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I have been skeptical of China's promise of "one country, two systems" since Hong Kong was reunified with China in 1997. How soon will Hong Kong news media lose their freedoms?

I believe the computer generated images on the left (at the top) were used in his speech. His speech highlighted remarks about this in the yellow.

Well, I would be ashamed if I gave an international speech and turned out to be wrong. Wouldn't you? Whether partly, or completely, wrong, I would still feel like crap for it. Not to mention that may ruin any political ambitions he had.

Some information about Vanuatu, as well as its capital, Port Vila (misspelled in TFA) can be found here and here.

As for why WinMX might want to relocate there, this link should shed a little light on the issue...

To put that in further perspective it might of interest to know that Sweden only has a population of about 9 million.

I want to see the US build a "skyhook" space elevator on the Equator right off Jarvis Island. Jarvis could house the cargo/control center. Nearby Kiribati could become an (inter)global shipping hub. And Hawaii would be even spacier than it is now.

*sigh*

10000000 + 0.00000001
is
10000000
in any practical sense (come up with a real-life example if you want to contradict me and someone already slam-dunked the mole example).

Example. Take the 0.00000001 to equal 1 grain of rice. That would mean that the 10000000 is equal to 1,000,000,000,000,000 grains of rice. Take the world's population as 6,446,131,400. Now split up this rice giving everyone an equal share. Oops, there a fractional amount. Let's truncate that since not everyone is a Democrat :-) and we can't make the .805 = 1 no matter what calculator we use.

At this point we have 5,189,135,777 grains spare. Put your extra grain of rice on the pile and if you claim to be able to tell the difference, then you will officially become the Divider Of Ice Cream for parents with 2 or more children. I assure you, this is a thankless job. So just give up your naive notion that
10000000 + 0.00000001 = 10000000.00000001
or you will be listening to the wails of "He got more than me!" and "Did not!" until your ears bleed.

As to poverty, another poster already replied to you and pointed out that Cuba has a lower poverty rate than the US. That just shows how (like the infant mortality rates) poverty statistics are BS.

To pre-empt any cries of foul play, here is the CIA factbook's side notes on the poverty percentages.

"Definitions of poverty vary considerably among nations. For example, rich nations generally employ more generous standards of poverty than poor nations."

The world bank defines poverty as living on below two US dollars per day, but few countries use that definition.

Please stop referring to people from the US as USians. Thanks.

As long as no other country builds an automatic retaliation system without telling us. I wonder where that idea would come from?

As long as no other country builds an automatic retaliation system without telling us. I wonder where that idea would come from?

As long as no other country builds an automatic retaliation system without telling us. I wonder where that idea would come from?

Our economy is almost an order of magnitude larger than theirs according to the CIA world factbook:

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ us.html
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ rs.html

I said nothing about anyone being better than anyone, its just the math that bothers me. Countries with GDP differences of that size should have have comparable space programs. But thanks for turning this into another anti-america post on slashdot - and thanks for proving my point about pride in our country.

Our economy is almost an order of magnitude larger than theirs according to the CIA world factbook:

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ us.html
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ rs.html

I said nothing about anyone being better than anyone, its just the math that bothers me. Countries with GDP differences of that size should have have comparable space programs. But thanks for turning this into another anti-america post on slashdot - and thanks for proving my point about pride in our country.

Hell, even the word 'China' refers to the 'Chin' dynasty - a bunch of semi-literate barbarians who overthrew the Ming Dynasty about the time America was being settled.

Actually, "Chin" is from Qin Dynasty 221BC

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qin_Dynasty:
http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/china/early _imperial_china/qin.html:

Also check CIA's website:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ ch.html
You can find this line:
  221 BC (unification under the Qin or Ch'in Dynasty);

Actually, it's even worse than you think. At 133,910 square km, Bangladesh is slightly smaller than Iowa. A population of over 144 million people lives there.

Source: CIA World Factbook, Bangladesh

• The likely scenario for a natural catastrophe in the Netherlands is much less than that for New Orleans due to historical hurricanes and tropical storm patterns. Protecting agaisnt a CAT4 or CAT5 hurricane is cost prohibitive in many instances.
• The Netherlands have four times the population of Lousisana (16.4 mil vs 4 mil) and a fraction of coastal area to protect (451KM compared to Louisiana's 15000 miles).
• The Netherlands has only recently had to deal as a Federal member in the EU. Give it 200 years and see where your tax dollars are being routed to.

