Slashdot Mirror

drinkypoo opined:

America is responsible to a large extent for what is happening in Venezuela and has long been the driving force in regime change in Iran, often through extremely direct intervention. We can't fix China (although we could stop enabling them so much) but we are responsible for much of the mess in the other countries you mentioned.

Let's see now:

According to Wikipedia, venezuelanalysis.com has been funded by the Venezuelan goverment since it was founded in 2007 (when Hugo Chavez was president), despite claiming on its website since 2014 (after Maduro took over) that it is funded exclusively via donations from its readers. And the wife of its founder, Greg Wilpert, was appointed Consul General of Venezuela's New York consulate in 2008. So, it's hardly an objective or disinterested source.

Wikipedia's article on mintpressnews.com highlights several ongoing controversies over issues of journalistic integrity (including falsely attributing co-authorship of an article on nerve gas attacks on Syrian citizens to a respected journalist who denies having co-written that article, and who has repeatedly demanded her name be removed from it, as well as falsely reporting an annual Shiite religious pilgrimage to Kerbala as a "march against ISIS"). The publication's masthead prominently features conspiracy mongers (including a strident proponent of the false and defamatory claim that the Sandy Hook shooting was staged, with actors hired to play the part of grieving parents, and that no children were actually killed there). Its sources of funding are undisclosed, although Mnar Muhawesh, its editor, now claims to be its sole investor, and that it is self-financing, via ad revenue (an extremely dubious claim, as anyone who is familiar with the paucity of legitimate advertising income available for online-only journalism ventures will attest). Her claims in this regard are impossible to verify, because, since 2015, she's made it impossible to contact her.

The only even-faintly-legitimate source you cite is cepr.net, which is a self-described "progressive" think tank. But the actual link you provide is to an editorial piece, which is, by definition, an expression of the author's personal opinion, not actual reportage.

In sum, you give us two propaganda outlets and an opinion piece in support of your argument that the USA is the party most responsible for "repressing" the people of Venezuela.

Now, I'll grant you that we embargo oil imports from Venezuela, in continuation of a policy that dates back to the G. W. Bush administration. That, in itself really doesn't affect the country's economy, because it has plenty of other customers elsewhere. What does, very much, affect it is the crash in world oil prices over the past 3 years or so - and that is entirely due to Arab countries (led by Saudi Arabia) overproducing. So, supply and demand is the cause of Venezuela's financial woes.

Well, that, and Maduro's insistence on printing money in an attempt to make up for the revenue shortfall, which has resulted in a disastrous hyperinflationary spiral that rivals Weimar Germany or modern Zimbabwe.

Chavez was a charismatic charlatan, who was able to provide Venezuela's poor with a whole range of "free" benefits only because oil revenues were at historic highs during his reign (again, driven purely by supply and demand - although rampant speculation by commodity traders had a significant hand in that). Maduro, by contr

The USA did OK without a secret ballot for 100 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Sure, there may be voter intimidation and vote buying and so on without a secret ballot. But will the consequences really be worse than widespread electronic election fraud?

And the fact is, you can find out who many people probably voted for by looking at campaign donation records anyway.
http://classic.fec.gov/finance...

We expect elected representatives to generally vote in a recorded way and to defend their votes. Why do we think that can work but doing the same for individuals won't?

Otherwise, use paper ballots -- ideally counted by a group of humans from different political affiliations like is done in many other countries.

Some bigger issues than technology for the USA:

We could return to the original constitutional number of Representatives so that each vote for one counts 10X more -- which might reduce the role of money in such elections.
https://economix.blogs.nytimes...

And maybe go back to having Senators appointed by State Legislatures.
https://www.senate.gov/artandh...

And also consider a Parliamentary system where Congress selects a Prime Minister instead of a direct election of the President (given what a money-driven circus such elections have become):
https://www.minnpost.com/eric-...

