Slashdot Mirror

Here are some links:
http://neteffect.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/09/09/one_week_inside_the_haystack

http://jilliancyork.com/2010/09/13/haystack-and-media-irresponsibility/

http://calixte.tumblr.com/post/1120185415/no-more-haystack - Lead Developers resignation Letter

http://www.oblomovka.com/wp/2010/09/14/haystack-vs-how-the-internet-works/

That sounds pretty dire, unless rare earth metals aren't actually all that rare.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/06/15/are_rare_earth_minerals_actually_rare

As this article in Foreign Policy explains, the Internet, especially Twitter, didn't contribute nearly as much to the protests in Iran as has been reported: Misreading Tehran: The Twitter Devolution. "Word of mouth was by far the most influential medium used to shape the postelection opposition activity." Other major media included text messages and email, which this software wouldn't help much with.

Efforts to counter censorship and intrusive government monitoring should be applauded, but it's a bit premature to call this "world class regime-slaying."

it really has zero visibility outside the country.

It sells for $44/bottle in China

So, we invaded Afghanistan for their opium?

From what I hear, that might well be part of it. Although they have some very nasty beliefs and rules, the Taliban - as religious fundamentalists - are absolutely opposed to drugs. While they were ruling Afghanistan, they came quite close to stamping out opium production completely. Today, it is booming again - which is odd when the Coalition is seemingly so keen to prevent it.
http://www.counterpunch.org/mercile06302010.html

Or did we send someone into the future to find out about the untapped mineral resources that were just discovered?

More like "into the past":
http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/06/14/minerals_in_afghanistan_mais_oui

Just because you have a fine knowledge of history does not mean that you understand true intent.

Thanks for the compliment. But how does knowing less about history make one able to "understand true intent"? That sounds dangerously close to telepathy.

Our mission was to destroy Al Qaeda.

To destroy a shadowy organization, not certainly known to exist at all, with unknown membership, size, resources, whereabouts, and intentions. And the way to do this was to invade and subjugate a sovereign nation that had made no overt hostile act, kill or maim very large numbers of its citizens, overthrow its government, and set up a Quisling regime?
http://www.counterpunch.org/rothenberg05262010.html

Unfortunately, the second mission was the neocon ideal of "nation building" that is doomed to failure.

It seems to me that was why it was chosen. A state of war gives the executive enormous power and impunity. But most wars are so short... As Orwell pointed out in 1984, the logical solution is a permanent state of war. How better to guarantee that than to invade a country that has never been permanently conquered, in pursuit of an organization not certainly known to exist, and attempt to change that nation into a standard-issue Western democracy?

"Of all enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germs of every other. War is the parent of armies: from these proceed debt and taxes. And armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended. Its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds are added to those of subduing the force of the people No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare".
- James Madison

The reference is this blog posting over at Foreign Policy which was posted back in March: http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com/blog/5630 The test was of a sub-orbital kill vehicle intercepting a sub-orbital target, both launched from ballistic missiles. There was no orbital debris generated and a satellite was not destroyed. This can be verified by looking at NASA's Orbital debris Quarterly Reports as well as the satellite catalog on Space Track: http://www.orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/newsletter/newsletter.html http://www.space-track.org/perl/login.pl However, because the same technology can be used for both hit-to-kill missile defense and hit-to-kill ASATs, the test can be seen as another test of China's ASAT capability, in the same way as the destruction of USA 193 (a satellite) by the US Aegis missile defense system

a search party sponsored by the magazine sailed from Bordeaux on a mission to study the athletic potential of the inhabitants of French West Africa. These sports missionaries eventually arrived in Senegal and were received by the highest colonial officials. The result of this talent search was the sobering discovery that the explorers had completely misunderstood the relationship between sport and their colonial subjects. The Africans, unlike their African-American counterparts, showed little aptitude for sport.

The French found that the athletisism presumed as a natural feature of African populations wasn't quite as innate as they believed. There are some interesting sociological studies which point to similar findings - check out Fair and Foul: Beyond the Myths and Paradoxes of Sport for a decent overview - especially when comparisons of races pop up. It's been a few years since I reviewed the literature but the general thrust was that African Americans dominate in sport because they are raised to understand that blockbuster sporting success is the only crediable route for personal and financial success. They are encouraged to devote themselves to atheletics - and specific atheletics at that - as a means to enter college and elevate their social status at exactly the same time that their peers in other races are being syphoned of into the trades, academics, or some such thing. Obviously there is nuance to the analysis that I'm forgetting but it makes for an interesting explination.

