However, how do you account for the fact that men are over represented within the prison system of every society?
I don't know, I haven't researched the variables that could account for that distribution.
If men and women are equal, surely this would mean that men are suffering disadvantages on a massive scale?
On the other hand, you're clearly very comfortable jumping to conclusions. I could fairly convincingly argue that men are more likely to be incarcerated because they are more likely to commit crimes to support their family and their status as breadwinner.
Finally, men and women being equals doesn't mean they're the same. It just means that they shouldn't earn 20% less than a man for doing the same job, and that they shouldn't be automatically overlooked for leadership promotions.
In that case, couldn't these differences explain why men were more successful in leadership roles in business, scientific achievements or earning a high income?
It could. I'm waiting for the mechanism that leads to this outcome, the study that collects the data supporting the theory, and an analysis of whether the data could point towards unrelated factors. You're merely offering your opinion on what could be. It's pretty irrelevant.
Oh no, it couldn't could it, because men and women are suddenly equal again.
Yeah..... no. All you're doing is constructing a narrative based on incomplete, incompatible and anecdotal data sets. One in which you, a white male, is a victim. Pretty fucking pathetic, if you ask me.
OK, so now that women can do all those things, what are feminists fighting for?
You clearly haven't heard of the glass ceiling, the 20% discount women have to take when doing a man's job, and similar things. There are plenty of studies around this. Just google "glass ceiling" and start reading.
Yeah, because men like me who grew up in working class families had so many advantages in life compared to women who grew up in suburbs and had private tutors to help them get into college -- where women now make up the majority.
Stick to apples to apples comparisons. Yeah, economic advantages are, gasp! advantages. The issue is that men who grew up in working class families still have advantages over women growing up in working class families. Your mom worked railroads, congratulations. What are the odds that she might make management? As compared to, say, your dad if he had been working in the railroad?
That's the problem. Not that rich women have more advantages than poor men. Everyone already knows that.
Men are also better at some things, but where are the people parading those results in the media?
Really? You don't see that? Granted, things have gotten dramatically better than even 15-20 years ago. But it's still trivial to see disparities in the media. Just one item: what's the shelf-life of a female actress? As opposed to that of a male actor? The entire point of the existence of feminism is to point out the situations where the established patriarchy is so blinded by history and habit that it just doesn't understand the problem.
Wow. I have to say that I should be surprised at the amount of vitriol directed at women, but sadly, I'm just reminded of the stereotype of the basement-dwelling nerd.
Just a few notes to maybe help you get out of the basement: #1 Feminism isn't about reparations. It's about giving women a chance to do the same things that men are doing - like run a business, smoke a cigar, and play golf in a golf club. Basically, have a chance to do something other than cook, bear children and be a secretary. #2 Removing glass ceilings is not the same as reparations. If you feel that way, it's merely an indication that you have no idea how large your advantage actually has been, and that you are pissed that you have to compete on a level playing field. #3 Women ARE better at certain things than men are. Driving consensus is one of them. Or at least, that's what science says. Feel free to piss and moan about it, but it's not going to change the fact.
The point is that the US can't meaningfully impact the price of gas. Maybe a few cents here and there, but that's it. The reason the Saudis can do it is because they have an oil extraction infrastructure that is very broad and flexible, as well as oil that is easily accessible. And even they have a hard time to significantly do it on their own. The US has neither, and yet people seem to think that tapping the piddly extra reserves the US has is going to bring us back to $2 a gallon gas. Fucking ridiculous.
The price of gas also came down during an election year, when some team won the Baseball World Championship, and when there were exactly 27 sun spots on the sun. Which one had the most impact? Show your work.
For everybody else, though, the lousier and more hypocritical your execution of your supposed ideals, the worse you look, and the better the chap down the road who has shit ideals, but is at least real sincere about them, starts to look.
I'm convinced that that is 90% of Ron Paul's appeal. Or Santorum, for that matter.
Pretty much. I'll be curious to see how that plays out. As others said, this is nothing but a transparent attempt to curry favor with the far-right. They are a minority, but a consistent minority. There's some electoral value in getting on a part of their plank. The real test will be the actual election: will Sarkozy be elected because of it, and will he remember this pledge?
