213374U

Anti-Onur team? Don't flatter yourself, chump. You aren't that relevant. I came to the conclusion that you may be an Ottoman jingoist by the generally sufficient tone of your comments, your remarks about the Armenian massacre, and that utter idiocy that "your country could easily rule the world", when in fact, you can't even seem to rule your own turf properly. But you're right, I was wrong about you. You aren't an Ottoman jingoist - you are merely disconnected from reality, and the fad is wearing thin fast. Have fun in Wonderland!

But that's exactly the thing - you are assuming that scholars are "on a side", based on where they were born. That's not serious. Conversely, nobody has suggested that Russian accounts of events are dismissed, just because they used to be dirty commies. What "side" are academics that study economic models in Antiquity on, exactly?

Somehow I can live with a purely defensive military. Maybe it's because I'm not an imperialist?A counteroffensive is still an offensive.

And lack of competition is a progress killer. Just how "efficient" you want things to be, anyway? Anarchists in Spain lost the war, and the popular Soviet militias were soon merged into traditional command structures so the revolution could stand a chance against the staggering odds it faced. Democracy in warfare is a placeholder at best, a catastrophe at worst.

Man, you guys suck at discussing the important stuff. In other news,

I would recommend that you read up on how historical research works before taking the "everything is propaganda" route. Of course, you aren't saying that everything is propaganda, only that IT COULD BE. And that is not your opinion, but IT COULD BE, right?

Tell me about it

http://www.examiner.com/x-2383-Honolulu-Ex...fe-is-imminent# Discuss.

Heh, I thought you were kidding. No, the problem with Garrus' face is that they somehow forgot to add in the hi-res LOD texture. And after a year and a half of NERDRAGE on the boards and failed patches, they gave up and announced that they weren't going to fix it.

Except for Garrus' face.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberty-positive-negative/ "Consensus among the desired freedoms of the people" is a notion as easily abused as the unlimited powers of whatever tyrant you wish to appoint, though. And once in motion, it's much more difficult to stop because, well, they are more numerous than the opposition. You use the word "freedom" to refer to different things, namely political power (1), unrestricted physical movement (2), and civil rights or prerogatives (3). And yet, by grouping them under the umbrella of "freedom", you create (consciously or not) an obfuscation. However those things do not guarantee (and are not in themselves) freedom. At any rate, a causal relationship between a specific political configuration and freedom has yet to be formally established. And the link between the trivialisation of political privileges (that's what universal suffrage amounts to) and greater individual liberty is even weaker. This is patently false. There's plenty of examples that show that compatibility between states depends on nothing but compatibility of interests. Dictatorships can get along with democracies just fine (Franco and the US, the Allies and USSR, etc), and democracies are not exempt from fighting other democracies, either. (*)

But is it? Aristes seemed to be pushing the idea that "democracy is necessary and sufficient for freedom". You suggest simply that it is necessary. I contend that it is neither as, for starters, the concept of freedom predates democracy. Your analogy is only valid as a rebuttal to the sufficiency relationship - having legs isn't sufficient to go jogging, even if it's necessary. But I think you are narrowing down the terms to make a point. In a broader sense: it's no longer a matter of jogging, but a matter of simply moving around, and so having legs isn't necessary anymore - jogging isn't the only way to change places possible for man. Likewise, I think that for your argument to work, you need to concrete what "freedom" means exactly in this context. If you mean "the natural right to have one's expressed political opinion count for something", then yes, democracy is necessary. But that's a bit of a circular argument, don't you think? Democracy is necessary and sufficient for democracy.

Freedom is a state of mind, not a political or administrative configuration. People today are "free" to choose which car to buy or what college they want to attend, but they have a hard time thinking freely - we are constantly bombarded by opinions of alleged "experts", political loads of hot air, and outright false data and lies. I take offense at this obstinately Western-centric mentality that democracy has a monopoly on "freedom". Consider yourself glove-slapped, good sir. One of the arguments used to defend the lack of transparency and accountability in the Euro exec organs is that the matters they deal with are of a highly technical nature, and the decisions they must make have to reflect that, which makes them ill-suited for popular consultation. And, to a degree, it's difficult not to agree. But it's the ages-old question: "I'm better than you, so I call the shots and you shut up". Only they aren't appealing to a birthright to back that, but to a professional career. That is both decidedly undemocratic and sensible. Do we place ideology and PR (which, don't kid yourself, is what decides elections) or capacity higher in the hierarchy of importance for traits that leaders should have? No need to worry about Euros becoming a credible rival to the US anytime soon, though. As you said, we're far too provincial for that. A shame, but the question is whether the US is better off being the sole superpower, or they could benefit from the help of a strong Western Roman Em... er, European Union.

Indeed. Weren't you talking about "cheap votes" in some other thread, though? The way the EC works, democracy plays a very small role. And they have done away with separation of powers, too, with an executive organ that has, for all intents and purposes, the attributes of a judicial authority. I see your point - the European directives and legislation promoting empowerment of the local government, coupled with the siphoning of sovereignty off national governments and to the Euro institutions, are an obvious effort to promote political integration and strengthen Euro power at the cost of national sovereignty. Is that good or bad? Maybe you'd be better off with the CW... but would they want you?

You crazy man, crazy! I spent a good 15 minutes browsing that list. Thanks Purkake.

Well, giving away what he can sell wouldn't make him progressive or even coherent... it would make him stupid. That's not what he's talking about, I think. Has he actually sued anyone for illegally copying his book? Yeah it looks like ignoring the concept of intellectual property altogether saves the Chinese the hassle of actually being innovative themselves.

...wow. An Ottoman jingoist? Now I've seen everything.

Hey man how does the war at large affect the Pacific theatre in this game? Do they go for a fully historical timeline or...? edit: the AAR style's cool. The embedded YT vids and WWII-era pics are great for setting the mood. Looks like you're going to spend more time writing this thing up than actually playing the game...

that's what i misinterpreted. you have earned a cookie for the day! Hey, no fair! Where did the posts disappear to? In my opinion as a certified attorney-at-lol, I'd say a law can work as designed, and still fail to accomplish what the lawmakers intended for it.

Okay, taks. You need to read the article, too! edit: by "he", I meant the copyright lawyer the article talks about.

He's actually supporting what taks always goes on about... that big businesses tend to game the system in their favour. He's arguing for less state intervention: You need to read the whole article, not just the first ten lines.

Neat looking little site. Do you think adding a comment feature would be too much work?

The European Commission is in on it. What did you expect? **** won't fly, btw.

Heh, that's a pretty bold claim to make. Further, the math in Bell's is correct, too, but according to Christian, the flaw therein isn't in the math. Again, I'm waiting until I see it published in a peer-reviewed source. If the man is right, any publication would kill to be the one that publishes the epitaph to Bell's theorem. I need to do a bit of research on FQXi 2009 which Christian attended and see how things went. You still have to come up with something better than QT to sustain a deterministic universe, even if we accept that Christian is right. Possibly. Judging by the author's work, it's not the math in Bell's paper that he's attacking, but the way he chose to interpret the topology in EPR's paradox. By using Clifford's he's re-written the topology and found a counterexample to Bell's. Err...