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but if any western media channel behaved in the way they did, normal regulatory bodies would have shut them down long ago. Imagine the bias of Fox news multiplied by 100 and you begin to get the picture.

Forgive me, but what part of:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

do you not understand?

During the coup attempt against the Chavez government in 2002 the news channels deliberately manipulated news footage to make it look like Chavez supporters were shooting people. What do you think would happen to a US TV Station if it did something like that and the whole Channel was behind it?

Well, the factuality of this claim is in question. Assuming that we're talking about the same deaths during the coup (we might not be, of course), at least Freedom House agrees with the claim.

What would happen to a U.S. station if it incorrectly claimed government officials were involved in illegal murders? Well, we can already see how CNN was treated. Even if they hadn't issued a retraction they would have kept their broadcast license. Take a look around at all of the 9/11 conspiracy nonsense - where is the heavy hand of the U.S. government to silence it or keep it off the airwaves? Excluding the minds of the paranoid and delusional, nowhere. The U.S. government allows it. Why? Because we allow free speech and this is, in spite of all the nonsense we hear about, a free country. If anything the U.S. greatly benefits from having a free market of ideas, which inevitably includes numerous lemons.

What Venezuela needs is effective media monitors like Ofcom, perhaps with international observers.

Oh yeah, that's a great idea. Let's bring the magically impartial people who, unlike the rest of the world, do not bring in bias to their thought process. Then let's make them the ultimate gate keepers of what the people get to hear. And instead of censors, let's call them "media monitors" or "observers". That would be double plus good! No need to let the people hear those pesky claims of others and evaluate sources. They're too dumb for that sort of thing.

Also, the reason we keep hearing so much about Chavez is not because of his actions, it is because he is not a US ally. If he was a US ally and was doing these things, the media would be largely disinterested.

As an American who has lived in Latin America before (2 years in Argentina - slums of Buenos Aires, 3 months Chile - rather nice parts of Santiago), I must agree that media coverage of Latin America is lacking in the U.S.. Most people simply don't care about the area here in the states (prior to traveling to Argentina, numerous people asked me what part of Africa it was in), and that leads to little coverage unless something bad happens like, say, a country turning from democracy to a dictatorship very, very quickly.

We can play with the red herring of "people only dislike Venezuela because he dislikes the U.S.!" all we want. No need to defend the U.S. on this note - it has in the past, does in the present, and will in the future associate with many unsavory characters. That's the way international relations work, and if you can find a single country that hasn't done the same then please let me know. The question is not so much one of International Relations in my book as it is a matter of domestic government. That said, consider the following:

One claim against the station is that it allegedly helped a military coup, making it in the view of many "bad". If that's the case, then what about Chavez, who staged his own failed military coup in 1992? Was that not

On the Freedom House website, I found a PR (press) rating on a 0-40 scale, and a CL (civil liberties) rating on a 0-60 scale. You'll find that the USA gets a 37/40 for press, and 56/60 for civil liberties, exactly the same as Hungary. Italy gets a 39 and 53. France gets 38 and 55. Belgium, 39 and 58. The Scandinavian countries get perfect 40-60 results.

There is room for improvement there, but this is hardly pitiable.

Details can be seen on the subcategory page. That page includes a 1-7 rank for each country for both the Press and Civil scores. The US is ranked 1 in both areas, just like all of Europe. This may be a case in which Wikipedia has out-of-date or misleading information.

On the Freedom House website, I found a PR (press) rating on a 0-40 scale, and a CL (civil liberties) rating on a 0-60 scale. You'll find that the USA gets a 37/40 for press, and 56/60 for civil liberties, exactly the same as Hungary. Italy gets a 39 and 53. France gets 38 and 55. Belgium, 39 and 58. The Scandinavian countries get perfect 40-60 results.

There is room for improvement there, but this is hardly pitiable.

Details can be seen on the subcategory page. That page includes a 1-7 rank for each country for both the Press and Civil scores. The US is ranked 1 in both areas, just like all of Europe. This may be a case in which Wikipedia has out-of-date or misleading information.

