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Being called a terrorist or avoiding that label all comes down to who and what you are.

Glenn Greenwald has been commenting on this issue for a while with respect to the disparate law enforcement treatment Muslims receive in general, and specifically most recently in the way the Boston bombers have been labeled terrorists before there is any real knowledge of motive.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/22/boston-marathon-terrorism-aurora-sandy-hook

Can acts of violence be deemed "terrorism" without knowing the motive?

This is far more than a semantic question. Whether something is or is not "terrorism" has very substantial political implications, and very significant legal consequences as well. The word "terrorism" is, at this point, one of the most potent in our political lexicon: it single-handedly ends debates, ratchets up fear levels, and justifies almost anything the government wants to do in its name. It's hard not to suspect that the only thing distinguishing the Boston attack from Tucson, Aurora, Sandy Hook and Columbine (to say nothing of the US "shock and awe" attack on Baghdad and the mass killings in Fallujah) is that the accused Boston attackers are Muslim and the other perpetrators are not. As usual, what terrorism really means in American discourse - its operational meaning - is: violence by Muslims against Americans and their allies. For the manipulative use of the word "terrorism", see the scholarship of NYU's Remi Brulin and the second-to-last section here.

That's a canard designed to appeal to the people who think they are smart but are in fact ignorant of how corporate taxes work in practice.
Much of the time it is loopholes, not actual expenses, that result in corps "not paying their share" - double-taxation is practically a myth under the current system.

Here's a short discussion of the myth with a table of companies that had negative or near-zero taxes but still reported significant profits and paid significant dividends in the same year.

The police's job during the 2004 RNC was to keep the peace, protect property and allow the convention to take place.

So you agree that providing false testimony, editing videotape evidence, or spying of dissident groups would not be under the police's lawful duties?

As for the Rand Paul supporter... Try this.

I'm not sure what that has to do with Rand Paul. If you want to learn about unions and violence, this would be a more useful link. Here is a good historical overview. For the motive behind the FUD about "union violence", see this and this.

Of course, we can't really blame the conservative half the country on the acts of a single member.

Of course. Conservatives may be, by and large, mistaken in their views, but I certainly do not wish to suggest that they all are directly responsible for the reprehensible acts of a few -- any more than everyone on the left is directly responsible for the reprehensible acts of a few.

But that's not the proposition you put forth. Your claim was that you has not seen evidence that anyone on the right was in favor of forceful censorship. That can only be true if you are living in near-isolation from the world, or if you were -- consciously or unconsciously -- closing your mind to highly visible evidence. And you specifically named Palin; a few minutes with Google could have saved you from looking pretty ignorant there.

Last night i was told by my ISP that they would charge extra to get fast access to hulu.com

Oh wait no .... no they didn't

The point isn't that they are doing it, it's that they could be.

I smell government wanting to get their grubby hands on my Internet.

Let me guess...you don't want "the googles" to be inaccessable?

OH and BTW that "free market" theory has been working pretty well so far .... ya might not want to kick dirt into the face of the system that puts food in your noise hole.

http://www.nathannewman.org/other/ENODE-ISP_hypocrisy.html

When did liberals start listening to comedians for their politics

I'm a registered Independent, and have been since I turned 18. I've also never voted in the two presidential elections I've been old enough for because all of the choices are just as corrupt. Yes, that includes third, fourth, and fifth parties.

oh guess that been every sense pelsoi and friends have been a joke of a government.

Right...because before Nancy Pelosi, our government was squeaky clean and perfect. ::facepalm::

If the power were being generated by wind, solar and perhaps nuclear power why would having a more inefficient television be harmful to the environment?

Well if I could fly a unicorn to my cloud castle in the sky to see if any rainbows needed a hug, then it wouldn't be. However, neither yours nor my situation is real.

And as for global warming, it's debatable that something needs to be done about that.

Whether the earth is flat is also debatable. Just because something is debatable does not mean either side has a strong argument.