Between that and the general studies that point to your kind of racial presumption as niave at best, dangerous at worst, I think we can safely presume that skin colour doesn't have quite the effect you're arguing for.

The whole European continent is over-leveraged on debt and Britain is doing their best to make an example by balancing their budget

Hardly the only ones though. France and Germany jointly announced similar budgets, for instance France committing itself to

cut 45 billion euros from the nation's budget and raise the retirement age to 62 years... "We've made a commitment to bring down our deficit from 8 to 3 percent by 2013, and we will concentrate all of our efforts on it."

as noted at http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/06/17/couples_retreat?page=full As for Germany, http://www.france24.com/en/20100608-merkel-rolls-out-unpopular-austerity-package-germany

Merkel...pledged to find around 11.2 billion euros (13.4 billion dollars) in savings in next year's budget. By 2014, the government hopes to cut 86 billion euros in spending.
The German government last year passed a constitutional amendment requiring an approximately balanced budget by 2016. The austerity package is intended to bring the budget into compliance with that law.
The government is also considering cutting up to 15,000 jobs from the federal administration by 2014.
The armed forces may be slashed by 40,000 soldiers and major projects such as the rebuilding of the Hohenzollern Palace in Berlin, which was badly damaged during World War II, has been postponed until at least 2014.

The Afghanis should get rich, but the wealth extraction requires expertise they don't have (killing each other has been more fun down the centuries).

Someone else posted this article in another story recently. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/05/27/once_upon_a_time_in_afghanistan?page=full Seems like it's mostly in the last few decades killing has surpassed development...

As noted on the foreign policy blog this morning, this is very old (as in years) news. In addition, there is no consideration to the cost to actually extract the minerals and ores.

fp story here

Yes they also had
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/02/25/whats_really_behind_turkeys_coup_arrests

Of course you are right about that. Oil refined and used is far less damaging than oil spilled. I didn't mean to imply otherwise. What I mean is that slow gradual problems can be bigger than huge obvious ones.

Anyway there was a similar event in 1979 and the world didn't end. Tens of thousands of barrels a day spilled for months into the Gulf.

Also, I've lived most of my adult life in Chicago. Don't get me wrong, I love Chicago, but one of its drawbacks is that it *always* smells like oil fumes. I don't believe you are smelling the Gulf.

[What] about a mysterious EMP that knocked out all electricity networks and computers in the USA and difficulty of returning to pre-1880 lifestyle.

This is covered in this ForeignPolicy.com post: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/02/17/the_boogeyman_bomb

The earthquake in Haiti is horrible. The human cost, unimaginable. Decades of corruption, slavery, and exploitation by the larger Caribean powers (which includes the U.S.) has left this nation in ruins. This article is hardly surprising, given the level of anarchy. The efforts of the Amerture Radio community are admirable and quite brave. The Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, etc are doing amazing things in dangerous conditions. I fully support all legitimate efforts to assist this nation's rebuilding efforts except for one area.

Some call for cancelling Haiti's debt:
Cancel Haiti's debt
Rich Nations Call for Haiti Debt Relief

You cannot cancel Haiti's debt without reforming this badly broken nation's government, police force, military, beaurocracy, and schools.

This should be the 21st Century's first rebuilding effort by Western World. Think of it as the continuation and modernization of the Monore Doctrine. Accept help from the rest of the world, but start treating these failed/failing states in the New World as part of a larger neighborhood.

You know, you got a lot of nerve, telling people who live in China that they don't know what they're talking about. Link Link. Maybe closed mouth, open mind would work better next time.

Competition is good until the Chinese govt. decides it wants the Chinese companies to win. Great Article on this: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/14/chinas_foreign_internet_purge

Those who imagined that Google was taking a principled stand against Chinese dictatorship might want to read this article in Foreign Policy:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/14/chinas_foreign_internet_purge

It builds a strong case that Google was simply cornered into protesting by an extreme and deliberate provocation - the most recent of many that have chased out by blocking or having their buttons pushed until they walked.

