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In the past, this was rectified by revoking corporate charters.

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=1810

The big advantages of a drone are 1) The pilot can live anywhere in the world. 2) It doesn't matter if the pilot gets shot down. 3) the drone can be made real small.

1) and 2) are really useful, if conducting operations over hostile Afghanistan. On the US-Mexico border, they are worthless. 3), why are the using the 2 ton mq-9?

A static barrier, with video cameras, might be the best option. Congress has been blocking that option for the last 15 years.

We already tried that already. Didn't work out all that well. Different idea, same contractors. Interesting, huh?

The board of directors do have a requirement to uphold the company charter. Many charters include wording like "maximise shareholder value" but it is also clear that they intend to do this by providing goods and/or services to people, not by kidnapping college students and selling their kidneys.

That is often true. And then there's Dyncorp. http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11119

Given all the attention recently put on beef, I expect McDonalds to be truthful on their page talking about their meats:

Do you use American meat?

We do. All of our chicken comes from our trusted USDA-inspected suppliers in the U.S., like Tyson Foods and Keystone Foods. Our beef and pork products also come from trusted USDA-inspected suppliers, such as Lopez Foods. In order to keep up with demand, a small percentage of our 100% pure beef is imported from USDA-inspected suppliers in Australia and New Zealand

The term USDA-inspected doesn't carry nearly the same power as it did 20 years ago. From allowing meat grinders to create and monitor their own safety plan with no followup corpwatch.org, to allowing chicken farms to do the same foodsafetynews.com, to criminally lax contamination guidelines on pork mercola.com ... this can continue but there are already dozens of documentaries to make these points.

Big Food will keep telling us our food is safe while pumping us full of the steroid-ridden anemic flesh that so many love.

If you funded the invention of a new crop version and wanted to recoup your hundreds of millions of development costs, you would not want the court to eliminate patent rights for 2nd generation crops.

This attitude is a problem. Why should anyone be forced to prop up a poorly thought out business model? Farmers have been manipulating genes for thousands of years.. is there a patent on corn or bananas or any number of domesticated crops? No, because the reward to the farmers was a more productive crop.

Maybe monsanto needs to change the way they do business rather than try to force everyone else to do so.

Apple's own audits show (PDF) the company has caught underage workers at a handful of its suppliers.

There is just a slight matter of scale here. Apple found evidence that several companies had hired employees when they were underage. In the year before, one company was responsible for more than half of these cases, and that company lost their contract with Apple.

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=15152 - The New York Times August 5th, 2008 State labor investigators have identified 57 under-age workers who were employed at a kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa That's 15 more than the company Apple dropped.

You Will Never Kill Piracy

These copyright laws are not about protecting artists from piracy, they are about expanding the for-profit prison industry.

Let's not full ourselves, the "piracy" issue is just as stupid as believing that the War on Drugs stops people from smoking marijuana.

These copyright agendas use the same principals as Microsoft's "embrace, extend and extinguish" corporate mantra. It's all about one class of people dominating another class of people.

References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrections_Corporation_of_America
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=867
http://mediafilter.org/MFF/Prison.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish

He has a significant financial interest in climate science reaching a particular conclusion.

Do you really believe that Al Gore is motivated by money? Think about that for a moment. What evidence is there for it? I don't even know if he has stocks in renewable energy research companies, or the like, but isn't it plausible that he has invested in said (theoretical?) companies because he has lots of money, and believes that this is a good thing to do?

Can you support your point a little better? It sounds like you are just casting unfounded negative aspirtions.

Clearly you have not followed Gore Jr's life much. His family continues to make millions off of oil stocks given to them as a bribe by Armand Hammer.

Here's Gore sort of being disclosed in 2000:

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=468

Here's Gore being called out for more faux caring:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-08-09-gore-green_x.htm

Public records reveal that as Gore lectures Americans on excessive consumption, he and his wife Tipper live in two properties: a 10,000-square-foot, 20-room, eight-bathroom home in Nashville, and a 4,000-square-foot home in Arlington, Va. (He also has a third home in Carthage, Tenn.) For someone rallying the planet to pursue a path of extreme personal sacrifice, Gore requires little from himself.

...and now Gore Jr. is playing both sides.

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/11/03/al-gore-the-worlds-first-carbon-billionaire/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/6491195/Al-Gore-could-become-worlds-first-carbon-billionaire.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/business/energy-environment/03gore.html

Clearly your blinders are locked if you do not understand the clear conflict of interest here. I'm sure the slightest bit of investigative journalism could produce much more incentive.

the very first question that should be asked of people proposing legal changes of this kind is, "Where are the data to show that this new and harsher law will result in a reduction in the penalized behaviour sufficient to justify the change?"

