What does "democracy" even mean these days, though? Most countries I see described as "democratic" afford very little power (if any) to the voter. It's really just describing one method of preventing civil wars while allowing the real overlords (the rich, the powerful, the elite) to continue to govern behind the scenes.
100% correct, and it is up to us to take back the helm while we still have some shred of democracy left.
Your utter ignorance of economics, politics and history is rivaled only by the hardness of your convictions. You would have made an excellent party secretary in certain regimes.
And you make an excellent coward. Sign your posts dipshit.
Do you not know what the CIA World Factbook is? It's basically an encyclopedia (and is frequently cited in research papers). And it's not exactly some sort of a secret that Libya's wealth doesn't trickle down. The minimum wage in Libya is about $120 a month.. Law #15 maintains the average salary at about $200 a month. Yet the per-capita GNP works out to about $1200 a month. So, well, you do the math as to where most of the money is going.
Wait... because a bunch of schoolteachers and engineers with scavenged weapons can't hold ground against a trained militia, therefore people love Gadhaffi? Run that by me again?
That's a straw man argument, he didn't say the people loved Gadhaffi. He suggested that the people might not have instigated the revolt. They may have been perfectly happy to go along with it. Not the point.
Either way, this doesn't look like a "people's revolution" to me, not anymore so than e.g. Russian revolution was. Those dying on the barricades under green flags are just as much citizens of Libya as those dying under the tricolor.
You could very well be right. That had not occurred to me. We do know that Gaddafi wasn't being a good boy and doing what he was told. This could all very well be a staged overthrow to put in someone who will behave.
We'll find out eventually. After no one cares any more.
Sure I have. All these democratic experiments in Islamic countries have only replaced dictatorships w/ regimes that back Islamic supremacists of one hue or another.
Of course, they aren't democratic experiments in anything other than name. The US, (actually the corporations that own the US) doesn't want democracy to exist in these places in anything other than name.
In Afghanistan, as someone else pointed out, their constitution specifically rules out Shariah-incompatible laws, with results like the Abdul Rahman case, as pointed out. Iraq, after getting 'democracy', now has a government that's a vassal of Iran, just like Syria is. There was an election in the Palestinian Authority, and the winner of that was Hamas.
That's right, it was Hamas, and that democratic result wasn't the one the US (read: the corporations) wanted, so they unleashed the terrorists, Israel.
In Egypt, the only organized opposition to Mubarak was the Muslim brotherhood, and once Egypt has regular elections, they are the ones most likely to come to power. Same deal in Syria. Saudi Arabia's is about as close to a kakistocracy as one can get, but if the Sauds are overthrown and they have elections, they too are more likely to elect an al Qaeda like party to power. Bahrein had been prevented from having its rebellion succeed, but had that happened, they too would have gone the way of Iraq.
I know the Muslims aren't Christians, but what is so wrong with them running their own country? They are Muslims after all.
There are problems with Islam, just as there are problems with Christianity. We'd be better off without both of them, but one is no better than the other. At the end of the day it doesn't matter who runs the country as long as the US gets the oil. That has been proven ad nauseum.
In the meantime, the governments that did/do exist there weren't much better - whether it's the Sauds, Mubarak, Assad, Gadaffi, et al, they were all happy to let Islamic fanaticism run rampant. Take Syria, for instance. During the US occupation, Syria was happy to let its restive Sunni majority, who they'd normally suppress, pour into Iraq's al Anbar province and join Iraq's al Qaeda and cause attacks on US troops, at the same time that they let Iran have a pipeline to Hizbullah to destabilize Lebanon and attack Israel (note that I don't care what the Judeophobic pro-Islamic pro-Nazi posters on/. think).
Of course you don't, it's glaringly obvious that you are in favour of Israeli and US terrorism. Basically the crusades and the inquisition rolled into one and backed with high tech weapons.
So obviously, Assad is no friend to the West. But if he gets overthown in this uprising, the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the parent organization of al Qaeda, would be its replacement. Think of it as the Syrian and Egyptian editions of Hamas (actually, vice versa - Hamas is the Pali edition of the Muslim Brotherhood).
So in all these Muslim countries, both the dictatorships that they do have, as well as the mass uprisings that would replace them, are all bad for the West. Using the term 'democratic' in an Islamic setting is a misnomer, since pluralism - particularly religious pluralism - is non-existent.
