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Why would you be going to Ireland? It's acting as a cheap whore for abusive foreign multinationals for the last ten years has meant it has been hit harder than any other western country in the "downturn".

lightbulbs to force their replacement with fluorescent tubes containing hazardous mercury (and which are ill-suited for many applications that require instant operation or even harness their heat), rather than leapfrogging directly to LEDs etc.

The coffee machine still exists! After it broke in 2001, it was bought by german magazine "Der Spiegel". They got the machine fixed by the vendor and created a new webcam. See here: http://www.spiegel.de/static/popup/coffeecam/cam2.html

The Bundeswehr is reportedly assembling a "Cyberwar-Unit", which additionally to protecting the armed forces' IT infrastructure from attacks, is also supposed to scout and manipulate other computers or "adversarial networks". According to information available to the news magazine "Der Spiegel" the troupe consists of several dozen alumni of the universities of the Bundeswehr in computer-sciences and are stationed in Rheinbach near Bonn.

The "Hackers-in-Uniform", as the Hamburg-based news magazine ["Der Spiegel"] called them, are currently in training and the troupe will be reportedly fully operational the next year. The strictly classified unit is subordinate to the Kommando Strategische Aufklaerung (Strategical Reconnaissance Command) under command of brigadier Friedrich Wilhelm Kriesel

The Bundeswehr has issued no statement to the report. According to the Grundgesetz [German constitution], the German self-defence forces are prohibited from assuming interior tasks. There are, however, plans to abolish this ban.

While experts are arguing world-wide, whether the term cyber-war is actually correct, as there are no casualties, there seem to be a consensus, that the defence of such threats is one of the task of the armed forces of a country.
Regardless, whether in retrospect the cyber-attack on Estland is counted as a war, or not, every nation, which has a substantial IT-infrastructure, is taking the potential threat of cyber-attacks seriously.

All links are leading to German pages. No guarantees on the accuracy of the translation, especially the military terms.

The actual source of the heise.de article seems to be an article on the website of the German magazine "Der Spiegel" which can be found here: http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/tech/0,1518,606096,00.html It seems that those guys are actually mostly graduates from Bundeswehr universities meaning the "recruiting hackers" theme is not really correct. (remarking this as a native German speaker). The rest of the article is rather uniformative though..

http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/0,1518,605606,00.html

I would like you to actually point me to the text of any speech of Ahmadinejad's where he threatens any state with military action. Just one.

Iran is one of the few countries, which has yet to recognize Israel — their foreign policy is that there is merely a "Zionist entity", which temporarily occupies "Northern Palestine". Their current president's rhetoric certainly matches that. You preemptively reject the most infamous quote regarding the "wiping out off the map" as "mistranslated", but here are two more:

• the ocean of nations of the region will get angry and will cut the root of the Zionist regime from its stem.
• [addressed to Israel's allies]: "It is in your own interest to distance yourself from these criminals [Israel -mi]... This is an ultimatum. Don't complain tomorrow."

You dont "recall", well that's a shame. Good thing about the internet, people like you can no longer revise history and muddy the waters after a large event happens. Five seconds of research shows that you're quite simply a reactionary apologist.

There was no shortage of scientists and doctors at every level willing to promote the ridiculous message that mass pandemic was imminent.

Here's a few examples from five seconds on google proving that your assertation that "only the media said we would all die of bird flu" is at best ignorance, at worst a bold faced lie:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4346624.stm
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,345165,00.html
http://www.satyamag.com/feb06/greger.html
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/03/17/the_cost_of_bird_flu_hysteria/

"The chief avian flu coordinator for the United Nations, Dave Nabarro, said last fall he was "almost certain" a bird flu pandemic would strike soon, and predicted up to 150 million deaths. The U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, Mike Leavitt, advised Americans to stockpile cans of tuna fish and powdered milk under their beds in case of an outbreak. Renowned flu expert Robert Webster has said society needs to face the possibility that half of the population could die in a bird flu pandemic."

Nice weasel words there by the way "non-medical scientists" lol so medical scientists opinions on a medical issue are irrelevant? How convenient, lets ask some geologists then and perhaps an astronomer too, it's they who have the 'real' insight.

I think it may be you who is lacking in understanding of the scientific method.

Rule number one, never make an assertation without a shred of evidence.

Folks know ash collapses roofs. So, gasp, folks would clear the ash as it accumulates.

Oh, I wonder why nobody else thought of that simple idea!

In the German city of Staufen, they drilled some 140m deep holes to get geothermal energy for heating the town hall and adjacent buildings.