Per capita consumption of margarine dropping correlates to a lower divorce rate in Maine. Oh, while we're at it, we need to lower the cost of potato chips to reduce deaths by falling out of wheelchairs. We can observe trends and make incorrect assumptions based on them all day long.

Just because the IPCC makes predictions that come true doesn't mean that their theory behind those predictions is correct. Note that I'm not saying they're WRONG either, just that I don't believe they are capable of being accurate because all data available is very limited compared to the amount of time that major climate shifts take to complete. It'd be like taking a photo of a stretch of thousand-mile road and making big assumptions about the entire road based on that photo.

Sorry I can't just have faith like you; I'm not interested in joining that religion.

I agree with the overall point you are making.

And you're immediately going to use this for political points

Politics and governing should be more than a team sport. But I would also point out that the two parties are not equal here. The Democrats drummed out Al Franken

Some did, some didn't. Example here, here, here, and elsewhere.

while the Republicans rallied around and defended Moore. Heck, some of them said they believed Moore's accusers, but would vote for him anyway.

Moore lost in a heavily Republican state. Stop trying to make moral equivalence arguments. It's like you're completely ignoring the very real support Franken enjoyed after all the women came out on record and the PHOTOGRAPHIC PROOF of him sexually harassing a woman.

This is the same kind of hypocritical enabling feminists did for Bill (and Hillary) Clinton in the 1990s, and I'm sure in their minds, too, Democrats are still morally superior because at least their sexual harassers vote the same way they do.

Total employment in agriculture in the US increased dramatically from 1850 to 1900.

I assumed he meant the drop as a percent of the labor force.

In any case, I agree that

Really, you agree that that slipshod, incoherent, thoughtless post is what it means to be an American?

That's damning by association. Don't you dare insult America like that again.

Further, if you want to understand how to parse the language, and avoid the misunderstanding that the 2nd only applies to militias, there are lots of articles out there which discuss how to parse it in the context it was written in, such as this pretty long article about it.

Lots of articles? True. But that's an empty and vacuous article that fails in the second paragraph:

But the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights is indeed a well-crafted sentence.

No, it is not. It's poorly written, and an honest historical analysis would admit it. The most damning thing? He doesn't deny the facts of the inconsistent written versions. So by his own words, he should know better.

I don't know why so many fools insist on sanctifying the specific wording of the Amendment, when they could accomplish so much more avoiding such wasteful and fruitless argumentation by engaging in a direct addressing of the particulars instead.

some other reading on the subject.

That's what it should mean to be American. Thoughtful, earnest consideration, by people with the integrity to realize that they cannot rest on the laurels of the past, that glorification of what was is a way to ignore what is, and that they need to be responsible for their own decisions.

This is the sort of thing that makes me think that the Second Amendment Advocates are worse than the Sixteenthers, they could make a legitimate and persuasive argument, but obstinately refuse.

In any case, I agree that

Really, you agree that that slipshod, incoherent, thoughtless post is what it means to be an American?

That's damning by association. Don't you dare insult America like that again.

Further, if you want to understand how to parse the language, and avoid the misunderstanding that the 2nd only applies to militias, there are lots of articles out there which discuss how to parse it in the context it was written in, such as this pretty long article about it.

Lots of articles? True. But that's an empty and vacuous article that fails in the second paragraph:

But the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights is indeed a well-crafted sentence.

No, it is not. It's poorly written, and an honest historical analysis would admit it. The most damning thing? He doesn't deny the facts of the inconsistent written versions. So by his own words, he should know better.

I don't know why so many fools insist on sanctifying the specific wording of the Amendment, when they could accomplish so much more avoiding such wasteful and fruitless argumentation by engaging in a direct addressing of the particulars instead.

some other reading on the subject.

That's what it should mean to be American. Thoughtful, earnest consideration, by people with the integrity to realize that they cannot rest on the laurels of the past, that glorification of what was is a way to ignore what is, and that they need to be responsible for their own decisions.

