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In the book "The China Price", a factory worker is discussed who had his hand mangled in an injection molder. He was left to fend for himself with a tiny bit of "compensation" from the factory. No wonder smart people in China want to avoid factory jobs -- they are not like factory jobs in the USA. See:
"The China Price: The True Cost of Chinese Competitive Advantage" by Alexandra Harney
http://www.amazon.com/The-China-Price-Competitive-Advantage/dp/0143114867
"In this landmark work of investigative reporting, former Financial Times correspondent Alexandra Harney uncovers a story of immense significance to us all: how China's factory economy gains a competitive edge by selling out its workers, environment, and future. Harney's firsthand reporting brings us face-to-face with a world in which intense pricing pressure from Western companies combines with ubiquitous corruption and a lack of transparency to exact a staggering toll in human misery and environmental damage. This eye-opening expose offers, for the first time, an intimate look at the defining business story of our time."

China is already moving to increase automation. From a couple years ago:
http://ww5.plasticsnews.com/china/english/headlines2.html?id=1278958338
"In the wake of labor unrest, Chinese factories are adding automation to control rising labor costs. It was bound to happen."

The same issues will play out as in the USA with a declining need for most human labor in all areas. For ideas on what to do about it:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html

I also don't understand why China does not just print money to give out as a "basic income" to Chinese citizens so they can buy Chinese factory products (eventually recycled by taxes when the money supply grows to the right size). While in the past it might have made sense for Chinese factory workers to accept low wages as a sort of "tax" so China could learn how to make things based on Western know-how, it seems that has passed the point of diminishing returns. The big issue is that the Chinese don't have enough cash to buy their own goods, and that should be relatively easy to solve. I guess even the Chinese don't understand modern fiat-dollar economics, let alone the emerging post-scarcity economic model? Of course, I could say much the same about the USA, where there is a shortage of money supply because so much digital cash is either sitting on the sidelines parked in zero interest bank accounts or is in the zero-sum "casino economy" on Wall Street. Related links:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/an-emergency-program-of-monetary-reform-for-the-united-states/5494
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3p48upXJaA&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
http://www.moneyasdebt.net/

Do you also believe that the gas companies send agents around the world to assassinate researchers every time they get close to discovering "free energy" or carburetors that will make any car in the world get 100 mpg?

De-chartering Unocal. Unocal has been accused of aiding and supporting human rights violations in Burma and with the Taliban in Afghanistan. In 2001 President Bush recognized almost immediately the leaders of the coup against the democratically elected president of Venezuela Chavez. Many people believe the Afghan and Iraqi invasions are for oil. Some think the same of the accusations against Iran.

Falcon

If that document says what you're telling me it says ... it goes against all the latest information on temperatures. Either way, if NASA is able to observe current sunspot activity correctly (here's a hint... they have the technology) , then we will see pretty soon. I'm willing to wager that it will be proven that solar activity is what has actually driven all recent changes. Anthropomorphic causes are secondary, in fact completely minor and probably irrelevant.

Since you probably have access to that document or you wouldn't have been citing it... can you explain what "In the end, the greenhouse-gas-induced warming is largely overwhelming the other forcings, which are only of secondary importance on the 20-year timescale." ... Are they actually saying that solar activity is of secondary importance???

Then we get the ill-cited references to people being sued "left and right" for supposedly doing nothing wrong.

That is laughable. It does not take a rocket scientist to use Google and see how many lawsuits for patent infringement monsanto has slapped on people.

The labeling nonsense was just a away around the lack of any good science against GMO. If you can't prove they're harmful, you'll just use scare labels to confuse people.

Confuse them? How about give them knowledge that it's genetically produced so that they at least know they are unpaid guinea pigs. The CA law is that they label products "Made with GMO" so people know what they are ingesting. People realized long ago that certain preservatives are bad for them, as are numerous artificial sweeteners. They must be labeled because.. they were found to be harmful to people. GMOs are relatively untested. The overwhelming majority of testing is coming from Monsanto. Don't you see the obvious conflict of interest? I'm picking on Monsanto here, but they are not the only company providing their own testing for their own products claiming they are safe. Red die number 5 was also safe according to the manufacturer. It took years to get it pulled, at the cost of thousands of lives and millions of dollars in lawsuits.

Name some of this "science" showing how bad GMOs are. Maybe you'll reference the French study, which pro and anti-GMO alike soundly criticized.

Google is not that hard to use, quite honestly you should be ashamed to ask. Here is a link by searching for "GMO bee death", and here is an interesting read about the French study which you claim is bad. Follow up, smearing a study is not the same as providing another study to show the French study was wrong in it's findings. How much money has Monsanto spent smearing the team compared to how much it would have cost to fund an additional independent study?

My "usual nonsense" is not quite usual nonsense. I wish I could say the same regarding your response.

Wrong, that received the blame publicly. There are many and numerous studies showing that links between GMOs and bees are a universal issue. Here is an article, but feel free to read more. Could it be that GMO is a red herring like wireless was a red herring? Possibly, but we are ignoring problems and continuing with release. You see no problem with that? Should we not find the root cause before we move forward?

It is apparently $4 for gas because of oil speculation: http://www.globalresearch.ca/perhaps-60-of-today-s-oil-price-is-pure-speculation/8878
Speculation accounts for 60% of the cost of gas they say. Bit of a long read but I'm convinced.

Yeah because the acid rain (and the jobs those factories had) simply went to China which as long as we have globalism is all you will EVER do, you will simply move the problem to a third world country that don't play by your rules.

