Because Saddam was a viscously successful survivor.... </quote> Damn straight. It's the viscosity that always put Saddam ahead of all those other survivors.
Generally, I'd call someone who leaked documents in order to expose a wrong done a "whistle-blower". A whistle-blower may be correct or he may be misguided, but even a misguided whistle-blower is not necessarily a traitor. A "traitor" I'd call someone who acted to sabotage the military effort of his nation due to allegiance to another nation, or for money, or for some other sort of reward. Bradley wasn't promised any sort of reward, not a tangible one anyway, and there's no evidence to suggest that he transferred his allegiance to another nation - unless you count mankind as "another nation". So he's a whistle-blower, not a traitor.
At least, there is no evidence of her ever saying that, and Rousseau wrote "let them eat cake" in his book "confessions", apparently no later than 1769.
Livni should not have said your version of the sentence, because it is not true - the current government that came to power shortly the aforementioned negotiations was markedly more right-wing than the one in which Livni served.
Look, I don't like the current government. I didn't like the Olmert and Livni government either. But to claim that it was not democratically elected, or that it does not reflect the will of the people, would be misleading. A small majority of the Knesset seats is held by parties clearly identified as the "right wing" - Likud, Yisrael Beytenu, Shas, etc. Many, and possibly most of the voters of these parties outright object to the creation of a Palestinian state in the west bank. The rest of these voters want a government that is "tough", and do not care much if the Palestinian state is created or not - they're not sufficiently interested in it to vote to any party that is seriously committed to a 2-state solution.
It's true that Yisrael Beytenu ostensibly claims to support some form of a 2-state solution - as does parts of the Likud - but you can see from the lack of willingness to negotiate just how uncommitted they really are. From decades of experience of living in this country, I can assure you that almost no right-wing voter is going to protest the lack of peace talks.
Now, if you claimed that the elections do not represent the will of the people because the west-bank Palestinians don't get to vote, then you'd be somewhat correct (some of the Palestinians do have their own government now, of a sort). But as long as you're talking about Israeli citizens, the current government has very firm implicit support for its line of no-serious-negotiations. The main pressure they feel from the electorate is not to cede any territory.
A final note - none of them is a psycopath. It's just that these governments and their voters do not care much about democracy. The way some of them see it, the Arabs were pretty much ready to murder every Jew in this land back in 1948, and to repay those Arabs with anything less than genocide is being "generous". I don't agree with that point of view, but I can see where they're coming from.
You're right, correlation isn't causality. But the evidence is stronger than mere one-time correlation.
In a March 23, 2008 interview, Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Ramadan Abdallah Shalah complained to the Qatari newspaper Al-Sharq that the separation barrier "limits the ability of the resistance to arrive deep within [Israeli territory] to carry out suicide bombing attacks, but the resistance has not surrendered or become helpless, and is looking for other ways to cope with the requirements of every stage" of the intifada.[36]
It's not an either-or proposition. The main thrust of public pressure to build this wall was people seeking an effective measure against the rampant suicide bombings (I know, because I live here and I was reading the papers at the time). The Sharon government eventually adopted the plan, but carved it in its own (expansionist) image. At the time, there were moderate left-wingers calling for a wall on the green line, and there were settlers calling for greater annexation. In retrospect, it's surprising that he annexed as little as he did.
Oh, and I'd like to see the aforementioned cost estimate (the one with rebuilding everything twice). That's a spectacular claim, especially in view of the figure you bring for California.
Burning garbage creates highly toxic materials, like dioxin. So does gasifying the garbage, apparently, according to this position paper. The article doesn't address this issue.
There is a reasoned and informative opposition to this plant. By ignoring this opposition, the featured article reads like a PR piece.
You can't seem to tell the difference between democratically-legislated protection of a common resource (like clean air and water, which you cannot live without), and widescale political terror.
You write: "So called Communist regimes of our recent past and our current future have not hesitated, what makes you different?" You may like to note that the people advocating social and environmetal legislation don't seem to be gearing up for a violent revolution and the establishment of a one-party regime (at least in the west). Your attribution of such or willingness to them seems, at least to me, highly arbitary.
Please note that the "communist" dictatorships didn't crop up in societies with a democratic tradition. They rose from the ashes of colonial Vietnam, Tsarist Russia, and Imperial China. In other words, one type of dictatorship was replaced by a different one. As for those democracies that preceded the "communist" regimes in eastern Europe, they were simply conquered by the USSR.
Socialism tends to develop very differently in established democracies, not least because it does not develop under terms of violent repression.
Their cheapest desktops and laptops are bundled with vista and 1-year support. No choice of linux there. Those are the models purchased by the masses.
It's true that costlier models have a linux option, but that's far from a level playing field. The way things stand, if you want a cheap PC from Dell, you pay the MS tax and you get no promise of hardware compatibility from Dell. That does suck.
Monopolies don't price their products that way. If costs increase, up to a certain point, they just absorb the increase. The customer doesn't pay more. Monopoly pricing is mostly sensitive to demand, and is insensitive to costs, as long as the costs are not too high to be profitable.
And there's no cause to think that selling software in the EU would stop being profitable for MS, because the fine is a one-time cost. They pay it, they produce the documentation, and then they continue selling their OS with no reduction of long-term profitability. Hence, no reason to think they would pull out of the EU software market, or increase their prices.
Slashdot Mirror
Because Saddam was a viscously successful survivor.
</quote>
Damn straight. It's the viscosity that always put Saddam ahead of all those other survivors.