Unfortunately, this drilling caused many cracks in houses around the city centre. Some of these cracks are said to be big enough that you can put your fingers in.

According to this article on the English Spiegel (a German news magazine) website, dated March 2008, the whole city is sinking. In a recent German article from November, they write that the city has risen several centimeters due to water mixing with gypsum deep down and therefore causing the gypsum to expand.

In the German city of Staufen, they drilled some 140m deep holes to get geothermal energy for heating the town hall and adjacent buildings.

Unfortunately, this drilling caused many cracks in houses around the city centre. Some of these cracks are said to be big enough that you can put your fingers in.

According to this article on the English Spiegel (a German news magazine) website, dated March 2008, the whole city is sinking. In a recent German article from November, they write that the city has risen several centimeters due to water mixing with gypsum deep down and therefore causing the gypsum to expand.

Even children's books with cartoons of high art containing rude bits are not allowed in the USA.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,493856,00.html

I've never understood why the group that believes we didn't do it think that means we can continue being oblivious. Climate change is climate change, man-made or not. It will cause problems, and we do need to think ahead.

First of all, there is a lot of evidence that global warming might actually be a good thing. The longer summers will tend to create more areas that have longer growing seasons and are more favorable to growing crops. Global warming will also increase precipitation levels in most areas, leading to less drought overall throughout the world and also contributing to more food for the world. Warmer temperatures will lead to a reduced need for fuel used in heating and it will reduce deaths due to exposure and the stresses placed on people during cold weather.

Health and Amenity Effects of Global Warming
Not the End of the World as We Know It
Questions and Answers on Global Warming

Secondly there are the costs and benefits associated with global warming. If you look at a detailed analysis of the sacrifices that would have to be made to carry out some of the recommendations of global warming alarmists, the economic impact is quite severe. Compare that to the economic benefits of a warmer climate and you can see that maybe we should be taking a less severe stance on global warming and instead of sacrificing everything maybe we should pick and choose our battles more carefully.

Economics of Global Warming

Lastly, although there is evidence that supports the theory that greenhouse gasses are part of the reason for global warming it is far from a foregone conclusion. There is also evidence that solar warming and several other factors might be primary causes. Without a thorough understanding of the mechanisms of global warming it is difficult to come up with methods of reducing the warming trend. We can call for severely impacting our economy and health by curtailing industry in the hopes that it will reduce global warming or we can make sensible cuts while we learn more about the situation.

Reading this thread, I finally get the origins of the expression CYA: it's the Kevlar pants some people wear to protect innocent bystanders against the sonic boom when the the large carbon briquette they're clenching suddenly compresses into that small diamond of professional livelihood.

In a bookstore the other day, I was leafing through Zittrain's "The Future of the Internet--And How to Stop It". I didn't take much from it myself, but it's a fine summary of many issues to pass along to that clueful someone outside the IT profession.

Had a nice passage concerning Verkeersbordvrij.

From http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,448747,00.html

"The many rules strip us of the most important thing: the ability to be considerate. We're losing our capacity for socially responsible behavior," says Dutch traffic guru Hans Monderman, one of the project's co-founders. "The greater the number of prescriptions, the more people's sense of personal responsibility dwindles." ...

Psychologists have long revealed the senselessness of such exaggerated regulation. ...

The plans derive inspiration and motivation from a large-scale experiment in the town of Drachten in the Netherlands, which has 45,000 inhabitants. There, cars have already been driving over red natural stone for years. Cyclists dutifully raise their arm when they want to make a turn, and drivers communicate by hand signs, nods and waving.

"More than half of our signs have already been scrapped," says traffic planner Koop Kerkstra. "Only two out of our original 18 traffic light crossings are left, and we've converted them to roundabouts." Now traffic is regulated by only two rules in Drachten: "Yield to the right" and "Get in someone's way and you'll be towed."

Strange as it may seem, the number of accidents has declined dramatically.

So much for the rigid linear relationship between rule conformance and orderly outcomes so beloved among the pride-in-earning-to-eat-another-day crowd.

That said, I think eggs are juvenile outlets, and utterly inappropriate for any class of software that can result in a more serious injury than a bent nose.

At the same time, I don't feel professionalism demands such a cold relationship with your work that your emotional investment never rises above rule conformance and personal CYA blast containment shields.

And no, don't think I'm advocating Verkeersbordvrij as a universal cure-all. I'm not even convinced its initial success will hold up.

In the real world, I'll be sticking with Firefox, with Ad blockers

You are a leech on the rest of society.