Again not a problem for the 3% that will make out like Gods, after all they have been bleeding the third world for decades, who gives a fuck about yellow and brown people? hell they can suck a tail pipe, what matters is the rich get richer! America Fuck Yeah! Gonna screw the poor and the third world together yeah..

Obama is a good man.

If you define someone who carries on the Bush policies of drone warfare who targets more brown children than Bush ever did as a "good man"...sure, you're spot on.

http://www.kesq.com/news/Drones-color-Pakistan-s-view-of-election/-/233092/17287934/-/xehcmcz/-/index.html
http://www.globalresearch.ca/drone-attacks-are-acts-of-terrorism-168-children-killed-in-america-s-drone-war-in-pakistan-photographic-evidence/30603

I would lead a bit differently than I but he's NOT a "Baby Killer",

Is it mincing words to call him a "Child Killer" instead of a "Baby Killer"?
I don't like either Romney nor Obama, but at least Romney doesn't have blood on his hands by way of a high tech Milgram experiment (droning, death "without consequence").

He's your president. He's your supreme leader.

Hogwash. Tell that to Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, an American citizen who was killed without a trial and due process.
Sorry, just because he didn't push the button doesn't mean he isn't to be held accountable for the savage action. Your "supreme leader" is a traitor to the Constitution he has sworn to uphold, and does not deserve the respect you think he does.

Are "American interests" worth more than a human life of someone in a country that the US is not at war with ? (in Yemen, Pakistan, etc)

. . . are naturally cool.
And the crucial news to the American side:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/110039863/A-Lawsuit-Against-Private-Equity

http://www.globalresearch.ca/does-the-romney-family-now-own-your-e-vote/5308911?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=does-the-romney-family-now-own-your-e-vote

Through a closely held equity fund called Solamere, Mitt Romney and his wife, son and brother are major investors in an investment firm called H.I.G. Capital. H.I.G. in turn holds a majority share and three out of five board members in Hart Intercivic, a company that owns the notoriously faulty electronic voting machines that will count the ballots in swing state Ohio November 7. Hart machines will also be used elsewhere in the United States.


http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-2012-us-presidential-non-election-which-brand-of-fascism-this-time/5308307

. . . are naturally cool.
And the crucial news to the American side:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/110039863/A-Lawsuit-Against-Private-Equity

http://www.globalresearch.ca/does-the-romney-family-now-own-your-e-vote/5308911?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=does-the-romney-family-now-own-your-e-vote

Through a closely held equity fund called Solamere, Mitt Romney and his wife, son and brother are major investors in an investment firm called H.I.G. Capital. H.I.G. in turn holds a majority share and three out of five board members in Hart Intercivic, a company that owns the notoriously faulty electronic voting machines that will count the ballots in swing state Ohio November 7. Hart machines will also be used elsewhere in the United States.


http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-2012-us-presidential-non-election-which-brand-of-fascism-this-time/5308307

www.vanityfair.com/politics/2012/07/benjamin-netanyahu-on-israel-mitt-romney
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25003
http://theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/islamophobia_no_longer_even_questioned

(everyone has a very slanted take on this, so I thought I'd post a cross-section)

I haven't heard anything about "wiping the Jewish world off the map" either; The Iranian government wants the Israeli government gone as it is unabashadly anti-Islam; the Israeli government wants to nuke Iran because it sees the Iranian government as an anti-Zion threat.

Both sides are high on rhetoric, and have been for hundreds of years. The US supports both sides, but is interested in keeping Jewish-controlled Israel in control of Jerusalem and Gaza. Tehran wants the state of Israel, as erected by the west, removed from the map. Literally. They're not talking about nuking Israel, they're talking about changing the political makeup and boundaries of the physical area. This is the politics of the situation, and has nothing to do with individual intolerance or hate -- those are a completely separate issue.

Put a different way: Iran wants Israel off the map the same way that Yugoslavia is now off the map, and the same way that the colony of Hong Kong is now off the map (or the USSR for that matter).

Of course, Iran dreams of being Persia again as well....

The June 2010 issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry published a study of 18,300 Army soldiers screened at 3 and 12 month intervals following deployment in Iraq. The study found that using “the least stringent definition” for PTSD, rates now range between 20 and 30 percent, and depression rates are at 11.5 and 16 percent.[2] Together this accounts for almost a third of our troops now suffering serious functional mental impairment. source

The fact that he has that link on his Slashdot homepage is, in fact, a complete excuse from the accusation of being a shill. What the Microsoft publicity people seem to do which is wrong and illegal (in most sensible jurisdictions) is pretend to be normal members of the public when in fact they are being paid.

What this guy should clearly be attacked for instead is

• attacking Ecuador's human rights record without mentioning that he works for an organisation which destroyed Equador's democracy in the 1960s and continues to do so.
• completely failing to mention that Sweden could easily just guarantee not to extradite Assange to the USA, thereby making the whole issue irrelevant
• and so on...

The involiability of embassies is something which the USA and the UK have much more reason to care about than most countries. The idea that people should be post-justifying the hostage taking at the US embassy in Iran by making embassies subject to the vagaries of random decisions of local law is outrageous.

"Climate Change" is a natural phenomenon. Climate has always been changing, in regular intervals, since the Earth was formed. And the variations in the Earth's temperature are due to changes in activity of the entity who warms it - the Sun. It's the variations in the Earth's temperature that lead to variations in the CO2 levels, and not the other way around. And this happens with a 800 years discrepancy. (Read the explanation here or here.)

