dre

Well... The US brokered peace between Begin and Sadat and forced Egypt to be a decent neighbor instead of a mortal enemy and still funds that deal today. They also have scuttled literally dozens of UN attempts to force Israel to comply with international law. They also give them billions in military and economic aid. They were also instrumental in Israel becoming a state in the first place and the first country in the world to recognize the fledgling state.

Not at all. Publically funded elections are usually cheap no-frills affairs. If you let corporations and special interests into the mix they bid the price of elections way up getting more and more power over government as the price increases. The best result for the public is to have small, cheap, quick publically funded elections. The more money you get in the game and the higher you set the bar the more political insiders with big corporate backing trump candidates with real ideas and virtues.

That of course sounds crazy but youve hit on a point. We could let one side finish the game and win. It would be Israel of course because the palestinians couldnt even drive my uncle pete into the sea. The problem of course is that solution is very unlikely in todays world. Nobody would tolerate the ethnic cleansing of palestinians in the occupied territories and that includes the jewish population of Israel. A more obvious solution would be forced assimilation. Sort of like Canadians and Americans did with the native North Americans. That would ACTUALLY PROBABLY WORK in the long run. The problem is that Israel cant do that because they have to be watchfull of demographics or the state will cease to be jewish before too long. Thats another little fly in the ointment that makes this thing so tough to solve. Thats a good place to start and its worth doing. The problem is that desalination is extremely expensive. Prior to the war in 67 Israel put the water works under the control of the military and when war broke out they immediately sent the military to secure two massive potential water sources. One is the mountain aquifier in the west bank, and the other is the Golan heights which gives Israel a buffer between Syria and Lake Tiberius (AKA the Kinneret basic AKA the Sea of Galilea). Those two regions account for almost 2/3's of Israels water supply and they have spent a lot of money on infrastructure to facilitate its use (the nation water carrier, networks of wells and pipelines etc). The cost to replace all that water with desalination is literally staggering. Desalination plants are very expensive to build and operate and use a massive ammount of energy. Israel would be putting itself at a major disadvantage and has limited resources to spend on mega projects like this. Remember we are talking about two factions (Israelis and Palestinians) that spend so much effort and resources fighting each other they depend on a steady supply of aid and global welfare checks to continue operating. Thats why this is so tough. Both sides are right to do what they do as bizzare as that sounds. Palestians have every right to resist the occupation with whatever force they can muster... And Israel would be crazy to vacate the occupied territories... especially since the world community essentially just toungue lashes them every once in a while and shows no real sign of forcing Israel to give back the territories in question. Ill sign over the deeds for three houses, a boat, a car, a truck, and 100 grand worth of heavy duty equipment if this conflict is resolved while either of us is still alive. Thats how sure I am of how futile a situation this is.

I watch a lot of viral videos and the worst ones I see are usually out of China and Russia. But theres mountains of senseless violence from virtually everywhere. In any case all youre really doing here is showing limited ability to use basic logic. You write a post entitled "Life in Colorful France"... then inside it you post an anecdote consisting of a single viral video. Then you fail to follow it up with any sort of commentary that might spark some sort of meaningfull discussion or debate. And then you think youve made some sort of salient point EPIC FAILURE.

Most of the violence is a symptom of that occupation and will never end before the occupation does. And negotiations youre talking about are a nonstarter, because everyone on earth knows that even if jews and arabs fell in love with each other Israel would not vacate the occupied territories. And EVEN IF a palestinian government was formed that had honest intentions of ending all violence against Israel it would be impossible for them to do it. They could try but theres no way they could keep every militant in check, and as soon as one successful attack against Israel happened the whole deal would be scuttled. So theres no conceivable path to a resolution... which is why this has gone on for half a century already and will still be going on when your great great great great grandchildren are born. There really is no solution to this thing. Isreal cant vacate the occupied territories because they depend on them for 2/3's of their fresh water. And the palestinians will never play nice with Israel as long as the occupation continues, especially while settlement building continues.

Its in the publics best interest to fund elections because thats the only way the government elected will truly represent their interests. Campaign contributions come with strings attached. In places where they are not limited you basically have a system where legislation is brokered during campaigns and by the time a government gets into office they have sold so much government action to private and special interests that serving the public is basically an after thought. I have a theory that the more elections cost the worse the quality of government will be. The more money there is in politics the worse the result will be.

I dont want corporate money in politics. I think the only reason why campaigning is getting more expensive is because of the tactics used. Its the political equivalent of spamming or email blasting... you broadcast your message over and over and over again and hope eventually it sinks in. If we just accept that campaigns need to cost more money and find new ways to bring MORE money into the system then we move further and further away from a system where ordinary people can participate and closer and closer to a system where only political insiders and career politicians rule. Why does an election have to be so expensive? What can you find out from a zillion dollar ad campaign that you couldnt learn from a single well written essay from each candidate followed up by maybe a couple of speeches and townhall style meetings? How does a system where the winner is the guy that sends the most spam make sense or serve anyone?

Nope. Im happy to say that was my first post making fun of an overtly racist troll!

Admirable. But the women in the video is probably very very lucky she didnt respond that way.

I think a merger to create a center/left party and defeat the conservatives might work. But in the long run I think its bad for the country. We would essentially be stuck with a political system oriented around the same divisive and false left/right dichotomy they have south of the border. Id like to see a lot more parties not less.

