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Ah yes, the infamous Blackwater Flight 61. Pilot got caught in a box canyon at 4600m in the Hindu Kush Mountains of Afghanistan. He only realized that screwing around on a flight, in high mountain valleys, could get someone hurt when there was no longer room left to climb.

The following is from a TV and radio interview with the attorneys for the families of the three Army soldiers killed on that flight:

"Look, there is an expression in aviation, that you plan your flight, and you fly your plan. That didn't happen here. Instead of flying a recognized route to the west, the crew went sightseeing in the mountains to the north of Bagram. They got into a box canyon. The plane they were flying could not climb above the 16,000-foot peak. They were in a canyon where they could not turn around, and tragically all six souls on board died." (Robert Spohrer)

One of the soldiers actually survived the flight, and lived long enough to smoke some cigs, before he died of exposure.

It's not only Blackwater who allows goofballs to pilot their planes. February 3, 1998, Mt. Cermis, Italy: A low-flying U.S. Marine surveillance jet on a training flight, whose joy-riding pilot must've been high or something, was deliberately flying *below* the mountain's ski lift cables. He "accidentally" clipped one of the cable-car lines, which freed the gondola to the effects of gravity, and caused all 20 people aboard to fall some 260 ft to their deaths.

A jet ain't a hot-rod. Drive with care.

of course a lot of the news sites are switching to flash video, which also doesn't come "standard" on macs. These are all really easy to take care of (though I think realplayer should be banned from the internets), I just thought it was silly to toe the "it just works" line of apple.

Although it didn't come up in this story with Stephen Colbert, I believe I can address why the Democrats and Republicans are part of the problem when it comes to American electoral politics: Ralph Nader is currently suing the Democrats for the stunts they pulled to keep him off the ballot when he ran in 2004 as an independent. It's worth your while to learn why Nader is suing and ask yourself if you are better served by having a few corporate candidates to choose from or more candidates spanning the political spectrum of ideas on the ballot. Voters aren't sufficiently outraged to support non-Democrat/non-Republican candidates, choosing to not vote at all most times. But their anger at the process is rising while the two major parties put up what Lawrence O'Donnell calls "virtually indistinguishable candidates" (and, let me assure you, after canvassing for signatures to get someone on the ballot in a local Congressional race, I know there's plenty of anger out there on this issue).

If you want to have a more informed view of the power which the Democrats and Republicans hold and how they use that power to keep candidates off the ballot, I suggest looking into

• the materials Nader's lawyer Carl Mayer referenced in his interview on yesterday's Democracy Now! (video and audio in a variety of formats),
• the Open Debates website, particularly their criticisms of the current American presidential televised presentations by which most American voters learn about the allowable range of debate in the US—the televised "debates" are a sham run by a partisan and corporate-sponsored group called the "Commission on Presidential Debates" which is headed by former Democrat and Republican higher-ups
• both discs of the 2-disc DVD "An Unreasonable Man" (a related entry from my blog), the recent documentary about Nader. In the candidacy portion of the movie (which isn't most of what's on these discs), the question before you isn't whether you agree with his politics, it's why he and so many other candidates have a hard time running. The second disc has a series of short videos on apropos topics including "What happened to the Democratic Party?" and "Debating the Role of Third Parties in the U.S.".

The real rub in Colbert's rejection is that he was polling higher than some Democrats (according to one brief clip Colbert played on his show last night). Perhaps the Democratic Party wanted to be the group that shut those Democratic Party candidates out, not let some citizen show them up and point out how managed American elections really are.

Taxes

The option to tax is not the requirement to tax. The income tax was temporary on the wealthiest 5% to pay for WWI, the entry into which by the U.S. has parallels to the unethical invasion of Iraq. Repealing the income tax would just put the U.S. back to between the founding of the Constitution and WWI.

Congress taking abortion out of the Supreme Court

Ron Paul explains the Constitutional basis directly in the bill:

(3) Article III, section 2 of the Constitution of the United States gives Congress the power to make "such exceptions, and under such regulations" as Congress finds necessary to Supreme Court jurisdiction.

In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

Health Care

There is no need for this to be handled at the federal level -- states can handle it just fine.

Global warming

I personally would stretch the commerce clause to cover the environment since air and water do not know state boundaries, but I can go with Ron Paul's approach of first having the federal government "do no harm", such as by eliminating corporate welfare to big oil. Boulder is suing the federal government over global warming due to its OPIC and Imp-Ex agencies, which do things like pay for oil pipelines in third world countries under the premise of providing economic development to the countries. Ron Paul has long stated he would like to eliminate OPIC and ImpEx.

Income disparity

Going on a gold standard, as Ron Paul advocates, would eliminate the hidden tax of inflation. As I've mentioned here before, I make 4x now as a seasoned professional than I did 20 years ago when I just graduated. Yet when using CPI computed according to pre-Greenspan formulas, it's 8% per year and I make less now than I did 20 years ago. Under a gold standard, wages would not automatically fall every year, and things like the minimum wage (which BTW should be at the state and local level, not the federal level) would not lag behind real prices.