The whole story about "Man-made Global Warming" is a fraud. (See this very good documentary, for example.)

The main scientists involved in this great swindle have already been exposed in a scandal known as "Climategate", in which it was denounced that the scientific data presented has been faked.

This hasn't only been exposed in the so-called alternative media, but has also been talked about in the mainstream one.

(I'm surprised that the people at slashdot don't seem to have read about this(?)...)

You are all being brainwashed and lied to. And this whole story is just an excuse to preserve valuable natural resources for the elites promoting it.

(And no, I'm not an ignorant person who doesn't read scientific or generalistic newspapers (controlled by this same persons). I'm a person who also swallowed this fraud for about 10 years, until I realized I was being lied to...)

"Climate Change" is a natural phenomenon. The Earth's climate has always been changing, in regular intervals, since the Earth was formed. And the variations in the Earth's temperature are due to changes in the activity of the entity who warms it - the Sun. It's the variations in the Earth's temperature that lead to variations in CO2 levels, and not the other way around. And this happens with a 800 years discrepancy. (See explanation here or here.)

The whole story about "Man-Made Global Warming" is a fraud. (See this very good documentary, for example.)

The main scientists involved in this swindle have already been exposed in a scandal known as "Climategate", in which it was denounced that the data presented has been faked.

This was not only exposed in the so-called alternative media, but has also been talked about in the mainstream one.

(I'm surprised that the people at slashdot don't seem to have read about this(?)...)

You are all being brainwashed and lied to. And this whole story is only a big excuse to preserve valuable natural resources for the elites promoting this lie.

And no, I'm not an ignorant person who doesn't read newspapers (controlled by this same persons). I'm a person who also swallowed this fraud for about 10 years, until I realized I was being lied to.

This is a PR move by the FBI. It makes them APPEAR to be an actor for justice - it matters of little consequence, except those personally involved.

Another oxymoron for America? How about "Justice Department"?

4 Years - and not ONE criminal indictment perused against the "investment" and reserve Banksters. Surely, the FBI could better spend their time and resources to ensure that the entire country is safe from another criminal fraud, costing tens of Billions, no?

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/05/06/why-can-t-obama-bring-wall-street-to-justice.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/may/20/wall-street-role-financial-crisis

http://www.propublica.org/article/why-no-financial-crisis-prosecutions-official-says-its-just-too-hard

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/nov/10/should-some-bankers-be-prosecuted/?pagination=false

http://www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=30979

BTW: The Fed knew about LIBOR fixing specific to Barclays and beyond... in 2008.
http://news.firedoglake.com/2012/07/14/barclays-employee-to-ny-fed-2008-we-know-that-were-not-posting-um-an-honest-libor/

So what's our precious FBI doing about examining THAT evidence?

Clearly, you do not live in Canada, maybe you did a while back or know someone who did. The 2011 national census was processed by Lockheed Martin. Don't get me started. Canada is for sale. Harper isn't our prime minister, he's our liquidator, elected by fraud.

Watch out for RIM, they're really sharp cats with equity to ride out the storm. Mark my words, they don't want to be bought out. Now that Apple has given up their crown as user-oriented developers in favour of content delivery, RIM stands alone. They're entrenching as opposed to making waves. They'll be my entire stock portfolio when I get word to buy.

The 2011 Canadian census was processed by Lockheed Martin. Under the Patriot Act, Homeland Security can compel any US company to surrender any data, and can also compel them to withhold all information about the surrender of data. So if Homeland Security wanted the 2011 Canadian census data, they could get it, and nobody would hear about it.

This represents a definitive intelligence test. If you think they don't already have it, you're incredibly stupid.

Here in the Netherlands Internet has become a primary good (A good that is required to be living in the Netherlands). Maybe this is not encoded yet officially in law; but the government requires its citizens to file their taxes through the Internet.

If you would be cut off the internet by a law like ACTA you would have a good case of not having to pay income tax anymore since you would not be able to file them. *This would only work for people who are self employed, since people who work for a boss already pay all their income taxes.

In case you are wondering; it is not possible to use a paper form to fill in your income taxes anymore.

I love it, "cut off the internet by a law like ACTA you would have a good case of not having to pay income tax anymore", not that I believe it would work in practice.

You have one thing very, very right, Internet should be a right, based on birth, for every citizen. Today its the only way to stay informed. As too many other media channels are payed, extremely well, to lie to people...and do it regularly.

• There are so many excellent examples where the news media has tried and failed to suppress news,
• ~ Fukushima (well over 10X worse than Chernobyl (85 X if building collapses) and unstoppable for next 10 years minimum, radiation spreading worldwide through precipitation, currents and winds. Oh that building, not a matter of IF only WHEN it will fall.);
• ~ Chernobyl (25 years after, levels of Cesium have not dropped as expected given a 30 year half life, impact much worse than reported);
• ~ US Bank Bailouts (Check out Rolling Stones reporter Matt Taibbi's many articles about how Americans have been bamboozled by all players);
• ~ Wall Street protests (99% vs 1%, this Spring the crack down will be harsh...its a presidential election year after all);
• ~ Worldwide financial reform (All nations should take Icelands lead and kick out the World Bankers and Corpers, of course Iceland had a law that allowed its citizens to oppose politicians that do not vote their will, unique in the world.);
• ~ Oil/gas/fracking pollution
  • Some OIl/Gas/Fracking Examples:
  • ~ Exxon Valdez - fines still not paid as of 2012, company using courts to wait until claimants die off.;
  • - Deep Water Oil Spill in 2000 in Norway; proves BP lied when they said an event like this had never happened before...and the whole oil industry knew this simple fact, of course they police, err protect their own, even if their methods and very business kill billions of consumers. I agree its not logical, but you can not dispute their actions.
  • ~ BP Oil continuing to spill and kill off industries/people all over Southeastern US, Mexico, Cuba, South America. Eastern USA coast, the Caribbean and the entire Atlantic. The article, May 21, 2010, was only reporting 70,000 barrels leaking per day, which we now know is much lower than reality, the amount of oil does not matter, the Gulf has been poisoned and it can NOT be completely cleaned out, watch the video, learn how the underwater plumes (rarely talked about) literally strip the ocean of life. How long will it take the micro-organisms that supposedly eat this poison to eat it all, if they even can and what are the ramifications of that? (Disclaimer: The oil companies are saying that there is a micro-organism that eats oil...so grain of salt)
  • ~ cancerous Dispersants (used to hide truth, sink oil, no other value at all but to hide the truth); OIl can be cleaned if it reaches the surface