Has this dork really gone on like this for 1700 posts?

Yup. Silly. You could apply that standard to denigrate virtually any activist for every cause in history. I remember that argument got used lots during the preamble to the Iraq invasion. The people who wanted to level the place and replace the government kept invoking humanitarianism, and the anti war crowd kept saying "if you cared about humanitarianism youd be focused on a bunch of other places (darfur, sudan, haiti, etc etc etc)". Its a form of logical fallacy.

Yeah... suprised and super dissapointed too!

Because in some cases inventors would not put the same time and energy into creating new works if they thought they were going to get shut out of the market by someone that can steal their idea and commercialize it faster. It cuts both ways. Too much protection hampers innovation and no protection could as well. Its just gone way way way too far. I would propose a cap on how long protection lasts. Maybe 5 - 10 years tops. This enhance innovation and increase the speed at which new ideas and products are delivered. After that it would be fair game.

Thats a stupid question really. People become emotionally attached to various causes all the time. Its human nature. Just because Naomi posts a lot about the middle eastern conflict without giving equal time to every other injustice in the history of the human race doesnt mean shes a hypocrit. You could flip that coin, and attach a feminist for not giving equal time to the middle east conflict... and it would still be equally silly.

How would the Itunes agreement you posted stop a person from listening to a song for ten thousand years if he could live that long? Clearly all the artists with music on there are ok with their material being licensed on a perpetual basis to a single user as long as they follow the terms of the license. And thats exactly why media manufacturers are in such big trouble. Like I said they are trying to use intellectual property law to protect their role as manufacturers but its not gonna work and soon theyre gonna gonna go bye bye.

I dont think it should be free, and I dont think patents and copyrights are necessarily stupid. The problem is that various industrial lobbies have been able to bastardize these protections into the grotesque laws we have today. I would support laws that accomplish the origional goal of patents which was to provide temporary protection to ensure sure that the origional inventor has "first movers advantage", and can make decent money off his product before generics and knock-offs hit the market. Anything beyond that stifles creativity and puts undue restriction on the flow of information and ideas. Patent protection was origional put in place to ENCOURAGE innovation but if its too strong it does the exact opposite.

What makes me think that is the rapidly growing indy scene and the trend of artists migrating away from the traditional business model and the dinosaurs that use it. What indication can you provide that your average artist would expect listeners to have to pay for the same usage rights multiple times? If thats what they wanted then an expiry date would be written into the usage license. Its not.

I dont see any expiry of the license in there. And they dont try to stop you from making backups either. Which is why modern services like Itunes are thriving and the obsolete part of the industry that has relied on making money from manufacturing instead of selling intellectual property usage licenses is slowly dying.

Thats how it worked about 50 years ago. But now lenders sell mortgages just like car companies sell cars. Mortgages are bundled into MBS's (mortgaged backed securities) which are then sold on a global market. Those MBS's are sold in a series of different tranches to different purchasers based on the level of risk they are willing to assume and the potential reward they expect. These are whats commonly referred to as derivatives.

No they dont... the intellectual property rights only extend beyond the artist if they wish to sell them. The vendor contributes ABSOLUTELY NO INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AT ALL to a piece of media. They create the media using a format that someone else invented, and a process that someone else invented... and the put the material on it (material the artist invented), then they sell it. They have not created a single iota of intellectual property that any protection should be applied to. ALL ENTERTAINMENT VENDORS DO IS SELL INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LICENSES FOR SOMEONE ELSES WORK.

I know such rights are there because theres nothing on any CD or DVD Iv ever bought saying that I can only use them for a certain ammount of time. The intellectual property license I have purchases does not expire. I cant use it for as long as I like as long as I comply with its terms (dont sell it, dont distribute it, etc). Do you have any backup at all for your assertion that theres some kind of expire date on the intellectual property usage license I buy when I purchase a song from a vendor? I think youre just making that up to be honest.

Im not twisting any facts at all. I havent even read the law only the origional post in this thread which says... That makes it sound to me like you couldnt make a high quality copy without breaking the lock... and the law.

Can I get a comment on this from anyone? Is there any real reason to oppose this project besides just appeal to emotion? Does the project violate any sort of city ordinance or zoning bylaw? Does it conflict with the community plan? And would it even be legal to deny a permit for this project based on it being associated with a particular religion? Are people REALLY suggesting that the city craft its zoning policy and its community plan around people who are offended by something on ethnocentric or religiocentric grounds? I think its ok if people are mistakenly angry with Islam over the actions of a radical terrorist groups that happens to be islamic. Illogical but OK. I even thing its ok for people to flat out have a hatred or bias against muslims. Misguided but to each his own. But for these people to expect a municipal government to adopt this sort of thing as a means of determining who can apply for a building permit in a certain area and who cant seems really really stupid to me.

Women are at risk if they adventure into the wrong kind of neigborhoods no matter where in the world they do it or who lives there. The OPs author took viral video of a moron assualting a girl and coupled it with the title "Life in Colorful France". But I could post viral videos of similar incidents happening in almost every country in the world and perpetrated by people of literally every race, nationality etc. That why this thread was such a tragic failure, and such an unmitigated adventure in uselessness and idiocy