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Many of the people who want to go back are elderly and in poor health anyway. Some have young children. Those groups will be worse affected, so you are not going to convince them to return just by looking at averages. They want to know the effect on themselves and their children.

In any case, so many people have moved on now that the communities they go back to won't be viable. They need to rebuild the population by attracting younger people who will want to start families, in an area that is still contaminated.

Before someone says it, the initial evacuation could not have been avoided. There was no way to know how bad the situation was going to get.

Its also important to note that there are still many people displaced from their homes due to the earthquake and tsunami alone;

https://www.theguardian.com/wo...

and many people died in those evacuations as well;

https://reliefweb.int/report/j...

Ten years after Katrina, there were still thousands who did not have permanent homes, and many homes that will never be re-built.

Importing a third world country that holds that exact opposite ideologies as your own is fucking suicide

Yeah, it sure destroyed the USA.

There are numerous Islamic countries that are very well off that aren't 'lifting a finger' to help their fellow Muslims.

That's completely wrong.

Turkey is taking responsibility for fully HALF of Syrian refugees, at great expense. Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt are home to nearly all the rest. The number going to Europe is miniscule by comparison:

"In three days in September 2014, Turkey received some 130,000 refugees from Syria â" more than the entire European Union had in the past three years"
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/11/20/amnesty-international-85-percent-syrian-refugees-in-turkey-living-outside.html

Successful Muslim (Gulf) countries like Saudi Arabia are JUST AS DISTANT from Syria as the EU is. Those same distant Muslim countries ARE now contributing significant amounts of money to support the current crop of Syrian refugees (though it certainly took them quite a while, and they could reasonably be doing more). They have some peculiar issues with taking in more refugees, which seem quite strange to someone in a western country:

"these countries are already overloaded with foreigners. For example, 88 percent of the population of the United Arab Emirates are foreigners. For Qatar, it's 85 and Kuwait 70 percent." http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-09-03/what-are-gulf-countries-doing-help-syrian-refugee-crisis

Lots more useful information is available here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugees_of_the_Syrian_Civil_War

Can't decide if you are trolling or just living under a rock.

Sorry if I'm destroying your wet dreams of "America no.1 fuck yeahhhhhh!", but here it goes some data: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_the_press#Worldwide_press_freedom_index
http://reliefweb.int/map/world/world-human-rights-risk-index-2013

So are you saying that if more American soldiers ended up dieing, all would be fine according to you?

Here is how preposterous your comment is. American soldiers are fighting a known enemy who kills more innocent civilians and children then the American soldier even thought to. Last year alone, it was more then 2/3rds the civilian collateral casualty rates. In fact, the argument could be made since democracy was imposed in the area, that if the forces of the Taliban and terrorists organizations would stop killing innocent civilians and participate in the democratically elected government for whatever change they wish to impose, that our soldiers wouldn't be killing anyone.

Giving this information out could do little to stop any so called mass murder by our soldiers and directly cause an increase in murder and civilian deaths by the Taliban and it's allies. You shouldn't let your ideology blind you from the facts. Otherwise you will only be pretending to be righteous when you are in fact no worse then who you accuse.

Why? Can you dispute the original comment, rather than making another stupid anti-America rant? Haiti certainly benefited from our parking a giant hospital ship off of its shores, and while we were doing all that, other countries were complaining that we had created "too large" a presence there (meanwhile sending no aid of their own) as if thousands of dead or dying people could give a damn about that. In fact, they wanted more of our help.

Sorry, I don't normally post, and not getting into the 'hate America' thing as I don't particularly believe that, but you may want to check your facts on who was involved in helping Haiti.

Haiti Aid Donations can be found here

Sorry, but Lao Tzu said "Give A Man A Fish, Feed Him For A Day. Teach A Man To Fish, Feed Him For A Lifetime".

No matter who said it it still applies. However thanks for informing me Lao Tzu said it, I'll check on it.

So it's not a Christian saying just something Christians stole from a culture and now think of as theirs; like Christmas.

