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Stolen from China which has this working since 2017 and much earlier for the shorter experiment setup.

The revolution was not a revolution, it was a military coup. And the almost-famine was engineered by our Deep State as an experiment. Yup, that happened.

Last year I arrived early for a lunch address by Gen. Michael Hayden, who ran the National Security Agency and later the Central Intelligence Agency in the George W. Bush administration. Hayden was already there, and glad to chat. The conversation turned to Egypt, and I asked Hayden why the Republican mainstream had embraced the Muslim Brotherhood rather than the military government of President al-Sisi, an American-trained soldier who espoused a reformed Islam that would repudiate terrorism. "We were sorry that [Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed] Morsi was overthrown" in July 2013, Hayden explained. "We wanted to see what would happen when the Muslim Brotherhood had to take responsibility for picking up the garbage."

"General," I remonstrated, "when Morsi was overthrown, Egypt had three weeks of wheat supplies on hand. The country was on the brink of starvation!"

"I guess that experiment would have been tough on the ordinary Egyptian," Hayden replied, without a hint of irony.

http://www.atimes.com/trump-la...

How likely is it that Kim would start a war knowing that he'd be obliterated? There's a difference between being a psychopath and a suicide bomber.

Parallel between Japan 1941 and N. Korea 2017?

The Japanese, many Arab states, and North Korea have had various times held to forms of honor cultures that sometime lead to bad outcomes.

Moreover, North Korea is really China's problem, and China would much rather not have a nuclear war adjacent to its border. The Chinese government knows perfectly well what happens if North Korea launches a nuke

The sovereign nation of North Korea has repeatedly stated it is at war with the United States, that the armistice is off, and stated its intent to attack the United States with nuclear weapons. It has both nuclear weapons and it seems the long range ICBMs to deliver them, if not now, then soon. That might suggest the United States has at least some "minor" direct interest.

The right thing to do is not to stir up trouble.

Trouble already exists, and the war never ended. Waiting for much longer will result in it moving to another level.

And, as far as those hundreds of thousands of North Koreans, the number of civilian deaths in the Seoul area on the first day of the war could easily exceed that. Some problems have no good solution.

The situation of Seoul is difficult to calculate fully given the many variable, but it is probably better than commonly held. One thing is clear, however: some solutions are better than others. Waiting too long will probably make things worse, probably much worse.

North Korea is already deeply involved in many criminal enterprises, including drugs, counterfeiting currency (especially US), and the arms trade, to name a few. How do you think it would work out if they perfect their nuclear weapons and then begin selling them? There are nations that would be happy to buy nuclear weapons if they were for sale, and there are terrorist groups with access to deep pockets.

Well, there was that one about threatening to nuke North Korea... Does that count? https://www.vanityfair.com/new...

Yeah, I also remember Trump threatening Iran with "massive retaliation" if they attacked Israel and later clarified Iran's aggression against Israel "would provoke a nuclear response from the United States". Hate speech!

And what about that time Trump threatened to "erase North Korea from the map of the world"? So much hate speech!

Oh, wait...

This. Someone with mod points needs to make this +6.

ATimes has better coverage: http://www.atimes.com/article/world-first-singapore-court-rules-parents-deserve-kids-genes/

The couple paid to have the Chinese mother's egg fertilized with the German father's sperm in vitro and then implanted in the mother, where it was to gestate and be born as their child, of their genes. Instead, the lab used an Indian man's sperm. The laboratory cuckolded the father and gave him a child that does not look like him. It has different genes and a darker skin tone than either parent. It will always look different from the father, and both the father and child, as well as everyone else who meets them, will know instantly that the mother gave birth to a child belonging to a man other than her husband.

That clinic needs to be punished, and other fertility clinics ought to be worried at how easy it could be for that mistake to destroy patients' confidence in the clinics. Why would you go to a fertility clinic now, when you know what they could do to your family? The fertility clinics need to band together and regulate themselves heavily in order to bolster confidence that they are not cuckolding factories.

A billion? No, more like 300k. But that's half the number you would have found a generation ago.

OK, let's split the difference and call it 750k. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/C...

For comparison:

• The average worker in Afghanistan earns about $426 per year.
• There are only about 30 million people living there.
• The US could have paid every single person there like 53x their annual salary (or 4x their salary every year for the 12 years) to be friendly to the US and do whatever we wanted (kill poppies, grow poppies, build pipelines, blow up pipelines, arrest the Taliban, support the Taliban, or whatever the policy makers wanted).

You seem to have drunk the Kool-Aide if you believe that the west (aka, EU, US) have had no involvement in the ongoing (over a decade) political instability in Ukraine. Here are just a few oldies but goodies

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/G...
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
http://monthlyreview.org/2006/...

And of course there is the very long history of CIA and MI6 meddling in the internal affairs of, well, just about every country in the world.

Actually, you could have said that about Iran.. until someone fucked it all up. But more to the point, 15 of the 19 September 11 hijackers were citizens Saudi Arabia. I'd suggest you pretty much have it ass backwards.

http://atimes.com/atimes/Middl...

Iran is the mess it is now (from our perspective) directly because the US fucked them over in 1953. We have a bunch of clueless myopic idiots who's first and only thought is to dump more weapons anywhere there's a problem in the world, without giving second thought to how that's come back to bite our asses time and time again. If we quit listening to these numb-nutted war neo-cons, maybe we wouldn't keep finding ourselves in bad situations decades later.... although with the whole Iraq/Afghanistan thing, it didn't even take decades.