I wonder if they take into account such matters as government presence and control in media

I'm willing to accept that if you can accept that basically all land throughout history was founded by stealing based on a sense of divine right. History is muddy with the footprints of people killing other people and taking their land. It did not stop until the last hundred years or so.

As for the rest...
http://www.freedomhouse.org/religion/news/bn2005/b n-2005-01-28.htm

WASHINGTON, DC, January 28, 2005 -- Freedom House's Center for Religious Freedom released today a new report exposing the dissemination of hate propaganda in America by the government of Saudi Arabia.... ... The report concludes that the Saudi government propaganda examined reflects a "totalitarian ideology of hatred that can incite to violence," and the fact that it is "being mainstreamed within our borders through the efforts of a foreign government, namely Saudi Arabia, demands our urgent attention."

    The documents stress that when Muslims are in the lands of the unbelievers, they must behave as if on a mission behind enemy lines

  One insidious aspect of the Saudi propaganda examined is its aim to replace traditional and moderate interpretations of Islam with extremist Wahhabism, the officially-established religion of Saudi Arabia. In these documents, other Muslims, especially those who advocate tolerance, are condemned as infidels.

elsewhere...

http://amsam.org/2005_03_01_archive.html
What Islamic schools are teaching
New York City: An investigation by the New York Daily News in 2003 found that books used in the city's Muslim schools "are rife with inaccuracies, sweeping condemnations of Jews and Christians, and triumphalist declarations of Islam's supremacy."

Los Angeles: The Omar Ibn Khattab Foundation donated 300 copies of the Koran (titled The Meaning of the Holy Quran) to the city school district in 2001 that had to be pulled from school libraries within months because of its anti-Semitic commentaries. One footnote reads: "The Jews in their arrogance claimed that all wisdom and all knowledge of Allah was enclosed in their hearts... Their claim was not only arrogance but blasphemy."

The Muslim Community School in Potomac, Maryland, imbues in its students a sense of alienation from their own country. Seventh-grader Miriam told a Washington Post reporter in 2001, "Being American is just being born in this country." Eighth-grader Ibrahim announced that "Being an American means nothing to me."

A textbook used at the Islamic Saudi Academy of Alexandria, Virginia, in 2004, authored and published by the Saudi Ministry of Education, teaches first-graders that "all religions, other than Islam, are false, including that of the Jews [and] Christians." An ISA class valedictorian, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, was recently indicted for plotting to assassinate President Bush.

[All this is assigned the usual code words of extremist and fundamentalist, when in fact it is an accurate representation of Islam as found in the Quran. And it is unmentioned that the same sort of anti-social behavior is encouraged by the Bible. The problem isn't a mis-representation and distortion of religion, the problem is religion itself.]

---

My perception of islam at this time is that they hide their true colors until they have a majority, then they impose islam- if need be violently.

I hope that can change in my lifetime. I'm very skeptical as long as the children are being taught this crap the cycle of violence is going to continue.

What little I did find supported the "90th percentile" assertion.

Citation please.

Try this. It lists them by "freedoms", however it's hard to define freedoms in such a way as to make good international comparisons, that and a former director was James Woolsey, a former CIA director, which has made some doubt its independence and neutrality.

Do you have any thoughts on if the US should do anything to prevent Al Qaeda from attaining its stated goal of killing 4,000,000 Americans?

OK. Lets do some research here. Here is some info about Paul Marshall. He's a scary looking American white dude. He is in "frequent demand" to tell people what they should here on such fringe "news" outlets like ABC Evening News; CBS Evening News; CNN; Fox; PBS; the BBC, Australian Broadcasting Corporation; Canadian Broadcasting Corporation; and South African Broadcasting Corporation. His work has been the subject of articles in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Washington Times, Boston Globe, Dallas Morning News, Christian Science Monitor, Weekly Standard, First Things, New Republic, Globe and Mail, Christianity Today, Decision, Reader's Digest and several hundred other newspapers and magazines. Not a very impressive list, eh? He also heads this place. Notice the other scary looking American white dude in the middle there.

