Slashdot Mirror

Thanks for the reply. I still think the situation is more complex than you outlined, and you are stuck in just viewing this through one lens of "regulation is bad". But what about managing "Externalities" through taxes, subsidies, and regulation?
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality

See also (though it ignores the value of health and community):
    "Marxism of the Right"
    http://www.amconmag.com/article/2005/mar/14/00017/
"If Marxism is the delusion that one can run society purely on altruism and collectivism, then libertarianism is the mirror-image delusion that one can run it purely on selfishness and individualism."

You think China and Japan and so on are less "socialistic" than the USA?

Neoliberal economics has kept real wages flat for thirty years in the USA, which is part of the reason for the current economic crisis. Related:
    http://www.capitalismhitsthefan.com/
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-Jix4opZuY

Also, the US government would have plenty of money without two (or is it five?) recent needless wars and the Bush tax cuts for the wealth.

All sorts of technologies have been subsidized in the past. Railroads were heavily subsidized, for example.

If you look at solar panels, costs are now dropping for the same reasons your computer chip costs are dropping, a lot of R&D and investment in that area. There is now, according to one report I read, as much research going into PV solar in two years as the entire amount invested in research on it since it was invented. There is a chart of falling prices here:
    http://www.solarbuzz.com/facts-and-figures/retail-price-environment/module-prices

That price decrease has little to do with government subsidies (other than pump-priming, to offset all the subsidies to fossil fuels and nuclear, given externalities of those have been generally ignored and "socialized".)

The bottom line: the USA is falling apart because Republicans make the worst socialists -- they privatize gains while socializing costs. Real socialist countries don't do that. That is why Western Europe, in general, is a much happier place than the USA for most people, and most people live longer there. As is Canada. Unfortunately, people can not flow over borders as easily as capital, otherwise much of the USA might just move somewhere with access to health care, cheap college, and so on (those who don't watch Fox News. :-) Though with that said, and it is joking obviously, since cultural ties and family ties keep most people rooted where they are short of a shooting civil war or other broad physical disaster, there are still many good things about US culture, like freedom of speech, which can still be better than in some other countries. But it seems the list of things better about the USA than other countries is getting shorter and shorter.

However, on top of that, there are broad trends from the centralization of wealth due to the increasing value of capital in production relative to human labor, which indeed undermines the paid value of most human labor (and not just in the USA, but eventually everywhere, which is why we will eventually see a new economic system for the 21st century with stuff like a basic income, a gift economy, better planning, and more advanced local subsistence production):
    http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY

"The problem is that government spends more than it takes it."

Due to borrow and spend conservatives launching war rackets of choice?
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

Instead of tax and spend liberals who at least pay more as they go?

"Smaller government is not a bad thing."

Unless government is too small to account for externalities through taxes, subsidies, and regulation?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality

And so we pay in our health bills and tax bills (and even inability to eat wild-caught mercurly laden fish) on the back-end the costs we should be paying up-front at the gas pumps and electrical outlets and supermarkets, in which case renewables would have been cheaper than fossil fuels since the 1970s and we would not be having such a health care crisis?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power
http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/11/the-subsidized-food-pyramid.html
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx

Or getting scammed by heart surgeons?
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/PCI_angioplasty_article.aspx

And scammed by dermatologists who are causing by some estimates 30 cancers for every melanoma they prevent?
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health-conditions/cancer/

Due in part to lack of adequate investment in public health research?

Do US Republican generally wanting to privatize gains and socialize costs make them the worst sort of socialists?

"Also, Obama has no plan, he just criticizes other."

I agree that Obama has been a terrible president so far. He blew his chance to make big changes in the first few days by trying to negotiate with idealogues who would rather destroy the USA than lose an election. He could have just declared medicare covers anyone of any age his first day in office (as in, not enforcing age limits), and then moved on from there to ensuring everyone had a basic income (social security for all, withotu age limits) even if there are no more jobs, and moved on from there to bringing our troops home and shifting the US defense budget to the space program. :-)

Related:
http://www.amconmag.com/article/2005/mar/14/00017/
"This is no surprise, as [propertarian] libertarianism is basically the Marxism of the Right. If Marxism is the delusion that one can run society purely on altruism and collectivism, then [propertarian] libertarianism is the mirror-image delusion that one can run it purely on selfishness and individualism. ... The most fundamental problem with [propertarian] libertarianism is very simple: freedom, though a good thing, is simply not the only good thing in life. Simple physical security, which even a prisoner can possess, is not freedom, but one cannot live without it. Prosperity is connected to freedom, in that it makes us free to consume, but it is not the same thing, in that one can be rich but as unfree as a Victorian tycoon's wife. A family is in fact one of the least free things imaginable, as the emotional satisfactions of it derive from relations that we are either born into without choice or, once they are chosen, entail obligations that we cannot walk away from with ease or justice. But security, prosperity, and family are in fact the bulk of happiness for most real people and the principal issues that concern governments. [Along with health and community.]"

And:
"The Market as God: Living in the new dispensation"

Well, The American Conservative plainly states Oamacare is Romneycare, and they quote plenty of examples from pundits, both left and right leaning, stating exactly why and how the two plans are alike.

Well, The American Conservative plainly states Oamacare is Romneycare, and they quote plenty of examples from pundits, both left and right leaning, stating exactly why and how the two plans are alike.

The Vietnam MIA issue can be traced via http://www.amconmag.com/article/2010/jul/01/00010/ by Sydney Schanberg (two George Polk awards)
Nixon pledged $3.25 billion in “postwar reconstruction” aid, congress did not seem to be interested in spending anymore.
No aid, no POWs. France paid up after Dien Bien Phu.
Every US gov seems not to want to admit they left them behind, so the cover up goes on. Better the fog of war than the reality of been left to rot.
The FBI might face the same with missing persons. Start digging and they find slavery, cults, sweatshop, sex trade and the deep state and federal links that cover/protect year after year.
Generation profit and evil.

And here's a somewhat more reasoned critique of Libertarianism:

[...] libertarianism is basically the Marxism of the Right. If Marxism is the delusion that one can run society purely on altruism and collectivism, then libertarianism is the mirror-image delusion that one can run it purely on selfishness and individualism. Society in fact requires both individualism and collectivism, both selfishness and altruism, to function. Like Marxism, libertarianism offers the fraudulent intellectual security of a complete a priori account of the political good without the effort of empirical investigation. Like Marxism, it aspires, overtly or covertly, to reduce social life to economics. And like Marxism, it has its historical myths and a genius for making its followers feel like an elect unbound by the moral rules of their society.

You can read the rest of the article here.

I don't agree with much else the author has to say but the paragraph above does a pretty good job of conveying my opinion of Libertarians and their movement.

Look, this isn't complicated. Illegal immigrants pay sales taxes, but don't receive EITC, food stamps, or Medicaid. Because they usually work with fake social security numbers, they get a huge portion of their paycheck withheld for income tax, which is never refunded because they're not real tax payers.

There are some costs associated with schooling their kids and emergency care, but realistically, because of the above, they almost always pay more into the system then they use.

But hey, basic logic and every empirical study are on my side. But since you have a hunch, clearly that over-rides everything else...