Every Christian holiday or celebration can be traced back somewhere else, each has a pagan, heathen, or other root. Christians have even taken others as their saints. Heck Christians even built their churchs on someone else's sacred site.

Anyway, more money (total value of goods) comes out of Africa than goes into it.

Diamonds, gold, and other metals like coltan are extracted from Africa and the average African see nothing from it, except for conflicts and death. Most if not all of the fighting in Africa is over a natural resource.

Basically the west's farm subsidies destroyed the value of local farm economies and we now extract a lot of raw materials from the ruins of their economies

Which is why the WTO meetings in Geneva failed. Nations like Brazil and India demanded the west; Europe, Japan, and the US to stop subsidizing agriculture in those countries. These subsidies distort the market, a US farmer is able to grow, harvest, then ship produce to most places cheaper than farmers there can grow food. And not because because the farmer has lower costs but because the government gives them billions of dollars in subsidies. Eventually India walked out because the west wouldn't budge. The US offered to lower some subsidies some but the EU and Japan refused to.

Food aid makes this process somewhat worse by preventing mass death that would adjust the local population size to something the local ecosystem is able to support.

Actually aid hurts because it drives farmers off of their farms. Afterall why should a farmer stay on a farm bleeding, sweating, and going into debt when western food is imported into his or her country and sold for less than they spend growing food?

Granted, there are significant political issues related to the random political borders etc but that landscape is way to complex for such simple analysis.

Yea, politics has a lot to do with it. At one tyme Zimbabwe used to be the breadbasket of south Africa, they were able to grow enough to feed Zimbabwe and still was able to export a lot of food, agriculture used to be the country's major money earner. However after president Robert Mugabe came to power he forced all of the white farmers off of the farms then gave them to his cronies and supporters. Because these people didn't know how to farm they weren't able to grow food. So now Zimbabwe is a basket case instead of a breadbasket.

Now this isn't true everywhere. For instance Ethiopia, it used to grow enough food too however because of droughts they haven't been able to grow enough. And some blame global warming on the drought. It's complicated but if the warming affected rainfall it would impact farming.

Here is some proof of the rampant racism against Arabs from reputable sources:

Human Rights Watch: Discrimination Against Palestinian Arab Children in Israel's Schools
Haaretz: JNF cannot discriminate against Arabs in allocating land rights
Al-Ahram: 'Democratic' racism 1
Al-Ahram: 'Democratic' racism 2

Of course you can argue whether this qualifies as apartheid, but it is hard to deny the inequality between Jews and Arabs in Israel.

It has no more to do with apartheid than the boundary fences on the borders of most countries

This argument would only be valid if:
1. Israel recognized the right of Palestinians to have a state and would allow 'nation-building'.
2. The wall would have been build on the Green line, instead of cutting through Palestinian land.

Besides, the barrier/wall/fence is only part of the great open air prison that the Palestinian territories have become. Palestinians cannot even travel freely within their own 'country'.

only it is more justified since Israel is under constant terrorist attack

Please look up the number of Israeli citizens killed versus the number of Palestinians citizens killed. Then tell me who is being terrorized.

If Israel were interested in apartheid, it would not have allowed hundreds of thousands of Arabs to become citizens and to live all over the country

And yet there are millions of refugees who have not been allowed back by Israel and whose property has been confiscated. In contrast, Jews with no claim other than their bloodline are allowed to immigrate into Israel.

http://www.reliefweb.int/ See Professional Resources > Jobs

But you might want to read this page first:

http://ngosecurity.googlepages.com/

Public opinion in China and the Philippines, that they were victimized by Japan and not the USA in WWII...

Perhaps I've been unclear. The American atrocities I'm speaking of predate WWII by several decades. Again I refer you to Wikipedia on war crimes during the Philippine-American War.

These atrocities were over long before WWII; however, imperialist rule of the Philippines continued until 1946.

The only physical delivery of aid after Yoyang (Dec. of 2004) was by U.S. Marine helicopter, I was there to document it and took hundreds of photos:

It may be that aid from other nations was delivered by the U.S.; thanks to our obscene military spending, we are the best at putting boots on the ground. As I've documented for you though, the stuff they were delivering was part of a multi-national relief effort, including substantial contributions from the Japanese. And Japanese doctors and other relief personnel were dispatched to aid relief efforts.

