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https://ratical.org/radiation/...

You, clearly, are a fucking moron.

As for the rest, you simply seem to be assuming that because there are people who disagree with reality, they must be democrats. Again, you clearly are a fucking moron. I'm a democrat.

Anti-vaccers are fucking morons... like you.

GMO's are most likely safe, BUT, the fact that companies have placed killswitches into food stocks so that farmers MUST re-buy seeds (the following year) ONLY FROM THE COMPANY... is fucking bullshit. Additionally, when a GMO crop is spread to adjacent farms via natural pathways, and then GMO companies sue the farmers out of their business because they ended up with some GMO crop in their fields.... that's fucking idiocy. https://www.cornucopia.org/201...

Anyone telling you radio waves are proven safe is a fucking idiot, including you. Radio waves have been studied until recently for health effects, and the studies so far have shown a mix of results. The only people who think it's been "proven" safe.. are fucking idiots, like you.

Holistic medicine is bullshit. Some herbal medicine may have some effect, but typically not remotely close to the effect that designed medicines do, but that's a world away from "holistic medicine."

Actual organic food is probably better for a persons system. If you don't think so, please, go have a nice cocktail of Dioxin and post tomorrow (i won't hold my breathe). As for proof actual organic is is worse or the same... it doesn't exist, except is some fucked in the head idiots rambling post right above mine. That said, i'm typically suspect of most foods that are labeled or marketed as organic; I think it's become more of a marketing ploy like gluten-free or "light" whatever.

So... why is it that conservatives fucks like you lie so damn much? I haven't met a single conservative in years that hasn't been a lying sack of shit... is it pathological, or do you truly not have an ethical bone in your body?

I hardly know how to respond to that: you made so many blatantly false assertions. And whereas I always provide links to back up my claims, you have yet to provide a single source or single piece of evidence to back up anything you have said.

Ok, let's try to go through those methodically.

Jim Crow laws were not the work of progressives. The whole point of them was to thwart the progressive agenda and preserve the status quo. They were about as regressive as you could possibly get.

Nazism were not in any way shape or form based on the progressive tradition. In fact, it was as diametrically opposed to it as you could possibly get. Don't take my word for it: here's a list of the core characteristics of fascism. Just go down the list: powerful and continuing nationalism, disdain for the recognition of human rights, identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause, supremacy of the military, rampant sexism, etc. Every one of those is the exact opposite of what progressives advocate.

No one is ever required to disclose their race, religion, or sexual orientation. While various questionnaires may ask about them, you are always permitted to leave them blank. The government collects statistics about people's answers to those questionnaires, but only those people who chose to answer them. Also, it's illegal to even ask about them in a job interview, specifically because that would make it too easy to discriminate against people who chose not to answer.

Finally, all of this is just a tangent. You still are totally avoiding the main subject of this conversation: your claim that anti-discrimination laws are harmful to peace, prosperity, equality, and liberty. I have asked you again and again to provide evidence of that, and you have yet to offer a single shred of evidence. Let me quote what I said in my very first post:

I distrust all views based on personal philosophy, because it's completely subjective. There's no way to say whose philosophy is "right" or "wrong". I'd rather base decisions on how things work out in practice. What happens if you have anti-discrimination laws? What happens if you don't? Taking all the consequence into account, both good and bad, which one produces better results overall?

In every post since then I have returned to that question. And in every one of your posts you have tried to deflect attention away from it. So let me be really blunt: I don't care about your philosophy of negative rights, or your fantasies about Nazis, or any of the rest of that. The only thing I care about is evidence on the effects of anti-discrimination laws. If you're prepared to offer concrete evidence, I want to hear it. Otherwise, I'm not interested.

You do realize that in the old US military, logistics was a notorious opportunity for rampant corruption and theft. General Smedley Butler, the author you link to, would be intimately aware of that. Well, guess who ran those schemes? Why it was the US government, of course.

As I implied in my previous reply, a common goal of government players is to monetize their power. Working out profitable deals with big businesses in a time of war is a convenient opportunity to do so. It's foolish however to assume that big business is in charge. After all, the government players can always find other big business to make deals. A common aspect of these sorts of schemes is a large variety of business parties and only one or a few government-side players.

Read Chapter 2 of War is A Racket and it outlines this aspect in gory detail. There is page after page of sweet deals made by many, many companies over the course of the First World War. If DuPont, to name the first example, was the driver of wartime profits, then how come they only managed to earn profits equal to 0.5% of the wartime spending (roughly $58 million per year from 1915-1918 versus was spending over $50 billion)?

It's very interesting to note how limited the profits were per company. I'm sure some enterprising businessmen in banking or elsewhere figured out how to dip into this pool multiple times via multiple companies. But the largess was carefully doled out to many different parties rather than concentrated in the hands of the few most powerful businesses.

A Pete Seeger song, likewise covered by Peter, Paul and Mary: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
http://www.metrolyrics.com/whe...
====
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time ago

Where have all the flowers gone?
Young girls have picked them everyone
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the young girls gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the young girls gone?
Long time ago

Where have all the young girls gone?
Gone for husbands everyone
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the husbands gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the husbands gone?
Long time ago

Where have all the husbands gone?
Gone for soldiers everyone
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the soldiers gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Long time ago

Where have all the soldiers gone?
Gone to graveyards, everyone
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the graveyards gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Long time ago

Where have all the graveyards gone?
Gone to flowers, everyone
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time ago

Where have all the flowers gone?
Young girls have picked them everyone
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?
===

See also on the Bob Dylan backstory for "Blowing in the Wind": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
http://www.npr.org/2000/10/21/...

And for another part of that picture, from a US Major General Smedley Butler :
http://www.ratical.org/ratvill...
"WAR is a racket. It always has been.
It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.
How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?
Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few -- the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.
And what is this bill?
This bill r

Looks like we turned down the wrong path a few decades ago...

When Lessig argued "Eldred vs. Ashcroft" there was some point where the justices said, essentially, well no one has ever complained about copyright extensions before in terms of that being a taking something of value from the public (breaking the previous bargain struck at the time the work was produced), so extensions must be OK. That was probably not true, but Lessig did not have much of an answer for that. My memory of that may be a bit fuzzy, but I think that was the gist of an important point in the case as far as precedent.

