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All well in good, in 20 years you will reduce crime. Though, if I want to reduce crime in the short term, I'd start by doing what Japan is doing in the short term:

"... Persons violating Japanese law, even unknowingly, may be expelled, arrested or imprisoned. ... In most drug cases, suspects are detained incommunicado, which bars them from receiving visitors or corresponding with anyone other than a lawyer or U.S. consular officer until after indictment, which may take as long as several months. Persons arrested in Japan, even for a minor offense, may be held in detention without bail for many weeks during the investigation and legal proceedings. "

Or, A spate of juvenile crimes over the past two years has prompted Japan's government to propose a new bill that would lower the criminal punishment age from 16 years to 14 years old.

According to the article: "Armored bulldozers work well only on level ground."

I googled around a little and came up witha typical story: Mines in Zimbabwe

America ranks last among all developed western nations in the amount of aid it provides foreign nations expressed as a percentage of its gross domestic product (GDP) about 0.08 percent, according to a recent report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
http://www.oneworld.org/ips2/jul98/23_13_097.html

U.S. foreign aid in 1997 -- at less than one-tenth of one percent of gross domestic product -- has not only reached its lowest level ever, but is also the lowest in relation to GDP of any developed nation

Free, Universal Healthcare,

Wait lists?

near-free higher education

If one can get in.

Sad, really. I thoroughly recommend a trip over to Europe to any American

Glad to hear it. I'm planning to travel to Europe again this summer, to visit family and friends. Wouldn't want to feel unwelcome this time.

Homelessness is rare

Are you sure?

• But they don't have clean water/food/underwear: that should come first!
• What about poverty? Internet doesn't put bread on the plate!
• Reminds me of "let them have cake!"
• The priorities are all wrong! Billions of Indians are going hungry!
• Oh great! Now the farmers in India will be taking jobs from the farmers in Iowa
• I, for one, welcome our new Indian farmer overlords

Now, please allow me to rant.

Who the f*ck are you to sit in your comfy little chair (in, most probably, your parents' basement) and pass judgement on these people 9,000 miles away (from US)? Don't you think that the people in India care about poverty just a little bit more than you do? If the poverty in India does bother you so much, then sell your earthly possessions, take the first flight to India that you can get, and go live in a village and help them out, OK? Don't sit around outside, trying to lecture them.

India is not the US (nor is it UK, Australia, France, Germany, etc.). They have their own problems, and want to come up with their own solutions. LET THEM EXPERIMENT! Don't pass judgement; if you can help, then, by all means, please do so; if not, then S.T.F.U.!

Assuming you naysayers live in the USA, here are some statistics for you (from this site:

• 20% of all America's children live below the poverty line; 43.8% of America's black children live below the poverty line
• 4,000 children in the USA will be murdered by their parents this year
• A child born in New York today is less likely to live to 5 than a child born in Shanghai
• A gun takes the life of a child every 2 hours in the USA; 50,000 children were killed by firearms between 1979 and 1991 -- same as US casualties in the Vietnam War
• On average, one out of every three Americans - 34.2 percent of all people in the United States - are officially classified as living in poverty at least 2 months out of the year. (source: U.S. Census Bureau, Dynamics of Economic Well-Being: Poverty 1996-1999, July 2003.)

So, please tell me: why should the US be spending any money on weapons, Internet, Reality TV, etc. etc. when there is so much child poverty? Are you running around in your neighborhoods, telling poor folks not to spend any money on gifts/computers/TV, until they have gotten out of poverty? If not, then please start lecturing in your neighborhood first, before lecturing some people 9,000 miles away.

Thank you.

You really are far, far, off base. [snip] Iraq is far better now than it was before the war. Better yet, this time next year they will be far, far better off than they are now. Additionally, they can more than likely expect the same trend to continue for years to come.

OK, where do I begin? First off - I'm amazed and somewhat scared at your current image of what life in Iraq is like. Secondly, I'd like to mention that all linked sites are googled for, none are my favourites or anything like that. I'm personally getting most of my news coverage from the BBC, FYI, but I'm having trouble with their website, so I can't reference anything there. However, I figured you'd want proof, so google was used to get me relevant links. Some of the articles/issues were new to me.

Imagine a place where basic social order has broken down. This is Iraq. No government to pay wages, no workers to do essential tasks in a human society. Complete turmoil. There are still problems with drinking water in many places; due to equiptment that has been poorly maintained, as you yourself point point out. The war and lack of engineers working (who'll pay them and give them replacement parts?) has pushed the system to breaking point, a system we weakened ourselves (I'm a bit skeptical on this one, i.e. delibarate targeting).

Coming out the other end, sewage is also a massive problem. Not only do the above issues affect drinking water, they also have a big problem with rivers of raw sewage around in cramped living conditions. Disease is the last thing you want when you have a completely destroyed health system. Having no refuse facitlities also causes many problems, not least of all disease carrying vermin.

The lack of maintence is not Saddams fault, it never was, it is due to the international sanctions, which has been commonly acknowledged for a long time. They could not import the parts to fix the systems. They couldn't manufacture them, as the equiptment to make piping etc is the same stuff you use to make weaponry, and the sanctions have denied them that as well. It's now down to charities to help rebuild this system, as well as collaliton forces. Sure, you can pat yourself on the back that water and sewage will soon be superiour to pre-war levels, but remember why the system was poor in the first place. I'm sure all the dead children and vurnerable people who have died as a result of your glory will be lining up to thank you if there was an afterlife.

Police are scare and crime is at extraodinary levels. Car jacking, kidnapping, rapes, murders and theft plauge every city. Citizens are scared to roam the streets, travel at night is a dangerous proposal. Cars are only used in emergency, unless you want armed gangs taking them from you.

Most peoples savings have been rendered useless. The most popular large denomination note, the 10,000 dinar, is not accepted anywhere, due to mass forgery on stolen printing machines. Coinage is the only acceptible payment for anything. However, this is fortunatly changing, as a new currency has been introduced a week or so ago. This will take a while (til January they reckon) to become universal, but it leaves serious issues with folk who have literally become pennyless. People have to eat, feed children, pay bills and live. With so many workers not getting paid

Just a few examples of the stupid US patents on other countries' products:

Bio-Piracy Campaign Exposes Holes in U.S Patent Laws
http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/tur-cn.htm
http://www.rediff.com/news/1996/3011am.htm
The US Patent System Legalizes Theft and Biopiracy
Absurd patent laws

The apocryphal nuclear suitcase bomb notwithstanding, it is very difficult to make nuclear weapons small enough for tactical use. To save you from greater chance of carpal tunnel syndrome, I am aware of nuclear artillery shells, but they only fit the largest of howitzers. On the other hand, weapons based on this technology could conceivably be deployed at the squad level in a manner similar to an RPG or bazooka. It makes it much harder to control its use when deployed in such fashion. With standing armies of hundreds of thousands of soldiers the fallout from such a weapon used in combat would probably litter the countryside in a manner similar to land mines in such now forgotten conflicts (by most in the Western world) as the Namibian war for independence from South Africa.