Democracy is not the plan, the US doesn't want a democracy, in the middle east, at home, anywhere.
In Egypt, things were always ugly for the Copts, and have only gotten worse. Maronites are fleeing from Lebanon while that country has gone from Sunni to Shia. In Iraq & Pakistan, Christians are @ the receiving end, and even in 'moderate' Malaysia, non-Muslims - Christians, Hindus and other Chinese - are witnessing more discrimination than ever before, and leaving Malaysia in droves. So it's not like one has to only use examples like Saudi Arabia and Somalia to demonstrate what's wrong with Islam.
Picture we've got a bunch of people in other countries telling you, "Oh, Americans are too irresponsible or stupid to handle democracy. America should just have a strongman who brutalizes and robs from his people for decades." What would you think of a person who thought that of you?
If I was a Rebublicon, I'd say "You mean like Obama?"
If I was a Dumbocrat, I'd say "You mean like Bush?"
If I was from any other party it wouldn't matter, nobody would be listening anyway.
LOL! Right, there doesn't appear to be any difference between the two, except Obama is literate.
It was a democracy which brought him to power. Of course, the very first thing he did then was remove those same mechanisms to prevent any would-be contenders. Then comes the time for a fuck-up.
That is the point. They have to remove the trappings of democracy first.
Like what is happening in the good ole U S of A? Read the history of the NAZI regime, then take a look at US history, and spend an afternoon watching a flock of sheep. Note the similarities.
I guess Afghanistan will have to pick up a new constitution down the road then. Still better than a non-democracy.
The middle east will continue to be ruled by tyrants installed by the US. These little hiccups are to be expected and dealt with.
the teabaggers frankly can't stand anything given to the poor so they'll cockblock any aid packages anyway.
That's in the US. Helping American citizens to live better lives, which was the original job of the US government, is no longer a priority.
Libya is a different matter. The US will be right there, chequebook in hand. ready to help out with rebuilding the country. (Read, the cheque will go to Haliburton.) Providing of course that you accept the next puppet government, and don't mind things going back to the way they were with a new despot at the reigns.
War is big business, we can't have democracies all over the place.
No, it isn't. It sounds like magic in some of the messages here, but if you are creating classes/structs to do a certain thing, you know exactly how you want the memory to act. It's no biggie.
The only time you really need to manage memory is if you have objects that are liable to get extremely numerous, or get reallocated a lot. Which is exactly when you should be rolling up your sleeves and making it work exactly right anyway.
After all, there is a reason you went to a low level language in the first place. I wouldn't let my grandmother use Perl, but I use Python for most things, c/c++ when I feel the need for speed/power. (Java never, sorry, don't like it.)
let's face it, most gamers don't play Call of Duty more than a month because by the time you play that long, you're SO done with the immature fucking hyperleveled kids who play all day long and shout "fag" into their headsets whenever they score a kill
I think a larger problem is that their price is on par with the iPad and the iPad is expensive. Once tablet manufacturers start dropping their prices they're going to sell a lot bette.
A tablet is not a serious puter in most scenarios, it's an accessory.
I'd have a tablet if the price wasn't so outrageous.
Actually, if I understand you correctly, Google is OK with the scenario you present. They don't want Cyanogen shipping Google apps, presumably because they lose control of them.
Now, the app is backed up, Cyanogen installed and the app put back, as shipped by Google (as opposed to 'as shipped by the Cyanogen install')
Slashdot Mirror
Bashar al Assad is thanking Allah that there's no oil under his country.
The people of Libya are fully responsible for this Revolution. It has absolutely nothing to do with oil, dickhead.
I think that is what "dickhead" is saying, coward.
What does "democracy" even mean these days, though? Most countries I see described as "democratic" afford very little power (if any) to the voter. It's really just describing one method of preventing civil wars while allowing the real overlords (the rich, the powerful, the elite) to continue to govern behind the scenes.
100% correct, and it is up to us to take back the helm while we still have some shred of democracy left.
Your utter ignorance of economics, politics and history is rivaled only by the hardness of your convictions. You would have made an excellent party secretary in certain regimes.
And you make an excellent coward. Sign your posts dipshit.