In short

Ron Paul is for personal liberty, including the Iraqis and the pre-born. He does not believe liberty should be extended to illegal immigrants, but would like to expand legal immigration somewhat once the incentives for illegal immigration are removed: welfare, education, healthcare, and birthright citizenship.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/07/130258 Democracy Now!
August 7th, 2007
Freedom Next Time: Filmmaker & Journalist John Pilger on Propaganda, the Press, Censorship and Resisting the American Empire

John Pilger: One of my favorite stories about the Cold War concerns a group of Russian journalists who were touring the United States. On the final day of their visit, they were asked by the host for their impressions. "I have to tell you," said the spokesman, "that we were astonished to find after reading all the newspapers and watching TV day after day that all the opinions on all the vital issues are the same. To get that result in our country we send journalists to the gulag. We even tear out their fingernails. Here you don't have to do any of that. What is the secret?"

"fractional reserve banking as economic parasitism"

endorsed by two phd economists. printed in nexus magazine, 60k world circulation. #1 top downloaded economics paper. used by economics teacher in australia as standard classroom material.

more info on request.

as for the book, for those saying that it is a conspiracy theory, who says? which part? it is true that history in retrospect often looks like a conspiracy.

as for those who ask, whats the point? well think about it this way. theres a lot of new online services that are experimenting with currency and microcurrency. consider Linden Labs & 2nd life. they have a fully functioning online/cyber economy with an exchange rate. what is the dynamics of that system? the paper considers that.

also, economics is a complex system. there is a new science of complex systems. cyberspace is a complex system. the web is a complex system. understanding one complex system will help us understand other complex systems. the economic system has many parallels to engineering fields also, such as electrical engineering. but because there is so far no science of "money engineering", few are aware of this connection.

many slashdot readers are interested in security, such as regarding viruses etcetera. the paper reveals that the banking and economic system can have worms, viruses, parasites, trojan horses, very much like cyberspace. in fact the security of our banking system may be very poor, and in dire need of improved engineering approaches to increase its security. it really needs the kind of first rate minds that build complex software systems.

the money system is in fact very much like a massive electrical or energy system. if you are concerned with cooling your cpu or optimizing its performance, imagine a machine that spans entire states, countries even. how can it be optimized? to what degree is it failing us? what are its design deficiencies?

consider the goethe quote. "none are more enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free"

some very interesting recent supporting material:

• The Shock Doctrine: Naomi Klein on the Rise of Disaster Capitalism
• Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: How the U.S. Uses Globalization to Cheat Poor Countries Out of Trillions
• John Perkins on "The Secret History of the American Empire: Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and the Truth about Global Corruption"
• Video, senator/pres candidate Dennis Kucinich at last years 2005 Monetary Reform Conference
• money as debt video by Grignon

"fractional reserve banking as economic parasitism"

endorsed by two phd economists. printed in nexus magazine, 60k world circulation. #1 top downloaded economics paper. used by economics teacher in australia as standard classroom material.

more info on request.

as for the book, for those saying that it is a conspiracy theory, who says? which part? it is true that history in retrospect often looks like a conspiracy.

as for those who ask, whats the point? well think about it this way. theres a lot of new online services that are experimenting with currency and microcurrency. consider Linden Labs & 2nd life. they have a fully functioning online/cyber economy with an exchange rate. what is the dynamics of that system? the paper considers that.

also, economics is a complex system. there is a new science of complex systems. cyberspace is a complex system. the web is a complex system. understanding one complex system will help us understand other complex systems. the economic system has many parallels to engineering fields also, such as electrical engineering. but because there is so far no science of "money engineering", few are aware of this connection.

many slashdot readers are interested in security, such as regarding viruses etcetera. the paper reveals that the banking and economic system can have worms, viruses, parasites, trojan horses, very much like cyberspace. in fact the security of our banking system may be very poor, and in dire need of improved engineering approaches to increase its security. it really needs the kind of first rate minds that build complex software systems.

the money system is in fact very much like a massive electrical or energy system. if you are concerned with cooling your cpu or optimizing its performance, imagine a machine that spans entire states, countries even. how can it be optimized? to what degree is it failing us? what are its design deficiencies?

consider the goethe quote. "none are more enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free"

some very interesting recent supporting material:

• The Shock Doctrine: Naomi Klein on the Rise of Disaster Capitalism
• Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: How the U.S. Uses Globalization to Cheat Poor Countries Out of Trillions
• John Perkins on "The Secret History of the American Empire: Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and the Truth about Global Corruption"
• Video, senator/pres candidate Dennis Kucinich at last years 2005 Monetary Reform Conference
• money as debt video by Grignon

"fractional reserve banking as economic parasitism"

endorsed by two phd economists. printed in nexus magazine, 60k world circulation. #1 top downloaded economics paper. used by economics teacher in australia as standard classroom material.

more info on request.

as for the book, for those saying that it is a conspiracy theory, who says? which part? it is true that history in retrospect often looks like a conspiracy.

