Boycott & computer products.

[MarkTime]

its ashame it takes a war to boycott french products...I mean c'mon ppl....

nevertheless I am no fan of bush to say the least.
there is an old saying, those who trade freedom for security, end up with neither.

we are in the process of ending up with neither.
my wife is a legal resident, but we are waiting on one govm't agency to send us paperwork we can forward to another govm't agency, and as a result of the delay, she is being harassed, she can't get a drivers license, work, nothing....

thank george bush....the country has gone mad.
but its 'necessary', people think...it is entirely unnecessary to harass legal residents because they were foreign born.  That is a huge lie.  What is  necessary and what is convenient or cheap, or politically expedient, are different things.  It is absolutley not necessary to harass a 23 year old woman, and wife of an american citizen.  Thats @#$@#.

I want to use harsher words, but I'll just upset everyone....

[MarkTime]

smerf,

I don't believe you are real, you seem like a cartoon character.

Nevertheless, your words aren't far off from what I'm talking about.  These hate mongers don't just hate 'dictators' they hate most everything....

And who is going to get the worst of it?  Not the europeans...the europeans have the luxury of being very far away...the people who will get the worst of it are OTHER AMERICANS....

McCarthyism is alive and well, we are already attacking our own.  

I'm not worried about the obvious hate mongers like smerf.  Ignorant people like him always exist, and are quickly marginalized.  You won't see any respectable politician talking like smerf...they would be forced to resign almost immediately...remember Newt Gingrich, remember Trent Lott, they had to resign over much tamer language.

No, what concerns me, is people who had previously been somewhat reasonable people are now in a frenzy over the war.  They don't believe in the consitution, they don't believe in due process...they are willing to let the government grab unprecedented levels of power, because they believe its 'necessary' for security.

Only, they forget, if people are so evil, then watch out for unlimited power...anywhere, even in the hands of government...in the end, government is made up of people, not different from anyone else....

more damage is done in the name of 'good causes' than anything else...what happened to restraint, caution, and good judgement....we aren't seeing it these days.

[MarkTime]

As someone who works in the News, I for one say it's the last place you should turn to find out

Here, here.  I wasn't planning on talking on this subject...but lets address it.

Fact: A mexican gets a state issued drivers license.  Why?  Because he knows how to drive and he applied...someone reports that to the news, and we get a big story.

NEWS HEADLINE: Driver's license being issued to illegal aliens.

What is really happening...driver's licenses are for driving skills, DOT is not an immigration agency.
But because of the war frenzy, and general hatred, it tries to become one anyway...

Fact: Legal residents now denied drivers licenses...Why?  because the DOT doesn'tt understand the intricacies of the BCIS and how the 'out of status' levels that don't imply fault, and may, indeed be their own fault..

What the news reports:  NOTHING

Don't worry so much about the news, the regular news is just a certain type of sensationalism that we are used to...but not any different from rags like the National Enquirer.

[MarkTime]

Hey everyone, the real issue is not with the UN but with NATO.

The UN was always a dodgy institution that rarely could ever get anything done.  It isn't just the United States, but Russia too, and for that matter probably France, that couldn't ever get anything passed, always facing a veto from another country.

You don't think the United States ever veto'd anything?   We may complain about veto's now, but we certainly have veto'd plenty a resolution ourselves. (and I'm not saying we shouldn't have)

the bigger issue here, is that NATO was always supposed to support member states, and NATO heretefore was an effective organization...but that ended over this matter cause Germany and France blocked the notification of member state Turkey, over this war effort.  Now, NATO is a political machine and a joke just like the UN, and that represents a change, and a loss.

I really don't think anyone should boycott products based on their country of origin, and I don't think many people will....nevertheless France's economy is shaky with or without this boycott, and it looks like troubled waters ahead.

[MarkTime]

@Dietmar,

the notification of member states in NATO was, heretofore sacrosanct...

of course NATO is political at a certain level, so is everything, but it has also been an historically effective organization, whereas UN is notorious for being political to the extreme in that it was rarely ever effective.  Shall we say , it was once an order of magnitude more political than nato.

do you mean to suggest, avoiding the possibility of an 'impression' being created was a good reason to torpedo the effectiveness of NATO?   That doesn't sound like a very good reason to me.

Notification of member states should have been sacrosanct...sure politicians will play their games, always...but some things should be out of play.

Now, with NATO, as with the UN, nothing is out of play...and its obvious that Nato will act as a 'collective'...only if by sheer coincidence allows that each individual state has the same interests...so much for NATO... it's done.

I think, that all the countries acted without honor to some extent.  France and Germany for torpedoing the effectiveness of NATO just to avoid the possibility that someone might read something into routine notifications....and the U.S. for not demanding the UN vote and allowing it to be veto'd....