At least in my own country, Norway, all of the fuel tax is diverted into the general budget - motorists hardly see any of the funds collected [put into roads]. However the whole point is to keep it expensive and encourage people to find alternatives! Norway is the world's third largest exporter of oil. We actually have a very good public transport system - and the country is quite large not to mention mountainous.

BTW: We don't spend our oil income, we put it into a huge fund for future generations. Approx. USD 190 billion and rapidly expanding.

I know that there will soon be people chomping at the bit to mandate these things.

I did some calculations. There are 7.6 million residential pools in the US, and 832 drownings per year among children age 0-14. This number includes non-pool drownings, so the cost to save each child is actually higher than below. There are also a smaller number of adult deaths. Assuming a pool lasts for 20 years:

Cost per pool per year:
$100,000/20 = $5,000.

Cost per year, nationwide:
$5,000 * 7.6M = $38B

Cost per life saved:
$38B / 832 = $45.6M

The per capita Gross Domestic Product of the US is $40,100. At this rate, one person must work 1,140 years to save someone else's life. I realize that it's very chic to say you can't put a price on life, but if you don't, the entire population of the world will quickly be working full-time to do nothing but save lives.

It's a shame that logic always loses out to "Please, won't someone think about the children!"

Actually, we rank #48 on longevity. #1 would be Andorra
Check your facts.
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/ranko rder/2102rank.html

Do they need it?

Not true. Luxemburg has a much higher GDP per capita. And several other countries are about equal to the US. Especially if you take into account other factors, such as national debt, savings/investment rates, standards of living, expected life-span, etc.

The NSA, on the other hand, has some very interesting listings under the Computer Science section of their career fields page. They look suspiciously like pleasant euphemisms for very devious behaviour.

• Information Systems Security
• Vulnerability Discovery

Sri Lanka has a population of 20 million and has 19 political parties.

--
Faith-based lying? Faith-based killing?

Yeap, there is a dispute between not only China and Vietnam, but also Taiwan about offshore oil deposits in the South China Sea. Here's a good case study of the Spratly Islands Dispute.

The loss of American blood and treasure in foreign conflicts was presaged by the warning from President Dwight Eisenhower regarding the USA's "military-industrial complex".

Yet Eisenhower set the stage for the Vietnam War.

Maybe we can just emigrate to Sealand. Or Tokelau.

-

Wake me up when our GDP goes below 10 trillion.

How about I wake you when your country's external debt hits a trillion dollars? Oh, I should have woken you in the late 90's, sorry.

If we're going to talk about numbers that mean nothing on their own, what about the current account balance?
Let's see the Rank Order - Current account balance

Hmm.

USA -Last- $ -646.5 billion.
Australia -Second Last- $ -38.3 billion. .....

Japan -First- $ 170.2 billion.

So yes, you have big economies, you get big numbers. But you can't keep this lifestyle up forever, you know. One of those tiger economies is coming up fast to bite you in the ass, and it's gonna hurt.

I'm American, so you'll have to help me out a bit. I found this table that gives results for private philanthropy as %of GDP. I believe the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, France, the UK, Finland, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Romania, Slovakia, and Poland are all part of Europe, and only the first 5 give more percentagewise than the US. Furthermore, the Netherlands is #1, yet its GDP is 481.1 billion, compared to America's 11.75 trillion. Make what you want about giving 4.49% vs 2.47%, but you can't argue that 21.6 billion helps those in need more than 290 billion.

Your analysis of govt is also wrong. Vocal minorities with lobbiests have a very disproportionate impact on govt policy, witness the **AA, or more positively, the 60s civil rights movement. Furthermore, someone who donates privately *chooses* to do that, whereas someone whose donatation was "given" in the form of taxes was compelled by force to do that. Which is more charitable?

Do be a good chap and stop hating America for your delusions. Hate us for being the lone economic superpower who doesn't care to listen to a continent that has only withen the past 50 years stopped waging near-constant wars with each other.

I'm American, so you'll have to help me out a bit. I found this table that gives results for private philanthropy as %of GDP. I believe the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, France, the UK, Finland, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Romania, Slovakia, and Poland are all part of Europe, and only the first 5 give more percentagewise than the US. Furthermore, the Netherlands is #1, yet its GDP is 481.1 billion, compared to America's 11.75 trillion. Make what you want about giving 4.49% vs 2.47%, but you can't argue that 21.6 billion helps those in need more than 290 billion.

