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I didn't plan it. I'm not the one who decreased the American workforce by half in just 5 years.

Decrease is a little vague...unemoployment rate is 1.2% higher than it was 5 years ago. ( reuters.com)

And with that trade deficit we'll be able to afford to do so exactly how long? We already can't feed our own population.

US per capita income: $40,100

China per capita income: $ 5,600

(Source www.cia.gov)

We aren't exactly hurting compared to the average Chinese, especially considering US citizens only spend 6.4% of their income on food (the lowest percentage of reported countries). (Source ific.org). No one has to starve in the USA; tragically there are those who still do, but there is plenty of food and money to go around. It's a resource allocation problem, not a question of affordability.

Which is bad enough for the common American LABORER- for whom American businesses are already traitors in this war.

You are probably right here that NEITHER US or Chinese laborers will benefit from a price war...

Then you haven't been paying attention to what the Waltons are saying.

I was surprised by a great NPR piece on the upcoming Walmart Movie which suggested that Walmart really does do some things to help common laborers like provide a lot of unskilled jobs, cashes a LOT of checkes, and keep the price of consumer goods down. Allbeit US manufacturing is suffering, it's not only Walmart's fault..."Traitor" is uncalled for...The Walton are mid-western American buisness owners, not anti-patriotic communists.

Which is bad enough- a Wal*Mart every three miles and no other stores at all.

While the loss of small buisnesses and farm owners preceded the fall of the Roman Empire (college history class), maybe in a World Wide Economy the Walmarts allow for more efficient transfer of goods and services.

Or at least they're pretending to- while they destroy jobs here and close our home retail outlets to sell their shoddy goods through traitors to America.

Do you know anyone who has been to China in the last couple of years!?!? Things ARE changing...and if the worst part of your war is the exchange of shoddy goods, then you clearly don't have much experience with a "World War". It should conjure images of hollocaust and depraved trench war fare, not poorly made can-openers and long check-out lines.

Except for China, who has already stated that if we interfere with their next invasion they will nuke American cities.

Do you have a source for that allegation? China wouldn't make that threat, much less carry it out.

It's Brazil not Brasil.

Yeesh, some people think God invented war to teach Americans geography. I don't know why.

According to YOUR OWN SOURCE , it is both. Follow the link, and search for the string "Brasil" within the page. You will find yourself staring at the following text:

conventional long form: Federative Republic of Brazil
conventional short form: Brazil
local long form: Republica Federativa do Brasil
local short form: Brasil

I have no problem with people posting corrections, even being pedantic, but be right, and for the love of $diety, don't be stupid!

It's Brazil not Brasil.

Yeesh, some people think God invented war to teach Americans geography. I don't know why.

According to YOUR OWN SOURCE , it is both. Follow the link, and search for the string "Brasil" within the page. You will find yourself staring at the following text:

conventional long form: Federative Republic of Brazil
conventional short form: Brazil
local long form: Republica Federativa do Brasil
local short form: Brasil

I have no problem with people posting corrections, even being pedantic, but be right, and for the love of $diety, don't be stupid!

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ br.html#Govt

read before you link, lest you look like an idiot:

          conventional long form: Federative Republic of Brazil
          conventional short form: Brazil
          local long form: Republica Federativa do Brasil
          local short form: Brasil

He was using the local short form: Brasil!

It's Brazil not Brasil.
Yeesh, some people think God invented war to teach Americans geography. I don't know why.

The European Union (which doesn't include all European countries, even) has a population of 456,953,258 (July 2005 est.)

Japan has a population of 127,417,244 (July 2005 est.)

While the United States has a population of 295,734,134 (July 2005 est.)

(Canada is 32,805,041 [July 2005 est.])

If you look at raw numbers... I would say Japan and Europe have us beat by quite a bit.

The European Union (which doesn't include all European countries, even) has a population of 456,953,258 (July 2005 est.)

Japan has a population of 127,417,244 (July 2005 est.)

While the United States has a population of 295,734,134 (July 2005 est.)

(Canada is 32,805,041 [July 2005 est.])

If you look at raw numbers... I would say Japan and Europe have us beat by quite a bit.

The European Union (which doesn't include all European countries, even) has a population of 456,953,258 (July 2005 est.)

Japan has a population of 127,417,244 (July 2005 est.)

While the United States has a population of 295,734,134 (July 2005 est.)

(Canada is 32,805,041 [July 2005 est.])

