Stalins Organ
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Posts posted by Stalins Organ
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If you have all the resources you'll probably have all the Chinese too....
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I wonder if anyone has done a similar study on wind, totalling the number of turbines required to generate 15 TW at 1MW/turbine (that would be 15 million at how much area, dead birds & neighbour each?), plus they take some materials to build to, dunno what their "life" is, but assuming 50 years like nuke plants that means building/replacing 820 or so every day.......
Disposing of the composite materials in old blades might be a problem - are they biodegradable? safe for the environment? etc., etc.
why is it pepole take these things to extremes?
Nuclear power is never going to supply 100% of power in the first place -home roof-top hot water systems see to that if nothing else:rolleyes:
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Here in NZ with a nationalised health system we have something called "Pharmac" - dunno if the Ausies have similar.
It is teh NZ Govt drug purchasing agency - a single buyer for all publically supplied medicines. So not only are only a limited number of drugs subsidised, but all drugs purchased for use in the public system are purchased through Pharmac, at contracturally agreed rates.
As such they can and do "play off" drug manufacturers against each other, use generics to push the price down, etc.
Pharmac buys whatever gives the best cost-benefit - so it is prety unlikely to buy (say) a $250,000/year treatment that will help 1 person if that means it can't buy 100 x $2500/yr treatments that will give benefits to more people.
and yes we regularly have cases where ppl complain that they can't get something through Pharmac that would save their lives and Pharmac replying that they can't afford it on a limited budget, criticisms that better drugs could be bought (invariably at much higher cost), etc which is used to pressure the Govt to increase health spending, etc (which is already about 18-19% of the NZ Govt budget!).
"Big Pharma" hates it, and is lobbying the heck out of the US Govt to make NZ give this up as part of any "free trade" deal.
Note that people ARE still free to buy whatever they can under insurance or other private schemes, or even direct from manufacturers if they have whatever connections it takes to do so legally. Although as I understand it insurance mostly deals through Pharmac too, as the drugs are cheaper than buying "retail".
but probably 90% or more of NZ drugs are supplied through Pharmac.
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I think that forgetting that government is a social contract, under which people expect safeguards for all, equality before the law, communial services, etc. is one of the most dangerous ideas in the world today.
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What blows me away is that the German population are expected and DO work hard until 65 when they finally reach retirement age and can enjoy some return on all the taxes they've paid while the Greek equivalent insist it's their right to still retire at 55 and get bailed out by the EU (read Germany mainly) to maintain the privilege. How does that work?
Watch the video I linked to......
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SO are you implying that all those roads are not directly funded by drivers! Thats atrocious. Only those that use certain roads should pay for them.
: )
I was reading a remark made by the head of Amtrak a few years ago to John McCain who suggested removing Amtrak's subsidies - teh head suggested that it would be fine as long as it also involved removing the subsidies to the regional airlines that fly around McCains home state of Arizona.
apparently Mr McCain pulled his head in at that point.....
According to that section of wiki -
Highways, airports, and air traffic control all require large government expenditures to build and operate, coming from the Highway Trust Fund and Aviation Trust Fund paid for by user fees, highway fuel and road taxes, and, in the case of the General Fund, by people who own cars and do not-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amtrak#The_21st_Century
Not sure exactly what those are, so my originalquestion - which parts of the transport system are not taxpayer supported?
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Here's all you need to know:
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What transport system in the USA doesn't get govt funding?
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As the article says - the roles are reversed - usually it is the "rich" nations concerned about the economy of "poor", but with china holding perhaps $2 trillion in US debt, andy collapse of the $ would hit the value of their savings pretty hard.
so any hint that the US may default on any part of its sovereign debt (as mentioned in the article) is quite a concern to them.
Also if the Chinese are in this positin perhaps it is time to drop the fiction that they are a "devloping" country??!!
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Except when those dying have already decided that they want to be "do not resuscitate".
Even then take hem out of the hospice as they are on the decline and see what reaction your get.
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I don't think there is a common understanding as to what constitutes "decent" health care.
For those dying or with rellies about to die it is everything that is necessary to keep them alive regardless of cost.
For insurance companies it is whatever their tables tell them the premiums are worth.
For those administering fixed budgets it is whatever gets them the least opprobrium from those who don't get what it takes to save their lives!
For politicians it is whatever gets them re-elected.
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Yep - so as I understand it, now all those people that might have gotten that healthcare get nothing at all - instead of some gtting some care, all get none.
So the "death panel" still existed, and did a much better job killing people than than "Obamacare" might have?
