Sertorius

In theory, but in reality the majority of people in Venezuala disagree. In fact they are doing better than they did before. And thats all that matters. Well, I'm not proposing that Venezuela's government be changed, but we can still debate whether Chavez's changes will be good in the long term. I don't doubt that Chavez's policies are popular and have some short-term benefits. One question is whether Venezuela's economy has the power to sustain Chavez's programs over the long term, or whether it will implode under their weight. It's easy for a government to hand out money, but the economy must keep up with the bill or the system will fail.

The fact is china is a big player and the U.S dont like it , its got nothing to do with venezuela. People simply dont like the fact that china is a superpower and it just sealed a deal for its future energy source and never dropped a single bomb . Interesting. I wonder whether the China-Venezuela relationship will resemble, say, the old USSR-Cuba relationship. There's definitely more than a whiff of a "big brother" to "little brother" relationship.

No, we were talking about them because Chavez appears to be leading his country into an economic pit. It would still be an interesting matter if Bush ignored the country totally. Well, you'll notice that "Venezuela" is in the title of the thread. That might (I think) imply that the subject of the thread has something to do with Venezuela. Since Uganda (genocide) and Zimbabwe (authoritarian capitalism) aren't carrying out similar policies, I don't see why they'd be mentioned in this thread. Start a new thread about one of them if you're itching to talk about those problems. Edit - As far as I know, discussion in this thread has mostly been about Chavez's apparent desire to turn Venezuela into a socialist state, and the reasons why that change could be good or bad. But since, to my knowledge, Uganda and Zimbabwe aren't ruled by men who want to make them socialist states, I don't see why they'd be discussed in the thread.

Er, that's completely irrelevant in a thread about Venezuelan politics. It doesn't matter if that's true, as the discussion was about Chavez's politics, not his moral position next to George Bush.

Even in the most capitalist countries, industries don't tell countries what they need, they just provide countries with items that the people want. People buy items because they want those items, not because they're told to purchase them. Communist purges in Cambodia. A basic high school history class, I'd assume. This is where theory and reality collide violently. Socialism/Communism both depend on a tremendously powerful central authority to change the system. The naive assumption is that this almost all-powerful central authority will step aside once a stable state is achieved. In practice, of course, the kind of iron-willed, power-obsessed people who aspire to positions of such power are never willing to give that power up. In theory, men like Stalin and Mao would never be at the head of a Communist government. In reality, ruthless men like them naturally bubble to the surface and land in positions of central authority. As usual, human nature puts a major crimp in idealistic political theory. No, humans aspire to gain items/power because of basic, hardwired instincts. Humans want food, shelter, and sex, and it is in their basic biological programming to get as much of these things as possible, through whatever means necessary. Power gets people food, it gets them shelter, and it gets them sex. Therefore, people will seek power, whether it is financial, politicial, aesthetic, or in some other form. How is this an improvement? Bill Gates may be millions of times richer than me, but he can't get one of his Party friends to throw me in a gulag if he doesn't like me. The USSR probably had around the same power differences as the US did at the time, the power was just in different forms. Why? I wasn't the one claiming that consumption is a "cancer", so why should I be held up to some ridiculous notion of moral purity through minimal spending? Now you're just making up arguments and putting them in my mouth. I never claimed that I need what I buy, but then again I wasn't the one claiming that consumption was cancerous. You on the other hand, claimed that consumption was cancerous, so you should have a clean life free of all unnecessary consumption. Either that, or you're extremely hypocritical. No, it's because neoconservatives believe that the way to eliminate negative feelings towards America is to invade and replace governments with democracies. Odd in theory, and definitely not all that effective in practice. I think it's an understatement to say that sentiments like this border on imperialism. Last time I checked, the US and Europe donate many billions of dollars every year through state-run foreign aid and private charities. It requires a great deal of technology and experience to produce those items with enough quantity and quality to compete on the world market. You can't just set up an oil well and start selling oil, you need to have equipment that can pull up that oil just as quickly and cheaply as your competitors in other nations. To afford that equipment, you need someone to invest a great deal of money. Are you actually defending Stalin's purges? That would imply an almost staggering level of historical ignorance. He wasn't killing traitors, he was replacing the command structure with idiotic yes-men. Since when? Sure, it's nice to not have to worry about your own health care, but that doesn't make free advanced procedures a "right". I'm even going to go into the sheer economic ridiculousness of "guaranteeing" advanced care. Just for starters, it would cost around $2,000,000,000,000,000 to guarantee everyone on the planet a heart transplant. Last time I checked, nobody has the budget to pay for multi-quadrillion dollar programs. You're right, people will be too busy trying to keep their crops from dying and their animals from starving to worry about their jobs. You know, most hand-crafter goods are much more expensive/rare than mass produced items. Downgrading to a craft-based economy would make items that we consider necessities become rare luxuries. If medicine was produced individually by Amazonian medicine men, toilet paper was hand-woven, and clothes were hand made, then we'd have a world with very little medicine, no toilet paper, and a few semi-clothed people. Ah, the march of progress... Well, the sudden drop in food production would probably cause an itty-bitty little famine and maybe a few billion deaths through starvation. Nope, no problem here, moving along... By the way, I've worked on a farm, and modern technology has not made the work a joyful, liberating experience. It is still hard, hot, and boring.