If you look at raw numbers... I would say Japan and Europe have us beat by quite a bit.

The European Union (which doesn't include all European countries, even) has a population of 456,953,258 (July 2005 est.)

Japan has a population of 127,417,244 (July 2005 est.)

While the United States has a population of 295,734,134 (July 2005 est.)

(Canada is 32,805,041 [July 2005 est.])

If you look at raw numbers... I would say Japan and Europe have us beat by quite a bit.

That's a lot of bucks, but studies like these are easy to take in isolation instead of looking at the big picture.

The U.S. economy is what? About 12 Trillion dollars a year? In 1999 the internet economy was closing in on 150 Billion, by now it has to be through the roof.

Poor software? It costs over 200 Billion a year (sorry no link). You have to put these numbers in perspective. When you are dealing with 300 million folks or so, and the world's largest free market, any kind of estimate for anything is going to be big. The common cold costs over $30 Billion a year.

Just keep it all in perspective. The internet economy will blow right through this obstacle if it gets in the way of sales

Hussein's lawyers claim they were to be used to create macro lenses but apparently the grand jury feels his story just wouldn't wash.

More to come...

How can a person without access to reliable drinking water earn money with a computer?

How can a person who lives on barren land use a computer to get food?

I totally agree. Then again every source of information is not 100% a solid information resource. As someone posted on an earlier article on slashdot, the CIA Factbook has posted information that alot academically recognized people beleive is wrong. Yet the CIA probably for geopolitical reasons post this as a fact (following the money, it is interesting to find out that Greece is one of the biggest arm buyers of the US and they are negotiating with the US to buy a batch of almost deprecated f16s at almost double the price. With political benifits also ;) Sounds like pimping, smells like pimping to me...). Mod me flamebait as you will, but my perspective of the internet has changed over time. Never take anything as granted or fact without investigating...

Well, the CIA says so: http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/ranko rder/2001rank.html [cia.gov]

Well, gee, if the CIA says so, then it must be true. Right? Just like the yellow cake in Niger and the WMD's in Iraq and how the Iranians just love the Shah, and how with just a little air support a bunch of expatriot grocers and hoteliers will be able to overthrow Castro and...

It's the per-head numbers that matter, absolute GDP doesn't really tell you that much.

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/ranko rder/2004rank.html

India comes in at #154 (out of 232) with per captia gdp of $3,100. The entries at the top of the list are generally involved in banking\trading, that seems to make sense given the nature of that business.

There's a large positive relationship between the capital stock of a country and the per capita GDP. That's what drives the high incomes in countries in the the US/UK/EU/Asia regions. In general, the higher the per capita capital stock, the higher marginal return on capital. I couldn't find any good comparative data to cite, most of the World Bank info was from the last 1980's.

Well, the CIA says so: http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/ranko rder/2001rank.html It doesn't surprise me, but I think that table may shock the many Americans who have a very distorted view of the world!

What distortion would that be? The US leads the world. The nearest competition is China that ranks about 60% of the US with over 4 times the population. If you want to include the EU in the compitetion then they just about tie us with about twice the population. USA USA USA

If you are trusting the facts given by these sites:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ in.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4436692.stm
http://www.dqindia.com/content/top_stories/2005/10 5091201.asp
http://www.x-rates.com/

From the BBC article, it is about 5344 pounds ($9300 US) annual salary for a software engineer in India. Take that money and you can hire about 182,000 workers in India or give every person in the country $1.50 (or a little less than a pound for 1,080,264,388 people.) Otherwise if you hire 3,000 new workers and pay them that avg. $9300 annual salary, you will still have $1.67 billion left over to invest elsewhere.

Well, the CIA says so:

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/ranko rder/2001rank.html

It doesn't surprise me, but I think that table may shock the many Americans who have a very distorted view of the world!

India is poor, dirt poor.

Not true. It has a lot of poverty, but it also has a lot of people with a fairly good standard of living, and some extremely wealthy people.

When I was travelling in Mumbai I met some people who had been working as software engineers in San Francisco but returned to India because they said the standard of living was better for a software engineer.

The GDP of India is about 1/3 of the USA's, although of course they have a much larger population.

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/ranko rder/2001rank.html

To put things in perspective, this investment is equivalent to just over 0.05 percent of India's annual GDP, so it's not a big deal for India at all.

Figures here.

Do you trust Wikipedia?

If not, how about the CIA's World Factbook?