Obviously you have never experienced a truly disturbing browsing experience because of either a great number of flash(y) ads, or few flash ads taking up a large portion of the screen. (See http://www.spiegel.de/ - it's in German, though, and I'm not entirely sure if they still have the same problem.) I wouldn't mind static picture ads, but to have dozens of ads flashing each to its own rhythm...

The summary doesn't tell the full story here. Okay, we don't really know the full story, but we can draw some conclusions from the few articles that are available.

(It's really a pity that even established new outlets like http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/0,1518,590643,00.html feel threatened by the injuction and hesitate to explain what it's all actually about. How are readers supposed to form an opinion when newspapers are afraid to repeat the original claims?)

So here's what apparently happened: The original article about Heilmann appeared in http://www.hl-live.de/aktuell/text.php?id=47614. Since that's a regular german newspaper, they are required to publish a counterstatement by Heilmann, which they did: http://www.hl-live.de/aktuell/text.php?id=47710

Neither is about his work for the Stasi: What hl-live states is that the immunity against prosecution he enjoys as a member of parliament has been revoked because he threatened a former boyfriend in a text message.

Not sure whether that's true, so let's look at his own counterstatement: He claims his immunity wasn't revoked, but that the commission deciding on immunity issues found that this particular investigation doesn't affect his political work and hence doesn't violate his immunity anyway.

That's kind of weird, because in the next paragraph of his counterstatement he claims that there isn't an investigation in the first place. (What? There's no investigation, yet the commission on immunity bothered to look at that investigation? Something doesn't make sense here.) He also says that he didn't threaten the guy, and that it's not a former boyfriend, just a roommate. He says the guy is an ex-con and that he wanted to encourage him to adhere to his parole conditions. :-) Okay, whatever.

Now enter wikipedia. For a brief time (the paragraph has been removed by now, probably thanks to all the media attention), the wikipedia article on him repeated the claims from hl-live about his revoked immunity, listing only hl-live as a citation.

Which I would argue is both legal and done according to wikipedia citation rules, but also a little fishy. At least they could have had to link to the counterstatement, and perhaps it was a little premature to link to something that's by no means well-documented.

And here's the ugly part regarding the source of the story: hl-live didn't research their article very well. They basically just repeat claim from yet another "newspaper", the infamous german tabloid Bildzeitung. Now that's very stupid, because Bild is known to publish misleading stories as well as out-right lies (see http://www.bildblog.de/ for a blog covering their misdeeds.)

Finally, Heilmann goes berserk and gets an injunction against that weird redirection site wikipedia.de while everyone else continues to use de.wikipedia.org and wouldn't have noticed much without all the media echo.

And while the whole discussion isn't much about his Stasi past at all, he definitely ensured that anyone (if indeed anyone was left who didn't know about it) know learned about his "extended military service" aka work for the Stasi.

BTW, the Stasi part is part of his official bundestag.de resume, so not much of a secret since it all came out a few years ago.

I'd buy an efficient Diesel in preference to a gas guzzler, and not to do the biodiesel thing, which is a niche since we aren't likely to wolf down enough french fries and fried catfish to make the market for used oil big enough to supply the convertors. And growing food for fuel is still stupid, even if it is diesel. Growing food for fuel is stupid. Eating is non-negotiable. There are plenty of ways to fuel transportation without taking precious farmland and growing stuff to burn.

Diesel is good enough to win at Le Mans. Oughta be a way to make it work on the 101 through Scottsdale, since it works on the Autobahn.

Of course, Mercedes-Benz thinks hybrids should be diesel-electric. Where have we heard that before? Oh yeah, locomotives. A business sensitive to costs, performance, and reliability.

Until we can go all-electric, we'll need a better battery. Right now, the favorite battery is a gasoline tank. Soon, it might be a diesel tank.

Sad. Maybe instead of trying to make an electric CRX, I oughta make a diesel...?

IMHO I strongly agree with you that the US press is a joke. All copying the same crap spoon fed to them from the wire services. The first time I read about the La Nina effect bringing us a cold year was in April on a German site. If you throw the text in an automatic translation app (such as babelfish.yahoo.com) you should be able to get the gist of it.

Ok answer this then, exactly what question does ID try to answer? Is it testable and falsifiable?

It's exactly as I already stated.

1. It is possible to scientifically detect and study evidence of design.
2. It is possible that such evidence exists in the natural world.

So the question is as claim #2 states: "Is there evidence of design in the natural world?" I don't think you can deny that this is testable and falsifiable, since then you would have to reject claim #1.