"Secondly, illegals all commit crimes by definition. The act of crossing into the United States without permission is a violation of United States sovereignty and an affront to our entire legal system."

Lots of things are against the law. Having sex before 18 and drinking before the age of 21 is against the law. Yet, the vast majority of the US population has done it. Three of our last presidents have admitted to drug use. Most of us have gone over the speed limit!

And yet, you don't seem to regard this an "affront to our entire legal system". Why the double standard?

"Again, percentages and ratios are absurd here given that we don't even have a basic understanding of the total number. What we do know is that our citizens are being raped, kidnapped, and murdered in ever increasing numbers by people who should not even be here in the first place. We don't know which of them are otherwise good and decent people and which ones are violent psychopaths. Why? Because they chose to skip past the normal immigration system that would sort out known violent criminals."

This is not true. Logic would dictate that illegals, out of fear of deportation, would keep their head down and avoid crime. And that's what the data shows! To quote http://www.amconmag.com/article/2010/mar/01/00022// :

""Nearly all of the most heavily Latino cities have low or even extremely low crime rates, and virtually none have rates much above the national average. Eighty percent Latino El Paso has the lowest homicide and robbery rates of any major city in the continental United States. This is not what we would expect to find if Hispanics had crime rates far higher than whites. Individual cities may certainly have anomalously low crime rates for a variety of reasons, but the overall trend of crime rates compared to ethnicity seems unmistakable.""

"Thirdly, illegals drive down wages in every industry they become largely involved with. They not only take jobs away from citizens and other legal residents, but for those who manage to keep their job in that particular field, wages and benefits will drop when there are a dozen illegals waiting at the door to do the job at below minimum wage and without any benefits."

Anecdotes are great, but let's look at the actual data: http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/07/immigration-and.html

" Finally, we account for the short run and long run adjustment of capital in response to immigration. Using our estimates and Census data we find that immigration (1990-2006) had small negative effects in the short run on native workers with no high school degree (-0.7%) and on ave

I live in Miami, a city with one of the highest percentages of Hispanics in the country. Most crime in my area is committed by Russians. Despite your assertion, study after study has shown that Hispanics, and illegals in particular, are far less likely to be criminals then the over-all population. This makes sense, if you're illegal, you don't want to rock the boat and get yourself deported. See http://www.amconmag.com/article/2010/mar/01/00022// . To quote:

"Nearly all of the most heavily Latino cities have low or even extremely low crime rates, and virtually none have rates much above the national average. Eighty percent Latino El Paso has the lowest homicide and robbery rates of any major city in the continental United States. This is not what we would expect to find if Hispanics had crime rates far higher than whites. Individual cities may certainly have anomalously low crime rates for a variety of reasons, but the overall trend of crime rates compared to ethnicity seems unmistakable."

"And with double digit unemployment I'm really fucking sick of jobs like construction, which used to be filled by hard working Americans that actually paid taxes"

From a pure fiscal point of view, there wasn't a chance in hell that construction workers were net tax payers. Illegal immigrants don't receive EITC, Medicaid, or food stamps, and still pay sales taxes. Not only that, put the money saved accrues to owners, who probably pay taxes on it at a pretty high rate. Not only that, but from what I understand, illegals work with fake SS numbers, and so their paychecks are automatically withheld. But because they're not actually tax payers, they don't get the refund that anyone working in construction would be entitled to.

Also, because of the housing burst, there is a huge surplus of housing. If I remember correctly, Arizona has enough houses to last for another 15 years. You know what would create more construction jobs? Population growth! Which also boosts demand by creating more potential customers, creating jobs for everybody in every sector...

"Hell it is so fucking bad here that guys yell "Immigra!" in front of construction sites for a joke. Yell Immigra around here and you can watch an entire job site turn into a ghost town in seconds, they just scatter like fucking deer."

They scatter like *people* trying to feed their family. It's perfectly fine to oppose illegal immigration, but the immigrants themselves are nearly all just hard working people trying to create a better life for themselves. Dehumanizing and mocking them isn't necessarily racist, but it's fucking cruel. To paraphrase the Bible, "Be kind to immigrants, remember that you were once a slave in Egypt".

"So until the fed gets off their pandering asses and actually does something about the borders the states are gonna have to step up. If you don't like it, don't go there! That is one of the nice things about having 50 experiments in democracy, if you don't like one state's laws you are free to move."

No. Arizona gets far more money from the federal government then they pay in taxes, as well as billions of dollars in defense related pork, and in exchange for that, they have to follow basic standards with regards to treating their citizens. If they want to succeed, then fine. But if they start violating central tenants of our constitution and national values, then they better expect to be slapped down by our courts and federal agencies.

"So scream "racist" all you want, I don't give a fuck. I've known too many folks that have lost their homes and are living barely better than animals because all the non McJobs have been given to illegals, whom the owners can treat like shi

Those indexes are biased since they neglect key aspects of human happiness like community; health; external costs like pollution, systemic risk, and defense that businesses often pass on to society; and the corrupting effects of the concentraation of wealth in a few hands as the rich get richer -- things implicit in the original poster's comment.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality

From:
    http://www.amconmag.com/article/2005/mar/14/00017/
"""
The most fundamental problem with libertarianism is very simple: freedom, though a good thing, is simply not the only good thing in life. Simple physical security, which even a prisoner can possess, is not freedom, but one cannot live without it. Prosperity is connected to freedom, in that it makes us free to consume, but it is not the same thing, in that one can be rich but as unfree as a Victorian tycoon's wife. A family is in fact one of the least free things imaginable, as the emotional satisfactions of it derive from relations that we are either born into without choice or, once they are chosen, entail obligations that we cannot walk away from with ease or justice. But security, prosperity, and family are in fact the bulk of happiness for most real people and the principal issues that concern governments.
"""

Like many conservatives, they leave out community and health as part of a good life, but otherwise it's a great essay.

Hans Rosling has shown that many materially poor countries have made great progress towards building prosperous and healthy societies under a variety of political assumptions (often ones that emphasize social welfare).
    http://www.gapminder.org/
    http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_reveals_new_insights_on_poverty.html

Another index:
http://www.rprogress.org/sustainability_indicators/genuine_progress_indicator.htm

As the value of human labor continues to fall from automation, better design, and voluntary social netwoks, we will need new models of prosperity that are not mainly about "every person for themselves". Freedom is also not very secure or meaningful without face-to-face community, which is often just assumed, but seems rarer these days as our individualized consumer-oriented society fails in so many ways.

I agree most of the world's problems are social problems (even if better technology can make some social problems easier to solve through increasing abundance).

Do you have a single shred of proof for this or are you basically a Truther or Birther at heart, with nothing but paranoia to offer us?

I refer you to this article from, wait for it, The American Conservative. Read the last paragraph. Here is the relevant part:

Such information could have made it far easier to carry out the type of mass roundup that some conservatives advocated.

And while we're on the subject of rounding up people, here's a neat goodie to show the mindset of at least one "conservative" and how they value American freedoms.

Do you have a single shred of proof for this or are you basically a Truther or Birther at heart, with nothing but paranoia to offer us?

