Well, I personally always thought that if we'd tread a little more softly instead of trying to find someone to go to war with about 9/11 we might have avoided the whole thing, though I understood how we got into the war once we'd gotten to that point.
Well we could have just gone to war with Saudi Arabia, the country that actually gave us al-Qaida, Wahabbism, and most of the bloody 9/11 hijackers.
So.... can we get on with it and invade Saudi Arabia already? Everyone knows they're the financial and ideological powerhouse behind much of the world's Islamist terrorism.
Good point. I was just thinking the other day that, say, the US government could release "leaked" "Iranian" papers on their "nuclear weapons plans" to WikiLeaks. The leak would be more credible coming from a third party than if the US government said they obtained them. Iran would deny that the papers are real...just as they would if the papers WERE real. And this could help justify the US going to war with Iran.
Silly person. The fakeness of a document on Wikileaks is in a quantum superposition: it's however fake your political biases make you think it should be.
Well, given Aftonbladet's history of supporting their reporters no matter what kind of crap they turn out, this will let Assange leak whatever he wants quite freely.
Neither of these conclusions – that Saddam’s possession of nuclear weapons would be dangerous, or that Israel might be most directly threatened by such weapons – was especially remarkable. These things were understood in 1991. Iraq tried very hard to pull Israel into that war and its politics, ultimately even bombarding Israel with ballistic missiles. The coalition laboured successfully to thwart Saddam and keep Israel out of that war.
None of this, though, bore on the question of what to do about a possible Iraqi WMD programme in 2002. On that issue – whether or when the US ought to go to war with Iraq – I expressed no view in my September 2002 talk, or on any other public occasion during those years.
Nor did I try to explain why the Bush administration went to war, either in 2002 or after the invasion in 2003 or 2004. And in those years I had little special knowledge of those motives. My work on the president’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (from which I resigned in February 2003) had not involved Iraq.
So how did my views wind up in Mearsheimer and Walt’s essay as evidence that Bush went to war in part for Israel? In 2004, local reports of my September 2002 comments were discovered by the Inter Press Service. To put it mildly, that body has a strong political point of view. It circulated on the web an article headlined ‘War Launched to Protect Israel – Bush Adviser’. Without any evidence other than the old September 2002 quotes, the article’s lead was: ‘Iraq under Saddam Hussein did not pose a threat to the United States but it did to Israel, which is one reason why Washington invaded the Arab country, according to a speech made by a member of a top-level White House intelligence group.’ The claim has bounced around the internet ever since. Mearsheimer and Walt cite this article, which they found in Asia Times Online, as their source for my comments.
The original slur did not deserve a response, but the situation is different when it is repeated by two accredited scholars, and endorsed by publication in the LRB. The claim still has three holes. First, like most of the world, I did think that, if Saddam Hussein possessed nuclear weapons, this would endanger the interests of America and the world in several ways, including the direct threat of a possible strike on Israel. Second, I did not state an opinion about whether this should be a cause for war in 2002-03. Third, I did not state an opinion – or even have any special knowledge – about the motives of the Bush administration in going to war in 2003.
Seriously, Google a dude before believing that he said just anything in just any context.
Reddit originally started out something like that. They eventually scrapped it as their traffic rose, because it turned out that those computations don't exactly scale well.
I personally don't recall (WARNING: this memory lapse is very likely the result of bias towards the left, so please fill in the blanks if you want) the most vocal left wing pundits making random shit up to prove their point on why the Iraq war should not have happened.
I'm actually on the hard left myself, but I'll just remind you: when unable to explain the Iraq War in any sensible way, some highly vocal left-wing pundits (the same ones involved with 9/11 "truth" movements) resorted to calling it a Jewish conspiracy.
Having travelled to Christian and Buddhist, I'd say the Buddhists are happier.
Whatever, because the GP talked about "monotheistic, Abrahamic" religion, which is a very different thing from Christianity, which is usually either not monotheistic or not Abrahamic.
There are studies that show that christian couples have more and better sex than non-christian couples, even, gasp, those that waited until they were married.
Most of our current mainstream religions, i.e. the monotheistic, abrahamic ones, basically need you to feel horrible because their story says the world is bad and the afterlife can be good if (and only if) you follow their teachings.
If by "most of our current mainstream religions, ie: the monotheistic, Abrahamic ones" you mean "Christianity", particularly European-style Pagan-Christianity, then yes. Otherwise, this statement is full of crap. Oh wait, by identifying Abrahamic religion solely with European-style Pagan-Christianity, it shows that it's definitely full of crap.
You believe that this so-called "abuse" and "coercion" is so terrible, despite it not involving physical force, that you're going to get the government to use physical force to coerce the game companies into behaving differently.
Well yes. For one thing, several games companies have already lost class-action suits on issues like this. Obviously, broad-based action is necessary.
