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But when Google does it, it can only be for the common good, right? A malicious Hax0r gets put away??

Life under Taliban cuts two ways Consider the following list of edicts issued by Taliban religious scholars in Kabul in December 1996:

"To prevent music.... In shops, hotels, vehicles, and rickshaws, cassettes and music are prohibited."

"To prevent beard shaving and its cutting. After one and a half months, if anyone [is] observed who has shaved and or cut his beard, they should be arrested and imprisoned until their beard is bushy."

"To prevent kite-flying."

"To prevent idolatry. In vehicles, shops, hotels, rooms, and any other place, pictures [and] portraits should be abolished."

"To prevent washing cloth by young ladies along the water streams in the city. Violator ladies should be picked up with respectful Islamic manner, taken to their houses, and their husbands severely punished."

The struggle over sharia Is sharia harsh?
Followed literally, it can be medieval. Sharia divides all human actions into five categories: obligatory, meritorious, permissible, reprehensible, and forbidden. Among the reprehensible and forbidden acts are drinking alcohol, eating pork, theft, slander, highway robbery, murder, adultery, and losing one's faith. Traditional punishments include whipping and the amputation of limbs. For the most severe crimes, the penalty can be decapitation, crucifixion, or death by stoning. In Saudi Arabia, where sharia governs civil society, these harsh penalties are still meted out. Women are shrouded and segregated from men; suggestive Western photographs censored; and criminals punished harshly. In the capital city of Riyadh, beheadings are carried out on a brick-and-marble plaza that some have dubbed "Chop-Chop Square."

And more about Sharia here and here.

Some of us are slaves to fashion.
They want to make us slaves to them, or at the very least, dhimmis.

Our guys and their guys have very different ideas about what to love.

Dealing in Death

Another chapter from early Islamic history -- serving as a lesson for today's Muslims at war against the West -- is the concept of the love of death. This originated at the Battle of Qadisiyya in the year 636, when the commander of the Muslim forces, Khalid ibn Al-Walid, sent an emissary with a message from Caliph Abu Bakr to the Persian commander, Khosru. The message stated: "You [Khosru and his people] should convert to Islam, and then you will be safe, for if you don't, you should know that I have come to you with an army of men that love death, as you love life." This account is recited in today's Muslim sermon

this one
Sort of this one

this one

this one
this one
this one

there are a lot more. I'm not saying religion in totality is trying to spread FUD I'm sayign certain religious groups are stirring opposition for no other reason then to undermine certain scientific corner stones and theories they find inconvienant. Like parts of geology, astronomy, genetics, immunology, ect..

I am myself a moderate catholic. I find the exstremists and fundementalsist distasteful.

There is a huge difference. I would say WORRYING (and thus planning for the prevention of) intelligent threats is far smarter, as they are a longer term threat that much be planned for as opposed to truly random threats which must be dealt with as they arrive.

I think we should worry and invest just as much in "non-intelligent" long term risks. If the US invested as much attention and money into non-intelligent risks we would have saved more lives now than in preventions of possible loss of life from terrorism. The Iraq war has cost about about 300 Billion to date (heres a running counter), and that's not including known future costs such as supporting medical expenses of injured vets - overall, according to an estimate by Joseph Stiglitz, a nobel prize economist and Harvard's Linda Bilmes, it is estimated to be above 1 trillion and up to 2.66 trillion! If we had put that much attention and money into the highest causes of death in the US (say automotive safety and medical research), how many lives would we have saved vs possible terrorists threats prevented? And that's not even opening the discussion that it's possible that all the extra terrorism attention has actually increased the numbers of potential terrorists as well as the probabiltiy of successful terrorist attacks.

From this, I take from Bruce's comments that we need to take human tendencies into account and systematically and soberly quantify risks from all sources unnatural and natural.

The definition of dictator is a : a person granted absolute emergency power; b : one holding complete autocratic control; c : one ruling absolutely and often oppressively.

While you could argue whether Bush, technically, meets the definition, there is plenty of evidence that he is trying to evade Congressional oversight, elimination of habeas corpus for detainees and immunity for torture, the use of signing statements to effectively nullify legislation, NSA spying on U.S. citizens and so forth that are clearly moves in that direction.

Further, he is definitely claiming power and using it based on a framework of emergency that goes by the label of the "war on terror". He, and especially people under him like Cheney, believe that that the President, as Commander-in-Chief, has the authority to disregard virtually all previously known legal boundaries. That's pretty close to an understanding that believes itself to have absolute emergency power, i.e., a dictatorship - given certain conditions (which in this case are vague).

Clearly the Airport officials were not paying the right people enough lobbying money.

The use of the capitalized version of "militia" means that this clause applies specifically to US armed forces -- of which there were none at the time the document was written, only state-run militias thus the use of "militia" as a stand in-- and provides solely for military "courts martial" during wartime.

The phrase "the land or naval forces" refers to the army or navy. Putting an enemy on trail after capture by the army would be part of that "cases arising in the land or naval forces" referred to in the amendment, during "time of War or public danger".

I see... and where, exactly, on a map of the world, is this nation of "Al Qaeda" of which you speak, and claim to be at war with?

Oh... You can't do that? Then I call bullshit.

You make war against people, not territory. You shoot or bomb because there is, or may be, an enemy soldier at that spot, not because you are trying to punish a hill or field. A terrorist group is a collection of people, an organization. It doesn't matter where they are, or if they own the territory they are on, you can fight against them. If it helps you get your head around it, think of Al Qaeda as claiming to be the Caliphate's government in exile's terrorist "army". Many governments in exile made war during WW2. Surely you can't be claiming anything so silly as the idea that large groups of people can't engage in violent warfare, or be killed in turn, if they don't have a chuck of land that they call their own? If so, I refer you to the First Law of Holes: if you are in one, stop digging.

See http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1013/p01s01-usec.htm l or, for a more British orientation, http://www.abi.org.uk/climatechange Companies pay attention when their insurance premiums change, and insurance companies pay attention when the probability of major disasters seems to be going up. These outfits are in business to make money (in a fiercely competitive industry), not to frighten people. I'm sure someone will accuse them of peddling scare stories, but it will be harder to make the accusation stick.