In one last ditch effort, if Wikipedia and the CIA are too shady for you, how about the self declared First Macedonian WWW Page? (I might note that the bottom of this page mentions that it "was rated in the 'Top 5% of the Web'")

In case you haven't heard, America is rich, but then again, maybe it's not. Depends on your perspective really.

In case you haven't heard, America is rich, but then again, maybe it's not. Depends on your perspective really.

The real story of Santa Claus is at Gutenberg.

higher poverty rates

Population below poverty line:
France: 6.5%
USA: 12%
Source: CIA - The World Factbook

The US government doesn't loan money, it provides loan guarantees to commercial banks, and because we paid for it we insisted that you use (or rather your dictator at the time) use our banks. It was thought that why give 50 million in a gift when you can multiply that into 500 million by using it as an insurance payment, and ,oh yea, the bank's CEO got a big bonus for the loan.

When you see a country, such as yours, which needs help (and I do mean really needs help) and is ruled by a dictator, we have one of two options.

1. Work with the dictator
2. Overthrow the dictator

Those debts your country owes the commercial banks (from all over the world, the U.S. wasn't the only one in the loan guarantee 'business'), negotiations are to recover just some of the billions owed, really just pennies on the dollar, as the companies have often already 'written off' the debt. Comercial banks took a big sting from 3rd world debt (not nearly as bad as ya'll though), and are much more careful about how much and who to these days, those negoication are a right step to becoming an economic success. Heck, even the CIA factbook has good things to say about your country.

Even if the US were to attempt to limit the distribution of such material, there would be many in foreign countries who would help fill the void.

Who said the US was attempting to do any such thing? Because the US Commence Department asked for more time to hear objections? I'm not a prude but I'm still not entirely sure what the whole point of this TLD is supposed to be. The ease of filtering is a BS argument unless porn sites are forced into the domain -- which I would not want to see happen just because that would imply putting a Governmental or regulatory agency in charge of what's considered "porn". So what exactly is the whole point except to generate fees for ICANN and the registers as everybody rushes to buy domain names?

It's also kind of funny that everybody always mentions the US when it comes to censorship about pornography. I could think of at least one other nanny state that completely puts to shame anything the United States has ever done

It's nothing (on a global scale) if the reported morbidity rates are anywhere near what they are now. Of course, that is the problem ... if the disease becomes highly contagious, then we have problems.

While we should be concerned about pandemics, don't panic (yet ;-).

Related to the quoted article, I can't find an original source of the report of Lance Jennings saying that there will be 75% mortality. This may be from the current reported cases, but to extrapolate this to the entire population seems a bit extreme. (Especially when your other article indicates that we have no idea of the incidence of infection.) Later in the Medical News article, a Chinese doctor predicts 300,000 fatalities in Hong Kong alone - which is a bit over 4% of the population. It is a significant number, but not the "end of civilisation" numbers predicted.

Is this the way USA educates its people?

I still think we ought to focus on Solar power in particular for third world nations. Solar is the real solution to the future energy production issues. I've found quotes for Solar power setups (including batteries for storage) for "large" houses that cost about $25,000. ... This is why it's popoular in places like Africa

Many of the countries in Africa have a GDP per capita of around $1600 or so. If you consider how much of their GDP per capita that $25,000 amounts to, it's the equivalent of a typical American spending around $625,000 on solar power.

That certainly doesn't sound like a viable solution.

3rd world countries will be able to "grow" a very essential component of fuel.

What, you mean like Nigeria, Angola, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Yemen, Belarus, Suriname, Nicaragua and Guatemala does today?

OK, so most poor countries (why do people still call them third world?) haven't got any oil. But most of the rich countries haven't got any either.

I believe this was answered in 2003 by David Kay http://www.cia.gov/cia/public_affairs/speeches/200 3/david_kay_10022003.html

You do know that pretty much every country does the same thing, advocating one set of limits for itself while following another for everyone else, generally resorting to narrow, sometimes hypocritical definitions, depending on their own interests?

Please look at http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/field s/2070.html and let me know how many of the open, standing disputes between states have to do with maritime limits? Or maybe http://www.oceanlaw.net/netpath/page8-mb2.htm ?

Not to interrupt your little Anti-American rant, I mean, it's so trendy nowadays. Self-loathing is so satisfying, it's like moral masochism. It's like self-righteousness in a can!

According to these folks, the nearest McDonalds is across the water, in Malta.

