So? If the USG decides to ignore the treaties, like it did with the treaties it signed with the Indian nations during the 19th century, the space treaty will be meaningless.

The Space treaty may make it illegal but no sanctions are specified. If the USG depenalizes space homesteading and allows people to sell ressources brought back from space, the treaty will be dead. Prior examples: The treaties the USG signed & then ignored with Indian tribes during the 19th century.

Peeking at my profile, I see sniveler. Nope, France isn't communist.

There are so few who recognise the quote: Bravo.

I will have you know that I set it long ago when participating in a particular long forgotten thread on /. & never saw any reason to change it.

As for it being number sticker wisdom, well given the length limitations on both number stickers & /. sigs, content is bound to be similar.

As Churchill so astutely said: Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

Democracy is far far from perfect, but the other systems are worse.

Not surprising. I've noticed that the people capable of belittling communism's crimes against humanity are very often incapable of normal rational thought.

Snort. 19th century oppression of women in psyciatric hospitals is not a valid counter-argument to me pointing out that no-one was condemned to an insane asylum in the US or condemned to prison with all their belongings confiscated by the government for merely daring to oppose the ruling party, so no, it's not like the Patriot act.

Attempting to use such a weak argument just shows that you have no better counter argument.

Get rid of your dictator and adopt a representative democracy and it will be over. Indeed, nobody could have thought it would go on this long.

The thing is, as many a Slashdotter has pointed out, you can't accomplish the same thing virtually. If you let people download material from a library then there are only two realistic options. One is that you provide the material with huge amounts of DRM and interfere with readers' own systems in dubious ways. The other is that you create a blatant avenue for copyright infringement and inherently give it special legal blessing that is intended to protect the public resource of a library for entirely different reasons. It is highly unlikely that libraries would support the former, and there is no way the latter was going to fly legally.

Cigarettes are undeniably bad. So are trans-fats, alcohol overconsumption, and too much stress.

The existence of stressors is not necessarily bad. How you deal with stress is more important.

What country sized example of long term communist rule which doesn't turn into fascism or dictatorships are you referring to? I didn't see any. Note that I do not lump socialism in with communism.

I agree that small scale communism has it's merits (kibbutzim being a good example where it works very well), but county size communism has failed every time, transforming itself over time into what should more properly be called fascism (rule by a small cadre) in many cases the boiling itself down to rule by tyrants. Thus IMO in the country sized communist systems, you're trying to draw a line where is no real difference.

No-one was condemned to an insane asylum in the US or condemned to prison with all their belongings confiscated by the government for merely daring to oppose the ruling party, so no, it's not like the Patriot act.

No-one was sent to Guantanamo for peaceful opposition of the ruling party in the US either, so no, it's not like Guantanamo either.

So, that makes the sniveling coward voluntarily wrong, yet again.

Junior? I was born before JFK was assassinated & was an adult in Berlin days after the wall fell, bucko.

So, the men & women I met from a number of different countries who described in detail their experiences of Communist rule that I briefly relayed were all liars.

Source: Russians, Ex-eastern Germans, Cubans, Chinese, Romanians, Nicaraguans, Vietnamese. Poles, Lithuanians, Hungarians.

No, we should all believe a sniveling coward without the courage to post in his own name that claims that all the personal experiences and documented abuses of Communism are a "boogieman" [sic] because he left one (probably former) Communist ruled country before he was an adult. Your lies are transparently seen for what they are, coward: Voluntary ignorance.

Communists in power don't force people to drink vodka & eat borscht you sniveling coward, they confiscate all your belongings, outaw dissent & condemn people to hard prison or insane asylums without fair trials.