Look what happens once there is an activation - nothing but pay issues broad and deep enough to ruin the budgets of a thousand patriotic, honest families. And it sucks. http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0201/p03s02-usmi.htm l

At the current rate of birth/death in the US, we'll hit 400 million in approx 2043, with the southern states gaining the most. It makes sense that the south would gain more, because I can't see how we can support that many more people in the bigger northern cities.

You don't need the whole country. You can just use a former superpower's unemployed nuclear bomb engineers.

Ignore the name: they are devoted to good reporting. They don't use wire services, and most of their editors are also reporters.

Check it out!

There is a real concern about the growing use of automated and electronic intelligence gathering in lieu of human intelligence, but ultimately, both are valuable. Unfortunately, electronic and signals intelligence is often much more costly, and sometimes gets more attention in some parts of the intelligence community while human intelligence needs languish.

Indeed. It's clear to me that the current administration has pretty much forgotten the importance of human intelligence, instead relying on high-tech gadgetry (and, of course, fear) to protect the nation.

For yet another example of an utter failure of human intelligence, check this out: Report: Terrorists' mail not well monitored in US prisons. We can't even monitor the mail being sent to and from *convicted terrorists* because we don't have enough people who speak Arabic and other middle-eastern languages. Better to build a no-fly list so that Cat Stevens can't spread dissent, and depend on magical computers to keep us safe.

Giving them enough supplies is not the problem. Getting it distributed is the problem. Here are a few examples:

Pirates (not the bittorrent kind) stealing supplies:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1014/p06s03-woaf.htm l

Food seized by political activists:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/2341549.stm

From what I've been reading over the years, this sort of stuff is extremely common. It's very sad, but the problem is NOT the quantity of our aid.

kdawson really seems to like this topic... as pointed out in the summary, this was slashdotted two weeks ago on her watch.

This submission, furthermore, stems from "plasmacutter". In a mini-flame war between he and I (note - this is in response to my post, yes), he goes on to claim that:

- Foreign Affairs, a publication of the Council on Foreign Relations, Policy Review, and the Christian Science Monitor "have been thoroughly debunked as extreme right" (I'd love to know who did that bit of debunking, and just how they determine what's "extreme right") while considering Al Franken to be an "influential political thinker". (source)

- Apparently believes anyone who has a Ph.D., particularly in the political sciences (I realize the social sciences aren't popular here on /., but when one is discussing election results/poll data, they're the best source) must belong to the "elite echelons" of the upper class (Also... people with Ph.D's in fields like those you are speaking about also tend to be in the elite echelons of the upper class, because those degrees tend to cost you more money than you make from them (without the right connections, of course.. wink wink).. and you wander why they espouse elitist right wing values and are listened to by elitist right wing leaders? (source). I got a good laugh out of this then, and still do, especially considering my top 3 favorite political science professors are, in order: 1. a Democrat, 2. a Green, and finally 3. a Republican. And I attend one of the most conservative universities in the entire U.S.

The submitter of the previous story was similarly a bit off his rocker.

In short, what we have here is kdawson publishing pretty much anything he or she likes about this matter to stir up debate and ad clicks, and all of it coming from that bastion of journalism, that peer-reviewed gem of western society, Rolling Stone.

Surely Slashdot can do better than this. There are LOTS of topics of interest to the left that could be covered in a decent manner. Why kdawson keeps banging away on this one note is baffling to me.

What's the current cost, 1-2 billion a day? Is it really worth it?

Try about $8billon a MONTH based on my estimates of the estimates I saw online. I couldn't find a recent estimate but most of them hover around $4-8 billion but that is for a whole month, not for your highly "accurate" 1-2 billion a day estimate. By the way, this site http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0829/p15s01-cogn.htm l shows that the current war has only exceeded two other wars (maybe 3 by now since the article is from last year) as far as cost is concerned so it is not the most expensive war by far. Is it worth it? I guess it depends on your priorities, but no matter what, you need to support the people whose job it is to do what their commanders tell them to do.

We've killed over 4000 Al Qeada in Iraq - accoding to Al Qeada! I say better there than here.

Not if by killing those 4000 we gain them 5000 new recruits. Which according to the President's own intelligence analysis is exactly what's happening.

Your hornet's nest analogy assumes that there is some fixed pool of terrorists out there, and our job is to hunt them down until they are all dead, after which we'll be done and there will be no more terrorists. Trouble is, terrorism is not a cause or a movement or a group that can be stamped out. It is a tactic employed in the service of a cause. As long as there are causes people are willing to die for, people will die for their causes.

Can you point to one case at any time in world history where eliminating insurgents has worked in the end? Where hunting down and killing fervent believers in a cause, people who were willing to die for their beliefs, has ultimately killed a movement, and the hunters have been able to wash their hands and declare victory?

What the "kill 'em all!" crowd doesn't get is that just about anyone can become a terrorist if they're given a good enough reason. We are over there giving a lot of people exactly that reason -- people who would not otherwise have become terrorists. We are worsening the very problem we're allegedly trying to solve, and the government's own experts on the matter have now said so in writing. I realize there are a lot of talk show hosts and bloggers who are quite certain they know more about strategic analysis than the combined staffs of the 16 intelligence agencies that contributed to the report, but I know who I'm more inclined to believe.

Suppose China suddenly invaded the US. If they started rounding up freedom fighters and shooting them in the head, would you shrug and say, "Good show guys, you win, what would you like from me?" I'm guessing not. I'm guessing for every one of your countrymen you saw turned into a "traitors eliminated!" statistic on the official state-run TV, you'd get angrier and angrier until you decided you'd had enough, those bastards were going to pay for destroying your way of life. Well, guess what, from the point of view of Al Qaeda's new recruits, that's exactly what we're doing.

It is true that editorial commentary (opinion work) is held to a different standard than traditional journalism. For one, commentary is expressly allowed to advocate for a particular position, rather than attempting to fairly and objectively present all sides of an issue. However, there are still standards for fair rhetoric which this article blatantly ignores. I offer this Poynter editorial about a current Wall Street Journal article that included a bit too much opinion commentary that turned into a scandal. And here is a Christian Science Monitor article about general journalistic ethics which may be of interest. --M

What a shortsighted (and incorrect) view of the situation.