China is still 50% subsistence farmers that live nearly carbon neutral lives. By contrast, "rural" Americans generally have a modest collection of SUVs; almost everyone in the US a is solid contributor to the per capita CO2 figure.

If you attribute Chinese CO2 to the Chinese actually responsible for the CO2 — the urban Chinese workers employed by Chinese industry — per capita CO2 doubles to 14.2 tonnes. And while that still doesn't match the US at 16.4 tonnes, US GPD is almost 2x greater.

So the US looks comparatively good; we get a lot more value for the carbon we emit. Likewise, if the US had 300 million subsistence farmers to improve that average we would be far down your list as well.

The per capita argument is a cop-out used to rationalize extreme CO2 reduction schemes. It's a bogus argument that goes unchallenged too often.

Being a Soviet republic be the first step in joining the Russian Federation?

Huh? What do you mean? How are those two things related?

4. The Russian Federation guaranteed the territorial integrity [wikipedia.org] of the Ukraine.

Please Joe, there's a difference between "assurance" and "guarantee", besides it being an unratified agreement.

5. The Russian Federation has now invaded the Crimea.

Repeat after me: this is not an invasion.

In case you're wondering about stationing the troops only on the bases,
- the *democratically elected* president of Ukraine asked Russia to use military force.

[Putin] added that deposed Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych had no political future but asserted he was legally still head of state. "I think that he has no political future. And I told him this," Mr Putin said [...] (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/10669670/Ukraine-Russia-crisis-live.html)

- Russia was asked by the Autonomous Republic of Crimea to aid them:

Sergei Aksenov, the [...] prime minister of the Crimea region, has declared that he is in control of all military, police and other security services in the region. But he appealed to Russia's president for help in keeping peace there.(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/10670827/Ukraine-live-Crimea-leader-appeals-to-Putin-to-help-as-Obama-warns-of-costs-to-Moscow.html)

When I arrived on the shore of America I had nothing.

I didn't even speak English.

To make the long story short - two of the three factors were very vital for my survival, and ultimately put me to where I am - except for the "superiority" factor, because I was less than a nothing back then.

As I grow more accustomed to the American lives, I get to know people from different cultures - for one reason or another, I find one group very very interesting - the Jews.

They are in so many ways so similar to the Chinese - and yet, they are far superior to the Chinese (yes, insecurity complex at play here) in that the Jews have a purpose in their own private lives and also for their community lives - on the other hand, most Chinese do not.

At the end of the day, the success of the Jews is not a fluke - their culture is structured in such a way that death of one member is nothing - even a massacre of millions to the Jews is nothing - as long as their culture gets to live on.

BBC has a very interesting program on the revival of Jewish culture in Krakow, Poland -

  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programme...

What the Chinese have is number. What the Jews have is determination.

But other than that, in many other aspect in lives, what the Jews are can very much be found in the Chinese.

And I am not the only one who is saying this - read the following article (written by a Jew) to find out what he says ---

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/C...

===
As a Jew, we were given the top three important qualities to rank careers. Teacher, Doctor, and Business Man.
Teacher to spread knowledge, Doctor to heal the sick, and Business man to give employment to the citizens, so that they may live without stress. The rabbi was number 4.

Our parents wanted us to have careers that are portable. If we had to leave a country because of war, we would be able to start up elsewhere. That obliged us to do well in school, to include fluency in a second language, and to chose friends who were as studious as were we. We also shunned wine, women and song.

Today, we have become soft, seaking leasure instead of knowledge and skills. We live in the TV set age, where we want to watch shows, instead of study. I believe that is the reason that Jews, Chinese, and other first and second generation immigrants surpass native borns is due to their instinct to have security.

When I arrived on the shore of America I had nothing.

I didn't even speak English.

To make the long story short - two of the three factors were very vital for my survival, and ultimately put me to where I am - except for the "superiority" factor, because I was less than a nothing back then.

As I grow more accustomed to the American lives, I get to know people from different cultures - for one reason or another, I find one group very very interesting - the Jews.

They are in so many ways so similar to the Chinese - and yet, they are far superior to the Chinese (yes, insecurity complex at play here) in that the Jews have a purpose in their own private lives and also for their community lives - on the other hand, most Chinese do not.

At the end of the day, the success of the Jews is not a fluke - their culture is structured in such a way that death of one member is nothing - even a massacre of millions to the Jews is nothing - as long as their culture gets to live on.

BBC has a very interesting program on the revival of Jewish culture in Krakow, Poland -
  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programme...

What the Chinese have is number. What the Jews have is determination.

But other than that, in many other aspect in lives, what the Jews are can very much be found in the Chinese.

And I am not the only one who is saying this - read the following article (written by a Jew) to find out what he says ---

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/C...

Not according to reality.

The backlash from US surveillance has impacted several large US tech firms like Google, Cisco Systems, IBM, HP and Microsoft.

Cisco Systems: "I've never seen this before." Those were the words of Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers on a conference call to analysts in November this year as he sought an explanation for the company's sudden drop in emerging market networking gear sales. First quarter orders in China plunged 18% from a year earlier. Q1 2014 orders in Russia tumbled 30% and in Brazil 25%.

As the world's largest provider of computer networking equipment, Cisco represents a vital player in the United States' dominant position in the technology market. In a November conference call, Chambers warned of the threat of further "challenging political dynamics" in China.

International Business Machines (IBM), a global supplier of networking equipment and services, saw its third-quarter 2013 revenue in China plunge 22%.

Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard also reported a drop in Q3 revenue from China, but the companies have been less vocal about the particular details of these declines.

