I found out a while back that you cannot mix whole quotes with partial quotes (whole quotes being the whole reply that contains the persons name, partial being just a snip of their comment).

Rights are definitely not absolute. You only need a superficial understanding of history to realise that. Only 200 years ago you had the right to own slaves. 600 years ago many people had no right to move from where they lived without permission from their rulers. I could go on listing changes, but you should get the idea. Rights are only what the current population say they are. Nothing absolute about that at all.

I can assure you, mate, your version is mildly tame in comparison... believe me.  I reckoned seasoned troopers would've winced and run home to mummy with their tails between their legs. Yup, the language was sooooo ribald I coulda done with some of that gas she was sniffing between the expletives

Oh, and there was an again, but let's just say that I considered myself very, very fortunate NOT to have been present for the birth of my daughter.... earning a crust had me placed elsewhere at the time, and it was all over before the hospital could inform me the birth was imminent., hehe.

You mistake rights with government actions.  Rights are absolute, but government can oppress you.  I do not have to look to history to understand that rights are not GIVEN by government, they can only be TAKEN by it,.  And have been throughout history.

Your slave example is not a "right" but privilege.  Since it restricts the rights of others, it cannot be a right.

You have always had the right to go where you want, but as I have said before, the government can "TAKE" your right if you allow them.  The governments of 600 years ago (or even today in some places) are taking that right.

LAWS are only what the current population (or government) says they are.  Rights are absolute.

There are all sorts of divisions of rights: Natural/G-d given; unalienable, absolute, relative, personal, property.... The list is long.

The really interesting concept (to me, at least) is the "absolute" or "G-d given"/Unalienable.

Since people have different religions and concepts of G-d, wouldn't it seem that this is not an "Absolute"?

I'm not starting a discussion of religion(please, please, please! Anything but that!), only of this category of rights.

It would seem that men define this category from a cultural/religious context, so how then can it be "Absolute"?

Which brings you to the age old argument, is a right really a right if you can lose it?  The Constitution negates any such discussion in the US, rights are inalienable and recognized as above the laws of man.  Disreputable individuals over the years have made significant progress towards infringing upon those inalienable right, but they still exist in writing, regardless of our judges intelligence levels.

I know you can, I just don't happen to care.  I've been warned about my behavior once on this particular forum, my response was a relatively diplomatic refusal to cooperate, stating that I would understand why I got banned, but I was still going to call a certain retard for what I saw him as in the future.  I'd ban me, I don't know why someone else hasn't.

I'd enjoy the time saved, I've burned a couple hours on this thread now, it's a terrible addiction.

You're more a shock-jock, but that's ok as long as you have consideration for the TOS. [yep, I know you'll deny having them, but that's (I suspect) just you being a cute "bad boy"] .

I suspect that moohoo bastard GW has a similar view of me.  He's largely responsible for this disgustingly inflated karma count...

I've failed to work up the motivation in the few, relatively uninteresting political discussions over the last few months.  The commies getting their kiester handed to them has really tamped down the left wing.  That and I've been busy breaking shit.

To this day, and I have done a lot of looking, I've yet to find even a state level monopoly of any duration that was not in collusion with the government or government subsidized entities, or created via regulatory barriers to new entrants.  You have cable monopolies in places because your government created them, not because they form naturally in a free market. 

They're often given exclusive access rights to the existing utility system in order to encourage them to expand into the market.  Well meaning idiots and corrupt politicians pull these stunts regularly.  Our local electric coop here just recently partnered with a nearby wireless company to get a broadband canopy system set up in the area.  It works, it's often even a good idea in the beginning.  Ten years from now, if they still only let this one company utilize their infrastructure, there will still be no competition to them because they have artificially created a barrier to entry.

The other big one, particularly in regards to telecommunication networks, was the requirement to transmit other companies data at the cost of transmission, negating the viability of anyone, themselves included ever putting in new systems.  This is why the US was looking forwards to being dead last for broadband speeds among western civilization ten years ago.

I fear the consequences of power residing with politicians far more than a potential, very short lived monopoly.  This is especially true since they so often give us the more dangerous kind, ones that stick around to the bitter end when a portion of our infrastructure is collapsing around us.

This argument was done into the ground a few hundred years ago.  It's the whole point of natural law.  Your rights exist beyond the law of the day, they are something you're born with and are morally correct in defending.  Slaves were wrongfully imprisoned.  Despotic rulers denied their citizenry justice.  Rights are absolute, Law is subject to the whims of those in power.

If you born with it, how come it took thousands of years for slavery to be abolished after the concept of natural law was first brought up. In fact that serious attempts of even freeing all slaves only arose after close to 1500 years?

Natural laws are not natural at all. They change, and develop over time, and if you think the definitions will not change sometime in the future too, you are very deluded.

Secondly it not even universal concept in today's times. Islamic teachings of their largest domination, state it quite the opposite way to the way you mean it saying "They see natural law, as the law of the jungle. They argue that the antagonism between human beings can only be overcome through a divine law". Hardly done to death if many millions still believe differently.

Don't worry, sweetie, I'm sure I'd at least dislike you in the real world and might well find your company intolerable. But here in Brad's playpens, you're useful in a couple of entangled ways. In and around your amusing, sprawling rants you often make me think and occasionally have come close to persuading me to change my mind about something.

Mainly, though, I often get vicarious gratification when you stomp solidly on someone who is making weak arguments or failing to make an argument at all--even if the writer believes he or she is 'on your side.' Now that I think of it, in that regard you're almost like a good Democrat, except the only way I can imagine you involved in one of our traditional circular firing squads is taking potshots from a discrete balcony well away from the stage.

p.s. The natural law natter is not one of the areas where I've found you nearly persuasive. That claptrap is just theology in secular drag and in complete denial of the fact that rights of any sort are social constructions, not material facts like gravity or temperature.