The arab Shia are the largest ethnic/religious group in Lebanon, at 30% (if you break it down by religion only, the Christians are larger, although there are many different, and sometimes conflicting, Christian sects). Hezbollah is their largest *political party*, which has a private militia that is more powerful than the Lebanese army (largely thanks to Iran and Syria's generosity, but also thanks to extensive training in fighting the Israeli army since the early 80's). The next largest political party, Amal, doesn't have near their level of support. Of course, don't think too mildly of Amal, either -- they fought Israel just as hard, even during this war, although they don't have Hezbollah's resources. Hezbollah is not only a major political party, but is the country's second largest employer, mostly for its network of government services that it provided to areas that the Lebanese government was either unable to or unwilling to provide to -- schools, hospitals, etc. Public service activism is one of the main ways that the party wins support, even down to the local level. I saw a documentary recently where one Hezbollah woman talked about an initiative she started in which Hezbollah families would stock medical supplies in their homes. Whenever anyone was injured, they could come and get treated for free, so that even if the hospitals were destroyed or taken over, people could get care. By doing things like this, addition to helping their own people, they rally support for Hezbollah at the same time.

Hezbollah has a very tight military discipline. They've been using what's termed "fourth generation warfare" by US military analysts. It combines classic guerella tactics with modern weaponry and a unique "peer to peer" communications structure. Weaponry is buried until used, then restored immediately, always in numerous, small caches, making it incredibly difficult to destroy. Local cells operate in their hometowns or other supportive territory, and are able to pick and choose targets as will. Groups communicate with their neighbors to exchange intelligence information; critical information is sent through hardened channels, sometimes even through physical runners. Overall strategy and reserves are controlled by Hezbollah itself. In the 2006 conflict with Israel, the army was bogged down in dealing with the local cells, in their supportive terrain.

Contrary to popular myth, Hezbollah (unlike Hamas and the other Palestinian groups) prefers not to operate around civilians. Not for a concern for the civilians' safety -- they'll confiscate buildings to use as shooting positions if needed, whether their owners like it or not -- but for their own safety. Hamas operates openly as a sign of pride and defiance. However, by doing that, it only takes a tiny handful of defectors to point out to Israel where they are and what they're doing. Hezbollah, on the other hand, prefers to operate in areas where nobody is around to reduce the risk of being exposed by defectors.

As we saw in the last conflict, they're a very effective military, and it's a big question mark on how to deal with them. It's almost funny how the major Arab powers were defeated one after another, yet this tiny band was blowing up warships and taking out hundreds of Merkavas, in addition to maintaining a steady rain of over 100 Katyushas per day throughout the entire conflict. And now their popularity is soaring -- not just in other countries, but even in Lebanon, where they started the conflict. Check out these polls. Check out this as well.

I totally trust your descriptions of recent events even w/o a reference to a single news piece. But then again I doubt you read any yourself, probably just got some excerpts from Kos. Try peeking out of your echo chamber once in a while.

• Situation Called Dire in West Iraq Anbar Is Lost Politically, Marine Analyst Says
• Iraq?s Anbar province a lost cause? Intelligence report pessimistic about controlling western province
• Iraqi insurgents launch wave of sectarian attacks in Kirkuk
• US intel report: Iraq's Anbar province 'politically lost'

-withdraw from iraq, try to do so gracefully since were damned if we stay and damned if we go.

So, the Democrats' official position is that Iraq's hopeless? Wow, I'm inspired with confidence. The solution of "no solution". Great.

-undo the damage to our civil liberties done by the patriot act

Yes, because the majority of the U.S. population is so pissed off that you can look at library records. Forgive me, but the PATRIOT Act is by far the least of my concerns. As someone who has done more than his fair share of studying national security issues, I recognize the need for something that goes well beyond FISA, which was designed to operate against different kinds of threats.

-reform social security by removing the blatant privatization bush put in which basically amounts to abolshment (but with the added benefit of commissions to brokers before your stock tanks)

Make Social Security insoluble. Great. Pardon me as I run for the ballot box...

-Universal health care (which responds to the increasing 10s of millions of people without healthcare, and which they make a damned good economic case for!)

Because it's worked oh so well for Europe and Canada! Quick, let's all jump on that bandwagon! And where do you plan on getting the funding for all of this?

-Investigation into bush's illegal activites, followed hopefully by impeachment

DOWN WITH BUSHITLER! Please, did you bother to read the post above?

-Investigation into oil companies among others for gouging.

Because there could only be one source for all the world's problems - rich people.

Among others.. it's all laid out..

I sincerely hope this isn't a serious party platform. Please, please tell me that your post is some kind of sick joke. No serious group could put this forward and expect people to vote for them.

Big media is owned by republicans so you don't see it.. listen to air america and they spend each and every day spelling out those exact same points.

And, of course, the big time media conspiracy theory which I don't buy from the right wing and find particularly fatuous when coming from the left. Yes, I must listen to the great Air America and exorcise the right wing demons like Ted Turner! Save me! Why, I've been wasting all of this time reading ridiculous publications like Foreign Affairs, Policy Review, and the Christian Science Monitor when I could've been listening to some idiot and paid political actor with a BA in Government tell me what to think in the form of nice, compact bumper sticker slogans! Oh, the fool I must be! I must throw away my entire library of books written by influential political thinkers and replace it with Al Franken and Noam Chomsky ravings!

If you're looking to convince me your party has anything resembling a platform, you've failed miserably.

I typed "Sudan" into the CSM's search box and got 4400+ hits. Kind of hard to report on Sudan without mentioning death and suffering.

You are dissmising the CSM out of hand because you have read some weird shit about it's owners, I did the same before I actually read a few articles several years ago. CSM has no trouble writing insightfull articles and reports that talk about death and suffering but they do try to avoid gloryifying/justifying those topics/events.

Take a look at their about page. You will find that even though owned by a church the paper sees itself as secular and has this to say about it's intended content...

"The idea is that the unblemished truth is freeing (as a fundamental human right); with it, citizens can make informed decisions and take intelligent action, for themselves and for society."

Brett Bursey
Police dogs loosed on recruitment protestors
Other protestors arrested
Veteran arrested on Veteran's day for reading an editorial out loud
Not arrested, just confined behind barbed wire
Military treating Quakers like terrorists
Grandmother arrested over "Investigate Florida Votergate" sign

Yeah. Go read a textbook. Any textbook. Assloads of information, most of it useful, I promise. Some better than others, but almost all good.