Maintaining a nuclear arsenal is really pricy. They're full of dangerous things.

Which is why it makes sense to leave them where they are. Decommissioning is even more pricey.

And dealing with the decay that you let build up because you were too lazy to maintain them is more costly still. No, 'let them sit' is a stupid fucking idea. Far more cost effective and safe to reprocess them into reactor fuel.

The U.S. does *not* do reprocessing. It has not done reprocessing since 1977, in order to avoid creating additional weapons grade material, which might fall into terrorist hands and/or lead to nuclear proliferation:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/readings/us.html

They require LOTS of upkeep. You have to guard them. (They have the power to destroy the world after all) The infrastructure to maintain your active arsenal is massive and costs piles of money, which seems silly for something you hope to never use.

Most of the cost is military. Personally, I think guarding holes in the desert is a much finer jobs program than bombing people in the Middle East. Safer for the people who get the make-work jobs, too.

You should probably try becoming part of this century before telling us about nuclear stockpiles. We don't have nukes sitting in holes in the desert anymore,

Wrong. We have 450 land-based Minuteman III ICBMs with MIRV'ed warheads, meaning approximately 1440 warheads which are currently land based. Try doing a simple google search before you spout incorrect information:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction#Land-based_ICBMs

which is why we don't need as many. We just launch them from subs that no one knows where they are so they can't be taken out.

Again, incorrect. Submarines are detectable, even at maximum depth, using space-based side looking synthetic aperture radar (SAR):

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/LE13Ad01.html
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/slbm/detection.pdf

Everyone who we care about knowing knows about our subs, just as we know about theirs.

[...]

I would suggest you take a basic economics and a history course, then learn WHY TARP actually happened rather than what your friends told you. You first need to understand that the magical failed banks failed because laws were changed that suddenly ... on PAPER ... made them insolvable. They were never actually doing bad, they just suddenly became illegal to operate.

TARP was needed due to de-regulation, after which banks jumped into the market for creation of derivatives, and created a bunch of worthless derivatives and sold them for real money. These were primarily collateralized debt obligations:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program#Purpose

The ability to create CDOs prior to the repeal of Glass–Steagall was based primarily on a decision by the 2nd Circuit Court:

http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/885/1034/144081/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass–Steagall_Act#Securitization.2C_CDOs.2C_and_.E2.80.9Csubprime.E2.80.9D_credit

[...Pu-239 uses...]

Or the operate on other things, which even

Clean hands you have there, keep that chin up and remember useful idiots like yourself are as indispensable to mass murders like Stalin, Milosevic, Assad etc as their own armies. Carry on with pride, job well done, no blood on your hands at all. How's that Syria thing working out for you?

On the other hand, the demand for hasty action leads to stupid foreign policy blunders like supporting fascist extremists conducting genocide in a war of their own aggression against relatively secular and moderate leaders like Slobodan Milosevic and Bashir Assad.

Compare Milosevic to Izetbegovic, and then read the news from Syria: the rebels receiving foreign guns and money and winning military victories are explicitly al-Qaeda, while the Free Syrian Army is only a front group that pretends to be secular in front of Western audiences.

Inflation _encourages_ you to invest money or see it whittled away. In the US, at the moment, the only investment option for 95% of the country is the stock market which is little more than gambling. Real investment opportunities are currently illegal unless you are rich (you can't group together and make small contributions to a big project). The JOBS act might help to improve this issue but it all depends on how it is interpreted and implemented. As things stand now, inflation dooms the middle class and poor to see their savings dwindle away to nothing and force them to rely on the government for everything in their later years. I know that is a Keynesian's idea of utopia but that doesn't sound like a satisfying existence to me.

As for Japan, I suppose it depends on your definition of a deflationary spiral. I take it to mean the continued deflation is caused by previous deflation (aka self reinforcing). There is no evidence that is the case in Japan. They have had 10 years of deflation but that doesn't mean that any of it was caused by previous years of deflation. Japan experienced high inflation in the past that led to a bubble bursting and then prices never really corrected themselves fully (that is what they are doing now). Japan has also opened up their markets more to international trade. Those two things in themselves have massive deflationary pressure. Here is an interesting article that touches on both sides: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Japan/LD07Dh01.html

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/LI11Ae01.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3126241.stm

Bonus info:

Mr. Yazid Sufaat, the guy who organized the "Kuala Lumpur Summit", which led to the bombing of World Trade Center in New York City, is a FREE MAN in Malaysia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yazid_Sufaat

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/12/al_qaedas_anthrax_sc.php

Are you seriously telling me that some academics at Harvard telling politicians what they want to hear, (that "using killer robots like you are already doing works great") is a good thing? That academics advocating policies with obvious "blowback" potential is "solving a small problem" that "improves the world"?
http://www.amazon.com/Blowback-Second-Edition-Consequences-American/dp/0805075593

When even people at the CIA are expressing doubts?
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LF05Df02.html
"Some United States Central Intelligence Agency officers involved in the agency's drone strikes program in Pakistan and elsewhere are privately expressing their opposition to the program within the agency because it is helping al-Qaeda and its allies recruit, according to a retired military officer in contact with them.
"Some of the CIA operators are concerned that, because of its blowback effect, it is doing more harm than good," said Jeffrey
Addicott, former legal adviser to US Special Forces and director of the Center for Terrorism Law at St Mary's University in San Antonio, Texas, in an interview with Inter Press Service (IPS).
Addicott said the CIA operatives that he knows have told him al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders are effectively using the drone strikes to recruit more militants.
CIA officers "are very upset" with the drone strike policy, Addicott said. "They'll do what the boss says, but they view it as a harmful exercise. They say we're largely killing rank and file Pakistani Taliban, and they are the ones who are agitated by the campaign."
Because the drone strikes kill innocent civilians and bystanders along with leaders from far away, they "infuriate the Muslim male", said Addicott, thus making them more willing to join the movement. The men in Pakistan's tribal region "view Americans as cowards and weasels", he said. "