Paul Marshall also wrote this book, which the book description says, "In an age when the relationship between politics and religion is becoming ever more important--and ever more blurred--both in America and beyond, God and the Constitution is an indispensable guide for Christians interested in exploring how they can interject their religious convictions into their political actions."

Oh, and the 4,000,000 link mentions a guy named Khalid Sheikh Muhammad. In case you don't know who he is, look here. Paul Marshall, in the pursuit of journalism objectiveness failed to mention anything beyond his scary name.

Oh, and the picture of the little girl was touching. I'm sure that its worse than any from what good old scary white Americans have done to people in Afghanistan, Iraq, not to mention Abu Ghraib, or Guitmo.

People like this, and this terrify me and others throughout the world. I've never had a beef with an Arab.

(1) http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=554
(2) http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=204& year=2005

From a historical perspective, since WWII electoral democracy is on the rise. http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=5

I think the OP might be referring to the Patriot Act, the torture and prisoner abuse in U.S.-run facilities in Iraq, the allegations of prisoner abuse at the U.S.-maintained detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or the use of wire taps by the U.S. govt. on U.S. citizens. All of these things are making the U.S. civil rights record look a little shoddy to the rest of the world and can take away from our creditability.

There are many countries that one could argue have a better existing civil rights situation currently. If you are really concerned you can check out http://www.freedomhouse.org/ where you can get all the facts on how free a country really is. For the record, the US is ranked amoung the highest.

According to the Freedom House Press Freedom rankings [PDF file], the U.S. is tied for 24th. It did drop about nine ranks since last year's survey [PDF file] (from 15 to 24), but that's due to a raw score drop of only two points (from 15 to 17).

According to the Freedom House Press Freedom rankings [PDF file], the U.S. is tied for 24th. It did drop about nine ranks since last year's survey [PDF file] (from 15 to 24), but that's due to a raw score drop of only two points (from 15 to 17).

There's so many to choose from! Ok, how about Freedom House instead? That gives the US an ideal rating of 1 in both categories (1 being most free 7 being least). Western Europe generally does teh same, though it's not so pretty in Eastern Europe. A number of countries there are still rated as "not free". http://www.freedomhouse.org/research/freeworld/200 5/table2005.pdf if you are interested. We can all find metrics to back up any point of view we like.

____________________

WORLD'S WORST REGIMES UNVEILED

Several of the World's Greatest Human Rights Violators Sit on UN Human Rights Panel

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND, March 31, 2005 -- Freedom House today released its annual list of the world's most repressive regimes at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. Six are members of the UN body, charged with monitoring and condemning human rights violations.

The report, "The Worst of the Worst: The World's Most Repressive Societies 2005," includes detailed summations of the dire human rights situations in Belarus, Burma (Myanmar), China, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Laos, Libya, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe. Chechnya, Tibet, and Western Sahara are included as territories under Russian, Chinese, and Moroccan jurisdictions respectively.

The report is available online.

Significantly, six of the eighteen most repressive governments--those of China, Cuba, Eritrea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Zimbabwe--are members of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), representing nearly 11 percent of the 53-member body. "Repressive governments enjoying CHR membership work in concert and have successfully subverted the Commission's mandate," said Freedom House Executive Director Jennifer Windsor. "Rather than serving as the proper international forum for identifying and publicly censuring the world's most egregious human rights violators, the CHR instead protects abusers, enabling them to sit in judgment of democratic states that honor and respect the rule of law," she said....

An additional nine countries Freedom House rates as "Not Free" enjoy membership on the Commission: Bhutan, Egypt, Guinea, Mauritania, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia, Swaziland, and Togo. Together, "Not Free" countries comprise just over one quarter of the Commission's membership.

_____________

--Mike Perry, Inkling Books, Seattle

____________________

WORLD'S WORST REGIMES UNVEILED

Several of the World's Greatest Human Rights Violators Sit on UN Human Rights Panel

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND, March 31, 2005 -- Freedom House today released its annual list of the world's most repressive regimes at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. Six are members of the UN body, charged with monitoring and condemning human rights violations.