Oh, hardly. Most textbooks aren't ment to teach kids to think or develop curiosity, but rather to drill information into their heads through blunt force repetition. Most of each school year is not spent teaching new information, but reviewing what was covered before. Math and English are bad, but History is horrible. Each history textbook is likely to start around Columbus and finish around WWII, chock-full of eurocentric bias and historical fictions like "The British are coming! The British are coming!", that skeptics of Columbus's proposed voyage thought the world was flat, John Handcock, "the shot heard round the world", etc etc.

The local school board is trying to keep people dumb so they won't question invasions? I think you've landed on Occam's bad side.

Rather than being obnoxious you might try reading up on how much controll Texas has over textbooks in this country.

A large number of people being stupid does not always indicate a conspiracy.

Who said anything about a conspiracy? You said "Oh, for the love of God, would you shut up? "The government" doesn't teach. Teachers do." Rather than refute my points on how government chooses the curriculum, you seem to be fond of straw men and changing the subject.

So the throngs of Iranians chanting "Death to America!" in unison are something we shouldn't be worried about? A government-sanctioned suicide-bomber brigade, "The Lovers of Martyrdom Garrison" is something a peaceful people would support? The elected leader of Iran, Ahmadinejad publicly stating that the time of the 12th Imam (the muslim version of the Apocalypse) is near doesn't concern you in the least?

Stop burying your head in the sand. As it is now, Iran is a major obstacle to any potential peace within the middleast. With nuclear weapons, Iran could be the provocateur of the next World War.

If the Iranian people are as moderate as you claim they are, then where are they? Why aren't they speaking out? Even assuming these moderates exist, don't they share responsibility (through their inaction) for the aggression of their government regardless? How are we supposed to simultaneously protect the interests of the region as a whole if we can't do anything that might coerce the Iranian people (such as sanctions)? Furthermore, if you are right--the Iranian people don't support their government--how does sitting back and letting the Iranian government risk a nuclear conflict in any way serve the interest of the Iranian people?

-Grym

"and it keeps going down thanks to genetic engineering"

That might be part of it, but its also due to the fact the U.S. massively subsidizes agriculture, especially corn and soy, which has always kept food prices in the U.S. down on the surface though we pay for it indirectly through our taxes. The unfortunate down side of subsidizing corn is its led to the massive use of high fructose corn syrup in our food, because its cheap and mass produced. There is a strong suspicion this is causing the current epidemics of diabetes and obesity in this country. It wasn't a great idea to make an anti-nutritious substance dirt cheap. There is hope because the midwest lobby that garners hand outs for corn farmers, now have the government subsidizing corn for ethanol production, in spite of the fact using corn is a horrible way to make ethanol. As a result corn prices are spiking, either leading to inflation in food prices, or a reduction in our dependence on corn syrup as food. Brazil saw a similar spike in food prices when it converted vast agricultural areas to sugar cane to make ethanol, though at least sugar cane is good for making ethanol.

Now back on topic, all in all this story is a non story as most have pointed out. The fact is the lion's share of India and China are still dirt poor and uneducated which is why the per capita numbers are so out of whack. India's boom is concentrated around Hyderabad and Mumbai. You get out in to the rural areas and IT is non existent. There is a flourishing Maoist rebel movement spreading through India's rural areas, call the Naxalites feeding on the fact the rural poor are increasingly fed up with the disparities in economic well being. As a few parts of India prosper most do not, and its unlikely that prosperity is going to spread in to the rural areas, so the per capita IT spending isn't likely to either.

China is a pretty similar situation. The bulk of its economic and IT growth is in the coastal regions especially Guangdong and Hong Kong in the SouthEast and around Shanghai further to the north. Interior China is also still very rural, dirt poor and not really participating in their economic boom. The young and poor from the interior immigrate to Guangdong and work in the sweatshop environment there as long as they can stand it, and then often take the money and go home. There is also a small boom going on in the North in Manchuria, China's equivalent of the U.S. rust belt. Much of it fueled by Japanese money especially in Dalian which is becoming a new high tech hub. There is irony that after Manchuria was a Japanese occupied puppet state through World War II, and Imperial Japan's industrial base, that the Japanese are reoccupying it peacefully using yen instead of bullets. There would be irony if a Maoist insurgency gains steam in China, home of Mao and the remnant of his communist party. The Communist party there has completely abandoned even the pretense of being a people's party or a worker's party in favor of Fascism and wealth for the ruling the elite while most of the country is still in rural poverty or urban sweatshops.

But you are right. These are not facts. Let's keep our eyes wide shut.

One could argue that the fact that we find these disfunctions is proof positive that the nuclear safety process is working, but the truth is that there is a hudge gap between the reality of the danger and the supposed nuclear safety : it's only because of various counter powers that these disfunctions are known. The nuclear industries are closely linked to the military industries and to say the least the field lacks in transparency

I should also point that if you sticked to a scientific and factual approach of the problem, you would certainly realize that defining something as safe once and for all clearly is not a good safety procedure. Err , let's just hope you are not in charge here !

Proliferation of nuclear power will lead to chernobyl like problems, if not only statistically then in the same way that the US power grid is failing : safety brings no short term profit.

But in all your arrogance and pride for your technology i doubt that you can stand back from this nuclear fiction, untill a disaster happens. In your backyard maybe ?

Security processes have no zero default, and you know it. Nuclear safety is a myth. What is the risk ? Don't ask. What are the benefits ? Trust us. The reality is that we shall leave our fate in the hands of the nuclear goons, despite the wastes, despites the risk, despite the damage already done but most of all despite the fact that this energy is over used and wasted in mainly illogicals and ineficient ways. Only the fake sense of safe and infinite energy that the nuclear industries promess permits such a waste of energy, and this has other dramatic effects. One simple example : excessive packaging. Very expensive energy wise, very destructive (plastics, heavy metals in paints, chemical tratement of paper et al), mostly useless.

And keep the insults to yourself, nuclear monger, because be it reason or unfortunately disaster, time is on my side.