American soldiers were not trained that anyone who surrenders is not a human being, and it's OK to kill them)

During the Philippine-American War, prisoners were indeed killed. General Jacob Smith directed "I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn; the more you kill and burn the better it will please me." Smith ordered that anyone over the age of ten who had not proven to be a friendly could be and should be killed.

After all, it's not like they were killing white men. As one contemporary account put it:

Undoubtedly, they do not regard the shooting of Filipinos just as they would the shooting of white troops. This is partly because they are "only niggers," and partly because they despise them for their treacherous servility... The soldiers feel they are fighting with savages, not with soldiers...

Those and other policies don't make it seem like Japan has reformed it's traditional belief in racial superiority (by way of comparison, Americans, not being homogonous, cannot have a collective national belief in racial superiority if they wanted to).

Of course there was an American collective national belief in the racial superiority of whites, up until the late 1960s (and still persisting in some quarters today).

Certainly Japan was strict immigration and naturalization laws, but that is distinct from racism. It's a crowded country. Lack of overtime laws is irrelevant to the question of racism.

Certainly racism does exist in Japan, primarily in the older generations; I got a few dirty looks from old Japanese men when I visited just for being a white guy, and there are businesses that post "Nihonjin-only" signs. On the other hand, white guys are hot property among young Japanese girls. Attitudes change across generations, as they always have.

Legally, Japan is signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.

watched U.S. Marines deliver food aid after typhoon Yoyang in 2004. I kept wondering, "where's the aid workers from Japan? Where's the aid from China? Where's the aid from Taiwan? Where's ANY OTHER COUNTRY AT ALL?".

If you were still wondering after you got back to somewhere with net access (I'm assuming that was sparse after such a disaster), a few minutes with Google would have told you that Japan sent money, doctors, and relief workers. China, Singapore, Korea, Belgium, Germany, and the U.S. all provided significant aid.

More recently, Japan has sent one million dollar in food aid for victims of Reming.

As for ongoing aid, here is the JICA page for the Philippines. And here's the Ministry of Foreign Affairs page on Japan-Philippines, chock full of stats and press releases.

Nobody was there except the USA.

Maybe you didn't see anyone there besides American military relief. Maybe that's a function of where you were, maybe you weren't looking very hard, I don't know. But several other nations were there, including Japan.

They did not have this attitude about the U.S., and they were glad she was going to marry an American. This is a fair characterization of attitudes there.

People's attitudes don't change the historical reality. Both the U.S. and Japan have, in the past, done horrible things in the Philippines. The U.S. atrocities were a little longer ago and were less horrific. But they were still atrocities. Both the U.S. and Japan now send significant aid to the Philippines.

If you believe American has victimized the Philippines (for example), and this matters to you (you care), are you willing to help the Philippines?

I generally do my international charitable contributions through the Red Cross. My money's tight now (I'm about to spend the spring in Japan, doing some informal study of the culture behind the martial and healing arts I've studied), but if $20 or so can be leveraged to some good, I could PayPal you or something.

Looking at the Land Use map of China, vast areas of China seem to be desert (as seen on "The Silk Road").

This doesn't seem to be too different from the USA (The mid-Western area around Nevada and the Rockies seems to be totally uninhabited) or Canada (all major Canadian cities seem to be strategically placed close to the US border).

There was a earthquake in Chile on monday, it was 7.9 on the Richter scale

bulletin with some more details.

Remember, there is a connection of these kind of events along Pacific coasts, mostly due to interactions between Nazca plate (north of Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia) and the Pacific Plate (Japan, EEUU west coast)

(obligatory IANAG disclaimer, G = Geologist)

They do have Earthquakes: "An earthquake measuring 5.9 on the Richter Scale hit Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on 16 Aug 2003. Considered the worst earthquake to strike Inner Mongolia in 700 years, it has caused at least 4 deaths and more than 1,000 injuries. More than 50,000 houses have collapsed, and over 80,000 houses have been seriously damaged."