I do deny 2 is testable and falsifiable, as I deny 1. Just as creationists and IDers say about dinosaur fossils, that the dinosaurs were wiped out in Noah's great flood, they can say whatever results of any test as just God testing, and how can you test whether there's an intelligent designer. Heck a Christian amusement park has humans and dinos living side by side, the Creation Museum in Northern Kentucky.

Falcon

Am I missing something here or is this really, really old news. Here is an article from 2000 (in german): http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/0,1518,107405,00.html

Your point is backed by African economist James Shikwati in the article "Stop the Aid!"

http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,363663,00.html

Satellite surface penetrating radar measurements indicate a layer of almost pure ice with depth of up to 1.8 km in places. Lateral spherical distribution of what is most likely water ice with about 1000 km diameter has been observed in March 2007 around the south pole.

Source (Sorry is German):

http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-33791-9.html#backToArticle=569278

sure the voice isn't "in" your head, but it's close. Here's a link to NY Times article from 2003. http://www.woodynorris.com/Articles/NewYorkTimesMagazine.htm As mentioned the same technology is used by DoD and other folks like Norwegian Cruise Lines. http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,385048,00.html Arrrgh!!! Me EARS!!!!

how about this: How German Intelligence Helped Justify the US Invasion of Iraq, though the article reads more like "How German intelligence sent the US intelligence on a wild goose chase". More here: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,542708,00.html , http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,542888,00.html , http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,558224,00.html .

I find it interesting that ever since WWII ended, some European country fails at diplomacy and US has to clean it up and get the blame ... think about France not recognizing that Ho Chi Minh won the elections in Vietnam and forcing him to side with the Chinese, or some other European countries supporting unilateral declarations of independence in Yugoslavia ...

how about this: How German Intelligence Helped Justify the US Invasion of Iraq, though the article reads more like "How German intelligence sent the US intelligence on a wild goose chase". More here: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,542708,00.html , http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,542888,00.html , http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,558224,00.html .

I find it interesting that ever since WWII ended, some European country fails at diplomacy and US has to clean it up and get the blame ... think about France not recognizing that Ho Chi Minh won the elections in Vietnam and forcing him to side with the Chinese, or some other European countries supporting unilateral declarations of independence in Yugoslavia ...

how about this: How German Intelligence Helped Justify the US Invasion of Iraq, though the article reads more like "How German intelligence sent the US intelligence on a wild goose chase". More here: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,542708,00.html , http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,542888,00.html , http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,558224,00.html .

I find it interesting that ever since WWII ended, some European country fails at diplomacy and US has to clean it up and get the blame ... think about France not recognizing that Ho Chi Minh won the elections in Vietnam and forcing him to side with the Chinese, or some other European countries supporting unilateral declarations of independence in Yugoslavia ...

how about this: How German Intelligence Helped Justify the US Invasion of Iraq, though the article reads more like "How German intelligence sent the US intelligence on a wild goose chase". More here: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,542708,00.html , http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,542888,00.html , http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,558224,00.html .

I find it interesting that ever since WWII ended, some European country fails at diplomacy and US has to clean it up and get the blame ... think about France not recognizing that Ho Chi Minh won the elections in Vietnam and forcing him to side with the Chinese, or some other European countries supporting unilateral declarations of independence in Yugoslavia ...

There are some real geniuses working on Wall Street, in VCs, Consulting, and yes, even marketing.

The same geniuses who thunk up "derivatives"? the sub-prime scam? The Bear Stearns bailout? The rising prices of commodities? The Ponzi Scheme and Musical Chair based economy which is about to collapse? I hope the IMF goes easy on Uncle Sam.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,562291,00.html
http://business.theage.com.au/imf-finally-knocks-on-uncle-sams-door-20080629-2yui.html
http://cleveland.indymedia.org/news/2008/06/30755.php
http://www.financialsense.com/Market/kirby/2008/0630.html

The task of this piece on the front page of today's Washington Post is to establish the believe that Iran has a nuclear weapon design.

An international smuggling ring that sold bomb-related parts to Libya, Iran and North Korea also managed to acquire blueprints for an advanced nuclear weapon, according to a draft report by a former top U.N. arms inspector that suggests the plans could have been shared secretly with any number of countries or rogue groups.

The drawings, discovered in 2006 on computers owned by Swiss businessmen, included essential details for building a compact nuclear device that could be fitted on a type of ballistic missile used by Iran and more than a dozen developing countries, the report states.

The Swiss 'businessmen', Friedrich Tinner and his two sons, are alleged to have sold several nuke related stuff to Lybia and other countries.