I refer you to this article from, wait for it, The American Conservative. Read the last paragraph. Here is the relevant part:

Such information could have made it far easier to carry out the type of mass roundup that some conservatives advocated.

And while we're on the subject of rounding up people, here's a neat goodie to show the mindset of at least one "conservative" and how they value American freedoms.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Freedoms
"""
The Four Freedoms were goals articulated by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt on January 6, 1941. In an address known as the Four Freedoms speech (technically the 1941 State of the Union address), he proposed four fundamental freedoms that people "everywhere in the world" ought to enjoy:
1. Freedom of speech and expression
2. Freedom of religion
3. Freedom from want
4. Freedom from fear
"""

Freedom from want includes things like redistribution, but also socially-directed investment to create health and material abundance for all. Freedom from fear includes things like reducing violence in a society. In this case, the chose method of banning the games to free people from fear and want can be seen as conflicting with freedom of speech and expression.

I think taxing the games would have been a more sensible approach to the externality created by violent media:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality
and either redistributing the tax revenue equally to everyone, or using it to combat violence somehow and promote the creation of more pro-social media.

A tax on violent media is kind of like saying people could shout "fire" in a crowded theater, but if they do it as a prank and it makes trouble for everyone, they are going to pay a serious fine to reimburse everyone for the trouble they cause.

Still, it is hard to say how much different games (violent or not) really harm society. A worse general problem is that people spending too much time indoors playing any sort of game (or even reading books) become vitamin D deficient.
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/
So, should all games and books have a tax on them for that?

And, children do need to work through issues of violence, even as they also need to be told that violence (and other aggression) is anti-social, which creates a dilemma (discussed in this book, which recommends reducing exposure to violent media, but not banning it):
http://www.amazon.com/War-Play-Dilemma-Childhood-Education/dp/080774638X

I wrote a review of that book here:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/the-war-play-dilemma.html
"""
From the table of contents, here is the list of topics in their "Guidelines for Resolving the War Play Dilemma" (each topic has a few pages of explanation and suggestions):
* Guideline 1: Limit Children's Exposure to Violence
* Guideline 2: Help Children Engage in Creative and Meaningful Dramatic Play
* Guideline 3: Learn as Much as You Can [about the media scenes kids view]
* Guideline 4: In Children's War Play, Address the Issues
* Guideline 5: Work to Counteract the Lessons About Violence and Stereotyping
* Guideline 6: Make Keeping the Play Safe You Highest Priority
* Guideline 7: Limit the Use of Highly Structured Violent Toys
* Guideline 8: Work to Counteract Highly Stereotyped and Limiting Gender Roles
* Guideline 9: Create an Ongoing Dialog Between Educators and Parents
"""

On the broader topic of freedom, consider:
"Libertarianism: Marxism of the Right"
http://www.amconmag.com/article/2005/mar/14/00017/
"""
The most fundamental problem with libertarianism is very simple: freedom, though a good thing, is simp

From: "Liberatianism: Marxism of the Right"
    http://www.amconmag.com/article/2005/mar/14/00017/
"The most fundamental problem with libertarianism is very simple: freedom, though a good thing, is simply not the only good thing in life. Simple physical security, which even a prisoner can possess, is not freedom, but one cannot live without it. Prosperity is connected to freedom, in that it makes us free to consume, but it is not the same thing, in that one can be rich but as unfree as a Victorian tycoon's wife. A family is in fact one of the least free things imaginable, as the emotional satisfactions of it derive from relations that we are either born into without choice or, once they are chosen, entail obligations that we cannot walk away from with ease or justice. But security, prosperity, and family are in fact the bulk of happiness for most real people and the principal issues that concern governments. "

Health and community are important too, but that article leaves out the government's role in promoting them too, befitting typical US conservatives. :-)

See also:
    "MESHWORKS, HIERARCHIES AND INTERFACES" by Manuel de Landa
      http://www.t0.or.at/delanda/meshwork.htm
"""
To make things worse, the solution to this is not simply to begin adding meshwork components to the mix. Indeed, one must resist the temptation to make hierarchies into villains and meshworks into heroes, not only because, as I said, they are constantly turning into one another, but because in real life we find only mixtures and hybrids, and the properties of these cannot be established through theory alone but demand concrete experimentation. Certain standardizations, say, of electric outlet designs or of data-structures traveling through the Internet, may actually turn out to promote heterogenization at another level, in terms of the appliances that may be designed around the standard outlet, or of the services that a common data-structure may make possible. On the other hand, the mere presence of increased heterogeneity is no guarantee that a better state for society has been achieved. After all, the territory occupied by former Yugoslavia is more heterogeneous now than it was ten years ago, but the lack of uniformity at one level simply hides an increase of homogeneity at the level of the warring ethnic communities. But even if we managed to promote not only heterogeneity, but diversity articulated into a meshwork, that still would not be a perfect solution. After all, meshworks grow by drift and they may drift to places where we do not want to go. The goal-directedness of hierarchies is the kind of property that we may desire to keep at least for certain institutions. Hence, demonizing centralization and glorifying decentralization as the solution to all our problems would be wrong. An open and experimental attitude towards the question of different hybrids and mixtures is what the complexity of reality itself seems to call for. To paraphrase Deleuze and Guattari, never believe that a meshwork will suffice to save us.
"""

Most US libertarians could be termed "Propertarian Liberatrians".
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propertarian

Another flavor, Noam Chomsky's, is "Libertarian Socialist" (which I mind less, and we may well see more and more of as we transition to a post-scarcity society):
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism

But, as Manuel de Landa suggests, we need concrete experiments to see what works well in different situations.

From The American Conservative:
http://www.amconmag.com/article/2005/mar/14/00017/
"""
This is no surprise, as libertarianism is basically the Marxism of the Right. If Marxism is the delusion that one can run society purely on altruism and collectivism, then libertarianism is the mirror-image delusion that one can run it purely on selfishness and individualism. Society in fact requires both individualism and collectivism, both selfishness and altruism, to function. Like Marxism, libertarianism offers the fraudulent intellectual security of a complete a priori account of the political good without the effort of empirical investigation. Like Marxism, it aspires, overtly or covertly, to reduce social life to economics. And like Marxism, it has its historical myths and a genius for making its followers feel like an elect unbound by the moral rules of their society.
The most fundamental problem with libertarianism is very simple: freedom, though a good thing, is simply not the only good thing in life. Simple physical security, which even a prisoner can possess, is not freedom, but one cannot live without it. Prosperity is connected to freedom, in that it makes us free to consume, but it is not the same thing, in that one can be rich but as unfree as a Victorian tycoon's wife. A family is in fact one of the least free things imaginable, as the emotional satisfactions of it derive from relations that we are either born into without choice or, once they are chosen, entail obligations that we cannot walk away from with ease or justice. But security, prosperity, and family are in fact the bulk of happiness for most real people and the principal issues that concern governments.
"""

There are other aspects of a good life beyond those, like community.