After reading it, I can't help but think that this is yet another case of protectionism disguised as censorship. That sounds strange - to most at /. that's like disguising a common assault as a kidnaping. But, of course, to the money guys at the top, protectionism is by far the worse - and more actionable - sin.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/11/10/the_case_for_keeping_al_qaeda?page=0,0
... keeping a battered al Qaeda intact (if weak) is the world's best hope of funneling Islamist fanatics into one social network -- where they stand the best chance of being spotted, tracked, and contained.
' The alternative, destroying the terrorist group, would risk fragmenting al Qaeda into thousands of cells, and these will be much harder to follow and impossible to eradicate."

If you want statistics, see:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/07/13/europes_new_lost_generation
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-07/24/content_11762331.htm

Three weeks of vacation, anti-firing laws, and other regulations that drive up the base cost of employing anyone, hurt those who need a job, but can't offer enough initial value to a potential employer to overcome the minimums they have to spend on them. That group is typically the young, the undereducated, and racial/cultural minorities.

The worst part is that those groups would spend some time doing entry-level stuff and learning how to be more valuable in their work through new skills, work habits, and knowledge, except the government makes it illegal to employ them at the entry-level rate they can profitably be employed.

An entry level job is better than no job at all.

Clean, as in: do you know how much greenhouse gases are emitted when getting uranium/plutonium out of the ground and processed to be able to use it in a nuclear reactor?

If you would know, you wouldn't call it clean.

Cheap is also largely untrue.

See (for example): http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3250 to debunk your clean and cheap arguments.

Politics aside, the blocks being imposed are somewhat irritating to those who live and work here (I do). For example, blogspot.com has been blocked for the last few days. I have memory of other examples of say, all wordpress sites seeming to become inaccessible. We don't use proxies at work, so it means being unable to share news with all colleagues who don't have their own proxy setup. As a topical example, that puts the google keynote out the window. You'd be surprised how much business related knowledge ends up getting blocked. Most irritating is the 'google sin bin'. Try and use a cached link, and google is blocked from your IP address for around 5 minutes. For a company with a shared proxy server, that gets old, very quickly.

Of course, there is a big commercial incentive to keep the blocks coming. Effectively it provides protectionist support for the Chinese alternatives on the internet[1]. That part I find more concerning, I think. If people here wanted to bypass the great firewall to read no blocked information, they can do so - I get the impression most people aren't really so interested in doing so though. The commercial aspects, however, would seem more sustainable.

[1] http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2006/05/12/a_new_form_of_protectionism

Apple doesn't seem to gain very much in its core business from the
acquisition

actually, twitter could turn out to be a very effective tool for reality distortion.

The story is their communist government cut down the communication tools. Cellphone coverage is off and all media "shutdown" early in the day. The radio / television employees all went home and the buildings are surrounded by the military.

The story is they were left with the internet. Here's a good read.

Actually its Mutually Assured Destruction in its purest form.

US owes tonnes of cash to China.
China has tonnes of foreign reserves... and holds tonnes of bonds... and lends tonnes of cash... in US dollars.

Do the math (or at least high school economics) - china selling US dollar bonds would drive down the value of their own reserves and remaining bonds / loan income. Lets not even get into trade income.

Here is a good primer
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4646

With a bit of help from petropolitics any idiot like Chavez can become popular.

Bratz dolls teach girls how to be materialistic, airheaded zombies more than any toy I can recall.

You're not old enough to remember the arrival of Barbie. Barbie represented those same values in her day. Teaching children to be "materialistic, airheaded zombies" is a prime requirement for the continuation of the system of consumer capitalism we're discussing here. Marketers encourage children to leech off their parents and demand today's "gotta have" items. Why should we expect those children to stop wanting those gotta-have items when they grow up? Only problem is there's often no longer a parent to pay for it.

So, Americans being an ingenious bunch, we've "fixed" that problem, too. We've extended credit to individual consumers on a scale unheard-of in human civilization. Americans now hold, on average, five credit cards per person (cite). Even with low balance limits, five credit cards together constitutes thousands of dollars in credit available to maintain those buying habits bred into American consumers from birth. Good thing all those American babies get to start life with five credit cards. They'll need them.