Your analysis of govt is also wrong. Vocal minorities with lobbiests have a very disproportionate impact on govt policy, witness the **AA, or more positively, the 60s civil rights movement. Furthermore, someone who donates privately *chooses* to do that, whereas someone whose donatation was "given" in the form of taxes was compelled by force to do that. Which is more charitable?

Do be a good chap and stop hating America for your delusions. Hate us for being the lone economic superpower who doesn't care to listen to a continent that has only withen the past 50 years stopped waging near-constant wars with each other.

Just for giggles, let's look at the last figure since public social spending dwarfs the other two categories. In particular, what is the per capita money using purchasing power parity USD (called "PPP" which attempts to adjust for cost of living) figures (from the CIA world factbook) spent per person in the country?

1. Norway $10,040
2. United States $9,383
3. Denmark $8,855
4. Belgium $8,721
5. Sweden $8,690
6. Germany $8,266
7. Austria $7,700
8. Finland $7,424
9. United Kingdom $7,282
10. Netherlands $7,080
11. Italy $7,008

Given the corruption in foreign aid, in the US and elsewhere, I'm not sure the first two figures are relevant. But if they are, then yes, the US is pretty stingy there.

My point here is that I see some pretty stilted thinking here about charity. Namely, that it has to be provided by a government and that a few particular measures of public expenditures determines who is the most generous donor. We also ignore circumstance. My take is that in the US there's a long history of failure in US foreign aid and public social spending, that might not be present for similar programs in EU countries.

Also, we're ignoring obvious ways to improve things. Greater overall wealth helps everyone. That's my point with the above table. The US spends less as a fraction of GDP, but it's greater overall because GDP is so much larger per capita. Further, routine economic activity is doing far more than any foreign aid to bring people out of poverty. Here the US leads (for good or ill) .

Could the US improve on its carbon production? Sure. But everybody else has a long way to go to catch up to our economic production.

So, you are suggesting that you should a million companies that support just 4 ppl each? You have seen the dumb joke about PROFIT here, yes?

That can't be a case where "it is likely that the majority of that site's users are physically present in Australia". Unless they mean the Australian version of Google. Even so, it's a teeny segment of Google's search engine, so the majority of Google users aren't in Australia.

Indonesia has about 1 billion people.

Fewer than that, actually: 241,973,879 (July 2005 est.)

Link.

Technically, 2 and 3 in the world rankings of GDP would be the European Union and China, with their combined GDP ousting the U.S. by $7,162,000,000,000. I think it's fair to include the EU as relevent since you phrased it as "economic power" and not as countries. Goodday sir.

Interestingly enough, as African states go Namibia isn't half bad. Atleast they haven't had a major civil war in a while.

What I don't understand is what the number of hours a particular ethnicity plays videogames per week has to do with what percentage of that ethnicity there should be in gaming.

The fact is that almost 81.7% of the country is caucasian. So obviously there will statistically be far more caucasians in any one area than there are of any other group.

So I guess someone needs to figure out how we're going to start relating population to employment in each industry. And what is going to happen when we run out of minorities to balance out the numbers? I mean, if they think we need to have exactly 50% white and 50% black and hispanic, we're going to end up with a massive population of unemployed white people and WAY TOO FEW minorities to fill that other 50%. I mean, if only 12% of the population is of a particular ethnicity, there's no way that 12% can fill 50% of the positions... So... we need some sort of an agreed formula.

And if there aren't enough people of a certain color who are interested in a certain field, the government should force them to pick up a certain career. And if you don't accept it, you should be put in prison until you change your mind.

Yes, overall the US is a net importing country. We import a butt load of stuff every minute of every day, and buy and buy and buy. If everybody stopped trading with us, they'd need to find outlets really fast for their goods, since the US has about the largest buying power per capita in the world. We have ~4% of the world's population, but ~21% of the world's money (US - here World - here).

Not trading with the United States is just as bad as us deciding not to trade with another country, except it would take 6 billion people (and their governments) to decide to not trade with us, compared with 300 million people (through our government and pocketbooks) to not trade with somebody else.

