Dan, at this point I urge you to pack up and move to Zimbabwe where you can be worshipped as the blue haired god of Spam (low salt of course). Free speech has always been the right to voice your beliefs on the condition that your words aren't ment to cause harm to another person. I have no problem with laws that punish those who use false words as weapons, but I do have a problem with people who want to return things to the way they never were.
You sir, are an idiot. Furthermore, you were off topic. It doesn't matter if it's hard to prove, my point is that it shouldn't exist in a country that has "free speech".
I've got no problem with people like Dan yelling whatever comes to them without thinking it through. Personally, they make the world i live in interesting. In any event slander is incredibly hard to prosecute. You have to prove that someone like yourself intended to say things like "Dan Juola is a blue-haired petafile" or "Dan Juola is a Canadian feed lot" to cause harm, not just that he/she spoke a lie. Common Dan, you should know that.
Party on Free Speech, Party on...
I have to say I completely 100% agree with dan. But I am lazy and dont want to take the time to add on so I quit here.
In a country built on free speech, how is it that the government can make laws about slander? This policy is undermining to the entire concept of free speech. If I feel like lieing about something in a country with free speech I should have every right to say something like "Paul Johnson is being raped by Chris Franson every night." What's you take on it? Cause to me, it's incredibly senseless.
Before you start getting up and arms about post-Iraq, let events play out. It could be very possible that we could screw the country, yet is also possible that we will be thanked forever by the Iraqi people for our work. Hans, you said, "I envision an economy and government run by the rich." WELCOME TO AMERICA! Our economy and government is run by the rich, and have always been. That is what allows our economy to expand and grow. I don't hear the cries of the American Proletariat crying out for revolution right now! In fact, most Americans prefer the American form of government over any other. I don't think that the American people want Iraq to turn into a communist country! Hopefully, Iraq will have an economy and government run by the rich (Capitalism!!). God willing, it will be democracy.
Did anyone besides me find it really freaky that Bush's head didn't move AT ALL during that speech? His neck must be really stiff. OR he could have trained his neck by keeping it in odd positions for hours on end... giving blowjobs, perhaps?
You know what they say about those Texans...
But seriously. I agree with Andrew. I got sort of this blah, blah attitude from Bush for most of the speech, kind of like "I've been saying the same stuff for the past 3 months... blah blah" but when he came to the topic of oil, his eyes lit up... I could see oil-lust. It did seem a bit blatant.
We're going about this wrong. Erik may have convinced me that we need to march in and hold an election, but I heard none of that in Bush's speech. There was only a casual reference to such an election, but I want to hear him explicitly say "We will hold a democratic election in Iraq and allow every citizen over 18 to vote." Instead, I only heard talk of disarmament. If this is the attitude that drives the war, I fear what will happen in post-war Iraq. I envision an economy and government run by the rich, because they're the ones who are least affected by a US invasion.
I admit, the United States did not have a great record of installing regimes in the Cold War. Back then the US had a Machiavellian foreign policy where defeating communism was the only thing taken into consideration. Before you can say that America has been horrible installing regimes and has never liberated anyone however, you must look at post-WWII Europe, Japan, South Korea, and post-Cold War Eastern Europe before you judge the entire American record. I trust that America will install a democratic government in Iraq because they cannot afford not to. If 9-11 taught us anything about the Middle East, it taught us that that drastic democratic reform was needed in that region. Now that all eyes are on America, they cannot afford to fuck this thing up. I am sorry that I "bull that shit" by implying that America will do the right thing in a post-Saddam Iraq. It is not without reason or rationality though Andrew.
You're completely retarded if you think that we can't find ways around that. There are water based lubricants. You can make fuel out of alcohol. Just because oil is in so many things NOW doesn't mean it always will be. We should start working on something more permanent, because furthermore, there won't always be oil. If we are entirely dependent on oil, and it eventually runs out, we'll be more fucked than ever. It would be better to start spending money on something practical rather than trying to control what little scraps of a dieing system.
Jesse you are most likely wrong when you say that Iraq has half the worlds oil fields because I assume you are pulling those numbers out of your ass (which is fine) but you are basing them on America. Therefore under that condition you are wrong because America only gets 20% of its oil from all of the middle East, so I imagine most of that would come from Kuwait and so on thus Iraqi oil would be a great benefit to America and all the other nations, but it at this moment hasn't been tapped as heavily by America.