as for those who ask, whats the point? well think about it this way. theres a lot of new online services that are experimenting with currency and microcurrency. consider Linden Labs & 2nd life. they have a fully functioning online/cyber economy with an exchange rate. what is the dynamics of that system? the paper considers that.

also, economics is a complex system. there is a new science of complex systems. cyberspace is a complex system. the web is a complex system. understanding one complex system will help us understand other complex systems. the economic system has many parallels to engineering fields also, such as electrical engineering. but because there is so far no science of "money engineering", few are aware of this connection.

many slashdot readers are interested in security, such as regarding viruses etcetera. the paper reveals that the banking and economic system can have worms, viruses, parasites, trojan horses, very much like cyberspace. in fact the security of our banking system may be very poor, and in dire need of improved engineering approaches to increase its security. it really needs the kind of first rate minds that build complex software systems.

the money system is in fact very much like a massive electrical or energy system. if you are concerned with cooling your cpu or optimizing its performance, imagine a machine that spans entire states, countries even. how can it be optimized? to what degree is it failing us? what are its design deficiencies?

consider the goethe quote. "none are more enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free"

some very interesting recent supporting material:

• The Shock Doctrine: Naomi Klein on the Rise of Disaster Capitalism
• Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: How the U.S. Uses Globalization to Cheat Poor Countries Out of Trillions
• John Perkins on "The Secret History of the American Empire: Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and the Truth about Global Corruption"
• Video, senator/pres candidate Dennis Kucinich at last years 2005 Monetary Reform Conference
• money as debt video by Grignon

What about when Fox News pays your ISP to slow down your webcasts of Democracy Now!? Is it your concern then?

I find $99 quite excessive considering the only things I've seen on a .Mac blog are the "bandwidth exceeded" banner because it was linked in from Digg or Boingboing.

What's the point, then?

If you want raw storage and unlimited bandwidth, Proxad offers dedicated boxes with 160G of storage, complete administrator access for 30 EUR a month. No filtering/shaping whatsoever, 100Mbps ethernet connectivity per box. They have plenty of bandwidth, being a major ISP that basically only offers (unthrottled, unmetered, unshaped) 28 Mbps ADSL links. I don't think you can order this directly from the US, but I believe there's 3rd party services that resell it. I use one of those boxes to download Democracy Now's torrents, and I routinely reach 3MBps (that's megaBytes) of upload speed.

And the investors are not happy with the current situation of Google. "I will not innovate if I can just use the investor's money to buy commoditized stuff and partially-inovating trendy companies like YouTube"

I am an investor and I applaud Google in it's initiatives. If I had the money myself, er if I had as much money as Bill Gates or that Mexican, I'd tell the FCC I'd bid $10 billion if the FCC were to require winners to provide access to others at wholesale prices. Maybe even $50B, of course it'd depend one whether I had the money readily available and not just on paper. It may not be that much to start with but selling access is another possible revenue stream. It could also open up more revenue streams.

What's next, Google buying oil refineries just because "they can"?

Bill Gates did, er his Bill And Mellisa Gates Foundation has. The foundation invested in Italy's oil giant Eni. The thing is is that Eni is responsible for some of the health problems the foundation is supposed to be fighting against.

Report: Gates Foundation Causing Harm With the Same Money It Uses To Do Good.

If you think that only a laser can blind someone, might I suggest you stare at the sun for a while? Obviously it's not a laser and therefore cannot harm you and I've heard you see the most gorgeous light-show of spots.

Seriously, wake up. No one is saying that this device is going to be designed to blind people or purposefully abused as a matter of policy from the start. It is simply inevitable that it will though. We're talking about something that will emit light intense enough to blind someone temporarily. It is only a matter of time before the device is set on a too powerful setting (accidentally or intentionally), malfunctions, or simply is used on someone who cannot tolerate the same amount of light as an average person. We have a right to discuss these things and present them as serious problems. More importantly, it's incredibly foolish to simply swallow whatever those in power regurgitate. This device is being marketed as being able to disable an entire crowd of people. We should ask ourselves though, do we really need such a device? The police already have methods of dealing with crowds and rioters so why should we give them an additional weapon that has the potential to cripple people for life?

As far as the abuse of this power goes, you are incredibly naive if you think the government never abuses it's power. Just recently we had a story come out about FBI agents that had been abusing the USAPATRIOT act. I seem to recall that when the act was first came into being there were many people, myself included, that warned it would be abused, that it was not just a hypothetical situation but only a matter of time. We had similar dismissals then.

And what about Tasers? There's another non-lethal weapon being pushed quite heavily by police forces around the country. When those first went into circulation people said "Oh no, they won't be abused and look: when they are used, they're non-lethal so it's ok!" Of course now it seems we can't go a week without another story about someone being killed or brutalized by a taser, that simple device that the police will maintain the same self-restriction on use as their firearms. Whether it's shocking an already hand-cuffed teenager in the back of a patrol car, brutalizing a student for refusing to show his ID, or tasering and killing a man in what can only be likened to an execution, the police have not shown that they can effectively use restraint or treat civilians with respect. If you think that this new device will be used even less than tasers when it can disable one or many suspects from a long range, consequences be damned, then you're a fool.