Yes, overall the US is a net importing country. We import a butt load of stuff every minute of every day, and buy and buy and buy. If everybody stopped trading with us, they'd need to find outlets really fast for their goods, since the US has about the largest buying power per capita in the world. We have ~4% of the world's population, but ~21% of the world's money (US - here World - here).

Not trading with the United States is just as bad as us deciding not to trade with another country, except it would take 6 billion people (and their governments) to decide to not trade with us, compared with 300 million people (through our government and pocketbooks) to not trade with somebody else.

"oil resources are distributed globally" -- NO. Saudi Arabia possesses 25% of the world's proven petroleum reserves. The remaining 75% are hardly evenly distributed. Most are owned by nations that are not our friends. Many of them hate us with a passion, as a matter of official policy.

"a jump in oil prices ... a bit of a recession" -- NO. We're talking about oil prices doubling soon, and tripling and quadrupling after that, on to a price point of infinity because there WILL BE NO MORE OIL, except what we can squeeze out of weeds and rocks. Back in the 70's and 80's, OPEC was playing us for suckers, and yes, we had high inflation. This time around, the shock will only be the beginning, and it won't be some council of ministers that controls it...it will be an inexorable descent into economic desperation.

"In a decade at most we're probably right back where we were" -- NO. In a decade at most the American military will be taking oil from around the world at gunpoint. We've already started. Yes, there will be increased incentive to use other sources of energy, but it will be too little, too late.

"I will just take the damn bike to work" -- NO. You won't have a job, and neither will I.

I agree that we should worry about avian flu. But your claim that oil is one of the least important commodities on which we have a "reliance" is hogwash. Oil is far and away the most important commodity in the US and a prolonged problem with it will be a disaster. Our economic growth has been tied to it for the past century. We have to break that tie, as soon as possible. No other policy problem approaches this one in importance.

You do realise that most if not all graphics card/chipset manufacturers provide their own implementations of OpenGL with their drivers, don't you? That this is only going to apply to the system default drivers that no-one who cares in the least about performance is going to be using?

European governments are starting to wise up that transfering as much as 0.3% of GDP to the United States in Windows licenses is not a smart move.

Can you give any references for that figure please? According to the CIA world factbook, our GDP is $ 1,782,000,000,000 - are you really suggesting that we spend more than $5,300,000,000 on Windows licences? According to computerworld, MS's revenue for 2004 (total, not just for Windows) was $36.8 billion; that would mean (according to your figures) that the UK was providing well in excess of 14% of MS's revenue...

No, in the absence of any measures, information ceases to exist. Fail to remember, fail to record it, fail to anything with it and it doesn't exist.

Nature records information all the time. There will always be information available to any who wish to retrieve it.

How is it that you get from "in the absence of measures" to "nature is making recordings?" There are two things to which you might be referring. A more careful selection of language reveals them both to be fundamentally broken arguments.

One is that an active process of nature creates a derivative product of information with long-term storage characteristics. One can make this non-argument for cases like fossils, where the information of the creature's structure can be determined occasionally billions of years after the organism itself disappears. The problem is, this isn't the lack of measures to maintain information to which the grandparent referred; there requires some active process, such as sedimentation or water fossilization (petrifaction) in order to occur. In the absence of such a mechanism, which is extremely rare (there's a reason there are so few fossils,) creatures do not leave significant information behind.

The other case is more difficult to explain. There is the argument that information is retreivable through some or another forensic process. Examples include using carbon patterns to determine the nature and temperature of fires or lava, gulleys to divine the presence of water on Mars, and pretty much anything you'd see on CSI: Miami which isn't a self serving pablumessage about the evils of racism or profiteering or some damned thing. There are those who would try to cast this as Nature or The World or something "recording information" which the intrepid researcher can come back and re-discover. Find something rotting? Plot out the progress of the putrifaction and you can (mostly) reconstruct the corpse's original state.

The problem is, that's not recording information at all. That's an incomplete loss of information. In many ways you can think of the physical world as an immensely error correcting signal. This is a fundamentally false analogy, but it serves my explanatory purpose, so run with it anyway. What we're doing when we walk back through partial information to reconstruct the original information is not finding other recordings of that information. What we're doing is looking for correlary effects which when summed give us the complete set of original information. It may sound like the same thing, but there's a critical semantic difference: we're not relocating, we're recreating. Granted it's the same information. Still, it's information lost and remade from evidence, not information located through crafty means.