More craziness and the law regarding the "owners" of so many copyrights these days:
http://www.ratical.org/corpora...
" In 1886, . . . in the case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that a private corporation is a person and entitled to the legal rights and protections the Constitutions affords to any person. Because the Constitution makes no mention of corporations, it is a fairly clear case of the Court's taking it upon itself to rewrite the Constitution.
                    Far more remarkable, however, is that the doctrine of corporate personhood, which subsequently became a cornerstone of corporate law, was introduced into this 1886 decision without argument. According to the official case record, Supreme Court Justice Morrison Remick Waite simply pronounced before the beginning of arguement in the case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company that:
                          "The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of opinion that it does."
                    The court reporter duly entered into the summary record of the Court's findings that:
                            "The defendant Corporations are persons within the intent of the clause in section 1 of the Fourteen Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
                    Thus it was that a two-sentence assertion by a single judge elevated corporations to the status of persons under the law, prepared the way for the rise of global corporate rule, and thereby changed the course of history.
                    The doctrine of corporate personhood creates an interesting legal contradiction. The corporation is owned by its shareholders and is therefore their property. If it is also a legal person, then it is a person owned by others and thus exists in a condition of slavery -- a status explicitly forbidden by the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. So is a corporation a person illegally held in servitude by its shareholders? Or is it a person who enjoys the rights of personhood that take precedence over the presumed ownership rights of its shareholders? So far as I have been able to determine, this contradiction has not been directly addressed by the courts. "

Different topic. A war gone badly is a mistake -- not a crime. But you simply don't know what the alternative would have been. Saddam was taking shots at US fighter planes all throughout the Clinton administration. You simply don't know that keeping him in power would not have proven more costly (in terms of lives) than what has happened. The was didn't turn a good situation into a bad one. It turned a bad situation into a different bad situation. But before calling it a mistake you'd have to show that the alternative would have been better.

You really think that with Saddam it was even remotely possible, under severe sanctions and no WMD, that he could have caused more deaths and cost more than the Iraq war started by W?

Instead of "containment" and no threat really besides the starving of kids in Iraq, we borrowed money from China to make Iran stronger. Do you like how that turned out?

One helluva mistake. But my mind was made up years ago. Its called war mongering by hook and crook, with the ends justifying the means. Scott Ritter may be a pedophile, but read what he said before the war. He was right on the money - there was no WMD and it was obvious to everyone who had been there. So W lied - there is no doubt about that to me.

This article by a USA general in 1935 makes me skeptical of your argument:

http://www.ratical.org/ratvill...

By Marine Major General Smedley Butler: http://www.ratical.org/ratvill...
"WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes. ..."

Of course, "heart disease" is a racket too these days:
https://www.drfuhrman.com/libr...
"The sad thing is surgical interventions and medications are the foundation of modern cardiology and both are relatively ineffective compared to nutritional excellence. My patients routinely reverse their heart disease, and no longer have vulnerable plaque or high blood pressure, so they do not need medical care, hospitals or cardiologists anymore. The problem is that in the real world cardiac patients are not even informed that heart disease is predictably reversed with nutritional excellence. They are not given the opportunity to choose and just corralled into these surgical interventions. Trying to figure out how to pay for ineffective and expensive medicine by politicians will never be a real solution. People need to know they do not have to have heart disease to begin with, and if they get it, aggressive nutrition is the most life-saving intervention. And it is free."

Possibly could draw an expanded parallel between "terrorism" and "heart disease" as far as causes and cures? As in invading Afghanistan and Iraq was like giving a world with morally-clogged arteries an angioplasty and then a triple bypass? At great costs? And without really solving the underlying problem (from past short-sighted behavior by the USA and others)? While people who sell arms and people who own domestic oil sources and drilling equipment (Bush friends?) profit greatly from all the uncertainty?

From a Marine Major General: http://warisaracket.org/racket.html "Smedley Butler: War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses. I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag. I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket."

At length: http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html

Another quote by Einstein: "The release of atomic power has changed everything except our way of thinking ... the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker. (1945)"

See also this essay by me on how that applies to all forms of modern weaponry, inspired by that Einstein quote, given a modern-day digital watch has more computing power than was used to design the first atomic weapons:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
----
Military robots like drones are ironic because they are created essentially to force humans to work like robots in an industrialized social order. Why not just create industrial robots to do the work instead?
Nuclear weapons are ironic because they are about using space age systems to fight over oil and land. Why not just use advanced materials as found in nuclear missiles to make renewable energy sources (like windmills or solar panels) to replace oil, or why not use rocketry to move into space by building space habitats for more land?
Biological weapons like genetically-engineered plagues are ironic because they are about using advanced life-altering biotechnology to fight over which old-fashioned humans get to occupy the planet. Why not just use advanced biotech to let people pick their skin color, or to create living arkologies and agricultural abundance for everyone everywhere?
These militaristic socio-economic ironies would be hilarious if they were not so deadly serious. Here is some dark humor I wrote on the topic:
A post-scarcity "Downfall" parody remix of the bunker scene. https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/openmanufacturing/8qspPyyS1tY/vZacyDL86DIJ
See also a little ironic story I wrote on trying to talk the USA out of collective suicide because it feels "Burdened by Bags of Sand". http://www.pdfernhout.net/burdened-by-bags-of-sand.html
Or this YouTube video I put together: The Richest Man in the World: A parable about structural unemployment and a basic income. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p14bAe6AzhA
Likewise, even United States three-letter agencies like the NSA and the CIA, as well as their foreign counterparts, are becoming ironic institutions in many ways. Despite probably having more computing power per square foot than any other place in the world, they seem not to have thought much about the implications of all that computer power and organized information to transform the world into a place of abundance for all. Cheap computing makes possibl

War is a racket - Major General Smedley Butler
Read that one book of confessions and never again support any war anywhere ever again.
Also,
Confessions of an Economic Hitman - John Perkins

Once you finish those two, you are pretty much enlightened and pissed at the same time.

Thank you for illustrating my point with a real life example.

I'm pretty sure I was just hallucinating webpages like these:
http://edugreen.teri.res.in/explore/renew/biomass.htm
http://www.seai.ie/Archive1/Files_Misc/REIOBiomassFactsheet.pdf
http://www.ratical.org/renewables/biomass.html
http://www.biofuels.fsnet.co.uk/challenge.htm ["The author of this paper, following a long-standing interest in renewable energy, obtained a small Sustainable Communities Award from the Millennium Commission in 1998 to study the viability of electric vehicles and, subsequently, sustainable transport fuels. As a result of this research he was one of the first people in the UK to be awarded a Millennium Fellowship."]
http://eerc.ra.utk.edu/etcfc/docs/Biodiesel-CleanGreen.pdf

etc.

