Slashdot Mirror

Which is not to say that civilians getting caught in the middle between two warring sides is anything new or novel, but the least we could do is not try to dismiss it by implying they deserve to get killed.

Someone is implying that Iraqis deserve to get killed? I doubt it is the US military. They seem to be working pretty hard to help Iraq rebuild and protect Iraqis from terrorism.

Focus On Projects That Put Iraqis Back to Work
Market Fair Helps Baghdad Residents Plan for Economic Future
Soldiers Provide Aid to Orphanage
Coalition, Iraqi Army Bring the Heat, Fuel Iraqi Fires
Work Resumes at Water Treatment Plant for Al-Zeirji Town
Police transition teams help Iraqi police take back streets
506th RCT Soldiers Distribute School Supplies to Iraqi Children
Streams of water bring progress, hope to village
More Electricity Projects Improving Lives in Dhi Qar Province
Marines Launch Rescue Effort to Save 3-year-old Hadithah Girl
Soldiers Work With Poultry Growers to Revitalize Chicken Industry

Maybe it is the extremists and insurgents that you are thinking of. After all, Al Qaeda considers the Shia heretics, and most of the Sunnis in Iraq as traitors, and wants to kill them both.

Tribal force in Iraq target of attacks
Bus bomb kills five in bustling market
Teenage Bomber Strikes In Anbar - Suicide Attack Targets Meeting Of Tribal Leaders
Female suicide bombers shatter Baghdad calm
Bin Laden's trained children of death
US Says Iraq Car Bomb Kills 23 Civilians

The first statement is made online, just quote in google here. I found it while looking up a law I remember a while back that makes looking up bomb material in the US illegal, though I couldn't find actual articles on it (I still believe this is illegal according to fed law, but cannot find a source). The grad comment was discovered after reading a book on the history of the bomb in a library, talking about how difficult it is to make the models that allow the bomb to chain react. The grad students did it in around 4 years if I remember correctly. (design only, would need actual fissible material to make the real thing, like isotopes of plutonium/uranium).

Here are references supporting the three American/two Canadian split:

• Cassels Brock law firm
• Nations Building News
• Christian Science Monitor

Mercury Rising:
"SMOKY SKIES: The coal-burning Gavin Power Plant in Cheshire, Ohio, is one of the US's top producers of mercury, according to the EPA. In the US, power plants account for 60 percent of all mercury released into the air by industry."

Or do you mean an organization like the Department of Energy which has been controlled by an administration which is absurdly friendly to the energy industry? (See: Mercury Emission Control R&D).

Dude. Nobody, and I mean nobody, is in doubt about the mercury released into the atmosphere from human activity, and which then falls into the oceans. Even according to the Bush administration, about a third of this is apparently from burning coal. Oh, and look! The data in the DOE chart is from 1994 and 1995! The data from the Christian Science Monitor is ten years newer. Huh. Imagine that. As mercury emissions are reduced form other industries, the proportion of emissions from coal fire plants has gone up. Bummer. Undermines the DOE case against actually doing anything about the problem of emissions from coal fire plants in the US, which just doubled in importance, right then, by taking the time to understand the attempted deception in the graph.

There are a few reasons that any mercury is released at all from coal burning:

1. Coal has mercury in it,
2. we haven't widely deployed the best available technology for scrubbing the mercury out of the emissions, and
3. we haven't the technical ability to scrub it all out, even with the best available technology, and
4. even the best available technology is apparently widely variable in effectiveness, ranging from not effective at all (scrubbing zero percent of the mercury from the emissions), to somewhat effective (a third to half of emissions captured).

Although global mercury emissions have fallen in recent decades, they are still absurdly high. Human activity is causing a rising level of mercury found in top level predator fish, the kinds people like to eat, like tuna.

Mercury is a neurotoxin, and a general toxin, and it accumulates in organisms (Bioaccumulation of mercury). In tiny quantities, it's bad for you. It's particularly bad for those unborn children that the "Christian Right" proponents of "Family Values" love to go on and on about. They don't seem to care much if those children are born healthy, only that they get born. But I digress.

Were this not the case, we would not have research programs designed to figure out how to reduce these emissions, under this pro-industry, head-in-the-sand Republican administration. Unfortunately, the "propaganda" is on the other side of the issue. Even though the DOE can't deny this problem, due to the overwhelming nature of the evidence, they can still obfuscate it. Notice how the first paragraph of this article differs pretty dramatically in gestalt view of the problem, as compared to a paragraph from deeper in the body of the content:
Mercury Emission Control R&D

"Trace amounts of mercury can exist in coal and other fossil fuels. When these fuels burn, mercury vapor can be released to the atmosphere where it may drift for a year or more, spreading with air currents over vast regions of the globe. In 1995, an estimated 5,500 tons of mercury was emitted globally from both natural and human sources. Coal-fired power plants in the United States contributed less than 1 percent of the total."

