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We worry about nuclear plants going Chernobyl, but how much do we worry about that chemical refinery 20 miles away? If it had an uncontrolled fire, it could spew toxic chemicals into the air that would be about as disastrous as fallout. It's like worrying about a plane crash when you drive like a maniac.

You've heard of Bhopal? Look it up. Makes Chernobyl look like a local hiccough, and was entirely chemical in nature.

Greeks protest and riot when they realize they are going to have to start paying for their entitlement programs,

Is this just a flavor of the month opinon, or do you have actual facts to back up your opinion? The Greek economy has been a minor player in the EU, but a reasonably good one, up until recent years when accounting irregularities underwritten by -- wait for it -- American financial firms caught up with the current government. While the Greek economy has never been structured for a long-lasting boom (nor has the Greek psyche been conducive to sustained growth like their first-world bretheren), it has persisted more-or-less in its present form since 1974 when the military dictatorship collapsed, modulo the explicitly observable shift to the West once the euro was adopted in Greece in 2001.

I'm still a supporter of offshore drilling. Ask me again in a year, when this whole episode has concluded (or not), and I may change my mind.

What, there haven't been enough major oil spills already to make up your mind? Seriously, even if you only recognize the Exxon Valdez (1989), and while it was a very bad spill, it doesn't even rank in the top 15. Quoting the late, great Jacques Cousteau, "we are entirely unable to handle oil safely."

oh no, the top ten percent of income owners pay seventy percent of the taxes!

oh, wait, they control eighty percent of the wealth.

http://www.endgame.org/primer-wealth.html

Where's the inequity, again? Why do all you lolbertarians keep claiming that a wal-mart cashier should be expected to pay the same net tax as Bill Gates?

About edit counting

Editcountitis

Edit count does not reflect value

Also, the richest 20% of Americans hold 49% of the wealth in 1999, so how is that any different than what was shown on Wikipedia?

http://www.fuckmicrosoft.com/content/whatsbad.shtm l
http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/
http://www.novell.com/linux/truth/no_mention.html
http://www.netaction.org/msoft/cybersnare.html
http://www.endgame.org/microsoft.html

Last I recall the top wealthiest 4% of the US population owns 80% of the stock. Can't find that figure now but I found this which is good.

http://www.endgame.org/primer-wealth.html

Frankly I give this country 50 years. Empires just seem to last a shorter and shorter time.
And a corporate ruled empire is exactly what we've become.

Its not an area where laws are consistent except to the extent that they have been consistently manipulated by/for the benefit of large companies. Analogies to railroads are apt but dangerous: a century and a half ago, our government knew it needed rails badly to make commerce efficient and mobility of the population easier. IT GAVE AWAY LAND AND GRANTED OR TOLERATED MONOPOLIES just to meet those objectives and the Goulds, ROCKEFELLERs and a host of other robber barons saw their chance. The debate about whether the public good is better served by public investiment or the enlightened greed of private enterpise is nearly as old as our repbulic. We the wireless public who will be ill served or well served by the decision about how the new infrastructure will be financed ought to be screaming at our congressmen right now. The risk/reward model for investiment in this technology is very different from the infrastructure developments that set the precedents for industrial lobbying in utilities. The cost of WiFi set up is low enough that many municipalities have it on their adgendas. Cities with money to burn are practially nonexistent in this country and still many are trying to be the first or best to enable a wirles citizenry. With costs that low and benefits that manifest, it is obscene that we as tax payers or wireless users would sit by and let corporations meter and profit from a service we could easily afford ourselves.
Where the analogy to older utility development may hold is uniformity of service: is local government, perhaps with guidance from standards bodies, or is private industry, jockying as it must for advantage over its internal competition and alternate services, the better way to provide a seamless or the most uniform WiFi service? Rail commerce did not take off until all the rail barons agreed on a rail guage that allowed cars to move from one carriers territory to another. Similarly, I expect WiFi won't be more than a convenience for pockets business travelers until WiFi is uniformly [and securely] supported in urban areas and the travel corridors between them. I want to be getting and sending my VOIP and email CONTINUOUSLY all the way from Boston to NY to DC and on my train ride to work in the morning...Are Verizon and SBC and their ilk going to cooperate on billing so I can do that?