The report, "The Worst of the Worst: The World's Most Repressive Societies 2005," includes detailed summations of the dire human rights situations in Belarus, Burma (Myanmar), China, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Laos, Libya, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe. Chechnya, Tibet, and Western Sahara are included as territories under Russian, Chinese, and Moroccan jurisdictions respectively.

The report is available online.

Significantly, six of the eighteen most repressive governments--those of China, Cuba, Eritrea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Zimbabwe--are members of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), representing nearly 11 percent of the 53-member body. "Repressive governments enjoying CHR membership work in concert and have successfully subverted the Commission's mandate," said Freedom House Executive Director Jennifer Windsor. "Rather than serving as the proper international forum for identifying and publicly censuring the world's most egregious human rights violators, the CHR instead protects abusers, enabling them to sit in judgment of democratic states that honor and respect the rule of law," she said....

An additional nine countries Freedom House rates as "Not Free" enjoy membership on the Commission: Bhutan, Egypt, Guinea, Mauritania, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia, Swaziland, and Togo. Together, "Not Free" countries comprise just over one quarter of the Commission's membership.

_____________

--Mike Perry, Inkling Books, Seattle

A 7/7 rating, in case you're wondering, is the worst a country can get and some of the countries pushing big to take the Internet out of U.S. hands and place it in the hands of the U.N. are China (7/6), Iran (6/6), North Korea (7/7), and Vietnam (7/6). In short, the world's hell-holes, places with good reasons to fear a free Internet.

Sadly, "The Man Who Will Save the Internet" is all too typical of the sort of tripe turned out by press correspondents the world over--fawning and inaccurate when is isn't hysterical and alarmist. This official may or may not patch together a tolerable compromise, but he's no savior. I'd be more impressive if the position were held by the Danish official who refused to meet with Muslim leaders over some political cartoons they disliked. He told them he was going to do nothing about them, so there was nothing to discuss. That's one European who should be made an honorary Texan!

--Mike Perry, Seattle, editor, Dachau Liberated

I believe calling for cops to be burned qualifies as "intention and knowledge that it may result in their personal injury", don't you?
Basically, European hate-speech laws prohibit public expression with the potential to cause violence against a group of people. You need only very basic knowledge of history to know why that is the case.

The laws in France, and unfortunately most of Europe, are there specifically to censor the public.

Could you please be a bit more specific? I really have no idea what you're talking about. Personally, I don't feel censored at all. The press is doing fine, too.

They are there to manipulate what information gets out, hell at least in the U.S. we don't try to erase our past, instead we embrace it, unlike many European countries where you you can't write about Nazi's (even in areas where it isn't illegal, it is still frowned upon and will get many eyes from the law looking at you).

I live in Germany. In history class we went through the transition to the Third Reich, the Holocaust and WW2 three times with increasing detail as we got older. So I guess what you mean is public display of the swastica which is indeed illegal with exceptions like art and education -- what you're not allowed to do is to wear it on a t-shirt or hang a flag out of your window. What the being frowned upon is concerned, this and last year's biggest German movie productions both were about Nazi Germany (yes, including swasticas) and they ran quite successfully.

The reason for this "censorship" is of course German history. Our constitution is designed to ensure the protection of the individual and of the democratic system. The first Paragraph is "Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority." It also prohibits censorship, but the protection of human dignity has a higher priority. That is a significant difference from having Free Speech as the first amendment, of course. "Censorship" of Nazi symbols, depending on context, follows the same reasoning. Imagine you'd be a Holocaust survivor and somebody would stand in front of you and shout "Heil Hitler", or waive the Nazi flag.
Also, any political movement aiming to abolish the constituion can be ruled illegal (in practice this is only done if they turn violent or gain significance for fear of making them go underground and losing methods of control). Nazis of course fall into the anti-constitutional category.