As for taxes being raised, I think it's time the government cuteir own waste. If their too inept to manage their own budgets they have no right coming to the people demanding more money.

Which waste would that be? Do you have any actual areas of improvement that are meaningful, or is this just another "government suxors" screed of ignorance? I hear so many people spout off about gov't waste without actually knowing anything about it. It seems to be just one of those things that everybody "knows," without really knowing anything at all.

I look forward to more energy efficient products, but I don't want the government cramming them down my throat.

As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, energy efficiency is not a very easy number to get at, and so it is generally not factored into purchasing decisions for many products (like TVs). What I don't want being crammed down my throat is preventable pollution due to a populace too ignorant to make decisions with regards to efficiency.

-Ted

"The difference is that in the US, we have had unemployment rates around 4% to 5% for most of the last twenty years. It got really bad in the early 2000's (2000 to sometime in 2003) and got all the way up to a horrific 6.3%. While in the EU-15 the rate was at its lowest in 2006 (I don't have numbers for 2007) at 7.9%. Basically, the answer is supply and demand. The US has had what was considered "full employment" in the 1970's for most of the last 20+ years. "

Europe measures unemployment rates differently!
If the U.S. measured it's rate using a similar metric, US unemployment rates would be in excess of 15%.

Surging Jobless- and Fake Unemployment Numbers

~20% Unemployment Rate

For the most part.. The US government's published unemployment rate is now a work of pure fiction.
They could state almost any number and Wall street would not catch the deception..
The similar misdeeds apply to the published CPI and GDP numbers.

P.S. If you measure GDP using the traditional method (worker income) it comes out to be ~47%(6.3T, 2006$) that of the administrations munged spending numbers(13.3T, 2006$) .

I usually try to avoid politics and social debates, and I'm all for space exploration, but can you really tell me people in the USA or the world should go hungry or go without health care while we spend billions on sending people to space?

Did you know that you could increase the budget for the whole of "General science, space and technology" (so that's science as well as space program spending) ten times, cut the military budget in half and break even on the deal. In terms of cost the space program, hell the entire science program in the US, is an absolute pittance compared to other major programs like defense and social security, and corporate tax breaks.

Honestly, there's a nice little calculator here that lets you dabble with increasing or decreasing spending in different areas. There are far jucier targets in which to reduce spending than the space program.

Jedidiah.

Ah, come on. Deregulation of the airlines has lead to MORE problems not less, and every private charter school I have ever heard about has been a total failure.

As for South America, I was refering to Argentina's water privitization schemes: http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=10088

and Chile's pension privitization schemes:
http://www.nathannewman.org/log/archives/002107.sh tml

both of which failed miserably.

Privatization is part of a self fulfilling worldview that rewards the greediest individuals and actively discourages cooperation and altruism, and as such it preferentially rewards the greedy, the rich and the powerful at the expense of the common man. The fantasy of Adam Smith has been proven to be untenable, the invisible hand is usually in the pants pocket of the poor, filching their wallets.

Yes, but you have to be white in order to get it.

Actually, buying legislation is quite cheap these days. For about $12,000 you can get a congressman to introduce almost any legislation, (no matter how bad it is). In fact when I send my rants to my legislators now, I simply ask them, "How much would it cost to get this legislation implemented?"

Note to all elected officials. I will personally raise $12,000 for the congressman that introduces legislation the eviscerates the DMCA. I actually think the Slashdot has enough critical mass in terms of readers to form a PAC (Poltical Action Committe) and get some serious work done in Washington. It's time for the geeks to unite and kill off the dinosaurs so we can get the *NEW* economy moving. Geeks were able to get it moving before and I am quite sure we can do it again. Also, if you are offended by the word geek, replace "geek" with "enlightened user of technology."

Who is getting the contracts to rebuild Iraq again? As a matter of fact I do get my news from the Daily Show.