To join in with the amoral, technophilic point of view preferred in this forum. From a technical point of view the problem with fallout seems to be related to the rate at which the halfnium explodes compared to the rate at which its volume is exposed to an x-ray source. Thus it seems that forming the halfnium in a thin shell around, and surrounded by, an x-ray source should mitigate fallout. However, I can't think to too many switchable x-ray sources other than a fission reaction which off course will cause its own problems...

IIRC from my undergrad days in econ, technically MS would not be covered by US anti-dumping laws, but by the anti-trust laws under a doctrine known as deep pockets. The idea is that you have enough cash stashed away that you can afford to drop your prices for a sufficiently long time to drive less well endowed competitors out of business and then raise prices to the monopoly level. Here is an example from the US airlines industry. Anti-dumping is a similar idea but under US law applies to foreign companies selling for less than production costs.

There are a couple of problems with both the deep pockets notion and anti-dumping laws. First, a large competitor may well have a lower cost of production than a smaller competitor and costs can be notoriously hard to measure. This can lead to charges that what is really happening is that the DOJ is bringing the case for political reasons, i.e. the protection of small business (the A&P grocery case is the classic example). The second problem is that cutting the price imposes a cost on the big competitor as well (e.g. $177 million quarterly loss for the MS game console) and so it isn't entirely clear that this is a rational strategy. Remember that both the large and small guys do best where their marginal revenue = their marginal cost (i.e. profit maximization) and this is not necessarily the same as maximizing market share as many Korean and Japanese firms have discovered in the past decade or so.

And for the parent who wrote:

The US puts taxes at will on any kind of product if they think their own industrie soffers from forreign laws... However: what is legal and what not, all over the world, is final descided by a US court.

The EU and the Japanese are at least as guilty of protection as the US (try selling Guatemalan bananas in the EU). Most of these disputes are now settled under GATT treaties by the WTO, not US courts. In fact, the US 1916 anti-dumping law has been held to violate the WTO and GATT treaty by the WTO. Under the rules, the US is required to bring its domestic laws into conformity with WTO and GATT rules as are all of the other signatories.

here.

This article is from Rio de Janeiro, it says that using sugar cane alcohol as a source of fuel also fights the greenhouse effect, because it doesn't produce C02 like regular fuel.

Just for all those who are making the US out to look like the good guy here, try some statistics The US consistantly ranks dead last among the 22 richest nations in terms of its foreign aid as a percentage of Gross National Product. The kicker is that it is behind Italy (which is in the midst of a political crisis) and Japan (which is in the middle of a decade long recession). If anything, the US should be apologizing for not having milled the corn in the first place.

More points:

a) Half of all US foreign aid is directed towards military purposes.
b) Of course, you might think this is just the democratic process at work. Americans don't want to spend that much on foreign aid. Of course, Americans also don't know how much we actually spend on foreign aid. Since they think we spend 15%, and we actually spend less than 1%, the first poll mentioned holds no water.

Look, I'm not here to demonize America. I like it here a lot. I just want to get it out there that as far as foreign policy is concerned, the American people are in the dark, and the American government does whatever is in its best interest. While I don't suddenly expect everyone to become foreign policy gurus, and the American government to be totally self-less (it shouldn't) some steps towards a nice middle ground would be a good start.

Well, it'd almost be nice if this was a flame, but it's probably a typical example of how most people have no idea what's going on in this region.

So, am I going to correct that massive information deficit with just one post?
Ha!
You gotta be kidding!

Ok, random facts:
Why are the 'Occupied Territories'/'Disputed Territories' known as the 'Occupied Territories'/'Disputed Territories'?
Because the UN has been saying since 1967 that Israel should withdraw from them.
http://www.un.org/documents/sc/res/1967/s67r242e.p df

Why do many Palestinines dislike the US?
You could just read this:
http://www.merip.org/media_outreach/CT-Harm-done-g lobe.html
Basically, the US is funding Israels occupation:
- Israel gets about a third of US foreign aid
even though
- Israel's GNP is higher than Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza combined.
http://www.wrmea.com/html/us_aid_to_israel.htm
(actually, most of the US's aid goes to military uses
http://www.oneworld.org/ips2/jul98/23_13_097.html )

What is one of the reasons Palestinians dislike Ariel Sharon?
He was Minister of Defence during a 1982 Palestinian massacre... gah, just look here:
http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/palestine/ news2001/amnesty100301.html

About 3 times more Palestinians have died in this conflict than Israelis. About a quarter of them, children.
The Palestinians have vastly less land available to them, they are poorer - many are living in refugee camps, after all.

And blah, here's more.
http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/palestine/ eduardoCohen.html

And "Will somebody please think of the Children!?"
http://playgroundsforpalestine.org/
Ok, so that's not actually funny...
:(

I could say that it's kinda atrocious how one group of people are treating another, considering they know how it is to be treated that way, and worse.
But I'd be living in Lah-lah land. People are not that nice, fair, or decent.

And yay, there's probably some people who will have gotten to this bit, and already decided I'm "a bad guy" so they can ignore me.

But it's not that simple.
It's a war, with all the nasties of a civil war.
It's in the best interests of Fundamentalists on both sides to continue the conflict, as it works helluva good in the popularity ratings.

Each side is gonna say the other side is THE BAD GUYS, because that's how wars work.
If you don't believe it, people don't want to fight them.

Currently, the Palestinians are getting the worse end of the stick, but Israelis are not "THE BAD GUYS" either.
It's just people - working, eating, caring for their children, getting on with life - on both sides, but until you realise that, there won't be peace.

A completely non-revolutionary idea, but still true.

The scary part is that there are only 5 other huge media corporations in the world, each with a list that's just as impressive. The pdf above doesn't go into the same kind of detail, but still gives a good idea.

You keep saying that, but it isn't technically true, and your repetition won't fix that. Every death the United States causes in the current attacks is a seperate crime. Of course, the deaths of the non-military personal are quite a bit more offensive to me than the fact that some alleged terrorist are being killed, but it is all a series of criminal actions, just as blowing up the world trade centers were.