Regarding that part of it: I smell a rat, and it's not Mickey! http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0213/p02s04-usmi.html

and in France the violence has turned to urban warfare

But I'll come back to that later. First:
It's people like you who are responsible for the rise of Sadam, Hitler, Bush and other despots. You justification is: there are "good" reasons to persecution. Hitler shared your point of view.
Instead of going after the people who failed to act (or juts let things happen that 9/11 to get the convenient war propaganda), you let your rights burn, you justify your own oppression, you take the lies about terrorism in Iraq as granted (the only terrorists active in Iraq were backed by the US and were acting to replace Sadam by a more cooperative dictator, just like in the very well documented coup against Mohammed Mossadegh which led to the current Iranian situation). You support the american terrorism. You can't recognise a failed leader when you see one, Bush speaks in YOUR name, he acts in YOUR name.

they have developed a reputation for it.

Americans have developed a reputation: a short summary of things done in YOUR name: You call others nations terrorists if they don't support in your holly war, you invade a country under false pretexts, plan the chaos (disbanding the government and army http://www.cfr.org/publication/7853/iraq.html) which will justify the presence of your army in the country. You steal all the oil you can while people argue about the effectiveness of your strategy. You kill people at random (just for fun, a video) and you create laws to avoid being prosecuted... You kill more people cause it's fun It's bad you broke rules but no laws, because killing people is not a crime (the killers will walk free and proud in your streets). You have a strong tendency of acting like criminals at every level of the state and you make your own law how and where it pleases you; As Bush said "He tried to kill my dad". And so you bombed a nation with radioactive waste (twice http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/95178_du12.shtml, http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0515/p01s02-woiq.html). Also, giving false evidence about mass destruction weapons to bring other nations into your jihad is another strategy in you sick failed-state. And this reputation of being christian fanatics who create your own private (out of the law) saint armies http://www.blackwaterusa.com/ counts for something... Your leaders are a reflection of yourself.

I think there are valid reasons for millions of people around the world to seek vengeance against the US. So stop complaining, having a 1984 like system at the airports and having your laptop stolen by greedy TSA officials is a low price to pay for your own security when you are too lazy to act responsibly. You don't deserve freedom if you can't fight for it... It's up to you as a citizen of a country to watch where your freedom goes... You are just like russians, happy to give away your rights by fear of loosing some of this daily comfort. At the airport you are treated like cattle, because you are... Your country and its officials (from top to bottom TSA agents) consider you as such... it gives you

$70 billion for a coast to coast mag lev? No way. The big dig in Boston, which was basically building a few tunnels cost $14.6b and you're telling me you can get a coast to coast mag lev for only 5 times as much? Keep dreaming.

Yes, it's a virtual paradise. They are a truly compassionate and loving people. I'm sure no one would want to reform such an flawless system. What was I thinking, even questioning their wisdom?

And that's not to mention the global warming/climate change implications of eating meat. Personally, I'm not 100% sold on the issue of man-made climate change; but considering the massive amounts of methane (a greenhouse gas far more effective at trapping heat, pound per pound, than CO2) produced by cattle, I've taken to completely disregarding those most vocal of global warming proponents who haven't taken up vegetarianism. Assuming they really and truly believe what they are saying, they need to look to their own hypocrisy first, before attempting to change the behavior of others.

Yes, first past the post voting is not as good as proportional. But what is recommended in this article is just the frosting on the cake. Before you can put on the frosting, you have to have the cake. America does not have the cake. THe approach espoused in this article is like a mechanic who, when presented with a car that does not start, decides that a paint job will fix the problem. The problem is that america is NOT a democracy. And where democracy is crippled, money rules. The lack of democracy in america creates a vacuum, filled by Big MOney. We have a choice--democracy or plutocracy. If you do not have democracy, you have plutocracy. the solution must return power to the voters by changing the constitution so as to empower the voters. How do you do that? The same way they do in Europe, canada, oz,etc they use governmental infrastructure to empower voters. They empower by parliamentarian democracy. Look to western europe. There is a reason why they have universal healthcare, progressive taxation, less police brutality, a small war machine, etc etc. You see, THEY have democracy in the form of parliamentarianism. We do not. The founding fathers were ANTI-DEMOCRACY. THe reason they illegally installed the present constitution is because the several states under the articles of confederation were becoming parliamentarian democracies, and then passing laws that were helpful to working people and harmful to the rich people like the founding fathers, e.g. debt relief laws and progressive taxation. The founding fathers hated democracy. James Madison, the father of the American constitution, said that democracy is not right for America. Elbridge Gerry, a signer of the COnstitution, said that there was an "excess of democracy." Read all about how america is not a democracy: How did the FOunding Fathers stop democracy in America? Primarily with strong checks and balances and the Presidential System. Read these articles and this online book to learn more about what I am talking about. These articles are written by Phds in history and political science (or are articles reviewing books by those PHDs). http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2007/10/31/taxation_revolution_and_some_other_rebellions/ and here: http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1023/p13s01-bogn.html and here: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa4026/is_200607/ai_n17187913/pg_1 and here: http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:u1pjfiO0X_8J:www.historycooperative.org/journals/wm/62.2/holton.html+woody+impera&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=opera and here: http://cyberjournal.org/authors/fresia/