Markets have all sorts of problems:
* systemic risks of collapse, especially from pyramid schemes involving debt
* negative externalities like pollution are paid by society
* positive externalities like global health are ignored in product design
* money tends to get centralized, as it takes money to make money
* those with a lot of money set standards to benefit themselves
* competition can be very wasteful if people otherwise agree on goals
* preparing and fighting war is profitable
* as above, human labor is needed less and less for production
* money tends to corrupt the political process
* the market doesn't hear the needs of people with money, so people can starve or sicken amidst physical plenty
* extrinsic security and planned obsolescence may be more profitable than intrinsic security and durable goods
* money distorts information flows about news
* money corrupts the medical decision making process (conflict of interest)
* money corrupts academia (Kept University)

There are probably others. :-)

Sometimes, market processes are the best we can use. But we need to be aware of where they go wrong. The USA has been greatly damaged over the last few decades by "market fundamentalism". Markets may be a great way to ration scarce goods if everyone has some ration units to pay with, giving everyone a right to some share of the industrial commons. But, as we have already seen globally, when the market does not need people's labor like in Africa, or the market is run by organizations so powerful they don't have to pay much for labor, then things can go badly.

Markets and the fear of starvation or the fear of looking bad socially or the desire to get ahead of everyone else materially may motivate some people to do some disagreeable jobs. But we now have the technology to rethink most jobs to make them more agreeable, or to eliminate them entirely if they are unpleasant to everyone (like by using robotics or better design). Ultimately, the income-through-jobs link is breaking as predicted here:

The...quote expresses at most an aspiration or desire that her kind of experience would make her a better judge. Suppose for a moment that a conservative Catholic man in a similar position said that he hoped that the richness of his religious tradition would inform and shape his judgments that would more often than not help him to make better judgments than someone without that background. Such a person might reasonably and legitimately claim this. No doubt there would be a comparable freak-out in certain circles on the left that theocracy was on the march, while conservatives would declare it outrageous (indeed, the imposition of a religious test!) that anyone would object to a statement about the importance of the man's faith to his formation and thinking. She is not asserting that Latinas are naturally superior judges, nor is she even saying that they are necessarily better on account of their experiences, but that she hopes that they would be. One might almost think that her recognition that impartiality is something to be pursued, but that it is never fully achievable, would be considered a refreshingly honest admission that judges have biases and are shaped by their past experiences. For a moment, imagine a pious Christian who expressed a similar hope that his faith would make him a better judge than an unbeliever. No doubt this would raise the hackles of all kinds of people, but it would no more make him a religious fanatic than Sotomayor's rather mild comments make her a 'racialist.'

I haven't had time to check every point in this article, but it fits with everything I've read about the subject.

Either way, you're either totally ignorant, or completely full of shit. According to the GAO, approximately 25% of "defense" spending is unaccounted for. This is probably by design to allow for the operational budget of the CIA, which is unconstitutionally hidden from the eyes of the public.

Once in Iraq, there was virtually no accountability over how the money was spent. There was also considerable money "off the books," including as much as $4 billion from illegal oil exports. The CPA and the Iraqi State Oil Marketing Board, which it controlled, made a deliberate decision not to record or "meter" oil exports, an invitation to wholesale fraud and black marketeering.

Thus the country was awash in unaccountable money. British sources report that the CPA contracts that were not handed out to cronies were sold to the highest bidder, with bribes as high as $300,000 being demanded for particularly lucrative reconstruction contracts.

The contracts were especially attractive because no work or results were necessarily expected in return. It became popular to cancel contracts without penalty, claiming that security costs were making it too difficult to do the work. A $500 million power-plant contract was reportedly awarded to a bidder based on a proposal one page long. After a joint commission rejected the proposal, its members were replaced by the minister, and approval was duly obtained. But no plant has been built.

Where contracts are actually performed, their nominal cost is inflated sufficiently to provide handsome bribes for everyone involved in the process. Bribes paid to government ministers reportedly exceed $10 million.

Money also disappeared in truckloads and by helicopter. The CPA reportedly distributed funds to contractors in bags off the back of a truck. In one notorious incident in April 2004, $1.5 billion in cash that had just been delivered by three Blackhawk helicopters was handed over to a courier in Erbil, in the Kurdish region, never to be seen again. Afterwards, no one was able to recall the courier's name or provide a good description of him.

According to this article: http://www.amconmag.com/article/2008/oct/20/00014/ McCain likely suffers from traumatic brain injury.

For me, it explains a few things, the with me or against me worldview, the incessant blinking, the spastic twitching of his arms, his habit of blowing up at those that disagree with him. He is additionally NOT A CONSERVATIVE (bailout drama anyone?), and represents how beaten down the Republican brand has been by the Right Wing Statists in charge.

Electing McCain during the primaries was just the shot in the foot the Republican Party was trucking towards with their willingness to go Big Government Big Spending and Big War against their bases wish. Now they meld Palin to the ticket to try to bring it back to some effect, but too little too late. Maybe the Republican party can have a purge after this long series of continued complete failure to adhere to principles and we can have a Coburn/Paul/Stoessel big tent that might actually do what it says again.

You pick a well thought out, moderate view

There is only one moderate view: it's none of your damn business if gay couples decide to get married, anymore than it is your business that inter-racial couples get married, which also used to be illegal.

Every time someone professes to be an Obama supporter, ask them to name/describe three of his policies. Out of several dozen people I've asked, every one of them tells me he's the new hope, that he's a stable guy, that he's not old... and ONE has been able to actually name three policies. Obama has perfected saying absolutely nothing and all indicators imply he's going to win because of it.

Then you're an idiot that hasn't talked to very many people. Quick, name all of Woodrow Wilson's cabinet members. If you can't do it right now, off the top of your head, it means they didn't exist.

McCain pisses off the liberals by being a conservative, the conservatives by being a free thinker and made the mistake of picking a VP who keeps having opinions about everything, whether they fit the platform or not... and is on course to lose because of it.

More garbage. McCain pisses people off because he's an incompetent flip flopping hot head who can't make a single attack on Obama that doesn't blow back into his hypocritical face.

And Palin? She makes George W. Bush look like a knowledgeable, experienced polititican.

I think you have to look why many principled conservatives are now supporting Obama: people like Andrew Bacevich, Lew Rockwell, and Douglas Kmiec. I really believe that only a neo-conservative administration - and except for Joe Lieberman and Zell Miller, all the neocons are Republican and the majority of Republicans are neo-con - would have gotten us into Iraq.

Douglas Kmiec's basis for supporting Obama is an interesting one, as well, because it seems he is one of the few people who actually has been listening to what Obama has been saying and watching what he has been doing. Obama is a Democrat who tells the underclass to stop relying on the state, being particularly critical of the culture of dependence that has harmed the African American poor over the past several decades. This doesn't make Obama a conservative. He's not. But then, who is? Certainly not McCain.

The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign--over 95 percent of all the incidents--has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw.

...

If Islamic fundamentalism were the pivotal factor, then we should see some of the largest Islamic fundamentalist countries in the world, like Iran, which has 70 million people--three times the population of Iraq and three times the population of Saudi Arabia--with some of the most active groups in suicide terrorism against the United States. However, there has never been an al-Qaeda suicide terrorist from Iran, and we have no evidence that there are any suicide terrorists in Iraq from Iran.