To some extent, I feel the same way about this idea as I feel about a lot of campaign rhetoric in the US. Most of it is nothing but basic pandering to extremist and unpatriotic viewpoints. If we'd take every politician at their election year worth, we'd have been in WW3 for the last 15 years or so.
Breach of fiduciary duty. Elop's move only could benefit Microsoft, and would turn Nokia into a subsidiary of Microsoft, with no ability to compete independently. In other words, the CEO of Nokia abandoned his duty to make decisions that first help Nokia, and instead made decisions to first help Microsoft. Considering that Nokia was a mobile heavyweight until shortly before Elop came on board, I'd say that it's not an entirely unreasonable idea.
And conveniently, you completely neglect to talk about the hard part: what exactly is "possible"? How do you define the limits of possible? In your quest to reduce the government "as much as possible", you completely fail to specify the exact limits of the reduction, leaving you with an absolutely unworkable model for government. Not to mention that the "as much as possible" always ends up being "nothing for what I don't want, and everything for what I want"
Firstly, evolution is a process;
Actually, evolution is the result of a particular set of reproduction mechanisms. It is as much a process as gravity is.
biological evolution just happens to be the most prominent example of evolution.
Biological evolution is the example you tied your analogy to. I understand you currently want to move the topic, but that's up to you.
For the record, neither of these phenomena need be random or even mindless (especially selection).
Wait - we're now talking about directed evolution? I.e., the use of an Intelligent Director to guide the outcome of evolution? Yeah..... for some reason, Libertarians always end up disappointing me in their ability to present a rational, coherent argument for what their position is. And for some reason, that position can always be summarized as "I've got mine, go fuck yourself".
I guess it must be appealing to reduce the complexity and unavoidable ambiguity of human society to something that can be solved via one-size-fits-most central planning by an Intelligent Designer, a noble bureaucrat with a brilliant mind and a crystal ball.
Yep, spergy computer nerd incapable of making subtle distinctions right there. You manage to put up both a straw man and a false dichotomy. Primarily because there's no other way to support your argument.
Here's your problem: you correctly identify some of the problems that government has, but then decide to solve them by throwing out all government. You are completely clueless as to the requirements for a functioning society, as well as the costs necessary to maintain it. The correct discussion is to talk about whether the money is better spent elsewhere. Your blanket squeal about thievery is completely, utterly sophomoric.
localized, decentralized experiments are essential to peaceful evolution towards a prosperous world.
And you also managed to get evolution wrong. Here's a little hint: evolution has nothing to do with a better world, or more prosperous world. Only with who makes more kids.
Some losses of freedoms are the price we pay to live in a civilized society. Otherwise, I have a few post-apocalyptic movies and historic references you can go over to get an idea what absolute freedom might look like.
They don't. Gold definitely undergoes supply changes (what do you think happens when a company finds and opens a new gold mine?), and even land undergoes supply changes: land is lost and gained from the sea, becomes unusable due to natural and man-made disasters, and has its use changed due to social and regulatory changes. And finally, the challenges you refer to in your parenthesis are the reason we aren't on the gold standard anymore.
I agree that an all-digital economy makes electronic robbery of various forms much easier and much more invisible. But that's where regulations and laws can help. The question is: are we willing to support the laws necessary to have a smoothly running digital economy, or are we going to throw our hands up, say "government is evil" , and have the worst of both worlds?
I do not see a shred of responsibility on the part of TAL. They were caught with a falsified show segment, based on lies and inadequately vetted, easily discredited, and could ONLY have retracted it and blamed eveyrone else, or forfeited their reputation in presenting anything as either fact-based or journalistic.
Wow. I hate to see what you think should happen when news stories are actual fabrications, rather than a medium through which someone managed to slip a lie that is subtle and actually quite hard to prove. Seriously, exactly how much fact checking do you expect someone to do when someone presents them with news? The amount that you imply should happen would basically make the initial news story irrelevant, because it would have been completely rebuilt from scratch during the fact checking. Fact checking is the verification of the main points of a story, along with the verification that the main actors in the story do not actively deny what is being described.
It doesn't mean that every statement gets independently vetted.