It's the reason people are terrified of terrorists getting nuclear arms. Because they simply don't care about the backlash.

So the primary qualification of a terrorist is the willingness to use weapons of mass destruction upon a civilian population with impunity?

Depleted uranium munitions (aka dirty bombs) fired by US forces into civilian areas in Iraq: 340 TONS - Casualties: immeasurable and counting, 7 digits for sure - Backlash: zero

The good news is that using depleted uranium munitions is actually a great cost saver for US taxpayers. It's a cheap way to dispose of nuclear waste while irradiating a foreign civilian population looking for WMD's you know don't exist. Oh wait, just kidding... I'm sure they billed US taxpayers a shitload for the privilege of disposing of their nuclear waste and making sure the "real terrorists" keep trying to attack America. How else can the US justify a "defense" budget that vastly exceeds all other countries combined?

Given our current lack of World Empire

"The US has established its control over 191 governments which are members of the United Nations. The conquest, occupation and/or otherwise supervision of these various regions of the World is supported by an integrated network of military bases and installations which covers the entire Planet (Continents, Oceans and Outer Space). All this pertains to the workings of an extensive Empire, the exact dimensions of which are not always easy to ascertain."

Link

When your currency is used as world currency, when your troops are deployed all over the world, when you control many international mechanisms, when you menace and punish those who disagree with you, you are an empire - even if you don't call it this way.

Your premise is rejected for the following:
Your source appears to be very biased with an agenda to prove. By no means a proper reference. Troops are deployed in many areas this is true. However, what you're not taking into account is that nearly all of those deployments are part of mutual defense pacts. Germany for instance does host a few large US bases, but surely you wouldn't call them conquered. The USD is the current world currency. However, that too is generally by choice as for the last few decades it was the logical choice.

Who was punished for merely disagreeing? Did we bomb Germany and the other countries for not going along with the silliness in Iraq? Clearly if they're part of the "Empire" as you seem to be saying those counties should be punished for daring to refuse to provide troops and materials, right?

You keep using that Empire word, it doesn't mean what you think it means.

Given our current lack of World Empire

"The US has established its control over 191 governments which are members of the United Nations. The conquest, occupation and/or otherwise supervision of these various regions of the World is supported by an integrated network of military bases and installations which covers the entire Planet (Continents, Oceans and Outer Space). All this pertains to the workings of an extensive Empire, the exact dimensions of which are not always easy to ascertain."

Link

When your currency is used as world currency, when your troops are deployed all over the world, when you control many international mechanisms, when you menace and punish those who disagree with you, you are an empire - even if you don't call it this way.

I do agree that "More important IMO to use our nukes as a nuke deterrent than a general deterrent", but I thought we were talking about worst-case scenario when functional nuclear-tipped missile is launched against US mainland, in which case "glass parking lot" might be an appropriate (over-)reaction (not that I would advocate that personally, before exhausting all other means). But, think, if someone would be lauching a missile at the US, wouth they really put just a little conventional bomb in it? (big conventional bomb is much better delivered by a bomber).

Saddam, Iran, NoKo??? Come on! Saddam could not treaten US mainland; yes, he could strike against US bases over there (Saudi Arabia), but what are we doign there in the first place? Iran has not attacked another state for couple hundred years (Iran-Iraq war was started by Iraq). For bonus points, read what really was (deliberately mis-) "translated" as "Israel must be wiped off the map" here: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=4527
NoKo? Again, crazy regime, which can barely feed their own people, and initially had interest in US only because US got itself in that Korean war.

"stated reason for some of the international dislike for us right now"? Hmm, do you honestly believe that "stated" reasons by the governments of the world would be their real reasons? Rhetorics of "US is The Great Satan" works great to unify, say, Iranian population to stay behind their government (or, at least, not owerthrow it), but it has little to do with what is really going on. From what I hear (and from personal experience, having grown up in Soviet Russia ;) ), normal people are not turned into suicide bombers after watching a Hollywood movie, moreover, majority probably like it and even go to great lenght to hide the fact that they watch those "evil" things if local Gov't position is hostile -- except, maybe, in France -- wait, they have lots of nukes too, let's point our missile shield at France then! ;-)

"Also, some people are really just assholes" -- agreed! And US helps keeping them in power by providing a convenient external enemy image too... Can assholes really deliver a nuke on an ICBM *despite* knowing that they will be annihilated is totally different question though.

Again, how do you propose to pay for that shield, in the light of what your signature says? I do not think I would have replied to you if I have not noticed that contradiction and got curious how do you manage to have two conflicting views simultaneously...