I'm sure he cares, he just understands that if you want to distribute wealth, then you need an economy to generate some wealth. That is, after all, how European pseudo-socialism functions: The mostly capitalist economy pumps money into government coffers, and from those coffers it is distributed in a semi-socialist manner. Er, a better question would be "Do you ever acknowledge that the Cuban system is dysfunctional at best, instead of trying to persuade yourself that a state that provides taxpayer-funded, crappy medical care must therefore be functioning well?" Well, this is an interesting example of logic at work. "The couch is totally black, but it's totally white too!" A country with little to no skilled labor cannot conjure up a functional industrial economy without either: A. A sudden wave of well-educated immigrants. B. A well-funded, smoothly operating educational system turning out qualified workers. Venezuela has neither. Driving out businessmen who could invest in businesses is not a winning tactic for the country. Capitalism will only lose its power when we can create individuals that don't have the basic instincts to gain power. Why? That's neoconservatism run amok, not bad capitalism. What? If that's true, then every organic lifeform on the planet is a cancer. Everything consumes, and most lifeforms consume more than is essential for basic survival. Guess what, you do the same thing. Unless you live naked in the jungle, living a pure hunter-gatherer lifestyle, you buy items that you don't need. Clothes, porn, booze, condoms, books, computers, cars, and soon-to-be-released copies of ArmA are all items that are completely unnecessary for life. They did not "disappear" because wicked white men killed off their food source. They were driven off their land and onto reservations because of westward expansion, driven by American desire for land and backed up with racism. If you're going to talk about the cruel excesses of capitalism, then at least get your facts straight. You should start listening to your own advice and start paying attention to evolving ideas. Marxism is a centuries-old, woefully outdated system based on an incredibly naive and inaccurate view of human nature. Edit: If you're going to try to make an emotional argument against capitalism by showing pictures of a starving child, then I may as well make an emotion argument against Communism:

Accusing me of jingoism is pretty absurd. I simply stated that Mexico is extremely corrupt, and that corruption is an important factor in suppressing Mexico's economic growth. Economic growth is suppressed when the government runs companies into the ground, and you can look at the state-run company Pemex as an example. That company currently makes 77 billion in revenue, but because the government chisels it for as much tax money as possible (60% of its total revenue is paid in various royalties and taxes), the company is in debt. It's not as if Mexico is lacking in oil wells, and if the government took some of the chains of Pemex, it could grow and provide both more jobs and more tax income. That's just nonsensical. The country's debt and other problems have much to do with the corruption, in fact the corruption is an important cause of those problems. In essence, you just said that Mexico would be less corrupt if it was less corrupt. Look, when did I ever start implying that the US economy was clean and corruption free? Of course it isn't corruption free, but as far as I know, it is less corrupt. Even if the companies were as corrupt, at least they're growing and turning profits. You can say what you will about Exxon Mobil, but it's turning a tidy profit, producing lots of jobs, and providing plenty of tax money (And perhaps a few "gifts" for certain Texan politicians). I think that proposal has become a casualty in the debate. By this point, many Republicans have reached such a level of discontent with Bush's perceived weakness on immigration that they will not tolerate any proposal until border controls are strengthened.