From what I can tell, the story consisted of several interviews, and one of the interviewers decided to lie during the interview. Basic checking wasn't able to conclusively prove certain statements to be lies, so they were presented as is during the broadcast. Furthermore, the parts where basic fact checking did uncover inconsistencies, the interviewee in question was challenged on it, and he persisted.
All in all, this is some pretty solid reporting. Not to mention that the retraction was done through research they conducted on their own.
Really, if you think that this is shoddy reporting worthy to be ignored on principle, you are either not reading any news whatsoever anywhere at anytime, or you have some serious blinders on.
I would have taken them, except the best they could offer me was 6mb down and 768 up. Speakeasy is also not an option anymore, as they dropped out of the consumer market. Until they manage to provide fiber to my side of the hills (hah! fat chance), I'm stuck with ATT UVerse and their overpriced crap. Speed isn't too bad 24 mb down, 2 mb up, but the jitter is huge. I also have little hope for competent customer support.
So again, I'm staring at ATT and Comcast as my only two choices in Internet access. Free market and competitive offerings my ass.
I don't know if I would make the same argument as your parent, but I know I stop reading when posters start talking about sheeple. Invariably, the post contains two things: * an unsupported statement that large swathes of the population are being actively mislead by a minority cabal whose goal is to destroy said swathes of the population * indignation that no else one sees the dangers in following said cabal, and that everything would be better if the swathes of population would follow the opinion of the poster.
Finally, those posts also reek of internet tough guys: tough talk about how bad something is, about how bad something will get if nothing is done, and about how people should follow them in revolt. But there is never any action that is demonstrated.
In other words, when I see the word sheeple, I see someone who talks a big game, but does nothing. And I just move on.
You missed the point. It is hypocritical of you if the only time you dislike rapists is when they rape you, but you are fine if they are raping someone else.
Do you understand that it's possible for other players in the world to do things that we and our allies view as "bad things" for whatever reason, and thus want to stop them?
Yes. However, painting yourself into a corner that requires war is probably the worst way to go about resolving "bad things". I can tell you that the ramifications of a war with Iran will be far worse than what we experienced with Iraq. As a result, the threat of war better have some meaningful reason. And working towards a nuke ain't it.
As for your comment about Voltaire - I find it doubly ironic. You pretty much spend the entire post discussing varying levels of "truths", and end up basically saying that truth was - and is - a political beast. Which makes no sense.
Oh hi - I was wondering where you had gone to. Seems not much has changed. Still supporting government jack boots in all their forms.
Note sure what you're trying to show with your two posts, because they pretty much make the case that a) we're seeing the same exact events unfold now with Iran that unfolded with Iraq b) the US position on Iraqi WMDs has been conclusively shown to be wrong
You can try to argue all you want that "the truth pointed to WMDs", but the actual truth was that Iraq didn't have nukes (only chemical weapons we had sold them), the intelligence reports presented to policy makers were selected to present a particular viewpoint, and did not reflect the consensus of the intelligence analysts. Furthermore, you are wrong when you state that many other intelligence agencies supported the conclusions of the american ones. They didn't. The French specifically stated that Iraq probably didn't have any WMDs, and the Germans were skeptical as well. Sorry I don't have any links - I don't save links from about 10 years ago. But I - and a lot of other people who didn't rely on US press - knew that in 2001-2003, the US executive was flat out lying about Iraq's WMD plans.
Finally, even your last paragraph neatly fits into the run up to the Iraq war. There as well, the final fall-back argument was "well, Saddam is evil, and we aren't, so we should support the plans to invade Iraq, because if we don't, Evil will win".
It's absolutely fucking eerie that you can sit here and make the same arguments, almost verbatim, and act surprised that everyone thinks you're lying. The worst part is: Iran IS working towards a nuke. But you are exactly the reason that they are working towards a nuke, because they saw what happened when you just bluff about having nukes: you get invaded. But if you have a nuke, and can point it at Tel-Aviv - well, chances, are you won't. So yes - I'm flat out blaming you, your entire rhetorical structure and everyone you got your ideas from for trying to start another war in the Middle East.