For the record, I do think that strong defence is a legitimate function of Federal government (one of very few), and if your proposal is to downsize everything else (move it to individual state level) and spend 50% of Defence budget on building impenetrable missile shield, I would be fine with that. Building that shield *in addition* to empire building, meddling all over the world, and provoking people to test just how good your shiled is -- well, you will find soon enough that it is not affordable and not wise.

Paul B.

They're paid by unit of work done by the prisoners as well as per capita. Very lucrative business having slaves where the upkeep is paid for by the tax payers and the profits of the labor go to the stock holders.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8289

Don't forget the slave labour that keeps America productive and raises industry profits.

According to the Left Business Observer, the federal prison industry produces 100% of all military helmets, ammunition belts, bullet-proof vests, ID tags, shirts, pants, tents, bags, and canteens. Along with war supplies, prison workers supply 98% of the entire market for equipment assembly services; 93% of paints and paintbrushes; 92% of stove assembly; 46% of body armor; 36% of home appliances; 30% of headphones/microphones/speakers; and 21% of office furniture. Airplane parts, medical supplies, and much more: prisoners are even raising seeing-eye dogs for blind people.

From http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8289

But the costs are externalized. A lot of people are making money off the new slave labor.

Because the government will invade your country if you dare consider using another currency. You know Iraq had switched to the Euro for oil, the US sure didn't like that. So if google actually pushed a currency the government couldn't manipulate with the bank controlled FED they'd be signing their own execution papers.

It is also hypocritical for America to refuse to buy products manufactured in china but not America, considering America has kept slave labor around for years, we just call it prison labor. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8289

Thanks for the comments. Yes, that site could be a lot better. I want it to be hosted in the best and fanciest peer-to-peer distributed semantic tools (that I help write), but until then I've ended up with the lowest of the low plain HTML. :-) Shoemaker's children, I guess. :-)

You're right about potential new bottlenecks, but there is a big difference between, say, people not getting enough food to eat and people not getting enough attention, like Abraham Maslow talked about:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs

We now probably have enough as a global society, even with a big population, that we probably don't need to ration the basics (if we did not divert 90%+ of our resources to competition, guarding, and warfare -- example, every checkout clerk is a guard, teachers are mostly guards, lawyers are mostly guards, much medicine is now defensive, etc.). Even if we do not, we will be there very soon with new energy sources, with new materials, with 3D printing, and with robotics in general. Potentially, we could support quadrillions of simultaneous human lives with the resources in the solar system, each having access to far more energy and matter than a typical Earth-dweller.

Instead of doing that, the USA has seeded Iraq with depleted uranium? Makes no long-term sense.
"Depleted Uranium Radioactive Contamination In Iraq: An Overview"
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=3116
"Horror Of US Depleted Uranium In Iraq Threatens World"
http://www.rense.com/general64/du.htm
"Iraq Depleted Uranium Contamination Linked To Illness, Deformities & Death"
http://consciouslifenews.com/iraq-depleted-uranium-contamination-linked-to-illness-deformities-death/114318/
"The report also states that total deformities are around 11 times the world average, and that the number is rising. The report is the first study done on births during 2010, and it shows "unprecedented levels" of birth deformities [in Falluja], which suggests that the longer adults are exposed to the contamination, the more their children will be affected by the DU."

As Bucky Fuller said, whether it will be "Utopia or Oblivion" will be a touch-and-go relay race up to the very end.

Will people still have the equivalent of a military? Well, it's true that most organisms have some way to avoid predators or to consume other organisms or external resources or to compete in various ways, so yes, I can't disagree. Something I wrote on that theme:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/a-rant-on-financial-obesity-and-Project-Virgle.html
"... I agree with the sentiment of the Einstein quote [That we should approach the universe with compassion], but that sentiment itself is only part of a larger difficult-to-easily-resolve situation. It become more the Yin/Yang or Meshwork/Hierarchy situation I see when I look out my home office window into a forest. On the surface it is a lovely scene of trees as part of a forest. Still, I try to see *both* the peaceful majesty of the trees and how these large trees are brutally shading out of existence saplings which are would-be competitors (even shading out their own children). Yet, even as big trees shade out some of their own children, they also put massive resources into creating a next generation, one of which will indeed likely someday replace them when they fall. I try to remember there is both an unseen silent chemical war going on out there where plants produce defense compounds they secrete in the soil to inhibit the growth of other plant species (or insects or fungi) as a vile act of territoriality

You didn't even try to read what I posted. If East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania underwent four decades of dictatorship much worse than anything the Shah did, how come Iran has so much trouble moving forward?

Because the United States refuses to allow them to move forward. Iran does not do as they are told, so our goal in the region is to strangle them through economic, political, and military policy. Consider our allies Saudi Arabia: women are treated as property, people are regularly beheaded for spiritual crimes, and there's not a single synagogue or church in the whole country. But since they sell us oil and play along with our plans -- they like being friends with a military power with the same regional interests -- last year we agreed to sell them 80 billion dollars worth of military equipment. Saudi Arabia makes Iran look like a democratic paradise, but we don't care. Iran could start holding legitimate elections and dismantle their religious police tomorrow, but if they were still critics of American policies, they'd be under constant threat of economic strangulation and warfare.

The United States has the world's largest economy, and the world's largest military, and we use that leverage to punish nations that don't serve our interests. We aren't exceptionally bad; we just behave exactly as you would expect any other empire to behave. We demand loyalty and trade -- fair or not -- from countries that have resources we want, or we strangle them. That's been an open secret since the end of WWII.

