What do you think about the fact that counter-piracy forces killed more people than pirates themselves ? Before 2011 it could even be said that more hostages were killed by counter-piracy forces than Somali pirates.
This is the bit where you deny that European and American influence has anything to do with the existence of these pirates in the first place.
Oh, no, I would never do that. You're absolutely right; we sail these huge shiny ships full of expensive goodies through international waters, and expect people not to hijack them. How ridiculous is that? Clearly we're provoking them.
By the way... where's your car parked? I could use a new set of wheels... and I'm feeling rather provoked right about now.
Somali pirates are not terrorists.Terrorists are individuals or organizations that use force to advance a political agenda. The Somali pirates are only in it for the money.
While I agree with your general premise, you're ignoring the possibility that some of the money being taken by pirates is being used to fund their own local territorial battles, as well as international terrorist organizations. While I haven't seen any actual figures, all the intel I've seen on the area indicates that the former is a near-certainty, and the latter a distinct possibility. So no, the pirates aren't necessarily "terrorists", but there's little doubt that their actions fund terrorism.
Yeah, jackasses like you - and whatever twats modded you "insightful" - are exactly why we'll never really do anything serious to combat piracy. The US takes enough flack without needing to be accused of butchering "poor innocent fishermen", and the rest of the naval powers don't individually have the capability to do anything effective. So we'll continue to dick around and hand millions of dollars over to your "poor fishermen" until either the problem gets so bad that we can't ignore it any more, or we manage to install a puppet government which can rein them in.
the problem with Josh Fox's movie is that the Gas industry hired a bunch of PR flacks to shoot him down at every available opportunity. if you surf any internet forum comment thread on this issue, you will see post after post after post that use classic PR strategies, like avoiding the question, changing the subject, and personal attacks against Fox, (it almost reads like a page out of Team Themis' plans against Glen Greenwald), etc.
Guantanamo plays in a whole other league, since it's official purpose was to extract information with torture.
If you honestly think that prisoners captured during WW2, Korea, and Vietnam weren't roughed up and mistreated in order to "extract information", I've got a nice bridge to sell you...
Yeah, it was. Personally, I wasn't thinking of the Japanese, but how many other examples would you like? POW's captured in Europe? Chinese and Korean prisoners during the Korean conflict? Vietnam? If you honestly thought that the US had never before captured and interrogated prisoners without first putting them on trial, you're horribly uninformed.
And no, it's not a uniquely American phenomenon, either. Here in Canada we interred Japanese people during WW2, same as the Yanks did. And we took POW's during the wars we were involved in. And we took prisoners in Afghanistan and handed them over to the local police/military. Gitmo might be some horrible exception on a peaceful and loving hippie planet; here on earth, it's status quo.
I'm one of those foreigners who're a little worried about what USA will do next in the name of "justice".
Which makes you either an idiot or paranoid-delusional. Your wikileaks example seems to suggest that the former is true, but I'm also willing to consider the possibility that you fall into both categories. Your nonsense about the FBI lacking evidence certainly suggests you've been swallowing some Truther woo, so I wouldn't disqualify the paranoia outright.
Lets wait for them to evolve atheism. That will be fun.
They're atheist by default; it's just that they'd have to make up some kind of religion before the concept starts having any meaning in reference to them.
For example, if a robot had a goal to pass on its genes, and sharing food was the means to accomplish this, it isn't a surprise that's the result: It didn't evolve that response; it was designed to acheieve it!
You say that as if they were two different concepts, rather than a rephrasing of the same thing. Either you don't understand evolution, or you don't get what's being discussed.
The flea-market I was at last week had laptops going for $300, and desktops going for $150 ($200 with a monitor). The local Salvation Army and Goodwill stores regularly sell components and sometimes complete systems. Then there are resources like Craigs List or kijiji. There's even Freecycle if you're really strapped for cash.