Can we stop the "brits" thing. We don't go around calling the French, Germans or Polish "Europeans" yet we still get that crappy label (which very few support) from Americans.

We have nationalities, we're not from Britianland.

???

Scroll down the list and you'll see why that particular shorthand form is used...

I am well aware of Russia's history, I was simply working from the fact that in policy discussions done in English concerning that country, the autonomous governmental unit just under the federal level, the respublik http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ rs.html , is commonly refered to here as a "state". Now this is once again a common simplification used to aid our thinking when trying to discuss the country, but it is close in its administrative concept.

I think we all just need to agree to disagree. I think "the States" is annoying but I understand your use of it. Just understand that the term America is just a conventional term for us, and when we see on the news all the people who "Hate America" that is the name which they use. And that seems to be all that our own media outlets are feeding us nowadays. Thank god for BBC online. And we can all agree that the guy who doesn't like "brit" is just weird.

Yah... we're from Britain, which also includes the letters "Brit".

You and I may be, but I assume the person complaining isn't. The UK is larger than Great Britain; people from Northern Ireland, for example, are from the UK but not Great Britain.

It's still correct to call these people British though, 'British' is actually a correct term for a UK citizen, even if they are not from Great Britain. References: CIA World Factbook, alt.usage.english.

From CIA World Factbook:

US: ~300 million
India: ~1,100 million
China: ~1,300 million

2,400/300 = 8.

Hence, China and India have a population roughly 8 times that of the US. The concern is that assuming a normal distribution of science and math talent across all populations (a debatable concept I'll get to in a moment), China and India will have a much greater talent pool than the US. This is already being born out in the comparative number of science and engineering grads those cultures produce, and as Romney mentioned, the number of PhD's granted. Statistically, for every 1 Einstein in 100 years in the US, China and India will have 8, and Einstein wasn't even born here. Of course, other factors such as political oppression, intellectual openess, and educational methods (rote learning vs. synthesizing/creating) play a role here, but the sheer numbers put us behind so we're playing catch up from the start.

Further, most East Asian cultures see science and math accomplishment as the result of skills developed through hard work, whereas the general population in the US sees such accomplishment as the result of innate talent alone, unobtainable if you're not born with it. This discourages many from even trying, whereas the opposite effect occurs in Asia.

One side effect I can think of off the top of my head is that less of the US general public is educated in the fundamentals of logic and scientific method, and hence lacks an understanding of why that is important, and also lacks insight into why basic research is important (it's the key to all long-term technological advancement). This state of affairs has the obvious political implications (no one to raise hell when Congress defunds the NSF and NIH to pay for bridges to nowhere in Alaska), and an increasing reliance on religion to help people sort out life, the modern world, etc.

So the discrepancy in numbers and the discrepancy in attitude combine to put the US at a serious fundamental disadvantage in the technological and economic competition ahead of us. I didn't vote for either candidate in the past election, but this one I know I'll vote for whichever ones come with a demonstrated commitment to science, be it Mitt Romney or Al Gore.

Please clarify: Georgia, or Georgia?

The DOE show that the prewar production levels were on the order of 2.5 m bbl/day (peak) and 2.0 m bbl/day now.

CIA World Factbook shows Iraqi production as currently 2.25 million bbl/day (2004 est.); note - prewar production (in 2002) was 2.03 million bbl/day (2004 est.)

And the Iraqi gov't says they can return to prewar levels sometime in 2006.

combining your link with the cia fact book

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/ranko rder/2119rank.html
http://www.whois.sc/internet-statistics/country-ip -counts.html

we get that USA uses 4.5, UK 4.2, Japan 1.1 and China uses 0.0555 ip-adresses per capita, so they are not really the problem ..

Swaziland has 18682461 ip-adresses and a population of 1138227 which is 16.4 per capita..
Uruguay has 42701418 ip-adresses and a population of 3415920 which is 12.5 per capita..
.. I don't understand .. maybe they've never heard about LAN's? (or something is seriously wrong with the ip address space)

Iraq
Oil - production:
2.25 million bbl/day (2004 est.); note - prewar production (in 2002) was 2.03 million bbl/day (2004 est.)

From the CIA World Factbook Web site:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ iz.html

More money for farmers? That's what usually happens when food prices go up. Imports will rise, but that's not a bad thing in the long run.

How, exactly does this help in any way prevent the economic collapse of our largely agrarian-based economy?