I agree with hherb on this issue. We are way to harsh on sex offenders. It seems that we can keep on passing new laws that find new ways to punish sex offenders. Are the current laws not strict enough? Other than murder, sexual assault convictions carried the longest median prison sentence in New Jersey. I think if someone suggested we add an extra 2 years onto minimum sentences for all sex offenders it would pass in any state. We have since 1980 consistently upped the penalties for sex crimes since the 1980s. There is no evidence that it has helped. Now states are considering the death penalty for worst case sex crimes. There is a guy in Louisiana who is on death row for a sex crime without murdering anyone.

But no matter how harsh the punishment, we can always make it a little worse. We could insist that sex criminals serve a minimum of 25 years. Then we could restrict their privileges in prison even if they were well behaved. We could ban them from having a television. We could ban them from lifting weights. We could stop them from wearing civilian clothes. We could lock them up for 23 hours a day like those on death row. But no matter how much we punish them the public desire for revenge is never satiated. We always want more. When do we finally say that some punishment is enough?

About 400 municipalities in New Jersey have enacted local zoning ordinances restricting where sex offenders can live within their boundaries. This vengeful justice is getting so out of hand that an ex sex offender cannot function in society. They can't get a job because firstly they have a criminal record and secondly they are a sex offender and have to register as such. They can't live in many places. We are forcing them into a life of crime to survive. Many towns like to ban sex offenders from living within 2,500 feet of any place where there might be children. This list gets very long. It starts with schools and parks. Then it moves on into movie theaters and churches. Now the vogue is to also ban them from 2500 feet of libraries and bus stops as well. There are increasingly states and counties where there is no place a sex offender can live legally.

As to the specifics of the internet ban for sex offenders. Firstly if they have already served their sentence haven't they already paid back their 'debt to society'. Or is this to keep society safe and not as a punishment. Well what if their original crime had nothing to do with the internet. What if they raped an adult and have no desire to do anything to kids? Is there any evidence that this would make kids safer? There is no evidence that residency restriction laws do in fact diminish crimes against children. And remember banning people from a using the internet is removing a distant threat from a kid. They can't physically do anything. And all this assumes that they will choose to use the internet to contact kids to begin with. What if they do not? What about other categories? If someone had underage sex, the law is the problem there as opposed to the law breaker.

So what type of person is this law about? Is it about a sex crazed pedophile who cannot help stop themselves. Well in my mind they don't have what we would call free will. the urge is so great. States are starting to use civil commitment with such offenders so they never get out. So what sort of sex offenders are we talking about?

I think banning people from using the internet is also itself ludicrous. In the 1990s the net was nice to have but

Oops, darn, my geography is almost as bad as your spelling. I'm confusing Guantanamo with Abu Ghraib, where we have piles of evidence that the inmates were tortured in this way, and others besides. Now, I'm sure that you'll counter with the lame argument that this behavior was perpetrated by a few "rogue soldiers." Hmm. The last time I looked, the military was a hierarchically structured organization with a well-defined chain of command, run by a bunch of grown ups, who, being adults, are directly responsible for their inferiors' behavior. So even if these were "isolated incidents," the blame lies squarely on the heads of perpetrators' officers. Further, as we both know, a private soldier can't have a wank without his officer's permission, much less his awareness, particularly in a war zone. Let's not forget, either, that this administration has not only repeatedly refused to rule out the use of torture in these camps, but has actively promoted its use as an expedient, arguing that the captives are not protected by the Geneva Convention. On top of all that, Dick Cheney himself has confirmed our government's use of waterboarding on these inmates. A technique which, even its US government practitioners claim is most definitely torture.

So there's plenty of evidence out there that we're treating these people like animals, regardless of how you and other children like you close your eyes, plug your ears, and shout "lalalalalalalalala," in a disingenuous effort to claim ignorance. If you want facts, just open your eyes.