And this time, it won't go nearly as well. Not only is our military overstretched, but there is nothing to achieve there outside of an ideological win: an Iran without a nuke. Even if we win, the cost will be astronomical compared to the actual prize. And if we lose.... yeah, was nice knowing you, USA.
TL;DR: Fuck off with your rhetoric of inevitable war. It has always lead to a disaster. It's stupid from a realpolitik perspective, and it's even worse from an ideological perspective.
They didn't create the Taliban, but they supported the same exact people who turned into the Taliban or warlords of varying degrees of acceptability.
It's completely disingenuous to argue that because the Taliban didn't formally exist until the withdrawal of the Soviet Union, the US couldn't have had a hand in creating them. The only reason we don't like the Taliban right now is because they're fighting us instead of someone we don't like. That's it. If the Taliban would be fighting Al Qaeda, we wouldn't care how many girls they keep out of schools, or how many people they execute for blasphemy. But since they don't, we pretend we do.
So don't even try the argument that the US somehow didn't support the same people we're trying to kill now. The only thing that has changed is who the Taliban are against. And it just so happens to be us.
Do you think there would be a problem giving kids sexual education if there wasn't a deranged stigma about sex in western society?
The US is the only Western country that has this level of obsession with sex. Pretty much anywhere else, it's a normal thing. Kinda like driving. You might be the only to like your driving, but everyone knows you're driving, and tries to make sure you're safe the first time you're out driving.
In the US - they prevent you from driving until you're of the legal age to do so, then drop you in it with almost no information or training. Weird. That analogy worked out better than expected.
I don't know what's worse - people who think judges should be subject to the wrath of the mob, or people who think that only pinko-commie California judges behave in a way that they object to.
Reading crap like this makes me happy that out-of-control judges do exist, just to remind the posters of the independence of the judiciary.
Slashdot Mirror
Now get your butt on kickstarter so that I can support you in your port!
My post wasn't about tolerance. It was about gender roles and status. You might want to recalibrate your irony meter or your reading comprehension.
However, how do you account for the fact that men are over represented within the prison system of every society?
I don't know, I haven't researched the variables that could account for that distribution.
If men and women are equal, surely this would mean that men are suffering disadvantages on a massive scale?
On the other hand, you're clearly very comfortable jumping to conclusions. I could fairly convincingly argue that men are more likely to be incarcerated because they are more likely to commit crimes to support their family and their status as breadwinner.
Finally, men and women being equals doesn't mean they're the same. It just means that they shouldn't earn 20% less than a man for doing the same job, and that they shouldn't be automatically overlooked for leadership promotions.
In that case, couldn't these differences explain why men were more successful in leadership roles in business, scientific achievements or earning a high income?
It could. I'm waiting for the mechanism that leads to this outcome, the study that collects the data supporting the theory, and an analysis of whether the data could point towards unrelated factors. You're merely offering your opinion on what could be. It's pretty irrelevant.
Oh no, it couldn't could it, because men and women are suddenly equal again.
Yeah..... no. All you're doing is constructing a narrative based on incomplete, incompatible and anecdotal data sets. One in which you, a white male, is a victim. Pretty fucking pathetic, if you ask me.
OK, so now that women can do all those things, what are feminists fighting for?
You clearly haven't heard of the glass ceiling, the 20% discount women have to take when doing a man's job, and similar things. There are plenty of studies around this. Just google "glass ceiling" and start reading.
Yeah, because men like me who grew up in working class families had so many advantages in life compared to women who grew up in suburbs and had private tutors to help them get into college -- where women now make up the majority.
Stick to apples to apples comparisons. Yeah, economic advantages are, gasp! advantages. The issue is that men who grew up in working class families still have advantages over women growing up in working class families. Your mom worked railroads, congratulations. What are the odds that she might make management? As compared to, say, your dad if he had been working in the railroad?
That's the problem. Not that rich women have more advantages than poor men. Everyone already knows that.
Men are also better at some things, but where are the people parading those results in the media?
Really? You don't see that? Granted, things have gotten dramatically better than even 15-20 years ago. But it's still trivial to see disparities in the media. Just one item: what's the shelf-life of a female actress? As opposed to that of a male actor? The entire point of the existence of feminism is to point out the situations where the established patriarchy is so blinded by history and habit that it just doesn't understand the problem.