Have you ever given any thought to the implications of Harvard academics endorsing the ever wider use of killer robots to solve political problems? Including the political problems resulting from earlier use of killer robots by the USA? Where does it end?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terminator
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

So many things in our world are complex feedback loops. And yes, many academics actually study such complex things (especially in biology and ecology). But apparently it is too hard for those two guys at Harvard to google on "CIA drone blowback"?

I have collected plenty of fairly straight-forward alternative solutions. For example, a "basic income" which is supported by five Nobel prize winners in economics according to Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_guarantee#Advocates

I outline them on my website in various spots, including here (both positive and negative ones, in this case):
http://pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html

Here is a book of alternatives collected by others:
http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Dictionary_of_Alternatives.html?id=IKZVKMPEQCEC

The issue is not whether solutions are simple or complex (witness the US tax code's complexity, or the complexity of all sorts of numerical models, including most recently one to simulate a bacterium posted recently on slashdot). The issue outline in "Disciplined Minds" is about putting on ideological blinders -- ones that may even prevent someone from seeing or advocating for simple solutions (like a basic

Consider that without nukes, we would have immediately gone to war with Stalin, and that that war would have been just as bloody as WWII

That's a very questionable statement. It's also not related to my argument. The risks of nuclear armament have constantly been underestimated by those who defend it. In fact, it's presented as a pretty solution. A solution that can blow up in your face when things get shaken up a bit is not a pretty solution. Instable situations where you're no longer in full control of the situation, like disintegration of USSR , Cuba crisis, internal problems in Pakistan, should be part of the calculation, not something to dismiss. And I'm not saying that as a radical opponent of MAD.

and none of the nuclear powers threaten anyone else using their nukes save as a measure of self defense.

More or less right.
The US has repeatedly considered using tactical nukes. Also self defense can be stretched to fit anything, and it is. Normally Israel's nuclear strategy is considered more than self defense. Eg in the Yom Kippur war they used them to blackmail the US into helping them. They've also made clear that Europe is a target, so Europe better align itself fully with Israel. "If we go down we take everyone with us".

Nuclear brinksmanship is a thing of the past, in my opinion.

You won't believe this, but that's what a lot of leading Iranians think. They appreciate the political strength of nuclear capability, but they don't see enough value in it to go all the way. Certainly not with Israel, which is too far away to do major damage with conventional means.

Of course, not every Iranian general will think the same about nukes, which is one reason for that Khamenei fatwa against nukes. It's a commitment. You can't turn your back on it without looking really bad. This way you make sure nobody gets any ideas.

I can provide links, that at least show this is indeed what they say, It won't stop anyone from thinking it's all elaborate deception of course. There's an interview of Charlie Rose with Mohammad Javad Larijani two years back that's worthwile. This article is just new http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NG04Ak04.html and discusses things I say here.

Enlightening article: http://atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/NE22Dj03.html

A Facebook page is a pre-arranged display window whose purpose is to block our gaze from the real person behind it.

That is Facebook's curse.

It attracts hundreds of millions of users by providing them with a platform for narcissism and the means to lie about themselves more persuasively, but it hopes to make money by learning what it is that they really like, the better to show them advertisements.

'nuff said :)

"...wait for March 20, when the Iranian oil bourse will start trading oil in other currencies apart from the US dollar..."

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NB17Ak04.html

(No, I haven't read the full article, it was linked on wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_oil_bourse#Opening )

Our systems could end up like the huge backlog of cases in India

From the article:

A backlog of 29.2 million cases pending across hundreds of subordinate state-level courts, 21 high courts and the Supreme Court. According to figures released recently [2008] by the Indian Supreme Court - the country's highest judicial authority - out of this mind-boggling number, over 25.4 million cases are pending in subordinate courts, 3.7 million cases in various high courts while the Supreme Court is stuck with 45,887 cases awaiting justice. According to the Supreme Court's findings, among the states, Uttar Pradesh - India's most populous state with a population of 180 million - leads the pack with 4.8 million cases awaiting trial followed by Maharashtra and Gujarat with 4 million and 3.4 million cases, respectively.

This huge backlog of unresolved cases, experts claim, is directly proportional to a lack of judges. So, while Uttar Pradesh has a vacancy of 521 judges against a required roster of 2,172, Maharashtra suffers from a shortfall of 376 against the current strength of 1,897 posts.

Although cases are resolved at an undeniably high speed, India has roughly 11 judges for every million people compared with roughly 110 per million in the United States.

http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MD14Ak02.html

No wonder The Wall St. Journal is gushing.

No one likes them.

If they go toe to toe with the US over the straight they'll have no backers. The chinese need that straight open. They have a strong interest in free trade. Europeans are finally on board. The Russians are not going to be the outsider if the US, China, and EU are largely in agreement. And there's the Arabs that are also scared that Iran is going to start threatening them with nukes.

So... no friends.

The US almost WANTS iran to attack it just for the justification.

China is an ally of Iran. They have strong trade across the borders.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/ML13Ak01.html

Russia doesn't need the strait.

North Korea is a wild-card that should be avoided finding where it lies.