The difference is quite real. I'm not just playing semantics. Consider The Einstein Puzzle as a good example of a way to recreate lost information, whose goal can only be reached thus.

"Information wants to be free" may not be as accurate as "people generally want to share information and make it available", but sounds a bit more philosophicalisticalish.

If you choose your phrasing to make yourself sound smart instead of to accurately convey information, then you deserve the opinion of ignorance other people aim your way. Besides, philosophy literally translates as "the love of knowledge;" even if the word meant what you seem to think it means, the bit about sharing would be far more in tune with the word than some vacuous notion about the supposed intent of recorded state.

there is nothing that the government can do even half as efficiently as the collective power of tens of millions of people with nothing better to do with their time than plink.

Exactly what do you think the government is, if not the collective power of tens of millions of people with nothing better to do with their time than solve tasks? (Yes, tens of millions. The government employs more than 5% of this nation, and the nation's around 300 million these days.)

Cuba is over 500 miles long.

That the proportion of incidence of HIV/AIDS to total population is a low one(about 39.4 million infected(1) in a population of about 6.4 billion(2) for about .6 infected people per 100) means that any random person has a rather low risk of contracting HIV in the next, say, ten years. Statistically, _nobody_ catches AIDS for any reason, except for a few anomalies. Certainly it's easy to ignore AIDS cases caused by a subset of possible causes in a relatively unaffected subset of all people, because _every_ case of AIDS in the USA is a statistical anomaly.

Unfortunately, in the real life you speak of nobody is 6/1000ths HIV+. It's easy to hide information using statistics; with the 6/1000ths number one might not expect for whole countries to have an adult HIV/AIDS prevalence rate of 21.3%(3) One might not even expect 640,000 children 15 and under to have been newly infected with HIV in 2004(4).

Of course AIDS isn't going to kill us all, at least not until it somehow manages to become transmissible by mosquito bite. But to say that "normal" people who "take a modicum of precaution" don't catch AIDS except for a few anomalies is willingness to misleadingly ignore those life has shat on, and because of that ignorance claim those covered shit don't exist.

Consider:

Correctional institutions in the USA have an HIV/AIDS rate five to ten times higher than that of the general population(5).

In 1998, 11.5 million inmates were released from jails and prisons(6), re-entering the "normal" population and bringing with them any diseases contracted while imprisoned.

It is estimated that more than 425,000 inmates in the USA are raped every year, although accurate numbers are notoriously difficult or impossible to come by(7)

True monogamy is really very uncommon, with most sexually active people in the USA going through a period of serial monogamy, wherein they may have a great number of sexual partners, allowing diseases such as AIDS to be spread unwittingly even by those held in trust.

(1)http://www.avert.org/worldstats.htm
(2)http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/ra nkorder/2119rank.html
(3)http://www.unaids.org/en/geographical+area/by+c ountry/namibia.asp
(4)http://www.avert.org/worldstats.htm
(5)http://www.spr.org/en/factsheetdisease.html
(6)Ibid.
(7)http://www.menweb.org/throop/abuse/usa-prison.h tml

Canada would totally win this cripple fight!

From the CIA factbook:
Denmark Military: http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ da.html)
Military branches:
Royal Danish Army, Royal Danish Navy, Royal Danish Air Force, Home Guard (Hjemmevaernet)
Military manpower - military age and obligation:
18 years of age for compulsory and volunteer military service; conscripts serve an initial training period that varies from 4 to 12 months according to specialization; reservists are assigned to mobilization units following completion of their conscript service (2004)
Military manpower - availability:
males age 18-49: 1,175,108 (2005 est.)
Military manpower - fit for military service:
males age 18-49: 955,168 (2005 est.)
Military manpower - reaching military age annually:
males: 31,317 (2005 est.)
Military expenditures - dollar figure:
$3,271.6 million (2003)
Military expenditures - percent of GDP:
1.5% (2004)

Canadian military: http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ ca.html
Military branches:
Canadian Armed Forces: Land Forces Command, Maritime Command, Air Command, Canada Command (homeland security) to be operational in early 2006 (2005)
Military manpower - military age and obligation:
16 years of age for voluntary military service; women comprise some 11% of Canada's armed forces (2001)
Military manpower - availability:
males age 16-49: 8,216,510 (2005 est.)
Military manpower - fit for military service:
males age 16-49: 6,740,490 (2005 est.)
Military manpower - reaching military age annually:
males: 223,821 (2005 est.)
Military expenditures - dollar figure:
$9,801.7 million (2003)
Military expenditures - percent of GDP:
1.1% (2003)