There is more to the Tinner story, but for now let me concentrate on the date. The WaPo says the laptop has been discovered in 2006. But Tinner was under CIA control at least since the 2003 bust of nuclear related stuff on board of the 'BBC China'.

The German magazine Der Spiegel had a big story about this in March 2006:

Two circumstances could prove to be Lerch's undoing: first, the fact that the German ship "BBC China" was intercepted in October 2003 carrying a cargo of containers filled with nuclear technology headed for Libya and, second, that the incident prompted a panicked Gadhafi to disclose the names of all those who had supplied the Libyans with material and expertise for their nuclear program.
...
The authorities caught up with Gotthard Lerch, who Tahir calls his "main contractor," in Switzerland. They also arrested members of the Tinner family -- Friedrich Tinner and his two sons, Urs and Marco -- all on the suspicion of having built parts for Gadhafi's nuclear weapons program in return for 15 to 20 million Swiss francs.

Tinner was flipped by the CIA at least since the 'BBC China' event but likely even earlier. Another man taking part in the alleged smuggling was also turned by the CIA or has worked for the CIA all along.

Indeed it somehow seems like everybody involved in the issue was somehow related to the CIA.

The usual story is that the Pakistani scientist A.Q. Kahn was the one who ran a smuggling network. That may not be true at all. Khan denies having been involved in such. A new book asserts that it was then Prime Minister of Pakistan Bhutto who personally gave Pakistani nuclear secrets to North Korea in exchange for North Korean No Dong missiles for the Pakistani army.

A Dutch court somehow 'lost' legal files about the Khan case and the CIA likely had a hand in this too. The CIA also successfully pressed (link in German) the Swiss government to destroy information it had about the Tinner case. Tinner will thereby never be convicted.

Now please explain to me how people arrested in 2003 and flipped by the CIA at least since then managed to keep nuclear plans on a laptop that were somehow found only in 2006?

This whole story stinks from A to Z

Funny since I am in Russia and writing this on a computer connected by broadband. True ADSL is more popular than cable here but still it is not dial up. Also I thought that France had one of the best broadband coverages in the world.

Actually, recently a scientist in Kiel, Germany, where Planck was baptised, found out that his real first name in fact was Marx. http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/0,1518,549404,00.html here is an articel in german. http://morpheme.wordpress.com/2008/04/24/marx-max/ Site in english refering to the article found on the spiegel homepage.

Very good point especially since these things can literally burn and crash.

This PDF contains some scary pictures. And there is nothing you can do if the turbine catches fire. It is to high up to put it out. Don't get me wrong I like wind energy but if these things are conventionally designed each one of them will be a bush fire waiting to happen.

Nonsense! This can even been seen to be so in an active thread that has even something as low as a dozen participants. What happens is that people stop to read post and start to skim them. Then after some time, they just stop reading certain people's which gets worse as time goes on. Then there's the people that come into the conversation "late" which exceedingly rarely read what has been posted before they post; they typically just read the last couple and then jump in.

Basically, what you have in an "everyone can speak up" newspaper/etc is nothing being said because any one person is drown out from the crowd. There'll be a disturbing signal to noise ratio. It's a kind of, the power of the internet is that everyone has a voice, but the weakness of the internet is that everyone has a voice.

I've been around since pre-popular internet and what I've seen in is the crackpots getting a voice, people trust what they read, and those crackpots create new crackpots downward spiral. Things were MUCH better when people listened to the experts instead of denying what they say and cherry picking there data (and getting away with it because there are so many of them agreeing with each other).

But, then again, you are using this cherry picking nonsense in this post. Don't want to read/listen to bad non-journalism? Don't. Switch on to something else. Yes, it does exist. In the US, when I lived there, the PBS channels had news programs that were fairly decent. In Canada there is CBC: Sunday and in the UK there is the BBC or the Independent. If you're in Germany, you could pretty much pick one (Spiegel has an on-line English version http://www.spiegel.de/international/).

how about this, then:

Iraq
  - http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,542840,00.html
  - http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,542881,00.html
  - http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,542888,00.html

breakup of Yugoslavia
  - http://www.springerlink.com/content/j339272hr6267766/ ... that's pay per view, or you find it in a "good library"
  - if you have access to the mythical "good library", you might attempt to check out this: Tim Judah, 'German Spies Accused of Arming Bosnian Muslims', in Daily Telegraph from 20 April 1997; it's not available on the net ... take it with as many grains of salt you think it's safe.

Name of "Gehlen" and the phrase "starting the cold war" ring a bell when on the same page ?