"As for the US using chemical and biological weapons, that is a vicious lie. If it were true, do you think we'd have the support from our allies that we do now?"

I didn't say 'chemical and biological weapons'. I said 'chemical and biological warfare'.

The disinction is important because biological warfare includes activities that promote suffering and death as a result of biological agents, even if those biological agents are not delivered directly.

The example I'm thinking of is the fact that the United States arranged to insure that the citizens of Iraq have been unable to provide clean drinking water for the last ten years by imposing sanctions that make it imposible to aquire the supplies to fix the infrastructure that the United States destroyed. The resulting desease and death has killed hundreds of thousands of innocent citizens. Here's a sample site about US use of biological warfare.

An example of chemical warfare is the use of depleated uranium ammunition during battles. Here's a sample site about US use of chemical warfare.

If you care to look, there is a lot of detail available on both these issues.

"As for recognizing evil, if September 11 didn't make things crystal clear for you, I shudder to think what would? Maybe L.A. getting leveled by a nuke?"

It is my belief that the course of action the United States is undertaking makes such an attack more likely, not less likely.

"That is the future we are facing if we don't fight to stop terrorism now."

Terrorism will never be completely stoped. I'm not at all convinced that the United States will even reduce it anytime soon. The 'wars' on drugs and poverty weren't successful, why should we expect this 'war on terrorism' to be successful?

I haven't heard anyone worrying about Geneva or Amsterdam being leveled by a nuke, have you? Why do you suppose L.A. is a more likely target?

Yeah, let's talk about scale of magnitude.

Perhaps you've missed the headlines like UN sanctions on Iraq lead to deaths of 500,000 children. That was five years ago.

The United States has been working to impose continued sanctions on Iraq which prevent them from fixing the infrastructure that allows them to supply potable water to their citizens. As a result hundreds of thousands of innocent citizens have been dying of proventable deseases such as cholera.

"Plus, there is the incy bitty point of that we were attacked, and we have the right to defend ourselves."

From their perspective, the United States has been engaged in biological warfare against the middle east for the last ten years.

>Slowing the economy down even more helps the planet?
Here's a hint: The planet is finite. And I'm pretty sure that the day we run out of resources is going to be a hell of a lot worse than any mere recession.

Why does everyone bring out just Hiroshima and Nagasaki as "evil" in these examples? What about firebombing Tokyo? What about Dresden? Why are those not mentioned? [..] What about the bombing of Britain by the Germans? What about the use of bioweapons by Japan against the Chinese? The Rape of Nanking? The Holocaust?

May I remind you what claim started this sub-thread?
US has never engaged in anything as evil or unjustified as what happened on 9/11.
Most of your examples simple do not fit as a counter-argument.

BTW: Did you even read
http://www.oneworld.org/news/world/bloomfield.html ?
I see no sign of an reaction to that in your answer.

You've been fed the same old distorted view of history. Victors rewrite history as necessary to portray themselves as the good guys. Every time.

See Why the atom bomb wasn't necessary to end the war :

I believe that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when considered in a historical perspective, were undoubtedly unnecessary and barbarous acts. Those who support this view include Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery and General Dwight Eisenhower.

There is a big difference between the Nazis and 'Islamic Fundamentalism'. The Nazis created themselves and had decided that Germany should be the dominant power in Europe. 'Islamic Fundamentalism' is a reaction to sustained policies of the West, led by America.
The rights of the Palestinians have been systematically trampled. In the Persian Gulf America supports random despotic regimes based merely on their support for American interests. Let us not forget that Bin Laden was supported by the CIA when it was convenient for him to fight in Afghanistan. Sadam was backed when it was convient to oppose the Iranian government that was in itself created to remove the American backed dictatorship of the Shah.
I know this is anti American but I should say that I am not. I honestly believe that America does tend to support Freedom and Democracy. However this is not the case in the Middle East. If it was these acts would not be taking place.
President Bush was correct when he called this a war. The only thing is that he didn't realise which war this was like. It's Vietnam all over again. The United States' aims are vague and are basically that the US and Israel can do whatever they want without respecting the values that they hold dear in the rest of the world. And think about this, why did the US withdraw from Vietnam ? Because it was immoral or because the cost to the US in lives and resources became too great.
The US should learn from it's mistakes and apply the values which it purports to hold dear everywhere.
What you are proposing is to fix the symptoms and not the cause. Fix the cause, be true to democracy and peace. First of all engage Iran, Iran has recovered from it's extremism and now has a president and a population who are desparate to return into the world system. Then, either invade Iraq or end the blockade, whose death count dwarves the loss of life in the US over the past few days. Finally, and this is the most difficult part, force Israel to make peace. Israel has a right to exist, but that right cannot include the right to persecute Palestinians. This is the only way and it will eventually happen. What you are proposing, the persecution of 'Islamic Fundamentalism' comes dangerously close to the persecution of Islam. There are 1.3 Billion muslims. The US cannot tell all these people that holy shrines that they have had for 1000 years they cannot have, or that their religion is babaric.
The US can stop these attacks. But it is not by further war. A truly amazing president, like Nixon, must realise that this is a conflict in which the US must understand it's own actions and change it's behaviour. America is a truly great country, perhaps the greatest in history, however this does not mean all US actions are correct.

Ok, first of all I'd like to say that I am going to wildly speculate and say that I believe that this action was carried out by a muslim group.
The reason this has been done was not completely illogical or irrational. The fact is that American efforts in the middle east backing up Israel and the continued blockade or Iraq - that has killed at least 200 000 people can be seen as a defacto war. Check this link for details on deaths in Iraq.
As for Israel, the United States gives around $5 000 000 000 in direct aid to Israel, plus access to military secrets and weapons of untold value. Israel has nuclear weapons. Secondly ~$2 000 000 000 in aid is given to Egypt on the proviso that they leave Israel alone.
The Bush administration has said on Israel it intends to step back - if stepping back is billions of dollars of aid and backing up Israel unquesionably I sincerely ask the US to step back with regard to me too.
This action is not silly terrorism, it is simply another act in a war that the United States has been fighting for 50 years.

(otherwise known as Fsck DeBeers.

They have said that they do not use conflict diamonds, which are diamonds that have been bought from human rights abusing governments and insurgencies in Africa. I.e. in order to get the mine where your diamond was mined, child soldiers may have been used, civilians killed and tortured, etc.

Not really, though. They allow themselves to be tricked, and their diamond reserves in London, Frankfurt and Tel Aviv are of course full of conflict diamonds.