I do agree with you about the press, though. Once it was alleged in the press that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, it certainly did become "fact" to all the booboisie out there. The administration and its shills were not complaining about the press then, were they?

Who says they are notoriously recidivist? From what I can find, they have a relatively low recidivism rate.
US
Canada

The supreme court never ruled on that use. Congress demanded the documents, Cheney claimed executive privilege and Congress chose not to pursue the matter any further, as they didn't think at the time anything would be gained by doing so.

So far, this has been the case of all of the Bush administration's use of Executive privilege. None have (yet) made it to the Supreme court. In previous cases where the Supreme Court has ruled (Clinton and Nixon being the two most recent), they have ruled that it covers only cases of national security, directly involving either military details or discussions with foreign nations.

Which, it should be noted, is exactly the claim made by Nixon, which the supreme court rejected in ordering him to turn over his tapes. From which, of course, someone had accidentally deleted a completely inconsequential 14 minutes.

• Showing off to other states how advanced you are.
• Possible side benefits from the technology you develop to solve the engineering problems
• Government corruption sponsored by the engineering firms involved

Torture is still used because it works, and it works because it's still used? That's some nice circular logic there, Lou.

The only reason it's still used because some people are sociopaths who enjoy hurting others (or they are in search of "revenge"). This is why it's generally associated with Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, and North Korea. It's a verifiable fact
that
torture
does
not
work
for
the
reasons
I
explained
previously.

There Are Four Lights!

if anyone didnt read the bbc site: "The trouble broke out at the end of the rally when about 100 protesters tried to break through police lines."

this is all just staged.. he wanted to get arrested... he wanted the story to be posted on bbc..

the OTHER side of the OTHER RUSSIA lead by chess man.. for those that dont know: "Mr. Limonov and his mainly youthful followers have been a mainstay of the Other Russia movement, a pro-democracy coalition led by chess champion Garry Kasparov"
source: http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0706/p07s02-woeu.html

more information on mr. limonov - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduard_Limonov more information on this party - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Bolshevik_Party

western media and their support for anti-putin, the lose use of the words like "authoritarianism" are all very interesting these days. in fact russia today is very interesting as well. however remember that american media print receives 90% of there material almost word for word from the same source the AP. i highly recommend anyone interested in world news to dig a little and research things and question what they read from western news.

in my post i do not make any conclusions. just questions to think about.

Here are some some links that were in related /. stories :

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70179-0.html?tw=wn_index_2
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0515/p13s01-stct.html

Basically about 50% of replies between normal people are misinterpreted.

jdb2

Just a few years ago a large football-sized hole was discovered in the Davis-Besse Nuclear power plant. The plant was closed for two years to undergo repairs. This seems to indicate that the safety issues are still a major concern, at least for those living near a nuclear plant :?)

A nuclear plant designed to be much safer and more efficient seems to be the answer, however, I for one am still convinced that nuclear energy is not the panacea that proponents claim it to be. Nuclear waste sticks around for quite a while and taxpayer subsidies are vital to the industry (their is no nuclear industry without taxpayer subsidies). If we consider how long it takes to bring a new nuclear plant online (est. 5-10 years), then the prospects seem even more grim.

Bring into consideration the prospects of a dirty bomb or a nuclear bomb in the hands of terrorists and the prospects for expansion of the nuclear industry seem more and more gloomy...

With renewable energy coming into favor as fuel prices continue to rise it's just a matter of time before clean renewable energies from solar, biomass, wind, etc. are cost competitive with nuclear. What will happen when nuclear plants are made obsolete by new technology??? We can be assured that the nuclear industry won't be around when that happens. The US tax payers, who are subsidizing the industry in the first place, will be left with the bill...

We are at the cusp of a new generation of technology that people cannot imagine. Faith is needed to support the research in physics/chemistry/biology/mathematics/computer science/engineering that will make commercialization of this technology possible. Supporting known, antiquated technology of the past is the easy way out. Keep the faith and call you congress person and tell them to support the education of future scientist/engineers/mathematicians. The money it takes to empower the next Einstein is pennies compared to the cost of a single nuclear plant. Keep the faith...

Solar? About $20 trillion dollars worth of solar panels near the equator will do it.

This problem has been plaguing us for years and we keep talking about how big and impossible it is, yet we do almost nothing about it. Somehow for the US to invest a couple trillion in solving this problem is out of the question - yet we have no problem spending that much to destroy and rebuild Iraq over and over again. It's sheer stupidity.

You really hold your fellow Americans in very low regard. Study after study have shown that the US has one of the lowest upward social mobility rates in the western world (only the UK is lower). I think that this is in great part due to these outrageous loans Americans are forced to acquire early in life. You think they are just lazier than the rest of the world.