Sudan is a country of 21 million people. Its government is extremely Islamic fundamentalist. The ideology of Sudan was so congenial to Osama bin Laden that he spent three years in Sudan in the 1990s. Yet there has never been an al-Qaeda suicide terrorist from Sudan.

I have the first complete set of data on every al-Qaeda suicide terrorist from 1995 to early 2004, and they are not from some of the largest Islamic fundamentalist countries in the world. Two thirds are from the countries where the United States has stationed heavy combat troops since 1990.

Another point in this regard is Iraq itself. Before our invasion, Iraq never had a suicide-terrorist attack in its history. Never. Since our invasion, suicide terrorism has been escalating rapidly with 20 attacks in 2003, 48 in 2004, and over 50 in just the first five months of 2005. Every year that the United States has stationed 150,000 combat troops in Iraq, suicide terrorism has doubled.

This story is peanuts compared to the Sibel Edmonds saga.

http://www.amconmag.com/2008/2008_01_28/article1.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/philip-giraldi/sibel-edmonds-must-be-hea_b_84781.html

There are many varieties of libertarianism, from natural-law libertarianism (the least crazy) to anarcho-capitalism (the most), and some varieties avoid some of the criticisms below. But many are still subject to most of them, and some of the more successful varieties--I recently heard a respected pundit insist that classical liberalism is libertarianism--enter a gray area where it is not really clear that they are libertarians at all. But because 95 percent of the libertarianism one encounters at cocktail parties, on editorial pages, and on Capitol Hill is a kind of commonplace "street" libertarianism, I decline to allow libertarians the sophistical trick of using a vulgar libertarianism to agitate for what they want by defending a refined version of their doctrine when challenged philosophically. We've seen Marxists pull that before.

I agree with what Locke said above. The Libertarianism we are all used to seeing everywhere is a formula: 1) gubmit == evil, 2) market == good, 3) supporting the market absolutely will ultimately lead to a meritocracy that doesn't need any gubmit at all except to enforce contract law, police, and national defense. Which is indeed a batshit crazy formula. No amount of quotes from Hayek, Mises, Rand, or the Cato Institute will turn the street libertarianism that is spouted all over the Internet into tested and successful public policy. Nor can you re-define "free market" at will. "Free market" strictly means in America unregulated capital. Forcing corporates to pay for externalities is precisely the purpose of regulation, and if you think regulation is OK then you aren't really a free marketer. I would suggest YOU look into modern socialist democracies as these come much closer to your idea of what a free market means.

other sources of interest:

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA Officer, and a partner in Cannistraro Associates, an international security consultancy, has written a reasonable, fairly current (news changes daily) summary which will appear in the next issue of Pat Robertson's American Conservative. It can already be read online here

Daniel Ellsberg has an oped at Brad Friedman's Bradsblog. He has called "what Sibel has as more explosive than the Pentagon Papers" do read his oped here The latest is here

Another good source is Steve Clemon's The Washington Note, where i mostly post my $0.02 worth The relevant post is here . And finally lukery's "let sibel speak" blog is here

"wouldn't the Bush people have exposed it in 2001"

You need to get up to speed on the case. Tons of Bush people ARE INVOLVED. Almost all the major neocon advisers of Bush in the State Department and the Defense Department are involved. Go look up Edmonds Web site www.justacitizen.com and read up on it. See the documentary video here:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1991080575212848283

Or at least read ex-CIA agent Philip Giraldi's recap in this article:

http://www.amconmag.com/2008/2008_01_28/article1.html

You may be required to apply for a permit to protest in the U.S., and there is no guarantee that you will get one from a given municipality. Often you will have to agree to stay inside a "First Amendment Zone" set up as a chain link fenced-in area in some place where nobody sees you except homeless people who can't vote.

The zoning is not applied evenly across the political spectrum; pro-government activists are allowed to line streets along motorcades.

Freedom of Speech is still alive and well. For that matter, it seems everyone of the bill of rights is still there and protecting us all. I don't see what your problem is.

The cover story of the newest issue of The American Conservative
http://www.amconmag.com/
was something like "Why Can't Bush Be More Like Bauer: The Neo-con
Cult of 24". Doesn't show up on their web site yet. Current issue
arrived in the mail yesterday.

Effectively 'Rewritten' (that is to say, very 'creatively interpreted'), or openly disregarded, in many instances, yes.

The Bill of Rights was too inconvenient for the Shrubinator, so thanks to Patriot, and other absurdly dangerous legislation, they have systematically attempted to create a 'new, convenient, streamlined legislative environment' free of such cumbersome restrictions, all, they would have it, in the name of 'national security'.

To be very clear, I agree with the quote generally attributed to Benjamin Franklin:
"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

Who's been paying attention? Let's take a quick inventory to see where we stand.

Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Freedom of speech, and the right to peaceably assemble
This now appears to apply only if you're in a 'designated free-speech *zone*' far away from the Shrub, or other government officials.

Similar aggressive tactics have been employed when confronted with any public opposition to administration positions. Steven Howards was arrested for simply voicing disagreement with Administration polices during a chance meeting with Cheney during a mall photo-op. Howards was taking his son to a piano lesson, and took the time to voice his opinion.

Another example is of the peaceful protesters ejected and threatened with arrest at the Ohio State commencement where Dubya spoke, simply because they attempted to peacfully and non-disruptively express disagreement with the Shrub and his his policies.

Still another is when two women, one the wife of a Congressman, were ejected from the Capitol building, simply for wearing T-Shirts with anti-Bush slogans into the Congressional Gallery. (The article references numerous other examples, as well.)

Freedom of the Press
Mostly, journalism from major news outlets in the US appears to be in significant danger from numerous sources. While it is still possible to find information if you dig for it, many of the significant stories never make major headlines, if they even see the light of day.

The Shrub has significantly reduced press events, and when holding them, has required journalists to submit questions in advance, selecting only those questions he chooses to answer, and calling only upon reporters who agree to 'stick to script'. Rather than challenge these policies, reporters have agreed to these stipulations, resulting in chilling effect, effectively self-censorship, rather than ask questions the President didn't like, at the risk of press room access.

Concurrently, starting in 2001, regulations limiting the scope of ownership of media outlets, designed to maintain diversity of opinion, so as to prevent control of too much of the media by a small number of individuals have been systematically attacked and dismantled. The result is that now most major media outlets in the US are owned by a small number of conservatives. (This has bee

No offense taken, btw, although I am glad you didn't burst into flames over my response. I happened upon your post in this thread after laying a few licks down before it. It seems that the more I age, the closer I relate to my roots from the high desert west; and often go cowboy, slinging fast and hard off of the hip. Goldwater happens to be one of the few contemporaneousness politicians I respect. Not because he held positions that I agreed with, but because his positions were true to his philosophy first, damn the party. He was actually troubled that racists were attracted to his ideology in '64, because his opposition to Johnson's Great Society was anchored in exactly what he said it was, a belief that welfare would trap its recipients within a web of defeatism, and make their plight worse than before. When he ran the family's department store in Arizona, it was the first to hire blacks as retail clerks, and offered one of the most generous health/retirement packages of any employer in the state. Facts that many of Goldwater's critics seem to miss. I tend to slam quick and hard around conservatives, and within their namespaces, whenever I come across hypocritical claims of affinity to Goldwater too.