You can only prevent the use of conflict diamonds in 2 ways. 1 make the diamonds yourself, and 2 get the diamonds from sources you control and make open to the public.

I prefer the first way, really.

We do not need to be mining natural diamonds for gem or other purposes anymore.

Firstly, charity is something you should do because you want to, not because it allows you to save some money from the taxman. The idea of charity is not to provide affluent geeks with a ready-made tax break, it's to raise money for good causes.

Secondly, if you're really interested in donating to charity, at least make it one that really helps people in need, not one that at the end of the day, accomplishes very little in the grand scheme of things. There are starving children in Africa, victims of ethnic cleansing in Montenegro, children forced into prostitution across the globe and countless other causes that accomplish real good for millions of people.

I think it's tragic that charity is only considered to be useful as a tax dodge, and that even then it's more "geek chic" to promote the EFF than the hundreds of charities genuinely improving people's lives.

1. Open source library of knowledge for developing nations (making the world's intellectual wealth available to all)
http://www.oneworld.org/globalp roj ects/humcdrom/
http://www.oneworld.org/globalprojects/& lt;/a>
http://www.oneworld .or g/globalprojects/humcdrom/copyrigh.htm
http://payson.tulane.edu:8888/
; http://www.globalprojects.org/
; http://www.humanitylibraries.net/ http://www.villageearth.org/
http://www.villageearth.org/ATLi bra ry/cdrom.htm

2. Open source knowledge management systems
http://www.bootstrap.org/
http://bootstrap.org/colloquium/ar chi ves.html
http://www.bootstrap.org/dkr/discussion /

3. Self-replicating space habitats (support trillions of humans in style without overrunning the earth)
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs/s ett le.htm
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs /sp acsetl.htm
http://www.permanent.com/
http://science.n as. nasa.gov/Services/Education/SpaceSettlement/
http://www.luf.org/
http://www.ssi.org/
http://www.ssi.org/alt-plan.html http://www.spacedev.com/
http://www.spacehab.com/
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/

4. Pursue the "Ecocity Berkley" vision in the book by that name by Richard Register and look for related visions of sustainable development
http://www.amazon.com/exec/ob ido s/ASIN/1556430094/
http://www.co-intelligence.or g/y 2k_commtyorgs.html
http://www.fuzzylu.com/greencenter/h ome .htm
http://www.ulb.ac.be/ceese/meta/sust vl. html
http://www.rmi.org/

5. Work towards ending the drug war and pardoning hundreds of thousands of Americans imprisoned on non-violent drug charges. (I believe drug use is wrong and should be avoided, and by all means as it is now illegal, so don't do drugs! But as with alcohol and tobacco and caffeine, drug abuse should be considered a medical problem, not a legal one (except when like DUI it hurts or puts at risk others directly)).
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pag es/ frontline/shows/drugs/
http://www.drcnet.org/facts/

6. Teaching tolerance and compassion
http://www.splcenter.org/
http://www.splcenter.or g/t eachingtolerance/tt-index.html

7. Open source educational simulations and simulation construction toolkits (one of the most meaningful ways to use computers in the classroom).
http://www.gardenwithinsight.com/ http://riceinfo.ri ce. edu/armadillo/Simulations/simserver.html
http://www.creativeteachingsite .co m/edusims.html
http://www.workingmodel.com/
http://www.idsia.ch/~andrea/simtools.h tml

8. Preserving biodiversity (when it's gone, it's gone forever)
http://www.tnc.org/
http://www.environment.about.com/newsissues/enviro nment/library/weekly/aa091700.htm

9. Develop any specific sustainable technology in energy (e.g. solar), recycling (e.g. recycle computers), materials (e.g. plastics from starch), society (e.g. participatory democracy & social justice).
http://www.google.com/sear ch? q=sustainable+technology
http://www.edf.org/issues/Recycling.htm l
http://www.sustainable.doe.gov/

10. Make corporations more accountable to human needs
http://www.adbusters.org/inform ati on/foundation/
http://www.adbusters.org/c amp aigns/charter/death.html
Previous link vanished, try instead:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.adbuste rs.org/ campaigns/charter/death.html+corporate+death+penal ty&hl=en
http://www.cwsl.edu/news/n_corpo rat e_death.html
http://monkeyfist.com/articles/340& lt;br> http://www.chaordic.org/

11. Reform the "Intellectual property" laws and their related organizations, perhaps so that copyrights are for a couple decades and most patents are for a dozen years and only for true innovations. Ensure that any IP developed with any government money is immediately put into the public domain.
http://danny.oz.au/fre e-s oftware/advocacy/against_IP.html
(Lots of other Slashot links!)

12. If you don't want to get you hands dirty volunteering your own time, look around and find good people (not organizations, although the people may be in organizations) already doing good things. Pick people with a track record of years of fighting for the common good or who have already made a major accomplishment demonstrating commitment and just anonymously give them $100K without strings attached. Example: Marty Johnson at Isles, Inc.
http://www.isles.org/mileston.html& lt;br> Find people just starting a career of public service or a charitable venture and struggling to do good things and give them $20K and tell them you believe in their promise and cause. Expect a bunch of the money to be wasted but give it anyway and learn how to give effectively. For ideas, look at the grantees list of any foundation. Then ask those people who they know who are just starting out and trying to do a good job.
http://www.beldon.org/grants2000_07.htm l

When I was about thirteen, I got about seven books out of the library on money thinking I wanted to become a millionaire. Six told me how to get rich (start a business and run it well.) One of them asked me "why do you want to be rich?" That is the one whose name I remember and the ideas in it have changed my life. For advice on setting a direction of what to do with wealth, read the Book "The Seven Laws of Money" by Michael Phillips and Sally Raspberry, especially the chapter on how foundations fail in their mission and how grants go to people who sound good but usually can't deliver (i.e. how hard it is to give money away).
http://www.seeingmoney.com/SevenLaws.ht m
http://www.hallbusi nes ses.com/biographies_primers/1420.shtml

My wife and I are working on a few of these issues ourselves (and a few example links are to our stuff). We make money contracting and spend it to "buy" our own time for making quality software the market can't or doesn't seem to want to pay for. Even without IPO riches, any competent software developer can make $75K-100K in today's market. Graduate students can live on $20K a year, and so can many software developers (kids make it harder) if they follow the path of Voluntary Simplicity. It's a question of priorities.
http://www.life.ca/subject/simplicity .ht ml
http://www.simpleliving.net/slj/ http://www.scn.org/earth/lightly/ http://www.thegarden.net/simplicity/

Voluntary simplicity leaves a lot of funds for doing good deeds - even if they are done on your own time by using your own money to take time off and develop open source software or do other worthwhile ventures. Or take a job that doesn't pay as well but involves helping an organization that you believe in.
http://www.idealist.org/

There are awesome things happening over the next twenty to forty years. According to Moore's law, desktop computers in twenty or so years will be a million times faster than today's. Already computers can drive cars somewhat well and identify vegetable better than humans.

http://www.research.ibm.com/resources/magazine/199 9/number_3/machine399.html ;

Other breakthrough innovations are happening in technological areas like energy, materials, nanotechnology, communications, agriculture, biotechnology, and robotics. Use your wealth to think deeply about what all this means and do something to ensure human survival with style.