-AI

there's money interests:

...Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran.

What do these seven countries have in common? In the context of banking, one that sticks out is that none of them is listed among the 56 member banks of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). That evidently puts them outside the long regulatory arm of the central bankers' central bank in Switzerland.

The most renegade of the lot could be Libya and Iraq, the two that have actually been attacked. Kenneth Schortgen Jr, writing on Examiner.com, noted that "[s]ix months before the US moved into Iraq to take down Saddam Hussein, the oil nation had made the move to accept euros instead of dollars for oil, and this became a threat to the global dominance of the dollar as the reserve currency, and its dominion as the petrodollar."

According to a Russian article titled "Bombing of Libya - Punishment for Ghaddafi for His Attempt to Refuse US Dollar", Gaddafi made a similarly bold move: he initiated a movement to refuse the dollar and the euro, and called on Arab and African nations to use a new currency instead, the gold dinar. Gaddafi suggested establishing a united African continent, with its 200 million people using this single currency.

http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MD14Ak02.html

There's MUCH more in that article... an absolute must-read!

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EH22Ak03.html

http://rescommunis.wordpress.com/2010/03/25/complaints-about-iranian-satellite-jamming/

http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2010/06/23/letter-eutelsat-corporation

http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/03/26/us-iran-jamming-itu-idUSTRE62P21G20100326

The Cuban government was home to an Iranian jamming program in the old Soviet facilities for years.

And the Libyans have done this before

http://www.space.com/3666-libya-pinpointed-source-months-long-satellite-jamming-2006.html

Standardization is the thief of creativity and creativity robs standardization.

It seems that no one is ever happy. The countries with high graduation rates and high standardization like South Korea have a low dropout rate. However the annual standardized test in South Korea always coincides with massstudent suicides.

Education is the USA is moving to a point where there is no depth, no love of learning, and no respect for the transormative power of education. Much of this is a direct result of standardized tests and limited teacher autonomy and resources. The weekly cycle of cover the standard: Powerpoint Lecture -> Read the Chapter -> Do your worksheet -> Scantron on Friday. move on to next state standard then rinse and repeat crushes any love of learning.

I would rather see a USA where we foster a love of learning, go deep on interesting topics then work on them in a meaningful project based way rather than the drive-by, inch-deep mile wide education system that we have become. If we work in a meaningful way the questions about math and science will come and apply to a realworld situation instead of being taught in abstract isolation.

When the USA can not longer produce innovators with a love for learning and/or attract innovators from foreign countries, we will become the low-cost labor market for those who do innovate. I implore everyone who reads this to help stop this madness. When George W. Bush was in office, he had a plan to take the Perkins-IV funding and shift it away from career and technical learning programs (nursing, welding, computer programming, cad, autobody) and shift that money to fund more standardized testing. If that would have happened, programs would have ceased to exist and dropout rates would have soared even higher.

China operates like the Orwellian nightmare of a business, uprooting people and destroying history and nature in its relentless march forward, hoping to get where its going before something irrevocably breaks.

If you're referring to China relocating entire villages for the 3 Gorges Dam project

The Three Gorges Dam is only one big example. But apparently, its quite common in China.

Apparently, when the government wishes to use land for some purpose and there's a village (or suburb) in the way, then the government will build a few high density residential buildings and have the entire village move in. In doing so, the entire village is uprooted, its history destroyed, and the place where the village was (the nature) is destroyed.

References:
http://factsanddetails.com/china.php?itemid=151&catid=11&subcatid=72
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/LE20Ad02.html

Bringing oil from Iran to China involves going through the Straits of Hormuz (with US ships wandering around), past India to the Straits of Malacca (also patrolled by the US) and some other countries like Vietnam with which China is having a dispute regarding islands.

That's why they are interested in extending a gas pipeline from Iran to Pakistan to China

some highly vocal left-wing pundits (the same ones involved with 9/11 "truth" movements) resorted to calling it a Jewish conspiracy.

Considering a member of George Bush's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, speaking on a panel of foreign policy experts at the University of Virginia in 2002, said that the attack on Iraq was to protect Israel, there is some justification for their thoughts.

> High Frequency Trading is _beneficial_ to the public markets at large

Ya .. that might be true, but I'm not looking at the bull from the front, I'm looking at it from the back and what I see is *output* ! I might be utterly wrong about this, but if you read this article you might not believe that HF trading is all that beneficial. I think in market lingo, it's called paying the rent - with small investors' money.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/KH05Dj03.html

Granted my references might be just as dubious as the OPs' site, but my reference looks a lot less like a blog from a shill.

"Jumping is a very gruesome way to die."

A dry dive is also quick (splat!) and a popular method in some areas. The person suiciding doesn't have to clean up the mess.

A dry dive in front of a train is quick and popular (++ for white-collar criminals who suicide, too bad they don't do it in the US):

http://www.atimes.com/japan-econ/AH04Dh01.html

You must be kidding me. Robert Mullins article is not worthy of publication, just because it is has a catchy byline regarding smelly duck eggs. The content is vague and overstated in many places. The content nothing more than bits of fluff without any kind of supporting detail. It has nothing it in that is new or inspiring and is so dry and boring, I simply began to fall asleep halfway through it. Robert Mullins should be slapped with a wet noodle for writing such drivel.