I hate to be a jerk, but I have to question why the farmers just don't stick to their traditional crops (versus the GM versions) if Monsanto is so horrible. Not one is forcing them to buy GM seeds...

That would be fine... except for the fact that:

(a) Even if you grow non-Monsanto traditional crops, if a Monsanto seed blows in from miles away and you end up growing Monsanto crops, you are liable for growing Monsanto crops without a license, and

(b) Third-world farmers are approached by agribusiness with incredibly delicious loans if they would just consent to grow GM crops. But this leads to an ever more expensive cycle of buy seeds / buy chemicals, leading eventually to many farmers simply committing suicide. So it's not necessarily that people are stupid and rolling over for agribusiness. Agribusinesses are being your typical ultracapitalistic corporate jerks. --Rob

Just because Miller was involved in the story too doesn't mean Libby was the leak.

Miller never printed a story about it, she didn't disclose anything. No leak. And according to her statements, She doesn't exactly claim Libby came right out and said her print this either.

Bob Woodward was the first to get the name. This time line should be helpful in keeping the facts straight.

Now it should be noteful that While bob woodward and judith miller knew first, they didn't publish anything until after Robert Novak did. Novaks article was the effective outing that is causing the stir. Both Noval and Woodward got thier information from Armitage. Libby was interviewed by woodard after the armatage situation but before Miller. Could be a reason why it was there, then again, it could be something else.

People know that something is better than nothing. So it's going to be tough to convince Americans that waiting months or over a year to see someone (let alone a specialist) for a non-emergency is somehow worse than waiting long periods of time knowing nobody will see you but the emergency room (which offers no chronic healthcare and everything they offer is very expensive). For over 40 million Americans without insurance that's the case now and that number is only going up. Then there's the ridiculously high cost of the shoddy healthcare Americans get: How many Canadians are entering bankruptcy or are homeless because they can't pay their healthcare bills? The leading cause of bankruptcy and homelessness in the US is not being able to afford the medical bills, according to Michael Moore. How many Canadian doctors get rewards for denying treatment at the behest of the HMOs like Dr. Linda Peeno did, and how many Canadians die as a result of being denied expensive treatment? That number will probably pale in comparison to the number of Americans.

The American system is so bad we can see it's not the best system Americans can have. And that's enough to justify leaving the HMOs out of the discussion and talk about what the Democrats, Republicans, and HMOs don't want us to focus on—a single-payer universal health care system (such as HR676, Americans: write your Congresspeople to co-sponsor this bill). Moore's "Sicko" properly recapitulates this discussion. The HMOs need to be put out of business; like America did when it stopped privatizing firefighting, America needs to stop privatizing health care. If there's a better plan than HR676 in the offing, I'd love to read more about it. But this much is clear: the insurers aren't necessary, and government does plenty of things right, so we should organize and use democratic power to steer things to how we want them to be.

People know that something is better than nothing. So it's going to be tough to convince Americans that waiting months or over a year to see someone (let alone a specialist) for a non-emergency is somehow worse than waiting long periods of time knowing nobody will see you but the emergency room (which offers no chronic healthcare and everything they offer is very expensive). For over 40 million Americans without insurance that's the case now and that number is only going up. Then there's the ridiculously high cost of the shoddy healthcare Americans get: How many Canadians are entering bankruptcy or are homeless because they can't pay their healthcare bills? The leading cause of bankruptcy and homelessness in the US is not being able to afford the medical bills, according to Michael Moore. How many Canadian doctors get rewards for denying treatment at the behest of the HMOs like Dr. Linda Peeno did, and how many Canadians die as a result of being denied expensive treatment? That number will probably pale in comparison to the number of Americans.

The American system is so bad we can see it's not the best system Americans can have. And that's enough to justify leaving the HMOs out of the discussion and talk about what the Democrats, Republicans, and HMOs don't want us to focus on—a single-payer universal health care system (such as HR676, Americans: write your Congresspeople to co-sponsor this bill). Moore's "Sicko" properly recapitulates this discussion. The HMOs need to be put out of business; like America did when it stopped privatizing firefighting, America needs to stop privatizing health care. If there's a better plan than HR676 in the offing, I'd love to read more about it. But this much is clear: the insurers aren't necessary, and government does plenty of things right, so we should organize and use democratic power to steer things to how we want them to be.

hmmm, how about people who die from heat stroke during the summer, or asthmatics having an attack due to smog, or i don't know people who die in a tornado or hurricane that is more intense due to it being 1 degree hotter. Do you work for Exxon? You might as well :( Stuff: Exxon Still Funding Climate Change Deniers $900 BILLION OF INSTITUTIONAL INVESTORS PRESSURE EXXON MOBIL ON GLOBAL WARMING Scientists' Report Documents ExxonMobil's Tobacco-like Disinformation Campaign on Global Warming Science EarthTalk: Exxon/Mobil's Climate Change Contrarions Report: ExxonMobil Spends Millions Funding Global Warming Skeptics ExxonSecrets

You can learn more about this from today's DemocracyNow! broadcast: http://www.democracynow.org/index.pl?issue=2007062 2

Yes, clearly Tuaturas are more advanced than humans. On the second page of the linked article it says that Tuaturas have methods of avoiding aggression. Humans, on the other hand, kill other humans over anything that will make money, like restricting the supply of oil to make more profit.