And pretty bad Snowstorms.

Your ignorance is only outdone by your anti-American screed...

Wow. I think a village somewhere is missing an idiot. I am not anti-american. A lot of my best friends are American. I even work in an American firm! But I am strongly anti-stupidity and you seem to spew as well as Bush does. Clinton was a much better president and was admired the world over despite his scandals.

Sure Iraq's military wasn't a threat to the US. However Iraq's money was. Just as Saddam was paying the families of homicide bombers in Israel he was sponsoring terrorism elsewhere.

Oooh so now the WMDs arent the problem but the money is? Hmm. You should run for Parliament. Tell me something ...when a country like Iraq has fought wars conseqtively for the last 30 odd years (one recently in 1991 with a much bigger foe - the US), followed by years of sanctions, how much "money" could I possibly have. Yeah. So you're solution is, pay you're military BILLIONS to bomb Iraq till the place is level forgetting all the civilians you kill? Listen "bub", the population of Falluja alone is 390,000 . And you're "ignorance" leads you to believe that you're armed forces only "killed the terrorists". When you bomb a city lifeless you will AT THE VERY MOST OPTIMISTIC ESTIMATE kill at least 1% of the innocents. Thats 3,900 people. More than September 11th. And_that_is_just_Falluja. Imagine the whole of Iraq and Afganistan and all the other places you lot set out to "liberate". I'd easily estimate at least 10 times that number and I still probably wont scrape the surface.

Dont give me horseshit like Tibet is worse off. China may be repressive but it hardly qualifies to be as bad. They never cluster bombed tibet by any stretch of imagination. And as for Russia, if radical extremists who are usually foreign mercenaries try to foment trouble in you're country I'd squeeze them too. What the hell do you know about Chechnya. Russia doesnt have the advantage of being on another continent. If I have foreign militants pouring through the borders creating trouble I'd use my arms as self defence. They are NOT invading the place. The place IS THEY'RE OWN COUNTRY.

And Oh China threatens Thailand eh? Well did they invade it ? No. What the hell have you been smoking - when you bomb the place its far worse than "threatening" last I checked.

...but gave Saddamn a free pass at murdering his own people.

For you're obtuse lack of knowledge of foreign affairs, heres a little dose of reality. Did you know that the chemical weapons Saddam used on his own people and the Iranians were..in fact...supplied by the US, and that too, in the HEIGHT of the Iran/Iraq war ? Why the hell supply those kinds of weapons to anyone in the first place and especially when you know they will be used. Also did you know OBL and his little band of troublemakers were originally trained and financed by the very own Uncle Sam ? Remember "Rambo" and all the "mujahideen" who helped him ? Oh yeah, then they werent terrorists but freedom fighters, hmm..damn convenient if you ask me. You're goverment switches opinions of weather people are heroes or villans at the drop of a hat.

The UN is a joke mainly because of countries like France. How many times do you see the UN condemn Russia of Chechyna? The UN is simply an anti-Israel and anti-American institution...

If I didnt know better I'd say you're a bloddy xenophobe. Go look that up in the dictionary "bub". The whole world isnt stupid. And barring a few countries who didnt want to piss off uncle sam for the fear of being "liberated", everyone was against the war. Sadly people like you fail to see this and vote for the mass murderer who perpetuates the problem of terrorism instead of solving it.

Look at the facts:

Unemployment rate has gone up (1.1 million jobs less than 2000 when Bush took over).
Budget deficit has skyrocketed.
Trade deficit has gone up to record levels.
Dollar is weaker.
Homeland security has gone down.
Personal freedom has gone down (no link, cause apparently you read slashdot ...)
America has fewer friends in the world.
America has killed 100.000 people in Iraq.
Iraq is more insecure than ever.
Iraq is poorer than ever.

Add your list of positive things Bush has done here. Mine is empty.

.
.
.

And the Bush administration is a bunch of liars. WHY for god's sake vote them?

Bye egghat.