Or from NationMaster.com:
Denmark: http://www.nationmaster.com/country/da/Military
Armed forces personnel: 22,000

Canada: http://www.nationmaster.com/country/ca/Military
Air force personnel: 14,000
Armed forces personnel: 59,000
Army personnel: 20,900

On the other hand, I guess they are freakin Vikings :-)

Canada would totally win this cripple fight!

From the CIA factbook:
Denmark Military: http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ da.html)
Military branches:
Royal Danish Army, Royal Danish Navy, Royal Danish Air Force, Home Guard (Hjemmevaernet)
Military manpower - military age and obligation:
18 years of age for compulsory and volunteer military service; conscripts serve an initial training period that varies from 4 to 12 months according to specialization; reservists are assigned to mobilization units following completion of their conscript service (2004)
Military manpower - availability:
males age 18-49: 1,175,108 (2005 est.)
Military manpower - fit for military service:
males age 18-49: 955,168 (2005 est.)
Military manpower - reaching military age annually:
males: 31,317 (2005 est.)
Military expenditures - dollar figure:
$3,271.6 million (2003)
Military expenditures - percent of GDP:
1.5% (2004)

Canadian military: http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ ca.html
Military branches:
Canadian Armed Forces: Land Forces Command, Maritime Command, Air Command, Canada Command (homeland security) to be operational in early 2006 (2005)
Military manpower - military age and obligation:
16 years of age for voluntary military service; women comprise some 11% of Canada's armed forces (2001)
Military manpower - availability:
males age 16-49: 8,216,510 (2005 est.)
Military manpower - fit for military service:
males age 16-49: 6,740,490 (2005 est.)
Military manpower - reaching military age annually:
males: 223,821 (2005 est.)
Military expenditures - dollar figure:
$9,801.7 million (2003)
Military expenditures - percent of GDP:
1.1% (2003)

Or from NationMaster.com:
Denmark: http://www.nationmaster.com/country/da/Military
Armed forces personnel: 22,000

Canada: http://www.nationmaster.com/country/ca/Military
Air force personnel: 14,000
Armed forces personnel: 59,000
Army personnel: 20,900

On the other hand, I guess they are freakin Vikings :-)

Well, you started it by occupying it.

I'm from Greenland and have only ever once noted the dispute; looking in the CIA World Factbook entry for Denmark, at the bottom you can see the dispute at the bottom of the page, mentioned in one sentence.

I'm sorry, but you are just plain wrong. I strongly suggest that you at least read the 20 page key findings summary from the ISG report and educate yourself on this subject beyond a CNN quote. The ISG (and CIA) never said there was no research. On the contrary, they documented 1200+ pages of WMD violations. The first CIA report from David Kay in October 2003 stated:

We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002. The discovery of these deliberate concealment efforts have come about both through the admissions of Iraqi scientists and officials concerning information they deliberately withheld and through physical evidence of equipment and activities that ISG has discovered that should have been declared to the UN.

I would quote more from these reports but I an only stomach so much spoon feeding from a report that has been publicly available for a year now.

And we're talking isolationism

She isn't a citizen. Bummer. At least she's allowed to stay. Try China.

How about comparing to somewhere a little more free, and developed, somewhere more comparable to Japan...somewhere like...America!

I note that the descendants of African slave labor are allowed to stay AND have citizenship. Hot damn! This is probably true of England as well. But in Japan, descendents of Korean slave labor are allowed to stay but are stripped of their citizenship. Hrm. Isolationist? Probably.