It looks like the US are not alone in all those conflicts you quoted, but are the only country with enough balls to take responsibility. As for USA going in Iraq "for the oil", if that's true, it's Europe's oil supply that the troops belonging to USA and the other "willing" countries are protecting.

Other examples of an European country starting some trouble and USA going in to clean up the mess ? How about the Vietnam War ? Or the WWII ? WWI, anybody ?

Edgar Rice Burroughs (the one who wrote the Tarzan and Martian Princess pulp "masterpieces") wrote also a novel (The Lost Continent (1916)) about USA not getting into WWI, but instead cutting all communication with Europe. After a few decades, a ship crosses the interdiction line during a storm, sinks near the coast of England, and the crew discovers that the war ended with the last Briton killing the last German and later succumbing to his wounds, leaving the Europe a desert populated only by animals escaped from zoos. How about such option ? Is it acceptable to you ?

The perpetual "holier than thou" attitude is getting tiresome. Ever wondered why the Eastern European "Untermenschen" stick with either US or Russia ?

how about this, then:

Iraq
  - http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,542840,00.html
  - http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,542881,00.html
  - http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,542888,00.html

breakup of Yugoslavia
  - http://www.springerlink.com/content/j339272hr6267766/ ... that's pay per view, or you find it in a "good library"
  - if you have access to the mythical "good library", you might attempt to check out this: Tim Judah, 'German Spies Accused of Arming Bosnian Muslims', in Daily Telegraph from 20 April 1997; it's not available on the net ... take it with as many grains of salt you think it's safe.

Name of "Gehlen" and the phrase "starting the cold war" ring a bell when on the same page ?

It looks like the US are not alone in all those conflicts you quoted, but are the only country with enough balls to take responsibility. As for USA going in Iraq "for the oil", if that's true, it's Europe's oil supply that the troops belonging to USA and the other "willing" countries are protecting.

Other examples of an European country starting some trouble and USA going in to clean up the mess ? How about the Vietnam War ? Or the WWII ? WWI, anybody ?

Edgar Rice Burroughs (the one who wrote the Tarzan and Martian Princess pulp "masterpieces") wrote also a novel (The Lost Continent (1916)) about USA not getting into WWI, but instead cutting all communication with Europe. After a few decades, a ship crosses the interdiction line during a storm, sinks near the coast of England, and the crew discovers that the war ended with the last Briton killing the last German and later succumbing to his wounds, leaving the Europe a desert populated only by animals escaped from zoos. How about such option ? Is it acceptable to you ?

The perpetual "holier than thou" attitude is getting tiresome. Ever wondered why the Eastern European "Untermenschen" stick with either US or Russia ?

how about this, then:

Iraq
  - http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,542840,00.html
  - http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,542881,00.html
  - http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,542888,00.html

breakup of Yugoslavia
  - http://www.springerlink.com/content/j339272hr6267766/ ... that's pay per view, or you find it in a "good library"
  - if you have access to the mythical "good library", you might attempt to check out this: Tim Judah, 'German Spies Accused of Arming Bosnian Muslims', in Daily Telegraph from 20 April 1997; it's not available on the net ... take it with as many grains of salt you think it's safe.

Name of "Gehlen" and the phrase "starting the cold war" ring a bell when on the same page ?

It looks like the US are not alone in all those conflicts you quoted, but are the only country with enough balls to take responsibility. As for USA going in Iraq "for the oil", if that's true, it's Europe's oil supply that the troops belonging to USA and the other "willing" countries are protecting.

Other examples of an European country starting some trouble and USA going in to clean up the mess ? How about the Vietnam War ? Or the WWII ? WWI, anybody ?

Edgar Rice Burroughs (the one who wrote the Tarzan and Martian Princess pulp "masterpieces") wrote also a novel (The Lost Continent (1916)) about USA not getting into WWI, but instead cutting all communication with Europe. After a few decades, a ship crosses the interdiction line during a storm, sinks near the coast of England, and the crew discovers that the war ended with the last Briton killing the last German and later succumbing to his wounds, leaving the Europe a desert populated only by animals escaped from zoos. How about such option ? Is it acceptable to you ?

The perpetual "holier than thou" attitude is getting tiresome. Ever wondered why the Eastern European "Untermenschen" stick with either US or Russia ?

Detroit anytime in the past 30+ years worries me. 1997 Romania worries me. These are two situations where I look at things and say "people can't be stupid enough to do x" and lo and behold they do it anyway (the details of what stupid things are happening in Detroit and what happened to the CDR government coalition in Romania are beyond the scope of discussion).