And if you're considering making the obvious silly crack about looking online for a computer, please, do yourself a favor and think, first. Or, alternately, refer back to my previous comment.
Then there are the unbudgeted consequences when your old, out-of-warranty second hand laptop suffers from a hardware fault...
So go even cheaper, and budget for a replacement. The sites I linked to list several laptops in the $175 and under bracket.
My aunt bought two laptops for about $350, almost two years ago. That's $350 for both, not each, so you can imagine the specs on them. I offered to find her a good deal on something more modern, but she insisted she didn't need anything fancy. Almost two years later, both laptops are still running fine. Their batteries last about 25 minutes, but they're still adequate for her and her husband. She checks her e-mail, composes documents in word, creates power-point presentations, and even does web-site design for her own small business. Oh, and she also has a 6-figure income. Maybe that's why poor people can't find these computers - the rich people keep buying them up!
I thought about writing a lengthy rebuttal, but realized that you would be unable to respond as I am sure your laptop is about to be repossessed. So I'll just note that there are exceptions to every rule, and math skills clearly aren't the only criteria required for financial success.
How so? Because I included the populace at large, rather than limiting myself to parents who take nude photos of their kids, and people who fly kites in thunderstorms?
Ok, what the hell, let's play it a different way. Assume 4 million births per year. Take an 8 year time-span during which nude photos of a child might be considered innocent. You end up with a population of 32 million. Assume 2 children per household and get 16 million families. Assume 1% of those parents took a nude photo of their kids this year and you get 160 thousand. So if you happen to be a new parent taking naked pictures of your child, your odds of being arrested for it might be 1 in 160 thousand, and the odds of being convicted are.... ? Still not high enough for me to be seriously concerned.
You know, if you walk into a bank carrying a toy gun, you'll probably be arrested for that too, assuming you don't get shot by a trigger-happy security guard. Sometimes people overreact based on incorrect perceptions, and yes, it sucks. If you're worried about the odds, don't do things which put you into that category. If you're ok with the odds, then go ahead. Either way, I don't see it as a huge issue. Though I reserve my right to sue the people responsible if/when my life is negatively impacted by such an arrest, depending on the circumstances involved, and encourage others to do likewise.
You obviously [wikipedia.org] haven't look very hard in regards to indefinite detention. There are more examples as well. [ourla.org]
So your two examples are a serial-convict who was later convicted on terrorism charges, and an idiot held for contempt of court for refusing to pay fines, divulge relevant information, and practicing law without a license?
Forget it - don't bother answering that because it's irrelevant; even if your examples had been a little old lady arrested for watering flowers and a Nobel laureate held for eating cheese, I'd dismiss them anyway because I'm not really impressed by rare exceptions. Granted, I'd be more concerned if your examples were people who hadn't actually done anything wrong but, again, I'm not impressed by exceptions. It sucks to be the person to whom it happens, but it also sucks to be hit by lightning.
I'm MUCH more concerned by the fact that I can be convicted even if I've never committed a crime simply because a group of 12 bored idiots think the government made a convincing case. Not only that, but I'm EVEN MORE concerned by the fact that this happens many times every year, and has been an issue for as long as we've had the concept of justice. The odds of me being wrongfully convicted are orders of magnitude higher than the odds of me being held without trial, and the odds of a person being wrongfully convicted were even higher back when people thought it was ok to have 12 racist white folks serve as a jury for a black man, or 12 homophobes act as a jury on charges of buggery. So yeah, as far as being imprisoned without charge goes, give me a call when it hits a few cases a year (without including contempt-of-court cases, for what should be obvious reasons) and you might have my attention. Until then you can go back to yelling on a street corner.
I'm not sure why you want to argue that civil liberties aren't under attack in this day and age.
Again, strawman; civil liberties have always been under attack - I'm merely objecting to the chicken littles who make a hobby out of ranting about it.
There have been many dozen cases of people taking pics of their baby kids in a bathtub or otherwise half dressed and successfully convicted.