I posted about rubber sidewalks in another forum... here's better links:

Christian Science Monitor story

Rubber Sidewalk company page

Economical? Not yet, and not far away from California. Maybe if you're a streets & sanitation manager for a rich town and have money to blow in exchange for lower maintenance cost down the road. But that's why I appreciate small businesses in America and worldwide; they can be effective in their own niche and take risks that bigger companies wouldn't make.

I was interested in your question, so I did some research. The grandparent poster is overstating the case, but there were polls back in December/January that kind of back him up.

The NY Times says, "The poll found that 53 percent of Americans approved of Mr. Bush's authorizing eavesdropping without prior court approval 'in order to reduce the threat of terrorism.'"

The CS Monitor (reporting on a Zogby poll) says, "Nearly half of likely voters, 49 percent, say Bush has the constitutional powers to approve such a plan".

I don't have more recent figures. The President's popularity is roughly the same now that it was then, though it had risen a bit for a while in the meantime.

Here is one example of them saving us from the evolution devil

http://www.csmonitor.com/ All news has been screened to make sure that none of Satan's lies (evolution/round earth) get through!

Thousands of people did die today... Due to car accidents, cancer, and poverty. If we're just trying to stop deaths, we should focus on making safer cars, researching cancer, and helping those less fortunate than ourselves.

I suspect, however, that all of this terrorism hype isn't about stopping deaths.

You've got it spot on, it isn't about stopping "deaths", randomly distributed accidents, excess deaths due to poor life style choices like eating too much cheese on your onion rings every day, or disease. It is about stopping deliberate, calculated mass murder. Terrorist incidents are infrequent due to active preventative measures, not because it has a low naturally occurring frequency.

We don't even know for sure that there was going to be a terrorist attack.

By repeated observation, the British like most people in Western society have learned that when young Muslim men between the ages of 18-40 accumulate explosives, hold secretive meetings, receive large sums of wired money, and follow up by studying airline schedules, and plots to blow up aircraft in midflight, it is unlikely to lead to a spontaneous soccer match, .... at least not one you would care to attend. A terrorist attack, on the other hand, seems to be a distinct possibility. Some well informed people might even spot something resembling a pattern or two. Of course, who knows? Maybe they just wanted to go "dancing". But hey, believe what you want.

The US and UK governments are far from being trustworthy.

You left out Australia, Spain, Russia, Morocco, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Italy, Egypt, Philippines, Afghanistan, and quite a few more countries that are having problem with Islamist terrorist organizations.

The US government has contemplated "simulated" terrorist attacks to change public opinion.

Well, here is a shocker: the US government tries to change or influence public opinion or behavior pretty much every day on all kinds of matters: diet, exercise, tax code compliance, joining the military, better methods to raise corn, reducing pollution, reducing drunk driving, avoiding travel to various foreign countries, and so on. The fact almost 45 years ago a handful of anti-Communist zealots managed to get a draft paper for a dubious plan like Northwoods to the President where it was immediately shot down (with no doubt that one or more of the words: crazy, stupid, insane, criminal, were in the air) is a wonderful example of US democracy and civilian control of the military in action. The system worked. Or is that bad? Unless you are proposing total thought control, which has plenty of problems of its own, there will always be ideas that need to be shot down in government.

You know, it strikes me as odd that you would seemingly trust the government to deliver all manner of social welfare services, health care, and medicines, when you believe that same government is untrustworthy and is trying to fool you or maybe even kill you.

Say what you will about the doctored photos; the whole wahabi movement seems only intended to maintain the thrones, for the mere price of endless Palestinian AND Israeli suffering.

Can anyone source me confirmation on these hunches?

Well, This picture is certainly data relevant to your hunch.
Feel free to ignore any real or imagined slant to the words in the article if you care to read it. I didn't. The picture was all I was looking for as it is one simple picture that demonstrates the one simple truth that the leader of Wahabism and the "Leader of the free world" are very close.

Heck, just do some simple reasearch into *how* rich the brutal Saudi dictators we fund arm and support are (while they funded the 9/11 terrorists, of course. Plenty of Saudis there. No Iraqis though, sad to say).

To get an idea as to how tenuous the rule of those who most sell hatred of America (while holding hands with our leader) is, just look into how depraved (by the inhuman standards they push on their essentially enslaved populace) they are while Eliting around Europe and the States drinking, drugging and fucking.

Heck, Saddam was even a different type of Muslim from the Saudis and their terrorist agents who attacked us. They were armed, trained amd funded with our dollars by their ruler who was playing kissy face with our "Dear Leader".

Take a deep look at that picture.

That explains everything about the current state of affairs.

Remember when you fold your hat, you want the shiny side of the foil OUT, or it won't work to protect you from Karl Rove's Mind Control Rays.

Before you start implying that someone is paranoid, you may want to do a little fact checking. Going over the grandparent post line by line:

• Would it surprise you to learn that these doctored photos were placed by someone on the far Right trying to discredit the centrist media?

  Note that he's not saying that it's true, just suggesting that it might be. And, given that this is a well known technique in spin control / psyops, it isn't an unreasonable questions.

• Sort of like the way the fake 60 Minutes article on Bush's little vacation from the Air National Guard was placed by a GOP operative trying to smear CBS and Dan Rather.

  Well, he's certainly not alone in this theory, and it is consistent with what Rove is known to have done to Alan Dixon, John McCain, and many others.

• The goons on the Right in this country are playing a very deep game.

  Goons is subjective, and pejorative, but the rest of this point is darned hard to argue with. When a party rises from the mat to take control of all three branches of the federal Government, is a coordinated effort lasting decades, you'd be hard pressed to call it luck.

• They're sophisticated enough to data mine,

  Widely known

• and they're morally deformed enough to try to smear the patriotism of a triple amputee war hero.

  His name was Max Clealand, and they did just what he said.

• It's just fascinating that the paste-eaters at LGF are always the ones who find these doctored photos,

  "Always" is an exaduration, and "paste-eaters" is (probably) unjustified, but other than that it is an interesting point. They certainly have found a number of them, and always leaning to the right.

• but never say a word about the ones on GOP web sites that show too much smoke on the destroyed World Trade Center.

  This did happen, and so far as I know none of them raised a stink, so he's spot on.

• With a news media that's run by press agents,

  Also well known.