You assume that reducing the behavior in question is the goal of the criminal justice system. More and more, I doubt this is the case.

For the prison-industrial complex, it's all about money; there's money to be had building and running prisons, and prison guard groups like CCPOA have clout and want to keep their members employed. For the masses, it's all about satisfying an irrational, almost ritual, need for revenge -- right up to the ritual human sacrifice that is capital punishment. (Just look at how many comments here are calling for tougher treatment of prisoners, without any rational argument involved.) For politicians, it's about pandering to all these groups with "tough on crime" rhetoric.

Actually reducing violent or fraudulent behavior is a pretty low priority.

Compulsory education in the USA was not "normal" until the last hundred years, and has a lot of negative side effects beyond being a major vector for communicable disease:
http://www.thewaronkids.com/
http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt

Parents can choose to avoid compulsory school by homeschooling or using alternative schools or tutors with more flexibility, which is how most of humanity has been educated for most of time.

You're also saying parents have less control over choosing to breastfeed for two years or choosing to feed their kids whole foods (vegetables, fruits, beans, nuts, seeds, whole grains, water, plus a few supplements like vitamin D) instead of junk? Less control than what? If so, why is this? Are their any commonalities between magic bullet thinking like with vaccines and other aspects of our society that relate in a refusal to invest the time and effort it takes for true health both as individuals and as societies building healthy infrastructures? Such as: http://www.bluezones.com/

I'm not saying these things are not difficult to some degree -- more difficult than going with the mainstream profit-drive flow of US society, I'd agree. But, so what? If people are going to condemn others and suggest they be dumped on an island somewhere for posing a health risk, where do you draw the line?

Also, is this the standard you use for vaccine safety and effectiveness?
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14401
"Critics point out that CROs can come with built-in problems. Conflicts of interest can arise when CROs are paid royalties only after a drug is approved rather than being paid a set fee that is independent of how safe or effective the drug turns out to be. Problems can also arise because CROs know that favorable findings mean that research into a test drug will continue, and they may also believe that results that please the hiring corporation can lead to future contracts. "[C]ompanies know that the farther the compound moves through the research cycle, the more money they can raise," Nature reported. Merck spokesperson Amy Rose refused say how many trials Merck contracted to CROs or what percentage of the Gardasil subjects these contractors recruited in the Third World. She also refused to specify how, or even if, the company oversees CROs."

Have you given any of this any thought before? For a long time, neither had I...

Anyway, the bottom line is that it is almost certain that the poster I replied to meant well with that comment. I'm just following through on the logic expressed there. You seem to think then that we should draw the line on "cheap" things? So, it's OK to feed kids junk and to send them to physical and mental disease factories because that is the cheap and conventional thing to do? Well, that's your right in the USA, I guess. But the original poster is suggesting rights be taken away for people for not submitting their children to essentially medical experiments with new vaccines some of which have had only limited trials in foreign countries by profit-making organizations with conflicts-of-interest -- and implies that is great parenting, but mentions nothing else about keeping kids healthy. So, anyway, again, if we are going to talk about exiling parents and their "spawn" for living differently than the mainstream who submits their children to day prison brainwashing, who feed their children a lot of junk food (obesity is a big problem in the USA), who can't be bothered to breastfeed for two years or more, and who without question inject their children with any stuff some companies in foreign nations tell us is "safe", then what should the standard be for exiling families for "bad" parenting and a wanton disregard for public health and safety?

Actually, I'm starting to think th

http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1932134&cid=34740048
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1932134&cid=34740098

Also, from:
    http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14401
"Merck spokesperson Amy Rose refused say how many trials Merck contracted to CROs or what percentage of the Gardasil subjects these contractors recruited in the Third World. She also refused to specify how, or even if, the company oversees CROs. Many consumers assume that the FDA carefully monitors CROs. But the agency hobbled by under-funding, politicization, and dependence on industry fees has few resources to assess foreign trials and relies on drug companies. "

On the point in your sig, and maybe a way to get better research by less conflict-of-interest in funding:
    http://econfuture.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/robots-jobs-and-our-assumptions/#comment-392

On keeping people healthy for cheap:
    http://www.amazon.com/Disease-Proof-Your-Child-Feeding-Right/dp/0312338058
    http://lewrockwell.com/sardi/sardi111.html
    http://www.iodine4health.com/
    http://www.ravediet.com/preview.html
    http://www.bluezones.com/

But that's the problem -- there are no enormous profits in natural wellness; the only big profits are in palliation and treatment for sickness or random attempts at "magic bullet" wellness through phrama stuff.

Back in January 2010, Obama gave the State of the Union right after the Court handed down the Citizens United decision. Obama told Congress, with several of the Supremes sitting in the front row, that the decision would allow foreign corporations to influence US elections, which most Americans still realize is a terrible development. Justice Alito, who had just decided in the majority to allow corporations "free speech" by spending unlimited money in US political campaigning, was mad: he angrily mouthed "not true". The corporate mass media attacked Obama for "picking on the justices" by warning Congress and "embarrassing" the court, but of course failed to examine whether it was true.

Less than a year later, we see it was totally true. We see that foreign corporations have invested huge amounts of money campaigning in the 2010 election. Republican candidates have gotten hundreds of $millions spent to elect them, sponsored by corporations including many foreign ones. The "US" Chamber of Commerce (Inc.) collects money from lots of foreign corporations, especially Indian ones that want US jobs shipped there, foreign banks like Credit Suisse and HSBC that want financial reform repealed, and even corporations owned by foreign kings, like the Emir of Bahrain. Foreign kings are spending more in US election campaigns than US citizens.

Whether you think that's OK or not (it is very not OK), Alito was totally wrong. And a jerk about it. Not surprising, since Alito was installed by Bush. Alito swore in his Senate confirmation hearings that he would respect established law, but his Citizens United decision overturned lots of established law, went against the basic understanding that corporations are not people, and recklessly unleashed foreign corporate power on US election campaigns.

He should be impeached. Then he'll be free to skip the State of the Union the way he plans to from now on because he can't stand criticism of his abominable rulings.

Ronnie Dugger was working with Jim Hightower back in the nineties on a project to educate voters about corporate charters and how to revoke them.

I attended a meeting in Los Angeles and was interested in their efforts but couldn't get any interest among local activists who were too busy inserting themselves into veteran/holiday parades with subversive signs, picketing rodeos for cruelty, and furiously jerking each other off to care.

Different players are mentioned in the same context here. The blurb section at the end is nice.

Yes, I'm so glad all those wealth-holders are paying their taxes!

Especially if you're a private military contractor in Iraq.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5xT1DGJMoQ

DynCorp was operating like that in South America throughout the 1990s. These private military contractors are not held accountable, which is why they're used. They can get away with things the military would have a hard tyme getting away with. And I bet that's one reason Bush pushed to privatize the military. About the only way these corporations can be held accountable is via the Alien Tort Claims Act, which Bush tried to get rid of.

Falcon

I'm in no way defending China here, but in which way is it different from what the US, Russia or the UK do and have done in the past?

For one example, the US has the legislation that forbids American companies and individuals to bribe foreign officials. That law existed for decades and has teeth, and prosecutions became particularly energetic under, ugh, George W. Bush.

It just annoys me when people single out a nation (in this case China) when in their backyard the same happens

Nothing "same" has happened in a long time... It just annoys me, when people rush to China's defense by dragging out something, that they believe is kinda-sorta similar, that the US has done... Whatever wrong you can accuse US of within the last 50 years, China has overdone with gusto within the last 10...

As a programmer, I can confirm that these programmers screwed up, but I would bet money on the fact that the management forced them to. There's no way programmers working on physics software would choose a processor limited to 24-bit registers unless that was the only choice they were given, so that decision must have been forced upon them by their bosses. I'm also certain that the decision that it was "good enough" to ship was not made by the programmers. Here's an interesting quote:

From: http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11110
"As usual with the Pentagon, cost is no object. But the Patriot is very expensive system and it's getting costlier all the time. Raytheon and Lockheed originally promised to deliver the new Patriot system for $3.7 billion dollars. Now the cost has soared to $7.8 billion. Each Patriot missile unit costs about $170 million. In the first Gulf War, an average of four missiles were launched against a single incoming Scud."

Even if that's grossly inaccurate, they saved a few bucks per multi-million dollar unit. That's like being penny wise but several million pounds foolish. While I agree it's not that hard to work around the 24-bit limitation, the decision to use such a limited processor was probably a major contributing factor to the schedule slips and cost overruns. Any time a project slips that badly, management will step in and force them to rush it out the door before it's ready. My bet is that the developers knew the problem was there, but they didn't have time to even look at it because they had bigger fish to fry when they were trying to get it out the door.

Shhhh.... People aren't supposed to know that the company crying wolf is the one who has the most to gain and is probably the one who is responsible for the alleged attacks.

US: Contractors Vie for Plum Work, Hacking for U.S. Government

And the race to develop weapons that defend against, or initiate, computer attacks has given rise to thousands of “hacker soldiers” within the Pentagon who can blend the new capabilities into the nation’s war planning.

Nearly all of the largest military companies — including Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon — have major cyber contracts with the military and intelligence agencies.

Daniel D. Allen, who oversees work on intelligence systems for Northrop Grumman, estimated that federal spending on computer security now totals $10 billion each year, including classified programs. That is just a fraction of the government’s spending on weapons systems. But industry officials expect it to rise rapidly.

The military contractors are now in the enviable position of turning what they learned out of necessity — protecting the sensitive Pentagon data that sits on their own computers — into a lucrative business that could replace some of the revenue lost from cancellations of conventional weapons systems.

Domestic Spying, Inc.

http://www.corpwatch.org/section.php?id=11

Shhhh.... People aren't supposed to know that the company crying wolf is the one who has the most to gain and is probably the one who is responsible for the alleged attacks.

US: Contractors Vie for Plum Work, Hacking for U.S. Government

And the race to develop weapons that defend against, or initiate, computer attacks has given rise to thousands of “hacker soldiers” within the Pentagon who can blend the new capabilities into the nation’s war planning.

Nearly all of the largest military companies — including Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon — have major cyber contracts with the military and intelligence agencies.

Daniel D. Allen, who oversees work on intelligence systems for Northrop Grumman, estimated that federal spending on computer security now totals $10 billion each year, including classified programs. That is just a fraction of the government’s spending on weapons systems. But industry officials expect it to rise rapidly.

The military contractors are now in the enviable position of turning what they learned out of necessity — protecting the sensitive Pentagon data that sits on their own computers — into a lucrative business that could replace some of the revenue lost from cancellations of conventional weapons systems.

Domestic Spying, Inc.

http://www.corpwatch.org/section.php?id=11

I think that's a bit glib. At least a significant portion of the Blackwater people, at least the ones actually on the ground, are just former soldiers who traded up to an employer who would fail at trying to save money by not giving proper armor or support.

There fixed that for you. Bleating the mantra privatized == good may get you karma from various politcal groups astroturfing here, but doesn't match with reality. Reality is that arrangments are better or worse on a case by case basis. In the case of Blackwater, its far, far more expensive for the country to outsource to 'Backwater' mecrenaries than to maintain their own, comparatively competent, comparatively low-cost units:

Blackwater rentacops couldn't handle regular army so they cover all the "safe" zones for tightwad company with political connections and get their asses handed back to them. That's epic fail all around: less efficient, more expensive, bad press.

as long as Al Gore can make a mint with his carbon-credit trading house scheme

I've asked this before, how is Al Gore making a lot of money off of carbon? That is other than the fact he is a large stockholder of Oxy, Oxidental Petroleum? If nobody answers this then the only conclusion I can come up with is it is all FUD!

Falcon

There simply is not enough data or the computing power to calculate what (if anything of significance) we are currently doing to the climate or what any measures we may take would or could do.

Sure there's enough data and computing power. With your garage door closed start your engine and sit there in the car in the garage. After 10 minutes let's know how things went.

like Al Gore who stands to make a LOT of money from cap-and-trade

How will Al Gore make a lot of money off of cap and trade? You do know he's a large stockholder of Oxy, Oxidental Petroleum? With cap and trade he could loose a lot.

On the other hand he shouldn't be tooling around in his private jet showing his movie.

Falcon

'While hundreds of companies have donated to this week's Republican presidential convention, Microsoft may have the most at stake. Microsoft gave US$900,000 in software and US$100,000 in cash to the committee hosting the convention'

'Microsoft's budget for political lobbying exceeded that of Enron, the judge residing over the antitrust case has heard'.

'the Bush administration has sharply changed course by repeatedly defending the company both in the United States and abroad against accusations of anticompetitive conduct'

When talking about necessities like public utilities and so on, we are talking about safe habitation of human life.

And many people consider broadband, which this is about, as necessary. I have been attempting to show that people's definition of what's necessary is different than your definition. B ut you only accept your own version.

Well, no. It's primarily because cities are too crowded to safely have farm animals

Not really, I suggest you read the article thread I'm now going through, Spiraling Skyscraper Farms For a Future Manhattan.

Be whatever the cause may be, the reality is what we have today. It was the reality of yesterday also and the reality of most of the life of the world. Cities are notorious for not having lawns or gardens big enough to support the life of the occupants.

That's because there is no free market. Government policies were designed to drive people out of rural settings and into cities.

Lol.. And it would have nothing to do with the fact that Mexico's economic recovery process involved shipping it's citizens into the US so someone else has to deal with them? The entire Mexico economy is in shambles. It's not the fault of the US or the EU or any other nation, it's their economic system.

BS! Yea it's the government of Mexico's fault they signed NAFTA. If Mexicans had an import duty to raise the cost of corn so Mexican farmers could compeat with subsidized corn from the US then US agriculture businesses could sued Mexico for lost profits. The Canadian business Methanex sued the US when California banned MTBE, a known cancer causer.

It's the lost intercity idiots who get absolutely no help from the government.

Perhaps you don't understand real world economics, but when farmers are driven off the farm because they can't compeat they then move to cities. And when those cities are already crowded some of those resident will themselves move to where they think they have a better chance. Which is what is happening in Mexico. Having said that I agree that the Mexican government can do more to help people.

You really have a naive outlook on the scenario.

No, you're the one who's naive. "Small Farmers Seen Gaining Little from Subsidies". "How Farm Subsidies Harm Taxpayers, Consumers, and Farmers, Too". Groups from those supporting free markets, such as the Heritage Foundation, to socialists agree subsidies harm small farmers more than they help.

when banks started folding during the savings and loan scandal (a lot like present day problems), the banks called the notes on these farms in knowing that they couldn't pay them. You had farmers taking out loans at $1000 an acre to buy combines and build a new home or a new barn on land that was valued at $100 an acre just a year or two before (remind you of the housing bubble?).

And just as with the housing bubble those farmers and wannabe farmers who bought land at high prices are the ones at fault. Most either bought more than they could manage or they did not know what they were getting into.

You then had zoning and tax laws that were either nonexistent or didn't distinguish between residential, commercial, or agriculture uses.

It may surprise you, but I also believe zoning laws and tax laws are bad. Besides railing about the farm subsidies like I have, I've also railed about taxes and zoning. The money people work to earn should not be taxed. Instead there should be a tax on consumption, with one exception, corporations. Since corporations have limited liability, the most most stockholders can loose is how much they invested in the

Small plants are more expensive to build, more expensive to maintain, and intrinsically less efficient.

False. This obvious "invention" was available in the public domain through all the debates about wind power, in which monopolists claimed that only one wind speed could generate power for any given turbine. Not to take away from the team that has finally brought it to market, but neither an electronic switch nor variable resistance are novel concepts. The only reasonable explanation for this taking so long is industrial conspiracy, illegal collusion. The Third World can do it. Expense is not the reason that we have not.

Coercive monopolies for utilities guarantee that we use over-priced and obsolete technologies, nullifying the presumed benefits of "economies of scale". Only residential, user-owned solar and wind power will solve the United States' energy problems, which stem from the petroleum oligopoly and local utility monopolies. Nuclear power is for suckers, and our country's corporatist GOP "leadership" diminishes our credibility and negotiating power on nuclear energy with un-chummy countries like Iran and Pakistan, in addition to the pollution and fraudulent deception of US "customers" who are deprived of options by government collusion with petroleum corporations and Bechtel, the largest recipient of US nuclear tribute.

So, for all the conspiracy theory fanatics out there. It comes down to the all-mighty dollar, not some nefarious deed

So, in your mind, dollars rule out nefarious deeds. that's stupid.

... to spy on your daily surfing and email habits....unless of course your are a child predator, drug dealer, human trafficker, organized crime-lord, etc.

Yes, well, the problem is that to be accurate you would have to also let "etc" = 100% legal statuses including political opponent, personal rival, and superior inventor, especially in a field with government-sponsored monopolies like telecomms and passenger transportation. Yes, government-sponsored monopolies, in the form of exclusive telecomms franchises and direct subsidies to oil companies, and farm corporations to burn food, are all highly suspicious as possible real motives for the blatantly criminal activities of the FBI and NSA, in the name of "Homeland Security." So who are you, that you claim to know that only criminals are subject to NSA spying? That is certainly not true. And in case you complain that Rachel Maddow is liberal, yes she is, she believes in liberty. And if you don't, emigrate to Saudi Arabia. Liberty is patriotic and searches and seizures without a warrant are not. The abuses by the NSA are not a concoction or an exaggeration from "liberal" MSNBC, the Associated Press carried the same story and Newsweek has yet another scoop. You cannot even send a bit across the publicly owned Internet anymore without the NSA committing surveillance crime against you. You'd have to be a neo-con conspiracy nut to believe any of Alberto Gonzales's arguments that NSA has any legal grounds to exist.

while i don't doubt that electronic warfare is being actively developed by other nations (i'm sure the U.S. armed forces aren't the only military interested in, or actively developing, electronic warfare tactics), i wouldn't put it past the MIC to exaggerate the risk of electronic attacks in order to manipulate the public. it certainly wouldn't be the first time the public was mislead about our nation's defense in order to funnel tax dollars into unnecessary defense projects. and now with war logistics being an more lucrative than ever through the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP) and its cost-plus award-fee contracts, even more more private sector companies have a vested interest in seeing a renewed Cold-War-type international tension and corresponding military spending.

it's just too bad Americans never heeded Eisenhower's farewell address. of course, if more people working in the defense industry were truly patriotic, they'd all be as morally enlightened as you, and the MIC wouldn't exist.

Which commentators, pundits and so on? Left wing, right wing, balanced?

Right wing, mostly. See the links below.

If you actually had evidence of this, it would be a huge story.

Indeed, it has been big news when evidence came to light concerning the programs under which the Bush Administration, including the DoD, was paying pundits and news analysts to promote administration programs, or otherwise buying the news.

But you don't.

If GP didn't (which I suspect is not the case), the web certainly does, including evidence directly from the horse's mouth at the DoD link above.

So you're nothing but a mindless droning troll.

I would be careful throwing around insults like that, especially when you clearly don't know much about the subject and are just assuming that the person to whom you are responding to is wrong because of your own ignorance.

what difference does it make to the FCC whether they sell the spectrum or give it away? aside form keeping public interest in mind, they shouldn't care either way, since the money gained from selling the spectrum would not go to the FCC. AFAIK the FCC is funded the same way most government agencies are--by fiscal policy. they don't make commission on the spectrum licenses they auction off, nor do their employees.

that's sorta the whole point of having a government agency regulating the radio spectrum rather than a for-profit corporation. so unless the FCC head has ties with a particular company that is looking to buy this spectrum, i can't see how the decision to sell this part of the spectrum is financially motivated.

now, if you want to talk about war logistics contracts given to the private sector, then that's a different story.

I think this puts your theories to rest.

How about this: "Gore isn't quite as green as he's led the world to believe"? Between Present Bush and Al Gore guess who's home is more energy efficient... Bush's home. While Gore's home is a gluttony for energy Bush's home is pretty efficient. Bush's home was built to use geothermal energy for heating, though this link says Gore installed such a system in his home. Some get on Bush because he's an oilman however Gore's family has also invested in oil, specifically they invested in Oxy, Occidental Petroleum, and Oxy has threatened a number of native Indian tribes ancestral lands.

Falcon

No he's not, Al Gore's family is a big holder of stocks in Oxidental Petroleum Company, Oxy.

"So why again does Bush and Cheney want the price of oil to rise?"

See these stories, for example:

Cheney's Halliburton Options Up 3,281% Last Year

Cheney: "I cut all ties to Halliburton years ago." Congressional Research Service: "Cheney made $8,000,000 from Haliburton while in office."

Quote from one of the comments in that story: "The Congressional Research Service has concluded that holding stock options while in elective office DOES constitute a "financial interest" whether or not the holder of the options donates the proceeds to charities, and deferred compensation is also a financial interest." [My emphasis]

Also, in general Cheney and Bush have shown that they don't believe any rules apply to them. So, there may be hidden bank accounts in Dubai, for example, which is where the head office of Halliburton is located now.

Before trying Gardasil, you might want to look at this:
    http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14401
Excerpt:
"""
Testing in the Third World

JayaJan Pharmaceutical Research in India was one of the companies with which Merck had a contract to test Gardasil. Like most of the industry, Merck increasingly outsources its clinical trials to Contract Research Organizations (CROs) in areas of the world where trial subjects are plentiful, operating costs are low, and regulations lax.

Some $285 million worth of clinical trials are outsourced to CROs in India, according to biopeer.com. These CROs are a booming $15 billion industry whose revenues are rising at 15 percent a year.

"CROs are known for their speed and efficiency; they can complete a clinical trial in two-thirds the time a drug company can, shaving months off the process and offering $120 million to $150 million in increased revenue per drug." Sam Bidwell an executive with Quintiles a U.S.-based CRO told Nature. "Of the top 30 best-selling drugs, we've touched every one."

Critics point out that CROs can come with built-in problems. Conflicts of interest can arise when CROs are paid royalties only after a drug is approved rather than being paid a set fee that is independent of how safe or effective the drug turns out to be. Problems can also arise because CROs know that favorable findings mean that research into a test drug will continue, and they may also believe that results that please the hiring corporation can lead to future contracts. "[C]ompanies know that the farther the compound moves through the research cycle, the more money they can raise," Nature reported.

Merck spokesperson Amy Rose refused say how many trials Merck contracted to CROs or what percentage of the Gardasil subjects these contractors recruited in the Third World. She also refused to specify how, or even if, the company oversees CROs.

Many consumers assume that the FDA carefully monitors CROs. But the agency hobbled by under-funding, politicization, and dependence on industry fees has few resources to assess foreign trials and relies on drug companies.
"""

Also:
"New Scientist estimates that Gardasil will save "around 1,200 lives. This is an unequivocally desirable outcome, but at $800 million per year, the cost of saving each life will be over $650,000. If the goal is to save lives, there are more cost-effective ways of doing so." They include spreading public health measures including low-cost, readily available Pap testing to the non-white, poorer populations that now die in disproportionate numbers of cervical cancer."

With stuff like this going on who the hell cares what is or isn't done on IRC?

As opposed to the peaceful and harmless corporations, who only kill on the quiet? Any concentration of power, whether public or private, needs to be carefully watched. Thomas Jefferson warned us about this, as did James Madison, Adam Smith, and Thomas Paine.

You must be talking about this http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=468/

I will say right now that I am vehemently anti-corporate, anti-corporatization, and anti-consumer, so you know my bias beforehand.

Now, if you really want to learn the history of corporations, and how they went from being chartered by the state, rather heavily regulated, and with very few rights, to the monstrosities we have today that exert control over governments and individuals, ransack our earth, place profits over people, and, due to diffusion of responsibility, can care for nothing but a bottom-line for their shareholders, I suggest these sources as good starting points:

Prof. Noam Chomsky on Microsoft and corporations. Chomsky is interviewed by Corp-Watch. He expounds on Microsoft and the anti-trust cases levelled against it, but he also goes into some depth regarding the history of corporations in America. I highly recommend Chomsky, of course because I by and large agree with his assessments, but also because he always includes his sources. He actually spends much of his time scouring over declassified government documents in order to back his assertions up. Also check out his website for an absolute wealth of information.

The Corporation. An excellent documentary, directed by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott, based on a book written by Joel Bakan. The corporation is examined, as if it were an individual (as it is seen to be in the eyes of the law), from a psychological standpoint. Not very surprisingly, corporations are diagnosed as psychopathic. Many interviews with CEOs, marketers, capitalist "think tanks," labor groups, and intellectuals. Rightly enough, the documentary can be downloaded freely via Bittorrent. I believe there is a link at the site.

Hopefully I've helped you out a bit, despite the obvious bias involved on my part.

Partly true. But still, corporations are moving their "dirty industries" elsewhere. You see, here, we don't have ROHS, so we don't worry about lead in solder. Our legislation isn't that tight regarding ecology, and if it is, you can always pay to make it a little more relaxed. Or pay someone to look the other way.

So, suppose you have a pulp mill. In Europe, you'd need to make a lot of processing to your waste so you'd keep the rivers totally clean. Down here, you don't need to make it clean. Check out this quote:

"The most widely used pulp bleaching technique in the world today-and the one used by Botnia and ENCE is Elemental Chlorine-free, or ECF. While cleaner than older technologies, it still releases dioxins, furans and other toxic substances. Safer yet is Totally Chlorine-Free (TCF) process which uses oxygen-based compounds instead of chlorine-based compounds.

Botnia has chosen not to go with this cleaner technology in its Uruguayan mills, says agricultural engineer Carlos Faroppa. The Botnia spokesperson says that the decision was based not on cost, but on quality and effectiveness. The oxygen-based "TCF is hardly used around the world because the technology has not continued to advance," he said. "The fibers it produces cannot be used to manufacture quality paper."

But Botnia does, in fact, use TCF technology at its pulp mill in Rauma, Finland, according to Arrarte. The company has not denied or confirmed this version. Botnia and ENCE's choice of the less safe process means that "Every day, millions of liters of wastewater will be dumped into the river, which will degrade it," Fray Bento activist Delia Villalba told CorpWatch."