This is the sort of thing that makes me think that the Second Amendment Advocates are worse than the Sixteenthers, they could make a legitimate and persuasive argument, but obstinately refuse.

All other paradigm shifts in working environment that have displaced people opened up new opportunities. Farm hands that got obsolete when farming was automated were needed by the emerging industries in the towns.

Each of these two sentences makes a point that, while not entirely wrong, is quite misleading.

Most important is the first claim that all other iterations of mechanization (the apparent meaning of "paradigm shifts in working environment") have opened up new opportunities.

In the very first iteration of this, the First Industrial Revolution (FIR) starting about 1770, this did not happen for 70 years. Massive job losses in textile making started around 1770, putting 20% of Britain's entire work force out of work and rendering them paupers. The economy did not finally provide enough alternative employment until about 1840.

This horrendous slums of Dickens, the imprisonment of up to 10% of Britain's population in prisons or workhouses for the destitute, was a situation lasting for generations. People who lost their livelihoods when the FIR hit never got re-employed, nor did their children, or even grand-children.

The Cybernetics Revolution now underway is likely to have the same immediate effect as the FIR, massive job elimination far faster than any natural evolution of the economy can accommodate.

Farm hands that got obsolete when farming was automated were needed by the emerging industries in the towns.

This is a story that puts the plow before the plow horse.

Quick question for the reader - when do you think farming automation started a large drop in farm employment? 1900? 1910? 1920? 1930?

The answer is 1950.

In 1900 there were 12 million people employed on farms, with a farm family population of 30 million.
In 1950 there 10 million people employed on farms with farm family population of 30 million.
But in 1960 there only 7 million farm jobs, and 15 million people living on farms.
By 1970 it was down to 4 million farm jobs (at which point it leveled out), and the farm population was 8 million.

The elimination of jobs in farm employment occurred almost entirely between 1950-1970, long after there were "emerging industries" in towns. In fact the exodus from farm employment began the same year that U.S. manufacturing as a share of U.S. employment began its steady decline. One does not usually think of the decade of the 1960s with the Vietnam War and the Moon landing as one where there were "emerging industries" in towns.

Most people have the idea that there was a large loss of farm employment some time early in the 20th Century, inspired by graphs like this one where it looks like a steady drop in farm jobs from 1840 to the present. Employment as a fraction of total U.S. jobs combines two different effects though, the total number of agricultural jobs, and the total U.S. population. Until 1950 the drop in agricultural employment was due almost entirely to the rise in U.S. total population alone.

Now there were people leaving the farm to get work in the cities from 1900 to 1950, about 600,000 a year. But they were simply the excess population on farms due to the large average farm family size producing 2% surplus each year that could not be absorbed by the stable level of farm employment.

Where were you during the election when your conservative brethren were claiming that if Hilary Clinton won the election they may have to resort to "2nd Amendment Solutions"? The right have been pushing gun ownership as an alternative for the vote not going your way for as far back as I can remember... and I've been politically aware since the 80's. You should be celebrating the fact that this loon is taking your arguments seriously, shouldn't you?

This Time
Ballot or Bullet
Musket Solution

In 2012, Ted Nugent said in front of a crowd of revelers that Barack Obama should "suck on my machine gun". He added: "Hey Hillary, you might want to ride one of these into the sunset, you worthless bitch!"

You really have selective attention, don't you? How about just realizing that this behavior is inappropriate on either side of the aisle instead of your tribal myopathy?

You do realize that layoffs remove people who aren't necessary to produce the product being sold, right? The cost of wages is the base cost of all prices; it is not business, but the consumer who pays wages.

Labor reduction is a good thing. The labor force moves to other things. How do you think food keeps getting cheaper? From where do you think all the manufacture and services jobs came from? What money are Americans redirecting to the growing Healthcare sector to enjoy more and better healthcare?