I must have also had two more bouts of weekly hallucinations going on for 4 months of a semester each, in which self-declared environmentalists were lecturing me and the rest of a class of 30 to 100 students on the environmental benefits of biofuels without mentioning even once that they compete with growing food. Are you kidding me? It we've had more than our share of environmentalists protesting against *delays* in the large-scale application of biofuels in Germany and enthusiastic exclamations of biofuel being used in lorries, ships, airplanes etc. as a sign of a green future. The Green Party being first among them.

Marine Corp. General Smedley Butler: War Is A Racket. Y'all should take a peep at this. Lays it out pretty well and is short and quick to read.

So many questionable assumptions in your post... If you are referring to US American history around the time of the American Revolution, quite a bit of the Colonial population fled to Canada to remain under the rule of the British Crown (as "Loyalists"). Canada got rid of slavery about 40 years sooner than the USA, never had a terrible Civil War, treat their indigenous people better, and now have universal health care. In many ways, the British were more socially advanced than the rough colonists. See also:
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/zinnapeopleshistory.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loyalist_(American_Revolution)

Of those people who stayed in the American Colonies, at least one of his own officers (Colonel Lewis Nicola) asked George Washington to become their new King, but he refused.
http://www.pbs.org/georgewashington/classroom/rule_of_law2.html

The major reason for the Colonies' revolt was banking policy -- that the British wanted to prevent American colonies from issuing their own currency, which caused an economic depression in the Colonies. so, a bad economy and high unemployment caused the revolt more than anything else. The reason the British wanted to do this was to collect more revenue to pay back debts incurred for the recent war with France over western territories. So, the end result was that the American colonists got the French territories without having to pay for the war that took them from France (and the natives). Both Britain and France were destabilized by such war debts, although France was worse off, leading towards the French Revolution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_and_Indian_War
http://www.chicagofed.org/webpages/publications/economic_perspectives/1981/ep_mar_apr1981_part4_wood.cfm
http://www.kamron.com/Liberty/colonial_script.htm

As for US interventions abroad since, most were just to ensure profits to specific wealthy investors, according to Marine Major General Smedley Butler:
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html

On the partisan politics of this disclosure and the Verizon one. Conservatives now are blaming Obama and Progressives. Liberals blame Bush and Republicans. Congress says it has been going on for seven years, so why worry now? What a mess. Somehow I don't feel much is going to change from this revelation though, because, to anyone paying attention, it is not that unexpected. Carnivore and Echelon did similar things over a decade ago, plus they are supposedly arrangements by US agencies to exchange data with other countries that can spy on US citizens without issues.

As is suggested here, gradual changes are rarely resisted:
"They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45"
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html
"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it -- please try to believe me -- unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, 'regretted,' that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these 'little measures' that no 'patriotic German' could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in

http://www.ratical.org/renewables/hempseed1.html
https://www.bible.com/bible/1/gen.1.kjv (see vs.11-12 and 29)
Too many human beings are fairly ignorant( https://www.bible.com/bible/111/hos.4.6.niv ). The leaders of humankind are mostly evil( https://www.bible.com/bible/1/eph.6.12.kjv ). It appears this will remain true until the Lord comes to snatch a knot in humanity's collective unsaved ass.
Yea Lord, come......

Xest makes some good points about reasons to be more optimistic. However, I've certainly been pessimistic about this myself in the past. Here is an excerpt from a satire I wrote about this and posted to slashdot over a decade ago in relation to an article: "MPAA to Senate: Plug the Analog Hole!" after sending a copy of the US Department of Justice who had asked for comments (I also sent a copy to Richard Stallman who said it made him laugh):
http://www.pdfernhout.net/microslaw.html
"My fellow Americans. There has been some recent talk of free law by the General Public Lawyers (the GPL) who we all know hold un-American views. I speak to you today from the Oval Office in the White House to assure you how much better off you are now that all law is proprietary. The value of proprietary law should be obvious. Software is essentially just a form of law governing how computers operate, and all software and media content has long been privatized to great economic success. ... [Inaudible shouted question] Prisons? There are only a million Americans behind bars for copyright infringement so far. No one complained about the million plus non-violent drug offenders we've had there for years. No one complained about the million plus terrorists we've got there now, thanks in no small part to a patriotic Supreme Court which after being privatized upheld that anyone who criticizes government policy in public or private is a criminal terrorist. Oops, I shouldn't have said that, as those terrorists aren't technically criminals or subject to the due process of law are they? Well it's true these days you go to prison if you complain about the drug war, or the war on terrorism, or the war on infringers of copyrights and software patents -- so don't complain! [nervous audience laughter] After all, without security, what is the good of American Freedoms? Benjamin Franklin himself said it best, those who don't have security will trade in their freedoms. ..."

Sad it is all becoming a little too true, even with some progress on the drug war front.

As I've realized, the USSR had to guard its borders to keep people from escaping that often dysfunctional society -- and we've all been told that showed how bad a country they were. But the USA needs to guard its medicine cabinets instead to keep people from escaping -- what does that say about the USA?

Some books related to your points:

"War is a racket" on the profit-oriented ("fascistic") military-industrial complex
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html

"Mistakes Were Made, But Not By Me" on cognitive dissonance
http://www.amazon.com/Mistakes-Were-Made-But-Not/dp/0156033909

In one of Freeman Dyson's books, like "Infinite in All Directions" he talks about the coming conflicts between government and individuals wanting to redefine themselves biologically, where drug use is just a first example of a more general issue.

On the accelerating problem of addiction to "supernormal stimuli", which is a much more general issue than "drugs":
http://www.amazon.com/Supernormal-Stimuli-Overran-Evolutionary-Purpose/dp/B0057DC3VY
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx
http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html

By the way, some health ideas to look into, including vitamin D deficiency and eating more vegetables and omega-3s, which can help in avoiding depression:
http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823

When all else fails, somethign from Howard Zinn:

So their tax-exempt status could possibly be revoked. From a decade ago: http://www.pdfernhout.net/open-letter-to-grantmakers-and-donors-on-copyright-policy.html
"Foundations, other grantmaking agencies handling public tax-exempt dollars, and charitable donors need to consider the implications for their grantmaking or donation policies if they use a now obsolete charitable model of subsidizing proprietary publishing and proprietary research. In order to improve the effectiveness and collaborativeness of the non-profit sector overall, it is suggested these grantmaking organizations and donors move to requiring grantees to make any resulting copyrighted digital materials freely available on the internet, including free licenses granting the right for others to make and redistribute new derivative works without further permission. It is also suggested patents resulting from charitably subsidized research research also be made freely available for general use. The alternative of allowing charitable dollars to result in proprietary copyrights and proprietary patents is corrupting the non-profit sector as it results in a conflict of interest between a non-profit's primary mission of helping humanity through freely sharing knowledge (made possible at little cost by the internet) and a desire to maximize short term revenues through charging licensing fees for access to patents and copyrights. In essence, with the change of publishing and communication economics made possible by the wide spread use of the internet, tax-exempt non-profits have become, perhaps unwittingly, caught up in a new form of "self-dealing", and it is up to donors and grantmakers (and eventually lawmakers) to prevent this by requiring free licensing of results as a condition of their grants and donations."