Why can't we easily download NPR content in a friendly format?

Some local NPR affiliates release their broadcasts in open formats even through nationally NPR does not. BTW, why are you still listening to NPR? It really isn't "public" media anymore, and the political slant is about as right wing as fox news. Pro-war, pro-religion, pro-corporatism. "Nationalist Public Radio" perhaps? "National Pentagon Radio"? I prefer Democracy Now! for my news. They offer one hour ogg vorbis streams every day.

Ah, rational discourse. The subthread is saved!

> 2)If you spam all people, you are left with a society that wastes more time (or can't use email anymore), therefor, society as a whole can survive

I should have clarified from the start that I'm using a very broad definition of spam. Namely, "to waste the time of many people", e.g., not necessarily through the medium of email.

Under the narrower email-only definition, I quite agree with you. But, in the broader sense...

Spam may be applied by varying degrees, whereas murder is boolean (It is nonsensical to "moderately kill" someone, but moderate spamming is less bad than heavy spamming). So for the categorical imperative, we crank the spam to 100% of time wasted for 100% of people, and arrive at:

    2) If you continuously spam all people, you are left with a society that wastes ALL time. Therefore, society as a whole cannot survive; it suffocates.

> Ok...if you really believe that, it would mean that, if you *had* to choose between someone being killed, and 11000000 spams being send, you would
> rather opt for the former. Somehow, I don't see that as the most moral choice. Ofcourse, one could be an egotistical bastard, and say: go ahead!
> But then I would ask: would you really say the same if YOU were the person to be killed?

I do believe that there's some point where a volume of spam is worse than a single death. I'm not going to try to figure out if it's 1000 spams or 10e9, though. I don't know.

> Now, why is there this difference? Because, frankly, spam and murder are simply not comparable, nomatter how much spam it is. They are on a completely different level.

This dilemma occurs any time human life is weighed against a more tangible (and less sacred) resource. Nobody wants to make this decision, for the exact reason you give: It's immoral to put a price on life, whether that price be measured in time, money, oil, or bananas**.

That's why black-and-white morality is an inadequate framework for real life. Sometimes you need to compare apples and oranges.

People avoid explicitly pricing life, but the decision is made quietly and implicitly by market and social forces every day. Just a few examples:

      --> Automobile speed limits: Reducing highway speed to 10mph would save lives. So why don't we do it? :: Life versus time

      --> Airport security: Running checked baggage through decompression prevents pressure-triggered bombs from making it onto a plane. Israel does this. Why don't we? It's too expensive. :: Life versus money

      --> Pharmaceutical testing: More extensive testing would definitely save lives :: Life versus time and money

Are these things immoral? Maybe, but no single person is responsible for the decision. Given that, I think it's okay to come out and say, "Here is how we are going to price life, and this is why..." for a particular situation. These decisions could be better made by clear reasoning, but the status quo is to avoid thinking about it and let whatever happens happen.

** bananas? Sadly, not a joke at all... c.f. recently uncovered links between Chiquita and Colombian paramilitary groups: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/2 3/1354205

DN also airs western propaganda when its relevant to the story. For example when the main stream media was buying the WMD story like it was gospel, Democracy Now would air the administration propaganda and then air voices from the many critics and dissidents that poked many holes in the WMD story.
Unlike the mainstream media that would air countless Bush admires building up support for an unjust war that cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Meanwhile DN viewers knew the administrations claims where highly dubious, years before the MSM woke up and realized they had been acting as loudspeaker for government propaganda.
Likewise if you followed DN you would know they are critical of human rights volitions wherever they occur including... gasp cuba, ie they don't neglect to mention the human rights violations that Cuba commits against its dissidents and those organizing democracy there.
Your point is valid in that we should scrutinize all our information sources but I value democracy now because it does a much better job at exactly that. Of course DN is not perfect... but no information source is, and its naive/religious dogma to think any information source is/can be absolutely authoritative or "objective".

Here's how the mis-addressed email thing works. Politicos in the White House or elsewhere, have mistakenly typed .org instead of .gov when addressing their emails. The www.whitehouse.org owners are none to happy with Bush's politics, and so routinely forward their emails to Greg Palast, whose reputation is well known. Mystery solved. Palast says this much in most of his books. While American networks avoid Palast like the plague, largely because he is at odds with the media-moguls, he has had his own show on the BBC for years and is considered a good source for what is really happening in the US by the Europeans. He has also appeared on the NPR show On the Media and on Democracy Now from Pacifica Radio.

This story has had zero play in the US media; it's been being carried on the BBC

Democracy Now airs in the US on quite a few small local stations (I listen to it on my ride home from work every day) as well as a few satellite channels.