It is saddening to see people spend so much money on less important stuff (another night club in this case). Now if it was a night club where these issues are discussed, then maybe it makes sense.

Capitalism without charity is evil, because capitalism only meets the needs of people with money.

1. Open source library of knowledge for developing nations (making the world's intellectual wealth available to all)
http://www.oneworld.org/globalp roj ects/humcdrom/
http://www.oneworld.org/globalprojects/& lt;/a>
http://www.oneworld .or g/globalprojects/humcdrom/copyrigh.htm
http://payson.tulane.edu:8888/
; http://www.globalprojects.org/
; http://www.humanitylibraries.net/ http://www.villageearth.org/
http://www.villageearth.org/ATLi bra ry/cdrom.htm

2. Open source knowledge management systems
http://www.bootstrap.org/
http://bootstrap.org/colloquium/ar chi ves.html
http://www.bootstrap.org/dkr/discussion /

3. Self-replicating space habitats (support trillions of humans in style without overrunning the earth)
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs/s ett le.htm
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs /sp acsetl.htm
http://www.permanent.com/
http://science.n as. nasa.gov/Services/Education/SpaceSettlement/
http://www.luf.org/
http://www.ssi.org/
http://www.ssi.org/alt-plan.html http://www.spacedev.com/
http://www.spacehab.com/
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/

4. Pursue the "Ecocity Berkley" vision in the book by that name by Richard Register and look for related visions of sustainable development
http://www.amazon.com/exec/ob ido s/ASIN/1556430094/
http://www.co-intelligence.or g/y 2k_commtyorgs.html
http://www.fuzzylu.com/greencenter/h ome .htm
http://www.ulb.ac.be/ceese/meta/sust vl. html
http://www.rmi.org/

5. Work towards ending the drug war and pardoning hundreds of thousands of Americans imprisoned on non-violent drug charges. (I believe drug use is wrong and should be avoided, and by all means as it is now illegal, so don't do drugs! But as with alcohol and tobacco and caffeine, drug abuse should be considered a medical problem, not a legal one (except when like DUI it hurts or puts at risk others directly)).
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pag es/ frontline/shows/drugs/
http://www.drcnet.org/facts/

6. Teaching tolerance and compassion
http://www.splcenter.org/
http://www.splcenter.or g/t eachingtolerance/tt-index.html

7. Open source educational simulations and simulation construction toolkits (one of the most meaningful ways to use computers in the classroom).
http://www.gardenwithinsight.com/ http://riceinfo.ri ce. edu/armadillo/Simulations/simserver.html
http://www.creativeteachingsite .co m/edusims.html
http://www.workingmodel.com/
http://www.idsia.ch/~andrea/simtools.h tml

8. Preserving biodiversity (when it's gone, it's gone forever)
http://www.tnc.org/
http://www.environment.about.com/newsissues/enviro nment/library/weekly/aa091700.htm

9. Develop any specific sustainable technology in energy (e.g. solar), recycling (e.g. recycle computers), materials (e.g. plastics from starch), society (e.g. participatory democracy & social justice).
http://www.google.com/sear ch? q=sustainable+technology
http://www.edf.org/issues/Recycling.htm l
http://www.sustainable.doe.gov/

10. Make corporations more accountable to human needs
http://www.adbusters.org/inform ati on/foundation/
http://www.adbusters.org/c amp aigns/charter/death.html
Previous link vanished, try instead:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.adbuste rs.org/ campaigns/charter/death.html+corporate+death+penal ty&hl=en
http://www.cwsl.edu/news/n_corpo rat e_death.html
http://monkeyfist.com/articles/340& lt;br> http://www.chaordic.org/

11. Reform the "Intellectual property" laws and their related organizations, perhaps so that copyrights are for a couple decades and most patents are for a dozen years and only for true innovations. Ensure that any IP developed with any government money is immediately put into the public domain.
http://danny.oz.au/fre e-s oftware/advocacy/against_IP.html
(Lots of other Slashot links!)

12. If you don't want to get you hands dirty volunteering your own time, look around and find good people (not organizations, although the people may be in organizations) already doing good things. Pick people with a track record of years of fighting for the common good or who have already made a major accomplishment demonstrating commitment and just anonymously give them $100K without strings attached. Example: Marty Johnson at Isles, Inc.
http://www.isles.org/mileston.html& lt;br> Find people just starting a career of public service or a charitable venture and struggling to do good things and give them $20K and tell them you believe in their promise and cause. Expect a bunch of the money to be wasted but give it anyway and learn how to give effectively. For ideas, look at the grantees list of any foundation. Then ask those people who they know who are just starting out and trying to do a good job.
http://www.beldon.org/grants2000_07.htm l

When I was about thirteen, I got about seven books out of the library on money thinking I wanted to become a millionaire. Six told me how to get rich (start a business and run it well.) One of them asked me "why do you want to be rich?" That is the one whose name I remember and the ideas in it have changed my life. For advice on setting a direction of what to do with wealth, read the Book "The Seven Laws of Money" by Michael Phillips and Sally Raspberry, especially the chapter on how foundations fail in their mission and how grants go to people who sound good but usually can't deliver (i.e. how hard it is to give money away).
http://www.seeingmoney.com/SevenLaws.ht m
http://www.hallbusi nes ses.com/biographies_primers/1420.shtml

My wife and I are working on a few of these issues ourselves (and a few example links are to our stuff). We make money contracting and spend it to "buy" our own time for making quality software the market can't or doesn't seem to want to pay for. Even without IPO riches, any competent software developer can make $75K-100K in today's market. Graduate students can live on $20K a year, and so can many software developers (kids make it harder) if they follow the path of Voluntary Simplicity. It's a question of priorities.
http://www.life.ca/subject/simplicity .ht ml
http://www.simpleliving.net/slj/ http://www.scn.org/earth/lightly/ http://www.thegarden.net/simplicity/

Voluntary simplicity leaves a lot of funds for doing good deeds - even if they are done on your own time by using your own money to take time off and develop open source software or do other worthwhile ventures. Or take a job that doesn't pay as well but involves helping an organization that you believe in.
http://www.idealist.org/

There are awesome things happening over the next twenty to forty years. According to Moore's law, desktop computers in twenty or so years will be a million times faster than today's. Already computers can drive cars somewhat well and identify vegetable better than humans.

http://www.research.ibm.com/resources/magazine/199 9/number_3/machine399.html ;

Other breakthrough innovations are happening in technological areas like energy, materials, nanotechnology, communications, agriculture, biotechnology, and robotics. Use your wealth to think deeply about what all this means and do something to ensure human survival with style.