Wow. I have to say that I should be surprised at the amount of vitriol directed at women, but sadly, I'm just reminded of the stereotype of the basement-dwelling nerd.
Just a few notes to maybe help you get out of the basement:
#1 Feminism isn't about reparations. It's about giving women a chance to do the same things that men are doing - like run a business, smoke a cigar, and play golf in a golf club. Basically, have a chance to do something other than cook, bear children and be a secretary.
#2 Removing glass ceilings is not the same as reparations. If you feel that way, it's merely an indication that you have no idea how large your advantage actually has been, and that you are pissed that you have to compete on a level playing field.
#3 Women ARE better at certain things than men are. Driving consensus is one of them. Or at least, that's what science says. Feel free to piss and moan about it, but it's not going to change the fact.
The point is that the US can't meaningfully impact the price of gas. Maybe a few cents here and there, but that's it. The reason the Saudis can do it is because they have an oil extraction infrastructure that is very broad and flexible, as well as oil that is easily accessible. And even they have a hard time to significantly do it on their own. The US has neither, and yet people seem to think that tapping the piddly extra reserves the US has is going to bring us back to $2 a gallon gas. Fucking ridiculous.
The price of gas also came down during an election year, when some team won the Baseball World Championship, and when there were exactly 27 sun spots on the sun. Which one had the most impact? Show your work.
For everybody else, though, the lousier and more hypocritical your execution of your supposed ideals, the worse you look, and the better the chap down the road who has shit ideals, but is at least real sincere about them, starts to look.
I'm convinced that that is 90% of Ron Paul's appeal. Or Santorum, for that matter.
Pretty much. I'll be curious to see how that plays out. As others said, this is nothing but a transparent attempt to curry favor with the far-right. They are a minority, but a consistent minority. There's some electoral value in getting on a part of their plank. The real test will be the actual election: will Sarkozy be elected because of it, and will he remember this pledge?
To some extent, I feel the same way about this idea as I feel about a lot of campaign rhetoric in the US. Most of it is nothing but basic pandering to extremist and unpatriotic viewpoints. If we'd take every politician at their election year worth, we'd have been in WW3 for the last 15 years or so.
Breach of fiduciary duty. Elop's move only could benefit Microsoft, and would turn Nokia into a subsidiary of Microsoft, with no ability to compete independently. In other words, the CEO of Nokia abandoned his duty to make decisions that first help Nokia, and instead made decisions to first help Microsoft. Considering that Nokia was a mobile heavyweight until shortly before Elop came on board, I'd say that it's not an entirely unreasonable idea.
decentralized and localized as much as possible
And conveniently, you completely neglect to talk about the hard part: what exactly is "possible"? How do you define the limits of possible? In your quest to reduce the government "as much as possible", you completely fail to specify the exact limits of the reduction, leaving you with an absolutely unworkable model for government. Not to mention that the "as much as possible" always ends up being "nothing for what I don't want, and everything for what I want"
Firstly, evolution is a process;
Actually, evolution is the result of a particular set of reproduction mechanisms. It is as much a process as gravity is.
biological evolution just happens to be the most prominent example of evolution.
Biological evolution is the example you tied your analogy to. I understand you currently want to move the topic, but that's up to you.
For the record, neither of these phenomena need be random or even mindless (especially selection).
Wait - we're now talking about directed evolution? I.e., the use of an Intelligent Director to guide the outcome of evolution? Yeah..... for some reason, Libertarians always end up disappointing me in their ability to present a rational, coherent argument for what their position is. And for some reason, that position can always be summarized as "I've got mine, go fuck yourself".
I guess it must be appealing to reduce the complexity and unavoidable ambiguity of human society to something that can be solved via one-size-fits-most central planning by an Intelligent Designer, a noble bureaucrat with a brilliant mind and a crystal ball.
Yep, spergy computer nerd incapable of making subtle distinctions right there. You manage to put up both a straw man and a false dichotomy. Primarily because there's no other way to support your argument.