See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-dealing
"Self-dealing is the conduct of a trustee, an attorney, a corporate officer, or other fiduciary that consists of taking advantage of his position in a transaction and acting for his own interests rather than for the interests of the beneficiaries of the trust, corporate shareholders, or his clients. Self-dealing may involve misappropriation or usurpation of corporate assets or opportunities. Self-dealing is a form of conflict of interest.[1]"

The self-dealing happens because the non-profit could make its digital resources available to the world for essentially free these days. But instead MIT and JSTOR impose artificial scarcity to extract a revenue stream for its staff in order so it may then create new resources which it also sells access to make more such resources etc.. That model may have made some sense in the 20th century, but it makes no sense in the 21st. The argument that access to digital resources today should be restricted to support making more digital resources tomorrow is not one that a tax-exempt organization should legally be able to make these days IMHO. And in order to sustain their self-dealing, they contributed to the death of an idealistic young man, Aaron Swartz to sustain their obsolete and now essentially corrupt business models, which just highlights how evil what they (and many other non-profits) are doing has become bit-by-bit year-by-year if artificial scarcity ever made sense for a non-profit.

So, perhaps a way forward here is to make an example of both MIT and JSTOR by getting their IRS tax exempt status and also corporate charters revoked (a corporate "death sentence") for the act of self-dealing? That might serve as an example to other tax-exempt non-profits to shape up and make their digital works freely available before they get the same treatment? See also:
http://www.ratical.org/corporations/
"In most states a lot of the language from the early days, that reflected the subordinate nature of corporations is still on the books

What I seem to be hearing is that it's dangerous, but the danger can be managed.

Yes, that's the line we've been fed by the nuclear power industry for 60 years. "The danger can be managed." Problem is, Fukushima is only the last of a long line of accidents which should never have happened according to the probability scenarios used to manage the danger.

a single incident at a 40 year old plant, due to extreme circumstances, with no deaths

No dramatic and initial deaths. That's not quite the same thing.

This is the big problem with nuclear accidents: they release toxic substances into the environment which remain toxic for centuries and kill slowly over time. Each time one of these happens, it contaminates land and water, and that contamination doesn't go away.

This is why nuclear reactors are scary to people who have some imagination and can think beyond the bounds of "normal operating scenario" into "what if something goes wrong which should never go wrong?" territory.

is going to set back production of new plants

Yes, that would be a positive outcome if you're not convinced that new nuclear plants are a net long-term win to humankind.

As far as explosions go, there's just as much danger from too much fertilizer being stored in one place as there is from any plant, nuclear or not.

The point is its not just photogenic Hollywood explosions that we're talking about. It's toxic leaks of long-term radioisotopes accumulating in the environment. Not nearly as easy to measure or as exciting to report, but once it gets out of the bottle, you can't put it back in.

The interesting thing is that a power reactor meltdown, small and benign as it might look compared to a nuclear bomb, can actually release more radionucleotides into the environment than an outdoor nuclear test. Plus, it does it in a location much closer to inhabited cities and farmland.

We don't really want a lot more of those.

Imagine if anti-gasoline nuts had blocked the implimentation of fuel injection, unleaded gas, and catalytic converters because their goal was the complete elimination of gasoline as a fuel.

If one gasoline power plant malfunction had caused 740,000 cases of premature aging, 100,000-200,000 abortions and 30,000-207,000 genetically damaged children (with 300,000-2 million expected over multiple generations) then they might not actually be 'nuts'.

[...] will have effects spanning billions of years.

Explain. I was of the impression that isotopes with half-lives in the range of billions of years (K-40, U-238, Th-232) can only be considered "technically radioactive" since they're just too damn stable to give off much of any radiation. Keep in mind 99.3% of all naturally occurring Uranium is U-238 and Potassium-40 is contained not just in nuclear reactors, but bananas and brazil nuts.

The increase in background radiation [...]

During the Chernobyl disaster, an estimated 50-80 million (Russian authorities), 1 billion (Time magazine; optimistic estimate) to 9 billion (whole core; pessimistic estimate) curies were blown into the atmosphere (source). Reasonable estimates vary around 3 to 4.5 billion, or a third to half of the core. A 2006 UN report figures an average lifetime dose throughout Europe of around 1 mSv or some three to four months of (global) background radiation.

[...]people who voluntarily and knowingly engage in such employment

And people living near coal mines or plants, breathing the exhaust air from coal plants, living near hydroelectic dams, living near windmills...

Solar, wind, and hydrothermal are much safer.

Nuclear: You're the expert, please provide numbers.
Hydroelectric: Quick Googlage reveals tens of thousands evacuated and >100 casualties 2009-2011.
Wind: Old data mentions rates between 0.1 and 0.4 casualties per TWh, about twenty deaths in NAM from mid-nineties through 2011. Some more googling finds interesting data.
Geothermal: Seems safe but may cause earthquakes. Some pollution issues are to be worked out, but after that we might have ourselves a real contender.
Solar: Apparently more dangerous than wind and hydroelectricity. Who knew.

That's stupid. We introduced the idea of "country" to them. Nomadic tribes don't generally hold land, and non-nomadic tribes hold very small pieces of land.

That's stupid and ahistorical. Please go read about the Iroquois and the role they played in shaping our nation.

Sure you can: http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/linkscopy/GlasgowCCTV.html

The drop in crime with cameras is the exact same as the drop in crime everywhere. If the cameras themselves had anything to do with it, you'd see a larger drop in crime where they're used.

Or alternatively, the cameras are so effective that they reduce crime well outside the range of the camera itself!

Sure you can: http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/linkscopy/GlasgowCCTV.html

The drop in crime with cameras is the exact same as the drop in crime everywhere. If the cameras themselves had anything to do with it, you'd see a larger drop in crime where they're used.

It is bizarre that corporations are "persons" because of the timing of a SCOTUS clerk's stenography.

But the fact people are losing rights as the corporate "person" is gaining them is hazardous to human health.

Who the hell modded this as flamebait? Go look for yourself: http://www.ratical.org/renewables/

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-157158690.html

http://www.stemergy.com/news/press/?id=42

The people that mod this as flamebait are the same people that are the reason hemp and other alternatives will never see the light of day.