Ah, but democracy on its own won't do much to get people out of poverty. Congo is a "democratic republic", but allows little political freedom, and is riddled by conflict. Zimbabwe has a political system modelled on British democracy, but is run by a madman dictator who's killing thousands.

There are even "real" democracies in Africa (in the sense of having truly free elections) that suffer massive poverty; consider Zambia.

If you read anything about Live 8 beyond the concerts themselves, or about the issues at the G8 meeting, you'd know that the real causes of African poverty involve corruption among African leaders, lack of effective rule of law, and an unwillingness among the people to challenge the status quo. It's not like you can just do an Iraq -- invade, install democracy, and hope all goes well thereafter. These problems are complex and long-term.

Ok so which country isn't violating human rights? 2, 1, none? It's a nice piece of paper but few leaders seem to obey it when going gets tough.

Giving you the benefit of the doubt, I guess you are not trying to excuse China from blame because there are western democracies with flaws, or because the concept of human right inherently contains goal conflicts. To take a simple example is that to guarantee civil liberties a state has to impose taxes on its citizens effectively infringing on their property rights. To combat crime, it has to empower the police with powers that intrude on yours. The worse the crime situation in your country, the more powers, the less civil liberties. Of course, rampant crime limits your civil liberties, so it is all a game of trying to make it balance. Just the right amount of laws to maximize the rights of the citizens (or so the theory runs, governments, just like programming frameworks, can get its own life). Replace crime with terrorism, or war, as necessary. It is interesting to see how well these systems handle stress.

Anyway, Freedom House has the list: http://www.freedomhouse.org/research/survey2005.ht m

It's just a local ordinance. If you can afford a new heart, you can afford a plane ticket to a free country. Are there any?

Bravo!

I wish people wouldn't bring up this lie. It's not that we're stingy with our aid that people are starving. In fact, at some point, the more aid we give, the worse the situation gets. It undercuts local businesses, driving them away, and making the ones that stay incapable of producing. In the long term, that ruins an economy.

(Please note that I am not against giving aid altogether.)

One problem Theatetus didn't address is subsidies. When we subsidize our own agriculture too much, it drives the prices down for us - and also for other, poorer countries. Again, not good for local businesses in those countries. Just something to chew on.

But what I really wanted to get to was this:

Map of Freedom 2004

Find the countries with mass starvation on the map, and notice that, in general, they are not free. Also notice that those that produce terrorists are not free.

If you want to help world hunger (and simultaneously end terrorism), support spreading freedom - whether it's Bush, Blair, Howard, or Iranian student protesters.

As far as Communism is concerned, it merely underwent some transformations and is alive and well, last time seen spending lavishly in China while sipping Martinis.
I dunno what your smoking, but I want some of it. Now before you go about praising China to be some great utopia, maybe you should do some reading. It's OK, just a *little*. Here, let me help you help yourself with a provided link.
http://www.freedomhouse.org/research/freeworld/200 4/countryratings/china.htm

Also worth checking out for comparison's sake are the Freedom of the Press rankings put out by Freedom House.

Also worth checking out for comparison's sake are the Freedom of the Press rankings put out by Freedom House.

The Freedom House index of media freedom shows the countries with the most media freedom are (in order): Denmark, Iceland, Belgium, Finland, Norway, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Andorra, Monaco and then USA.

All the top countries are in ... Europe.

In any case, presumably you'd be the first to applaud Germany if they allowed complete freedom to spout Nazi propaganda, anti-semitism, racism, eastward imperialism, anti-Catholic screeds, state-sponsored prostitution, white supremacy and all the other rabid nonsense that happened before? Never mind that Europe suffered dreadfully as a result and would be horrified if Germany allowed such 'freedom'...

It will heavily depend on your metrics, which is why I said "among the freest." Well in the interest of full disclosure, here are some of my metrics: - Do I have an absolute right to speak my mind, no matter how hateful or divisive, so long as it does not directly harm (beyond hurt feelings/sensibilities) others? Do I have a corollary right not to support the speech of other private individuals with which I do not agree? - What percentage of my life's labor is exclusively for the benefit of the state? - How federal is the government? What is the balance of legal control between local and national governments? These are just a few off the top of my head. Freedom House has some pretty good metrics in my opinon (and they rank both the US and Norway as a "1" for both political and civil freedom, incidentally.) That said, is it really true that Norway has a state church supported by tax dollars?