The average family put 43% of their income to food in 1900, with 38% of the labor force working on farms. In 1950, it was 30% of our income with 12% of our labor force on the farms (and an additional chunk in the laboratories and factories making tractors, pesticides, fertilizers, and diesel fuel to support the farm worker). Today, we spend 11% of our income on food, with under 2% of our workers on the farm. How many poor families should be starving right now so that we could have avoided the elimination of 36% of our farm labor force, and should we give up healthcare or the Internet to support these excess and unnecessary farm workers?

Nobody cares if Taliban wants to call school teachers terrorists, because we know, and they know that's bullshit. We just care what they DO, and what they do is try to scare people into conducting their lives the way their religious say they should. Beard police! No dancing! Fly kites and die!

Indeed, a better example of relevancy probably comes from western perspectives about brainwashing in public > schools.

Why look to an outside group that is widely dismissed already, when you have ones here at home pushing their own message? The question is, who is full of bullshit?

PS, don't worry about the Colonies not having representation in the British Parliament, inhabitants of England didn't, even the rotten boroughs weren't eliminated for another few decades and true suffrage was even longer in developing.

Of course, the US has its own problems with representation today.

Given that there are fewer and fewer jobs in farming and manufacturing (due to big technology advances)

Yeah, there's this chart, and it looks startlingly familiar if you were around circa 1840-1920 with factories replacing good old American farming.

The overall improvements in the past do not guarantee the same in the future and I'm sure that you're aware of the fact that the golden era of productivity increase is over.

We are not The Enlightened, and we do not have the end-all of all technology. We can manufacture gold from lead, but it's more expensive than digging it out of the ground; we make cesium and molybdenum by converting other elements using what's essentially a coat hanger stuffed in a glass jar. When our energy-production technology improves (e.g. more efficient nuclear, space solar, or quantum tunneling junctions used for geothermal energy production at 55% efficiency), the labor cost of creating gold from base matter will move downward toward the labor cost of digging it out of the ground. A dyson sphere would quickly make all material concerns moot, but there's no way we're building one in the foreseeable future--it's economically and technologically unfeasible.

Given that there are fewer and fewer jobs in farming and manufacturing (due to big technology advances) and that the service economy is not working for the large majority of our co-nationals (exactly because there is no intrinsic technology innovation solving their issues), I agree 100% with your sig.

Any form of basic income relies on productivity and production. All taxes take a percentage of the total income for a period, which represents the total production for that period. That is to say: all income (business and personal) represents everything produced and sold (even strategic reserves get turned over--their sale is *delayed*--and things produced and ultimately unsold represent a waste cost contributing zero productivity), and we take a portion of that wealth in the form of a portion of the money paid for it. A Basic Income levies a tax to capture a proportion of that wealth and redistribute it to provide everyone with a minimum standard of living (i.e. the capability to buy a minimum amount of stuff).

A Citizen's Dividend as I describe is essentially the pure form: I levy a flat income tax on all income to fund the Dividend, thus directly and stably collecting a percentage of the per-capita income (or GDP or whatever measure you want to use). If you require 1/n of the per-capita income to live at the intended minimum standard-of-living, then the percentage is 1/n--in 2013, that's 17%; in 1950, it's 32% and doesn't fucking work. This dedicated tax operates alongside a general fund tax: I slash the tax brackets so the rich are paying 26% instead of 39.6% (hence the disconcerting 43% upper tax bracket), and the rest of the classes down are paying something equal to or less than their current tax bracket minus 17%, thus retaining a progressive tax system.

If the economy collapses because we have tons of people but no jobs for them, the percentage required becomes *extremely* high. The amount of income is only what the employed labor force makes: 17% of the total income of 64% of the population (that's the 68% labor force minus UE4) can pay for 74% of the population (all adults), plus 1.4% for family welfare (children, from the general fund, on a sharply-reduced public aid system); but if it's only 32% employed, you need a 34% dividend tax, plus you have a *lot* more children needing welfare (bump that figure about 7-10 times--maybe 8% to 14%), plus you need to pretty much double the government's general fund taxes to keep shi

More important than the graphic is knowing how it was derived. The criteria for poverty has changed at least twice within my lifetime. Anyhoo- the current definition-

https://www.census.gov/hhes/ww...