Providing easy and universal access to education is not just a lofty socialist ideal. Society, as a whole benefits from such an approach. Sergey Korolev, the architect of the Soviet space program, was born in a poor, dysfunctional family, yet he attended the MVTU, Russa's MIT if you want. Had he not had access to free education, maybe the Americans would have won the space race.

Think about electricity deregulation: the transmission is seperate from the generation, and while everyone has to pay for the transmission (since we don't want overly redundant infrastructure), individuals can choose their generation source.

And we all know how well electricity deregulation worked out for consumers, right?

No, Iraq is not the scene of terrorists with bombs causing all the damage we've seen. You're buying into a selective analysis meant to blame those foreign devils for the state of their country, the same as those who have been taking this "white man's burden" style of intervention into the third world have always done.

You do realize that when mostly you're shooting a missile from an airplane into a building where a suspected "terrorist" is, you're going to get a lot of casualties right? You may argue that US soldiers are trained to avoid killing civilians, but when the whole system of aerial warfare is careless of collateral damage, it doesn't matter.

American bombs blew the infrastructure for "shock and awe" and the majority of Iraq's city population has been without steady electricity and proper sewage since. They dropped cluster bombs, which like land mines destroy civilian lives because of the unexploded ordnance left laying about. Then there's the depleted uranium. Cancer is skyrocketing in Iraq, on account of the radiation levels our weapons have sown. The radiation levels are a thousand times the usual. Do you know what the half-life of that stuff is? We're talking billions of years.

Yes, insurgent groups and sectarian militias added to the body count, but the conditions on the ground were set up for that by turning Iraq into a hellhole.

Bush's America is the cause. It is the instigator. When a brute like Saddam has ruled more gently than Bush's occupation, it's quite damning. Bush, his cohorts, and everyone who followed orders to do this bear the moral responsibility.

We'd never bombard our cities this way to do in a few dangerous criminals, and the fact that we do that in Iraq shows how little their lives mean to the powers that be.

The FCC should look to end exclusive cable contracts for cities.

This is leftover from the early cable days. In the early days, this was required to get any provider to cover the expense of building a market. The risk was way too high of stringing an infrastructure expecting at least 50% market penetration and having a competitor aim at the same market and also requiring over 50% to break even on buildout, so they underpriced to gain market share, but now need 80% market penetration to break even. This left the first in the market bankrupt and unable to recover costs and pay the loan as they now have 10% of the market.

These exclusive contracts should have an expiration date. Some don't. Those that don't are very hard to get the company to release. Independant homeowners with the option of satelite is the wedge that is breaking up some of these exclusive markets. They have shouted contract violation by permitting residents to use satelite, but the satelite industry has fought back and won.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1023/p04s01-ussc.html

The cable industry is fighting back and convincing cities they are losing tax revenue, so please tax the competition to even back up the playing field. And the fight continues.
http://www.stopsatellitetax.com/

Saddam invaded Kuwait and made lame attempt to explain his position on annexing it (it was always part of Iraq, etc). He started lining up armor and troops as though seriously considering doing the exact same thing across Saudi Arabia's northern border.

An excellent point, if only it weren't all lies.

We are not "afraid", we are cautious and -- unlike the Burmese -- we are far more trustful of our government. And for good reasons...

Caution seems to be indeed in place ...
"America's global image has again slipped and support for the war on terrorism has declined even among close US allies like Japan. The war in Iraq is a continuing drag on opinions of the United States, not only in predominantly Muslim countries but in Europe and Asia as well. And despite growing concern over Iran's nuclear ambitions, the US presence in Iraq is cited at least as often as Iran - and in many countries much more often - as a danger to world peace." ( CSM, quoting a PEW study).

Whether one should trust in a government creating this type of image is questionable, at best.

CC.

Heh. You're still cracking me up. Here's the first link from a quick google search: http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0224/p02s01-usju.html. There's plenty more with actual self-defense laws.

Finally, as plenty of others already pointed out, when you just woke up because of some commotion in your house, where things are dark, you're bleary eyed and can't immediately figure out who is exactly sneaking around your house.... things will get ugly without anyone being a paranoid sociopath. You're making the mistake of assuming that all cops have a little "cop" icon floating over their head, and all robbers and murderers have a "bad guy" icon over their head.

You're as ill-informed and moronic as ever.

And in case you're wondering - all freaks get a +1 from me. I have a morbid curiosity for people who put me on their foe list.