I hate to break this to you, but that is a myth. All of the medical care I have seen there is about what you would expect from a third world country. Neither much better nor much worse. Actually, with the possible exception of one or two hospitals in Havana, particularly Cira Garcia [cirag.cu], which very few Cubans could ever afford, I would rate health care there as being at a somewhat lower level than most of the third world countries

to the best of my understanding there it is a stretch to say that there is a direct correlation between paying less taxes and creating more national debt.

When your income goes down either you cut spending or you go into debt. Not only has the US federal government cut income, taxes, but it has also ballooned spending. When Bush was sworn into office in 2001 there was a budget surplus of, if I recall right, $300B. Now under Bush the USA has the highest budget deficit it has ever had.

What's so hard to understand about that?

Paying more taxes does not make the economy healthier.

Agreed. However when taxes are cut spending needs to be cut as well. We can start by getting rid of waste. Paying more than a half billion dollars ( $740B so far for the world's largest embassy) for a new embassy in Baghdad? That's absolutely ridiculous. With that kind of money you could hand every Iraqi $10,000 and still leave pocket change. How many Iraqis would then hate the US?

just one more newsitem from today:
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/node/7715

> The European Union is reexamining its biofuels policy after finding evidence that increased demand might be endangering rainforests and causing other nasty side effects.

The original article didn't mention Yahoo! specifically, but other articles did:

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/node/7184

Yahoo! claimed that he was using his email accounts for spamming, so they shut him down.

That's why so many things we tend to take for granted exist, such as safety glass in automobiles.

Safety glass for windshields have been required by federal law since 1966.

No culture or society can survive an overwhelming influx of illiterate, unskilled people for a sustained period. The vast majority of the people coming here illegally from Mexico create a huge expense for the U.S. citizens, financially and also when viewed from public safety and societal cohesion viewpoints.

So did those Irish Catholics. Most if not all of those "illegal immigrants" from Mexico pay taxes. They all may not pay income tax, though about 8 million do, but they either rent or own property and owners of said property have to pay property tax. Then when they go shopping they are paying sales taxes. By allowing the illegals to legally work in the US they will be paying more taxes, as well as helping to keep Social Security running. Those 8 million have paid more than $50 billion into SS. Imagine if they all paid into SS? Require them to pay into it but without them being able to collect any unless they become citizens, then SS will be kept solvent. As for any illegals collecting SS now, that's a problem with the SSA. They need to check and make sure anyone collecting SS is eligible to collect it.

I've seen some interesting ideas to help curb the drug money

Drug money? Drugs should be legalized period. The government should not be telling people what to do with their own bodies. Instead legalize and tax drugs. This alone would cut down dramatically of crime. With only 5% of the world population the US has 25% of the world's prison population. Half of them in prison for nonviolent drug offenses. With drugs legalized and taxed, not only would there be taxes collected from drugs but all, well must anyway, of those people in prison for drug offenses would also be employed and pay income tax. Then with legal drugs street drugs will cost less which will reduce crimes such as muggings, theft, and murder. "Foreign Policy" magazine had a good article in the September/October 2007 issue on ending drug prohibition and looking for it online I found 13 articles on drugs. The one I have goes into how the Taliban in Afghanistan are benefiting, profiting, from illegal opium. Make it legal and you take away their profits from opium. There's more to it however I'll just end it on the note that the government shouldn't be telling people what they can do with their own bodies, the only thing it should be concerned about is if a person is harming or violating the rights of another.

There's also the aspect of non-citizens drawing on the social support system paid for by taxes on citizens.

As stated above that's a problem with the Social Security Administration, SSA, not immigrants receiving SS. The SSA needs to make sure, from the first filling for benefits, the person is eligible to receive SS. For other costs such as medical care, that's not just a problem with illegals. Something like half of US citizens don't have health insurance either. As many say about capitalism driving wages down, I say let freemarket capitalism drive health care cost down as well. First, the AMA has a pretty good lock on healthcare. Open up healthcare. Child birth is a bit expensive, most happen in hospitals. Next a lot of child births are done by C section. Both of which drive up prices. Allow Midwives to deliver babies at home, this one step will reduce costs. Then, of those who have health insurance most get it through their employer. Employers get a tax brea

That's why so many things we tend to take for granted exist, such as safety glass in automobiles.