Before throwing accusation only based on the hate of some Americans for the Germans and French, mainly fueled by the political international fiasco of the Iraq war you should look at this analysis of the free press around the world.

France and Germany are well respected free press countries. There is even this report of 2002 where Germany received a better rate for free press than USA.

USA is a great country with free press tradition but this doesn't means that other countries can't do a better job in this department.

Before throwing accusation only based on the hate of some Americans for the Germans and French, mainly fueled by the political international fiasco of the Iraq war you should look at this analysis of the free press around the world.

France and Germany are well respected free press countries. There is even this report of 2002 where Germany received a better rate for free press than USA.

USA is a great country with free press tradition but this doesn't means that other countries can't do a better job in this department.

I'd say your last three paragraphs here display a rather jaundiced and inaccurate view of life in the US, so, in the spirit of Jeane Kirkpatrick's witticism that it is important for Americans to `face the truth about themselves, no matter how pleasant it is', I'd like to address a few of the points you make there before speaking to the questions you raise earlier in your post.

You begin by saying:

Where is the liberty in our proportionally huge prison population bloated with nonviolent victims of prohibition? Too many people who go down the path Rush Limbaugh has end up in jail with manditory minimum sentences measured in decades. Is that more liberty than exists in England, the Netherlands, Denmark, etc., where prohibition is an afterthought and treatment for abuse comes first?

which is certainly an improvement in tone from a few posts back, when you were suggesting that any who disagreed with Dean's plan for tax hikes were themselves abusing prescription drugs, but still falls short of being a really weighty point. :-)

First off, we can probably both agree that some prohibition, particularly of marijuana is a bad idea -- no, don't bug your eyes out when I say that: remember that National Review and the Wall Street Journal are just about the only mainstream venues calling for decriminilization of marijuana -- but this is true not because of the number of people in jail for marijuana use, but because the criminalization of such a substance (whether or not it's use is a good idea -- it's not) is a bad idea, and one which, in the case of lesser drugs such as marijuana, almost certainly does more harm than good to the state of the rule of law in the US.

But smoking a joint is hardly the most dangerous and damaging activity for the government to prohibit, so let's look at the state of civil liberties in the countries which you claim are `more free' than the US:

• England:

  Now don't get me wrong, I like England -- I value them as an ally, and I've lived and worked in London at several points. But if you think that England is somehow `more free' than the US, you're mistaken.

  We are, after all, talking about a country which has:

  • prior restraint and other restrictions on the press
  • extensive censorship of ISPs
  • the Official Secrets Act (compare the criminal penalties placed on newspapers publishing such information in the UK with the upholding of the free press in the `pentagon papers' case),
  • and is working on mandatory biometrics files for most of the population.

  England is also facing legislation which would eliminate the right to a jury trial for most or all offenses,

  conclusion: friendlier to drugs, perhaps -- but certainly not `more free'.

• Netherlands:

  While Amsterdam is certainly pot-friendly, the Netherlands are not otherwise a particularly civil rights utopia. To start with, the Dutch have extensive laws providing for punishment of unpopular positions in the name of preventing `hate speech' (one preacher, for example, was recently fined a substantial amount of money for advocating caps on immigration). And that's not even asking why the Dutch police refused to provide protection to a popular but controversial politician who had received death threats, and who was murdered shortly thereafter.

  Conclusion: drug-friendly for sure, but `more free'? Only if your opinions are popular.

• Denmark:

  Her

Er, don't worry about Laotian "biz people" selling out their countrymen. Worry about the Laotian government's of torture and repression.

I hope the Laos Government is getting totally screwed. Laos's government is one of the sixteen Most Repressive Regimes on Earth.