You'll note the homeless that aren't even counted unless they are under some government program.

And the number of homeless people have been increasing despite improvements in the economy:

https://www.minnpost.com/commu...

And most telling is the rate of bankruptcy for the past century (hint- it has exploded in the later 1/3)

So what am I to make of this? If you set the bar low enough, poverty rates have been consistent around 15% for the past 50 years (even with near exponential productivity gains). But if you set the bar even lower, the number of homeless and bankruptcies have shown an even greater increase.

I do not trust the APA anymore in regards to LGBT and its stances on mental illness in this subject matter. They are just as political as the rest of us. They place politics over medical evidence or attempt to form that evidence to fit their narrative and stay as middle-of-the-road as possible.

Confirmation bias abound...

http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~ju...

http://www.newyorker.com/scien... (opinion article, but still relevant)

https://www.lifesitenews.com/n... (article from former APA President, although this news source is rather right-leaning)

https://drhurd.com/2012/03/29/... (Another opinion article discussing this issue)

https://www.minnpost.com/secon...

I have a friend who was a journalist and worked for a major newspaper until he quit to write books (about the state of journalism). Good luck trying to get him to work for free.

The thing that really killed the papers is craigslist. I remember classified ads being a majority of the newspaper

Guns are out there. Accept it. The notion of "but if the guns weren't there" is meaningless. They're there. They're not going away.

In the short term, yes. In the long term they are definitely going away, if you look down the road far enough. The mechanism of gun ownership demise won't be political though. It will be accomplished via evolution.

Having a gun in your home significantly increases your risk of death â" and that of your spouse and children.

And it doesnâ(TM)t matter how the guns are stored or what type or how many guns you own.

If you have a gun, everybody in your home is more likely than your non-gun-owning neighbors and their families to die in a gun-related accident, suicide or homicide.

Ergo, people who own guns are gradually removing themselves from the gene pool.

The General Social Survey (GSS), conducted roughly every two years by the independent research organization NORC at the University of Chicago, with principal funding from the National Science Foundation, provides a widely-used look at the rate of gun ownership over time. The GSS data show a substantial decline in the shares of both households and individuals with guns.

Sure, but government agencies assign dollar values to lives all the time, though they do vary. DOT's value is lower, for example, than the FAA's.

You're still stuck trying for too much accuracy. Ballpark is enough for this sort of stuff, then you adjust as science clarifies or the situation changes. IE the actual damages from X could be estimated to be $8-12. Nailing it down closer is less important, at least in the short term, than the fact that charging $10 for the damage is 'fairer' then charging them $0.

As such you can't attribute a given number to coal power generation.

Sure I can!
5.7-11.7 euro cents per kWh, for the dirtiest plants.
MN estimates it at 1.8 cents per kWh

When did I mentioned that the pollution damage was from CO2? Oh, I didn't? Then why bring it up that way? I've very clearly said pollution, not CO2.

To my knowledge, if you removed both those from the coal emissions which modern coal plants can do... then the health issues you're citing vanish.

They don't remove them completely, and no, they don't vanish. Become an order of magnitude less, that you get. Even 2, but at that point a nuclear plant is cheaper, and still cleaner(on average, including pollution from TMI, Chernobyl, and Fukushima, but excluding nuclear weapons stuff). No, 'filtered coal' is not cheaper. I've seen what it takes to get a modern coal plant up and running (Healy clean coal plant).

> After WWII most of these women didn't need to work any longer and the positions they left were filled by men returning from overseas.

You couldn't be more wrong. The percentage of bachelor degrees in computer science going to women peaked in 1984 at 37%. In 2010 it was only 18%.

1984 is more than a few years after the end of WWII.

