Suppose you have 1 (one) ballistic missile with 20 kiloton warhead available for your personal use right now. Assume, furthermore, that the only consequence of the launch would be istantenious and painless elimination of, say, 20,000 people working at the Microsoft's Redmond compound, including every manger that works for MS.

Would you launch?

That's what I expected (hoped for). Next time you use fiery (literary) rethorics, I'll know they are only "metaphorical". Taken literally, they make "unrestrained humanism" look just as bad as unrestrained anything else.

P.S. If DMCA and MS's sheninagans are good examples or unrestrained capitalism, they still fall far short of what unrestrained nazism (or, better yet, communism) brings. Check your scale.

> Murican atrocities match most others, also in scale: the treatment of the Original Folks here - says it all. (No, not aware of a methodical census of the tribes, individuals massacred -- bet there are a number of PhD theses citing estimates, though.) As a % of local / world population at the times: bet *We're a Contender* in the overall homo-sap Annihilation Sweepstakes. Gentlemen - start your database engines. (Stalin likely gets the Gold, or.. does he?)

I think he does...
Apparently, between 1917 and 1953 Russia lost 68 Million people (between 1/2 and 1/3 of the population at the end of the period. Since no one managed to get the exact count, it was estimated by demographic patterns: how many people do you have to kill to keep country's populationat the same for 40 years?). That's just dead, not counting the ones who managed to survive.


>
> And we are better than most, at euphemism - we practically own the Olympic Gold in that, every year. God is (Known to Be) On Our Side, no matter what particular actions we are er "forced to take", day to day. In more recent times, we - along with the other 'enlightened nations' - were as deaf to the matters of the Hutus and Tutsis as: to the boat-load of Jews turned back to Nazidom and extermination. Etc. (too 'icky'?)
>
> No, I don't see anything redemptive in our chosen Dream of Capitalism VS all the other 'logical utopias' - each one so evidently subvertible by the subtlety of (greed+ego). All the -isms suffer from the same idea of having 'solved' that! Pshaw.


The very possibility of you and me having this discussion is "redemptive" in my eyes. People were annihilated for far less in other "utopias". I don't think you can _imagine_ a world where people are sent for 10 years hard labor for exchanging e-mail, can you?

>
> Is the searing heat of fission - a worse phenomenon than the daily institutionalized poverty imposed by the very-few upon very-many of the rest? Remember: there are millions of (untimely) *deaths* brought about by the same corruption as divides up the wealth and deposits over half -- among the current 3-5%. Is a lingering death counted differently from an instant one? ('specially say re 'working below poverty level' = no medical AND industrial-caused cancer?)
>


The difference is not between the manner of death. The difference is (I hope) between you and them. They caused distraction and frustration at levels that can kill people. You, presumably, want to stay better than they are.

> (One of millions of tales: the Uranium miners who fueled the madness of M.A.D. all those decades. They died later, some still are - from the Radon and other byproducts of mining (mostly Carnotite ore in US). No protection: though the fact that protection Was needed - Was Known. Even then.)
>

At least those people were paid. At least they could get away from it, if they knew better. I still maintain that comunism and nazism are far more destructive than anything capitalism has been so far. The very worst of capitalism, slave trade, is still better than concentration camps. At least slaves were valuable. Prisoners in Russia were _supposed_ to survive for 3 months on general works. After that, the faster they die, the better.


> Then there's Ed Curry. He's dead - early too. Imagine Billy will ever pay a dime to his family? By our vaunted system of justice? How typical is that situation we here know so well: as regards other Corporate (That 3-5% on BOD) malfeasance VS an individual? Sue? Hah !!
>
> So is that fireball a worse fate than the integrated total of those deaths -?- or just flashier? I get so confused by how Pro-life we all seemingly imagine we are -- on those scales. We 'avert our eyes' a lot, in support of that Murican Dream? - no?

Again. If you want to go into the Book (whoever writes it) on the same page as Billy, go use that warhead. Please do not complain afterward.
>
> Maybe you can figure it out - we like figures too, a lot.
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>
>
> Ashton
> On second thought - have ya got one a bit smaller? say 1 KT?
> Neutron-enhanced - the buildings could be a jail for the other perps. Like the 500 lawyers at the bottom of the Marianas Trench: it's a start..
>

Right on topic, too.