Corporations are people, too: http://www.ratical.org/corporations/SCvSPR1886.html

So I guess they merit "social engineering", eh?

/SarcasmOff

The reactor you're referring to in France is a 3rd generation reactor, the first of its kind.

It is not the first of it's kind. It is a clone of the reactor in Finland.

Subsequent reactors built on the same technology will naturally cost less and not be underbudgeted.

Except it is a subsequent reactor and is still over budget and overdue.

In a previous post you mentioned people should have more "personable responsibility" when it comes to food choices. That is a truly crass and elitist statement,

No, those who want a nanny state are crass and elitist. Only the nanny state has the wisdom to decide what people can and can not do. Now tell me how many capitalists, free market advocates, and businesses have massacred more than 10 million people, massacred or repressed more than 10 million others, or killed tens of millions more people?

And don't say the US hasn't had it's hands on anything like that. Ask the Cherokee about the Trail of Tears President Andrew Jackson forced the Cherokee to march on, in which thousands died, breaking a treaty despite the USSC ruling he was breaking the law. Ask the Sioux how many treaties the US broke with them. Ask them what happened in the Black Hills and at Wounded Knee. Ask the American Indian women who were forcibly sterilized up through the 1970s by the government. Ask the East Timorese about President Ford and Henry Kissinger's support of Indonesia's invasion of the sovereign nation of East Timor and the subsequent massacre of 200,000 East Timorese, on third of the population. Ask about Ford and Kissinger's support for the overthrow of the democratically elected in Chile by General Pinochet after which tens of thousands simply disappeared with thousands more bodies found.

Falcon

How exactly is an unsubstantiated comment from some random nerd "symptomatic" of anything, other than the well-known level of anti-government paranoia on Slashdot?

How some people on Slashdot trusts government I don't know. During the past century governments, yes even the US government, has killed millions of people and experimented with millions more. And that's not unsubstantiated. NAZI Germany, a democracy, exterminated not just large numbers of Jews in the Holocaust but also other ethnic groups such as the Romany, Sinti, and other Gypsies and Serbs. Communists and Social Democrats were also targeted. About the same tyme Stalin ordered the death of some 20,000,000. And estimates say Mao had some 50,000,000 killed. During WWII the US Army Air Corps did medical experiments on the Tuskegee Airmen, the first Blacks the US trained as airmen, without their knowledge or consent. The Bureau of Indian Affairs had doctors sterilize American Indian Women, forcibly and unknowingly, up through the 1970s. Here are more experiments the US government or military has done. The Tonkin Incident was made up in 1964 to justify the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which authorized President LB Johnson to use military force in Viet Nam without an official declaration of war, which only congress can do. The US Army also killed hundreds in the My Lai Massacre in Viet Nam in 1968. The US even played a part in the death of some 200,000 East Timorese with the arming and backing of General Suharto's Indonesian invasion of the sovereign nation of East Timor in 1975.

I fear government far more than any other nation or terrorists. Much of the distrust of government has been earned not made up.

Falcon

How about shareholder lawsuits? Remember, the corporation must do everything in it's power to maintain or improve shareholder value. Of course, ethics is a lower priority.

I know, how about reversing this decision that allows corporations to be persons? Maybe after that, corporations will play nice.

He said essential liberty for a little temporary safety, don't mix it up.

I don't recall the exact phrase but it still applies. I bet the Gestapo and KGB would of loved these technologies. Some may, no will, say but the US won't abuse them however history has shown the government or people in the government will abuse them. I doubt many slashdotters lived through J Edgar Hoover's reign of the FBI but he vary much abused his power. Even less lived through McCarthyism and Mccarthy's House Un-American Activities Committee or the Hollywood Blacklist. As late as the 1970s the US government were forcibly sterilizing American Indian women as part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing.

No, I do not trust government, I fear government more than anything else, including those "terrorists" the government wants to protect us from.

Falcon

You totally overlook the fact that 15x background is just an average

It's all law of averages. On average, you'd need a HUGE population with that exposure to expect one additional cancer from the radiation release, and that's assuming the assumption of linearality is true. Realistically, most of those DNA bumps simply result in nothing or a dead cell. Heck, there's evidence that people get lots more cancer than we detect, it's just that the body's own systems kill it before it gets anywhere.

Basically, the radiation release was small enough that NATURAL radiation would cause far more cancers. A not insignifcant amount of the radiation exposure I listed is for Radon, and that'll get you in the lungs. Xenon gas isn't exactly known for being absorbed. Heck, as a noble gas, it's not exactly reactive period.

Plus your thyroid and many fish concentrate radioactive iodine and other elements by factors of, say, 10,000 and more.

It was chernobyl that released radioactive iodine. TMI was primarily Xenon gas(~13M Curies). Only 13-17 curies of I-131 was released. Compared the Chernobyl, that's a tiny amount. Estimates vary widely, but one figure, has 10-15% of the radiation being I-131, and the release being in the billions of curies.

Chernobyl and surface nuclear weapon tests are blamed for the increase in thyroid cancer. I'll note that I-131 is used medically today, so there has to be a reasonably safe dosage level.

> Bacteria are not technically classified as animals
Biological/Scientific definitions are often trumped by political/legal definitions.

Witness California's Proposition 8, a ballot initiative that defines a word, or the Supreme Court decision SANTA CLARA COUNTY v. SOUTHERN PAC. R. CO. that made every corporation a "person".

Al Gore has made many millions of dollars off of fearmongering.

Al Gore has also made a lot from oil. He has had a long relationship and been an investor in Occidental Petroleum.

Falcon

How sad is it when the Army is contracting out one of its most essential functions?

Sad? It's great! It means the Army is doing a fine job of fulfilling its most essential function -- enriching the stockholder class.

Oh, come on, surely you don't believe that old-fashioned sentimental nonsense about the armed forces existing to protect the nation and its people? The U.S. military has been protecting commercial interests since the late 1800s. The military-industrial complex that grew up in the early 20th century just made war more of a racket. Turning military functions directly over to the industrial side of the complex merely improves the process of removing money from working citizens and putting it in the pockets of the owning classes. It's a great business model!

(Sure, soldiers get electrocuted by shoddy KBR workmanship, but c'mon, we can't be worried about the lives of grunts like that any more than we worry about Iraqis or Afghanis who get blown up. Profits before people, after all, so long as they're not our people.)

Are you really so callous that you'd torpedo the whole economy just to punish a few people you don't like?