None of the stories linked to by the page you reference actually claim that anyone was convicted. What I found interesting was this:
There was, throughout the 1990s, an average of about one case per year that made it into the news of photo lab customers being arrested for taking innocent naked photographs of their children.
So while your odds of being hit by lightning this year are around 1 in 1 million, your odds of being arrested for taking innocent pictures of your naked kids are about 1 in 300 million. And your odds of being convicted are apparently even lower. I think I can live with those numbers.
Or maybe it just proves, further, that the poor get screwed.
No, it shows that the poor are generally poor for a reason. Consider: you claim that a person who cannot afford a $1,000 computer must therefore go out and pay $156 per month to rent one. A "poor person" who is serially-poor - or a "not poor person" who is bad at finances but has a high enough paycheck to keep him going - would probably agree with your assessment. A temporarily or formerly "poor person" - or a "not poor person" with common sense - would point out that you can buy a second-hand laptop for $200-$300. In the event that the "poor person" cannot even afford $300, the "not-poor-person" with common sense would point out that a $156 payments saved over 2 months equals $300, and that during the said 2 months it's quite possible to just use the computers at the local library. In other words, people who know how to manage and leverage their money either aren't poor, or don't stay poor for long; those who ARE poor will continue to make poor decisions when it comes to managing their money, and will remain poor.
Of course, I'm not rejecting the idea of credit outright; sometimes it makes sense to take out a loan and pay interest. However, I know plenty of people who make more money than I do yet have less disposable income simply because of their loaning habits. I've yet to run into a poor person who was good at math.
Sorry, where have I been granted more freedom in the last 30 years?
The advent and widespread acceptance of the internet is, in and of itself, a huge increase in freedom. Other than that, I'm sure I could come up with a few examples for you, but it's rather irrelevant; there's no reason why I should try to defend a strawman which you constructed, let alone restrict myself to a 30 year timeframe while doing so.
Remember times when a warrant was necessary to collect evidence?
No I don't. Nor can I find any evidence of such a time in the historical record.
Remember when you had a right to speedy trial and didn't have to rot in jail for years on end without charge?
Sure: yesterday, today, probably tomorrow... why?
Remember a time when jews were second class citizens? When the irish were treated like dirt? When women couldn't vote? When homosexuals were forced into hiding? When abortions were illegal? When a black president was the punchline to a joke?
I'm amazed that you choose to blind yourself of the politics of the last 30 years and then have the balls to declare someone else deluded
I'm amazed that you think the politics of the last 30 years is any worse than politics throughout history. Or, rather, I'm amazed that people can actually suggest something so silly, although I've noticed that it's actually a rather common belief.
Furthermore, there has not been a single documented case of anyone being killed because they were "outted" by wikileaks.
There has not been a single documented case of you making poopie, anywhere, any time. Therefore I can conclude that you MUST be full of shit. Isn't logic wonderful?
The problem isn't that you don't remember it; it's that you refuse to acknowledge it. It's much more fun to delude yourself into thinking that you're a brave soul fighting against an oppressive dictatorship. The more freedom you give people, the more of a persecution complex they seem to develop.
If I saw a Madagascar button in a datacenter with a sign on it that said "DO NOT PRESS THIS! It will SHUT DOWN EVERYTHING!", I would probably remove that key from the keyboard.
Screw that. I'd remove the sign. And replace it with one that says "FREE MOUNTAIN-DEW!".
Slashdot Mirror
What do you think about the fact that counter-piracy forces killed more people than pirates themselves ? Before 2011 it could even be said that more hostages were killed by counter-piracy forces than Somali pirates.
I think you're making shit up. Next question?
This is the bit where you deny that European and American influence has anything to do with the existence of these pirates in the first place.
Oh, no, I would never do that. You're absolutely right; we sail these huge shiny ships full of expensive goodies through international waters, and expect people not to hijack them. How ridiculous is that? Clearly we're provoking them.