The only nations that get better deals are powerful nations like China. Remember Tiananmen Square? US investment increased after they ran over students with tanks, because Beijing proved they were in control and could provide a stable place for investment. Morality has almost nothing to do with our foreign policy. Turks are free to slaughter Kurds because they play ball.

On January 10, Swiss-based Manas Petroleum Corporation broke the news. Gustavson Associates LLC's Resource Evaluation identified large prospects of oil and gas reserves in Albania, close to Kosovo. They are in areas called blocks A, B, C, D and E, encompassing about 780,000 acres along the northwest to southeast "trending (geological) fold belt of northwestern Albania."

A Discreet Deal in the Pipeline

In November 1998, Bill Richardson, then US energy secretary, spelt out his policy on the extraction and transport of Caspian oil. "This is about America's energy security," he explained. "It's also about preventing strategic inroads by those who don't share our values. We're trying to move these newly independent countries toward the west. "We would like to see them reliant on western commercial and political interests rather than going another way. We've made a substantial political investment in the Caspian, and it's very important to us that both the pipeline map and the politics come out right."

That video by Albert Bartlett is misleading because it ignores how more people leads to more innovation -- like developing solar panels or fusion energy to replace fossil fuels, or developing space habitats to make more land for humans.

But I agree with you about the economic issues as far as our current financial system. Both the housing bubble and the college bubble helped push back a problem related to rising productivity but flat real wages related to wealth concentration.
http://www.capitalismhitsthefan.com/
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=5494

As I outline on my site ( http://www.pdfernhout.net/ ), mainstream economics assumes infinite demand (or at least, that demand will grow as fast or faster than productivity). But that assumption is becoming invalid, and so all of mainstream economics is suffering through a divide-by-zero error which most economists won't admit.

See also:
http://www.responsiblefinance.ch/appeal/

A fairly straight-forward solution is a "basic income", but there are other approaches and we will likely see a mix of them.

I'm not so worried about the ingestion part of GM crops but the troubling part for me is seeing Megacorp take down small time farmers for "copyright infringement"[0][1] due to crops cross-pollinating via the wind, bees, whatever. It's ridiculous. It's basically a legal argument to eradicate any form of alternative food source other than Monsanto's monopoly.

Thing is, GM crops are the foothold for food copyright. If you need any indication where that could end up have a look at RIAA proceedings for the past 10 years or even Microsoft's (et al) Seed Vault[2].

[0] - http://www.nelsonfarm.net/issue.htm
[1] - http://www.mnn.com/your-home/organic-farming-gardening/stories/monsanto-wins-lawsuit-against-indiana-soybean-farmer
[2] - http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=23503

http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
"There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all."

How can a system be ethical however it is programmed if it mostly ignores that issue? Granted, we may well need smart security robots. But they might be designed and used differently if we understood that fundamental issues.

Banking problems are another aspect of why we are creating military robots, given the Muslims have repudiated the US banking system, and this is part of the whole conflict. Here is an insightful essay by Richard C. Cook ( http://www.richardccook.com/ ) about a "national dividend" (or a "basic income") from April 2007 (!) called:
"An Emergency Program of Monetary Reform for the United States"
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=5494

A related six-part video series:
"Credit As A Public Utility"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3p48upXJaA&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

I wasn't aware that Fox News was reporting any of this. Or this or this.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=821

The people in countries the US has invaded would disagree with this portrayal. Vietnam alone estimates that removing US mines and unexploded shells will take 300 years and 10+ billion dollars (see also: Hearts and Mines documentary). The automated killing in Vietnam, Cambodia, Indochina, Yugoslavia, Iraq, and the use of murderous drones in Afghanistan/Pakistan, continues.

"...by now they should be converted to self-destructing or self-dearming anyway." is a PR phrase of no value.

I'm from the same country as Hans Blix.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/hans-blix-slams-bush-blair-over-iraq-war-20100728-10uo8.html

He was right you know, and what was it Bush said about him and his work again?

#37: "When he [Saddam Hussein] chose to deny inspectors, when he chose not to disclose, then I had the difficult decision to make to remove him" - http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=3907

My guess is that you're so deep into partisan US politics to ever be able to understand how the rest of the world looks at your actions.

noone wants to start filling up prisons with skiddies

I wouldn't say no one.

..., but it was the 9/11 dead, and only those 3000-ish, that motivated the US to war.

Used as a pretext for war, yes, but motivated? I doubt it, because the plans were already laid out before. There is some nice commented link collection.

You again, mistake effect for cause - and demonstrate that state propaganda has displaced investigation and observation as the basis from which you derive your exalted opinions.

The entire cause of the Balkan conflicts of the 1990's was engineered by external political and financial entities: "The West" as a part of the program to re-orient the profitable engines of conflict, after the Cold War.

First, several NATO states supported nationalist secessionist movements within Yugoslavia, especially Croatian separatism. A war in Croatia followed - incidentally diverting attention from the successful Slovenian secession. The war spread to Bosnia, and the NATO powers encouraged atrocities, to justify NATO intervention there. A political coalition for an anti-Serbian intervention was formed in the NATO states, and an occupation force was stationed in Bosnia: first IFOR, then SFOR. Bosnia became a de facto protectorate. Nevertheless Serbia itself was not targeted at that time , and the Republika Srpska (Bosnia Serbs) got half of Bosnia. In the subsequent Kosovo war, Serbia was attacked: the regime collapsed under internal and external pressure. And what was the purpose of this all? The World Bank later explained:

"...greater emphasis must be placed on establishing a viable institutional structure for effective and countrywide governance, as outlined in the Dayton Agreement, and on undertaking the key structural reforms for transforming the old socialist economic structure into a new, market-based economy."
(World Bank 1997, p. xii)

In historical perspective, that is the moral crusade which underlies the whole episode: the crusade of the liberal market-democracies, to remake the world in their own image.

http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/bosnia.html

Why? Yugoslavia was under Tito, a relatively successful non-aligned state, which had a good standard of living and was neither beholden to massive Western capital interests for its continuing future success, nor dependent on Soviet military subsidization.