Being callous has nothing to do with it. The US economy is an unsalvageable wreck. Where is that $700 Billion dollar bailout coming from when the nation is already $10 Trillion in debt? They're going to print it. They're going to rob every hardworking American of their savings via massive inflation and destroy the economy for the sake of a privileged few. It's time we return to a constitutionally mandated gold standard so they cannot rob the poor and give to the rich by printing money again. Since it has been almost 40 years since there was anything resembling legal tender in this country, I suggest we declare a jubilee and start over... that's really the only fair thing left to do. Sure, it will ruin our credit as a nation, but frankly, it's ruined already anyway. Additional reading:

• Depression era laws undone
• Nobody cares if the Fed prints money until it is completely worthless
• What they didn't tell you about the housing market collapse on TV

I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men. — Woodrow Wilson, in regards to the creation of the Fed

No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility. — US Constitution, Article 1, Section 10

"The biggest blow to citizen constitutional authority came in 1886. The US Supreme Court ruled in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, that a private corporation was a "natural person" under the US Constitution, sheltered by the 14th Amendment [(even though that amendment had been written and ratified in 1868 to protect the rights of freed slaves) [3]] , which requires due process in the criminal prosecution of "persons." Following this ruling, huge, wealthy corporations were allowed to compete on "equal terms" with neighborhood businesses and individuals. "There was no history, logic or reason given to support that view," Supreme Court Justice William 0. Douglas wrote 60 years later. [4]" Quoted verbatim from http://www.ratical.org/corporations/
Seems you know nothing about how corporations came into being in America, and in addition use non-sequitor without knowing its actual purpose and meaning.
Please, please surrender your US citizenship. Its Foxnews-watching idiots like you who spoil this Great country for all.

While I grant that libertarians tend to oppose government control of drugs, you are the first one I have heard of who does not think corporations should be able to drug test their employees. So you favor government regulation to accomplish this? Or by what means do you propose?

First, it's because of government that employers started testing for drugs, the government required some employers to test for drug use with the fake War on Drugs. In "The Libertarian Alternative - Questions about Drug Testing" [it's 28 minutes] a speaker (emergency room doctor) in this Google video says Libertarians believe the government mandate for employers to test for drugs is a violation of the 4th amendment, unreasonable search. As for me, I oppose drug testing but I would let the free market decide whether to test for drugs. An employer can choose to test or not test. If a potential employee didn't like being tested then they don't have to apply for employment at a company that requires it.

And what's wrong with that? [regarding the sale of human organs]

Because it forces people who are in desperate financial straights into a decision of their organs or foodstuffs.

I'll start by saying I believe that in a true free market most of those people who would be in any "desperate financial straights" are those who either won't work or who spend too much as compared to how much they make, ie they live beyond their means such as buying that brand new Jaguar every 2 years. In a free market people would be able to make enough money to live a comfortable life, have a roof over their head, have enough food to eat, and could afford health insurance. I do leave out, agree to, the possibility of requiring insurance providers to pay into an insurance pool that would allow those who either can't afford or have been turned down for health insurance to get coverage from the pool. I know about being denied health insurance, more than 10 years ago I survived an accident that left me with a permanent disability and have been denied insurance because of that.

Also I love gardening and believe in city farms or gardens. Besides private gardens, if say you have a 5 blocks X 5 blocks section of a city maybe you could have a lot on the center block that's a garden. People living in the area could have an allotment where they could grow their own food. With big enough of a garden, or more than one, people could hire garden tenders to take care of them.

We'd abolish the limited-liability shield laws to make corporate officers and stockholders fully responsible for a corporation's actions

That voids the concept of a corporation, which is that, due to my limited liability, I can invest only my money, but not my credit/honor/personal future in your idea, and limits access to capital. That combined with yourdesire to return to the gold stndard would destroy the economy.

I'm partially, but not compeatly with you on that. Businesses were originally granted a corporate charter, to limit liability, if the business served the common or public good. The first corporation to be granted a charter and issue stocks was the Dutch East India Company in 1602. The second was the Honourable East India Company in 1604. Both companies were shipping and trading businesses, they shipped goods between the Indian subcontinent and Europe. However shipping was a risky business. Ships could run into bad weather and sink or be attacked by pirates. The owners of the ship were responsible for lost cargo and crew, if a

We NEED hydrogen power.

And algae produces hydrogen.

Elect officials that build mass transit systems.

And have those who can't afford it will be stuck paying for it? While I support mass transit, I like many others will not give up our cars. And I don't drive much, in 2000 I bought a brand new car. When I drove out of the dealership it had 6 miles on it, now almost 9 years later I still haven't driven it 45,000 miles. I drive it less than 5000 miles a year.

Our cities our built with the assumption that people can very cheaply get from one end of it to the other, but they can't anymore.

Those elected officials can help, they can enact mixed use zoning regulations. They can allow people to operate a business from their homes easily. They can also make room, and use it, for designated bike lanes on the roads.

The neo-hippies with their lattes and they horn rimmed glasses are not helping the cause, they're hurting it by buying into a false reality and encouraging others to do so.

Hay, though I drink espresso and don't wear glasses, I'm a hippy. Actually I want hemp, marijuana, made legal again. It's a good source for vegetable oil, and Rudolph Diesel designed his diesel engine to run on vegetable oil. Henry Ford designed and built an auto on his Iron Mountain estate that used hemp in it's construction as well as was fueled by hemp. Hemp can also be used for making Bioplastic. And hemp seeds are nutritious.

It seems that the government does a fantastic job of eventually telling on itself. There is really no reason to not trust what they have said on this issue.

BS! The US government has a history of doing horrible things, some of which have taken many years before coming out. For instance did you know that it was government policy of the Bureau of Indian Affairs to forcibly Native American Indian women? This went on for many years. Or that the military used Blacks to do medical experiments on diseases like syphilis in Tuskegee which lasted 40 years, and only ended when it came to light what was being done? Not only that but Bush reclassified a lot of documents Clinton released, and you really believe everyone will find out what the Bush admin does?

no flame bait either .. but just as most always ..

i will most likely receive the flame bait .. troll label .. written off as paranoid etc.

that was the whole idea ..