Safety glass for windshields have been required by federal law since 1966.

No culture or society can survive an overwhelming influx of illiterate, unskilled people for a sustained period. The vast majority of the people coming here illegally from Mexico create a huge expense for the U.S. citizens, financially and also when viewed from public safety and societal cohesion viewpoints.

So did those Irish Catholics. Most if not all of those "illegal immigrants" from Mexico pay taxes. They all may not pay income tax, though about 8 million do, but they either rent or own property and owners of said property have to pay property tax. Then when they go shopping they are paying sales taxes. By allowing the illegals to legally work in the US they will be paying more taxes, as well as helping to keep Social Security running. Those 8 million have paid more than $50 billion into SS. Imagine if they all paid into SS? Require them to pay into it but without them being able to collect any unless they become citizens, then SS will be kept solvent. As for any illegals collecting SS now, that's a problem with the SSA. They need to check and make sure anyone collecting SS is eligible to collect it.

I've seen some interesting ideas to help curb the drug money

Drug money? Drugs should be legalized period. The government should not be telling people what to do with their own bodies. Instead legalize and tax drugs. This alone would cut down dramatically of crime. With only 5% of the world population the US has 25% of the world's prison population. Half of them in prison for nonviolent drug offenses. With drugs legalized and taxed, not only would there be taxes collected from drugs but all, well must anyway, of those people in prison for drug offenses would also be employed and pay income tax. Then with legal drugs street drugs will cost less which will reduce crimes such as muggings, theft, and murder. "Foreign Policy" magazine had a good article in the September/October 2007 issue on ending drug prohibition and looking for it online I found 13 articles on drugs. The one I have goes into how the Taliban in Afghanistan are benefiting, profiting, from illegal opium. Make it legal and you take away their profits from opium. There's more to it however I'll just end it on the note that the government shouldn't be telling people what they can do with their own bodies, the only thing it should be concerned about is if a person is harming or violating the rights of another.

There's also the aspect of non-citizens drawing on the social support system paid for by taxes on citizens.

As stated above that's a problem with the Social Security Administration, SSA, not immigrants receiving SS. The SSA needs to make sure, from the first filling for benefits, the person is eligible to receive SS. For other costs such as medical care, that's not just a problem with illegals. Something like half of US citizens don't have health insurance either. As many say about capitalism driving wages down, I say let freemarket capitalism drive health care cost down as well. First, the AMA has a pretty good lock on healthcare. Open up healthcare. Child birth is a bit expensive, most happen in hospitals. Next a lot of child births are done by C section. Both of which drive up prices. Allow Midwives to deliver babies at home, this one step will reduce costs. Then, of those who have health insurance most get it through their employer. Employers get a tax brea

They're doing it by hand in China. Here's a slashdot posting, referring to a photo journal about just such a thing.

--But alas, the only amendments that most politicians seem to be interested in proposing involve idiocies like flag burning and marriage definition (both of which come as close to the concept of 'unconstitutional constitutional amendments' as can be imagined).--

Anyone else notice that the only things to make the news anymore are topics that will cause people to have a strong emotional reaction? Nobody wants to hear about technology amendments, educating our senators and congress critters. They want to know who won on American Idol. They want to know about OJ and Anna Nicole. They want useless, pointless busywork so they don't have to pay attention to the REAL issues. Why would we want to worry about the Government wiretapping our homes when things like whether or not your neighbor wants to bang someone in the ass in his/her own home?

Abortion, Gay Marriage, Music Downloads...all of these things to keep the eyes of the populace glued to the TV for the next fuckin' commercial. It reminds me of The Wizard of Oz and the 'man behind the curtain'. They trump up all this useless bullshit, meanwhile lots of actually IMPORTANT things go un-reported because they only have so much time on the air.

A quick Google on a topic I had read about a few years ago turned up quite a few websites that were touting "most missed / under-reported news stories"
Newsdesk.org,Foreignpolicy.com, and Worldnetdaily.com to name a few. Start asking questions of your congressional representitaves, then KICK THE BUMS OUT IF THEY DON'T WANT TO LISTEN. There are millions of people in America. I find it astounding that they can all be so damn silent while their country rots from the inside out.

