"well sometimes its your friends.. that will put pictures up of you without knowing, or will tag you in and can't remove it yourself"

As many have pointed out, this happens already in blogs and email, on twitter, in various forums, etc., and not joining facebook will do nothing to prevent it from happening on facebook.

But more importantly, if you don't want your friends doing X or Y to you on facebook, you have a very powerful method of ensuring that at your disposal: make it clear that you find this unacceptable when it happens. Over time, people get the message before making the mistake, and these expectations harden into social norms. Ultimately, relying on these social norms is much more robust than relying on technological solutions, in my opinion.

Not having a Facebook account will not prevent people from posting pictures of you on their own, and even including your name in the picture description (thereby "tagging" you in every way except the notification.)

Not having Facebook will not prevent people from posting pictures of you on the web. The horse is pretty far out of the barn on that one.

I thought that one could now veto tags for yourself in pictures? Doesn't prevent you being named in the description.