"they" the ruling class have known for a long time that the vast majority of people will simply not believe that it could happen .. it's called denial .. their most reliable and important weapon ..

modern democracies .. such as america have been useful and necessary distractions .. to give the lower classes the illusion that they have some power over the system .. while their plans could unfold ..

if you still believe the official story of 9/11 events .. time to think again ..

google "false flag operations"

this really has been a private planet since the military was outsourced to the private sector read:the ruling class .. after the first world war .. the real beginning of the modern phase of the plan .. as it was the only realistic option for the ruling class after the industrial revolution .. that or lose their control of the planet .. and subjugation to the lower classes .. ie. being just like everyone else .. no privileges .. no power over others (the real aphrodisiac by the way)

they almost lost the war in the sixties with a relatively open and FREE press (their only real achilles heel) but they were able to gain control of the mass media .. game over .. end of story ..

there have been a lot of canaries in the mine .. but the majority have refused to take them seriously .. just as expected ..

just a few interesting links ..

once you really start looking .. you will be overwhelmed with information .. another thing working in their favor ..

this is a good place to begin as it was a modern pivotal event .. even if it appears a little insignificant ..

http://www.mediatransparency.org/story.php?storyID=21

most people thing the Nazis lost the war .. think again .. just a temporary setback ..

http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/noon.html

and a few more to get you started ..

http://www.surfingtheapocalypse.net/cgi-bin/archive.cgi?noframes;read=73328
http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/aliensindenver.htm
http://www.trufax.org/
http://www-bsac.eecs.berkeley.edu/archive/users/warneke-brett/SmartDust/
http://www.freezone.org/mc/swfqw.htm
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/ST/ST.html
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/raisethefist/
http://www.alpha-education.co.uk/

this one is even fun ..
http://www.theyrule.net/

you can find more "truthful" information out there than you probably want to know .. as "they" do not believe that it posses a t

Corporations are not people.

I know that. You know that. Everyone knows that. Except, we are all wrong.

"This is the text of the 1886 Supreme Court decision granting corporations the same rights as living persons under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Quoting from David Korten's The Post-Corporate World, Life After Capitalism (pp.185-6):"

"In 1886, . . . in the case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that a private corporation is a person and entitled to the legal rights and protections the Constitutions affords to any person. Because the Constitution makes no mention of corporations, it is a fairly clear case of the Court's taking it upon itself to rewrite the Constitution. Far more remarkable, however, is that the doctrine of corporate personhood, which subsequently became a cornerstone of corporate law, was introduced into this 1886 decision without argument. According to the official case record, Supreme Court Justice Morrison Remick Waite simply pronounced before the beginning of arguement in the case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company that:"

"The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of opinion that it does."

"The court reporter duly entered into the summary record of the Court's findings that:"

"The defendant Corporations are persons within the intent of the clause in section 1 of the Fourteen Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws"

Call me crazy, but that is one of the most stupid things the Supreme Court ever decided. I think I understand where they were going, but the precedent they set is really scary and, I am sure, has something to do with the rise of coporate power and influence in America today.

That, and all their money

I personally cannot understand why companies are allowed to give political donations.

Because the Supreme Court ruled, back in 1886 (Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company), that corporations are real people. People can make political donations, corporations are people, therefore corporations can make political donations. QED.

And the campaign finance laws that try to limit political donations (where they survive constitutional challenge), have made thing worse instead of better. As long as politicians have influence over business, businesses have no choice but to try and influence politicians. And the right to do so is guarantied to everyone in the Constitution.

Well, the Mac is on TV, but it is most definitely _not_ an alternative. Jobs would have to let it be legally installable on whitebox hardware first. We're not just talking about letting Dell and HP make and sell Mac OS pre-installed boxes. Your local integrator has to be able to install it, without too many hurdles, and at a cost that leaves him some profit.

Apple won't allow OS X to be installed on beige box clones, at one tyme Apple did allow Mac clones but Apple lost more in lost hardware sales than they made in the sales of Mac OS licenses.. If the local integrator would make money then Apple would loose money. Apple isn't just a software company, Apple also makes and sales hardware. All to together Apple is a systems integrator, Apple just make things that work, the hardware and software work well together. And that totally ignores Microsoft. MS has already shown what it will do to those it views as competitors.

One relief I could think of that might not be unreasonable for a court to order when a company continues to behave like Microsoft. Strip them of all their patents and bar them from obtaining more patents until their market presence drops below 50%. (Trade one monopoly for another.)

What could be done to MS is to have it's Corporate Charter revoked. Corporations were originally granted charters if the corporation served the Public good. Once a corporation did not serve the public or common good it's charter could be revoked. The first corporate charter was granted to the Dutch East India Company in 1602 by the government in the Netherlands. Corporate charters allowed those who invested in the corporation to limit liability to just what they paid for for the stocks they owned.

Some obscure European political theorist writing about how he admires the Iroquois does not an invention make.

I only provided a starting point, and didn;t do all the research for you. But since you won't follow through with it Benjamen Franklin, a signer of the Declaration Of Independence, and Thomas Jefferson the writer of the DOI also studied and used the Iroquois Conferacy as a basis for the Constitution of the USA:

"The Six Nations:"
"Oldest Living Participatory Democracy on Earth"
The people of the Six Nations, also known by the French term, Iroquois [1] Confederacy, call themselves the Hau de no sau nee (ho dee noe sho nee) meaning People Building a Long House. Located in the northeastern region of North America, originally the Six Nations was five and included the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas. The sixth nation, the Tuscaroras, migrated into Iroquois country in the early eighteenth century. Together these peoples comprise the oldest living participatory democracy on earth. Their story, and governance truly based on the consent of the governed, contains a great deal of life-promoting intelligence for those of us not familiar with this area of American history. The original United States representative democracy, fashioned by such central authors as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, drew much inspiration from this confederacy of nations."

"Although hotly debated, it is a historical fact that a number of founding fathers had direct contact with the Iroquois and prominent figures such as Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were closely involved with their stronger and larger native neighbor, the Iroquois."

"During the era, Benjamin Franklin published twenty-six treaty accounts and represented the state of Pennsylvania as an Indian commissioner. In the pre-Revolutionary period, when he and his friends were advocating a federal union of the colonies, no European model was found to be suitable. Franklin's contact with the Iroquois influenced many key ideas for a new form of government =96 federalism, equality, natural rights, freedom of religion, property rights, etc. At the 1744 treaty council, by Franklin's account, Canassatego, speaker for the great council at Onondaga, recommended that the colonies form a union in common defense under a federal government: 'We are a powerful Confederacy, and by your observing the same methods our wise forefathers have taken, you will acquire much strength and power; therefore, whatever befalls you, do not fall out with one another.'"
...
"Those who recognized the wisdom and long history of the Iroquois government did not consider the Indians as mere "savages." Like the Iroquois, Thomas Jefferson believed that public opinion and popular consent were key in maintaining freedom and good government. He held that the power of public opinion was an important reason for the Iroquois ' lack of oppressive government and class differences, and for the power to impeach officials who offended governing principles. Like the Iroquois, he also believed that the best government is the least government."