It is saddening to see people spend so much money on less important stuff (another night club in this case). Now if it was a night club where these issues are discussed, then maybe it makes sense.

Capitalism without charity is evil, because capitalism only meets the needs of people with money.

1. Open source library of knowledge for developing nations (making the world's intellectual wealth available to all)
http://www.oneworld.org/globalp roj ects/humcdrom/
http://www.oneworld.org/globalprojects/& lt;/a>
http://www.oneworld .or g/globalprojects/humcdrom/copyrigh.htm
http://payson.tulane.edu:8888/
; http://www.globalprojects.org/
; http://www.humanitylibraries.net/ http://www.villageearth.org/
http://www.villageearth.org/ATLi bra ry/cdrom.htm

2. Open source knowledge management systems
http://www.bootstrap.org/
http://bootstrap.org/colloquium/ar chi ves.html
http://www.bootstrap.org/dkr/discussion /

3. Self-replicating space habitats (support trillions of humans in style without overrunning the earth)
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs/s ett le.htm
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs /sp acsetl.htm
http://www.permanent.com/
http://science.n as. nasa.gov/Services/Education/SpaceSettlement/
http://www.luf.org/
http://www.ssi.org/
http://www.ssi.org/alt-plan.html http://www.spacedev.com/
http://www.spacehab.com/
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/

4. Pursue the "Ecocity Berkley" vision in the book by that name by Richard Register and look for related visions of sustainable development
http://www.amazon.com/exec/ob ido s/ASIN/1556430094/
http://www.co-intelligence.or g/y 2k_commtyorgs.html
http://www.fuzzylu.com/greencenter/h ome .htm
http://www.ulb.ac.be/ceese/meta/sust vl. html
http://www.rmi.org/

5. Work towards ending the drug war and pardoning hundreds of thousands of Americans imprisoned on non-violent drug charges. (I believe drug use is wrong and should be avoided, and by all means as it is now illegal, so don't do drugs! But as with alcohol and tobacco and caffeine, drug abuse should be considered a medical problem, not a legal one (except when like DUI it hurts or puts at risk others directly)).
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pag es/ frontline/shows/drugs/
http://www.drcnet.org/facts/

6. Teaching tolerance and compassion
http://www.splcenter.org/
http://www.splcenter.or g/t eachingtolerance/tt-index.html

7. Open source educational simulations and simulation construction toolkits (one of the most meaningful ways to use computers in the classroom).
http://www.gardenwithinsight.com/ http://riceinfo.ri ce. edu/armadillo/Simulations/simserver.html
http://www.creativeteachingsite .co m/edusims.html
http://www.workingmodel.com/
http://www.idsia.ch/~andrea/simtools.h tml

8. Preserving biodiversity (when it's gone, it's gone forever)
http://www.tnc.org/
http://www.environment.about.com/newsissues/enviro nment/library/weekly/aa091700.htm

9. Develop any specific sustainable technology in energy (e.g. solar), recycling (e.g. recycle computers), materials (e.g. plastics from starch), society (e.g. participatory democracy & social justice).
http://www.google.com/sear ch? q=sustainable+technology
http://www.edf.org/issues/Recycling.htm l
http://www.sustainable.doe.gov/

10. Make corporations more accountable to human needs
http://www.adbusters.org/inform ati on/foundation/
http://www.adbusters.org/c amp aigns/charter/death.html
Previous link vanished, try instead:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.adbuste rs.org/ campaigns/charter/death.html+corporate+death+penal ty&hl=en
http://www.cwsl.edu/news/n_corpo rat e_death.html
http://monkeyfist.com/articles/340& lt;br> http://www.chaordic.org/

11. Reform the "Intellectual property" laws and their related organizations, perhaps so that copyrights are for a couple decades and most patents are for a dozen years and only for true innovations. Ensure that any IP developed with any government money is immediately put into the public domain.
http://danny.oz.au/fre e-s oftware/advocacy/against_IP.html
(Lots of other Slashot links!)

12. If you don't want to get you hands dirty volunteering your own time, look around and find good people (not organizations, although the people may be in organizations) already doing good things. Pick people with a track record of years of fighting for the common good or who have already made a major accomplishment demonstrating commitment and just anonymously give them $100K without strings attached. Example: Marty Johnson at Isles, Inc.
http://www.isles.org/mileston.html& lt;br> Find people just starting a career of public service or a charitable venture and struggling to do good things and give them $20K and tell them you believe in their promise and cause. Expect a bunch of the money to be wasted but give it anyway and learn how to give effectively. For ideas, look at the grantees list of any foundation. Then ask those people who they know who are just starting out and trying to do a good job.
http://www.beldon.org/grants2000_07.htm l

When I was about thirteen, I got about seven books out of the library on money thinking I wanted to become a millionaire. Six told me how to get rich (start a business and run it well.) One of them asked me "why do you want to be rich?" That is the one whose name I remember and the ideas in it have changed my life. For advice on setting a direction of what to do with wealth, read the Book "The Seven Laws of Money" by Michael Phillips and Sally Raspberry, especially the chapter on how foundations fail in their mission and how grants go to people who sound good but usually can't deliver (i.e. how hard it is to give money away).
http://www.seeingmoney.com/SevenLaws.ht m
http://www.hallbusi nes ses.com/biographies_primers/1420.shtml

My wife and I are working on a few of these issues ourselves (and a few example links are to our stuff). We make money contracting and spend it to "buy" our own time for making quality software the market can't or doesn't seem to want to pay for. Even without IPO riches, any competent software developer can make $75K-100K in today's market. Graduate students can live on $20K a year, and so can many software developers (kids make it harder) if they follow the path of Voluntary Simplicity. It's a question of priorities.
http://www.life.ca/subject/simplicity .ht ml
http://www.simpleliving.net/slj/ http://www.scn.org/earth/lightly/ http://www.thegarden.net/simplicity/

Voluntary simplicity leaves a lot of funds for doing good deeds - even if they are done on your own time by using your own money to take time off and develop open source software or do other worthwhile ventures. Or take a job that doesn't pay as well but involves helping an organization that you believe in.
http://www.idealist.org/

There are awesome things happening over the next twenty to forty years. According to Moore's law, desktop computers in twenty or so years will be a million times faster than today's. Already computers can drive cars somewhat well and identify vegetable better than humans.

http://www.research.ibm.com/resources/magazine/199 9/number_3/machine399.html ;

Other breakthrough innovations are happening in technological areas like energy, materials, nanotechnology, communications, agriculture, biotechnology, and robotics. Use your wealth to think deeply about what all this means and do something to ensure human survival with style.