Wolves have come back to Germany for the first time in a century and Spiegel's reaction is to adjust to the wolf. They don't examine at all the role of depopulation:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,467205,00.html
Here's a map
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Pop_density-lowestest.png

The relevant area where the wolves are is in eastern Brandenburg.

And, btw, the song about how these animals are not dangerous is an old one in the US. The end of this sad theater piece is when people start getting killed (usually an incautious tyke but sometimes a hiker) but long before then pets and agricultural animals disappear and a feeling of siege settles on the population as they become no longer comfortable with living a normal life and enjoying the outdoors. The FRG seems to be at the agricultural animals getting killed stage which is pretty early, maybe the beginning of act two in a three act play.

They probably have time to pull out of their delusions and treat the situation seriously before somebody gets scarred for life or dies but they're already gambling on the statistical probabilities when an animal overcomes its fear of humans and sees "tasty treat" when a small child gets loose. I find that sort of playing with somebody else's lives outrageous.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,437087,00.html

I also like this story:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/10/07/wwii-veteran-nazi-interrogators-denounced-bushs-torture-techniques/

That's how you can get caught easily. If power companies have their act together, they know in which areas they have unexplained losses, and the police can simply check the neighbourhood out with infrared cameras. That's how the Netherlands pushed its "industrial hemp" plantations into Germany and Belgium.

Devil's advocate: What attributes? Being brown?

This is what vigilantism looks like.

I'm not so sure. Your argument rests on the assumption that the terrorists make well-reasoned decisions to further their cause. They do have objectives -- "get out of the Middle East, U.S!" -- but in my opinion they are horribly misguided in their decisions: If they wanted to reduce the U.S. military presence there, they sure as hell haven't succeeded.

Some people say, "the terrorists have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams." I don't think so. Rather, the current situation is a dismal failure for all involved, terrorists included. It's a failure for the U.S., which is now engaged in a bloody, costly (we have spent more than we did in Vietnam), no-way-out quagmire of a war. It's a failure for the extremists who downed those planes, who rather than convincing the U.S. to pull out of the Middle East has provoked it to deploy even more troops there. It is a failure for "Iraqi" civilians (even if no "Iraqi" ethnic identity really exists), who might have been oppressed under Saddam but who at least had electricity and drinking water. It is a failure for nearly everyone. The only reason this mess continues is that we, the extremists, and everyone else, are stuck together in yet-another (the world has so many) collective action problem.

[The list of those who have benefited from this situation is short -- mainly politicians (in the US and in the Middle East) and government contractors (Haliburton/KBR, etc) happy to multiply the terror and exploit the situation (see the BBC's The Power of Nightmares -- video here). But these people didn't engineer the attacks; they're just opportunists.]

I got a little sidetracked, but the point is this: The terrorists did not plan a well-reasoned attack to achieve their objectives; by most rational metrics I can think of, they have failed. Therefore, I wouldn't put it past them to do something stupid again -- like stage an attack which will ultimately make their task more difficult. That's the part of your post I was disagreeing with -- that these terrorists make smart decisions. I suspect they don't -- not because they're populated by stupid people (terrorists tend to be well-educated. I'm most familiar not with Middle-Eastern terrorists, but with the Japanese terror cult Aum Shinrikyo that released Sarin nerve gas on the Tokyo subway -- and that organization was full of Ph.D.s and physics students) but because their logical, analytical minds have been short-circuited by a seductive ideology.

In other words, we've got one group of people whose brains have been short-circuited by ideology and anger against another whose frontal lobes have been shut off by a hyperactive fear-and-stress center. I'm not counting on rationality from anyone.

According to one of Germany's reputable news sources Spiegel Online (in German) early reports suspected counterfeit claims by companies such as Apple, but it has since become clear that the Italian company Sisvel has filed suit over MP3 patent infringements and thereby caused the raid of stands offering mp3/4 players et al.

There have since been further confiscations of GPS/navigation systems too.

The storm has barely even started.

That's for sure. Already, 10.3% of all homes are "under water" on their mortgages. Its expected that between 30% and 50% will end up tht way before we get to the bottom of the trough. The US could be in for a Japan-style meltdown, with at least a decade lost.

This will sideswipe the worlds' economy.

Already, there's a question of whether several German state banks, who hold billions in US toxic mortgage paper, will be forced into bankruptcy.

That's what happens in a global economy where lying ratings agencies give triple-a ratings to junk in return for fees.

If we had taken the nearly 1 trillion dollars we have currently spent on the war and invested in this country's infrastructure we would not be in so many shit holes at once.