" John Adams and Thomas Jefferson have left us some additional evidence that the Iroquois and the Iroquois ideals of government may have influenced them. Johansen asserts that Adams, in his book Defence of the Constitution of the United States, discusses the 'fifty families of the Iroquois' as a model for the Americans to follow. (Johansen 1998:75) Thomas Jefferson, perhaps the quintessential libertarian in American history, wrote admiringly to John Rutledge during the Constitutional Convention 'The only condition on earth to be compared with

I don't use grievances from multiple generations past in my family as justification for racist hatred and neither should you.

I don't use anything as justification for racist hatred, although I admit I am biased I try not to be. I try to judge people by their abilities and motives not by their skin colour. As I've told others my ethnicity is Heinz 57 as in 57 varieties. I have French Canadian blood as well as Welsh and American Indian blood. Multiple generations? As in the past? As late as the 1970s, which is part my personal past, the US government was forcibly sterilizing American Indian Women. This was the policy of the Indian Health Service. And it wasn't just used again the American Indians but also against Latinoes. Today, president Bush wants to open up Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste storage site. However Yucca was promised by the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley to the Western Shoshone Nation, as was most of the Nevada Nuclear test Site. If Bush has his way another treaty the US has signed will be broken along with a string of similarly broken treaties.

Innocent until proven guilty applies only to sentencing in a court of law. It does not mean law enforcement and national security are prohibited from discovery. If a cop pulls your car over and asks for your license, the law requires you to provide legal identification.

Being able to drive is a privilege not a right and for being granted the privilege you're required to show your drivers license when you are driving.

Now that's a definitive source for ya.
          And Popular Science definitively disproved 9/11 was an inside job, right? Mhh Hmm. Americans.
          Anyway, the CIA certainly shot Kennedy just as they did with Martin Luther King a few years later.

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/WFP020403.html

Now where can I bone up on the info you mentioned?

Start here. It has links to a lot of useful stuff, mainly on US Government sites.

Google is your friend. Things like info on the Six Nations' declaration of war on the Germans are easy to find with searches like "Iroquois war Germany".

Speaking of whom: It was the Iroquios Confederacy that was the main inspiration - primarily through Franklin - for the structure of the federal government of the United States. Prior to the discovery of their working Republic and its long history (which has been described as "outdoing the Romans"), the history of democracy and republican forms in Europe - particularly certain episodes from Greece - were used as royalist propaganda. They were cautionary tales about why government of the people was doomed to failure and despotic rule by a member of an elite was allegedly necessary.

Quit a bit of this history has been unearthed in recent decades. A search for "Iroquois Franklin" will point you to quite a bit of it, such as full online text of Bruce Johansen's The Forgotten Founders

"A corporation exists to make money."

See, that's where you and many others go wrong. Historically, this is completely untrue. Corporations are "chartered" by the state to meet otherwise unmet social needs. If they fail to do so, the state has the right and responsibility to revoke their charters. It was understood that because corporations were large immortal beings without consciences or an ability to feel pain and without family or community ties that they needed to be kept on a very short leash. So, originally, corporations were only created for very narrow public purposes. The current state of related laws is an abomination of the original intent. While they are organizational demons made of people, the people do not control them any more than the cells in your body individually control you. And if you are in a role in a corporation and do not fulfill that role, you will be swapped out with as much emotion as you have when swapping out a burned out light bulb. The corporate demons created to serve humankind are now the masters.
See for example:
    "The History of the Corporation"
    http://www.astonisher.com/archives/corporation_int ro.html
Or:
    "TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS: Citizenship and the Charter of Incorporation"
    http://www.ratical.org/corporations/TCoBeij.html
From the second link: """ The American colonists did not revolt simply over a tax on tea. The laborers, small farmers, traders, artisans, seamstresses, mechanics and landed gentry who sent King George III packing, feared corporations. As pamphleteer Thomas Earle was to write in 1823: "Chartered privileges are a burden, under which the people of Britain, and other European nations, groan in misery." While American volunteers were routing the king's armies, they vowed to put corporations under democratic command. After the revolution, people were determined to keep investment and production decisions local and democratic. They believed corporations were neither inevitable nor always appropriate. Many colonial citizens argued that under the Constitution, no business could be granted special privileges. Others worded that once incorporators amassed wealth, they would use their corporate shields to control jobs and production, buy off the press and dominate elections and the courts. Craft and industrial workers feared absentee corporate owners would turn them into "a commodity being as much an article of commerce as woolens, cotton, or yarn," according to historian Louis Hartz. Having thrown off British rule, the revolutionaries delegated their elected state legislators to issue corporate charters on the people's behalf. For 100 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, citizen vigilance and activism forced legislators to keep corporations on a short civic leash." """

And of course your education was designed by corporation owners to keep you from thinking about this:
    http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.ht m

spread the word, he's not kidding. Hemp's a real solution, if not the solution. Give it a try. And, oh... ah um mod parent up (a little further)... look up the history and potential of the cannabis plant, you might learn a thing or two

Exactly how far back in time do we need to go in paying reparations?

When people who are still alive who have been the victims of the acts in question, reparations are due. Perhaps extending to the immediate children and grandchildren of those people (I note that some Holocaust reparations have gone to heirs, not to Holocaust survivors).

Also, so long as political entities remain extant, so do their obligations. The U.S. has treaty obligations of Native nations, even if the people who signed those treaties are long dead. Similarly, as Jack Straw has admitted, Great Britian bears much of the responsbility for the fscked-up sitation in the Middle East, from the Balfour Declaration that started the theft of Arab lands for the benefit of Zionism, to the formation of Iraq; the Britian ought to live up to its obligation to people in those areas.

The Americans will have to pay reparations to the Native Americans (most of whom are only fractionally N.A.) for their land.

For land, no; but reparations are due for extensive contemporary treaty violations with Native nations, and for recent acts of cultural genocide. There are men and women out there now who as infants were stolen from their Native American parents and given to "good White Christian" families to be raised. (In a more good ol'-fashioned style of genocidal policy,thousands of Native women were compeled into sterilizion in the 1970s.)

Similarly, while slavery reparations may be a dead issue, reparations are long overdue for every person who suffered under segregation laws.

The only reason the airlines (NOT the TSA!) require ID is to keep their profit margins on business passengers. They require the ticket to be issued for a particular person and validate that that person is flying to prevent bulk resale of lower priced economy tickets by travel agencies - which used to be the business model before the airlines started doing this (something in the late 70s? I remember there being a time this was not required).

Neither the TSA or the airlines care about security so much as cost effectiveness, price gouging and maintaining the status quo with the appearance of saving our lives on a continual basis.