The only saving grace to the whole thing, was in the comments submitted by readers. Inside this is a gem of links supplied by one such anonymous reader. If you want the tip of the iceberg on hundreds of Chinese Government espionage cases, then follow these links.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/02/AR2008040203952.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/02/25/60minutes/main6242498.shtml
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/3319656
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/KG31Ad01.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/01/world/europe/01spy.html?src=sch&pagewanted=all
http://www.intelligencesearch.com/ia068.html

However to dig deeper. The Chinese are not the only ones targeting Government and other high tech companies in the US. There are many others, but China is going much further than just the US. It would seem that the Chinese officials, are casting a huge net to capture just about anything they can get and only later throwing away what they don't need. No wonder China is advancing so fast in all the major technologies, including space, military and civilian.

"From Rice Paddies to Rocket Ships". In only a few short years has China advanced or simply stolen it's future? Followed by actual case studies and methods, would have made an article worth reading and a far better byline. I can't believe I wasted 10 minutes of my time reading that piece of crap. Thank the gods for an enlightened and intelligent reader that offered a few links and with just that small effort did far more than Robert Mullins did in a whole page.

One more reason out of hundreds to not go to the US of A, land of the free. I am compiling a list of reasons on why I should never go visit the US. This is just another entry on to the list: asshole paranoid-xenophobic-megalomaniac border officials. I come from Malaysia.

And how are people treated in Malaysia?

Patricia Lourdes Irene, 54, who was held for a year in 1987, said she was threatened with rape if she did not cooperate. "They said they had raped many times before and I believed them - it was scary," she said. "It is just you and them in a cell, you have everything stacked against you."
Former ISA detainee Tian Chua, who is now information chief of the National Justice Party (NJP) recalled: "We were routinely tortured during interrogations, stripped naked, beaten with broomsticks and threatened with rape."

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/GH06Ae01.html

The notion that "anybody can make it in the US if they work hard" is a fairy tale.

Seriously. Be born rich. That's the way to go.

The notion that the notion is a fairytale is a fairytale. People love to blindly spread memes like this because they enjoy feeling sorry for themselves, but it simply isn't true:

Rags To Riches Billionaires: "Almost two-thirds of the world's 946 billionaires made their fortunes from scratch, relying on grit and determination"

That doesn't mean everyone can end up a billionaire, but it's simply false that this notion that 'anyone can make it' is a fairytale; it's borne out on practically a daily basis. If you open your eyes and look, you'll find true-life rags-to-riches story under every second stone you turn --- especially in the USA, but also these days frequently in places like China. But yeah, not everyone is born hard-working, I guess, so keep sitting and feeling sorry for yourself and you'll definitely ensure that nothing ever changes for you.

Rags to Riches CEOs

7 greatest celebrity rags to riches stories

Rags to Riches

Entrepreneur takes women from rags to riches

Rags to Riches billionaires

Asian American Rags to Riches Sagas

Case Study: From Rags to Riches (Brenda French)

Cordia Harrington: From Rags to Riches Success Story

Local cosmetics magnate reveals rags-to-riches life story

China: A rags-to-riches story to dream about (Yan Huiyan)

China’s paper magnate is a rags-to-riches story, literally

Rags to riches: Bill MacAloney: from orphan to successful business owner to CBA

From rags to riches: Filipino weavers trade up

Etc. etc. blah blah ... I could go on pasting these stories in here all day. Nothing worse than listening to whiny losers feeling sorry for themselves that they weren't born rich.

CIA and Tibet http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/JC26Ad02.html CIA and Xinjiang http://www.prisonplanet.com/the-cia-and-rioting-uyghurs-in-xinjiang.html

When you say "expanding its influence" are you referring to anything specific? I'd be interested in hearing your take.

I read this interesting article recently about growing tensions between the Saudis and Iran which states : "Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen - three different theaters have appeared where the Saudis have moved in to challenge Iran's growing regional influence." The most interesting part is about growing tensions on the border in Yemen unnervingly close to the oil fields that supposedly has the Saudis very worried.

I think you're right in pointing out no one is worried about territorial expansion, but rather about Iran becoming the regional power broker. That would make Iran what we call "incontournable" ("inevitable") in french on Middle East issues. Being held over a barrel (of oil, get it) by the Saudis from time to time is bad enough but the Iranians taking their place would take things to a whole new level ('73 all over again and worse.)

Setting off a working nuke would be purely a symbolic act I think, a way of underscoring Iran's ascendence in defiance of the west. Certainly it wouldn't immediately give them a strategic advantage and personally I don't think they're crazy enough to lob a nuclear missile at Israel despite the rhetoric. As the afore mentioned article says : "Iran is very radical on one hand, but on the other hand you can't say that it is an irrational country."

Sorry, yes I meant companies. I hadn't heard of this story about Bechtel here is the article I found on it. After reading it, I would still put Bechtel in the category of good operators. They made a proper deal and were looking to carry it out properly. Absolutely they were operating with a morally bankrupt regime. But they were going to fulfill their end of the bargain, and I don't think that makes them complicit in the unrelated actions of their employer in any way.
There are a lot of unsavory places in the world. American companies continue to do business there regardless, and I don't see why Bechtel doing business in Iraq should be differentiated from all the many businesses operating in China or Saudi Arabia or the former USSR. Those authoritarian states are likely killing at least as many people as Saddam did Kurds, but they never developed as political opportunities for American politicians to make hay by taking the moral high ground, like Saddam's Iraq did, along with a few others like Cuba and Syria. The "moral justice" meted out by the US federal government is very unevenly distributed, and it seems unfair to vilify Bechtel for finding itself on the wrong side of that often arbitrary distribution with millions of dollars on the line.

