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You seem to be under some illusions about the working conditions of University professors. Most of your professors are adjuncts, working part time for less than minimum wage.

You're upset because your professor didn't contact you way before the first class to tell you what the expectations were? Guess what? The University probably hadn't even gotten around to hiring her yet. And even if they had, they reserved the right to say "just kidding" and cancel it at the last minute.

You want someone to blame for the poor quality of your education? It's not your professors. It's the "dooshbags" they are working for.

I am sorry to hear that you are out an extra $50 for the cost of a new textbook. Your professor, who makes about $20,000 a year by working at three different schools with no benefits, no job security and no support from their employer, knows what that feels like.

Where, indeed!

Now, if they will just provide us with a detailed forensic audit of who make millions off of that deal?

http://www.ips-dc.org/articles/the_trojan_horse_in_the_debt_debate
http://www.ips-dc.org/files/5507/IPS-CEO-Campaign-to-Fix-the-Debt-report.pdf

Where, indeed!

Now, if they will just provide us with a detailed forensic audit of who make millions off of that deal?

http://www.ips-dc.org/articles/the_trojan_horse_in_the_debt_debate
http://www.ips-dc.org/files/5507/IPS-CEO-Campaign-to-Fix-the-Debt-report.pdf

Quite frankly, I think we need to look at revenue before we even consider looking at aggressive spending cuts. Granted, the two may go hand in hand, but the amount of money we're losing to corporate tax loopholes and subsidies is staggering. Note: when I say losing, I don't just mean revenue we aren't collecting, but money being paid out in refunds to some of the largest corporations in the country/world. Here's a little food for thought on the subject.

http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=67562604-8280-4d56-8af4-a27f59d70de5
http://www.ips-dc.org/reports/executive_excess_2011_the_massive_ceo_rewards_for_tax_dodging
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/stop-coddling-the-super-rich.html

...that the French had an aversion to things normal people like! Apparently they like stuff besides snails, frog's legs, and French military defeats!

Must I conclude from you half baked wrong arguments you are still pissed about being wrong about Irak?

In the name of France, and all the french people, I say "We're sorry."

Sorry for being right. Sorry for your not-so-funny comment. Sorry your life seem to be so miserable you need to hide it behind ill conceived contempt for the french.

And believe us, if is there something the french are immune to, it is contempt... You see, arrogance is so much in our DNA and culture you'll need talent to even attract anything from us but smiling frowns of pity for the average disdainful comment. (I'm not speaking of your above abysmal comment, of course. Please, check your facts and have some brain examination for a possible Hydrocephalus affliction)

You see, it's like a game, for us. The Brittish know that we like to argument for the sake of argument... And the other's utter humiliation. Not so dissimilar from Tauromachy. We, the french, take some fact, and go against the official trend saying something we know is true. (Note the we know is true part. It's important). And somehow, there is always some braindead macho man coming up with his "My own is longer than your's" challenge to defy us on our own grounds. And then, of course, the braindead monkey ridiculizes himself. Of course, even after admitting some semantic miscalculation, the victim can't still accept being in the bad end of an international joke, apparently everyone knowing it even before the beginning of the invasion.

And then, after all the efforts we put together, using our intelligence services, working night and day, trying not to spill the joke and contain our laughter, sending our most talented orators, having half the world agreeing with our viewpoint when you painfully put together your supporters, the only biting, acid, venomous answer you have is "Hey, I was told they eat frogs, Muah ah ah!" ???

WTF???

-- Yours truly, France, (very, very, very disappointed)

What ever you do, don't let it in your brain! storage of any kind is piracy!

Just think of the minions that will fight the war:
http://images.google.com/images?q=See%20no%20evil% 2C%20hear%20no%20evil%2C%20speak%20no%20evil&hl=en &lr=&safe=off&sa=N&tab=wi
(See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil)

Seriously though, I'm sick of declaring wars. Aren't we wasting enough money on wars?

I can think of 2 that havn't been very successful...

DRUGS: http://www.drugsense.org/wodclock.htm
TERRORISM: http://www.ips-dc.org/iraq/failedtransition/

And, just to make things clear, in the 1980s, the US had tremendously favorable relations with Iraq.

When the U.S. gets a coalition together, it must be because they were blackmailed or bribed.

No, not 'must be'. A pretty good case can be made that at least some of the nations were coerced into joining. That report doesn't address some of the post-war issues, such as only giving rebuilding contracts to coalition members (instead of going with the cheapest bidder). Those contracts are paid in part by Iraqi oil, which means that the coalition spends Iraqi money in their own interests, 'paying' countries for their support.

Unfortunately, I really do think you're myopic and naive enough to actually believe your own argument whilst simultaneously ignoring everyone else's.

I don't ignore your arguments, I disprove them. Do I need to explain the difference?

• Indescriminate and excessive use of force, and a shitload of other charges the US was guilty of according to the International War Crimes Tribunal.
• Several US companies supplying chemical weapons precursors to Iraq.
• Staged media event when toppling the saddam statue.
• US companies provided Iraq with the seed stock for biological weapons agents including anthrax, botulinum, e-coli and many more.

