Re: Politics again! (was: Re: DebConf 2 post-mortem)
On Thu, 11 Jul 2002 07:17, Sam Couter wrote:
> [ I'm actually prolonging the pain here ]
They'll start saying that Australians are terrorist sympathisers again...
> Scott Dier <dieman@ringworld.org> wrote:
> > There is a majority here that want drugs to not be out there. Theres a
> > majority here that dont paticulary like terrorists.
>
> And a majority that don't think black people should be able to vote, or
> sit in the same seats on the bus as white people?
The majority decided in the early 1860's to allow black people to become
citizens rather than property. As for seats on busses, I think that the
majority wanted that for a long time before it came about in ~1970.
> Democracy is just mob rule of a different magnitude.
Except if you have a senate and a congress/parliament that get selected in
different fashions (generally population vs region representative), then
maybe have a monarch/president/governer-general with the power to sack a
prime-minister, and have courts that are independant of the government and
have the power to defeat bad laws.
A modern democracy is a long way from having a group of people vote on what
happens.
> > I personally think
> > that people who wage war over an idea with no state linked backing are
> > criminals and not 'soldiers'. If a state is involved, its just warfare
> > of a different type.
>
> Define "state". Compare your definition with others. Wage war to force
> others to accept your definition as the only correct definition.
It gets even more tricky when you have multiple organizations that consider
themselves to be the "state" and their opposition to be terrorists.
> > What should be scaring you is the "strike first" crap that gets spouted
> > off about Iraq. Talk about setting a example for the others in the
> > neighborhood.
>
> But it's alright if the good guys strike the bad guys first, because
> they're... well... bad. And we're good. Yeah, hooray for our side!
BTW If the Australian Liberal government gets it's way, then they'll have
the power to detain both of us indefinately without trial for having this
conversation. They might even declare Debian to be a "banned" organization
for opposing MS. This is all for the "war on terror".
--
I do not get viruses because I do not use MS software.
If you use Outlook then please do not put my email address in your
address-book so that WHEN you get a virus it won't use my address in the
>From field.
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-request@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org
Reply to: