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No, but in the 70s (Such as 1972's "Limits to Growth" report by the Club of Rome) people like you said we would be completely out of oil by 2020. Unless we run out in the next 5 1/2 years, that will be nothing more than fear mongering lies of the Political Left.

From http://www.counterpunch.org/20...

Going back to Hubbert’s paper we find that he predicted that by 1970 the US should have consumed half or about 100 million barrels of oil of the original endowment of 150-200 billion barrels of recoverable oil. And by his own chart on page 32 of his paper if we use the assumption of 200 billion barrels as the total potential oil reserves of the US we should be completely out of oil by now. According to his curve and graph, by year 2000 we should have had only around 27 billion or so barrels of oil left in the US and fallen to zero sometime in the mid-2000s.

Boys who cry "wolf" are ignored. And eventually there is a wolf, but crying wolf repeatedly when there is none, is bad policy.

Apple's management (notably Steve Jobs) and some people who work for Apple used to work at NeXT. When NeXT needed a compiler, they chose to base their work on GCC. NeXT got caught distributing the GCC Objective-C frontend in violation of the GPL in what Brad Kuhn (longtime FSF employee and GPL violations enforcer) called a "calculated" infringement. It's reasonable to consider that when Jobs and company lost that fight they decided to get away from GPL'd software because they had experience with a copyright holder who defended their license. Sadly, Apple is building quite a record of copyright infringement. Apple got caught distributing VLC and GNU Go in violation of the GPL. Apple also got caught commercially infringing upon some writers' copyright. So perhaps Apple's switch from GCC toward a non-copylefted free compiler has at least as much to do with control over the user as any technical issues. After Apple's other illegal and unethical behavior, maybe Apple is just getting tired of the bad press.

But it's clear that differing values are at the heart of this issue; not having Apple use GCC doesn't "harm GCC" at all. The fight for software freedom was and is the reason for the GNU Project including starting GCC. Apple is welcome to help improve and distribute free software, including allowing its users to share in that freedom. This isn't a popularity contest no matter how much Eric Raymond and other open source advocates want to frame the issue in that way. As RMS said, "If that enables GCC to "win", the victory would be hollow, because it would not be a victory for what really matters: users' freedom."

And how long before all of the weeds just think of Roundup as a nice cool sip of water? Time for the next pesticide!

We're already seeing it. Several species of weeds in the midwest (including the already nearly indestructible pigweed and lamb's quarter) have developed not only resistance to Roundup, but a taste for it as a fertilizer. Glyphosate-loving superweeds are not science fiction or theory; they are already reality.

Talk of stronger herbicides is already happening, including the resurrection of Agent Orange:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2010/07/13/the-escalating-chemical-war-on-weeds/

:-)

AC wrote: "Paul, referring to Disciplined Minds on Slashdot is like admitting that you are a predator alien. We're going to have to be much more clever than that if we want to convince people to question their ideologies. The subconscious will not cede its control unless you offer it something in return. The best way to deconstruct the subconscious is to study branding and market research. Learn about what happens when people buy stuff, and compare that to what people do when they try to evaluate claims about scientific models with limited information.
See my thread: http://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=14667 "

First, I probably can't in general disagree with your points on branding, advertising, purchasing, etc. Even if specific cases for specific individuals may differ, as in some people are more analytical than others (sadly sometimes meaning perhaps they are more easily bamboozled by "facts"?), some people may be in a stage of life looking for a new idea to try or an explanation for a past difficulty, etc.. I can wonder if that person to be so good at selling such ideas would be me though? But yes, in general, you are probably right. I liked the personal development diagrams in that thread (having only looked through the first page of 11 in the thread, need to read more later). Reminds me of one I've seen elsewhere with eight stages or so but generally overlapping.And I liked the line in Megamind where he says the difference between a villain and a supervilian (or by extension amateur and professional) is ... "presentation". "-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy2zB8bLSpk

The first ten episodes of the popular "Downton Abbey" provides examples of workers identifying with the system around them and not seeing much hope for change (although a war shows up and some things do start to change, and some do see potential for change). James P. Hogan echoes similar themes in Voyage from Yesteryear, as people cling to the old scarcity-based social hierarchies even when confronted with abundance. Historian Howard Zinn's take on that: http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncomrev24.html

BTW, you might also like some other quotes I've collected here:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science

Also related (there are better links I've posted before, these are just top Google matches):
http://www.counterpunch.org/2010/02/26/peer-review-as-censorship/
http://landshape.org/enm/peer-censorship-and-scientific-fraud/

One thing Einstein got very right was the need to improve our ways of thinking given our new technological powers:
http://anwot.org/

I'd also agree we could use better communications systems to discuss science and reason together about it. My wife and I have taken some steps towards such things in terms of making free and open source software, but no big successes so far. This web page has a video related to a Kickstarter campaign I thought about doing to further those efforts a couple years ago, but I did not proceed with it (taking work doing more conventional stuff instead for sadly short-term reasons): http://twirlip.com/

At least I still have some time now and then to advocate for a Basic Income as at least one way someday to give people more intellectual freedom (among other things). But even that is a tough sell, although I am glad

We stood idly by while Saddam expended huge quantities of chemical weapons.

Personally that may be true. On a bigger scale, we (the United States) provided helped them deploy the chemical weapons.

Our governments (US and UK) knew very well what Saddam had, and what Saddam was capable of.

We certainly should have known what Saddam had and was capable of. First, we helped put the Ba'ath party in to power. During the Iran / Iraq war, we helped them financially and with intelligence information. Then, we sold the precursors of chemical weapons to them and provided reconnaissance intelligence that was used in their deployment. Why else would Donald Rumsfeld be smiling as he shook Saddams hand in 1983?

You will note, I hope, that I've said nothing in Saddam Hussein's defense. I have ONLY pointed out how dishonest our own governments are.

And here is more evidence supporting that supposition.

Huhhhh???

...is the safety of our way of life at the hands of those who would subvert it.

Read and heed, my friend, read and heed . . . .

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/22/donde-estan-where-are-the-disappeared/

Actually Oakland Police Officer Entry Level current annual salary is $69,912 to $98,088 (source).