By the way ... where's your car parked? I could use a new set of wheels ... and I'm feeling rather provoked right about now.
Somali pirates are not terrorists.Terrorists are individuals or organizations that use force to advance a political agenda. The Somali pirates are only in it for the money.
While I agree with your general premise, you're ignoring the possibility that some of the money being taken by pirates is being used to fund their own local territorial battles, as well as international terrorist organizations. While I haven't seen any actual figures, all the intel I've seen on the area indicates that the former is a near-certainty, and the latter a distinct possibility. So no, the pirates aren't necessarily "terrorists", but there's little doubt that their actions fund terrorism.
Yeah, jackasses like you - and whatever twats modded you "insightful" - are exactly why we'll never really do anything serious to combat piracy. The US takes enough flack without needing to be accused of butchering "poor innocent fishermen", and the rest of the naval powers don't individually have the capability to do anything effective. So we'll continue to dick around and hand millions of dollars over to your "poor fishermen" until either the problem gets so bad that we can't ignore it any more, or we manage to install a puppet government which can rein them in.
Bingo!
Even Fox News is reporting that the drilling and injecting of this polluted water in Arkansas might be causing thousands of earthquakes.
lol. "I hate fox because they're crazy and stupid, but now they're being MY kind of crazy and stupid, so that's ok!"
the problem with Josh Fox's movie is that the Gas industry hired a bunch of PR flacks to shoot him down at every available opportunity. if you surf any internet forum comment thread on this issue, you will see post after post after post that use classic PR strategies, like avoiding the question, changing the subject, and personal attacks against Fox, (it almost reads like a page out of Team Themis' plans against Glen Greenwald), etc.
OMG! CONSPIRACIES!!! DER EVERYWERE!!!!
Guantanamo plays in a whole other league, since it's official purpose was to extract information with torture.
If you honestly think that prisoners captured during WW2, Korea, and Vietnam weren't roughed up and mistreated in order to "extract information", I've got a nice bridge to sell you ...
From the link the parent provided:
OMG, dat link sez dere still looking for him! The FBI nose hes not realy dead! OMG CONSPIRASIE!!!!11!1!1
Yeah, it was. Personally, I wasn't thinking of the Japanese, but how many other examples would you like? POW's captured in Europe? Chinese and Korean prisoners during the Korean conflict? Vietnam? If you honestly thought that the US had never before captured and interrogated prisoners without first putting them on trial, you're horribly uninformed.
And no, it's not a uniquely American phenomenon, either. Here in Canada we interred Japanese people during WW2, same as the Yanks did. And we took POW's during the wars we were involved in. And we took prisoners in Afghanistan and handed them over to the local police/military. Gitmo might be some horrible exception on a peaceful and loving hippie planet; here on earth, it's status quo.
I'm one of those foreigners who're a little worried about what USA will do next in the name of "justice".
Which makes you either an idiot or paranoid-delusional. Your wikileaks example seems to suggest that the former is true, but I'm also willing to consider the possibility that you fall into both categories. Your nonsense about the FBI lacking evidence certainly suggests you've been swallowing some Truther woo, so I wouldn't disqualify the paranoia outright.
Will Osama get a gun in this game or are they going for the more realistic shoot him in cold blood no pow operation.
Good troll is good.
Lets wait for them to evolve atheism. That will be fun.
They're atheist by default; it's just that they'd have to make up some kind of religion before the concept starts having any meaning in reference to them.
For example, if a robot had a goal to pass on its genes, and sharing food was the means to accomplish this, it isn't a surprise that's the result: It didn't evolve that response; it was designed to acheieve it!
You say that as if they were two different concepts, rather than a rephrasing of the same thing. Either you don't understand evolution, or you don't get what's being discussed.
Buy one from where?
The flea-market I was at last week had laptops going for $300, and desktops going for $150 ($200 with a monitor). The local Salvation Army and Goodwill stores regularly sell components and sometimes complete systems. Then there are resources like Craigs List or kijiji. There's even Freecycle if you're really strapped for cash.