A few rights I do know I have.

"The right to remain silent".

"The right to an attourny"

These have been read to me a few time over the years  .

A few years back, Verizon began to sell off ALL their above ground telephone lines (netting them around 7 billion U.S.D.) and then began buying up locally installed and run fiber optic installations as well as laying some of their own.

One of the arguments Verizon and others have levied in trying to restructure the internet for "fees" is that "they" have built the internet and need to recoup their losses...i.e., they are entitled to the right to charge fees because they own it.  Ironically, a lot of what they bought was what was developed by others long before they "built it".

They don't own the internet--though through extensive lobbying and legal action over the past decade they are trying to.

The internet was owned by the American people (here in the U.S.) and the government opened it to commerce--that does not automatically equate to, "the people no longer own it".

The strategy of many of these telcoms is to purchase a majority of the nets infrastructure and then say "it's ours". 

It isn't.  they are leased/granted the right to operate on it and to some extent set standards when their services are required to maintain/use it.  That doesn't equal, "It's ours".

Broadcast companies are restrained by government regulation because the U.S. airwaves are the property of the United States.  Companies lease its use but cannot autonomously dictate absolute terms for accessibility to it.  The internet should be no different but the precedent these businesses want established is that the internet is different so that you can't have access to it unless you buy their services first.

Imagine if private companies could purchase rights to operate the U.S. highway system..then they began requiring annual membership fees and then specific, road-by-road access fees each time you travelled "their" highway.  So you would have to pay "Company A" a monthly/annual fee, then pay the same company a "per use fee" and then, when you moved off their road to another company's, you would have to pay them their fees and have a membership with them as well. This is the telcoms vision of the future internet.

Quite simply, there is no liberty for the law-abiding citizen.

Freedom is a lie, and politics is an illusion.

-.-

Essential services are vital services or services that are indispensable for a decent and dignified life. In particular, these collective servicesinclude: 

• drinking water and water purification
• sanitation and waste removal
• energy
• daily public transportation
• access to information and telecommunications media.

The required levels of service and expected use must be defined for each service and for each territory. Other services may become essential as economic and social development progresses. Thus, to support the development of regions involved, it must be possible to extend the list of services to include access to basic communications and communication services (radio, telephone, internet).

Can you pick which ones on this list that the greedy corporate pigs are in charge of?

Well, in Canada anyway.

Human law is different from natural/divine law.  Human law changes.  By definition, a government is the collective opinion of a people -- nothing more.  Thus, human law changes given the opinion of the majority.  Divine/natural law does not change, unless man rewrites it (theologians, academe; which both only serve to keep the masses in total ignorance) and then is passed on from generation to generation and so on.

Slavery --before human law became the popular mechanism of governance-- was meant to represent a concept of giving; a concept of selflessness (do onto others, goodwill towards men, etc).  Example:  Do onto a person a favor or a service, that person then would "owe" something in return; a debt, if you will.

Slavery has evolved, as humans have "de-volved".  Slavery, as we have come to know it as it is represented in our "history" books, denotes a different type of human-to-human mechanism/relationship:  privation, where a man (or group of men) is solely owned by another man until the rights over that man/men has been surrendered, whether voluntarily.

The fall of man, the de-volution of man, is owed to the "evolutionary thoughts" of man.  The idea was to ignore divine law and put in its place "human law".  Human law created the concept of 'modern' concept of slavery; created worldly governments; created the concept of currency/banking/finance.  The creation of human law marked the beginning of the end for human civilization.

Enter the 1700s:  the genocide of the Native Americans along with their religious culture, and the creation of the The United States Constitution for the [planned] creation of the United States of America.

If humans do have "unalienable" rights, then man does not require to be governed by man; nor does man require protection by man to preserve there rights...since they are unalienable.

If humans do have the right to religious freedom, then the Natives and its culture would not have been systematically eradicated..... only to publish the Bill of Rights the year after the "Trail of Tears".

If humans have a right to NOT be governed by man, then that right (for the benefit of all) will be ignored and all mechanisms designed to a keep a people in full servitude will continue to be employed without the will or acceptance or consent of any human being for as long as he shall live.

:mass deception:

-.-

In the US we have the right to a free press and public assembly--strong constitutional mandates.  What companies would like is for the internet to be seen as simply business and property and not those other things...and then they can gain control through commercial means.

The internet is as much a necessity for free press and public assembly as any newspaper or the public airwaves.  If it isn't then the shut down of the net in Iran and Egypt during their protests was just a "business matter" and shouldn't be tied to repression or human rights...yeah...ri-iiight.

We also have commerce laws that are supposed to insure fair access to markets by all and to allow for fair competition.

These things are what's really at stake in this issue.

You don't have to buy it.  It simply is.  The Constitution is based on the unlisted inalienable rights.  As it is the foundation of the supreme law of the land, whether it's real or not is irrelevant.  That Islam doesn't give women the rights a dog would get here doesn't matter because Islam has dick to do with the Constitution of the United States.  They are legally recognized as inalienable and beyond the authority of man to infringe upon, so they are.

This is retard logic.  Electromagnetic wavelengths simply exist.  What is licensed in regards to the "public airwaves" is a physical property of the world that need not require the existence of humanity at all.  The internet is built, it can be expanded and is thus impossible to use up.  The only thing comparable would be internet protocols, it has nothing to do with physical infrastructure.

While you're shitting bricks over a company taking away your freedom over the internet, do try remembering that it's the government restricting content on those public airwaves.  Go ahead, give them the same control over the internet.