Now nato is a joke, the U.N. is (still) a joke....

It's not a good day for international politics, though, to be frank, I am more concerned about the damage going on now, internally in the United States...but that is for another post.

[MarkTime]

@Smerf

I don't know how many people have to tell you and in how many different ways, before you will understand.  The war in Iraq is not related to 9/11.  It wasn't justified in those terms, and they aren't related.

Your man George Bush can freely say that, if he wanted...he isn't saying that....no one is saying that, except you.  Where do you dream this stuff up?

You know Alcaida terror cells operated in America, trained at American flight schools, used American dollars to fund some of their operations...maybe you want to say the United States supports Alcaida too?  We don't, of course.

The reason that argument about Iraw was never made, is because it isn't a true statement.  For all the horrible things he did...he didn't do that one...gotta remember Hussein was part of a specific tribe...all Arabs are not the same, there are divisions in the Arab world...Saddam didn't happen to be a big supporter of Alcaida.

Do you remember Afghanastan...now there was a government that supported Alcaida...and you know what, we went in there and removed that government.  Destroyed the taliban....And everyone supported that, including me.  There was hardly a voice of concern, even in the international community about that.

But where did you get the idea, that we have a license to invade any country at any time now?  because of 9/11??

That just isn't logical thinking, that is your emotions talking.  It is up to America to make responsible decisions.

And I'll be very blunt...we bombed a civilian restaurant because we thought Saddam Hussein might be eating there.  We killed children and women, and WE, this country, decided it was acceptable.

Thats very wrong.

Saddam Hussein deserves to die, and he will die.  We will catch him, but bombing civilians because we have to get him today, we can't get him next week?  That is incredible.

And, its wrong.

And, being a tough guy won't prevent deaths.  Thats where you are wrong.    Eventually,  the Tim McVeighs of this world will be commonplace.  That is, if we keep heading down this path.

I hope it never happens....you and I have the same goals, but I don't agree that this is the right solution.

[MarkTime]

@amigamad

You are too simplistic.  The fact is, as I hate strong armed tactics, and the worst offender of all is Saddam Hussein.

For all the bad decisions our government may have made, it isn't anything on par with the type of cruel, horrible tyrant Saddam Hussein is...I don't feel sorry for him at all.   Given that he needed to be brought to justice, what is the best way?  Not *IF* but how...

The best way, would have been for the iraqi ppl to do it, but they never did.  But, nevertheless I am reminded of the many other options that don't include bombing children at restaurants.

Is it OK to consider them?

For some reason I think of Nicaragua, I guess because its an example where we tried to fund Contra rebels instead of invading ourselves, but its a bit of a lousy example.  We supported the Samoza dictatorship for 40 years, and then when the people of Nicaragua FINALLY got rid of their dictator without our help, we then set about to destroy the Sandinistas....a government that took the illiteracy rate from 50% down to 13%...had free elections resulting in their party winning in a popular vote as well, but still we funded the contra's forcing the government to spend almost all its resources on defense.

Well that isn't a shining example of how to do it either....but its another option to consider.

We talk about the need to stop the Hitler's of the world, but  how would have we stopped Stalin, Lennon, or Mao, even with 20/20 Hindsight....anyone going to suggest invading the one billion plus China?
Or a nuclear force, like Russia?

Eventually we will need to have some solutions in mind that will work against countries that aren't almost completely defenseless, so we should think about it....in some cases we will have to think about persuasion.

And considering that Hitler was freely elected, God forbid, but what if we ever elect a madman?  (no we haven't done that, I support our president, as our president, even if I don't agree with his decisions and will vote against him)....but what if we ever did, remember....a president doesn't need to consult congress before starting wars, he has absolute control.  We keep removing all our safety nets, calling them loopholes, instead of what they really were, which is thoughtful checks based on a study of history and abuses that occur with power.

I'm not a liberal, but I will say one thing, I believe absolutely is true.  People like Timothy McVeigh, they weren't a result of too much love.  Tim McVeigh knew people hated him (or thought they did), and he hated them back.

hate breads hate...it doesn't make the world safer.
Go ahead and criticize pacifists if you want, a true pacificist isn't going to kill you, and in the end, its the people doing the killing that are the problem.  I think hating pacifists is a bit silly.

I'm no pacifist.....I was in the Army myself...oh ya, no kidding....

I am just concerned about the pro-war fever, it's too nationalistic, it isn't tempered with caution.  It's too one sided.

In short, its scary.  But I will be glad when the war is over, and I do think, that one good thing that will come of it, is a better government in Iraq, and I am happy for the Iraqi people in that regard.