Examples include the periodic banning of "The Economst", arresting people holding a peaceful demonstration against the government, encouraging eugenics (i. e. breeding "smart" people), etc. The former prime minister, Lee Quan Yew, had implemented a policy of eugenics. These and other shocking examples of civil-rights/human-rights violations are described at "Singaporean-statistics web page" by Freedom House. Singapore has a law called the Internal Security Act. It is the Chinese version of the Patriot Act and is a clear violation of civil liberties. Further, most Chinese support the Singaporean laws. They even support the laws that banned or restricted "Time Magazine", "Far Eastern Economic Review", and "The Economist".

Singapore is an example of what the Chinese have done. It is also an example of what the United States must never become.

We Americans must protest the Patriot Act and its variants. We must support civil liberties and human rights. Otherwise, our society will degenerate into a place like Singapore or, worse, China.

Examples include the periodic banning of "The Economst", arresting people holding a peaceful demonstration against the government, encouraging eugenics (i. e. breeding "smart" people), etc. The former prime minister, Lee Quan Yew, had implemented a policy of eugenics. These and other shocking examples of civil-rights/human-rights violations are described at "Singaporean-statistics web page" by Freedom House. Singapore has a law called the Internal Security Act. It is the Chinese version of the Patriot Act and is a clear violation of civil liberties. Further, most Chinese support the Singaporean laws. They even support the laws that banned or restricted "Time Magazine", "Far Eastern Economic Review", and "The Economist".

Singapore is an example of what the Chinese have done. It is also an example of what the United States must never become.

We Americans must protest the Patriot Act and its variants. We must support civil liberties and human rights. Otherwise, our society will degenerate into a place like Singapore or, worse, China.

Oh, well. Let me do it for you: "-1, Offtopic."

Muslim doesn't represent terrorism to 2/3 of the world, only the US and the Jewish states (oh that includes the US i think).

And New Yorker stock analysts don't represent oppression to 2/3 of the world, only Marxists (speaking of REAL knock on the door in the middle of the night jackbooted, "workers paradise" gulag opression) and Klansmen/Nazi's (ditto) Ever notice how close either extreme really are to each other? Either way the state will MAKE you be what it wants you to be and all your problems are caused by "The international Banking Conspicary" not your own irresponsible decisions or the failings (corruption, oppression, etc) of your own government.

I won't argue that *some* banks and corporations aren't complicit in oppression around the world but it is governments that are DOING the oppression - gulags, "dissapearances", murders, genocides etc. The argument against those businessmen is NOT generally that the oppress anyone themselves but that they are willing to do business with or aid or seek the aid of those who are. But just as most Arabs are NOT terrorist most businessmen (and certainly most of their employees) are NOT oppresing anyone outside of the fantasies of losers like the KKK (& their islamic equivalent) or other sad little extremists that are upset they are not the ones that get to do the oppressing.

As for Arabs & Muslims not having a reputation outside of the US and the Jewish states (aside from Israel which other state(s) are jewish?) I think you could find a few Pakistani's Indians Filipinos Indonesians, Susanese, Kenyans & Tanzanians, Germans, Brits, Egyptians, Turks, Swedes, French, Austrians, Romanians, etc. etc. etc. that have fairly sound reasons to disagree with you. The point is not that Muslim==Terrorist but that SOME muslims are and the argument you made that because SOME businessmen (or Muslims) are guilty of oppression (or terrorism) that means ALL businessmen (or Muslims) are guilty and deserve to have a plane flown into their office (or drop bombs on their village). If your argument is collective guilt fine - but it is a two-way street and you have no basis if you adhere to it to protest even *intentional* civillian deaths.

BTW what would I want with a loan?

I don't know, I didn't suggets that you did. Just that not getting one, or having to pay it back if you DID get one is not being oppressed. Two contradictory reasons bankers are often accused of "oppressing" people.

I maintain no such thing. I said that income and purchasing power are not in themselves indicative of the standard of living. They form metrics which, when combined with other metrics, can give someone an idea of the standard of living.