After the Soviet stalemate faded, it could not be allowed to continue. Yugoslavia was like the small but successful corner-shop, which "owed" back-rent to the protection racket.

Lost in the barrage of images and self-serving analyses are the economic and social causes of the conflict. The deep-seated economic crisis which preceded the civil war had long been forgotten. The strategic interests of Germany and the US in laying the groundwork for the disintegration of Yugoslavia go unmentioned, as does the role of external creditors and international financial institutions. In the eyes of the global media, Western powers bear no responsibility for the impoverishment and destruction of a nation of 24 million people.

But through their domination of the global financial system, the Western powers, in pursuit of national and collective strategic interests, helped bring the Yugoslav economy to its knees and stirred its simmering ethnic and social conflicts. Now it is the turn of Yugoslavia's war-ravaged successor states to feel the tender mercies of the international financial community.

As the world focused on troop movements and cease-fires, the international financial institutions were busily collecting former Yugoslavia's external debt from its remnant states, while transforming the Balkans into a safe-haven for free enterprise. With a Bosnian peace settlement holding under NATO guns, the West had in late 1995 unveiled a "reconstruction" program that stripped that brutalized country of sovereignty to a degree not seen in Europe since the end of World War II. It consisted largely of making Bosnia a divided territory under NATO military occupation and Western administration.

http://www.glo

Nice try in making it seem like over reacting, but it isn't that simple even if you want it to be. First off, Nuclear power is dangerous but doesn't leak out onto coal/gas/propane/ect... power. GMO's genetic sequences have leaked out onto other non-GMO genetic sequences. Also, it might have been a test crop, but that doesn't mean it couldn't spread into the wild on its own (like GM Canola. And if goes wild, its wild and odds are can't be contained. This has already happened with things like Kudzu in the southern US as it grows wild and chokes the local, native plant life. (It natively comes from Japan and southern China, not the US.)

The biggest issue is that GMO's have caused many health issues, just not the ones people wanted to see splashed across the newspaper. Thing is, when you take Object A and splice it with Object B you get Object A/B which means that anyone that is allergic to either A or B runs a risk of allergic to Object A/B. Now companies not only don't like telling people that the product already has GMO's in it, but they refuse to tell you what each GMO was crossed with (they claim its a trade secret). That means you have companies that are selling you a product that can have the risks of having an common allergen inside it and can cause a reaction, possibly even death from the reaction, and the companies all sit there and go "Wasn't our fault, we labeled what we put in there." while hiding what had been placed within the GMO (which caused the reaction) and effectively sweeping it under the carpet. You can read more about GMO (GM Soy to be exact) and how GM Soy causes allergic reactions in people due to how it's amino acids resemble common allergens not found in non-GM Soy here.

I hear name calling, "You are naive" but nothing factual.

It's interesting that you would say that after doing the same yourself. When you state "It's also true grass roots, unlike the paid astroturf deployed against it" what facts do you have that show it is "true grass roots"? What "paid astroturf"? You state that the person you replied to is ignorant, yet have no facts to back up your assertions. Then you come and claim that I need facts. Why must I prove myself yet you do not have to?

Which TEA party isn't grass roots?

I'll give you that the original movement of the TEA party was somewhat grass roots but has since been co-opted and formed into an astroturf campaign full of people being manipulated by larger organizations

Who is funding them if they aren't grass roots?

When you have Tea Party organizations such as "Americans For Prosperity" which are funding a lot of Tea Party movements and activities. Then you realize that the "Americans For Prosperity" are funded by the Koch brothers....You begin to wonder. That, and if you look at the funding that Tea Party candidates receive, you find that they get tons of donations from the oil industry, gas industry, health professionals and the financial industry. Every large donation (Tea Party Patriots received a $1million donation from an 'anonymous donor'. How is that grass roots?) is hidden behind the new laws that don't require disclosure. So while you might look at everything I just said and claim I made it up (I did not) and then say I haven't proved it isn't grass roots. I say to you, you haven't proved that I'm wrong and that it is grass roots.

Did I hear you say according to your assertions that Rand Paul is ultra conservative far right?

Rand paul is so conservative that he scared Dick Cheney. Think about that for a second:

Some of his positions frighten even staunch conservatives like former Vice President Dick Cheney, who backed Paul's GOP opponent. Source

He opposes abortions even in cases of rapes and incest and wants to overturn Roe v Wade. He wants to eliminate the department of education. I'll give you that some of his positions aren't as far right. He's an interesting mix of both far right and moderate, even a little left (such as legalizing Marijuana). But if it'll make you feel better, my original assertion was slight hyperbole and should have said "are generally ultra conservative/very far right" because yes, there are some exceptions.

The TEA party was effective in....

Just because they got someone elected does not necessarily mean they were effective. Consider Wisconsin where I'll be surprised if Scott Walker gets another term doing anything ever again. He's outright shown that getting rid of Unions has nothing to do with the budget or money, he just wants to bust unions. Including firefighters and policemen. In fact, the only public worker he's not trying to take a paycut and benefits from is himself!