By your standards, "let them eat cake" is an entirely appropriate response to French people lacking bread, since they haven't chopped off your head yet.
There just isn't a unanimous opinion about what rights people have, not even in America (there's no way the Bill of Rights would be able to pass today; it already lacks the support of many Americans and is only reluctantly and selectively upheld). And as long as things are like this, fracturing the world into different jurisdictions with different laws is the only way to have any unity on the un-contested points (whatever they are, if there are any). If you try to force agreement where agreement doesn't exist, some countries will just drop out.
Good, excellent, let's do it! It's about time we ended all this "one world" nonsense, acknowledged the vast diversity of humankind, and each stood up for our own principles.
"Hate speech" is not illegal in the United States at the federal level
True (with my addition), but missing the point. Many municipalities, academic campuses, employers, and media apparatuses - many of these publicly funded - have indeed put in place heavy restrictions on what they term "hate speech". This thicket of diverging standards and moral hectoring has led to what is popularly addressed as "political correctness gone mad".
The Democrats are currently the big-tent coalition in America, but the hard left, as represented by the Green Party (which I favor... some of the time) or The Nation, can get pretty wacky sometimes.
Raises an interesting question, am I the only one who thinks we'd be better of as a world if the UN Bill of Rights was as absolute in it's protections as particular clauses in some of our constitutions (like the first in America for example) and ALL U.N. member states were REQUIRED to implement it as part of their own constitutions (and where no constitution exists as in Britain be required to create one and make said bill of rights the entirey there-off ?)
That sounds great, actually, since all the illiberal countries would leave the UN, ending their hijacking of it and enabling it to function usefully.
The horror of horrors to all who dream themselves the master of others: Freedom's here. You can no longer keep us ignorant. Die, shitheads, die and be forgotten!
Would you like your facile pseudo-radicalism with an AK-47, a bomb belt, or a cutlass -- ever popular with pirates?
Seriously, I'm all in favor of free information, but this just isn't the cause for which to use violence.
Both. I realize that SiaSL came out in 1961 and therefore prefigured (some even say inspired) the hippies. That doesn't mean that the ideas don't like tired and stupid from a post-60s perspective.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I personally always thought that if we'd tread a little more softly instead of trying to find someone to go to war with about 9/11 we might have avoided the whole thing, though I understood how we got into the war once we'd gotten to that point.
Well we could have just gone to war with Saudi Arabia, the country that actually gave us al-Qaida, Wahabbism, and most of the bloody 9/11 hijackers.
So.... can we get on with it and invade Saudi Arabia already? Everyone knows they're the financial and ideological powerhouse behind much of the world's Islamist terrorism.
That's not shenanigans at all. Bush and Cheney have never been worthy of attention!
Now a full-season anime!
Good point. I was just thinking the other day that, say, the US government could release "leaked" "Iranian" papers on their "nuclear weapons plans" to WikiLeaks. The leak would be more credible coming from a third party than if the US government said they obtained them. Iran would deny that the papers are real...just as they would if the papers WERE real. And this could help justify the US going to war with Iran.
Silly person. The fakeness of a document on Wikileaks is in a quantum superposition: it's however fake your political biases make you think it should be.
Well, given Aftonbladet's history of supporting their reporters no matter what kind of crap they turn out, this will let Assange leak whatever he wants quite freely.
Do a bit more checking before believing everything you read on the net.
Neither of these conclusions – that Saddam’s possession of nuclear weapons would be dangerous, or that Israel might be most directly threatened by such weapons – was especially remarkable. These things were understood in 1991. Iraq tried very hard to pull Israel into that war and its politics, ultimately even bombarding Israel with ballistic missiles. The coalition laboured successfully to thwart Saddam and keep Israel out of that war.
None of this, though, bore on the question of what to do about a possible Iraqi WMD programme in 2002. On that issue – whether or when the US ought to go to war with Iraq – I expressed no view in my September 2002 talk, or on any other public occasion during those years.
Nor did I try to explain why the Bush administration went to war, either in 2002 or after the invasion in 2003 or 2004. And in those years I had little special knowledge of those motives. My work on the president’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (from which I resigned in February 2003) had not involved Iraq.
So how did my views wind up in Mearsheimer and Walt’s essay as evidence that Bush went to war in part for Israel? In 2004, local reports of my September 2002 comments were discovered by the Inter Press Service. To put it mildly, that body has a strong political point of view. It circulated on the web an article headlined ‘War Launched to Protect Israel – Bush Adviser’. Without any evidence other than the old September 2002 quotes, the article’s lead was: ‘Iraq under Saddam Hussein did not pose a threat to the United States but it did to Israel, which is one reason why Washington invaded the Arab country, according to a speech made by a member of a top-level White House intelligence group.’ The claim has bounced around the internet ever since. Mearsheimer and Walt cite this article, which they found in Asia Times Online, as their source for my comments.