Certainly there are plenty of other conditions one might consider when deciding where to live -- climate, language, proximity to friends, you name it. Thus I will not say `the US is a better place to live for you'. I will say two things: first that more people move to the US each year than to any other nation on earth, and second that the US is the most free, the most democratic, and the most prosperous nation on earth, and to whatever degree you value these things, the US will do well in your measure.

Only if you count cash in hand. Americans are in fact more deeply in debt than swedes. Look. It comes down to the difference between net-worth and cashflow. Americans have high cashflow. Lots more cash in hand, but many more expenses. Swedes earn less, but don't need as much money to lead similar lives.

There are two problems with this claim. The first is that `savings' often does not include many forms of investments, and Americans as a nation are highly invested. The second, and more telling is that Americans consume so much more than Swedes do that you cannot claim that Americans could not save as much, if they wished to. This is a cultural difference, and largely reflects the fact that Americans are much more confident that they will see economic growth in the years ahead.

But ok. How about this [worldaudit.org] then?

How about it? It provides very little information about how it reaches its numbers, and many of the sources it cites are groups with noted biases in this area (Human Rights Watch comes immediately to mind). For a report of this sort which works harder to back its claims, see Freedom House's annual report for 2001. Ironically, the audit you cite claims Freedom House as one of their main sources, but reaches very different results.

There are several studies available that try to reduce this question to science; the best I've found are:

Freedom House (political rights and civil liberties): http://freedomhouse.org/ratings/index.htm.

Fraser Institute (economic focus): http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/publications/books/e con_free_2000/.

Also, the U.S. State Department does on on religious freedom: http://www.state.gov/www/global/human_rights/irf/i rf_rpt/index.html.

There are several studies available that try to reduce this question to science; the best I've found are:

Freedom House (political rights and civil liberties): http://freedomhouse.org/ratings/index.htm.

Fraser Institute (economic focus): http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/publications/books/e con_free_2000/.

Also, the U.S. State Department does on on religious freedom: http://www.state.gov/www/global/human_rights/irf/i rf_rpt/index.html.

There are several studies available that try to reduce this question to science; the best I've found are:

Freedom House (political rights and civil liberties): http://freedomhouse.org/ratings/index.htm.

Fraser Institute (economic focus): http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/publications/books/e con_free_2000/.

Also, the U.S. State Department does on on religious freedom: http://www.state.gov/www/global/human_rights/irf/i rf_rpt/index.html.

Freedom House has been doing this since 1970.

>Okay, choosing ways to measure is going to be hard. Do high tax rates count as an infringement
>on freedom? Does a high incidence of crime count against a country? Do export restrictions
>really hurt people within the country, or do they just infringe the liberty of people outside
>the country?

Freedom House's rankings do not directly measure such things, and some of what it does look for is biased towards higher government expenditure (and thus higer taxes.

>I honestly have no idea if such a measure exists, nor whether the US would top the poll or
>not. I just wonder. If you could point the media at such a poll and get them to tell the
>population "These things are stopping us from calling ourselves the most free nation on earth"
>would it be easier to get them to do something about it (IE stop voting for it).

The United States places quite well in the Freedom House ratings, but there are criticisms in their report. In terms of economic freedom, the United States likely leads the pack by a more significant margin than in other measures.

Freedom House has been doing this since 1970.

>Okay, choosing ways to measure is going to be hard. Do high tax rates count as an infringement
>on freedom? Does a high incidence of crime count against a country? Do export restrictions
>really hurt people within the country, or do they just infringe the liberty of people outside
>the country?

Freedom House's rankings do not directly measure such things, and some of what it does look for is biased towards higher government expenditure (and thus higer taxes.

>I honestly have no idea if such a measure exists, nor whether the US would top the poll or
>not. I just wonder. If you could point the media at such a poll and get them to tell the
>population "These things are stopping us from calling ourselves the most free nation on earth"
>would it be easier to get them to do something about it (IE stop voting for it).

The United States places quite well in the Freedom House ratings, but there are criticisms in their report. In terms of economic freedom, the United States likely leads the pack by a more significant margin than in other measures.