You're ignoring the costs of bringing in either batteries or fuel and a generator to a remote location. Which isn't trivial by any means - Trucking in supplies takes additional fuel, equipment, manpower, time (days) and can be intercepted by hostile forces.
Heck, the US Army says delivery of 1 gallon of fuel costs up to $300 Source

Having even a meager 1800W supplied to you with virtually no risk of interception by hostile forces (which, assuming you're fighting people whose technical knowledge ends at "make a cone out of copper and fill it with HE" is pretty much guaranteed) can be incredibly helpful and allow for greater flexibility in deployment and selection of areas for FOBs, etc.

Sure, 1.8 KW isn't really enough to be used a power source to kill your enemies (yet, at least), but it is a decent amount of power and you can do a number of fairly useful things w/ it.

Granted, you're going to have to truck / pack in some supplies anyways, but food / water isn't nearly as much of a logistical challenge as fuel is. We're already pretty good at making drinkable water out of some pretty nasty stuff and MREs don't weigh that much.

The 'fraction' of our population that goes to a university for a four year program is pretty high. About 50% of adolescents enter college at the expected time (18-19 years old), and there's a fair number of nontraditional students as well. Of course, many never graduate.

About 75 percent of U.S. high school graduates enter college and about 70 percent of 9th graders go on to graduate from high school, according to one study. If you do the math, you get about 50% (I've heard this elsewhere but can't recall where.)

US notches world's highest incarceration rate

Well, I see that you're familiar with Republican talking points. But did you know that:

• The Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan and is in fact regaining control?
• That Al Qaeda is still a global organization?
• That Afghanistan is still largely controlled by warlords? Karzai; the President's nickname is the "Mayor of Kabul" because is sphere of control is so limited
• Your hero Bush found out that Al Qaeda was responsible for the Cole bombing in March of 2001, but did nothing about it until AFTER 9/11. The CIA refused to certify the cause during Clinton's presidency.
• That burqas are back in fashion (and not by choice) in Afghanistan?
• 7 of 9 Supreme Court Justices were appointed by Republican Presidents, so I have no clue where your manufactured 5-4 usurpers figure came from. I'm sure the same right-wing sources that have so ill-informed you on these other bullets.
• There is no oil sharing agreement in Iraq. Not sure where you pulled that from either. That's why we're still there. And the Kurds just signed an independent oil agreement.
• I have no clue how you figure we've had 6 years of unprecedented economic growth. And, I have no clue how you seem to think the last time the economy was good was under Reagan (it was under Clinton).
• I'm glad that your family is doing well (as most upper class families are), but the buying power of Americans is going DOWN. And, . And, in the next year or so the bankruptcy crisis is going to explode as all those exotic loans are about to flip to higher interest rates.

Hopefully, you'll go out and try to understand why you're so uninformed, but I think you're going to continue rationalizing away reality.

Citations:
Spying on Quakers in an "anti-terrorist" program, http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1215/dailyUpdate.html
Teacher arrested for holding up a sign, http://www.woi-tv.com/global/story.asp?s=3276385&ClientType=Printable

as a percentage of GDP. And maybe that's why, after cutting 10 divisions during the Clinton years, we don't have enough troops to win a prolonged war.

In the early 1960s the Department of Defense constituted 45 percent of federal spending, whereas this year it will constitute an estimated 17 percent, according to the Office of Management and Budget. At the same time that percentage shrank, the percentage devoted to entitlements rose. This is reflected in money allocated to the Department of Health and Human Services: It skyrocketed from just over 3 percent of federal expenditures four decades ago to an estimated 25 percent this year. Source: Triumph of the redistributionist left.

Funny how all of you lefties want to cut the things the Constitution actually requires the government to do, not the preposterous entitlements that are not mentioned in the Constitution, and are bankrupting America.

He's no hero. He always let Cobra Commander -- the leader of a ruthless terrorist orgainization determined to rule the world -- get away. A real leader like George W. Bush would never let that happen.

We need laws like this to replenish the work force being vacated by deported immigrants. Where will the new workers come from? Where else? For this burgeoning industry the law is more than sensible. Expect much, much more of this.

... I have to say that Telkom is absolutely terrible. Have a look here for more info.

Telkom have consistently been a stumbling block to technological progress in the country, especially with regards to internet access. Telkom owns all the international links to the rest of the world from SA, and most of the bandwidth and international calls have to be routed through them. In fact, the price of ADSL has been so prohibitive that many individuals have pursued cellular alternatives, paying per MB, for light browsing instead.

While it's easy to criticise the private companies who have been managing it, Telkom is a parastatal, and not wholly private; roughly 39% is still owned by the South African government, so I'm fairly certain they weren't too unhappy about the affair. There has been evidence of cronyism at the company, too, most likely as a direct result of this: in 2004 a government pension fund was used "to buy telecoms shares for a group of former government officials". This was part of the government's Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) requirements that firms need to be 1/4 black owned before 2010, and falls within a pattern shown, by 2004 government surveys, that "68 percent of BEE deals went to just 6 black-owned businesses, all of which were owned by top members of the ANC party."