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That's fine if you have an infinite amount of money to spend - or if yuo are spending your own (or have insurance, etc), but for those spending taxpayer dollars in health I believe it is an entirely reasonable and indeed a necessary criteria to take into account.
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I was thinking of hte code name last night - I cant' help but think that Nazi leader names might have been moer apporpriate
Eg
Adolph - if he had killed himself
Mengele - if he wasn't found
Himmler - if captured alive
Heydrich - if killed in the operation
Whadaya think - should I contract to the US to supply them better code names??
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Given that is was BinLaden it makes perfect sense to me that the administration has to say SOMETHING about how the effort to track him down finally succeeded - it would be much stranger if they'd said nothign at all.
The no-landline thing isn't quite so obvious as you make it IMO - the compound had no wires AT ALL.
And while there may not be garbage trucks in much of Pakistan, it is still apparently normal to take your own rubbish and dump it somewhere - burnign it ALL onsite is apparently not teh norm for the country any more than pickups are.
Moreover by mentioning all these factors they could be being a bit disingeneous - saying that these aspects raised suspicion so people wont' use them in the future, but if they resort to more "usual" behaviour then it would probably make tracking easier - (you get to tap phone lines, examine rubbish)
So this is the yanks saying "See - all your attempts to hide actually drew our attention!", even though they also made tracking harder, trying to persuade other people who are hiding not tp repeat these efforts and therefore being easier to track.
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You should drop the patronising tone mate.
that would spoil thepatronising effect - which was deliberate......mate.
Whether the killing is justified or retaliation or murder is simply a matter of perspective..
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That is the root of the problem, until such time as we gain the maturity as a species to move beyond the law of the jungle we are doomed to continue on this path.
First you say it's a matter of perspective, then yuo state it as a moral imperative as if your perspective is more important than everyone else's.
We've evolved into the animals we are over a billion years or so.......expecting significant change in the mere 10,000 years or so of "civilisation" and 60 years of "western liberalism" is unrealistic...childish even IMO.
I prefer to deal with the reality of what we are now and for the foreseable future.
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The engine didn't fail mechanically - it apparently stalled due to the complex wash generated by its own rotors ansd the high walls.
Turbine engines do this occasionally - even big jet engines - it can create a massive "backfire" & seriously damage an engine. Turbulent airflow into an engine can be a factor so a lot of design work goes into smoothing the airflow into the engine to prevent it.
I don't have any personal knowledge of such a thing happening, but it doesn't seem outlandish to me that a helicopter coming into a complex airflw envirnment might suffer a compressor stall, and have no room to recover before hitting the ground too hard.
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I remember Armstrong's walk being shown live, and very grainy, on B&W TV...at least I think I do
It was possibly the 1st live networked broadcast in NZ from outside the country??My dad got a moon-globe and a thin vinyl record of the radio coms as they descended in Nat Geographic.
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So killing should be answered with killing?
It usually is in a war.
and I have no great problem for killing to be punished by killing either, as long as ther is no doubt. I've bee nattacked for that position on here before, am happy to be attacked for repeating it
.They kill and cheer in the streets then we kill and cheer in the streets, I was saddened the other night by the scenes of jubilation in America mainly because it looked just like down town Baghdad with different hair styles.I am saddened that you cannot see the difference between killing somone who advocates and practices mass murder of civilians, and killing mass numbers of civilians.
i really think you should think about it a bit more.
You do not defeat your enemy by becoming your enemy in fact you hand them victory.Just as well we haven't become AQ then - phew - glad we dodged the bullet on that one!
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The killing wasn't terrorism, since ObL was an officer in an organisation that has declared war (however asymmetrical) on the US
i'm pretty sure that rule only applies to states, not any bunch of nutters who wants to get organised.
and the shooting was by uniformed US personnel. Similarly, it wasn't an 'extra-legal execution', since he was attempting to fight back. IANAL.ther seems to be some discussion about that now- with the white house reporting he was unarmed but resisting??
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If it seems like a tin-foil conspiracy ... well fair enough. I am just thinking what could happen in the real world. ; )
you should pop across to "Above Top Secret" - the forum there is full of nutcase ideas that make your look entirely rational.
there's the one where Benazair Bhutto was killed because revealed that OBL was killed years ago, and the release of hte info jsut now is solely to bolster Obama's re-election chances....or the Canadian Govt's chances, or something like that...it's kind of hard to say...
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These two bear special reply..
In our case, no matter how we treat the prisoners, we are killed if taken prisoner ourselves.
shame the war is so screwed up huh?
Sometimes wars are like that, but not all that often overall.