I do NOT think, however, that restrictive regulation how to go about it

in the United States, it is out of the purview of the Federal Government-- it's not an enumerated power.

Yes, there's evedince that the environment is changing, but the causality has not been proven.

Hey, I'm in the same boat - there are a lot of things I'd rather the gov't not pay for, especially including the exhorbitantly expensive U.S. military, oh and also the idiotic tax rebate we'll all be paying back for the next couple of decades.

Mozilla = an effort by underdogs to group together and make a better piece of software than Microsoft, not just focus on their big bad enemy and lament their life. Palestinians = well ... not that!

I think they have some pretty good reasons to focus on their big bad enemy and lament their life.

They have a huge amount of data in varried resolution. Most of it is available from multiple sources for free; however they have it all in one spot and all converted for their program.

What makes it truly great is the ability to add your own overlays directly over top of its data. Quite a spectacular product.

If you have it give this a try take a image of vegitaion [A] and overlay it over Iraq with at 30% transparency. Add a overlay that with the sunni / sheite population densities [B] and do the same.

KaPow! Data in context. Quite amazing really.

[A] vegetation will require some cutting and pasting... but the images you have w/ key hole are pretty good
[B] Religious groups

If you want to check them out they are here:
earthviewer

[ I dont' work for them, but I would ;) ]

More maps of Korea

North Korea is a monster made by her neighbors:

• Hyundai and South Korea gave the North $500 million dollars
• Japanese Pachinko players supported North Korea with their gambling

Accurately estimating the size of a cloud by eye is no easy feat and, as others have already pointed out, non-nuclear weapons can also make mushroom clouds -- either large conventional explosions or smaller explosions that take place inside tubes or silos

South Korea is building a new capital city. Supposedly this is because of overcrowding, but the new capital is farther south... out of artillery range of North Korea.

The explosion supposedly occured near a missile field. It's possible the North Koreans tried to test-fire a missile for their 56th anniversary and it blew up in the silo.

Actually, the Palestinians have gotten billions of dollars/euros in humanitarian aid, much of which is suspected of actually being diverted to the extremists in their society.

While no one I know of has outright public proof this is happening, one Reuters piece suggests that over $900 million in aid over five years dedicated for humanitarian purposes was not used for that purpose . To be balanced a bit, it is also worth noting that the Israelis might not be considered playing fair in some circles because they charge the Palestinians for security procedures and hampering UN teachers's movements.

Play around with Google or your favorite search engine a bit to find out more; I really do not have the time this morning to go into the details.

Actually, the Palestinians have gotten billions of dollars/euros in humanitarian aid, much of which is suspected of actually being diverted to the extremists in their society.

While no one I know of has outright public proof this is happening, one Reuters piece suggests that over $900 million in aid over five years dedicated for humanitarian purposes was not used for that purpose . To be balanced a bit, it is also worth noting that the Israelis might not be considered playing fair in some circles because they charge the Palestinians for security procedures and hampering UN teachers's movements.

Play around with Google or your favorite search engine a bit to find out more; I really do not have the time this morning to go into the details.

In the longer term perspective, a recent expert study estimated that the world is approaching the limits of global food production capacity based on present technologies. Its most optimistic projection suggests that a doubling of food production by 2050 might be technically feasible, and this could feed 7.8 billion people if grain is largely used as human food and not for animals. A likely higher level of population growth, or a failure of sufficient commitment to increase food supplies around the world, will create severe problems for a major part of the world population (Kendall and Pimentel, 1994). The pessimistic assumptions seem more likely, as present per capita food production is stagnating if not declining, and some crops may be close to biological and environmental limits. Already 700 million people experience endemic hunger, not counting those added by natural disasters (Serageldin, 1995).

Further,

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) expects the world's population to grow to more than 8 billion by 2030. The FAO projects that global food production must increase by 60 percent to accommodate the estimated population growth, close nutrition gaps, and allow for dietary changes over the next three decades. Food charity alone simply cannot eradicate hunger. Increased supply--with the help of tools like bioengineering --is crucial.