The whole thing stinks, and Saffas get screwed, as usual.

John Taylor Gatto explains in his book (online) why putting more money into the system will not change things:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.ht m

One of the most important things Gatto does is to distinguish between
"Education" and "Schooling".

The hardest thing to understand about schooling, Gatto suggests, is that
schools are not *failing* at their original purpose but are actually
*succeeding* at creating dumbed down and easily "class"-ified people.
So, for example, when people note that more money spent on schools does not
produce smarter kids, the issue isn't that schools are not working, but
instead it is that schools are actually working all the better for the more
money. It just isn't the point of schools to produce "educated" people (even
if that is what school administrators or school teachers might claim is the
point of schooling, and perhaps even genuinely believe themselves).
The big issue is just that the original purpose of schools, intended to
produce an industrial utopia by turning children into the adult robots 19th
century industry needed, is no longer very relevant to the information age
or a world where universal abundance is possible (say, via *real* robots
automating away those assembly line jobs) or even moving beyond the notion
of "work" altogether.
"The Abolition of Work" by Bob Black, 1985
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolitio n.html

Gatto maintains that public (and most private) school as we know it
is a state-oriented social institution originating in Prussia
designed specifically to produce mainly uncritical
consumers, compliant workers, and obedient soldiers, and that it is out of
step with the needs of an information age society which thrives on diversity
and creativity (as well as out-of-step with the needs of the individual).

See, for example:
"A Conspiracy Against Ourselves"
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc5.ht m
"Spare yourself the anxiety of thinking of this school thing as a
conspiracy, even though the project is indeed riddled with petty
conspirators. It was and is a fully rational transaction in which all of us
play a part. We trade the liberty of our kids and our free will for a secure
social order and a very prosperous economy. It's a bargain in which most of
us agree to become as children ourselves, under the same tutelage which
holds the young, in exchange for food, entertainment, and safety. The
difficulty is that the contract fixes the goal of human life so low that
students go mad trying to escape it."

This idea that schools need a complete overhaul is now becoming somewhat
mainstream, see for example the title of this article:
"To fix US schools, panel says, start over"
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1215/p01s01-ussc.htm l
but unfortunately the solutions proposed (like longer universal
kindergarten) are still coming from those with industrial power (the
"captains" of industry again, but now the IT industry :-) and wanting cheap
laborers (but now, cheap and compliant intellectual laborers).

Another take on this issue from a different perspective:
"Sustainable Education" By Jerry Mintz
http://www.greenmoneyjournal.com/article.mpl?newsl etterid=21&articleid=195
"Nevertheless, there is an education revolution going on, and it is long
overdue. It is moving in the

In the old days, a stalker had to take time off work to follow a victim and find out every place she went.

With comprehensive vehicle tracking, all he has to do is suborn someone with access to EZ-Pass records.

Too hypothetical? Then consider something that's already happened, divorce lawyers using EZ-Pass records.

Agreed, though, calling it 1984 is hyperbole as long as there are feasible alternatives to having an EZ-Pass.

It's only within peoples financial means because the externalities are being largely ignored, distorting the market. Nice crack about the communists! 52.6% of Americans get their financial means from the government, sure sounds like central planning to me!

... for this is something along the lines of: "Hey, if we recognise them as journalists, and give them equal access, maybe they'll regurgitate the same junk we feed the mass media."

Please excuse my cynicism of an organisation (i.e. the CIA) that relies on disinformation, propaganda, and psychological warfare, and uses the mass media and journalists to spread it.

even one of my favorite companies has resorted to similar tactics.

A single person saying things is nothing at all compared to what big dumb companies do through PR firms and other proxies. "Normal advertising" where supposedly "normal" companies like American Express, Home Depot etc, hire crackers to install push adserver viruses and trojans, is just the tip of the iceburg. Pretending to be popular support of a thing you are trying to sell (Zune) or badmouth (OSX) is bad enough. More disgusting efforts seek legislation that's bad for everyone:

• ATT targets Net Neutrality
• Microsoft targets antitrust trial
• Supporting political pets

The web is changing the way public opinion works. It's giving companies like Whole Foods a voice they never had before and it's taking away the power of broadcasters. The broadcasters seek to "harness" the internet and will use their money to keep as much of their power over public opinion as they can. It's a doomed effort because they can't hire enough PR people to do the job.