However the total cost of an average Oakland Police Officer is around $160,000 per year (source) when you add up $97k pay, $30k health care and $30k pension costs.

Not to mention that Oakland spent over $57 million on police abuse cases from 2001 through 2011.

Obama Comes Clean!

President Obama today announced he will no longer prevaricate (for the American audience: lie like Hell!) on the Syria matter, but instead offer them the "olive branch" of peace.

"If Syria and Iran will finally sign onto the WTO's Financial Services Agreement, thus allowing the banksters in, we will refrain from unleashing a leviathan deluge of cruise missiles against them," said an annoyed Barack Obama.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/09/05/making-the-world-safe-for-banksters/

http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/larry-summers-and-the-secret-end-game-memo

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-09-07/high-level-us-intelligence-officers-syrian-government-didn%E2%80%99t-launch-chemical-

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-09-07/obamas-missing-link-no-direct-connection-between-assad-and-gas-attack

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/05/syria-battle-maaloula_n_3872906.html

Morsi tried to "declare himself dictator for life after being elected."

Sorry, but citation needed. I've been Googling for this and can't find him guilty of anything above rank incompetence.

If anybody can show me what he did that was so bad other than being a crap leader or vague accusations of being devious and manipulative (of course he is! He's a frikkin' politician!) I'd love to see it.

The most factual account I can find is here where author Esam Al-Amin says:

"The people in Egypt went to the polls at least six times: to vote for a referendum to chart the political way forward (March 2011), to vote for the lower and upper house of parliament (November 2011-January 2012), to elect a civilian president over two rounds (May-June 2012), and to ratify the new constitution (December 2012). Each time the electorate voted for the choice of the Islamist parties to the frustration of the secular and liberal opposition.

"To the discontent of the Islamists, all their gains at the polls were reversed by either the Mubarak-appointed Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC) or the military."

I'm really trying not to be a troll but people keep saying that Morsi wanted to become a dictator but I can't find any stories of him doing anything other than breaking election promises. In my country, that's considered pretty normal and no cause for a coup.

"According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US. The upshot, according to this official: 'Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.'" from here.

That could be FUD, but I'd not trust a key size that small for RSA anyway.

You're thinking of the washing that you do in the bathroom. I looked up Gawande's words and found that I understated the time to wash. Here's how he describes it.

First, you must remove your watch, rings, and other jewelry (which are notorious for trapping bacteria). Next, you wet your hands in warm tap water. Dispense the soap and lather all surfaces, including the lower one-third of the arms, for the full duration recommended by the manufacturer (usually fifteen to thirty seconds). Rinse off for thirty full seconds. Dry completely with a clean, disposable towel. Then use the towel to turn the tap of. Repeat after any new contact with a patient.

Almost no one adheres to this procedure. It seems impossible. On morning rounds, our residents check in on twenty patients in an hour. The nurses in our intensive care units typically have a similar number of contacts with patients requiring hand washing in between. Even if you get the whole cleansing process down to a minute per patient, that’s still a third of staff time spent just washing hands.

And it's not always possible to hire more staff, especially when strict adherence to washing means you have to hire half-again as many staff to do rounds. While there are some private hospitals making a healthy profit, not all of them do, and there are a lot of hospitals that are run by governments, churches, or non-profits and their margins are thin to non-existent. The need to purchase new equipment just to keep up with other hospitals can obliterate that margin in a single purchase. Doctors tend to send their patients to whichever hospital has the shiniest toys and patients want it that way. Failure to keep up with the newest technology puts revenue at risk and may mean cutbacks that further damage the hospital's ability to effectively treat its patients.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/02/15/top-10-users-of-h-1b-guest-worker-program-are-offshore-outsourcing-firms/ (Thanks for your comments, BTW, 14erCleaner!)

Any info from Reporters w/o Borders should be taken with a large grain of salt - is a dubious organization at best, a propaganda mouth piece for special interests. References:

"Reporters Without Borders Unmasked"

"Reporters Without Borders seems to have a geopolitical agenda"

"Source Watch: Reporters Without Borders"

Good point. Or, ten or twenty trillion US$ in paper wealth disappeared as an externality of banking risk that some bankers made billions from and caused suffering for tens of millions of people:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/01/18/the-parable-of-the-frogs/
"What does it take to produce large-scale social change? Most historians, if you catch them in an honest moment, will admit that the popular levers of social change, such as education or legislation, are bogus; they don't really amount to very much. What does make a difference -- and then only potentially -- is massive systemic breakdown, such as occurred in the United States in the fall of 2008. It was the greatest market crash since 1929, leading to widespread unemployment (something like 18% of the population, in real -- as opposed to official -- statistics*) and the loss of billions of dollars in retirement savings. In fact, the crash wiped out $11.1 trillion in household wealth, and this is not counting the several trillion lost in stock market investments. It had been many decades since the middle class found itself in soup kitchens, and yet there they were. In the face of all this, however, very little seems to have changed. Americans are still committed to the dream of unlimited abundance as a "reasonable" goal, when in reality it is (and always has been) the dream of an addict. President Obama's upwards of $19 trillion bailout and stimulus plan funneled money into the very banking establishment that gave us the disaster; it rescued the wealthy, not those who really needed the money. And while he could have appointed economic advisers such as Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz (both Nobel laureates), who would have attempted to put the nation on a different economic path, he chose instead two traditional neoliberal ideologues, Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers, who believe in the very policies that led to the crash. "Change we can believe in" never sounded more hollow."

No doubt some of this is spin, but there is some truth in here:
http://www.infowars.com/100-million-poor-people-in-america-and-39-other-facts-about-poverty-that-will-blow-your-mind/

One of the links there goes to:
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2011/12/15/9461848-dismal-prospects-1-in-2-americans-are-now-poor-or-low-income
"Squeezed by rising living costs, a record number of Americans -- nearly 1 in 2 -- have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income."

I'm not saying the average US citizen is as bad off as most people in North Korea in material ways -- just that there remains a lot of unnecessary suffering in the USA which is being justified by a crazy ideological bubble. For example, if the USA redistributed half of the US GDP equally as a "basic income", then every citizen would have US$2000 a month, and the other half could be competed over. It's only a cultural mythological bubble that keeps most of the USA from seeing this:
http://web.archive.org/web/20120102011454/http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/402
"That rationalization came in the form of a brand new science known as economics, which included a brand new mythology."

Despite books like this by Moshe Adler:
"Economics for the Rest of Us: Debunking the Science that Makes Life Dismal"
http://www.amazon.com/Economics-Rest-Us-Debunking-Science/dp/B007F7WKV8
"Why do contemporary economists consider food subsidies in starving countries, rent control in rich cities, and health insurance every

"...it's also like a combination of the Truman Show and They Live. One massive reality distortion bubble that nobody is aware of.
And the whole discussion, just as the voting choices, always revolves around two options that are only differing in something entirely beside the point, giving the citizens choices for all aspects of their life, except those that aren't meaningless. Everything is condensed down from picking a fuzzy varying area in a multi-dimensional gradient space to a one-dimensional binary choice. With you being called at least "Hitler" for picking the "wrong" one. Let alone trying to think outside that box.
It's ludicrous."

See my comment posted earlier above, or also this by Morris Berman:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/01/18/the-parable-of-the-frogs/
"In the case of the United States, the imposition of rules and limits on individual behavior to protect the commons is not, at present, a realistic prospect; the population is simply not having it. But how much longer before this freedom of choice is regarded as an impossible luxury? In fact, no crystal ball is required to predict the future here. The tragedy of the commons -- what Hardin called "the remorseless working of things" -- is that a society such as that of the United States won't undertake serious changes even when it is sitting on the edge of an abyss. It has to actually be in the abyss before it will entertain such changes; i.e., it has to be faced with no choice at all. It seems unlikely now, but things are probably moving faster than we realize. In terms of population, energy, food, resources, water, social inequality, public health, and environmental degradation, a crunch of the type I am referring to may be only twenty years away."

By that author:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1118061810/
"During the final century of the Roman Empire, it was common for emperors to deny that their civilization was in decline. Only with the perspective of history can we see that the emperors were wrong, that the empire was failing, and that the Roman people were unwilling or unable to change their way of life before it was too late. The same, says Morris Berman, is true of twenty-first century America. The nation and its empire are in decline and nothing can be done to reverse their course. How did this come to be? In Why America Failed, Berman examines the development of American culture from the earliest colonies to the present, shows that the seeds of the nation's "hustler" culture were sown from the very beginning, and reveals how the very tools that enabled the country's expansion have become the instruments of its demise. "

BTW, Germany is a legacy of what the USA used to be:
http://www.salon.com/2010/08/25/german_usa_working_life_ext2010/
"How did Germany become such a great place to work in the first place?
The Allies did it. This whole European model came, to some extent, from the New Deal. Our real history and tradition is what we created in Europe. Occupying Germany after WWII, the 1945 European constitutions, the UN Charter of Human Rights all came from Eleanor Roosevelt and the New Dealers. All of it got worked into the constitutions of Europe and helped shape their social democracies. It came from us. The papal encyclicals on labor, it came from the Americans. ..."

Yet we in the USA should not lose hope:
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1108-21.htm
"In this awful world where the efforts of caring people often pale in comparison to what is done by those who have power, how do I manage to stay involved and seemingly happy? I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we should not give up the game before all the cards have been played.

Putting non-existent features onto published maps to provide proof of future copyright infringement is a well-known practice, after all...

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

You make a very interesting point, but someone should have told Alan Dershowitz that several years ago. He plagiarized a fairly-well debunked hoax of a book supposedly about how the pure Israel was against the Palestinians, but was found innocent by Harvard university. Never mind the fact that he copied word-for-word several glaring mistakes. Not that it matters anyway, he being a Zionist Jew and a Harvard professor and all. I mean seriously, what other reason would Harvard have to completely drop the ball on this one?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dershowitz%E2%80%93Finkelstein_affair

http://www.counterpunch.org/2008/02/11/the-case-against-alan-dershowitz/

Saddam never got any weapons from Reagan.

Yes he did. The Reagan administration was in fact supplying both sides of the Iran-Iraq War in the hopes that they'd basically destroy each other.

I think it's a combination of patents and "health care" industry protection from so-called free trade agreements. Noted economist Dean Baker has documented the trade and patent protection that the health care industry gets, and that the same protections are rarely ever mentioned by economists.

If "free trade" is good enough for electronics, clothing, cars and the rest of the working class, then it's good enough for the health care industry.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2009/08/04/why-don-t-we-globalize-health-care/

The Fusion Center network has been plausibly alleged to be used for coordination by various municipalities with Federal agencies - for suppression of "Occupy" protests.

Another group of documents shows that on November 9, two days after a demonstration by 1000 Occupy activists in Chicago protesting social service cuts in that city, the NOC Fusion Desk relayed a request from Chicago Police asking other local police agencies what kind of tactics they were using against Occupy activists. They specifically requested that information be sought from police departments in New York, Oakland, Atlanta, Washington, D.C. Denver, Boston, Portland OR, and Seattle â" all the scene of major Occupation actions and of violent police repression. Realizing that it would look bad if it assisted in such coordination overtly, higher officials in the DHS ordered the recall of the request but then simply rerouted it through "law enforcement channels," where presumably it would be harder for anyone to spot a federal role in the coordination of local police responses. In response to that order, the documents show that the duty director of the NOC wrote that he would "reach out" to "LEO LNOs (liaison officer) on the floor" to assist.

http://my.firedoglake.com/joeshikspack/2012/05/30/foia-revelations-show-administration-role-in-occupy-crackdown/

So, the Fusion centers are used by DHS to obfuscate their role in suppression of people's rightful, democratic action.

"Hostility to nonviolent public protests is hostility to democracy."
http://www.eschatonblog.com/2012/09/suck-on-it.html

I'll assume you are misinformed, rather than anarchically vicious. Read this, and say that again:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/08/23/the-secret-history-of-pussy-riot/ [counterpunch.org]

Since the rest of your post was sane, I just want to point out, you should be careful using sources like that. The linked articled bears only the flimsiest resemblance to reality, and raises at least 3 distinct red flags of being part of the Russian state propaganda. (1 . Putin is anti-oligarch HAH! He likes to say that, but too many Oligarchs are also his friends for it to matter that one of them was caught in his web of intrigue 2. Most Russian media is anti-Putin, WTF? 3. No Russian media supports Putin, double WTF!). Saying Russian media is anti-Putin, is like saying American media is left-wing only, and not a single American media supports the right. It is not that hard to disprove with a few examples.