In the same vein is a fairly recent article by a paleocon that I've often disagreed with in the past, heir to a Greek shipping business, Taki Theodoracopulos, who has even bragged about naming one of his houses after Pinochet. Still, it is hard to disagree with his renouncement of the bipolar polity:

"What are Right and Left any more? Who is a liberal and who is a conservative? When Madeleine Albright proudly announces that the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children via the sanctions on Iraq were worth it, even God becomes suspect. Which liberal or conservative can explain to me the difference between an Iraqi insurgent's roadside bomb that kills civilian passersby and a U.S. bombing raid that also causes the deaths of innocent women and children? Both are acts of savagery: in both cases one knows in advance that civilians will most certainly be killed. Bush and Americans in general claim the moral high ground, but both are terribly wrong. War is a barbaric business. Only defensive wars are justified.

When this journal began four years ago, a bum by the name of David Frum accused us of being unpatriotic Americans-this from a man who has never seen war up close and would never send his son or daughter to serve their country. But we were proved right. Iraq is the greatest American foreign-policy failure, bigger than Vietnam, but the neocons have yet to apologize. To the contrary. The Murdoch-owned Weekly Standard's William Kristol, a sofa samurai par excellence, is urging Uncle Sam to stop dithering and to engage in more pre-emptive wars. Kristol calls himself a conservative. Could I possibly call myself the same? Not on your life.

All governments are monopolies of organized force, inherently unjustifiable. And once accepted, they are bound to get out of control sooner or later. No, there is no longer a Right or a Left. Bush's mammoth expansion of government power and spending makes LBJ look like Robert Taft, the last true conservative-and peace lover, I might add.

Labels are for fools."

Taki Theodoracopulos, "What's Right, what's Left, Does It Matter?", American Conservative, August 28, 2006

I await the PostDigital Political wavefront...

No offense taken, btw, although I am glad you didn't burst into flames over my response. I happened upon your post in this thread after laying a few licks down before it. It seems that the more I age, the closer I relate to my roots from the high desert west; and often go cowboy, slinging fast and hard off of the hip. Goldwater happens to be one of the few contemporaneousness politicians I respect. Not because he held positions that I agreed with, but because his positions were true to his philosophy first, damn the party. He was actually troubled that racists were attracted to his ideology in '64, because his opposition to Johnson's Great Society was anchored in exactly what he said it was, a belief that welfare would trap its recipients within a web of defeatism, and make their plight worse than before. When he ran the family's department store in Arizona, it was the first to hire blacks as retail clerks, and offered one of the most generous health/retirement packages of any employer in the state. Facts that many of Goldwater's critics seem to miss. I tend to slam quick and hard around conservatives, and within their namespaces, whenever I come across hypocritical claims of affinity to Goldwater too.

In the same vein is a fairly recent article by a paleocon that I've often disagreed with in the past, heir to a Greek shipping business, Taki Theodoracopulos, who has even bragged about naming one of his houses after Pinochet. Still, it is hard to disagree with his renouncement of the bipolar polity:

"What are Right and Left any more? Who is a liberal and who is a conservative? When Madeleine Albright proudly announces that the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children via the sanctions on Iraq were worth it, even God becomes suspect. Which liberal or conservative can explain to me the difference between an Iraqi insurgent's roadside bomb that kills civilian passersby and a U.S. bombing raid that also causes the deaths of innocent women and children? Both are acts of savagery: in both cases one knows in advance that civilians will most certainly be killed. Bush and Americans in general claim the moral high ground, but both are terribly wrong. War is a barbaric business. Only defensive wars are justified.

When this journal began four years ago, a bum by the name of David Frum accused us of being unpatriotic Americans-this from a man who has never seen war up close and would never send his son or daughter to serve their country. But we were proved right. Iraq is the greatest American foreign-policy failure, bigger than Vietnam, but the neocons have yet to apologize. To the contrary. The Murdoch-owned Weekly Standard's William Kristol, a sofa samurai par excellence, is urging Uncle Sam to stop dithering and to engage in more pre-emptive wars. Kristol calls himself a conservative. Could I possibly call myself the same? Not on your life.

All governments are monopolies of organized force, inherently unjustifiable. And once accepted, they are bound to get out of control sooner or later. No, there is no longer a Right or a Left. Bush's mammoth expansion of government power and spending makes LBJ look like Robert Taft, the last true conservative-and peace lover, I might add.

Labels are for fools."

Taki Theodoracopulos, "What's Right, what's Left, Does It Matter?", American Conservative, August 28, 2006

I await the PostDigital Political wavefront...

I see you're new to neoconservatism. Here's how it works:

      Things you agree with == conservative and moral
      Things you disagree with == liberal and treasonous

You might like to join the thinking conservatives, rather than blindly follow the Trotskyites turned neoconservatives.

Can't control things in Iraq and Afganistan so start a new war?

It certainly looks like so, unfortunately. They're stepping up rhetoric. The arresting of the Iranian diplomats was pretty rough. The US troops almost engaged with Kurdish security forces in the process.

You need only a some kind of border incident, retaliation and counter-retaliation and you are in a war with Iran. No need to consult the Congress.

That could easily escalate into regional conflight. The whole region between Israel and Pakistan could flame up. That would lead to huge number of casualties and wreck our economies.

Somebody shut Kissenger up or stop people listening to that corrupt old idiot - this didn't work last time either.

Good idea. It however doesn't look like he's behind this--Bush &co. are following William Kristol's "advice" (he is one of the leading neocons and staunch supporter of a regional war).

According to Seymour Hersh, Bush & Cheney were actually dead serious about using nukes against Iran's nuclear facilities. Fortunately the Joint Chiefs of Staff had enough sense to make them scrub the plan. Now it appears that Israel is planning a similar strike.

Hard to believe they could be that mad, though. "Pre-emptive" nuclear strike would mean that everyone would start to build their own for deterrence.

I hope the new winds of change don't just turn into a draft.

The supply lines to Baghdad go through southern Iraq--the heart area of Shi'ites. Now imagine that the war starts and the Shi'ites turn against the American (and other) troops. In addition to Sunni resistance, you would have to fight against Shi'ites, who are much more numerous. And now Iran could help them in earnest. You could run out of fuel and other supplies really quickly. Iraqi government nor police could help you, since they're mostly pro-Iranians. The worst-case scenario would mean that you could lose the army.

So, isn't it an appropriate time to move the clock ahead?

Free trade does to a nation what alcohol does to a man: saps him first of his vitality, then his energy, then his independence, then his life.

America today exhibits the symptoms of a nation passing into late middle age. We spend more than we earn. We consume more than we produce.

Why does it matter where our goods are produced? Because, as I wrote in The Great Betrayal:

Manufacturing is the key to national power. Not only does it pay more than service industries, the rates of productivity growth are higher and the potential of new industries arising is far greater. From radio came television, VCRs, and flat-panel screens. From adding machines came calculators and computers. From the electric typewriter came the word processors. Research and development follow manufacturing.