Generally, I'd call someone who leaked documents in order to expose a wrong done a "whistle-blower". A whistle-blower may be correct or he may be misguided, but even a misguided whistle-blower is not necessarily a traitor. A "traitor" I'd call someone who acted to sabotage the military effort of his nation due to allegiance to another nation, or for money, or for some other sort of reward. Bradley wasn't promised any sort of reward, not a tangible one anyway, and there's no evidence to suggest that he transferred his allegiance to another nation - unless you count mankind as "another nation". So he's a whistle-blower, not a traitor.
At least, there is no evidence of her ever saying that, and Rousseau wrote "let them eat cake" in his book "confessions", apparently no later than 1769.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_them_eat_cake
May I suggest another first-hand perspective?
Livni should not have said your version of the sentence, because it is not true - the current government that came to power shortly the aforementioned negotiations was markedly more right-wing than the one in which Livni served.
Look, I don't like the current government. I didn't like the Olmert and Livni government either. But to claim that it was not democratically elected, or that it does not reflect the will of the people, would be misleading. A small majority of the Knesset seats is held by parties clearly identified as the "right wing" - Likud, Yisrael Beytenu, Shas, etc. Many, and possibly most of the voters of these parties outright object to the creation of a Palestinian state in the west bank. The rest of these voters want a government that is "tough", and do not care much if the Palestinian state is created or not - they're not sufficiently interested in it to vote to any party that is seriously committed to a 2-state solution.
It's true that Yisrael Beytenu ostensibly claims to support some form of a 2-state solution - as does parts of the Likud - but you can see from the lack of willingness to negotiate just how uncommitted they really are. From decades of experience of living in this country, I can assure you that almost no right-wing voter is going to protest the lack of peace talks.
Now, if you claimed that the elections do not represent the will of the people because the west-bank Palestinians don't get to vote, then you'd be somewhat correct (some of the Palestinians do have their own government now, of a sort). But as long as you're talking about Israeli citizens, the current government has very firm implicit support for its line of no-serious-negotiations. The main pressure they feel from the electorate is not to cede any territory.
A final note - none of them is a psycopath. It's just that these governments and their voters do not care much about democracy. The way some of them see it, the Arabs were pretty much ready to murder every Jew in this land back in 1948, and to repay those Arabs with anything less than genocide is being "generous". I don't agree with that point of view, but I can see where they're coming from.
In a March 23, 2008 interview, Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Ramadan Abdallah Shalah complained to the Qatari newspaper Al-Sharq that the separation barrier "limits the ability of the resistance to arrive deep within [Israeli territory] to carry out suicide bombing attacks, but the resistance has not surrendered or become helpless, and is looking for other ways to cope with the requirements of every stage" of the intifada.[36]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_West_Bank_barrier#Effects_on_Israeli_security
It's not an either-or proposition. The main thrust of public pressure to build this wall was people seeking an effective measure against the rampant suicide bombings (I know, because I live here and I was reading the papers at the time). The Sharon government eventually adopted the plan, but carved it in its own (expansionist) image. At the time, there were moderate left-wingers calling for a wall on the green line, and there were settlers calling for greater annexation. In retrospect, it's surprising that he annexed as little as he did.
Oh, and I'd like to see the aforementioned cost estimate (the one with rebuilding everything twice). That's a spectacular claim, especially in view of the figure you bring for California.
US$2,139,150,000.00 is (a bit over) 2 billion, not 2 trillion (using US numbers). In UK numbers, that's 2 milliard. Either way, not 2 trillion.
gmail is not OSS. The article doesn't mention any specific vulnerability, just general concerns. There's really nothing there.
Burning garbage creates highly toxic materials, like dioxin. So does gasifying the garbage, apparently, according to this position paper. The article doesn't address this issue.
There is a reasoned and informative opposition to this plant. By ignoring this opposition, the featured article reads like a PR piece.
For chrissake, that's modded insightful?
You can't seem to tell the difference between democratically-legislated protection of a common resource (like clean air and water, which you cannot live without), and widescale political terror.
You write: "So called Communist regimes of our recent past and our current future have not hesitated, what makes you different?"
You may like to note that the people advocating social and environmetal legislation don't seem to be gearing up for a violent revolution and the establishment of a one-party regime (at least in the west). Your attribution of such or willingness to them seems, at least to me, highly arbitary.
Please note that the "communist" dictatorships didn't crop up in societies with a democratic tradition. They rose from the ashes of colonial Vietnam, Tsarist Russia, and Imperial China. In other words, one type of dictatorship was replaced by a different one. As for those democracies that preceded the "communist" regimes in eastern Europe, they were simply conquered by the USSR.
Socialism tends to develop very differently in established democracies, not least because it does not develop under terms of violent repression.
Their cheapest desktops and laptops are bundled with vista and 1-year support. No choice of linux there. Those are the models purchased by the masses.
It's true that costlier models have a linux option, but that's far from a level playing field. The way things stand, if you want a cheap PC from Dell, you pay the MS tax and you get no promise of hardware compatibility from Dell. That does suck.
Monopolies don't price their products that way. If costs increase, up to a certain point, they just absorb the increase. The customer doesn't pay more. Monopoly pricing is mostly sensitive to demand, and is insensitive to costs, as long as the costs are not too high to be profitable. And there's no cause to think that selling software in the EU would stop being profitable for MS, because the fine is a one-time cost. They pay it, they produce the documentation, and then they continue selling their OS with no reduction of long-term profitability. Hence, no reason to think they would pull out of the EU software market, or increase their prices.