It's a reckless, amoral organization, that doesn't care who it hurts, doesn't care if it gets blood on its hand [sic]

Yes, that is true of the US Federal Government. That is what you meant, isn't it?

and could care less about the fate of the people who supply its documents.

Now maybe you are referring to Wikileaks. But your argument is disingenuous in the extreme. Ever hear the story about the mice who decided to bell the cat? A wonderful idea in principle, as then they would always know when the cat was approaching. Only one small practical problem: who gets the honour of actually belling the cat? Knowing that the odds of dying horribly are very high. My name for someone who deliberately volunteers for a mission like this is "hero". The fate of the people who supply the documents is altogether, and solely, the responsibility of those who inflict that fate. Your government.

Remember what Benjamin Franklin said, back when there was some hope that the USA would actually become a free country? "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety". Well, Bradley Manning refused to give up his liberty in order to obtain safety - and now he is being punished for it. Assange has laid his life and liberty on the line, and he may very well be next.

What the world needs, and still has plenty of, are people of good moral character, who will fight for what's right, who will take stands, and who will take risks.
I have way more respect for the three young women of Pussy Riot and what they have accomplished than anything Wikileaks has done.

I'll assume you are misinformed, rather than anarchically vicious. Read this, and say that again:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/08/23/the-secret-history-of-pussy-riot/

The "covert CIA operative" line is the most "jumped the shark" accusation in this whole fiasco. Do you actually know where that comes from? It's because Ardin once wrote two anti-Castro articles for a magazine Revista de Asignaturas Cubanas, which is put out by a group, Misceláneas de Cuba, which according to some professor, is itself funded by a Swedish organization (unnamed), which is connected with Union Liberal Cubana, which is led by led by Carlos Alberto Montaner, which a Wordpress article says is connected with the CIA. Oh, and she met with a women's right group in Cuba who once had a parade in Florida wherein an accused plane bomber marched next to Maria Carey. Therefore, she's a CIA operative! I kid you not.

Can you Assange fans please get back in touch with reality here and step out of the echo chamber for once? Start with the judgement.

The conservatives need to change their stance on global warming ... the only real way to solve global warming is through advancements in science and engineering to give us cheap reliable sources of green energy.

No, they all need to stop trying to legislate "solutions" to what hasn't been proven to be a problem. The "conservatives" came up with the Burn Our Food program (ethanol). The only thing that's doing is causing starvation and death. It certainly didn't accomplish the stated goal of reducing greenhouse gas. Of course, that never was the real goal. The real goal was driving up prices for El Presidente's friends in the corn belt.

The same sort of "solutions" are being offered up by the liars on the "left" too. Everyone is trying to get their nose in the trough. Everyone remember T. Boone and his windmill scam? When a politician preaches green energy, he's talking about the other kind of green. The green he wants to fleece from the American taxpayers.

How Israeli Backdoor Technology Penetrated the U.S. Government's Telecom System and Compromised National Security
An Israeli Trojan Horse
http://www.counterpunch.org/2008/09/27/an-israeli-trojan-horse/

How Israeli Backdoor Technology Penetrated the U.S. Government's Telecom System and Compromised National Security
An Israeli Trojan Horse
http://www.counterpunch.org/2008/09/27/an-israeli-trojan-horse/
.
.
.
B&N was fighting this FUD but looks like that they capitulate.... http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Barnes-Noble-Microsoft-deal-settles-patent-dispute-1563990.html

From the mid 1990s by the Vice-provost of Caltech: http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
"Peer review is usually quite a good way to identify valid science. Of course, a referee will occasionally fail to appreciate a truly visionary or revolutionary idea, but by and large, peer review works pretty well so long as scientific validity is the only issue at stake. However, it is not at all suited to arbitrate an intense competition for research funds or for editorial space in prestigious journals. There are many reasons for this, not the least being the fact that the referees have an obvious conflict of interest, since they are themselves competitors for the same resources. This point seems to be another one of those relativistic anomalies, obvious to any outside observer, but invisible to those of us who are falling into the black hole. It would take impossibly high ethical standards for referees to avoid taking advantage of their privileged anonymity to advance their own interests, but as time goes on, more and more referees have their ethical standards eroded as a consequence of having themselves been victimized by unfair reviews when they were authors. Peer review is thus one among many examples of practices that were well suited to the time of exponential expansion, but will become increasingly dysfunctional in the difficult future we face."

More like that:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science

Also:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2010/02/26/peer-review-as-censorship/

All reasoning is also based on emotion, which relate to perceptions, assumptions, priorities and preferences which are, to some extent, outside of pure rationality (which why "technocracy" has many issues).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descartes'_Error

But the biggest issue is that our socio-economic-political system is not well-adapted to handle "externalities" including systemic risks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality

Any reasonable projection over the next twenty years shows we will almost certainly have dirt-cheap PV given exponential growth of that industry and rapidly dropping costs. We may even have hot or cold fusion in that time (and other things). With alternatives on the way, there is not a very good case to be made for risking destroy our groundwater for just a bit more fossil fuels:
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/
http://www.solarbuzz.com/facts-and-figures/retail-price-environment/module-prices
http://bigthink.com/think-tank/ray-kurzweil-solar-will-power-the-world-in-16-years
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_parity#Solar_power
http://pesn.com/2012/07/19/9602138_LENR-to-Market_Weekly_July19/
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/414559/a-new-approach-to-fusion/
And so on...

Accounting for externalities (including US defense spending for long oil supply lines), renewables (and energy efficiency) have been *cheaper* than fossil fuels since the 1970s... Two resources on that from around 1980:

It's a subtle point, but the Hebrew speaking ones are the good guys, even when they act exactly the same as the other members of the Semitic language family.

I like how you promoted an article about a man making a *claim*, to an article stating a fact about China having backdoors.