Here's your problem: you correctly identify some of the problems that government has, but then decide to solve them by throwing out all government. You are completely clueless as to the requirements for a functioning society, as well as the costs necessary to maintain it. The correct discussion is to talk about whether the money is better spent elsewhere. Your blanket squeal about thievery is completely, utterly sophomoric.
localized, decentralized experiments are essential to peaceful evolution towards a prosperous world.
And you also managed to get evolution wrong. Here's a little hint: evolution has nothing to do with a better world, or more prosperous world. Only with who makes more kids.
Go move out of the US rather than forcing me under the threat of violence to let you mooch off the civil society taxes and government has enabled.
No, seriously. Get the fuck out of my country.
Some losses of freedoms are the price we pay to live in a civilized society. Otherwise, I have a few post-apocalyptic movies and historic references you can go over to get an idea what absolute freedom might look like.
but gold and land do have a constant scarcity,
They don't. Gold definitely undergoes supply changes (what do you think happens when a company finds and opens a new gold mine?), and even land undergoes supply changes: land is lost and gained from the sea, becomes unusable due to natural and man-made disasters, and has its use changed due to social and regulatory changes. And finally, the challenges you refer to in your parenthesis are the reason we aren't on the gold standard anymore.
I agree that an all-digital economy makes electronic robbery of various forms much easier and much more invisible. But that's where regulations and laws can help. The question is: are we willing to support the laws necessary to have a smoothly running digital economy, or are we going to throw our hands up, say "government is evil" , and have the worst of both worlds?
I do not see a shred of responsibility on the part of TAL. They were caught with a falsified show segment, based on lies and inadequately vetted, easily discredited, and could ONLY have retracted it and blamed eveyrone else, or forfeited their reputation in presenting anything as either fact-based or journalistic.
Wow. I hate to see what you think should happen when news stories are actual fabrications, rather than a medium through which someone managed to slip a lie that is subtle and actually quite hard to prove. Seriously, exactly how much fact checking do you expect someone to do when someone presents them with news? The amount that you imply should happen would basically make the initial news story irrelevant, because it would have been completely rebuilt from scratch during the fact checking. Fact checking is the verification of the main points of a story, along with the verification that the main actors in the story do not actively deny what is being described.
It doesn't mean that every statement gets independently vetted.
From what I can tell, the story consisted of several interviews, and one of the interviewers decided to lie during the interview. Basic checking wasn't able to conclusively prove certain statements to be lies, so they were presented as is during the broadcast. Furthermore, the parts where basic fact checking did uncover inconsistencies, the interviewee in question was challenged on it, and he persisted.
All in all, this is some pretty solid reporting. Not to mention that the retraction was done through research they conducted on their own.
Really, if you think that this is shoddy reporting worthy to be ignored on principle, you are either not reading any news whatsoever anywhere at anytime, or you have some serious blinders on.
I would have taken them, except the best they could offer me was 6mb down and 768 up. Speakeasy is also not an option anymore, as they dropped out of the consumer market. Until they manage to provide fiber to my side of the hills (hah! fat chance), I'm stuck with ATT UVerse and their overpriced crap. Speed isn't too bad 24 mb down, 2 mb up, but the jitter is huge. I also have little hope for competent customer support.
So again, I'm staring at ATT and Comcast as my only two choices in Internet access. Free market and competitive offerings my ass.
I don't know if I would make the same argument as your parent, but I know I stop reading when posters start talking about sheeple. Invariably, the post contains two things:
* an unsupported statement that large swathes of the population are being actively mislead by a minority cabal whose goal is to destroy said swathes of the population
* indignation that no else one sees the dangers in following said cabal, and that everything would be better if the swathes of population would follow the opinion of the poster.
Finally, those posts also reek of internet tough guys: tough talk about how bad something is, about how bad something will get if nothing is done, and about how people should follow them in revolt. But there is never any action that is demonstrated.
In other words, when I see the word sheeple, I see someone who talks a big game, but does nothing. And I just move on.
You missed the point. It is hypocritical of you if the only time you dislike rapists is when they rape you, but you are fine if they are raping someone else.
Do you understand that it's possible for other players in the world to do things that we and our allies view as "bad things" for whatever reason, and thus want to stop them?