It is saddening to see people spend so much money on less important stuff (another night club in this case). Now if it was a night club where these issues are discussed, then maybe it makes sense.

Capitalism without charity is evil, because capitalism only meets the needs of people with money.

No, the fact of the matter is that the USA was 'screwing over' Latin America well before the Cold War gave us a more plausible excuse. Check your facts next time you spout off about American superiority.

PS. I'm an American too and I'm not exactly proud of all the things my country has done in the past (and continues to do to this day.) We are not neccesarily "the good guys." We are an empire like any other, which happens to carry the biggest stick at the moment.

Fun fact of the day: the term 'gook' did not come out of Korea or Vietnam -- American Marines were using it to refer to natives of Haiti as far back as 1915.

---

I would suggest you to get in touch with NGOs involved in Africa (then again, Africa is *huge*). There's also some UN-related agencies working very hard to bring education and tools to developing countries, even in remote/agitated/devastated places (which Africa isn't as a whole, far from it). Most of them are based in Geneva, Switzerland, just in case. Contact them, I'm sure they'd be very happy to get some help. You can probably gather some info at http://www.oneworld.org/ and on the United Nation Development Programme on http://www.undp.org/

If education was more widespread in Africa, you can be sure there'd be much less wars, epidemics and other catastrophies.

Some moronic posters here on /. seem to forget the African continent is several orders of magnitude larger than the USofA and carry almost a billion people. If the "Western" world stops using Africa as a dumpster and testing ground for chemicals and actually starts redistributing its [financial and educational] resources, many African countries could start experiencing strong growth in the tech domains, just like South-East Asian countries did.

Now, tell big companies to give away their old computers so they can be shipped to developing countries... But most of them don't give a shit and most of all don't want to spend a penny for getting rid of their 3 year-old PC junk...

Good luck,

/max

Like organic farming, 'gasohol' will take up much more farmland than is currently in use, effectively wiping out all natural land that can be farmed. Goodbye, nature preserves. Wetlands will be drained, forests razed.

The real key to efficiently feeding ourselves lies in going beyond organic techniques and using good design to produce systems which use natural cycles to increase production and reduce pollution. See here for a randomly selected example, and here or here for more globally representative projects.
- Derwen

The following link is to the english version of this story...
RUSSIA: Environmentalist Maintains That 'Portable Nukes' Are Missing

and the next link is to a rebuttal of sorts including...

Much confusion was brought into the modern politico-military environment by retired general Alexander Lebed. His statements on dozens, or even hundreds of nuclear suitcases (presumably, weapons for sabotage units) allegedly missing from the storage facilities, was one of the major reasons for political unrest in the world in August-September. What is hidden behind Lebed's words - a genuine intention to alarm the people and structures responsible for nuclear security, or just a pure desire to come back into the Russian and international political life, of which he was forced out last year? Alexander Akulov in "Hey you, just hold my suitcase!" tries to answer these questions. And Alexander Golts cites communist leader Gennady Zuganov, and the arguments of the latter, why START 2 has no chances to be ratified this year...

Nuclear security and Safety parts 4-5

If you're going to do unpopular activities, don't flaunt them in front of the authorities. This applies in the United States too, by the way.

The difference is that unpopular but not illegal activities don't get you killed or imprisoned in the U.S. Sure, at some times the record has been better than others, but if you espouse an unpopular view point you can still remain a free citizen in the U.S.

Inalienable rights? You don't have nearly as many as you think you have. You've got exactly as many rights as you can get for yourself.

I couldn't agree more, actually. But the government of the U.S. is constructed to recognize the rights of citizens and to guarantee them as far as possible through the courts and the executive branch. The government of China doesn't seem to recognize any rights for its citizens other than the right to be a cog in the machine.

I'm glad to see the citizens of China fighting for their rights, and I wish them the best of luck. If you're happy living under a totalitarian regime, at least try not to get in the way of a real people's revolution.

In China, nobody anti-government gets heard because (a) most of them don't care, and (b) the government doesn't like that sort of thing (who does?). In the States, nobody anti-American gets heard because EVERYBODY doesn't care. There's no question about where I'd rather be.

I hear plenty of anti-American sentiment on this forum every day. Sure, maybe most people don't want to hear it, but the government does not stop the speakers from saying it. Whether anyone is listening or not is really an orthogonal issue; if your viewpoints make sense to people, in a free society you will gain listeners. How much anti-Chinese sentiment would a China-based /. be allowed to post? It wouldn't stay up for even a week, I imagine.

Oh, yeah, there's an entire PSB division monitoring my Internet activity, and I have to wear a fucking tinfoil hat all the time to keep the mind control beams out. Give it a break, alright?

Here's a sample:

• Internet crackdown in China
• Silencing the Net (scroll down)
• The Cracker War on China - see paragraph three for example - the PSB are watching you.

Oh, really? How lofty is a society where everybody acts like it's a police state because they damn well don't care whether it is or not?

What part of the U.S. are you from? I don't recall there being any police state around these parts. I've never had a problem complaining about the government, contacting my representatives to complain, getting letters published in the newspaper, etc. Sure, things aren't perfect and there are constant threats from groups that don't believe in civil liberties, but on the whole people over here worship whatever they want to, speak their minds whenever they feel like it, and complain about the government like it's going out of style. Doesn't sound much like China of late, does it?

No wait - don't agree with me, you wouldn't want to be "subverting the state" on the Internet, now would you?