• and a government run by lobbyists,

  Well, they write the laws, and

• you should just be prepared to only believe your own experience, and the media that you absolutely trust.

  If you want to, go ahead and argue that you should believe sources you don't trust.

• Other than that, expect it to be lies.

  Thing that aren't true, are...lies. Again, pretty hard to argue with.

• Then, get ready for the struggle to save our freedom that is inevitable.

  Everyone from Ben "A Republic, if you can keep it" Franklin has agreed with this.

Oceanic algae produces something like 85% of the world's oxygen and is dying off rapidly due to pollution and climate change.

If pollution kills algae, how the heck does this work?

For those miserables whose humanity was stolen from them in this war, however, the aftermath of mass murder is somewhat less of an occasion for sanguine techno-speculation. And so is it for us: as these shattered men rotate back into civilian life, we will see familiar patterns of depression, joblessness, drug addiction, domestic violence. There will be individual and collective pain.

Beyond the immeasurable human cost, the economic hit to our society may total trillions according to estimates by Nobel Laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz.

Food for thought before starting unnecessary wars.

Meanwhile, in a continent near you... The price is already more than $5/gal.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0826/p01s03-woeu.htm l/

Right, the marketplace doesn't care. Have you checked the oil prices lately?

Fool. Most US electricity is generated using natural gas and coal. The price of natural gas has dropped nicely in the past year. It has been showing lately in my electric bill. Coal has always been cheap. After businesses realise that oil prices have been talked up by active deceitful threat compaign by Ahmedinejad and Chavez, oil price will drop drastically too.

I love this country b/c it allows me to say things like, "This country is retarded" without fear of black helicopters and an SS-type goonsquad picing [sic] me up ...

Maybe because they don't have to, as most of the freedom-limiting and privacy-infringin terror is now done by your very own state.

More on why money-tracking doesn't really work can be found in this interesting article. Furthermore, in europe it seems that western union is probably the main/only company for sending money to foreign countries, so a lot of people will be hurt by these rather retarded regulations. But, from what I've heard, western union wasn't a very costumer-friendly company already way before this (could lose your money without really knowing where it went, etc.).

There seems to be a few more than that:
http://papersplease.org/hiibel/facts.html

Now, they'll have no problem thanks to this:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0622/p01s01-usju.htm l

Soon you see commercials:
Your National ID card.
Don't leave home without it, or else!

Kind of going off on a tangent but to illustrate your point, yesterday's Christian Science Monitor has an article on New Zealand's attitude towards Americans. In 2001 they had a 54% positive attitude towards America, today its 29%. They reference a case of an ex pat American teaching there whose filed a civil rights complaint because his students are openly hostile, and verbally abusive to him, because he is American. Similar double digit declines in America's popularity are found in Russia, Turkey and India. Pakistan approval rose slightly thanks to U.S. earthquake assistance. China also rose slightly presumably out of appreciation for giving them all of America's money.

Now most Americans probably don't think they are bad people or doing evil, but most of the world is thinking that U.S. is more the problem in today's world than the solution, especially thanks to Iraq and the incessant saber rattling by the Bush white house. A long source of friction with New Zealand was their ban of U.S. ships which are nuclear powered or carrying nuclear weapons. Most of the world no longer appreciates the value of nuclear weapons, the U.S. continues to develop new ones and threatens to use them to resolve every dispute. The U.S. has installed or propped up so many ruthless dictators in so many places that much of the world does in fact hate the U.S. but Americans are completely oblivious to the fact they are hated and why. They think they are champions of "freedom and democracy" in the world and do no wrong.

Don't tell the President. Or Rove, for that matter.

"Actually, they are. Perhaps you don't read enough news. Or, maybe you think those organizations are small monoliths, restricting their members and activities to that area?"

The U.S. and Pakistan has made no viable effort in the tribal areas of Waziristan. Afghanistan and has turned it in to a narco-state thanks to the corruption of the U.S. supported government, and on the other hand a home for a resurgent Taliban. You see the U.S. backed government is so bad, the Taliban looks good by comparison. Rumsfeld's failed strategy of using the North Alliance on the ground and the U.S. in the air, scattered the Taliban and Al Qaeda. It did very little to actually catch or punish them.

" In it you list things the FBI should have done (which would have "stopped" 9/11), which is pretty much exactly what they're trying to do now."

You fail to grasp the concept. You see the FBI could have stopped 9/11 just using some basic police work and good communication, with the powers they had pre 9/11 and and pre patriot act. They don't need to spy on all Americans to catch Al Qaeda. The FISA courts worked fine the way they were, sure it was some paperwork but that is a small price to pay to prevent spying on innocent people.

What they are doing now is massive overkill and of dubious merit. It is in like making you take your shoes off to get on an airplane. It makes it seem like they are doing something when in fact they are just punishing innocent people to give those same people a false sense that they are doing something effective.

"They are buying data from the commercial sector and using it. This is spying how?"

Because they can and probably are correlating it with all the other data they have, much of which is illegally obtained like our phone call records, and evesdropping on our every form of communication without FISA warrants, probably illegally accessing our IRS records, sneak and peak searches which is basically the Patriot act authorizing the government to break and enter in to our homes and businesses withour our knowledge.

The cumulative effect is our government is accumulating vastly more information about us than they should. Knowledge is power and when our government can use computers and networks to accumulate all this information about us they are becoming enormously dangerous. If I could trust them that would be one thing, but Hoover and Nixon and all the bad things the CIA and FBI have done in the past when they started spying on America suggests they can't be trusted. It is inevitable all this spying will turn in to spying on dissidents, to suppress dissent, and smearing political opponents to suppress democracy, and to just suppress our right to free speech and right to privacy in general.

" (You don't think they would have discovered the Saudis learning to take off and not land without the "mining", do you?)"

Dude, the flight schools they were at reported them to the FBI because they were being suspicious. As I recall TWO different schools reported them in Arizona and I think Minnesota. THERE WASN'T ANY MINING INVOLVED. They ARRESTED Moussaoui a month before 9/11 because of it, and were holding him on a visa violation. The FBI could have foiled 9/11 with some basic police work but they didn't because they are an inept bureaucracy.