Thanks. /soapbox rant
A.A

anyone who can dismantle supertankers with their bare hands deserves some respect.

See http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/node/4834

china, india and the like start developing their infrastructure outside of major cities and their workers wages start growing even faster there will be a higher number of people in poverty

Income in the two most populace nations in the world, China and India, are rising quite well. And partially because of this their birth rates are dropping. With the trends now going on now they believe within a couple of generations there will be more retired people in China than there are workers. The Economist has had some good articles on this in the past year as have other periodicals such as Foreign Policy .

Also, I wanted to touch on your particular links. Your major source seems to be Hernando De Soto. I'll grant that the criticism of his ideas is poorly presented on Wikipedia. But you can find plenty of people that can give you some ideas: Slate linked from Wikipedia, Fair Housing and Foreign Policy.

The Foreign Policy article is not freely available, but I think it makes some interesting points: no evidence his ideas work even though the Peruvian government established a Commision to institute his ideas in 1996 (and is not the only country where his ideas have demonstratedly failed); the ideas are not different from his ideas published in 1986 in _The Other Path_ and can be traced backed to the ideas of people such as David Collier and Jagdish Bhagwati in the 1970s; doesn't allow for cultural variation like the fact that traditional Muslims are opposed to borrowing money; and the fact that other factors such as famine, disease, war and so forth impact economic opportunities.

Best part is this quote:

His solution is vague enough to appeal to people of all political stripes.

Although judging from the coverage in the business press, IMF and places like the Cato Institute, he clearly appeals to a particular flavor of politics more than others.

What bothers me about people like de Soto is that they are experts that don't have to live with the problems their policies create. They have ideas that are not backed up by any empirical evidence, and when they are tested, these policies fail because they are simplistic. In the meantime, the do more harm to the poor and in some cases find ways to funnel cash to the wealthy (someone is flying him around the world to attend conferences and give advice for a reason).

Speaking of simplistic, did you read the sub-title for People's Capitalism? It's Peoples' Capitalism: The Economics of the Robot Revolution. Originally published in 1976, it is an example what is called Binary Economics (you can see that it is finally mentioned at the bottom of the page). I loved this quote from the article - Binary Economics: Paradigm Shift or Cluster of Errors by Timothy D. Terrell in Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, Spring 2005, v. 8, iss. 1, pp. 31-50:

Binary economists stress the uniqueness of their "new paradigm." Yet the theory is riddled with severe problems. Milton Friedman, who once debated Kelso, called Kelso's "two-factor economics" a "crackpot theory," and with considerable justification, it seems. It is not clear from reading binary economists that they understand the "conventional" economics that they are criticizing. Many binary economists are not formally trained in economics...Binary economics is, in sum, a cluster of significant theoretical errors masquerading as a market-friendly solution to our worst economic problems. Kelso's employee stock option plan is a legitimate method of simultaneously compensating employees and solving a pervasive principal-agent problem. Binary economics takes the ESOP and turns it into a fantastic Wolkenkuckucksheim, heedless of the massive inflation that would necessarily accompany its policy proposals.

I don't claim to be an expert in economics. I personally think a lot of it is based on false premises, and it is of limited use. However, there is enough in the article you linked to that did not sound right - particularly how all of our problems could be solved if we just followed this two part plan.

You should do a better job of looking into the background of people selling these crackpot theories and what kind of criticism they are recieving. I realize that conversations like these are how we discover our mistakes - but I can't help but wonder whether you put the effort into checking into and th

There's a parallel here with the "shipbreaking" industry (photo essay) in Bangladesh, one of the world's poorest countries. It's dirty, dangerous work, and people willingly do it because it pays and it's one of the country's main sources of metal. What Greenpeace and others are lobbying for is to forbid those people from being able to volunteer for the job, awful as it is.

It's not just e-waste. As this piece notes, the toxic byproducts of manufacturing are being dumped as raw materials too: The Global Village's Septic Tank

But Brazil is going to be energy independent not because they have a small but successful ethanol program. They are going to be energy independent because they had a massive offshore drilling program which has more than doubled their oil production from 650,000 barrels a day in 1990 to 1.6 million barrels a day now.