Alexander Hamilton, the architect of the U.S. economy, knew this. He had served in the Revolution as aide to Washington and lived through the British blockades. He had led the bayonet charge at Yorktown. And he had resolved that never again would his country's survival depend upon French muskets or French ships. ...

-Death of Manufacturing

how the fuck does -that- work, exactly?

I'd imagine pretty much like this

Substitute "marxists" for "libertarians" and you are entirely correct.

Precisely.

Neocon, Zionist... the important thing is the "o", which stands for Joooos!

Seriously, though, look at some of this stuff:
Neoconservatism as a Jewish movement

The thesis presented here is that neoconservatism is indeed a Jewish intellectual and political movement.

The neoconservative Jews' thirst for Iraqi blood began years before 9-11, of course, as did their determination to find a justification for spilling it.

Tam Dalyell's belief that a 'cabal' of neoconservative Jews controls Bush is gaining currency in liberal circles

Who are the neoconservatives? The first generation were ex-liberals, socialists, and Trotskyites, boat-people from the McGovern revolution who rafted over to the GOP at the end of conservatism's long march to power with Ronald Reagan in 1980.

A neoconservative, wrote Kevin Phillips back then, is more likely to be a magazine editor than a bricklayer. Today, he or she is more likely to be a resident scholar at a public policy institute such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) or one of its clones like the Center for Security Policy or the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). As one wag writes, a neocon is more familiar with the inside of a think tank than an Abrams tank.

In any case, they're not part of the "religious right" (or even the "big business conservatives"). They aren't conservatives at all (but neither, imo, is GWB). Now I must go rinse my eyeballs, but I hope this explains where the "codeword for 'Jews'" bit comes from...it isn't imagined, although I'm not quite sure what it has to do with Clinton.

BS. Where exactly is this happening? The web, TV, and radio are dripping with dissent and nonsense. There are regular demonstrations.

government fuck-ups get buried beneath terror headlines...

Instead of other headlines? Whoop.

Obedient? HOW! Did all crime stop? Did everybody start paying their taxes? Is the government handing out careers? More vague generalities and nonsense.

9/11 did $100,000,000,000 in damage to the US economy and killed 3,000 people. Chump change? If it happened every year? Every month? Al Qaeda has a goal of killing 4,000,000 Americans. Do you think it is better to prevent that, or to clean up the mess?

The impact in the US is only small because we are protecting ourselves, or have been lucky.

Al Qaeda and its affiliates are killing people by the hundreds in other places.

Ding, ding, mod parent up. The people of Nazi Germany thought they were free too:

http://www.thirdreich.net/Thought_They_Were_Free.h tml

the dirty secret of successful totalitarian control is rooting out the dissidents quietly while making sure the people who go along with it think "if I'm not doing anything "wrong" what do I have to worry about...?" Keep a constant watch on the watchers, some good resources to start:

Libertarian/Paleo right

http://antiwar.com/
http://www.lewrockwell.com/
http://www.amconmag.com/

Moderate:

http://buzzflash.com/
http://moveon.org/

Left:

http://counterpunch.org/
http://commondreams.org/
http://indymedia.org/

That should keep you busy for a while...

> That said, what do you think the people blowing up US troops want? In your worldview, once the troops
> leave, there will be peace and the people doing this will stand down

Historical evidence says yes, many of them will. From American Conservative magazine's piece on "The Logic of Suicide Terrorism":

RP: The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign--over 95 percent of all the incidents--has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw.

TAC: That would seem to run contrary to a view that one heard during the American election campaign, put forth by people who favor Bush's policy. That is, we need to fight the terrorists over there, so we don't have to fight them here.

RP: Since suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation and not Islamic fundamentalism, the use of heavy military force to transform Muslim societies over there, if you would, is only likely to increase the number of suicide terrorists coming at us.

Since 1990, the United States has stationed tens of thousands of ground troops on the Arabian Peninsula, and that is the main mobilization appeal of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. People who make the argument that it is a good thing to have them attacking us over there are missing that suicide terrorism is not a supply-limited phenomenon where there are just a few hundred around the world willing to do it because they are religious fanatics. It is a demand-driven phenomenon. That is, it is driven by the presence of foreign forces on the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. The operation in Iraq has stimulated suicide terrorism and has given suicide terrorism a new lease on life.

(For the curious, Pat Buchanan was one of the founders of American Conservative magazine, suggesting it really does approach things from a US conservative viewpoint.)

> That said, what do you think the people blowing up US troops want? In your worldview, once the troops
> leave, there will be peace and the people doing this will stand down

Historical evidence says yes, many of them will. From American Conservative magazine's piece on "The Logic of Suicide Terrorism":

RP: The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign--over 95 percent of all the incidents--has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw.

TAC: That would seem to run contrary to a view that one heard during the American election campaign, put forth by people who favor Bush's policy. That is, we need to fight the terrorists over there, so we don't have to fight them here.

RP: Since suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation and not Islamic fundamentalism, the use of heavy military force to transform Muslim societies over there, if you would, is only likely to increase the number of suicide terrorists coming at us.

Since 1990, the United States has stationed tens of thousands of ground troops on the Arabian Peninsula, and that is the main mobilization appeal of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. People who make the argument that it is a good thing to have them attacking us over there are missing that suicide terrorism is not a supply-limited phenomenon where there are just a few hundred around the world willing to do it because they are religious fanatics. It is a demand-driven phenomenon. That is, it is driven by the presence of foreign forces on the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. The operation in Iraq has stimulated suicide terrorism and has given suicide terrorism a new lease on life.

(For the curious, Pat Buchanan was one of the founders of American Conservative magazine, suggesting it really does approach things from a US conservative viewpoint.)

That'd NEVER happen!

Dumbass did you read what I said?

"Racist, sacrilegious, cartoons help no one, whether it's intentional desecrations of Islam or anti-Semitic cartoons published in the Arab world BOTH should be morally condemned."

It's precisely this mindless hatred of Muslims that is exemplified by your post has me terrified. And no of course the radical Mullahs who are ALSO taking advantage of the situation aren't helping.

We are seeing a lot of bad players on BOTH sides, I know that's hard to swallow when our elected leader talks like a 3rd grader pretending to be a cowboy about "smokin' out dem bad guys." In the real world unfortunately there is a lot more gray that is missed by BOTH anti semitic racist Mullahs who inflame people to burn down buildings AND racist neo-cons who inflame hatred of all Muslims when 99% are not involved in this controversy at all. Again Qui bono, who gains by inflaming hatred against Muslims in the run up to a war against Iran?

I would note as well that racist cartoons were one of the mechanisms the Nazis used to inflame hatred against the Jews. BOTH the anti-Muslim right and the anti semitic Arabs need to cut it out before we wind up in a pointless war that mainly benefits a rich chosen few. You can bet the owners of the oil companies are laughing with glee at the stupid antics of both sides as they draw up their war plans. We can and must do better. And don't just think this is some sort of left issue of political correctness IMO some of the best critiques of the neo-cons war plans come from Pat Buchanan's American Conservative magazine

http://www.amconmag.com/

And the Libertarian right: http://antiwar.com/

Another hero in our fight for rationality against mindless (unconstitutional) "patriotism" has been Republican Ron Paul, and former deputy treasury secretary under Reagan Paul Craig Roberts who has stretched himself enough to write for the leftist http://counterpunch.org/

We must approach this in a nuanced sophisticated fashion, allowing ourselves to be manipulated by EITHER simple minded mullahs or war mongering neo-cons will only lead to the world wide bloodshed of WWIII.