Yes. However, painting yourself into a corner that requires war is probably the worst way to go about resolving "bad things". I can tell you that the ramifications of a war with Iran will be far worse than what we experienced with Iraq. As a result, the threat of war better have some meaningful reason. And working towards a nuke ain't it.
As for your comment about Voltaire - I find it doubly ironic. You pretty much spend the entire post discussing varying levels of "truths", and end up basically saying that truth was - and is - a political beast. Which makes no sense.
Oh hi - I was wondering where you had gone to. Seems not much has changed. Still supporting government jack boots in all their forms.
Note sure what you're trying to show with your two posts, because they pretty much make the case that
a) we're seeing the same exact events unfold now with Iran that unfolded with Iraq
b) the US position on Iraqi WMDs has been conclusively shown to be wrong
You can try to argue all you want that "the truth pointed to WMDs", but the actual truth was that Iraq didn't have nukes (only chemical weapons we had sold them), the intelligence reports presented to policy makers were selected to present a particular viewpoint, and did not reflect the consensus of the intelligence analysts. Furthermore, you are wrong when you state that many other intelligence agencies supported the conclusions of the american ones. They didn't. The French specifically stated that Iraq probably didn't have any WMDs, and the Germans were skeptical as well. Sorry I don't have any links - I don't save links from about 10 years ago. But I - and a lot of other people who didn't rely on US press - knew that in 2001-2003, the US executive was flat out lying about Iraq's WMD plans.
Finally, even your last paragraph neatly fits into the run up to the Iraq war. There as well, the final fall-back argument was "well, Saddam is evil, and we aren't, so we should support the plans to invade Iraq, because if we don't, Evil will win".
It's absolutely fucking eerie that you can sit here and make the same arguments, almost verbatim, and act surprised that everyone thinks you're lying. The worst part is: Iran IS working towards a nuke. But you are exactly the reason that they are working towards a nuke, because they saw what happened when you just bluff about having nukes: you get invaded. But if you have a nuke, and can point it at Tel-Aviv - well, chances, are you won't. So yes - I'm flat out blaming you, your entire rhetorical structure and everyone you got your ideas from for trying to start another war in the Middle East.
And this time, it won't go nearly as well. Not only is our military overstretched, but there is nothing to achieve there outside of an ideological win: an Iran without a nuke. Even if we win, the cost will be astronomical compared to the actual prize. And if we lose.... yeah, was nice knowing you, USA.
TL;DR: Fuck off with your rhetoric of inevitable war. It has always lead to a disaster. It's stupid from a realpolitik perspective, and it's even worse from an ideological perspective.
They didn't create the Taliban, but they supported the same exact people who turned into the Taliban or warlords of varying degrees of acceptability.
It's completely disingenuous to argue that because the Taliban didn't formally exist until the withdrawal of the Soviet Union, the US couldn't have had a hand in creating them. The only reason we don't like the Taliban right now is because they're fighting us instead of someone we don't like. That's it. If the Taliban would be fighting Al Qaeda, we wouldn't care how many girls they keep out of schools, or how many people they execute for blasphemy. But since they don't, we pretend we do.
So don't even try the argument that the US somehow didn't support the same people we're trying to kill now. The only thing that has changed is who the Taliban are against. And it just so happens to be us.
Do you think there would be a problem giving kids sexual education if there wasn't a deranged stigma about sex in western society?
The US is the only Western country that has this level of obsession with sex. Pretty much anywhere else, it's a normal thing. Kinda like driving. You might be the only to like your driving, but everyone knows you're driving, and tries to make sure you're safe the first time you're out driving.
In the US - they prevent you from driving until you're of the legal age to do so, then drop you in it with almost no information or training. Weird. That analogy worked out better than expected.
I'm sure you have something to back up your claim of what is essentially bribery?
I don't know what's worse - people who think judges should be subject to the wrath of the mob, or people who think that only pinko-commie California judges behave in a way that they object to.
Reading crap like this makes me happy that out-of-control judges do exist, just to remind the posters of the independence of the judiciary.
Sheesh. Some mod got caught in a surly mood, or doesn't know any Germans.