And if you're considering making the obvious silly crack about looking online for a computer, please, do yourself a favor and think, first. Or, alternately, refer back to my previous comment.
Then there are the unbudgeted consequences when your old, out-of-warranty second hand laptop suffers from a hardware fault...
So go even cheaper, and budget for a replacement. The sites I linked to list several laptops in the $175 and under bracket.
My aunt bought two laptops for about $350, almost two years ago. That's $350 for both, not each, so you can imagine the specs on them. I offered to find her a good deal on something more modern, but she insisted she didn't need anything fancy. Almost two years later, both laptops are still running fine. Their batteries last about 25 minutes, but they're still adequate for her and her husband. She checks her e-mail, composes documents in word, creates power-point presentations, and even does web-site design for her own small business. Oh, and she also has a 6-figure income. Maybe that's why poor people can't find these computers - the rich people keep buying them up!
I thought about writing a lengthy rebuttal, but realized that you would be unable to respond as I am sure your laptop is about to be repossessed. So I'll just note that there are exceptions to every rule, and math skills clearly aren't the only criteria required for financial success.
How so? Because I included the populace at large, rather than limiting myself to parents who take nude photos of their kids, and people who fly kites in thunderstorms?
Ok, what the hell, let's play it a different way. Assume 4 million births per year. Take an 8 year time-span during which nude photos of a child might be considered innocent. You end up with a population of 32 million. Assume 2 children per household and get 16 million families. Assume 1% of those parents took a nude photo of their kids this year and you get 160 thousand. So if you happen to be a new parent taking naked pictures of your child, your odds of being arrested for it might be 1 in 160 thousand, and the odds of being convicted are .... ? Still not high enough for me to be seriously concerned.
You know, if you walk into a bank carrying a toy gun, you'll probably be arrested for that too, assuming you don't get shot by a trigger-happy security guard. Sometimes people overreact based on incorrect perceptions, and yes, it sucks. If you're worried about the odds, don't do things which put you into that category. If you're ok with the odds, then go ahead. Either way, I don't see it as a huge issue. Though I reserve my right to sue the people responsible if/when my life is negatively impacted by such an arrest, depending on the circumstances involved, and encourage others to do likewise.
You obviously [wikipedia.org] haven't look very hard in regards to indefinite detention. There are more examples as well. [ourla.org]
So your two examples are a serial-convict who was later convicted on terrorism charges, and an idiot held for contempt of court for refusing to pay fines, divulge relevant information, and practicing law without a license?
Forget it - don't bother answering that because it's irrelevant; even if your examples had been a little old lady arrested for watering flowers and a Nobel laureate held for eating cheese, I'd dismiss them anyway because I'm not really impressed by rare exceptions. Granted, I'd be more concerned if your examples were people who hadn't actually done anything wrong but, again, I'm not impressed by exceptions. It sucks to be the person to whom it happens, but it also sucks to be hit by lightning.
I'm MUCH more concerned by the fact that I can be convicted even if I've never committed a crime simply because a group of 12 bored idiots think the government made a convincing case. Not only that, but I'm EVEN MORE concerned by the fact that this happens many times every year, and has been an issue for as long as we've had the concept of justice. The odds of me being wrongfully convicted are orders of magnitude higher than the odds of me being held without trial, and the odds of a person being wrongfully convicted were even higher back when people thought it was ok to have 12 racist white folks serve as a jury for a black man, or 12 homophobes act as a jury on charges of buggery. So yeah, as far as being imprisoned without charge goes, give me a call when it hits a few cases a year (without including contempt-of-court cases, for what should be obvious reasons) and you might have my attention. Until then you can go back to yelling on a street corner.
I'm not sure why you want to argue that civil liberties aren't under attack in this day and age.