Whoa! Wait a minute who ever said anything about solving overpopulation. I'm just saying that from a career perspective caregiver can be rewarding. Also, to really be a caregiver you are going to probably have to be married with your partner working, unless you want to be one of the government dependents but then why are you asking about jobs.

However, I do have some issues with your points.

Food scarcity is normally not caused by society not being able to produce enough food. Well maybe we can't produce a enough meat for everyone to eat like a fat American, but we could meet the current worlds total caloric needs with some work. However, due to war, oppression, terrible government, stupidity, and callously choosing to say screw the poor I want double Steak we make that hard.

Energy scarcity: We have tons of Uranium and Thorium. If we could get off our asses and actually use it to build useful things like Modern power plants instead of bombs we might be able to have a sensible energy agenda.

Pollution Levels: The modern world needs steel and steel is dirty. Unless you want to go back to a pre-steel world we are going to have to put up with some pollution for the foreseeable future. But with good management we can limit the pollution.

Disease Susceptibility: People get sick. Always have always will. Poor people get sick more than rich people due to malnutrition or improper hygiene. Things are still better now than they were though. Maybe we should raise the standard of living in the rest of the world some.

Psychological Disorder: Always existed, society just killed people with this because they were "Possessed by the devil" before the enlightenment. I am not for a return to that idea even if it puts stress on society.

Political unrest: Come on wars are as central to human activity as breathing. As long as humans exist there will be war or at least arguments over something. If you think otherwise have fun in your utopia fantasy land. I welcome getting proven wrong.

Overpopulation in the Western World: Most of the western world is in demographic decline. (I'm assuming this is a predominantly western audience being English language and all.) The US and EU only skirt by with immigrants. So clearly we are not prolific reproducers anymore. Now for the rest of the world, they may have to tone down the reproducing, but unless we want to use that war thing to stop them I'm not sure how we could. And I'm not sure I can support a government that would go to war against the breeders it sounds to Nazi like to me.

Though in the end I agree with you. If we keep growing our population we will eventually run out of resources to support that population. In the end the only real answer is to get off this rock and colonize space. But that's not really an answer to the problem. It's just kicking it down the road for a really long time. (Universal Entropy and what not) Any other form of forced population control will require some form of world government. Otherwise the countries that don't comply will just swallow you up in a few generations.

Everyone without kids replies saying they'll never let their child do anything but play outside

Especially when urban and suburban environments aren't designed to expose children to a lot of quality outside time. They often aren't pedestrian-friendly, and a child might not have a playmate within reasonable walking distance. Parents are afraid of vehicular traffic, abduction by strangers, and abduction by the ex-spouse. Nor can parents with full-time jobs always manage to find stay-at-home neighbors to supervise their kids' outdoor play.

If only they made family, babysitters, after-school and other public sports/activity programs, organized sports, and free time for parents in the 16-or-so hours a day that they're not expected to be working

Articles like this and this claim that "after-school and other public sports/activity programs, organized sports," and the like are part of the problem.

Resolution 1441 was based on absolute lies by the Bush administration, and Colin Powell was *used* as a *stooge* to *lie* to the UN. He has since recanted the WMD stuff and has said things like this:

Colin Powell discusses the WMD 'blot' on his record
Share on printShare on email
By Eric Black | 05/04/12

In a forthcoming memoir, Colin Powell will describe the speech he gave at the U.N. justifying the U.S. invasion of Iraq on the basis of bogus evidence that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons as "a blot, a failure will always be attached to me."

As far as I can tell by the preview of the book published by Bloomberg, Powell does not suggest that he knew that was he was saying was false.

âoeI am mad mostly at myself for not having smelled the problem," Powell writes about his role. "My instincts failed me."

http://www.minnpost.com/eric-black-ink/2012/05/colin-powell-discusses-wmd-blot-his-record

You're an AC because you are repeating the same lies of the Bush idiots.

You're disgusting.

--
BMO

I'm from Minneapolis, and although I don't fly all that much, I believe our airport (MSP) is 100% millimeter-wave. I have never seen a backscatter x-ray machine there.