Last year Ethiopia's population grew by 2.7%; according to this article: 'Most years, Ethiopia has to depend on some level of food aid as it rarely grows enough to feed the whole population.' The reliefweb article also states: 'many impoverished rural families say they have no choice but to have large families to help raise their incomes.' This strongly suggests that poverty is a vicious circle: because people are poor and famine-stricken they have more children; which leads to even greater pressure on food production; which, at its non-GM present state, is unable to answer with requisite increases in the amount it yields; which leads to even greater poverty; and so on and on and on. A way to break that vicious circle would be to provide people with the means to farm their own food locally and with better chances of success. In their article Technology That Will Save Billions From Starvation Prakash and Conko write:

The productivity gains from G.M. crops, as well as improved use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, allowed the world's farmers to double global food output during the last 50 years, on roughly the same amount of land, at a time when global population rose more than 80 percent. Without these improvements in plant and animal genetics and other scientific developments, known as the Green Revolution, we would today be farming on every square inch of arable land to produce the same amount of food, destroying hundreds of millions of acres of pristine wilderness in the process.

It is estimated that Vitamin A deficiency leads to some 1,000,000 children dying and some additional 300,000 being struck by blindless every year. According to the WHO between 100 and 140 million children are vitamin A deficient and between 250,000 to 500,000 children per year become blind due to Vitamin A deficiency. If, as Patrick Moore says, 'adding a daffodil gene to rice in order to produce a genetically modified strain of rice can prevent half a million children from going

In the longer term perspective, a recent expert study estimated that the world is approaching the limits of global food production capacity based on present technologies. Its most optimistic projection suggests that a doubling of food production by 2050 might be technically feasible, and this could feed 7.8 billion people if grain is largely used as human food and not for animals. A likely higher level of population growth, or a failure of sufficient commitment to increase food supplies around the world, will create severe problems for a major part of the world population (Kendall and Pimentel, 1994). The pessimistic assumptions seem more likely, as present per capita food production is stagnating if not declining, and some crops may be close to biological and environmental limits. Already 700 million people experience endemic hunger, not counting those added by natural disasters (Serageldin, 1995).

Further,

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) expects the world's population to grow to more than 8 billion by 2030. The FAO projects that global food production must increase by 60 percent to accommodate the estimated population growth, close nutrition gaps, and allow for dietary changes over the next three decades. Food charity alone simply cannot eradicate hunger. Increased supply--with the help of tools like bioengineering --is crucial.

Last year Ethiopia's population grew by 2.7%; according to this article: 'Most years, Ethiopia has to depend on some level of food aid as it rarely grows enough to feed the whole population.' The reliefweb article also states: 'many impoverished rural families say they have no choice but to have large families to help raise their incomes.' This strongly suggests that poverty is a vicious circle: because people are poor and famine-stricken they have more children; which leads to even greater pressure on food production; which, at its non-GM present state, is unable to answer with requisite increases in the amount it yields; which leads to even greater poverty; and so on and on and on. A way to break that vicious circle would be to provide people with the means to farm their own food locally and with better chances of success. In their article Technology That Will Save Billions From Starvation Prakash and Conko write:

The productivity gains from G.M. crops, as well as improved use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, allowed the world's farmers to double global food output during the last 50 years, on roughly the same amount of land, at a time when global population rose more than 80 percent. Without these improvements in plant and animal genetics and other scientific developments, known as the Green Revolution, we would today be farming on every square inch of arable land to produce the same amount of food, destroying hundreds of millions of acres of pristine wilderness in the process.

It is estimated that Vitamin A deficiency leads to some 1,000,000 children dying and some additional 300,000 being struck by blindless every year. According to the WHO between 100 and 140 million children are vitamin A deficient and between 250,000 to 500,000 children per year become blind due to Vitamin A deficiency. If, as Patrick Moore says, 'adding a daffodil gene to rice in order to produce a genetically modified strain of rice can prevent half a million children from going

A quick google for 'ethiopia food aid' finds me plenty of articles like

http://www.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/0/dbe7c656f4d19 d4c85256beb0051bddc?OpenDocument

which say that food aid is unhelpful.

