OT: For all the genocidal dictators...

[Will]

Originally posted by Puke:
and why should 'principals' be applied equally to all? that smacks of communism, good man.

And what's really wrong with communism? It seems to me that there is still way too much residual effect from the US anti-communism propaganda campaign during the Cold War. People never stopped and realized that the Soviets were not, and never were going to be, communists. Same with China, North Korea, and whatever other countries currently have what the US has ignorantly labeled "communist government". Communism in its pure form is really a complete lack of government; wealth and power is held equally by all. Of course, because of human nature, communism will never happen in a group of any significant size.

Back to the thread's topic, though... First, I didn't quite expect a reaction as big as this. After all, I can be quite certain that anyone who argued that the subject of the site's satire is wrong and illegal, is being quite a hypocrite. Unless they have NEVER fired a single shot at a planet in SEIV There are countless threads that talk about glassing enemy planets, and I don't recall anyone making a fuss about "killing" sentient alien populations. Only difference really, is fewer clicks.

I actually thought it was more humorous that somebody actually bothered to create a site for that. I didn't dig in deep enough to see it was a mouse manufacturer, I guess.

[Puke]

Originally posted by Will:
And what's really wrong with communism?:

you're kidding? is a crappy economic system based on fantasic ideals. and by fantastic, i mean fantasy. la-la-land.

Communism in its pure form is really a complete lack of government; wealth and power is held equally by all. Of course, because of human nature, communism will never happen in a group of any significant size.

see? you agree.

[QB]Back to the thread's topic, though... [QB]

yep, i agree with everything following the elipsis. ill shut up and go away now.

[d0b]

Of course foreign policy is supposed to benefit your country but the USA being the most powerful country they have far more influence and immunity from their actions than possibly anyone else. So their policy infringes on other countries in ways that you would not accept if a hypothetical more powerful country did to you.

[ July 16, 2002, 08:17: Message edited by: d0b ]

[Growltigga]

Crime has been a global problem for a lot longer than the Internet has existed. Computers merely speed up the transactions, and enable a few new ones

This is exactly what I said

But all in all, if I were on trial for my life I'd rather have a lawyer than a man of principle working for me. It's a shame though that those are often mutually exclusive

Ooh, I think you need to get off your anti-lawyer kick.. lawyers are not overpaid compared to other professionals (eg accountants, actuaries and venture capitalists particularily). Given that it takes most of us 6-8 years to even qualify (and we take loans to fund university and law school) and then you can be assured of 70-80 hour weeks for the rest of your life, together with the second highest work levels of stress going, we are then criminally underpaid. The legal profession, certainly in the UK, has the highest number of people wanting to change jobs but cant due to preciseness of training, why would we want to due that if we were so overpaid?

another point, the new trainee in my room is 25, earn about $18K a year and has just started her career, after law school, she says she is $42K in debt...

my next door neighbour is an accountant, he has a mercedes and a BMW.. I drive a 9 year old Renault clio that is frankly held together by rust and stubborn understains

wow, ease up guys. lets not get angry with each other about dancing styles, sports brawls, and income brackets. i cant dance, im unsporting, and i make more money than i deserve. go ahead and get mad at me for it, both of you.

Puke, it sounds like you have enough problems of your own... the point I want to make here Geo is that I showed your post on our sports behaviour to 2 germans, 1 belgian and 3 english colleagues... it really was better than laughing gas.. to accuse us of jingoism and patriotric fervour in our sports is an absolute classic, do the words "pot", "kettle" and "black" mean anything to you.

The rest of the world praised Salt Lake for the cracking winter olympics earlier this year. Brilliantly organised, excellent for world sport.. the rest of the world also pointedfly remarked that US supporters should really learn to be less partisan.. it is just insulting the lengths it is taken to (booing other teams?? yeah, really sporting)

WRONG.

Pax, wake up and smell the roses. YOur statements are frighteningly naive (or idealistic, I am not sure)

Freedom of Speech is constitutionalised in the US, rather than legislated as it is in most european countries.

So you think this means you can say what you like about what you like when you like.

Fine, try it. You try and take your soap box to the middle of your town today and preach on something like kiddy porn. You think you will be free to do so?

WRONG. You will be arrested. Try looking at the US public order offences and see what they really say.

We actually have more "freedom of speech" as you define in in europe. If our rights are breached, it is illegal and we can take the police to the lower courts. In the US, any constittuional breach goes to the Federal Supreme COurt...