I am starting to wonder about the interests behind the constant claims that China (and Russia!) are enemies of the US, while ignoring the massive scale of Israeli espionage against the US.

China isn't the only country spying on the US

How Israeli Backdoor Technology Penetrated the U.S. Government's Telecom System and Compromised National Security
An Israeli Trojan Horse

http://www.counterpunch.org/2008/09/27/an-israeli-trojan-horse/

Since the Swedes have allowed the US to use extraordinary rendition against at least one individual in Sweden in the past

So have the British, and have even led joint extraordinary rendition efforts. The British are far more of a US lapdog than Sweden. Even Google recognizes this - start typing anything about "Britain" and "lapdog" and you get suggested searches about Britain being America's lapdog.

Beyond that, this is being done through the European Arrest Warrant system. To reextradite Assange would require both Swedish *and* British consent, in contrast to just British consent as it stands now. Unless you think one of the most high profile accused persons on Earth right now is just going to disappear.

I can understand someone deciding that having already been examined, and given permission to leave because no charges were going to be laid after answering all the questions put to him, he might decide he doesn't see why he should have to go through that whole process again.

First off, people suspected of crimes don't get to pick and choose what cooperation they want to have with the police without repercussions. Multiple questionings are not only not unusual, but they're pretty much standard. And there's nothing at all unusual about one investigator deciding that there's not enough evidence to push charges at a particular moment in time and a different investigator deciding, at that some different moment in time, that there is. The reports are that he had promised to come back, and even if he hadn't, Sweden had every reason in the world to suspect that he planned to come back because he had just applied for permanent residency there. To reiterate, he had applied for permanent residency somewhere, but as soon as there were criminal accusations against him, he hightailed it out of town to avoid them.

Then we have the various questions about why the 2 women raised the whole issue in the first place and their (to me at least) somewhat suspicious behavior

Ah, yes, the obligatory victim smearing. Please elaborate after reading the actual accusations,

plus the fact that one of them has had some connection to the CIA in the past (if that is true).

This one is the most absurd of them all. The source is a Counterpunch article, which begins with casting Assange as Neo, hero of The Matrix, that... now try to follow this...

1) She published anti-Castro articles...
2) In a magazine...
3) Run by a group in Sweden...
4) Which according to some professor in Oslo...
5) Is funded by another group in Sweden...
6) Which is connected with a Cuban organization...
7) Which is led by a guy...
8) Who a Wordpress blog post says is a CIA agent.

And then this:

1) She has "interacted"...
2) (No source)...
3) With a cuban feminist organization...
4) ... of women, repeatedly praised and defended by Amnesty International, who protest the jailing of their husbands by going to church dressed in white...
5a) Because it "gets money" from the US government...
5b) (No source)...
6b) And because someone who bombed a plane...
7) Walked next to Gloria Estefan when she supported the group in Miami.

I wish I was kidding - check out the article yourself, that's where this tripe started.

I am not defending him mind you,

Yes you are. That's precisely what you're doing, without hardly even looking into the situation. Take a look at your post. You even accused someone who is charging someone with raping them of being a CIA plant witho

AC wrote: "The post-scarcity society is not going to end this, even supposing it does turn from utopian dream to reality. If anything, it will make everything worse, because you'll have more resources with which to bestow your benevolence."

This is just about exactly the point I'm concerned about, as reflected in my sig of: "A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those thinking in terms of scarcity."

And that is the nightmare we are actually living today! People tend to forget about all the nuclear missiles still ready to launch from a computer glitch in decades old hardware from the 1960s and 1970s.

That is exactly why we need some sort of global mindshift to a newer way of thinking in order to survive having discovered all kinds of new sorts of technological "fire" (like nanotechnology, robotics, biotech, nuclear, networked bureaucracy, etc).
http://www.global-mindshift.org/discover/viewmeme.asp?memeid=239
http://anwot.org/

By the way, on "education" which in practice means compulsory state-sponsored mass schooling, see:
http://johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
http://disciplinedminds.com/
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199710--.htm

Or also on your theme:
"The NED, NGOs and the Imperial Uses of Philanthropy: Why They Hate Our Kind Hearts, Too"
http://www.counterpunch.org/2006/05/13/why-they-hate-our-kind-hearts-too/

yes, because the so called 'friends' are so much better! How Israeli Backdoor Technology Penetrated the U.S. Government's Telecom System and Compromised National Security An Israeli Trojan Horse http://www.counterpunch.org/2008/09/27/an-israeli-trojan-horse/ Full-Spectrum Penetration Israeli Spying in the United States http://www.counterpunch.org/2009/03/12/israeli-spying-in-the-united-states/

yes, because the so called 'friends' are so much better! How Israeli Backdoor Technology Penetrated the U.S. Government's Telecom System and Compromised National Security An Israeli Trojan Horse http://www.counterpunch.org/2008/09/27/an-israeli-trojan-horse/ Full-Spectrum Penetration Israeli Spying in the United States http://www.counterpunch.org/2009/03/12/israeli-spying-in-the-united-states/

I don't know why JWR is pussyfooting around, here's explict quotes without the ambiguity of the WSJ article.

Israel "aided Hamas directly -- the Israelis wanted to use it as a counterbalance to the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization)," said Tony Cordesman, Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic Studies.

According to U.S. administration officials, funds for the movement came from the oil-producing states and directly and indirectly from Israel.

http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Security-Industry/2002/06/18/Analysis-Hamas-history-tied-to-Israel/UPI-82721024445587/

But the Islamic Palestinian leaders viewed the relationship with Israel differently. They were eager to accept Israel's financial backing and an easing on their activities...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2003/01/18/sharon-and-hamas/

So there's plenty of evidence that the Israeli intelligence services, especially Shin Bet and the military occupation authorities, encouraged the growth of the Muslim Brotherhood and the founding of Hamas.

http://www.democracynow.org/2006/1/26/how_israel_and_the_united_states

Thanks to Israel's intelligence agency Mossad (Israel's Institute for Intelligence and Special Tasks), the Islamists were allowed to reinforce their presence in the occupied territories.

http://www.wariscrime.com/2008/12/29/news/hamas-was-founded-by-mossad/

No, I did my own research.

As to the retarded question of whether or not I'm retarded: you've never met me, so you have no idea and don't for one fucking minute try and convince anybody that you do - it makes you look stupid and brands you the liar that you are. My last WAIS-III composite, assessed four years ago, was 223. Make what you will of that.

Storm has some good points. The main character is ignoring mystery of consciousness, to begin with, and leaps from the fact that science does have a lot of explanatory power to a religion of "scientistic" materialism assuming that whatever is not currently explained well (and may never be explained well) should be or can be ignored.

Google on work by Charles T. Tart for example: http://www.paradigm-sys.com/end-of-materialism/index.cfm
"Charles T. Tart is internationally known for his more than 50 years of research on the nature of consciousness, altered states of consciousness (ASCs) and parapsychology, and is one of the founders of the field of Transpersonal (spiritual) Psychology. His and other scientists' work convinced him that there is a real and vitally important sense in which we are spiritual beings, but the too dominant, scientistic, materialist philosophy of our times, masquerading as genuine science, dogmatically denies any possible reality to the spiritual. This hurts people, it pressures them to reject vital aspects of their being."

Or:
http://www.esalenctr.org/display/confpage.cfm?confid=9&pageid=121&pgtype=1
"According to Tart's model, the interface between the transpersonal "mind" and our brain-body's computational assessment and virtual reality construction of the physical world results in consciousness as-we-experience-it. Our consciousness is not pure, and we don't see "reality" as it is. Rather, what we experience is a semi-arbitrary construction derived from the balance between the transpersonal mind and the brain-body to produce a virtual reality that we simplistically call "reality." This virtual reality is a good simulation of the physical world, so it works well most of the time for our practical purposes, but it isn't reality per se. "

Many people loved the "Matrix" movies. Plato had the allegory of the "Cave" millennia ago which is similar. How do we know that reality and our own conscious being is not much more complex than our current limited brains can handle? It is indeed a leap of faith to say we are nothing but carbon atoms, or even just patterns of carbon atoms. It is not scientific! But many, many people make that "scientistic" leap of faith quite possibly in error because science can be so blindingly helpful sometimes in developing technology or making some predictions.

More points here on the limits of science as a *social* enterprise:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html

I give an example there about how for many people homeopathy may indeed work as a system of healing, even if only from the fact that the placebo effect is scientifically proven (it's even getting stronger) and homeopathy is a way of accessing that placebo effect power. There may be other aspects in practice as well, like most homeopaths may listen more to clients than MDs and may give good nutritional advice.

Also, unlike most usually innocuous homeopathc remedies, many drugs are put on the market after questionable studies and may be deadly. For example, consider Vioxx that may have contributed to my own father's death (when now I know better nutrition and vitamin D might have helped with his joint pain):
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/11/29/merck-pays-a-pittance-for-mass-murder/
"Q: Who killed more Americans-- al Qaeda crashing airplanes into the World Trade Center, or Merck pushing Vioxx?
A: Merck, by a factor of 18."

That disaster is one more reason we need better health sensemaking:
http://www.changemakers.com/morehealth/entries/health-sensemaking

Als

"... less than a week after a United Nations agency warned that Iran was secretly working to develop a nuclear weapon..."

That is not what the UN warned or reported. The headline is repeating western propaganda. Read this, this, this, or this.

And there is more to it, the Russian Nuclear scientist is not a nuclear scientist at all:
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=105776
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/11/14/the-holes-in-the-iran-nuke-report/

And what a coincidence: this shit comes up a couple of weeks after that ridiculously bogus attempt to frame Iran for trying to kill the Saudi Ambassador in the US. What are the evil Iranians going to do next???

Economic policy failed for three reasons: (1) policymakers focused on enabling offshoring corporations to move middle class jobs, and the consumer demand, tax base, GDP, and careers associated with the jobs, to foreign countries, such as China and India, where labor is inexpensive; (2) policymakers permitted financial deregulation that unleashed fraud and debt leverage on a scale previously unimaginable; (3) policymakers responded to the resulting financial crisis by imposing austerity on the population and running the printing press in order to bail out banks and prevent any losses to the banks regardless of the cost to national economies and innocent parties.

-- Saving the Rich, Losing the Economy by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

And....

Republican economists blame "high" US wages for the current high rate of unemployment. However, US wages are about the lowest in the developed world. They are far below hourly labor cost in Norway ($53.89), Denmark ($49.56), Belgium ($49.40), Austria ($48.04), and Germany ($46.52). The US might have the world's largest economy, but its hourly workers rank 14th on the list of the best paid. Americans also have a higher unemployment rate. The âoeheadlineâ rate that the media hypes is 9.1 percent, but this rate does not include any discouraged workers or workers forced into part-time jobs because no full-time jobs are available.

-- Saving the Rich, Losing the Economy by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you were only kidding.

Economic policy failed for three reasons: (1) policymakers focused on enabling offshoring corporations to move middle class jobs, and the consumer demand, tax base, GDP, and careers associated with the jobs, to foreign countries, such as China and India, where labor is inexpensive; (2) policymakers permitted financial deregulation that unleashed fraud and debt leverage on a scale previously unimaginable; (3) policymakers responded to the resulting financial crisis by imposing austerity on the population and running the printing press in order to bail out banks and prevent any losses to the banks regardless of the cost to national economies and innocent parties.

-- Saving the Rich, Losing the Economy by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

And....

Republican economists blame "high" US wages for the current high rate of unemployment. However, US wages are about the lowest in the developed world. They are far below hourly labor cost in Norway ($53.89), Denmark ($49.56), Belgium ($49.40), Austria ($48.04), and Germany ($46.52). The US might have the world's largest economy, but its hourly workers rank 14th on the list of the best paid. Americans also have a higher unemployment rate. The âoeheadlineâ rate that the media hypes is 9.1 percent, but this rate does not include any discouraged workers or workers forced into part-time jobs because no full-time jobs are available.

-- Saving the Rich, Losing the Economy by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you were only kidding.

Just saw Isles (previously mentioned) had some videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3krXLJEfdhQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WX6dcsn-fc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c52hHMHsOGU
etc.

My wife and I visited Isles, Inc about 18 years ago, to talk about our garden simulator. In Marty Johnson's office he had this quote under his computer monitor: "You can't plow a field by turning it over in your mind".

Of course, if you are a computer programmer or mathematician who spends a lot of time on mental things, that adage may be a bit less true, :-) but it's still a good sentiment about engagement.

I regret now not trying harder to figure out some way we could have worked together back then.

Those videos might be inspiring as far as thinking about the value of what you are doing in Chicago and what is possible.

Although I feel we still need bigger things like a basic income or other broader shifts, too, if our economy continues to implode with rising productivity (like from robotics) coupled with limited demand from currency issues and an environmental ethic and the law of diminsihing returns on having more stuff. Stronger local communities might lead to the energy to make bureaucracies accountable again and get better policies in place?

Related about a new book on US economic problems:
http://www.counterpunch.org/mokhiber07292011.html
"Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner were at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. this week for a discussion about their book -- Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon. ... "Five years from now, mark my words -- none of the people responsible for this -- not only not be held accountable -- they will be in more important positions -- that is what would happen in Russia." Rosner pretty much agreed. "My father was a federal prosecutor and my mother was a criminologist, and her speciality was Soviet criminology," Rosner said. "As she read our book -- she kept saying -- Jesus, this sounds like the way it is done there. Every piece of it. You have an entrenched bureaucracy without accountability." Rosner said a "code of silence" protects those complicit in the recent collapse."

That new book mentioned there echoes this old one:
"They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45"
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html
"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security."

Stronger local communities might be able to generate more social energy for national (and global) accountability?
"Visions of a Free Society"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjHTrwCstcM

I mentionian "localism" as one way to deal with increasing unemployment towards the end here (as one of four broad apporaches including a basic income, a gift economy, and better democratic resource-based planning):
http://knol.google.com/k/beyond-a-jobless-recovery

So, all the local efforts can add up nationally. How can we expect to have healthy national politics if our local politics are non-existent or dysfunctional? (I guess the Greens have been saying that for a long time.)

W

Bullshit. You ate the neo-lib propaganda about "humanitarian war" - hook, line and sinker.

"Humanitarian war" was designed to get comfortable, right-thinking and educated people to support wars of aggression and domination. The Clinton's were used as the messengers in the states, to sell this as "progressive" policy in the "post-Cold War" era. If you need to look deeper into any "hints", try examining the "accidental" bombing of the PRC Embassy in Belgrade. "Whoops".

GET THIS THROUGH YOUR HEAD:

There are NO "humanitarian" BOMBS. The people killed are like your Mother and Son - not "monsters" that need rough justice.

'A humanitarian operation is not a militant operation, and to attach any political objective or connotation to it would undoubtedly impair its credibility for all concerned in a conflict situation, and consequently its acceptability and efficacy."
-- Yves Sandoz, excerpt from 'Implementation of International Humanitarian Law: Challenges and New Approaches', Third International Security Forum, Zurich, October 1998.

"Humanitarian action is designed not to resolve conflicts but to protect human dignity and save lives. To maintain its neutral and impartial character and, consequently, the trust of all the parties to the conflict, it must be clearly dissociated from political and military measures the international community may take in search for conflict resolution. Only by strictly respecting the specificity of each other's mandates can military and humanitarian actors work 'separately together'..."
-- Jacques Forster, Vice President of the International Committee of the Red Cross, presented at the Ninth Annual Seminar on International Humanitarian Law, Geneva, 8-9 March 2000

"Since the Nato airstrikes began on March 24 Serb officials say more than 2,000 civilians have been killed and more than 7,500 wounded. Nato has owned up to bombing raids and missile attacks that have killed 460 civilians, according to a tally by Agence France-Presse. By all accounts, the bombing was indiscriminate, killing farmers, suburbanites, city dwellers, factory workers, reporters, diplomats, people in cars, busses and trains, hospital patients, the elderly and children. Indeed, by our count, Nato bombing raids have killed more than 200 children. Hundreds more will almost certainly perish in the coming months, through environmental factors, such as poisoned water supplies and lack of electrical power to run vital hospital equipment. The following list of civilian casualties is far from comprehensive. We compiled it from daily reports by the Yugoslav Foreign Ministry and wire services, including Agence France Presse, Reuters and AP."
-- Andrew Cockburn, Counterpunch: Who NATO KIlled

here's an interesting article on the Chernobyl death statistics: http://www.counterpunch.org/giambrone04012011.html

Here you go, HTH ...

The health effects of the Chernobyl accident are massive and demonstrable. They have been studied by many research groups in Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine, in the USA, Greece, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and Japan. The scientific peer reviewed literature is enormous. Hundreds of papers report the effects, increases in cancer and a range of other diseases. ... Alexey Yablokov of the Russian Academy of Sciences published a review of these studies in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (2009). Earlier in 2006 he and I collected together reviews of the Russian literature by a group of eminent radiation scientists and published these in the book Chernobyl, 20 Years After. The result: more than a million people have died between 1986 and 2004 as a direct result of Chernobyl.

A study of cancer in Northern Sweden by Martin Tondel and his colleagues at Lynkoping University examined cancer rates by radiation contamination level and showed that in the 10 years after the Chernobyl contamination of Sweden, there was an 11% increase in cancer for every 100kBq/sq metre of contamination. Since the official International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) figures for the Fukushima contamination are from 200 to 900kBq.sq metre out to 78km from the site, we can expect between 22% and 90% increases in cancer in people living in these places in the next 10 years. The other study I want to refer to is one I carried out myself. After Chernobyl, infant leukaemia was reported in 6 countries by 6 different groups, from Scotland, Greece, Wales, Germany, Belarus and the USA. The increases were only in children who had been in the womb at the time of the contamination: this specificity is rare in epidemiology. There is no other explanation than Chernobyl. The leukemias could not be blamed on some as-yet undiscovered virus and population mixing, which is the favourite explanation for the nuclear site child leukemia clusters. There is no population mixing in the womb. Yet the "doses" were very small, much lower than "natural background".

- Chris Busby source

Much like Three Mile Island (which also didn't release any significant radiation), this will set nuclear energy back years. And with the carbon problem and increasing dependence on fossil fuels, we need it now more than every. Solar and wind aren't ready, and so much progress has been made in nuclear plant safety.

Your post is almost entirely false. Three Mile Island killed people. The radiation released wasn't catastrophic, but it was most certainly significant. What happened at Three Mile Island shouldn't be dismissed like it was nothing at all, and this is a major reason (dismissive attitudes) why many nuclear proponents should be dismissed. You, sir, are dismissed.

It depends on you mean by the "whole play was written." Do you mean that the US had it in for Assange before the accusations came to light? That is certainly true. But exactly what they were doing about it is another matter. It is possible that one or both of the women were CIA plants, and there have been suggestions to that effect http://www.counterpunch.org/shamir09142010.html. However, while this is a plausible story, it doesn't seem likely nor is it necessary to explain events. Several things to remember: 1) Assange was trying to gain Swedish citizen at the time; 2) so, the US would have reason to put pressure on Sweden about the issue; 3) Sweden's interests mostly align with those of the US and they probably don't want to become known as a haven for international Robin Hoods, so they had their own reasons for not wanting to grant Assange a citizenship; 4) rape laws in Sweden have the lowest evidential bar in the entire world, essentially a woman can decide at any time after sex that she was assaulted, even if it was apparently mutual and she seemed to enjoy it; 5) there is a history in Sweden of women using these laws to their advantage, such as suing for large sums of money, that is has nothing to do with governmental pressure; 6) ultimately, it doesn't matter whether Assange is found innocent or guilty (for the US it would be a bonus, but not necessary), simply the charge of rape is enough to tarnish his image. So, I would suggest that if we were to be able to Wikileaks the behind the scenes chatter we would probably see some diplomatic pressure from the US on Sweden to find a way to deny Assange citizenship. We would likely also see internal pressure within the Swedish establishment to deny Assange citizenship. We would probably also see that he was watched closely by the authorities. When his sexual escapades came to light, it was hard to miss since one of the women tweeted them all over the net and the other texted to all her friends, there may or may not have been some suggestions given to those women that maybe he didn't treat them as nicely as they would have liked. However, it is also quite likely that the women came to the conclusion to accuse him on their own, given that some Swedish woman have used these laws for less than upright purposes. The "coincidence" of two women charging Assange at the same time can easily be explained by the fact that they talked to each other beforehand. Regardless of whether these charges were influenced by suggestion or not, the Swedish government certainly jumped at the opportunity. So, while it is possible that there were deep machinations involved, the events can easily be explained by conjunction of governmental business as usual (basic diplomatic pressure, and pressures internal to the Swedish system), Swedish rape laws, chance and jumping on opportunities when they arise.

The first thing I do when a phone operator robot asks me to say "English" for English or "Espanol" for Espanol, I push all the buttons to see if I can get to a number-based menu, or at least hurt the robot's ears. Saying "English" and waiting for it to confirm that I said English is not faster or more convenient than hitting 1. It's not scary, but it's a computer, and I'm not going to pretend it's not.

Especially annoying to blind people! Could you imagine if it were possible to actually get the computer to do complex things with minimal effort by only using your voice!? Imagine if the computer could actually tell you what's going on with it's voice! The horror!

Saying, "Open a command prompt," is in no way more convenient, faster, or easier than slamming the mouse to the lower left, clicking, and typing cmd.exe. Having it say, "OK, here's a command prompt," afterward would just be annoying.

Maybe I'm just not picturing the right use case.

Indeed.

P.S. Vinux - Linux for visually impaired, Blinux - Blind + Linux discussion group & LinuxSpeaks

See also: StarTrek TNG -- Talking to the computer midship instead of having to be at the damn terminal.

Also: http://www.google.com/#q=peer+review+as+censorship
http://www.counterpunch.org/mazur02262010.html
http://www.suppressedscience.net/censorship-medicine.html

A key point being that keeping information from the public is not the same as modding up (or revising interactively) information like on slashdot. What would slashdot be like if every comment needed "peer review" before it was posted? Instead, slashdot uses after the fact moderation. (Nothing is perfect, of course.)

In general:
http://www.suppressedscience.net/
http://www.disciplinedminds.com/
http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/book.php?titleID=37
http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm

And from a previously posted link (from 1994 from the Vice Provost of Caltech, and it has probably gotten worse since):
    http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
"Peer review is usually quite a good way to identify valid science. Of course, a referee will occasionally fail to appreciate a truly visionary or revolutionary idea, but by and large, peer review works pretty well so long as scientific validity is the only issue at stake. However, it is not at all suited to arbitrate an intense competition for research funds or for editorial space in prestigious journals. There are many reasons for this, not the least being the fact that the referees have an obvious conflict of interest, since they are themselves competitors for the same resources. This point seems to be another one of those relativistic anomalies, obvious to any outside observer, but invisible to those of us who are falling into the black hole. It would take impossibly high ethical standards for referees to avoid taking advantage of their privileged anonymity to advance their own interests, but as time goes on, more and more referees have their ethical standards eroded as a consequence of having themselves been victimized by unfair reviews when they were authors. Peer review is thus one among many examples of practices that were well suited to the time of exponential expansion, but will become increasingly dysfunctional in the difficult future we face.
    We must find a radically different social structure to organize research and education in science after The Big Crunch. That is not meant to be an exhortation. It is meant simply to be a statement of a fact known to be true with mathematical certainty, if science is to survive at all. ..."

Anna Ardin (the official complainant) is often described by the media as a “leftist”. She has ties to the US-financed anti-Castro and anti-communist groups link

That article contains more factual errors in every sentence then I thought was possible. Don't they check any facts? They even get simple things like the spelling and capitalisation of Säpo wrong (and it isn't a "secret police" it's a security service, even though it is somewhat more secretive then other branches of the Swedish police force, it is still open for investigation by representatives of the Swedish public (mostly journalists and politicians, you have to get a security clearance (it isn't that hard, it is on the same level that you need to go sailing in some archipelagos in Sweden, basically you have to be a Swedish citizen and haven't done anything really extreme in your past, even weird people like me, with really radical friends, get higher grade security clearance then the one required), they are in turn allowed to reveal all generic mechanisms used by Säpo to everybody they like, as long as they don't reveal any specific information they have happened to see).