Socioeconomic Hazards

The patenting of genetically engineered foods and widespread biotech food production threatens to eliminate farming as it has been practiced for 12,000 years. GE patents such as the Terminator Technology will render seeds infertile and force hundreds of millions of farmers who now save and share their seeds to purchase evermore expensive GE seeds and chemical inputs from a handful of global biotech/seed monopolies. If the trend is not stopped, the patenting of transgenic plants and food-producing animals will soon lead to universal "bioserfdom" in which farmers will lease their plants and animals from biotech conglomerates such as Monsanto and pay royalties on seeds and offspring. Family and indigenous farmers will be driven off the land and consumers' food choices will be dictated by a cartel of transnational corporations. Rural communities will be devastated. Hundreds of millions of farmers and agricultural workers worldwide will lose their livelihoods.

Socioeconomic Hazards

The patenting of genetically engineered foods and widespread biotech food production threatens to eliminate farming as it has been practiced for 12,000 years. GE patents such as the Terminator Technology will render seeds infertile and force hundreds of millions of farmers who now save and share their seeds to purchase evermore expensive GE seeds and chemical inputs from a handful of global biotech/seed monopolies. If the trend is not stopped, the patenting of transgenic plants and food-producing animals will soon lead to universal "bioserfdom" in which farmers will lease their plants and animals from biotech conglomerates such as Monsanto and pay royalties on seeds and offspring. Family and indigenous farmers will be driven off the land and consumers' food choices will be dictated by a cartel of transnational corporations. Rural communities will be devastated. Hundreds of millions of farmers and agricultural workers worldwide will lose their livelihoods.

Actually, America is historically among the LEAST generous country in the world. From A deposition given to the house of representatives "Congressional support for relief and development assistance remains low, and the United States has now fallen behind Japan, Germany and France in terms of actual dollar amounts of assistance given to less developed nations. As a percentage of GNP, we now spend less on helping the poor overseas than any other of the world's 21 wealthiest nations. Last year, one-fourth of all U.S. foreign aid went to high-income nations, at a per capita expenditure of over $5 per person for the 638 million people living there. In contrast, the 3 billion living in the world's poorest countries received the equivalent of only 96 cents per person. Of this assistance, almost half went to military or security assistance. In overall terms, less than one percent of the Federal budget is spent on foreign aid, and less than half of that goes to development and humanitarian programs that help millions of the world's poorest people. This situation is deeply regrettable for a prosperous and powerful nation with the means and opportunity to make a tremendous difference in the lives of impoverished peoples and countries."

Also much of the aid given by the US is actually inapropriate, either dumping of food unwanted in the US, destroying local agriculture or linking aid with helping the US's military interests

• South Asia Pig heart transplant confirmed in India
• Indian authorities arrest doctors who claimed to have transplanted pig heart into a man
• Animal-Human Transplants Coming
• Genetic engineering could overcome rejection problems

--

Lots of additional information on the technology and the socio-political debates on the issue from the folks at Resurgence.

Here are some links to alternative news sources, many reports from various of the protesting groups. Get away from the Corporate news bullshit and expand your mind...
One World
WtoWatch
The Mid-Atlantic InfoShop

Nuclear Power as it stands is a dirty, nasty, dangerous business. We are playing with forces which we know can destroy us all, we are creating toxins and wastes that we hardly know how to deal with, and we are putting trust in that the next generations will solve our problems for us.

Nuclear power is considerably less dirty, nasty and dangerous than most practical alternatives today. A catastrophic failure of a nuclear power plant (and Chernobyl was about as bad as it can get) might kill a few dozen people, but perfectly normal operation of a coal or oil burning power plant kills a lot more people by releasing all sorts of nasty chemicals into the atmosphere, which then cause lung cancer and similar diseases. (I recall seeing a figure of 28,000 deaths per year quoted, but I can't find a reference right not. Oh well.) Then you have coal mine accidents, general pollution, etc. "Forces that can destroy us all" is ludicrous hyperbole, even a loaf of bread is radioactive and it contains those same forces.

Anyone here going to tell me that greenhouse effect is not real?

I will tell you that it is too early to tell. Global temperatures are rising, but not in the way it should be according to the standard global warming thoery. The reason for it may well be unrelated, as the Earth's average temperature goes up and down anyway. Less than 20 years ago there was widespread fear of a new Ice Age, ie. global cooling, based on exactly the same data.

Just the same, if the global warming theory is correct, the problem is fossil fuels. Nuclear power plants produce next to no greenhouse gases. Nuclear power is not ideal, but solar and wind power just aren't going to cut it, now or quite possibly ever, for places like Finland.

And a few links:

• http://www.oneworld.org/energy/
  A neutral view of most types of energy
• http://www.newscientist. com/nsplus/insight/global/faq.html
  The New Scientist's global warming FAQ

Cheers,
-j.

• Massachusetts Burma law
  
• EU Banana import policy
  
• Hormone-raised beeif
  

  Nick

The fact is, the government and corporations have LONG been stepping and crushing people, but it's always been the poor. No one cares about the poor! Now they're invading your space. The middle and upper middle class. Crushing your rights and freedoms. Recently large numbers of people have been protesting things like the G8, and in November, the WTO in Seattle. University students protesting against sweatshop labor. Thousands and thousands of people. And they're all involved in these things DESPITE the fact the corporate media never mentions them at all. Somehow, people are fed up and have discovered ways on their own, to try to fight back. Right now the largest community run microradio station, KPFA, is protesting against Pacifica because Pacifica wants to sell KPFA because of it's large audience! People have been outraged and massive protests have been going on there.

Our government hasn't just now decided to become corrupt, it has long been so. it is just now invading the "freedoms" of the middle/upper class of the country, where as before it was only hurting the voiceless poor and people of other countries (and still is I might add).

From killing off native americans in the past and now, to using slave labor in the country, and now using slave labor in third world countries, raping the earth's resources for profits and to feed our addictive consumption rates, suppressing the rights of women, and long promoting right-wing Christian fundamentalism...how can it not be clear the US isn't perfect like they lie and make you believe? The US is f-cking evil...and if you don't believe me now, you will soon enough...when they limit your freedom, or put you away.

http://www.savepacifica.net
http://www.infoshop.org
http://www.protest.net
http://www.commondreams.org
http://www.zmag.org
http://www.fair.org
http://www.foodnotbombs.org/
http://jya.com/crypto.htm
http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointel.htm
http://www.urban75.com
http://www.oneworld.org
http://www.mediafilter.org


There you go. Arm yourself with information. Don't believe the world is perfectly all right. Now apparently the short-sighted people are beginning to see they were wrong. Don't think you're alone for thinking something is wrong, there are millions out there who know it already. From those educated on the subjects, to those experiencing the abuses caused by this horrible corporate owned world, and their servant governments.