If only it were true. He seems to be able to lie us into a war, shred the constitution, hand out important government jobs like stocking stuffers to incompetent nitwits, give aid and comfort to our enemies in time of war, suppress political descent, and run up enormous debt in our name to enrich his backers, and there doesn't seem to be anything the hand wringing "opposition" party can do to stop him.

If only he sucked , he's be out of there so fast his head would spin.

--MarkusQ

``...to serve the internet? China?''

Ok, so far so good.

``What other nation of the world could guarantee the free speech implicit to the internet, as sites like slashdot are testament to?''

What? The country that has free speech zones, has the media only telling half of the news (the other half censored by themselves - or maybe there is some entity imposing censorship on them after all?) or even blatant lies (I'm thinking of Fox here); the country where one of the political parties blocked Internet access to their campaign site from outside the borders; the country where disagreeing with the government can get you labeled anti-patriotic or even considered supporting terrorists?

The country that invades other countries based on false allegations of possesion of weapons of mass destruction and ridiculous claims of being a threat, without even so much as an apology, or even admitting guilt? The country where corporations have so much power that some people find it hard to believe voting in elections still makes sense?

The country that had Dmitri Sklyarov arrested for breaking a law that wasn't even in power in the country where he lived and worked? The country where the corporate world is a circus of lawyers, with the lawsuits flying even beyond the country's borders, draining the recipients' money and energy, even thought the lawsuits are often completely without merit? The country that, at the same time, lets some of the worst offenders go unpunished?

Yes, there's a lot of USA bashing in this post. Yet, I feel it's no more outrageous than the suggestion the parent makes that the USA is the best country in the world to protect free speech on the Internet. I can think of plenty of countries that would be on about equal footing with the USA.

Give an example of how you are being restricted in exercising ANY civil right since these policies were put into place.

Free-Speech Zone - The administration quarantines dissent

You might not realise it, but you're living in a fascist country. To quote Mussolini (!):

"If classical liberalism spells individualism, Fascism spells government."

Despite the fact that you only get to practise that expression of poilitical beliefs where they can't be heard by the President or the mass media.

ICANN is contracted by the Department of Commerce, which is controlled by -- you guessed it -- Congress. Congress has several times in the past tried to make laws governing Internet content (Communications Decency Act, anyone?). Fortunately, thanks to a sane supreme court, the law was struck down and freedoms were preserved. Unfortunately, however, the Supreme Court isn't guaranteed to remain sane, and I (along with a not insignifican percentage of Americans, and most other people in the world) don't really trust the president to appoint non-wingnuts.

Also, just because political speech is generally protected at the moment doesn't mean our freedoms aren't being eroded. Certain political parodies can result nowadays in run-ins with the police. And if you're a member of the press, Don't try to take pictures of coffins coming home from Iraq. Oh, and if you try to pull any of that peaceful protest stuff where news cameras might see you near the president, don't be surprised if the police escort you off to a 'free speech zone.'

This gets its own paragraph because it's particularly worrisome.

As for other expression involving consenting adults, take a look at the War on Porn, for instance. Porn may not be political expression, but it is expression nonetheless, and tax dollars are being wasted trying to stamp it out because some people disapprove of it on religious grounds. That's to say nothing of the fact that in Texas, anal sex (once again between consenting adults) would still be illegal (yes, on religious grounds again) had the Supreme Court (which, again, isn't guaranteed to remain sane) not stepped in. Sex toys are still illegal in Alabama... what non-religious reason could there possibly be for banning them?

Also, the United States isn't one to talk about human rights violations (is it really just a few soldiers acting on their own, or does it go all the way to the top?). Or internment camps.

Other countries may also be nervous about our constant attempts at setting up massive surveillance networks.

You're right on a few counts: China and Cuba are a lot worse than we are. Also, European anti-hate-speech laws are a violation of free speech. That does not excuse this country's conduct. As long as we aren't the most free country in the world, America has a problem. Say it with me.

America has a problem.

The rest of the world sees it. Half of us see it. We're just not responsible enough to handle control of the internet right now.

> > Furthermore:
> > -Nearly all suicide bombers in Israel have been young Arabic Muslim males

> gee, do you think that might possibly be because they were Palestinians? you know,
> the people who are fighting against Israeli occupation and oppression of their
> homeland?

in any case, what you claim isn't even true.

many of them have been christians (palestine has both christians and muslims), and many of them have been female. several were atheists or undeclared religion. and a few were old.

"young arabic muslim males" may make up the largest group of suicide bombers, but that doesn't even come close to "nearly all".

contrary to the propaganda you get in the mainstream media, the only factor common to terrorists and suicide bombers is NOT religious affiliation, but a sense of outrage at foreign occupation of their homeland. they don't give a damn about america's religion or morals, what they care about is that US-forces (and/or US-backed forces) are occupying their land.

but don't take just my word for it - see, for instance the article "The Logic of Suicide Terrorism" in the American Conservative magazine:

http://www.amconmag.com/2005_07_18/article.html

you want to stop creating terrorists and suicide bombers? the solution is easy - force israel to get the fuck out of palestine (in the same way that iraq was forced to get the fuck out of kuwait in 1991), and withdraw from iraq and saudi arabia. sure, iraq and saudi will then collapse into civil war - but that's no worse than what is going on there now.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

In the light of recent events perhaps that sentence should be rewritten?

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances unless those assemblies threaten to publicly embarrass the president of the United States at major media events.

I aplogogise if anybody read that as a cheap attempt at making fun of the US constitution, it was not intendied to be. It simply seems to me that until the Constitution has been modified to looke something like the above GWB should be made to swallow the bitter pill of having his TV extravaganzas ruined by picketers.

Funny - that's not the conclusion people who've actually studied suicide terrorism have come to. From The American Conservative:

RP: The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign--over 95 percent of all the incidents--has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw.

TAC: That would seem to run contrary to a view that one heard during the American election campaign, put forth by people who favor Bush's policy. That is, we need to fight the terrorists over there, so we don't have to fight them here.

RP: Since suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation and not Islamic fundamentalism, the use of heavy military force to transform Muslim societies over there, if you would, is only likely to increase the number of suicide terrorists coming at us.

According to someone who's studied the problem, the "other methods" include such things as removing our troops from unfriendly foreign soil and our military backing from autocratic foreign regimes. Basically, stop stomping around in other people's backyards and maybe they'll stop telling us to leave.

Will it work? I dunno. But even the CIA says our current approach is failing, and is making the threat of terrorism worse:

The insurgency in Iraq is creating a new type of Islamic militant who could go on to destabilise other countries, a leaked CIA report says.

The classified document says Iraqi and foreign fighters are developing a broad range of skills, from car bombings and assassinations to co-ordinated attacks.

It says these skills may make them more dangerous than fighters from Afghanistan in the 1980s and 1990s.