This article confirms it as of August 2012, although it could have changed since then:

From the same wikipedia link.

Design patents cover the ornamental nonfunctional design of an item.

I am unable to find any reference that makes it mandatory for a design patent application to be accompanied with a working prototype in order to merit the protection. Anyways, as far as the design patent goes, the Star Trek tablet provides the some function, so it qualifies for a design patent.

Another example: A 1994 video demonstrated Roger Fidler's concept for an electronic newspaper tablet.
http://www.minnpost.com/business/2012/07/roger-fidler-man-who-came-tablet-steve-jobs

Fidler had a chance to patent his tablet idea way back when, but took a pass. He believed it should be left unprotected so that the entire newspaper industry could benefit from it.

Guess what, the testimony of this guy will be used in the Apple-Samsung trial.

As far as I can find, Minnesota has never had an incident of terrorism. "Terrorism" in Minnesota seems to consist of throwing glitter at people.

You're right to an extent (the news cannot be free as in beer), but the nation-wide non-profit online only experiment that I was referring to is really more aimed at the kind of reporting you are talking about. See: The Voice of San Diego, The MinnPost, and The St. Louis Beacon for examples. Non-profit, local newspapers going 100% online and depending on their communities for support (with maybe some ad sales on the side). All of them are doing hard news coverage and in some cases are doing it better than their city's major daily paper.

Also, your local NPR station has long operated on the model that you just described, providing the kind of coverage that you've described.

The model may not yet be proven for "print" but it is certainly being tested, and seems to be holding up pretty well.

(sigh)

Civil case between individuals, not government prosecution. And quite possibly heading for reversal on appeal.

http://www.minnpost.com/braublog/2011/03/14/26584/johnny_northside_damn_right_were_appealing_60000_judgment

The world is not getting warmer, and at least if it is, God would make sure that it didn't get too hot so as not to harm us

You may joke, but there are people in power who actually believe this!

I am a Christian. Rep. Mike Beard's beliefs scare the crap out of me.

It's not sexist to observe that a woman who has a long history of saying and doing crazy things may be crazy.

Chances are they will enforce it strictly on everyone except Muslims who insist or wearing a kamize and hajib who will be told "of course wear what you want, our culture is subservient to yours"

This is not a troll. It is a commentary on the double standards which exist in the UK and other parts of Europe. They have a double standard for driver's license photos and for airport security for muslim women.

Correct. Some people are so used to giving way to Islam that they see any suggestion that we should hold Muslims to the same standards as anyone else as "islamaphobic". We ban Santa because more than one Muslim might be offended, but if two non-muslims said they were offended by an "Eid Murnbarak" poster how far do you think that would get. When Muslims set off bombs in our cities the call is not to stop Muslims setting off bombs but not to allow the incident to undermine multiculturalism! Muslims frequently burn bibles but go on the rampage when someone says they will burn the Qur'an - but doesn't!

Everyone knows they're all pictures of boobs anyway.

I think you're confusing it with this.

There is a reason the press is considered the fourth estate . They serve a role in our society that bloggers and news consolidators do not yet fulfill. Think of the various investigative reports and whistleblower services each good local paper provides. These checks on the system only work when the published report is widely read and available (to be picked up by TV and national media), which is not the case for electronic systems. I think no electronic location has mindshare enough, and generates enough cash to support the staff for this function. In my area all the best reporters have been laid off during the recession and are showing up on a good blog MinnPost. But they can't find a business model or audience (although you can donate to them to help as I have done). But very few of the readers of the papers know that MinnPost exists, it took me quite a bit of time myself. My plea is to consider what happens along these lines when the audience is fragmented to many many blogs with a niche perspective or audience. As an example, Michelle Bachman is my congresswoman and without the papers her silliness would go unnoticed - ironically I am going to link a blog so you can see what I mean, but these all came out in the papers for the entire district to see. The press may be the only think keeping her from the deep end.

