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But no wheat. Check it out. What they are growing are stuff like vegetables, fodder to produce milk, and fruit crops, all stuff that actually makes sense to produce locally since they don't ship that well, or are specialty items, not tonnage crops like grain.

Sorry, but taxes in Somalia are a 35% income tax, a 10% sales tax, plus "Indirect taxes are imposed on imports, exports, mortgages, vehicle registration, sugar, alcohol, and a number of other goods and services."

You should look up what "unanimous" means...

Are you trying to say that the UN may only pass motions with unanimous votes? The League of Nations required unanimous voting but this rendered it ineffectual, hence the UN decided not to require unanimous voting for the General Assembly (there are different rules for the Security Council, and even these depend on what kind vote it is), see http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/United-Nations/Comparison-with-the-League-of-Nations-VOTING.html

So if we agree that the UN doesn't always require unanimous voting then we can get back to my original point.

Would you like the UN to control the Internet and its regulation? especially when it is clear that it is repressive regimes and the islamic bloc that really want this. They certainly would not upload the ideals of Free Speech, such as the freedom to make critical statements about religion, governments or anything else.

This is a factor when you see how stacked the UN has become when voting against Israel eg. the shamefully biased Goldstone Report, that Goldstone himself later said was incorrect as he was "played" by the propaganda of the fascist islamic dictatorship ruling Gaza.

I would be interested to hear your arguments for supporting the agenda of such people, since they would wield great influence over the ITU based on the number of countries.

Some of the largest investors in Nokia Finnish retirement funds. Notably the funds of the very same government personnel who would conduct this investigation. Elop may have to retire in a country that doesn't have an extradition treaty with Finland when this is over.

The plan was to transfer Nokia's own retirement funds to third-party insurers in 2008. I don't know if that went through or not.

Be careful with that phrase "not possible". It's a tricky one.

that, and seeing as estonia has an area of around 45,226 square kilometers, vs the US with 9,629,091 square kilometers, that means(despite the huge difference in GDP, (5k per person in estonia, 35k per person in the US) the actual amount of work and cost involved in bringing fast internet to the entire country is fractions of what it is in the US. we can thank http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/ for this information.

Yes, security among nations perhaps, but not security for people in totalitarian states. If Libya had better tech to defend against NATO, that country would probably be at "peace" right now in the sense that no nation would bother its sovereignty, but it would have a few hundred thousand less of its people, and harsher lives for those who remain.

What do you know about Libya? If the NATO wouldn't have intervened the rebellion would have been over by now for a very simple reason: the majority of the Libyan people didn't support the rebellion, probably because the living standards in Libya are amongst the highest in Africa. And anyway, how do you come by the number of few hundred thousand that would have been killed? Besides, it is bombing Libya like it is done now, destroying the infrastructure, what makes live harsher for the people there -let alone the killing of civilians that the intervention was supposed to stop.

Somehow it seems like this wouldn't be a problem if you could just divide the country regionally between these two philosophies

I think the left-wing half is called "Scandinavia" ;-)

Interesting factoid: in a recent episode of The Young Turks featured on Best of the Left, Cenk (the host of TYT) talks about wealth distributions. Americans think the richest 20% of the people own 59% of the wealth, they want the richest 20% to own 32% (59 and 32 are averages among the asked), and in fact the richest 20% own 84% of the wealth. [32, 59, 84: IIRC]

In Denmark, the richest 20% own 34% of the wealth, see http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/economies/Europe/Denmark-POVERTY-AND-WEALTH.html

You're welcome over here; we talk english reasonably good, the food's nice, the tax rate is high and the weather is shit during the winter but the people are friendly and trusting. When you've got enough you don't need to squeeze more out of others, and when squeezing isn't the norm people don't have role models to learn it from. [We're like the Canada of Europe :D]

And their wealth distribution amongst the top and bottom 10% is better than the US with fewer people below the poverty line.

http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/economies/Asia-and-the-Pacific/Korea-South-POVERTY-AND-WEALTH.html

http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/Americas/United-States-INCOME.html

I know Banksy is from the UK but the Simpsons are a US show created by US citizens.