Just because you haven't been paying attention, doesn't mean it didn't happen.

I never said it didn't happen, hell the Tea Party is causing chaos, I even said that. But don't pretend that there's no corporate influences going on here. Don't pretend there's no astroturfing. Hell, don't pretend that the Tea Party is "drastically chang[ing] the conversation towards what We the People believe is important" because it's not. It's just another corporate funded group of people who believe they know best thinking that they are speaking for many more people than they actually are.

"Bill Binney .. worked on NSA's ThinThread program; a way to monitor the flood of internet data from outside the US while protecting the privacy of US citizens" ..

For a professional spy he does come across as naive. The US security services has been spying on the rest of the world and its own citizens for years before 9/11. All September 11th did was give them the pretext to massively expand the program. And I guess the rest of us don't really matter, we're not real countries anyway.

The secret of Room 641A

AT&T collaborates with NSA

Echelon

No they aren't. Their headquarters is a federally-owned building, their board of governors is appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by Congress, and they enabled and subject to oversight by the US Congress. All profits are returned to the US Treasury. Hell, they even have a .gov web address. The member banks are private - is that what you mean? Or is it because they can make large decisions without congressional approval? That is by design, and Congress could change it in a single session - it doesn't make them "private", it makes them somewhat independent.

It seems there is a lot of information saying you are wrong on that count. The Federal Reserve is not a part of the government, it is considered a private organization, similar to a corporation. In fact I found a court case stating that fact while searching Google to see if you were correct.

court case

Federal reserve banks are not federal instrumentalities for purposes of a Federal Tort Claims Act, but are independent, privately owned and locally controlled corporations in light of fact that direct supervision and control of each bank is exercised by board of directors, federal reserve banks, though heavily regulated, are locally controlled by their member banks, banks are listed neither as "wholly owned" government corporations nor as "mixed ownership" corporations; federal reserve banks receive no appropriated funds from Congress and the banks are empowered to sue and be sued in their own names. . . .

Just one minor issue with that quote: Federal Reserve Bank is a private institution. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8518

Kind of but not really. Congress created it and retains some measure of oversight. They and the President also confirm/appoint members to the governing board and decide their salary to a certain extent. That said, the reserve board can pretty much do whatever the hell it wants.

Just one minor issue with that quote: Federal Reserve Bank is a private institution.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8518

The hypocrisy here is thick enough to cut with a knife. Every minute of every day US corporations (from Microsoft to Monsanto to Chevron and thousands of others) and the US military break the law in over 100 countries, heedlessly and without accountability or redress. Yet the FBI has the astonishing chutzpah to make a statement like, "Foreign firms that choose to operate in the United States are not free to flout the laws they don’t like simply because they can’t bear to be parted from their profits".

The iconic example of US corporate intransigence might be Union Carbide/Dow's all-but-deliberate poisoning of Bhopal, India, where tons of toxic, unstable nerve poison, improperly and carelessly stored in an American pesticide plant, killed 8,500 horribly in one night, and permanently injured 100,000s. No proper reparations have been made and nobody has been held to account.

In the Amazon, Chevron has committed one of the largest environmental crimes in US history - and thousands of US companies are doing the same every day.

More recently, the behaviour of Blackwater has illustrated that indiscriminate murder of foreign citizens is now just an accepted part of American corporate practice. Countless Iraqi citizens killed and injured by Blackwater (and other mercenary firm) employees have not seen justice.

Another example from this morning's timeline.

Here's another: Indonesia is just one of many countries now being flooded by a tsunami of toxic electronic waste from the United States.

Funny thing about karma...

Here's some real science regarding the number of deaths caused by chernobyl. Note that the study was completed more than 20 years after the disaster. It takes a long time to experience, record and document the effects of radioactive contamination.

This past April 26th marked the 24th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear plant accident. It came as the nuclear industry and pro-nuclear government officials in the United States and other nations were trying to "revive" nuclear power. And it followed the publication of a book, the most comprehensive study ever made, on the impacts of the Chernobyl disaster.

Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment was published by the New York Academy of Sciences.

It is authored by three noted scientists:

Russian biologist Dr. Alexey Yablokov, former environmental advisor to the Russian president;

Dr. Alexey Nesterenko, a biologist and ecologist in Belarus; and

Dr.Vassili Nesterenko, a physicist and at the time of the accident director of the Institute of Nuclear Energy of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus.

Its editor is Dr. Janette Sherman, a physician and toxicologist long involved in studying the health impacts of radioactivity.

The book is solidly based -- on health data, radiological surveys and scientific reports -- some 5,000 in all.

It concludes that based on records now available, some 985,000 people died, mainly of cancer, as a result of the Chernobyl accident. That is between when the accident occurred in 1986 and 2004. More deaths, it projects, will follow.

The book explodes the claim of the International Atomic Energy Agency-- still on its website that the expected death toll from the Chernobyl accident will be 4,000. The IAEA, the new book shows, is under-estimating, to the extreme, the casualties of Chernobyl.

I'll give you that Bush was more tolerant than Mugabe, for whatever that is worth. But if you think there were "no consequences" and nobody got arrested you're mistaken.

http://www.mountainx.com/news/2007/activist_arrested_after_displaying_impeach_bush_cheney_sign_on_overpass

http://forum.davidicke.com/showthread.php?t=9167

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2927369

http://www.progressive.org/mag_wx081607

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6702

http://warisacrime.org/node/30068