Again, strawman; civil liberties have always been under attack - I'm merely objecting to the chicken littles who make a hobby out of ranting about it.
There have been many dozen cases of people taking pics of their baby kids in a bathtub or otherwise half dressed and successfully convicted.
None of the stories linked to by the page you reference actually claim that anyone was convicted. What I found interesting was this:
There was, throughout the 1990s, an average of about one case per year that made it into the news of photo lab customers being arrested for taking innocent naked photographs of their children.
So while your odds of being hit by lightning this year are around 1 in 1 million, your odds of being arrested for taking innocent pictures of your naked kids are about 1 in 300 million. And your odds of being convicted are apparently even lower. I think I can live with those numbers.
Or maybe it just proves, further, that the poor get screwed.
No, it shows that the poor are generally poor for a reason. Consider: you claim that a person who cannot afford a $1,000 computer must therefore go out and pay $156 per month to rent one. A "poor person" who is serially-poor - or a "not poor person" who is bad at finances but has a high enough paycheck to keep him going - would probably agree with your assessment. A temporarily or formerly "poor person" - or a "not poor person" with common sense - would point out that you can buy a second-hand laptop for $200-$300. In the event that the "poor person" cannot even afford $300, the "not-poor-person" with common sense would point out that a $156 payments saved over 2 months equals $300, and that during the said 2 months it's quite possible to just use the computers at the local library. In other words, people who know how to manage and leverage their money either aren't poor, or don't stay poor for long; those who ARE poor will continue to make poor decisions when it comes to managing their money, and will remain poor.
Of course, I'm not rejecting the idea of credit outright; sometimes it makes sense to take out a loan and pay interest. However, I know plenty of people who make more money than I do yet have less disposable income simply because of their loaning habits. I've yet to run into a poor person who was good at math.
Sorry, where have I been granted more freedom in the last 30 years?
The advent and widespread acceptance of the internet is, in and of itself, a huge increase in freedom. Other than that, I'm sure I could come up with a few examples for you, but it's rather irrelevant; there's no reason why I should try to defend a strawman which you constructed, let alone restrict myself to a 30 year timeframe while doing so.
Remember times when a warrant was necessary to collect evidence?
No I don't. Nor can I find any evidence of such a time in the historical record.
Remember when you had a right to speedy trial and didn't have to rot in jail for years on end without charge?
Sure: yesterday, today, probably tomorrow ... why?
Remember a time when jews were second class citizens? When the irish were treated like dirt? When women couldn't vote? When homosexuals were forced into hiding? When abortions were illegal? When a black president was the punchline to a joke?
I'm amazed that you choose to blind yourself of the politics of the last 30 years and then have the balls to declare someone else deluded
I'm amazed that you think the politics of the last 30 years is any worse than politics throughout history. Or, rather, I'm amazed that people can actually suggest something so silly, although I've noticed that it's actually a rather common belief.
Furthermore, there has not been a single documented case of anyone being killed because they were "outted" by wikileaks.
There has not been a single documented case of you making poopie, anywhere, any time. Therefore I can conclude that you MUST be full of shit. Isn't logic wonderful?
Also: http://www.anorak.co.uk/267106/politicians/wikileaks-killed-1300-people-and-counting.html
And: http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/uk/taliban+hunt+wikileaks+outed+afghan+informers/3727667.html
No, the real question is how history will judge this assassination
*facepalm*
Clearly more money needs to be put into psychiatric research.
The problem isn't that you don't remember it; it's that you refuse to acknowledge it. It's much more fun to delude yourself into thinking that you're a brave soul fighting against an oppressive dictatorship. The more freedom you give people, the more of a persecution complex they seem to develop.
If I saw a Madagascar button in a datacenter with a sign on it that said "DO NOT PRESS THIS! It will SHUT DOWN EVERYTHING!", I would probably remove that key from the keyboard.
Screw that. I'd remove the sign. And replace it with one that says "FREE MOUNTAIN-DEW!".