Do you not know what the CIA World Factbook is? It's basically an encyclopedia (and is frequently cited in research papers). And it's not exactly some sort of a secret that Libya's wealth doesn't trickle down. The minimum wage in Libya is about $120 a month.. Law #15 maintains the average salary at about $200 a month. Yet the per-capita GNP works out to about $1200 a month. So, well, you do the math as to where most of the money is going.
FYI: "The top economic 1 percent of the US population now has a record 40 pecent of all wealth, and have more wealth than 90 percent of the population combined." http://www.alternet.org/story/151999/meet_the_global_financial_elites_controlling_%2446_trillion_in_wealth/
There you go, the math is all done for you. (and why does my spell checker insist that "math" is not a word?" LOL!)
Wait... because a bunch of schoolteachers and engineers with scavenged weapons can't hold ground against a trained militia, therefore people love Gadhaffi? Run that by me again?
That's a straw man argument, he didn't say the people loved Gadhaffi. He suggested that the people might not have instigated the revolt. They may have been perfectly happy to go along with it. Not the point.
Either way, this doesn't look like a "people's revolution" to me, not anymore so than e.g. Russian revolution was. Those dying on the barricades under green flags are just as much citizens of Libya as those dying under the tricolor.
You could very well be right. That had not occurred to me. We do know that Gaddafi wasn't being a good boy and doing what he was told. This could all very well be a staged overthrow to put in someone who will behave.
We'll find out eventually. After no one cares any more.
Sure I have. All these democratic experiments in Islamic countries have only replaced dictatorships w/ regimes that back Islamic supremacists of one hue or another.
Of course, they aren't democratic experiments in anything other than name. The US, (actually the corporations that own the US) doesn't want democracy to exist in these places in anything other than name.
In Afghanistan, as someone else pointed out, their constitution specifically rules out Shariah-incompatible laws, with results like the Abdul Rahman case, as pointed out. Iraq, after getting 'democracy', now has a government that's a vassal of Iran, just like Syria is. There was an election in the Palestinian Authority, and the winner of that was Hamas.
That's right, it was Hamas, and that democratic result wasn't the one the US (read: the corporations) wanted, so they unleashed the terrorists, Israel.
In Egypt, the only organized opposition to Mubarak was the Muslim brotherhood, and once Egypt has regular elections, they are the ones most likely to come to power. Same deal in Syria. Saudi Arabia's is about as close to a kakistocracy as one can get, but if the Sauds are overthrown and they have elections, they too are more likely to elect an al Qaeda like party to power. Bahrein had been prevented from having its rebellion succeed, but had that happened, they too would have gone the way of Iraq.
I know the Muslims aren't Christians, but what is so wrong with them running their own country? They are Muslims after all.
There are problems with Islam, just as there are problems with Christianity. We'd be better off without both of them, but one is no better than the other. At the end of the day it doesn't matter who runs the country as long as the US gets the oil. That has been proven ad nauseum.
In the meantime, the governments that did/do exist there weren't much better - whether it's the Sauds, Mubarak, Assad, Gadaffi, et al, they were all happy to let Islamic fanaticism run rampant. Take Syria, for instance. During the US occupation, Syria was happy to let its restive Sunni majority, who they'd normally suppress, pour into Iraq's al Anbar province and join Iraq's al Qaeda and cause attacks on US troops, at the same time that they let Iran have a pipeline to Hizbullah to destabilize Lebanon and attack Israel (note that I don't care what the Judeophobic pro-Islamic pro-Nazi posters on /. think).
Of course you don't, it's glaringly obvious that you are in favour of Israeli and US terrorism. Basically the crusades and the inquisition rolled into one and backed with high tech weapons.
So obviously, Assad is no friend to the West. But if he gets overthown in this uprising, the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the parent organization of al Qaeda, would be its replacement. Think of it as the Syrian and Egyptian editions of Hamas (actually, vice versa - Hamas is the Pali edition of the Muslim Brotherhood).
So in all these Muslim countries, both the dictatorships that they do have, as well as the mass uprisings that would replace them, are all bad for the West. Using the term 'democratic' in an Islamic setting is a misnomer, since pluralism - particularly religious pluralism - is non-existent.
Democracy is not the plan, the US doesn't want a democracy, in the middle east, at home, anywhere.