Naturalization procedure: http://www.debito.org/naturalization.html

Proof and pudding: according to the above Washington Post article, the equivalent of the TOTAL NUMBER OF ALL FOREIGNERS IN JAPAN (just over one percent of Japan's population) naturalize into the United States recently EVERY YEAR. Or, according to the US Census Bureau, 1300 would-be immigrants every day enter America (Daily Yomiuri, Nov 25, 1996, p.3). That means that America absorbs all of Japan's annual intake of foreigners in just over a week! AND THAT MATTERS This is not a statistic to ignore. Just about *every single American* here reading this html has or has ancestors who went through a version of this process--my Polish great-grandparents in the 1910's, and my British dad in 1972. On the other hand, practically NO Japanese can claim this background, indicating a great deal about assimilation. If you're not born it, you have to claim it. Not all that many do. But anyway, my point is this: this should all come as no surprise. Obviously, Japan is going to be far behind accepting foreigners legally, given what we know about Japan's history, constant refusal of refugees and active export of illegal immigrants, and social attitudes towards strangers in general. And even more so when compared to the US--the US is the real outlier in the world when it comes to absorbing extranationals. (Anybody else want to give me more information about other countries?)

Granted it's a bit dated (1996), and we are talking about america, but from what I recall, proportionally, Japan's annual intake has always been incredibly low, something like less than 0.01% relative to total population, whereas America has been around less than 0.4% total population? It's interesting to note that, even today in 2005, Japan is still 99% ethnic Japanese according to the CIA world factbook. http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ ja.html

Btw, as far as I know, if those two mixed couples should decide to get a divorce, and already have kids, well, the foreigner of the pair will get the shaft as far as custody rights go. But I admit I'm not sure how that policy compares to other free nations.

Look here:
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/myths/ mf21.html#h
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/myths/ mf21.html#i
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/myths/ mf21.html#j
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/myths/ mf21.html#k


MYTH

"The U.S. has always given Israel billions of dollars without expecting repayment."

FACT

U.S. economic grants to Israel ended in 1959. U.S. aid to Israel from then until 1985 consisted largely of loans, which Israel repaid, and surplus commodities, which Israel bought. Israel began buying arms from the United States in 1962, but did not receive any grant military assistance until after the 1973 Yom Kippur War. As a result, Israel had to go deeply into debt to finance its economic development and arms procurement. The decision to convert military aid to grants that year was based on the prevailing view in Congress that without a strong Israel, war in the Middle East was more likely, and that the U.S. would face higher direct expenditures in such an eventuality.

For several years, most of Israel's economic aid went to pay off old debts. In 1984, foreign aid legislation included the Cranston Amendment (named after its Senate sponsor), which said the U.S. would provide Israel with economic assistance "not less than" the amount Israel owes the United States in annual debt service payments.

MYTH

"Israel continues to demand large amounts of economic aid even though it is now a rich country that no longer needs help."

FACT

Starting with fiscal year 1987, Israel annually received $1.2 billion in all grant economic aid and $1.8 billion in all grant military assistance. In 1998, Israel offered to voluntarily reduce its dependence on U.S. economic aid. According to an agreement reached with the Clinton Administration and Congress, the $1.2 billion economic aid package will be reduced by $120 million each year so that it will be phased out over 10 years.
(...)
Israel made the offer because it does not have the same need for assistance it once did. The foundation of Israel's economy today is strong; still, Israel remains saddled with past debts to the U.S., which, unlike those of Jordan and Egypt, were not forgiven.

MYTH

"U.S. military aid subsidizes Israeli defense contractors at the expense of American industry."

FACT

Contrary to popular wisdom, the United States does not simply write billion dollar checks and hand them over to Israel to spend as they like. Only about 26 percent ($555 million of $2.1 billion in 2003) of what Israel receives in Foreign Military Financing (FMF) can be spent in Israel for military procurement. The remaining 74 percent is spent in the United States to generate profits and jobs. More than 1,000 companies in 47 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have signed contracts worth billions of dollars through this program over the last several years. The figures for 2001 are below: (There is a table in the last link)


Furthermore, from the CIA World Factbook entry on Israel:

Budget:
revenues: $48.09 billion
expenditures: $52.11 billion, including capital expenditures of NA (2004 est.)

The US Aid is about 3 billion dollars.
thats less than 1.5% of the israeli budget! (revenues-wise)
So next time you are saying stuff like "Tax breaks which would not be possible if the U.S. stopped financially supporting the State of Israel" know the numbers.

Japan and China both have rapidly aging populations.

Do you just make stuff up as you go along to prove your points? Per the CIA World Factbook, the US has 20.6% of its population 0-14 years of age, and 67% ages 15-64. China similarly has 21.4% ages 0-14 years and 71% ages 15-64. China is a younger country than the United States, and certainly younger than Europe.

But at least we have a "devise" society!