Source: http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=13111

In short, you can see why they move here. Besides.. "The oxygen-based "TCF is hardly used around the world because the technology has not continued to advance," he said. "The fibers it produces cannot be used to manufacture quality paper.". Yeah, right. And they won't invest anything on R&D to make it better, either. Seems that it's easier to go screw someone else than to do your job.

But the worst thing is that Uruguay and Argentina signed a treaty where they agreed not to place polluting industries in the Uruguay River. Now they ignored that and allowed the plants to install there. So you can see how things work here.

I'm not quite as negative as that for all ethanol production - at current consumption levels, and with the current cheap manual labor so they don't need to fuel tractors for harvesting, Brazil seems to be able to produce enough ethanol for itself without too much damage. As their consumption rises, and in particular if their export business takes off, it could lead to massive destruction of rain forest. This lack of scalability is why I feel it is a distraction.

Corn base ethanol production in the USA is much worse. Here's an article: http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=13646

How about corruption? How about Gore having money laundered through chinese monks for the oh-so-pure Democrats? Gore's fundraiser, Maria Hsia, was conviced on all counts.

Speaking of stealing elections, why is that the Democrats are the ones who push to ease registration (such as "motor voter") and yet oppose any Republican attempts to require people at the polls to actually present identification to prove that they are who they claim to be? Photo id needed at Blockbuster, but we'll take your word at the polls!

hmm destroying the world? Maybe that means something like voting against Kyoto? the 95 votes against it in the Senate would suggest that there are some democrats out to destroy the world too. Rove must have waterboarded them ...

As there is always a Microsoft vs. EU article on /. I thought this might be interesting reading... http://www.corpwatch.org/ has a great article on what it takes to lobby the EU.
Right on their front page:
An Insider in Brussels: Lobbyists Reshape the European Union

The Chinese (in both mainland China and Taiwan province) simply do not care about workers' rights. Foxconn is a Chinese company based in Taiwan.

To understand how horribly Chinese (from Taiwan) treat their workers, read a shocking article by the "San Francisco Chronicle". According to the article, the Taiwanese managers beat up their Central American laborers when they could not produce their assigned quota of blue jeans.

I agree, the sanctions were extremely harmful and another solution needed to be found. But trying to claim that Saddam was a threat to US security, and using that to justify a war, just makes you a laughing stock.

>Because I don't know if you turned the dial on your radio lately, but of the 90+ possible FM radio stations, only 20+ are occupied in my city

What percentage of those are owned by Clear Channel?

>Broadcasting equipment capable of covering short ( 40km) distance is relatively cheap ( US$ 1000 [in today's currency]) since the 1970's
and its deployment has been passionately opposed by the incumbents, who've gotten the the government to shut down such "pirate" operations withno evidence of interference.

Can you name an initiative of his that Marx wouldn't approve of?

Black Box Voting demonstrated in Florida that whoever has access to the flash memory card, used to keep track of the votes can determine the results of the voting on that machine: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/1559 5.html?1141791589. No tinkering with the machine is necessary.

I would say even the submitter's point of view is not biased enough - Diebold should get a corporation death penalty for even agreeing to provide voting machines without paper trail. This is such no-brainer, that no amount of outrage is sufficient.

Recently, courts have punished drugs manufacturers with incredibly high damage awards. Take for instance the COX-2 inhibitors Vioxx.

Merck got a slap on the wrist compared to the corporate death penalty that they earned. The way that they hid information about the dangers of Vioxx call for criminal, not merely civil, sanctions (I know the feds began a criminal investiation at one point but don't know the status on that).

You're right. They hate our freedom and these are clearly terrorist acts. I don't think I even need to explain the link between them and 911, any idiot can see it.

We know they have weapons of mass destruction. We *KNOW* they have weapons of mass destruction. Freedom, freedom, stay the course, weapons of mass destruction. Freedom, freedom, stay the course, weapons of mass destruction.

Freedom, freedom, stay the course
Weapons of mass destruction

Bring 'em on!

Freedom, freedom, stay the course
Weapons of mass destruction

Fuck Greenland

Freedom, freedom, stay the course
Weapons of mass destruction

Fuck Greenland

Pussy, pansy motherfuckers
You know what you get
When you fuck with the red, the white, and the blue

We're coming to liberate you
We know who's responsible for 911
and it's fucking you

We're number one
We know what's best for you
We're coming to liberate you