" China and India, the two most populus countries in the world, had high population growth, but now that their economy has dramatically improved their birth rates are dropping."

Do you actually have a reference to support this or did you pluck it out of your....

Amoung others Foreign Policy magazine had an article on this. Unfortunately as their online archives is subscription based and I don't have a subscription I can't provide a link. I have to admit though you pointed out something I left out about China, that China has a one child one couple policy. And while rural areas don't directly feel the economic boom in China more and more people are moving from the countryside to cities. Wish I could find one article from "Foreign Policy" but they had an article on one of the fastest growing cities in central China that said thousands of Chinese are moving to every day. This releases some of the economic pressure on rural areas. As for India, farmers are experiencing hardships with many committing suicide. They don't have open access to the industrial nations such as the US and EU, and the US and EU can import into India agricultural products relatively cheaply. That's a big reason the WTO meetings failed in Europe this summer. Because the EU wouldn't talk about opening their markets to imports and the massive subsidies the EU gives to farmers the Indian representative walked out.

If China and India weren't benefitting from an economic boom then neither would be able to finance the US national debt, and China and India are the biggest buyers of US Treasury bonds and notes respectively.

It's not surprising people can't fix their own machine, how many people can fix their own car? How many people can even change the oil in their own car? The other option would be for computers to be more like cars.

Someone, Stephen Ambrose I think, has claimed that one of the secrets of America's success in WWII was Americans' familiarity with cars. The teenage kids who learned how to maintain and modify a Chevy were better able to maintain and upgrade Jeeps and tanks. (Seems to me that this "car culture" didn't exist till the 1950s, but I'm far too young to know.) With the Chinese supposedly engaging in "cyber-warfare" testing, how prepared are we with our low average skill level? See also Vernor Vinge's recent novel Rainbows End for the idea of who really owns your machines when they're full of parts you don't understand and can't access.

Here's a video of Ben Cohen (of Ben & Jerry's ice cream fame) that puts the size of the US nuclear arsenal in perspective.

Ben's BBs [flash]

Even President Reagan's assistant secretary of defense says [PDF] we could cut some of these nuclear weapons and not harm our national security.

And Robert McNamara (of Vietnam War fame) is now saying that the US should urgently confront the dangers of it's nuclear weapons policies to avoid another Cuban missile crisis scenario.

The US is already investing trillions in foreign aid. Why the fuck should we be required to pay more?

I wonder how that compares as a percentage of each countries GDP -- that would be a more telling figure.

As a percentage of GDP the Scandinavian countries give the most aid to non and under developed countries. The US ranks somewhere in the middle, not the most but not the least either. Though I don't recall in which one it is in I recently read some articles on this subject. Here's one from Foreign Policy , "FP's index, ranking the Rich".

I wonder how that compares as a percentage of each countries GDP -- that would be a more telling figure.

As a percentage of GDP the Scandinavian countries give the most aid to non and under developed countries. The US ranks somewhere in the middle, not the most but not the least either. Though I don't recall in which one it is in I recently read some articles on this subject. Here's one from Foreign Policy , "FP's index, ranking the Rich".

To be fair to Foreign Policy though, they mention this upfront in their blog entry.

China's economic performance since 1979, for example, is actually less impressive than that of its East Asian neighbors, such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, during comparable periods of growth. Its banking system, which costs Beijing about 30 percent of annual GDP in bailouts, is saddled with nonperforming loans and is probably the most fragile in Asia. The comparison with India is especially striking. In six major industrial sectors (ranging from autos to telecom), from 1999 to 2003, Indian companies delivered rates of return on investment that were 80 to 200 percent higher than their Chinese counterparts. The often breathless conventional wisdom on China's economic reform overlooks major flaws that render many predictions about China's trajectory misleading, if not downright hazardous.

Sexual prowess aside, those 18 - 22 year olds are smart enough to overthrow Iraq in a few weeks when given the proper leadership. There are millions of them in our society. They don't always fit back in perfectly, but most of them understand that the rules are different while you are in the military.

I understand that you might find that discomforting, but have you ever wondered what this planet would be like if the US didn't have a dominant military? http://foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=33 31&print=1