Of course, everyone seems to completely ignore it, even though so far they have a pretty much spot-on record regarding the evils of the current administration... They broke the "secret prisons" story about two years before the mainstream media caught on; Regularly discussed Abu Ghraib and detainee torture at least six months before we all started "Doing the Lyndie"; Private jet chartering for illegal renditions to have prisoners tortured by third-party countries, 18 months before anyone cared (and still, even now that everyone stopped caring despite the practice continuing).

But then, ya just can't trust them tinfoil hat types, right?

We need to help each other educate ourselves about the corruption. Here is my summary of U.S. government corruption. Where's yours?

Bill Gates: Killing Africans for profit and P.R. Mr. Bushs bogus Aids Offer

Report: Gates Foundation Causing Harm With the Same Money It Uses To Do Good

Yes, Gates is soo GOOOOD. Lets all praise him and his crazy huge mansion.

"Oh yeah, how many websites on the Armenian genocide can you bring up in Turkey?"

How about every single one of them? Actually, none of the websites about the genocide are banned. It is not illegal to talk about the genocide, nor to accept it. The crushing majority still denies it, and would hate your guts if you supported the claims, but they can't legally do anything.

No journalist have gone to prison for reporting on Armenian genocide. Hrant Dink got convicted of "insulting turkishness" because of a misinterpretation of a article he wrote in newspaper. His sentence was "postponed", which really meant that he wouldn't really serve it if he didn't get convicted of the same charges. (Since it was a misinterpretation, it was unlikely)

Coincidentally, he was talking about how the Armenians should leave aside the bad blood between Turks and them. (The mistranslation was kind of like "Armenians should get rid of the bad blood of Turks in their veins.)

It wasn't the state who prosecuted Hrant Dink, it was a private lawyer called Kemal Kerincsiz, a fascist jackass who only pressed charges to draw attention to himself. He also pressed charges against other prominent public figures who supported the Genocide. Nevertheless, all these charges were dismissed by the courts, since article 301 is very vague and doesn't really say anything about genocide. This in turn put Hrant in the crosshairs of an über-nationalistic minority, and he got murdered.

While everybody knows that he got murdered, no one here really mentions that more than 50.000 people marched in his funeral, shouting out "We're all Hrant, we're all armenians!". That's the single most number of people attending a civilian funeral in Turkey. (barring aside the ex presidents and such.) (link : http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/2 3/1530254)

Denying the genocide doesn't make it go away, but making it illegal to say that it didn't happen doesn't necesserally make it right neither, as in France. (link : http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/10/19/opinion/edk inik.php)

Freedom of speech means you have to be willing to hear both sides, right or wrong.

To add one more point about Donahue, check out this interview, Democracy now. For the record, I would not be caught dead typically with anything to do about the Democrats - yuck. Anyway, except for the addition of CNN and Fox, that has been little diversification since the reign of the big 3 networks. Now we have like 5. If you only count cable news (and exclude foreign sources), it more like 2. We have gone from 3 to 2 (or, at best, 3 to 5). Inteview snip:

PHIL DONAHUE: Well, we knew we were visually boring. We -- and television was filled -- Monty Hall was on the other channel giving away $5,000 to a woman dressed like a chicken salad sandwich, and Bob Barker was saying, "Come on down!" And people were screaming and yelling, and here comes Donahue with one talking head and a group of women sitting on folding chairs. We had two cameras. It was live. And it soon became -- we knew that we had to -- and we were in Dayton, so -- you know, celebrities were not on call for us. I had been listening to WBZ in Boston, a chap by the name of Bob Kennedy, no relation to the political family. I remember him so very well. He's no longer with us, but he was fabulous. It was a Westinghouse station, and I could hear it in Dayton. And he was putting on people long distance on the, you know, on the phone. And so I started doing that on radio in 1965, maybe. And so, that's what translated to the TV show, and my first guest was Madelaine Mary O'Hare who came on the program.

AMY GOODMAN: The atheist.

PHIL DONAHUE: Atheist who effected the Supreme Court decision banning the official reading of prayer in school. 'There's no God, there's no heaven, there's no hell. When you die, you go into the ground. The worms eat you, you biodegrade, and you become part of the physical universe.' Well, the building fell down. All of Dayton came to a halt. It really was quite a sensation, as I knew it would be. And I knew it better be, or we wouldn't -- we were very nervous about how long we would last, as I say, because we were visually boring, so we had to survive on issues. And she brought issues. 'I don't care if you worship a pet rock, you pay for it. I'm tired of paying more taxes because of your churches getting phony tax relief that causes my taxes to -' oh, I mean, she was fabulous. And also, you know, a very, in many ways, a very, very unpleasant woman whom I happened to really like. I liked her a lot and still do and have fond memories of her, and sorry about her grim death.

AMY GOODMAN: And just to explain, you were protected by the California journalist shield law, but we don't have a federal journalist shield law. And because -- at least the argument the US attorney used, because there was some money that went into the buying of the police car that they say there was an alleged arson against, then that put you in a different category?