" How then do you suggest they determine those individuals that are doing suspicions things which might lead to another 9/11? "

Arab men in this country on visa's deserve more some scrutiny by default, since all the 9/11 attackers were Arab men and citizens of Middle Eastern countries and likely will be in the future. Unfortunately there is a degree of racial profiling there but, but its against people who aren't U.S. citizens and I am OK with that, that is a smaller price than trashing the civil liberties of citizens who have done nothing wrong nor will they.

You see you are presuming all this bullshit is actually going to foil th

It is impossible to tell just how bad the labs under the control of the University of California are or aren't. Its murky since its hard for anyone to peer inside high security facilities because thats what security clearance are for. Also much of the information coming out of them in recent years may be the Bush administration intentionally trying to make them look bad because they want to transfer their control to Republican friendly contractors or the University of Texas to pump billions of dollars in to his home state.

"administration-pleasing junk science and "imaginary weapons""

Unfortunately this is what you get out of governments whose top priority is delivering pork to contractors who happen to be big political supporters of the people in power (like Bechtel and Lockheed Martin). This is a disease that predates the Bush administration by a long ways, but the current administration has just taken it to new and breathtaking levels. Not sure the Bush administration really cares if it gets anything for the money, they are just delivering large quantities of our tax dollars or borrowed dollars(our deficit) in to the pockets of their friends. It has an important added political benefit of creating artificial stimulus in the economy and jobs by pumping large amounts of money and profit in to the private sector, and it makes the U.S. economy look a lot better than it is. The U.S. economy is becoming massively dependent on government spending since its one of the few parts of the U.S. economy that isn't being crated up and shipped to China and India. This massive government intervention in the economy used to be referred to as either Socialism (under FDR) or more like Fascism today. Its sad to see how the Republican's have tarnished the name Conservative. There is nothing conservative about them any more unless you qualify it with Social Conservative. Political and fiscal conservatives are for limiting government power, size and spending and that is the antithesis of today's Republican party so they are aghast at today's Republican party. Someone should make them, Limbaugh and Colter stop claiming the title, Fascist is a lot more accurate term its just a taboo term since World War II. Conservative != Fascist so stop claiming to be conservatives, you aren't.

The national labs, DOD weapons programs and satellite manufacturing are GREAT places to pump money in to the pockets of your friends because you can use the high security clearance, and "state secret privilege" to crush any oversight that might catch some of the fraud, waste, abuse and incompetence. A subset of Congress is the only body that can provide oversight but.....

There is an intereting article on the Christian Science Monitor today about Congress's feeble efforts to restore legal and financial oversight on the Bush administration and the DOD. I didn't realize it till this article but when the Republican's gained power in 1995 one of the first things they did in the House Armed Services Committee was disband the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. This subcommittee's role was to reign in the fraud, waste and abuse in the Pentagon. It was like they fired the last cop in town, and created open season for thieves. It is now quite clear why there is such rampant corruption in the DOD now. There is NO real Congressional oversight to stop it.

Harry Truman rose to prominence with the "Truman Committee" which basically performed this role during World War II and saved the country billions in fraud, waste and abuse.

Its a basic problem in the current government that the Bush administration and DOD is running amuck using 9/11 as an excuse and since they have control of all branches of the government there is NO oversight of anything going on. Congress has abdicated so much power to the Executive branch we really are teetering on the edge of a term limited dictatorship.

As a result we get Duke Cunningham, satellite programs billions

Actually, I think CSM itself is more eloquent:

http://www.csmonitor.com/aboutus/about_the_monitor .html

Unless those articles are about Christian Science zealots refusing medical attention to the sick and dying.

Here's a CSM article on the Schiavo case. Judge for yourself.

Real Christians are typically well read and well thougt out individuals.

GP made no such generalization.

Liberal == Communist

An apt paraphrasal of the neo-con smear to which gp refers.

The Christian Science Monitor is indeed one of the best newspapers around. They're small (my dad threw away the first few he received because they didn't LOOK like a newspaper), but that's because they don't use the AP wire or Reuters to fill out their newspaper, as the parent noted.

Consistently, the CS Monitor has had definitive articles on subjects. Unfortunately their archive isn't available for free or I'd point to their excellent article on the whole Ten Commandments in the courtroom fiasco in Alabama. While every other newspaper was either talking about the Ten Commandments being removed, playing soundbytes from the judge, or talking about what other reporters were talking about[1], the CS Monitor did their research and printed their story a day later. They talked to the people rallying outside both for and against (and covered the fact that many of these people had zero clue what was going on), covered what the judge was saying and why he was saying it - and when his support for the monument started (here's a hint: election upcoming, he started the whole thing just a few months before).

Their coverage on the last election was the coverage to beat. Managed to avoid the horserace of usual election coverage[2] and talk about the campaign, the people behind the campaign, etc, etc.

In Iraq they were one of the few newspapers not afraid to go outside the green zone and interview real people. Incidentally, for their efforts at finding the truth their reporter was kidnapped and held hostage.

In my opinion the religious convictions of the founder and the church (First Church of Christ, Scientist) that owns the operation (keep in mind that church members do not make up the journalists...they hire those) help keep them well-oriented. For their newspaper "it bleeds, it leads" doesn't happen - they want to discover what is happening in the world and to tell everyone. They believe that the truth is liberating, and they want to find it - whatever it may be. Honestly, they have a lot in common with the Quakers.

The religious article they print is more of a philosophy article, is usually well-written and is treated like the opinion section of another paper. It is there at the request of the founder.

Check out their website at www.csmonitor.com, and read a few articles. The major problem with our reporting these days is that the reporters just report events and he-said she-said. The monitor uses reporters with clue who contribute actual analysis.

Cruising quickly, the article on Escalating Violence in the Gaza Strip is a good one, as is today's story of President Bush's Visit to Iraq.

People are so used to the bible beaters and the kooks. Religion can be a very powerful force for good. I'm glad to see it happen once in a while.

However, to put this all in perspective...the CS Monitor has its shortcomings. Since they don't rely on wire services, if you want to find out about breaking news you can't just read them like you can several other mega-papers. Their articles tend to come out later (it's the flip-side of doing careful research) and are longer - yes, that can be a downside if you're trying to skim. They don't have local, daily delivery in many places, so their stories come even later if you don't read the online site[3].