Its not an area where laws are consistent except to the extent that they have been consistently manipulated by/for the benefit of large companies. Analogies to railroads are apt but dangerous: a century and a half ago, our government knew it needed rails badly to make commerce efficient and mobility of the population easier. IT GAVE AWAY LAND AND GRANTED OR TOLERATED MONOPOLIES just to meet those objectives and the Goulds, ROCKEFELLERs and a host of other robber barons saw their chance. The debate about whether the public good is better served by public investiment or the enlightened greed of private enterpise is nearly as old as our repbulic. We the wireless public who will be ill served or well served by the decision about how the new infrastructure will be financed ought to be screaming at our congressmen right now. The risk/reward model for investiment in this technology is very different from the infrastructure developments that set the precedents for industrial lobbying in utilities. The cost of WiFi set up is low enough that many municipalities have it on their adgendas. Cities with money to burn are practially nonexistent in this country and still many are trying to be the first or best to enable a wirles citizenry. With costs that low and benefits that manifest, it is obscene that we as tax payers or wireless users would sit by and let corporations meter and profit from a service we could easily afford ourselves.
Where the analogy to older utility development may hold is uniformity of service: is local government, perhaps with guidance from standards bodies, or is private industry, jockying as it must for advantage over its internal competition and alternate services, the better way to provide a seamless or the most uniform WiFi service? Rail commerce did not take off until all the rail barons agreed on a rail guage that allowed cars to move from one carriers territory to another. Similarly, I expect WiFi won't be more than a convenience for pockets business travelers until WiFi is uniformly [and securely] supported in urban areas and the travel corridors between them. I want to be getting and sending my VOIP and email CONTINUOUSLY all the way from Boston to NY to DC and on my train ride to work in the morning...Are Verizon and SBC and their ilk going to cooperate on billing so I can do that?

That business in India could have easily been located in the United States

According to this web site, the same chemicial was produced and stored at a Union Carbide plant in Institute, West Virginia, USA. Safety was neglected to the point that state officials fined Carbide that year (see same page). I remember some mention of this in the press at the time.

I think you are right on about lost causes getting booted to the UN, but
Long-established commercial activity such as farming, mining, agriculture, retail, insurance, medical practice, etc. have equally long-established, effective laws that protect us from the abuses of their worst practitioners.

Congratulations on saying that with a straight face, corporate behavior in those areas have had some of the worst abuses in the history of business. agriculture, medical practice, mining you are kidding right? The same people, people who have power, control the industries and the governments paying lip service to controlling those industries, so the laws have never been effective.
Laws haven't ever been effective against the rape of the environment and populace by these industries. - Esp. not during this administration and never before either:

One huge Bush example -
Strategic Metal Mining is not supposed to be owned by the Russians but in a elaborate back room deal to make Halliburton money on Platinum and Palladium, the US govt allowed a "private Russian company" aka the Russian mafia aka the Russian govt by the largest US Platinum mine and then had Monsanto hook up with Halliburton for a joint venture - unfortunately, some (supposedly effective as you say) US laws were going to get in the way, so what does Halliburton do?
The same thing that all is available to all wealthy, powerful individuals and corporations - they move to a jurisdiction that is more convenient, law-wise for what the want to do. Halliburton pays a couple hundred bucks for a PO Box in Liechtenstein and gets a part of a multi-billion dollar pie:
Bush allows Russians to own US strategic metals so that Halliburton can make money

It is hard to know where to start when you have mining and agriculture as targets...
But given just tobacco, pesticides, GM plants, mine tailings, "hydro" mining techniques, oil exploration and processing (considered in terms of laws often is the same vein as mining), the history of abuse is mind boggling.
Multinations
railroads and clear cutting
Big money cabinet
Corp Agribusiness

And I imagine someone from AU would have plenty of examples of mining abuses, including clear evidence of support and/or complicity of the Australian government in those abuses (But they are brown people and a third world country we are raping, so it doesn't really matter)...

Excuse me, I'm off to get in a single vehicle rollover accident on a clear, dry road and then have the authorities find lots of pr0n on my computer instead of the live-CD linux isos that I have on there now. I understand exposure of the links in the Stillwater Mining/Halliburton deal is really pissing off some people.

I wasn't sure how easy it would be to find info on the other companies, but it was pretty easy... Here's some links for the other companies, just for fun:
Boeing (2)
Morgan Stanley
Fannie Mae
Apparently, Target isn't well-liked, either.
Safeway

Granted, you may not agree with all of these people's opinions, but the complaints are there.

"A corporation has no soul to damn and no body to kick" (variously "kill", "punish").

This comes from the Baron Thurlow, the Lord Chancellor of England in the 1700's and as far as I can tell (http://www.xrefer.com) the full and correct quote is :

"Corporations have neither bodies to be punished, nor souls to be condemned, they therefore do as they like."

Or you might prefer this from Ambrose Bierce :

"Corporation: an ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility."

More at http://www.endgame.org/primer-quotes.html. These quotes (naturally) apply to HP, to MS, to Dell, Red Hat and so on