JOSH WOLF: Right, it's not exactly that it put me in a different category. That's what allowed the federal government to get involved, because the 14th Amendment says that there are certain things that are the state's matter of order, and there are certain things that are within federal limits. And this shouldn't have been able to even be accessible by the federal government. They basically used this whole "well, there's some money in the police department" as a crux to get their hands into the situation and to circumvent the California State shield law. So that further shows why we need a federal shield law. If it's protected in forty-nine states and the federal government can just make an inroad around the federal shield law, then this can affect independent journalists like myself, but also mainstream media just as equally. In fact, the argument that I wasn't a journalist, which the US attorney tried to put forward, didn't even come about until after I had been incarcerated.

"Too many limits on free markets has historically led to socialism which results in a weak economy."

Halliburton, AT&T, Bechtel, etc do not operate in "free markets", they are a myth that performs the same function as religion - maintain the status quo.
Check out "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" as an example of the "free markets" that these companies operate in.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/0 9/1526251

A simple google search and:

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/0 2/1440234

You can find a link to the video on that page. Happy now?

Pretty lazy Dude.

U.S. Soldiers Force Reporters To Delete Photos of Casualties --- Meanwhile the U.S. military is being accused of trying to cover up the civilian deaths. A freelance photographer working for the Associated Press said he took photos of a vehicle where three Afghans had been shot to death inside. An American soldier then took the photographer's camera and deleted the photos. A reporter for Afghanistan's largest television station, Tolo TV, said a US soldier also forced him to delete footage. The soldier reportedly told the journalist "Delete them, or we will delete you."

Not only is there no real punishment for these corporations, the linked article is itself an indicator of a deeper problem: it is carefully written so as to avoid painting any of the businesses as illegal actors where adequate, democratically-arrived-at remedies ought to be applied. There is no simple and clear declaration akin to what one /. poster wrote: "The recording companies are illegally paying off radio broadcast networks to get exposure for their music." nor anything as short and simple as the /. headline in this thread, "Major Broadcasters Hit With $12M Payola Fine".

I'm not trying to suggest this is new; during the run-up to the Iraq war the stenographers at the New York Times repeated government propaganda to far worse effect (Common Dreams, PDF excerpt). I'm saying that we do ourselves a disservice by letting our contempt dull our shock because we need to point out when corporate leaders behave illegally and we need to tell the corporate reporters when punishment is minimized ($12M is referred to as a "large cash settlement" despite no single payout greater than $4M) and buried (the list of corporate settlements is buried in the piece).

Human rights groups all over the world are seeing this happening. Folks are connecting the dots. Heard about this on the radio today.

The place where I use Ogg is at DemocracyNow! which includes this format along with realplay, cd and mp3. http://www.democracynow.org/streampage.pl. This show tends to cover problems with voting machines, corporate control of media and net neutrality that are also covered on slashdot, as well as other issues.
--
One person one solar power system! http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

According to a new survey, hundreds of government scientists say they have perceived or personally experienced pressure from the Bush administration to eliminate phrases such as "climate change" and "global warming" from their reports and public statements. One of those scientists -- NASA climatologist Drew Shindell - testified Tuesday before the Committee on House Oversight and Government Reform.

As always, the Democracy Now site has a transcript of this up, as well as audio files if you'd like to listen to it: Government Scientists Accuse Bush Administration of Interfering, Misleading on Climate Change

"We all find it easy to bash Microsoft, their products, and their practices, and quite rightly so, but you can't really argue with Gates's way of using his riches. Even the most cynical would have to admit his heart is in the right place."

Correct. His heart is with his money and control of said wealth. Soon he'll have control of Buffett's billions as well. I mean the Gates foundation has/will have huge influance everywhere
that cash lands. He/Gates Foundation looks good in the papers while he uses that influance to push folks/companies in whatever direction he wants. I'd be curious to see the agreements that the foundation requires when money is given. Based upon the MS format of agreements, I'd be suspect.

They also use the Foundation to do other interesting things:

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/0 9/1455200

Because Fox spreads misinformation, therefore Fox fans tend to be misinformed. People who are happy to be misinformed tend to be idiots. That's why.

This isn't just a general impression. Studies have shown that the more you watch Fox, the more likely you are to be misinformed on key political issues. See this PDF document.

Well, it depends where you put the centre ground. If you classify all sane people as being on the "liberal" left, and all the genocidal maniacs as being on the "conservative" right, then perhaps most non-Fox media is "liberal". But I don't think that's a fair place to put the dividing line.

I'd say that all networks with a systemic bias in favour of the establishment (see the Propaganda Model) must be classified as right-wing or at least centrist. This puts Fox at the extreme right, with other networks in the centre-right and centre, and alternative news sources such as Democracy Now at the left.

You can find examples of people who have passed through the education system, and yet still believe in gods, angels, fairies, aliens, homoeopathy, astrology, moon-landing conspiracies, feng shui, tarot cards, Iraqi WMDs, virgin birth, Fox impartiality, and cigarettes making you look cool. However, this doesn't stop the fact that such beliefs have a strong scientific correlation with having shit for brains (specific example given above).

1) Human beings may or may not have had an influence on the Earth's climate in the past few hundred years.