I have to assume you mean our energy infrastructure. Our raw materials and manufacturing capacity loss is more about pay scale than infrastructure. I think improving our energy infrastructure would be great, but it wouldn't have much immediate quality of life improvements for most civilian Americans. A different handful of people would be getting rich right now, but that's about it. One of the longer term dangers to our economy is the loss of the dollar as the international currency. That loss is largely caused by our ballooning deficit. A "New Deal" spending spree at home wouldn't help any more than the current military spending spree. Currently the national debt is about $30k per citizen, so assume you had a $30k lower quality of life and that is what we are likely to balance out at when China stops funding our spending habits.

I will leave your rose-tinted view of history for now. It's not worth getting into an argument about how much "damage" Ghandi did to the occupation force or whether the Brits really wanted to be there any more at all. The least you can do, however, is examine the great success Ghandi had applying his principles in Africa before you conclude just how universally irresistable they are.

It takes a real genius to interpret the phrase "pro-life"...

I think that it's relatively fair to allow the movement that self-identifies as X to define X. I don't go around telling a "pro-choier" what "pro-choice" means. I allow the actions, words, and writings of the pro-choice movement (e.g. NARAL, NOW, and PP) to speak for themselves. Is it too much to ask that you allow your political opponents to speak for themslves, rather than insist on retaining for yourself the authority to tell everyone what their own stance really means?

They key, I think, is to take an unpopular group of people and convince the masses that they are second-rate humans and their lives are just not as valuable.
Exactly. Other than the word "unpopular" I agree word-for-word, and consider that exactly the method being used to strip unborn human beings of their human rights. Rather than "unpopular" they are "invisible", but certainly expensive to keep around. The pro-choice side rests on the proposition that human rights are not for all human beings: that is that "their lives are just not as valuable" as the lives of the born.

The burka-clad arabs are not even Christians, a carpet bombing is just about enough due process for every one of them. And those starving children in Africa - well, they are n-----rs for god sake! Let them starve! Besides we are not killing them, we are just standing by while they die, while we could have saved each one for $5/year. The right of life is only a negative right you see.

I see your grasp of international aid is no beter than your grasp of history. It really is sad to me that so many liberals subsist on good intentions alone, when good intentions with research would benefit the world far more.

I'll address the points one-by-one:

1. I said that pro-life does not necessitate strict pacifism. You took this to mean that carpet-bombing civilians is A-OK. I am amused, but not surprised, at where you ran off with that argument, but I'd like a response to what I actually said rather than what you think I believe.

2. Allegations of racism and religious intolerance are about par for the course. It's just a matter of commonly known fact that if you're conservative it is because you are intolerant of others: http://kiriath-arba.blogspot.com/2006/11/libertarians-liberals-and-who-really.html (my blog)

3. The staving children in Africa: http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,363663,00.html (der spiegal interview of kenyan economist) http://kiriath-arba.blogspot.com/2007/06/myth-of-big-push.html and (my blog again)

I hope you will read, or at least skim, those articles. In case you don't here's the short version: I care deeply about how Americans can best alleviate suffering in the world and have dedicated serious amounts of time to researching this problem. Research will not solve problems, but trying to fix problems without knowing what you're doing can make things much, much worse. Ignorant attempts to "fix" Africa, the Middle East and so on have led to almost as much suffering (if not more) than attempts to oppress those same regions. Far more have died in the name of progress and "help" (Stalin, Pol Pot, the mess made of Africa and the Middle East due to foreign 'aid') than died in quests for God, Glory, and Gold.

Before you condemn conservative as heartless bastards

Nice 1st post. Made it to the German Newspaper Spiegel: http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/tech/0,1518,533040,00.html

your comment was translated and quoted at http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/tech/0,1518,533040,00.html

about the most asinine lawsuit I've ever heard of

Not even close.

The FBI keeps arresting and convicting people in this country for ties to terrorist organizations. Now, how do you suppose domestic surveillance contributes to that? Did the idea cross your mind that those arrests and convictions, not to mention the other disrupted plots, are the reason we haven't had something like the Bali bombing, or the London tube bombing, or the Madrid bombing? Of course I'm sure that you also know that the Canadian bomb plotters had connections in the US, that the US helped the Germans foil a dangerous bomb plot, and British and American surveillance helped foil a major attack? There are plenty of other cases as well.... for anyone that cares to know.

On the Legality of the NSA Electronic Intercept Program

Falling in love with inanimate objects is a phenomenon called objectum-sexual: http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,482192,00.html/