[1] - In the news when there's no actual content the reporters will often interview each other. It sets up a giant echo chamber. Easiest example? People in flooded New Orleans shooting at rescue helicopters. Turns out it wasn't that common - might not've even happened at all. Hundreds of stories about it, though. Hundreds.

[2] - Elections are often covered as a race. Based on opinion polls candidate A is ahead or behind candidate B. This is done because there is so very, very little news during an election campaign. The same speech

The Christian Science Monitor is indeed one of the best newspapers around. They're small (my dad threw away the first few he received because they didn't LOOK like a newspaper), but that's because they don't use the AP wire or Reuters to fill out their newspaper, as the parent noted.

Consistently, the CS Monitor has had definitive articles on subjects. Unfortunately their archive isn't available for free or I'd point to their excellent article on the whole Ten Commandments in the courtroom fiasco in Alabama. While every other newspaper was either talking about the Ten Commandments being removed, playing soundbytes from the judge, or talking about what other reporters were talking about[1], the CS Monitor did their research and printed their story a day later. They talked to the people rallying outside both for and against (and covered the fact that many of these people had zero clue what was going on), covered what the judge was saying and why he was saying it - and when his support for the monument started (here's a hint: election upcoming, he started the whole thing just a few months before).

Their coverage on the last election was the coverage to beat. Managed to avoid the horserace of usual election coverage[2] and talk about the campaign, the people behind the campaign, etc, etc.

In Iraq they were one of the few newspapers not afraid to go outside the green zone and interview real people. Incidentally, for their efforts at finding the truth their reporter was kidnapped and held hostage.

In my opinion the religious convictions of the founder and the church (First Church of Christ, Scientist) that owns the operation (keep in mind that church members do not make up the journalists...they hire those) help keep them well-oriented. For their newspaper "it bleeds, it leads" doesn't happen - they want to discover what is happening in the world and to tell everyone. They believe that the truth is liberating, and they want to find it - whatever it may be. Honestly, they have a lot in common with the Quakers.

The religious article they print is more of a philosophy article, is usually well-written and is treated like the opinion section of another paper. It is there at the request of the founder.

Check out their website at www.csmonitor.com, and read a few articles. The major problem with our reporting these days is that the reporters just report events and he-said she-said. The monitor uses reporters with clue who contribute actual analysis.

Cruising quickly, the article on Escalating Violence in the Gaza Strip is a good one, as is today's story of President Bush's Visit to Iraq.

People are so used to the bible beaters and the kooks. Religion can be a very powerful force for good. I'm glad to see it happen once in a while.

However, to put this all in perspective...the CS Monitor has its shortcomings. Since they don't rely on wire services, if you want to find out about breaking news you can't just read them like you can several other mega-papers. Their articles tend to come out later (it's the flip-side of doing careful research) and are longer - yes, that can be a downside if you're trying to skim. They don't have local, daily delivery in many places, so their stories come even later if you don't read the online site[3].

[1] - In the news when there's no actual content the reporters will often interview each other. It sets up a giant echo chamber. Easiest example? People in flooded New Orleans shooting at rescue helicopters. Turns out it wasn't that common - might not've even happened at all. Hundreds of stories about it, though. Hundreds.

[2] - Elections are often covered as a race. Based on opinion polls candidate A is ahead or behind candidate B. This is done because there is so very, very little news during an election campaign. The same speech

The Christian Science Monitor is indeed one of the best newspapers around. They're small (my dad threw away the first few he received because they didn't LOOK like a newspaper), but that's because they don't use the AP wire or Reuters to fill out their newspaper, as the parent noted.

Consistently, the CS Monitor has had definitive articles on subjects. Unfortunately their archive isn't available for free or I'd point to their excellent article on the whole Ten Commandments in the courtroom fiasco in Alabama. While every other newspaper was either talking about the Ten Commandments being removed, playing soundbytes from the judge, or talking about what other reporters were talking about[1], the CS Monitor did their research and printed their story a day later. They talked to the people rallying outside both for and against (and covered the fact that many of these people had zero clue what was going on), covered what the judge was saying and why he was saying it - and when his support for the monument started (here's a hint: election upcoming, he started the whole thing just a few months before).

Their coverage on the last election was the coverage to beat. Managed to avoid the horserace of usual election coverage[2] and talk about the campaign, the people behind the campaign, etc, etc.

In Iraq they were one of the few newspapers not afraid to go outside the green zone and interview real people. Incidentally, for their efforts at finding the truth their reporter was kidnapped and held hostage.

In my opinion the religious convictions of the founder and the church (First Church of Christ, Scientist) that owns the operation (keep in mind that church members do not make up the journalists...they hire those) help keep them well-oriented. For their newspaper "it bleeds, it leads" doesn't happen - they want to discover what is happening in the world and to tell everyone. They believe that the truth is liberating, and they want to find it - whatever it may be. Honestly, they have a lot in common with the Quakers.

The religious article they print is more of a philosophy article, is usually well-written and is treated like the opinion section of another paper. It is there at the request of the founder.

Check out their website at www.csmonitor.com, and read a few articles. The major problem with our reporting these days is that the reporters just report events and he-said she-said. The monitor uses reporters with clue who contribute actual analysis.

Cruising quickly, the article on Escalating Violence in the Gaza Strip is a good one, as is today's story of President Bush's Visit to Iraq.

People are so used to the bible beaters and the kooks. Religion can be a very powerful force for good. I'm glad to see it happen once in a while.

However, to put this all in perspective...the CS Monitor has its shortcomings. Since they don't rely on wire services, if you want to find out about breaking news you can't just read them like you can several other mega-papers. Their articles tend to come out later (it's the flip-side of doing careful research) and are longer - yes, that can be a downside if you're trying to skim. They don't have local, daily delivery in many places, so their stories come even later if you don't read the online site[3].

[1] - In the news when there's no actual content the reporters will often interview each other. It sets up a giant echo chamber. Easiest example? People in flooded New Orleans shooting at rescue helicopters. Turns out it wasn't that common - might not've even happened at all. Hundreds of stories about it, though. Hundreds.

[2] - Elections are often covered as a race. Based on opinion polls candidate A is ahead or behind candidate B. This is done because there is so very, very little news during an election campaign. The same speech