cause confusion. They will probably lose.
There was a brilliant short story by Arthur C. Clarke (I think) where the world population was in the trillions, and they were about to reach the point at which all the earth's resources were entirely dedicated to humanity. Accordingly the last zoo (comprising a couple guinea pigs and rabbits and a square meter or two of grass) was to be demolished to allow this milestone to be reached.
When we cast our eyes to the ground all we eat is dust, when we look to the heavens our feast is the stars.
Every society which has focused on their navels as the idiot above suggests has failed. Every single one. No exceptions. Only societies which explore and question and try for audacious goals succeed. By all means, encourage your politician-critters to drive your society to follow the Mayans to extinction. I'll applaud the net loss of stupidity, ignorance and cowardice.
Ummm, which home calling? Are you talking about those "Improve your XYZ Experience"; because those are opt-in.
These days most such holes are in IE, drivers and third party software. Not excusing them; just pointing out that the situation is vastly better than it was a few years ago.
But keep in mind that your second point talks to an inadvertent loss of privacy which MS usually does it's best to fix quickly. Unlike the Sony debacle, normally only a small subset of customers are affected before the patch is put in place. Unlike Google and the others, MS doesn't have a policy of denying you privacy, quite the reverse.
Umm, I did not, and neither did anyone else in this discussion.
Yes, but you see the context of the discussion was why Linux isn't a popular desktop OS. My point was that it has little to do with technology and a lot to do with familiarity and marketing. The old saw that Linux is too difficult for the end user is bunk with modern distros; so we're discussing other barriers to it's adoption on the desktop. Going on about how Linux has conquered everything else is an interesting tangent; but not really germane to the discussion. Although I appreciate your insight that the "desktop is morphing into mobile": certainly true, it will be interesting to see where (or if) that trend slows, stops or reverses.
citation needed
I agree that Linux is not difficult for the ordinary home user; yet nonetheless they stay away from it in droves. It's been the Year of the Linux Desktop for over a decade now. You see, the problem is that people just don't CARE. They don't give a flying stuff; so they use Windows because they've always used Windows - it's familiar and all their apps work on it, and all their devices work.
Ironically this works in favor of companies like Apple which can convince people to care by creating a branding experience that customers respond to. It was always the mantra of the Linux fanbois that the only reason people used Windows is marketing.
Newsflash: do your marketing better and you will outpace Windows.
Ummm, and it's proprietary...
As a 3 dimensional creature in a 3 dimensional space observing a curved 2 dimensional space you can easily see the boundaries which are not as apparent to any 2 dimensional creatures. If you were similarly able to observe the universe from "outside", a higher dimensional space, you would perceive it as a 4 dimensional surface which curves back on itself.
So you're quite right, it isn't infinite; and if you could travel in a straight line for long enough you would end up back where you started.
To speak of "outside" the universe is meaningless. Space, dimensions, time, none of them exist "outside" the universe, all of them are functions of this universe. It's like asking what was "before" the Big Bang. Time didn't exist, so asking about time before it began makes no sense.
Don't be ridiculous; Stalin's purges resulted in about 1,000 executions a day, the deportation of about 10 million people, and resulted in the deaths of about 15 million people. It is unlikely that all the wars, dictators and oppression since WWII added together have caused as much suffering as that. To then turn around and claim that the US-installed dictators were worse is just ridiculous. They killed maybe just over a million together at a push, which would be less than a fifteenth of the amount killed by Stalin.
All depends on context I guess. From here in the southern hemisphere with our summer solstice she's pretty damn dumb and arrogant
But the action was done TO citizens of the EU by a company which operates in the EU.
So a better analogy would be if the EU could prosecute Microsoft for a hacking attack conducted by it's USA branch on a British citizen.
Well, if found guilty of something in an EU court, they could be levied with a fine. Said fine could be served on any subsidiaries or offices they may have in the EU. Should they not have any such offices (they do), any EU assets they may have could be seized, their directors and/or staff could be constrained from travelling to the EU. A "nuclear option" would be a court order requiring all EU ISPs to block Twitter. For global companies these days, they generally have to abide to some degree to all sorts of laws beyond those of their home country.
:-)
Yep, was huge fun.
At what point did I get snippy about grammar? I made an entirely justified assumption you were talking about the Anglo American company, I explained why I made that assumption.
You seem completely unable to understand that and seem determined to somehow make it MY fault that your intent wasn't clear.
The underlying problem is not your poor communication skills, the problem is your stupidity. I tried to given you the benefit of doubt on that one, but you walked into proving it.
Grammar Nazi, my foot.
Uhhh, no. You don't capitalize at all; making it impossible to determine if anglo american is an adjective or a proper name. Since Anglo American is the largest mining company operating in Zimbabwe, I was entirely justified in assuming you were referring to it.
I also find it ironic that you're insultingly trying to denigrate my knowledge of Africa, when in fact that is the topic originally under discussion. You've shown that to go with your woeful inability to communicate you appear to have difficulties in thinking too.
Now run away snotling, the adult is bored of arguing pointless semantics with someone incapable of grasping their readily apparent limitations.
So I have to then question the wisdom of trying to insinuate that my English is worse than yours?
Let me Google "angloamerican corporations" for you.
Ironic that the guy with the spelling mistakes, punctuation mistakes, and grammar mistakes is telling me to learn English. Let me guess, English isn't your first language?
For starters it's the Geneva Conventions, plural, there are four treaties and three protocols. The USA and Iraq are both signatories to the First Convention, but it is the Third which explicitly outlaws torture. The USA signed it, but is has not been ratified. That would seem to let the USA off the hook. Except that torture is considered a grave breach (i.e. war crime) by the Third Convention, and has universal jurisdiction. So, any nation which has ratified the Third Convention could prosecute US politicians and personnel for their illegal actions.
But the Conventions are kinda moot (since the USA and Iraq are not signatories, along with a who's who list of detestable, tyrannical regimes and a few others). However, the USA did ratify the UN Convention against Torture. This means that the USA is obligated to prosecute those who commit and condone torture. They're not, so we can clearly see that the rule of law does not apply in the USA.
Did you know that Anglo American is a South African company, and has NOTHING to do with the US? Probably not, since you're clearly ignorant of so much relating to Zim.
As I recall the bee deaths have been linked to the EPA approving fertilizers/pesticides known to cause bee deaths despite regulations stopping them from doing so. Nothing to do with cellphones.