But not for the reasons you claimed. Had you taken 2 minutes to skim the article, you would see that the reasons the authors found food aid to be unhelpful were:

• People count on it but due to poor logistical planning, it can't pass through seasonally bad roads
• It causes economic distortions
• It causes population spikes

Nobody (or at least not I) claimed that food aid was the perfect solution to everything. I merely called you on your patronizing and invalid assertion that the reason food aid wouldn't help Ethiopia was because Ethiopians were a bunch of gun-wielding warlord maniacs who would steal it ("siphoned off to raise armies" I believe was your turn of phrase) before it could get to its intended recipients.

You are hurting your cause.

Uh huh. And what's my cause?

Actually, I was wrong. It was 43 Million dollars. It is amazing what google will show up which leads to this

The scareiest part of your troll is that you, like so many other people, wish to ignore what W. does or does not do. Then you try to wrap yourselves in the flag or proclaim that the person to be a lunatic. Richard Clarke and others from the W admin have now come out against him and suddenly these heros are considered liers. Sad state of affairs that we are in.

Oh, did you really think that the taliban was using that money for humanitarian aid? Get real.

How often does artillery come into play in a coup?

Here's a another write-up of the incident by ReliefWeb. If you're looking for a place to direct your help to, note that Niue is a member of Development and Economic Policy Division Funding Assistance and Regional Natural Disaster Relief Fund ... so these might be good places to donate.

I suppose you could also just pick a random person, transfer some money and ask them to pass it around, since there are only about 2,000 people there.

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

Oh yeah, I forgot how well the Sahara would be wonderful farmland if we didn't put the farmers out of work, how we started the whole Somali famine, caused all of the natural disasters in the world, etc. Nice troll.

What about the 1 million metric tons of food that we just... give away for free? This link is to just one program... in total, the U.S. gives away (for free) about 9 million metric tons of food to needy foreign countries every year. Where's the "profit" in "free."

The real problem is distribution. Quite often, the food doesn't make it to the people it mostly needs to go to. Case in point... the U.N. food-for-oil program in Iraq. Saddam kept almost all of it for his government and military, all the while telling the Iraqi people that they had no food because we were stopping the flow of food. Not true... he was keeping it for himself.

By the way, one million metric tons of food donations equals about 8 pounds per person in the United States. I also happen to donate to local food programs (voluntarily)... approximately 100 lbs per year. Did *you* donate any food this year?

Oh, and you're wrong about why the WTO is bad: The WTO is bad because it fails to protect workers in the United States from foreign competition and encourages things like NAFTA and FTAA, which put our own people out of work. This happens because labor is a lot cheaper elsewhere (so-called sweatshops, etc), so companies increase profit margin by using foreign labor.

It's the same reason that hiring illegal immigrants is bad: It gives a job away that could be filled by a higher-paid, tax-paying, protected-by-labor-law American worker. And, the argument that "they do the jobs nobody else would take" is bullshit. If nobody took the jobs, and they needed to be done, the offered pay would increase until people would take the job for the money. Instead, illegal immigrants are exploited because they can't get a normal job, and fear getting busted.

• Tornadoes in Brazil
• Tornado brings death in Brazil
• Earthquake in western Brazil
• 16 dead, thousands homeless from floods and mudslides in Brazil (and here)

healthcare but is definately not uniform and the quality is at best tenious (tenuous maybe?)

Utter bullshite. Ive never had a problem with healthcare here in Canada. If Im sick I get care. Simple. This holds true for 'serious' illness as well (ive had immediate family members with exceptional care during their successfull battles w/ cancer).

a by-product of the large concentrations of people

Bullshite again - The US has high crime beause of its value system. People are more likely to feel justified in their violent acts because it serves their selfish needs (whatever they are) - and that is the #1 value in America: You are the only important thing to yourself - Serve yourself - Consume. America does not have a 'high concentration' of people - look at the other end of the population density scale (Asian countries) and you'll see an inverse violent crime rate to that of the USA.

Get your shite straight.