Would you really trust anything that Yahoo puts out? Yahoo has previously ratted on journalists and bloggers to the Chinese Authorities. Worse: They were unapologetic about it, and kept doing it. One Yahoo 'satisfied customer' got ten years jail for criticizing the Government.

So when Yahoo trundles along offering me neat tracking software, umm, no thanks. There's no telling where you might end up reading about it. Now sure, in the U.S. you don't get locked up for criticizing the government, but things do get leaked or given to the wrong people. Anyone who has ever written a comment that was less that P.R.-worthy should consider that. Yahoo has shown itself to be less than trustworthy.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0909/p01s03-woap.htm l
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=14884
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/12/business/worldbu siness/12search.html?ex=1185508800&en=a0a01819d3ec c0ca&ei=5070

The problem being, the Republican party in general, and the Bush family in particular, have very questionable records with regard to drugs and drug policy and the U.S. relationship with China. The ability to ignore human rights abuses really crosses all political lines. Clinton doesn't really compare to the Carlyle Group as far as enriching themselves through government policy. It is sadly not new. As a marine, you may be familiar with Major General Smedley Butler, if not you may find his perspective interesting.

You don't really need to rely on "initial reports", the DOD has actually released documents since then. If you need pictures, I believe there were pictures of some of the people who were beaten and choked to death. I'm sure the Internet can provide them. And those were people in direct U.S. custody, not including programs like extraordinary rendition, or the various C.I.A. prisons. You must be living or working a spin machine of your own to be basing your thoughts on "initial reports". I'm personally puzzled by the fact that the U.S. considers Syria a sponsor of terrorism, won't engage them diplomatically on Iraq or Lebanon, yet sends "terror suspects" there to be interrogated.

The problems with the U.S. engaging in these tactics are numerous and profound.

It has nothing to do with American programmers being incompetent (as a group they're certainly not). It's a numbers game. The unemployment rate for programmers is amazingly low - 2.4%. (As a comparison, the overall population's unemployment rate is double that, and is still considered to be low by historical standards.)

There simply aren't as many talented developers actively looking for jobs as there are jobs to be filled.

"Wrong. Refining capacity has expanded significantly in the U.S. while no new refineries are built precisely because of EPA roadblocks. Far cheaper, faster, and easier to expand than build new. This concentrates throughput and pollution at existing sites."

Could you provides a source to substantiate this. I think you are the one who is wrong. In a couple minutes of googling I find this in the Christian Science Monitor:

"In 1981, the US had 324 refineries with a total capacity of 18.6 million barrels per day, the Department of Energy reports. Today, there are just 132 oil refineries with a capacity of 16.8 million b.p.d., according to Oil and Gas Journal, a trade publication."

While major producers like Exxon have significantly expanded production at existing refineries, or snapped up refineries in mergers, a large number of small refineries have disappeared, and of course many oil companies have consolidated in mergers. Refining has as a result been significantly consolidated. Here is another chart which also shows total refining capacity is down from 1982 to 2002 by 500,000 barrels, and shows the extent of the consolidation. Not sure if this has changed in the last 5 years, but I doubt it has.

Everyone knows U.S. refining capacity is inadequate, the Saudis point this out everytime Americans bitch about gasoline prices and blame crude oil for it. The fact is the refiners are the leading profiteers on gasoline. That's why gasoline prices spike when crude oil prices don't spike, its why gasoline prices always spike just in time for the summer driving season. Oil companies are racking up record profits on crude oil, but they are also making record profits on gasoline because of refining.

I wont argue that environmental regulation is a reason for the shortage in capacity, but I can most definitely assure you that oil companies are overjoyed with the fact there is a shortage in refining capacity and are crying crocodile tears blaming it on the EPA.

It would be great if there was a truly free market in refining with competition and if when there was a shortage of capacity some enterprising capitalist could just build a new refinery, increase supply and reduce costs. In the area I'm in there is really only one refinery serving the entire area and they jack up prices with impunity whenever they feel like it. It simply isn't a free market, and when Reagan deregulated it, we traded a government manipulated market for an industry manipulated market and they are both bad.

Wow are you ever off base. You're comparing apples to water melons. The big thing you are over looking is the difference between one person carrying out this horible act on their own and a group of people condoning it while the legal system shrugs. The man who kills his wife faces the full weight of the criminal justice system. The family that asks a brother/cousin to kill their daughter who happened to get rapped faces no charges and the brother/cousin a lighter sentence (if any) than the crime warrants.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0214/p07s02-wome.htm l
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/05/18/iraq.hon orkilling/index.html
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,344374, 00.html
and also
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/16/world/europe/16t urkey.html?ex=1184040000&en=be57dfd1ac6ad029&ei=50 70