In Egypt, things were always ugly for the Copts, and have only gotten worse. Maronites are fleeing from Lebanon while that country has gone from Sunni to Shia. In Iraq & Pakistan, Christians are @ the receiving end, and even in 'moderate' Malaysia, non-Muslims - Christians, Hindus and other Chinese - are witnessing more discrimination than ever before, and leaving Malaysia in droves. So it's not like one has to only use examples like Saudi Arabia and Somalia to demonstrate what's wrong with Islam.
If I was a Rebublicon, I'd say "You mean like Obama?"
If I was a Dumbocrat, I'd say "You mean like Bush?"
If I was from any other party it wouldn't matter, nobody would be listening anyway.
LOL! Right, there doesn't appear to be any difference between the two, except Obama is literate.
It was a democracy which brought him to power. Of course, the very first thing he did then was remove those same mechanisms to prevent any would-be contenders. Then comes the time for a fuck-up.
That is the point. They have to remove the trappings of democracy first.
Like what is happening in the good ole U S of A? Read the history of the NAZI regime, then take a look at US history, and spend an afternoon watching a flock of sheep. Note the similarities.
I guess Afghanistan will have to pick up a new constitution down the road then. Still better than a non-democracy.
The middle east will continue to be ruled by tyrants installed by the US. These little hiccups are to be expected and dealt with.
the teabaggers frankly can't stand anything given to the poor so they'll cockblock any aid packages anyway.
That's in the US. Helping American citizens to live better lives, which was the original job of the US government, is no longer a priority.
Libya is a different matter. The US will be right there, chequebook in hand. ready to help out with rebuilding the country. (Read, the cheque will go to Haliburton.) Providing of course that you accept the next puppet government, and don't mind things going back to the way they were with a new despot at the reigns.
War is big business, we can't have democracies all over the place.
Are Afghans in the NATO-controlled ares free to do as they please?
No, they are living in a tyrannical regime controlled by a hostile invader and must act anonymously.
Was the Rio Negro River named by the Department of Redundancy Department?
It was done by the, not horribly literate, NegroAgua mercs Google hired to shut the villagers up about the cameras.
Quite frankly, memory management is not hard.
No, it isn't. It sounds like magic in some of the messages here, but if you are creating classes/structs to do a certain thing, you know exactly how you want the memory to act. It's no biggie.
The only time you really need to manage memory is if you have objects that are liable to get extremely numerous, or get reallocated a lot. Which is exactly when you should be rolling up your sleeves and making it work exactly right anyway.
After all, there is a reason you went to a low level language in the first place. I wouldn't let my grandmother use Perl, but I use Python for most things, c/c++ when I feel the need for speed/power. (Java never, sorry, don't like it.)
Eh.... the vast majority did NOT elect him. stupid first past the post.
So our electoral system sucks. The majority did not vote for him, but he still has a majority, and we still suffer for it.
I suppose that as long as the public believes what big media tells it, we'll have more of the same anyway.
sudo "vote green party"
let's face it, most gamers don't play Call of Duty more than a month because by the time you play that long, you're SO done with the immature fucking hyperleveled kids who play all day long and shout "fag" into their headsets whenever they score a kill
+2 Funny, and true.
that is stupid. osx>>>linux
Shuddup! Your stupider.
Inpure graphene -> amino acid base pairs -> DNA -> Badgers.
Oh Crap, Impure Space Badgers! IIt was bad enough worrying about NEO's and GRB's...
What about the ROUS's?
I think a larger problem is that their price is on par with the iPad and the iPad is expensive. Once tablet manufacturers start dropping their prices they're going to sell a lot bette.
A tablet is not a serious puter in most scenarios, it's an accessory.
I'd have a tablet if the price wasn't so outrageous.
If a product is bad it will just result in the situation where nobody buys it.
Then why do people buy Apple?
Because Apple makes good stuff, and their designs are hot. I have Linux running on a 17" MacBook Pro (My boss gave it to me.) It's a nice puter.
No warranty on the blue pixels though.
I want to check the code. Diebold elected Bush, we don't need that here.
I'd mod that funny if I could.
Now, the app is backed up, Cyanogen installed and the app put back, as shipped by Google (as opposed to 'as shipped by the Cyanogen install')
So now everyone is, more or less, happy.