Well, the CBO did not report what was being exported and how many times. A friend of mine fishes and he got a fishing lure for his birthday. On the lure, it said "Assembled in Mexico ... parts made in USA". Now, I'm not sure if anyone is too familiar with fishing lures, but they typically have between 3 to 10 parts, including the packaging that they come in. Something like a hook, a body, and maybe some string twirled around it, and the box. When I asked him about why the hell the parts were exported to Mexico, assembled, and sent back here, he said that it was a benefit to the company to do it that way because they got tax breaks based on doing NAFTA a favor by 1) exporting the raw parts to Mexico and 2) by importing the finished good back to USof$.

Free trade is not about free trade. Free trade is the natural state of existance. Contries put tarifs, trade embargos, and other laws, taxes, and regulations to restrict trade. I don't see the significance of calling reducing/repealing these restrictions as "Free Trade". They are for the multinational corporations (see this link that describes how mulitnational corps are the top 51 of 100 economies in the world, and growing.)

Well, actually there's a recent report by the Institute for Policy Studies that shows that Rumsfeld's visit to Saddam was actually to secure an oil pipeline for Bechtel.

(Summary)

Well, actually there's a recent report by the Institute for Policy Studies that shows that Rumsfeld's visit to Saddam was actually to secure an oil pipeline for Bechtel.

(Summary)

Oh Please! Sadam is one of the worst criminals in the world & for decades everyone looked the other way because he paid them off in oil!

This is a repost.

It's the fall of 1983. Michael Jackson is riding high with Thriller; Ronald Reagan is obsessed with a red menace in the jungles of Central America; humiliated U.S. troops have just slouched out of Beirut following a series of suicide bombings, and America's newest nemesis, the Ayatollah Khomeini is locked in a vicious conflict with America's soon-to-be ally, the secular 'socialist' dictator Saddam Hussein. The fight is vicious indeed.

In November 1983 U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz receives an intelligence report describing how Hussein's troops are resorting to "almost daily use of CW [chemical weapons]" against the Iranians.

A month later, Ronald Reagan dispatches a special envoy to Baghdad on a secret mission. The identity of the envoy is intriguing. He's not a diplomat or a member of Reagan's cabinet - he's a private citizen, the CEO of a Fortune 500 company.
On Dec. 20, the envoy meets with Saddam Hussein. But he is not there to lecture the dictator about his use of weapons of mass destruction or the fine print of the Geneva Conventions. He is there to talk business under orders from high. Reagan had just signed a secret order instructing his charges to do "whatever was necessary and legal" to prevent Iraq from losing the war.

The envoy informs the Iraqi leader that Washington is ready for a resumption of full diplomatic relations, according to a recently declassified State Department report of the conversation, and that Washington would regard "any major reversal of Iraq's fortunes as a strategic defeat for the West." Iraqi leaders later describe themselves as "extremely pleased" with the visit.

The envoy was Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the CEO of pharmaceutical giant Searle.

The meeting is widely considered to be the trigger that ushered in a new warming of U.S.-Iraq relations, which allowed the shipment of dual-use munitions, chemical and biological agents and other dubious technology transfers. But for years what exactly was said between Rumsfeld and Hussein in that now infamous meeting has been shrouded in secrecy.

No one knew, until last week.

In a new investigative report from the Institute for Policy Studies entitled Crude Vision: How Oil Interests Obscured U.S. Government Focus On Chemical Weapons Use by Saddam Hussein released last week, researchers Jim Vallette, Steve Kretzmann, and Daphne Wysham expose the real reason Donald Rumsfeld was sent to Baghdad: Hewas sent by Reagan himself to pressure Saddam Hussein to approve a highly lucrative oil pipeline project from Iraq to Jordan.

Examining recently released government and corporate sources, the researchers document for the first time how a close-knit group of high-ranking U.S. officials (including Sec. of State Shultz and Attorney General Edwin Meese) worked in secrecy for two years attempting to secure a billion dollar pipeline scheme for the Bechtel corporation. The Bush/Cheney administration now eyes Bechtel as a primary contractor for the rebuilding of Iraq's infrastructure.

Bechtel's pipeline would have carried a million barrels of Iraqi crude oil a day through Jordan to the Red Sea port of Aqaba.

"The men who courted Saddam while he gassed Iranians are now waging war against him, ostensibly because he holds these same weapons of mass destruction" said Jim Vallette, lead author of the report. "They now deny that oil has anything to do with the conflict. Yet during the Reagan Administration, and in the years leading up to the present conflict, these men shaped and implemented a strategy that has everything to do with securing Iraqi oil exports. All of this documentation suggests that Reagan Administration officials bent many rules to convince Saddam Hussein to open up a pipeline of central interest to the U.S., from Iraq to Jordan."

I find the timing particularily convenient. Saddam nixed the pipeline deal in late 1985 and the first "official" arms shipment to Iran (Iran/Contra) went through in January 1986. (According to Reagan's own statements on the matter.)

I asked this question last fall when the military buildup in the Gulf became public. Why now?

Unfortunately, the US government, for whatever reasons, have decided to whore out the rights of its citizens in exchange for increased corporate revenues and, as a result, increased taxes (not to mention all those nice PAC campaign contributions).

Here's a document comparing the economic sizes of corporations and the world's nations. One of the most interesting tidbits is:

Of the 100 largest economies in the world, 51 are corporations; only 49 are countries (based on a comparison of corporate sales and country GDPs)

This is from the report "TOP 200: THE RISE OF CORPORATE GLOBAL POWER" by Sarah Anderson and John Cavanagh

you could have found the document (and lots of other interesting stuff) at the ips website, of course.. so what's the deal??