Are your principles backed up by enbough cash to do this?

[Fyron]

In the US, lawyers in general are paid absurd amounts of money.

[Growltigga]

Fyron, you are right.

The statistics are that 85% of the world's lawyers are in the United States.

The pay differential is scary. I was speaking to an American lawyer of equivalent grade to me a couple of weeks back. We talked salaries and I choked when he told me that his pay was 8 times what mine was, and that he got a bonus.

Who do we think is paying for all this?

It is scary

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Growltigga:
Ooh, I think you need to get off your anti-lawyer kick.. lawyers are not overpaid compared to other professionals (eg accountants, actuaries and venture capitalists particularily)...

But it's so FUN to kick lawyers.

You do know that that is all in jest, no? I would not be so simple minded as to think all lawyers everywhere are overpaid and not worthy of respect. Well, they aren't all overpaid anyway...

Puke, it sounds like you have enough problems of your own... the point I want to make here Geo is that I showed your post on our sports behaviour to 2 germans, 1 belgian and 3 english colleagues... it really was better than laughing gas.. to accuse us of jingoism and patriotric fervour in our sports is an absolute classic, do the words "pot", "kettle" and "black" mean anything to you.

Gt, please do try to keep your comments at least a little bit to the point of the discussion. You keep going off on these tangents where noone else has gone and it makes it terribly inconvient to try and keep things moving along. If you didn't have such a prejudice against all things American you would realize that my comments were in no way directed at British, Belgians or Germans. YOU commented that linedancers showed a lack of intelligence by the actions they partook in persuit of their hobby, and i was merely pointing out that soccer fans show many of the same lacks of mental prowess. Not British soccer fans, just soccer fans in general. I could have said the same thing about American Football fans, except for the part about beating the crap out of each other. For that matter, booing is one thing, but how many people got beat up in Salt Lake City for carrying the wrong flag? I didn't hear about it if it happened at all.

The fact that you don't seem to get is that I am not anti-British. I never even brought up any comments about American fredom of speech being better than European Freedom of Speech. You were the one that opened that particular box unfortunatly. In my mind you either have freedom of speech either or you don't have freedom of speech. It's a human condition, it's not about countries.

Freedom of Speech is constitutionalised in the US, rather than legislated as it is in most european countries.

So you think this means you can say what you like about what you like when you like.

Fine, try it. You try and take your soap box to the middle of your town today and preach on something like kiddy porn. You think you will be free to do so?

WRONG. You will be arrested. Try looking at the US public order offences and see what they really say.

You really don't get it do you? We can in fact do that exact thing and will not be arrested. You may have to get a permit or something. The Klu Klux Klan does that very thing several times a year all over the country. And As Baron pointed out,. the perverts at NAMBLA even have their own organisation and everything. It's all protected by law.

Many people think the permits are a tool used by the government to restrict the freedom of speech, and so say they are wrong. That I am sure has happened from time to time, but actually they are there to protect the person wanting to speak those things which are unpopular. It allows the local municipality to prepare for the speech and call in more police protection so the inevitable crowd doesn't turn into a mob and take away the person right to free speech, along with their head.

Where do you get your incorrect ideas about the US? I guess the European press must protray America as some sort of facist police state. I guess if a few shameful incidents get all the TV coverage that is what you would think. I can tell you I live in America, and that's not the way it is.

But even if you don't file a permit and go down town and start preaching on some unpopular topic, you may get arrested, but it WON'T be for the words that you speak Gt. It will be for causing a disturbance. In fact you may not get arrested at all. The cop may simply glare at you and tell you to move along. If you refuse he'll take you away and throw you in jail. The fact is if the cop wasn't there you might get killed, and then he'd have to fill out more paperwork, and cops hate paperwork.

You might spend a night or two and get a fine for public disturbance. But there are no prisons in the US for people that say the wrong things. Hell, there aren't even enough for the real criminals. You will be back on the street in no time.

As a lawyer you must know the difference between constitutionalising something and legalising it. But I'll explain it for the room.

If something is legalised, the government is saying, we have the right to take this away from you if we choose, but we are not going to do that. We will let you do it, for now at least.

Constitutionalising something says, I the government do not have the right to take this right away from you. As long as we are bound by this document I cannot do so. We could as a people ammend the constitution and give the govenrment the right to restrict our freedom of speech if we wanted to, but it would be really stupid to do so.

Geoschmo

[ July 16, 2002, 13:17: Message edited by: geoschmo ]