BTW the largest electronic readership web site is that of the paper, but without the print edition I am not sure the online edition would survive long.

Thousands of windmill, all at least a few hundred feet apart are very difficult to damage in any sigficant way.

I've said much the same. However the sabotage of key points in the national infrastructure can have a significant impact, as with the I 35W bridge collapse. Some businesses did not survive the collapse. I live in Minneapolis and people were shocked and dumbfounded. The blackout in the Northeast is as you point out another example. Now imagine what people's reaction would be if the Golden Gate Bridge collapsed.

Falcon

Smaller newspapers will fold (no pun intended) but larger ones will always exist.

Yeah?

So what? The USA govt, sponsored and largely run by corporate interests (of which media corporations are subsidiary) isn't any more credible.

I don't think any government's words should be taken at face value, but I also don't believe for a moment that the Chinese government is on par with the US government in credibility and transparency. there are shades of gray, and I see the US and China in much different areas of the spectrum. The fact is that the press, including foreign press, is more free to report things *here* than *there*. However, my point above was not whether the US government is more credible than the Chinese government. I'm glad we agree on the fact that there are legitimate reasons why people across the world, including in the US, have a right and a need for privacy, and that right is threatened by the tracing tools these governments seek.

Even the Tiananmen Square "Massacre" is a myth.

The Tiananmen Square massacre is historical fact. If you want to dispute the particulars, such as how many died, where they died, etc., fine. I give greater weight to the Red Cross's casualty estimates than to the Chinese government. Gregory Clark does not seem impartial, nor does he seem to have fully read the US government documents he is quoting, since on the whole they contradict his core assertion, ie, that the massacre didn't happen. He seems to have cherry-picked the parts that suit him best, while ignoring other relevant content. He claims that they show that "They confirm that there was no massacre in the square", which is a cheap attempt at deception, since he then goes on to admit that much of the killing appears to have been just outside the square. He attempts to minimize the event by ignoring important parts of the story, such as at least one tank crushing protesters, and troops with fixed bayonets firing metal bullets directly into crowds of unarmed civilians, and then tries to diminish the importance of the event by comparing it to other atrocities, as if that made it somehow more acceptable.

I think that if he had confined his assertion to stating that the massacre as it happened and the massacre as the news media reported it appear to be different, he would be on more accurate.

I find it interesting that in arguing that the US govt is not trustworthy, you quote a source who himself quotes US govt documents, referring to them as "a source whose sober impartiality cannot possibly be doubted".

Have you paid attention to what's been done with protesters at the DNC and RNC events?

Some. I'll make no apologies or excuses for heavy-handed police action, whether it is here or over there, but the difference between the RNC / DNC protests and Tiananmen Square is mind-boggling. This article talks about Amy Goodman's arrest, and I think makes an interesting point about journalists, the events they cover, and the law. I have read that most protesters were peaceful, and were left alone by police. The tear gas didn't come out and the arrests didn't happen until some (a very small minority) protesters got violent and started trashing property. It appears that Amy got caught up in that. As for the warrantess poo preemption, I don't know about that incident. However, before getting up in arms about the lack of warrants, I have to ask did the event meet these requirements? "Reasonable grounds" and "exigent circumstances" seem to be the key.

To the original topic: If it were in my power to grant or withhold, I would never entrust China (or any government - even my own) with tools that would help it roll back the shield of anonymity that protects the natural right of people to speak freely.

I can certainly agree with that.

Amen, brother.

Off topic: Former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura said yesterday that he thinks the complete, symmetrical destruction of the World Trade Center was a controlled demolition.

Quote: "This man's problems were caused not by ID theft, but by suspicion of crime."

So many things have been happening like that, I wonder if there is an intent to overthrow the U.S. and U.K. governments. For example, former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura said yesterday that he thinks the attack on the World Trade Center was a controlled demolition.

The U.S. Senate voted against Habeus Corpus, which provides legal protection from unlawful detention.

The U.S. government has been building prisons.