The CIA lists the agricultural sector as producing 0.9% of our GDP and farming as less than 0.7% of employed people. We aren't "largely agrarian-based" by any means, only the third world is.

Guess what: the invisible hand only cares about itself, but I suppose that's all we Americans are expected to give a shit about so it doesn't matter anyway.

I would say the opposite, you only care about American farmers, but the invisible hand cares about everyone. We have good estimates about how many Africans die due to American and European subsidies, because they can't compete with people that get free money on top of their income. And the overall price Americans pay (taxes plus food prices) is much higher than it needs to be.

I am awaiting your obviously more highly-enlightened economic explanation.

I'm not trying to be mean, but I really don't know where your info is coming from. You seem to think that the world will end if as subsidies are reduced, and I can't imagine why.

Your point is well taken - and that's why Europe has chosen to use Russian technology:
ESA has entered into a 340 million euro joint venture with the Russian Federal Space Agency over the use of the Soyuz launcher. Under the agreement, the Russian agency will manufacture Soyuz rocket parts for ESA, which will then be shipped to French Guiana for assembly. ESA benefits because it gains a medium payloads launcher, complementing its fleet while saving on development costs. In addition, the Soyuz rocket -- which has been the Russian's space launch workhorse for some 40 years -- is proven technology with a good safety record, which ESA might be happy to use for launching humans into space.

This cooperation is well on it's way - this week they used a Soyuz vehicle to launch the successfull ESA mission "Venus Express".

China can muster more troops than the US? I don't think so.

Try this. They found at least one of the seven biowar trucks that Powell presented to the UN all nice and scrubbed to a level not seen elsewhere.

The link goes to an CIA archival page. The Duelfer report (and the last word on the matter) specifically points out that the trucks found were not mobile biowarfare labs. (Its the last paragraph before the section titled "Evolution of the Bio Warfare Program".) Someone with a brain might realize there might be a problem with the accuracy, if not veracity of the information, when the former Secretary of State hints that his biggest regret was his presentation of it at the UN.

That doesn't mean that we're responsible when the other side straps explosives to a Down's syndrome kid and points him down the street, hopefully to explode with lots of other casualties.

We are responsible if we create the conditions that allows these scumbags to operate. Bushco has created these conditions by lying to the American people that Iraq presented an imminent threat to our national security. Then after invading, he disregards the JCS's recommendations on troop strengths, leading to a situation where there aren't enough footsoldiers to secure major population centers from insurgent attacks, and interdict support from Iran. He plows a ton of money to Halliburton and friends, who do not proceed to use the funds to rebuild the Iraqi infrastructure. Two years later, and some egregious conduct at Abu Graib, the Iraqi people can't kid themselves that the US is leaving, OR walk down the street without worrying about getting blown up.

Here is the bottom line. Presuming Bushco has learned from its mistakes, it must now have a strategy to correct the errors and leave. How is he going to fix the fact that Iraq consists of three ethnic groups that are each others throats? How is he going to fix the fact that Iran is basically preparing Iraq to be the next Islamic state, and he doesn't have the boots in Iraq to stop it? How is he going to secure the oil infrastructure, transportation arteries, and rebuild the economy when the US military cannot eradicate the insurgent movements? How is Iraq supposed to rebuild its police and military when insurgents keep slaughtering the recruits (because we don't have the boots on the ground to protect them), and it may be the case the insurgents are using the recruitment programs to build its infrastructure?

The military has given up counting the war crimes these guys in Al Queda and the Sunni groups do. They think nobody cares. I care. You should to.

Pithy neocon rhetoric doesn't change the fact that American patriots are dying and being maimed in Iraq over a lie, and piss poor execution after the invasion. I care about them. If Bushco can't correct its fuckups, then they should take our troops out of there.

I don't think you should place a price upon the value of saving civilization.

It's perfectly fine to put a price on it. But you should compare that price to the value of civilization.

Which is apparently $55.5 trillion

The U.S. is 52% protestant and only 24% Catholic. Why should the 52% majority care what that old geezer in Rome thinks?

fact: did you guys know that costa rica is only using wind and water power?

Blah blah blah..

It's actually about 2% from fossil fuels, which is still outstanding, but that's only because 83% comes from hydro power alone. Costa Rica is a very small country with huge elevation extremes (3,810M to sea level), which makes hyrdo power much more practical than in other locations. Additionally, the energy consumption per capita in Costa Rica is on the order of 1,800kWH per capita per anum compared to 13,700kWH in the US.