The original slur did not deserve a response, but the situation is different when it is repeated by two accredited scholars, and endorsed by publication in the LRB. The claim still has three holes. First, like most of the world, I did think that, if Saddam Hussein possessed nuclear weapons, this would endanger the interests of America and the world in several ways, including the direct threat of a possible strike on Israel. Second, I did not state an opinion about whether this should be a cause for war in 2002-03. Third, I did not state an opinion – or even have any special knowledge – about the motives of the Bush administration in going to war in 2003.
Seriously, Google a dude before believing that he said just anything in just any context.
Reddit originally started out something like that. They eventually scrapped it as their traffic rose, because it turned out that those computations don't exactly scale well.
Silly person. The left has Reddit.
I personally don't recall (WARNING: this memory lapse is very likely the result of bias towards the left, so please fill in the blanks if you want) the most vocal left wing pundits making random shit up to prove their point on why the Iraq war should not have happened.
I'm actually on the hard left myself, but I'll just remind you: when unable to explain the Iraq War in any sensible way, some highly vocal left-wing pundits (the same ones involved with 9/11 "truth" movements) resorted to calling it a Jewish conspiracy.
Go ahead and blame the victim. You're just building his revenge-complex up even further.
Having travelled to Christian and Buddhist, I'd say the Buddhists are happier.
Whatever, because the GP talked about "monotheistic, Abrahamic" religion, which is a very different thing from Christianity, which is usually either not monotheistic or not Abrahamic.
There are studies that show that christian couples have more and better sex than non-christian couples, even, gasp, those that waited until they were married.
I call bullshit.
Most of our current mainstream religions, i.e. the monotheistic, abrahamic ones, basically need you to feel horrible because their story says the world is bad and the afterlife can be good if (and only if) you follow their teachings.
If by "most of our current mainstream religions, ie: the monotheistic, Abrahamic ones" you mean "Christianity", particularly European-style Pagan-Christianity, then yes. Otherwise, this statement is full of crap. Oh wait, by identifying Abrahamic religion solely with European-style Pagan-Christianity, it shows that it's definitely full of crap.
Hahahaha. 99.99% of the Higgs-wannafinds will burn out during graduate school or simply be passed over for tenure-track jobs.
You believe that this so-called "abuse" and "coercion" is so terrible, despite it not involving physical force, that you're going to get the government to use physical force to coerce the game companies into behaving differently.
Well yes. For one thing, several games companies have already lost class-action suits on issues like this. Obviously, broad-based action is necessary.
So any kind of abuse and coercion that doesn't employ physical force is OK with you? Dear God, man, grow a sense of humanity!
By your standards, "let them eat cake" is an entirely appropriate response to French people lacking bread, since they haven't chopped off your head yet.
There just isn't a unanimous opinion about what rights people have, not even in America (there's no way the Bill of Rights would be able to pass today; it already lacks the support of many Americans and is only reluctantly and selectively upheld). And as long as things are like this, fracturing the world into different jurisdictions with different laws is the only way to have any unity on the un-contested points (whatever they are, if there are any). If you try to force agreement where agreement doesn't exist, some countries will just drop out.
Good, excellent, let's do it! It's about time we ended all this "one world" nonsense, acknowledged the vast diversity of humankind, and each stood up for our own principles.
"Hate speech" is not illegal in the United States at the federal level
True (with my addition), but missing the point. Many municipalities, academic campuses, employers, and media apparatuses - many of these publicly funded - have indeed put in place heavy restrictions on what they term "hate speech". This thicket of diverging standards and moral hectoring has led to what is popularly addressed as "political correctness gone mad".
The Democrats are currently the big-tent coalition in America, but the hard left, as represented by the Green Party (which I favor... some of the time) or The Nation, can get pretty wacky sometimes.
Raises an interesting question, am I the only one who thinks we'd be better of as a world if the UN Bill of Rights was as absolute in it's protections as particular clauses in some of our constitutions (like the first in America for example) and ALL U.N. member states were REQUIRED to implement it as part of their own constitutions (and where no constitution exists as in Britain be required to create one and make said bill of rights the entirey there-off ?)
That sounds great, actually, since all the illiberal countries would leave the UN, ending their hijacking of it and enabling it to function usefully.
The horror of horrors to all who dream themselves the master of others: Freedom's here. You can no longer keep us ignorant. Die, shitheads, die and be forgotten!
Would you like your facile pseudo-radicalism with an AK-47, a bomb belt, or a cutlass -- ever popular with pirates?
Seriously, I'm all in favor of free information, but this just isn't the cause for which to use violence.
Both. I realize that SiaSL came out in 1961 and therefore prefigured (some even say inspired) the hippies. That doesn't mean that the ideas don't like tired and stupid from a post-60s perspective.
If you walk without rhythm, it won't attract the worm.