Uh, no. I think I clearly said we have, or at least was asking "how much." I think by asking "how much" I clearly accept the fact that we have.

2) There exist people who claim that the Earth's climate would, right now, be different if only Bush had signed the Kyoto Accords

Yes, very many leftists blame Katrina on right wingers, especially Bush (taking the blame even if he had no choice). Perhaps they don't phrase it that way, but here's a few choice ones:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: As Hurricane Katrina dismantles Mississippi's Gulf Coast, it's worth recalling the central role that Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour played in derailing the Kyoto Protocol and kiboshing President Bush's iron-clad campaign promise to regulate CO2.

Now, you can argue he didn't come out and say it, but he certainly is relating Kyoto with Katrina.

From here: German Minister Links Katrina to Global Warming, Bush Policies.

How about this one: "Katrina's Real Name is Global Warming", with this choice quote: "In 2001, the Bush administration announced it would not ratify the Kyoto Protocol that has been signed by 120 countries."

Again, why does the author include this in the article if it's not his sentiment that Kyoto and Katrina are related?

And here: "In Australia, the Greens party said Katrina was aggravated by climate change and criticised Bush for pulling out of Kyoto."

Again, the association goes Katrina as a result of global warming as a result of Bush not signing Kyoto.

The implication is clear.

First of all, the connection between income inequality and crime rates is interesting, and dramatic, but it doesn't strike me as being the biggest problem.

The main trouble with "income inequality" is that it's incompatible with democracy: money can buy elections, bribe officials, undermine the very legal system and so on.

That's pretty obvious, and if it doesn't strike you as a problem, I would guess it's because you've got the idea that rich people are smart and wise and can do a better job of controling the political system than poor people (poor people, after all, are lazy and stupid and just want government handouts so they can watch TV and drink beer all the time. Right?).

This is an idea that was considered by the founding fathers, and explicitly rejected. You're not supposed to get any political edge by owning wealth. Everyone gets one vote, everyone can run for office, bribery is illegal, etc.

Further, I might point out that places that have tried a tight association between rulers and the wealthy are not exactly shining examples -- the polite term for this sort of thing is "crony capitalism", or "fascism" if you're not afraid of over-worked political rhetoric.

Myself, I used to be a hard core advocate of free markets. Back around 1980, if a lefty tried a line on me like "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer", I would point out that historically what really seems to happen is "the rich get richer and the poor get richer". I used to sneer at their complaints about increasing income inequality as (a) a statistical blip and (b) politics of envy.

But here we are 20 years later, and that statistical blip still hasn't gone away, and the United States is starting to look like a strange country that I barely recognize...

Anyway, my advice to conservatives: stop fighting the cold war, and pay attention to what's really happening... "Markets" are legally defined entities, and there's room to wonder if definition we're using is the right one. And my advice to liberals, I suppose, is to think about other ways of fixing problems like this than just raising taxes.

And speaking of not being afraid of over-worked rhetoric... allow me to recommend: Paul Krugman on the New Class War in America

Quick synopsis for those uninitiated to John Perkins

Economic Hitmen give the "hyper-rich" unfair advantages on foriegn investment. Financed by ensuring the raise a small new set of newly rich in a foriegn country that is dependant upon US companies for technology and construction. Often this set of newly rich do nothing to help their fellow countrymen raise their economic status, occassionally they do try and we kill them.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/0 9/1526251 DemocracyNow interview with John Perkins.

Police Taser Anti-War Protesters in Pittsburgh She looked pretty harmless lying on the ground to me. Direct link to video. Jump to 6:42 or 7:02 - 7:13!

More video and coverage of Pittsburgh Taser-ing of protesters.

Coverage of protests against taser deaths in Ohio and California.

Third Taser Death in a Month in Florida.

All coverage of tasers by Democracy Now.

Police Taser Anti-War Protesters in Pittsburgh She looked pretty harmless lying on the ground to me. Direct link to video. Jump to 6:42 or 7:02 - 7:13!

More video and coverage of Pittsburgh Taser-ing of protesters.

Coverage of protests against taser deaths in Ohio and California.

Third Taser Death in a Month in Florida.

All coverage of tasers by Democracy Now.

Does this mean that we'll get some decent radio stations back? Clear Channel effectively ruined the radio for me, NPR being the only remaining reason to turn it on.

Well, for me that would be Democracy Now!, which you can may be able to hear broadcast somewhere, depending on where you live, e.g. KPFA, in the SF Bay Area, and WBAI in the New York area. In general, the Pacifica stations do a decent job of "alternative" broadcasting, provided you don't mind the almost exclusively left-wing focus.

Also, there are many, many small college stations (and other non-coms) scattered around, usually located at the bottom of the dial. They also all have internet streams these days:

• KZSU
• KFJC
• WFMU
• WREK
• WRCT
• KALX
• KUSF
• WNUR
• KSPC
• KXLU
• WPRB
• KTRU
• KALW

This organization calls itself "Democracy Now!" yet fawns over Fidel Castro as if he really were leading a democratic government.