Besides I assumed it was a dig at Fox more than a dig at South Korea or China.

And their wealth distribution amongst the top and bottom 10% is better than the US with fewer people below the poverty line.

http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/economies/Asia-and-the-Pacific/Korea-South-POVERTY-AND-WEALTH.html

http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/Americas/United-States-INCOME.html

I know Banksy is from the UK but the Simpsons are a US show created by US citizens.

Besides I assumed it was a dig at Fox more than a dig at South Korea or China.

It is now also the Latin American country with the most capable web-based information system for agriculture [...] already contains live data.

Shut up and report back, when agricultural output in the country increases by, at least, 50%...

For benchmark, this source reports: During 1990-2000 the agricultural output grew by a yearly average of 5.7%. In 2001, the agricultural trade surplus was $85.2 million. But that was when the Sandinistas were out of power. They are ruling the country again since 2006, when Daniel Ortega returned to the presidency with 37.99% of the vote.

In 2007 they were afraid of a famine blaming a hurricane. Unless their policies are drastically different now, they aren't going to achieve much good, even if they use Linux for their command-and-control implementation of economy — for the Greater Good (TM).

did your friend also say that the yearly salary
should be a minimum of one million dollars.

with 100k you won't even get a proper house in
places where IT companies exist.

You don't get out much, do you? 100k would buy you a really nice house in my country, about 500 square meters built (about 5000 square feet) with a half-acre to an acre of yard (and we're not talking about one of those plaster and cardboard things you call houses in the US)

And FYI it is quite safe to live here (Montevideo, Uruguay), much safer than the "bad" areas in urban US cities (and yes, I've been there, while I guess you haven't been here). Tech industry here: 5% of GDP was exports of software products and services.

A quick check shows that 100k would buy you a decent house in the US even: http://realestate.shop.ebay.com/

However, I am impressed at the number of rooms an average American house is supposed to have:

http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/Americas/United-States-HOUSING.html

A coworker bought a house (ok, a ruin mostly) for 11k USD last week, and housing prices are expected to fall with the recent crisis. The apartment I rent costs about 20k USD (and rent is 150 USD, that includes running water but not other utilites).

The Netherlands has a maritime climate, with cool summers and mild winters. The average temperature is 2C (36F) in January and 19C (66F) in July, with an annual average of about 10C (50F). Clouds generally appear every day, and in the winter months fog often abounds, while rainfall occurs frequently. Average annual rainfall is about 76.5 cm (30 in). The mild, damp climate is ideal for dairying and livestock raising, but the limited sunshine restricts the growing of food crops.

Yeah, 11 hot days in July. Well, I suppose there is a good reason not to build your data center in Dallas 28 days in July above 90F.

You do realize that 298 of those 1195 SEK are tax, right? So subtracting that out, you get a real price of 897 SEK, which is only 68 SEK more than the US price, or about $10.60 USD.

I doubt that you'd be able to order a US version and have it shipped to Sweden for less than $10 in shipping.

Seems like a pretty fair price to me. Maybe you should vote for politicians who support lower taxes if you don't like it?

At this time, it's better than a coal plant that pumps tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. I rather my waste is buried than floating in the atmosphere.

For food, well, the Vegans (not that I am one - I believe in being an omnivore!) say you can feed a person with 700 square meters of farmland. So that means that 1 square kilometer will feed 1400 people.

Now, the US has approximately 950 million square acres of farmland, which is around 3.9 million square kilometers. That would support 5.4 billion people. Add in a bit more farmland from northern Mexico or Canada, and we have enough space here in North America for the entire population AND the farmland to support it.

Meaning that - if we really wanted to - we could leave the other 6 continents - and a large portion of North America - empty, untouched, unused.

They ought to move them to Brandon, MB Canada. (1 hour from the US Border). They have an abundance of Cheap Electricity and it doesn't cost much to Keep your office cool most of the year.