Then you are bound to acknowledge that THEY claim the high ground by THEIR measures and THEIR society.

Given this difference, it remains to be asked who the agressor is in waging war to impose external standards upon whom.

I don't see how simply being a theocracy automatically makes it "better", and death penalty for adultery and stoning may seem grotesque to a Western mind, but to a society that accepts and considers that to be just, well, that's their choice. Having spoken to Iranians, they don't have a problem with either punishment, as they consider those "crimes" to be undermining of the social fabric.

Don't even attempt to claim the moral high ground when it comes to justice as delivered from the state. Modern legal systems are no better (arguably worse) than the systems that went before them. Theyshoot people with no cause, blatantly imprison people for no valid reason and deliberately frames its own people for military ends. Not to mention such famous institutions as Guantanamo and those black op torture programs carried out by the CIA.

But wait, we have democracy I hear you say? If you call the circus that is the two party system "democracy", then I'm a flee on a baboon's arse. There's no meaningful difference between the parties, and on those occasions where they promise to fix the mistakes of the previous administration ("I'll close Guantanamo" said Barak), if the people actually give them the chance to carry out the promise, they simply renege when the time comes.

I think it's time the so-called "Free World" got off its moral high horse and recognised that it is no better than the barbaric hordes it's fighting against. Indeed, when viewed from the Other Side, we're the barbaric hordes.

Do you have any evidence to the contrary*? There's plenty of evidence supporting that proposition.

Just sayin'.

* Deliberately mistranslated speech outtakes and vague references to financial support to terrorist groups doesn't count as "evidence" unless you're a moron.

Please stop calling out idiots on Slashdot. Slashdot wouldn't be Slashdot without them.

Everyone uses a road *somewhere*. Why tax each road user for his particular stretch of road? Why not just tax everyone who uses roads, say through vehicle registration fees, and skip the costs associated with setting up infrastructure to monitor, track and charge each road user's particular use? Roads and other basic infrastructure have alwasy been, and *should* always be, free to all. Regulating use of the basic infrastructure assets of the economy slows down the process of doing just about anything by adding unnecessary management. To illustrate this point with an extreme example, how fast could you travel down the road at night if you had to stop to put a coin into every street light to turn it on as you passed by it? Would you rather not just pay an annual lump sum, even if it meant paying a little more or less than your fair share? To a greater or lesser extent, user-pays for basic infrastructure introduces these inefficiencies, creating frictional resistance to basic human activity.

But don't let these practical considerations stand in the way of fundamentalist privatism.

Search warrants are only a "heavy measure" when the public is using the legal system to uphold their rights. When they are being used by the government of so called "democratic nations" to get around the public's rights, it's a different story.

Clearly this article is from terrorists intent on destroying the defect system that we call "democracy". We should bomb the Yahoo servers for collaborating with the enemy.

Absolute gold. I love that quote.

That >2% comes from the funds that they don't spend invading other countries, feeling you up at the airport and paying spooks to pore over your Facebook profile.

I think his point was that it wasn't an injustice, but turned out to be a positive. However, well done on isolating out the perceived negative in his post just so you could point out that you don't care about it.

"Plotting to destroy every human alive at noon GMT June 3rd, 2007"

Dude, plotting do do ANYTHING 4 years in the past is not only not a waste of time, it's frikkin' cool. Plus there are all sorts of puns that can be made when you're talking about wasting time by doing something in the past. So many that I wasn't able to pick one and had to settle for a meta reference to them all.

"mathematically impossible"

What you mean to say is "mathematically improbable". If you're going to split hairs, then make sure your hairs are properly split, lest some bigger, more pedantic anal retentive pedant come and split it for you.

Being from South Africa and having worked in health care, I can confidently tell you that the only people who think dumbass shit like "vaccines are a government plot" are "educated" people from first world countries.

Don't go lumping all religions together. There is nothing in Islam that says contraception isn't allowed, and there's plenty of literature (both recent and ancient) on the subject that says that sex can and should be fun.

Consider:
* The scale of CFC dispersal into the atmosphere from these things is so small that it's literally like complaining that raw sewage pollution is ruining the ocean when a 5 year old toddler pees his pants while buliding a sandcastle on the beach.
* Those who need these things are not in a position to go without. You get them, or you live a miserable life, or potentially die.

The cost/benefit analysis in this case is CLEARLY in favour of making CFC use in medicinal asthma inhalers an exception to the CFC ban. If the alternatives were the same price, I'd be all for it. But those asthmatics who are less well-heeled may find a 3x increase in medicate prices a little difficult. I am all for banning CFCs and crimping corporate profits in favour of the environment, but this is just silly.