And how, exactly, is the US going to "improve" Mexico's government? The massive corruption can't be eliminated without major reform, and the officials who profit from the corruption aren't about to attack that same corruption. Since Mexico is essentially flushing its poor and dissatisfied into the US before they can make trouble, then perhaps tightening the border will keep more of those dissatisfied Mexicans in their own country, where they could create some internal change. Otherwise, the US would have to resort to external change, and I highly doubt that would be an especially pretty spectacle (Remember what happened when the US tried to change Iraq's government?). Stopping illegal immigration is impossible, but we can certainly slow it down.

I noticed this in the examples for the moveinturret command: If I'm interpreting this right, it means that not only can vehicles have numerous turrets, but that individual turrets can have their own turrets. So, for example a ship could have three main turrets, and each main turret could have 2 AA turrets on top, with each AA turret possessing multiple indepedently-rotating MGs.

<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE"> initAmbientLife Operand types: None Type of returned value: Nothing Compatibility: Version 2.90 required. Description: Initialize the ambient life. <table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE"> vectorDir obj Operand types: obj: Object Type of returned value: Array Compatibility: Version 2.61 required. Description: Return object's direction vector in world coordinates as [x, z, y]. I've wanted this one for a long time.

The difference is $94, so I think I'll just spend the money on better speakers (Edit - Which I just did). By now, my specs are: Case: CoolerMaster Praetorian 730 OS: Windows XP Home Edition PSU: NZXT PF-500 (500 Watt) Mobo: Asus A8N-E CPU: Athlon 64 X2 4400+ RAM: 2x 1GB Corsair Value Select GPU: Geforce 7900GT 512MB HDD: 250GB Sata-II CD1: 16x DVD-ROM CD2: LG GWA-4161 Floppy: 1.44MB Drive Sound: SB Audigy 4 SE Network: Onboard 10/100 Modem: PCI 56k V.92 Monitor: Viewsonic VA912B 19" Speakers: Logitech X530 5.1 Keyboard: Logitech Deluxe 104 PS/2 Mouse: Logitech Optical Wheel Flashmedia: 12in1 Reader/Writer Printer: HP Deskjet 5740 This all comes in at $2182.

@ch_123 - Thanks for all the help you've given me. Now, I have just a few more questions . First, concerning RAM, I'll guess go with 2x 1 GB sticks. However, I'm considering buying Corsair Value RAM instead of Corsair XMS, as I've read good reviews about it and I don't intend to overclock my PC. Also, downgrading to Value RAM would allow me to upgrade to an Athlon 4400+ dual-core CPU (Maybe even a 4600+). What do you think about this? Second, will regular XP Home still recognize and use the dual core abilities of my CPU? Also, how well does it use a 64bit CPU? I'm sorry if this question sounds a little noobish, but the mixing of a 32bit OS and a 64bit CPU confuses me. Third, should I upgrade from a 4400+ (2.2 GHz w/ 2x 1MB caches) to a 4600+ (2.4 GHz w/ 2x 512KB caches)?

I forgot to ask before, but what are the problems with XP 64? Are they just driver incompatibility issues with the OS, or are there other problems that I haven't heard about? Edit - Also, is there any reason why I shouldn't use 4x 512 MB pieces of RAM instead of 2x 1GB pieces? Using 4x 512MB saves me some money.

A good analysis of many of the most popular theories concerning 9/11: Popular Mechanics - Debunking The 9/11 Myths

Thank you for the advice. I guess I'll go with either a 3800 or 4200 dual core instead of a single core. Now, regarding the mobo, should I just stick with an Asus A8N-E, instead of the A8N-SLI? I don't think I'll need SLI, so unless SLI mobos have some other distinct advantage I'd probably be better off with the cheaper A8N-E.

What do you guys think about this system I'm considering? Case: Asus Vento 3600 PSU: NZXT PF-500 (500 Watt) Mobo: Asus A8N SLI Deluxe CPU: Athlon 64 4000+ RAM: 2GB Corsair High Performance GPU: Geforce 7900GT 512MB HDD: 160GB SATA-II OS: Windows XP X64 Edition Sound: SB Audigy 4 SE Speakers: Logitech X-230 Monitor: Viewsonic Q9B 19" CD: 16x DVD-ROM CD2: LG GWA-4161 16x DVD-R/RW + CD-R/RW Dual Layer This system, plus a printer, keyboard, mouse, and the Microsoft Works Suite comes out at $2195. Anything I should change? I'd especially appreciate advice concerning the mobo, as I know very little about what would be an appropriate choice.