Also, to your second point..I realize you are probably defending your (here to be un-named) countryman who haunts this boardwrong again.
...but I have been to Guantanamo, where I would venture to guess most of the people posting in this column have not. I am not "speaking out of my ass" but I would say that anyone who lumps the entire thing into "bad"category,without ever having been there to see with their own eyes, is the one making an ass of themselves. I agree there are issues there..probably even some serious ones, but a verse in the Christian Bible seems to have the best part here.."Let he who is without sin cast the first stone"..mostly, I am tired as hell of people who themselves,and their countries, make far more mistakes, or, for the sake of argument, we will even say "make the same amount of mistakes" having the gall to accuse the US, at every step of the way.Whether I have been to Guantanamo or not, I still have the ability to form an opinion on it from all the info that has been put out.
And if you (as a country) cannot convince me - a western liberal atheist - that the people you have locked up there are a bunch of nutcase religous fanatics that are a danger to everyone (and I'm completely predisposed to think of religious fanatics as dangerous nutcases!!) then that's your fault - not mine!
Perhaps if some of these countries defended themselveswho is it you thnk hasn't defended themselves from which attack??
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SO..first, yes, it was a "nonsense"comparison,the point is that the other comparisons you are not seeming to get
Perhaps you should use reasonable ones then, instead of resorting to stupidity?!
..and FYI..*most* of the detainees at Gitmo were battlefield prisoners, although, not all.Not even close:
Among the data revealed by this Report:
1. Fifty-five percent (55%) of the detainees are not determined to have committed any hostile acts against the United States or its coalition allies.
2. Only 8% of the detainees were characterized as al Qaeda fighters. Of the remaining detainees, 40% have no definitive connection with al Qaeda at all and 18% are have no definitive affiliation with either al Qaeda or the Taliban.
3. The Government has detained numerous persons based on mere affiliations with a large number of groups that in fact, are not on the Department of Homeland Security terrorist watchlist. Moreover, the nexus between such a detainee and such organizations varies considerably.
Eight percent are detained because they are deemed “fighters for;” 30% considered “members of;” a large majority – 60% -- are detained merely because they are “associated with” a group or groups the Government asserts are terrorist organizations. For 2% of the prisoners their nexus to any terrorist group is unidentified.
4. Only 5% of the detainees were captured by United States forces. 86% of the detainees were arrested by either Pakistan or the Northern Alliance and turned over to United Statescustody.
This 86% of the detainees captured by Pakistan or the Northern Alliance were handed over to the United States at a time in which the United States offered large bounties for capture of suspected enemies.
5. Finally, the population of persons deemed not to be enemy combatants – mostly Uighers – are in fact accused of more serious allegations than a great many persons still deemed to be enemy combatants.
And what I said in the end, was most soldiers have found it easier to shoot than take prisoners...that is not saying that most soldiers did take the easy way, but, it is saying,that those taken prisoner, are lucky,that their captors chose the harder way.Got any evidence to support your self contradiction??
Like I said - you should have shut up on this topic rather than keep looking stupid:rolleyes:
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whatever....
The end justifying the means, is a debatable issue..not sure on which side of that I stand..for certain, to do wrong, in favor of a right end, I think is still wrong..my argument here, is that I do not think that it is wrong to punish the guilty.
doesn't that require the establishment of guilt, which is normally done by trial, which was my point in the first place??!!
Perhaps in NZ, you allow murderers to run loose, rapists to prowl at night, pedophiles to "shop" in schools...are you trying to be offensive? Or are you just stpuid?
And yes, these are just nonsense examples, I know you do not.so you were just being stupid:rolleyes:
Here's a tip - it's better not to be stupid if you can avoid it.
In every war in history, prisoners were taken...they are, really, lucky they were not shot on the battlefields,most of the people at Gitmo were not taken on battleifields at all AFAIK, so yet another irrelevant comparison from you.
as most soldiers in history, including from your country, have usually found that easier than dealing with prisoners.bullshirt
certainly peole have sometimes not taken prisoners - but to say that "most" soldiers in history have not done so is supposition - stupid supposition at that.
Most soldiers in history have been delighted to take prisoners - because prisoners can be sold for cash, and because they don't want to be shot if they themselves get captured!
IMO you should shut up on this topic before you make even more of an ass of yourself!
It was possibly the 1st live networked broadcast in NZ from outside the country??
Why is medicine expensive?
in General Discussion Forum
Posted
Costard AFAIK most US rail track IS actually in private lands, and them scheduling their freight trains over Amtrak passenger trains has been an issue that has required several law changes to address.