Interestingly, the criticism has come from Indian scientists, who have launched a scathing attack. At the helm of this brigade has been H S Mukunda, chairman, Indian Institute of Sciences (IIS), Bangalore. The IIS is considered by many to be the Indian equivalent of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Though Mukunda is today unwilling to elaborate his views - which now some refer to as his personal views rather than that of the IIS - he has been extensively quoted as calling the program "stupid" and the equivalent of reinventing the wheel. "It's bankruptcy of ideas. What the US did 30 years ago we are trying to do now. It won't bring the country any technical benefit," Mukunda reportedly said at a lecture organized by Prasthutha, a student forum of the IIS.

Asia Times

I am not saying this isn't vague at best but the criticism looks like it is gunning towards the whole approach of the space program of going to the moon and eventually wanting to send a man to the moon than this scientific endeavor.

You mean like the Asian Times? A Non-US entity? with the story?

Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad has demanded apologies from the US as essential for smashing the wall of mistrust between Iran and the US. He has a point.

If president Jimmy Carter had apologized to Iran for the fact that the US since president Harry S Truman supported Mohammad Reza Pahlavi - aka the shah of Iran - and his tyranny; if he had promised not to subvert the Iranian revolution; and if he had committed to give back to the country the up to US$60 billion stolen by the shah, his family and acolytes, the infamous Iranian hostage crisis would have been solved swiftly.

That is the Iranian point of view, not Fox News, and not the Neocons or Liberals.

Now why would the Iranians claim that, and blame Jimmy Carter? How come they don't mention that Carter negotiated the hostages release? They stated the terms that Carter had to meet to release the hostages, and that Carter didn't meet them.

The rest of the world has a different history than the Liberals and Neocons in the USA have.

Oh yeah Rockefeller and Kissinger influenced Carter like Dick Cheney and Karl Rove influenced Bush, by pressuring them to make decisions, yet Bush is vilified for that and Carter isn't? Isn't it the same exact thing? Thank you for proving my point.

Anyone who thinks they can change the weather is either absorbed in hubris or insane.

According to Wang Guanghe, director of the Weather Modification Department under the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, each of China's more than 30 provinces and province-level municipalities today boast a weather-modification base, employing more than 32,000 people, 7,100 anti-aircraft guns, 4,991 special rocket launchers and 30-odd aircraft across the country.

"Ours is the largest artificial weather program in the world in terms of equipment, size and budget," Wang said, adding that the annual nationwide budget for weather modification is between US$60 million and $90 million.

http://geography.about.com/library/weekly/aa021400a.htm

Anyone familiar with Japanese history would understand Japanese poking constant fun of the Russians, their neighbors. Russia is a bit of a sore spot to Japan since they are still disputing sovereignty of mineral rich islands that Russia claimed as a results of Japan losing WWII. It doesn't help that Japanese culture has been known as being a bit on the racist and xenophobic side.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KF11Df01.html

Where is the "Retard with no facts to back up their opinion" button? Why don't you read that article and tell me China doesn't get involved in other peoples affairs. Do you even know what you are talking about? Yes, America = Evil, China = Underdog Hero. White = Evil, Black = Underdog Hero. Yes yes yes we know the deal. If I wanted your opinion I'd watch the media.

I have long wondered why more public officials are not assassinated using a pistol mounted in a video camera.

The Taliban did it by filling camera batteries full of explosives for a targeted assassination: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/DI12Ag02.html

No nuclear nation failed to detonate its first implosion device.

Well, maybe one.

All externally-visible indicators (i.e., what you can see from seismography or other remote sensing, rather than watching the actual test instrumentation) were pretty unimpressive for any full-fledged nuclear detonation. Either it was faked (not that easy to do) or a fizzle.

And a fizzle is exactly the kind of failure that you have if you mis-engineer the tamper, the containment, or even the explosive lens. I.E., why you can't just run down to the local home improvement superstore and whip up everything except the fissile.

Getting the plutonium is hard; it requires a pretty large infrastructure investment in breeder reactors, centrifuges, etc., and also takes a long time. Getting the rest of the bomb is "just engineering", but it's very precise engineering with some very specific critical knowledge which is not generally available (and takes some serious experimentation to figure out for yourself).

BTW, I like the quote in the Wikipedia "fizzle" article:

This North Korean debut test was weaker than all other countries' initial tests by a factor of 20,[8] and considered possibly the worst initial test in history.[9]"

[8]# ^ Todd Crowell."A deadly kind of fizzle." Asia Times Online. Retrieved on 2008-05-04.
[9]# ^ Staff Writer. "Special report -The fizzle heard around the world." Nature.com. Retrieved on 2008-05-04.

You got some of the facts of the situation wrong... there's no anti-monarchy sentiment on either side--the clash is between the rich elite in Bangkok who traditionally held political power (and tended to disenfranchise the rural majority) vs. said rural majority.

Summary: the people elected a Prime Minister who gave a lot of aid to the rural poor (mainly at the expense of the rich elite). He was extremely popular, and was actually elected to a second term (unprecedented in Thai history... Thailand hasn't quite gotten the hang of this "democracy" business and tends to depose their elected officials). Well, the rich folk were getting POed about all their money being taken to help the poor, so they protested, and managed to get the army to stage a coup d'etat. After a period of junta rule, they have elections, and the people vote in the current Prime Minister, a guy who has the same policy as his ousted predecessor. The rich folks are now steaming mad that the majority like someone who'll pay attention to their needs, so they protest again. They're now saying that democracy won't work in Thailand, since the rural hicks aren't smart enough to vote: only 30% of parliament should be elected by the people--the other 70% should be appointed (and of course, the rich elite should be the ones doing the appointing). So far, the rich protesters have temporarily taken over a TV station, blockaded and vandalized airports, and are currently occupying the government house (sort of like the White House). In any other country, if a mob took over government offices, the police would go disperse them, but the Thai government is leery about using force, since past governments have had a bad history of killing anti-government protesters--the police can't even use tear gas. After over a week of anti-government protests, a group of rural pro-government protesters arrived, and they got into a fight, with one guy getting shot and killed (last I heard, it was still unclear which side the guy was on, but most news outlets were saying he was on the pro-government side), and numerous others injured.

FWIW, here are a few articles that give more details: article 1 and article 2

You got some of the facts of the situation wrong... there's no anti-monarchy sentiment on either side--the clash is between the rich elite in Bangkok who traditionally held political power (and tended to disenfranchise the rural majority) vs. said rural majority.

Summary: the people elected a Prime Minister who gave a lot of aid to the rural poor (mainly at the expense of the rich elite). He was extremely popular, and was actually elected to a second term (unprecedented in Thai history... Thailand hasn't quite gotten the hang of this "democracy" business and tends to depose their elected officials). Well, the rich folk were getting POed about all their money being taken to help the poor, so they protested, and managed to get the army to stage a coup d'etat. After a period of junta rule, they have elections, and the people vote in the current Prime Minister, a guy who has the same policy as his ousted predecessor. The rich folks are now steaming mad that the majority like someone who'll pay attention to their needs, so they protest again. They're now saying that democracy won't work in Thailand, since the rural hicks aren't smart enough to vote: only 30% of parliament should be elected by the people--the other 70% should be appointed (and of course, the rich elite should be the ones doing the appointing). So far, the rich protesters have temporarily taken over a TV station, blockaded and vandalized airports, and are currently occupying the government house (sort of like the White House). In any other country, if a mob took over government offices, the police would go disperse them, but the Thai government is leery about using force, since past governments have had a bad history of killing anti-government protesters--the police can't even use tear gas. After over a week of anti-government protests, a group of rural pro-government protesters arrived, and they got into a fight, with one guy getting shot and killed (last I heard, it was still unclear which side the guy was on, but most news outlets were saying he was on the pro-government side), and numerous others injured.

FWIW, here are a few articles that give more details: article 1 and article 2

Yes. I'm estonian. Let me to tell you a story. When i was a kid, I asked from my granny - where is my grandpa. My granny told me, that my grandpa died in a prison in Siberia. He was simple fisherman, who gave food to his relative who was seeked by russian police. Then I asked my father, where is my other grandpa. My other grandpa was forced to Red Army and was killed there. My mother in law was sent to Siberia by russians, when she was about 6, with her old grandma, because her mother wasn't cooperative enough. And this is the story of average estonian family. Of course i'm brainwashed by media!

And you think this makes you special? Most people in Europe will have sad stories to tell about the generations past. I could tell you stories just as sad about my (extended) family. Besides, let's not forget who bore the brunt of the brutality of the Soviet (and mostly Stalinist) regime -- the Russians themselves. Most Russians could tell you stories even sadder. So could a lot of Germans, Italians, Spaniards, Frenchmen, British, Jews -- and a lot of Arabs could tell you sob stories about stuff happening right now that our wonderful democratically elected governments are responsible for. Sorry, but sob stories don't make your misinformed opinions any more credible. Your russophobia, while wholly understandable, prevents you from taking any kind of an informed, objective stance on the matter.

You speak of the elections, and make an appeal to the majority opinion (in the West, anyway) -- "you don't honestly believe that Putin was fairly elected, do you?" Well, yes and no. Is 71% of the vote believable for a president who oversaw the largest increase in wealth that the public can remember? The Russian opposition is a joke that doesn't have a foot to stand on, especially as long as the standard of living continues its crawl upwards. I'm sure you'll bring up Kasparov -- who is equally a joke. Oh, certainly, he has made his little television tour through the United States and is thus very well-known in all the right circles, but there is zero substance to the man's "heroic struggle against fascism". He got locked up a few times for staging illegal protests. Illegal protests? But there's supposed to be free speech! Fascism! Not quite. I would suggest you google the fabled American "free speech zones".

You bring up the Russian media, and how it's supposedly government-dominated, but all anyone can ever say is that the three largest television networks are controlled by "Kremlin loyalists". So, apparently it's also fascism when someone who agrees with particular government policy controls a television network. Question: how many large networks are there in the United States, and who are they controlled by? Just how hard did they question, say, Bush' invasion of Iraq? But, you not only overstate the importance of these television networks, you also ignore everything else. I quote (it's a long-ish read):

Discussions of the Russian media typically imply that state control is total, when in fact there are more private media in Russia today than at any time in its history.

In 1997 there were just over 21,000 registered periodicals, virtually no electronic media, and just under 100 television companies. More than half of all media were owned by the state. A decade later, there are more than 58,000 periodicals, 14,000 electronic media, and 5,500 broadcasting companies. The state's share in the newspaper and journal market in 2006 was estimated to be less than 10%, while its share in electronic media, which today reach 25 million people, is even smaller. Today it is not the Russian state but foreign companies that own shares in more than half of all Russian broadcasting companies.

Critics, however, have zeroed in on the one area of the media where the state's presence still predominates - national television. Through its control of seats

A million criminals?? Phew... I'm sure they're piling on the miles on their execution vans.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/HG21Ad01.html

Scumbags run our country, scumbags run their country.