Slashdot Mirror

I was interested, so I did a quick search...

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/Trading_Enemy_excerpts.html
http://www.archives.gov/research/holocaust/bibliographies/trade-with-third-reich.html
http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/waryearsp5.html

Looks like I have some reading to do....

If I owned a business that could make a buck supporting a regime that wasn't anti-US, I'd do it no matter how "repressive" they were. That sort of ruthlessness helped win the Cold War, and there is no reason the shrink from it now.

So you would support the massacre of 200,000 people? That's what President Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger did when they supported the Indonesian dictator Suharto's invasion of East Timor. That 200,000 massacred was 1/3 of East Timor's population.

Yes, oil was a factor, but not access to oil. Sadam switched to selling oil in currencies other than dollar which had the potential to show the Euro as the strong currency it has become - a truth published as early as 2003 but no media would touch it.

See http://www.thinkandask.com/news/thedollar.html and http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Iraq/Iraq_dollar_vs_euro.html. Unlike a Hollywood movie, the US is NOT the hero here..

The problem with GM vegetables isn't the GM itself, but how they're modified and why. If they're modified to make them resistant to parasites but still good and healthy is one thing, while if they're engineered in a way they can't reproduce so you've to buy seeds again and again is a dirty move and a very different story.

They may even be concerned with such simple concepts as keeping shelter and food available to their families.

You know, there's a good reason why the Buddha listed "right occupation" as a step in the Eightfold Path. You can't justify doing wrong by saying "I needed the job". That's exactly the meme that makes the banality of evil possible. It leads not just to harming to others, it's corrosive to one's own soul.

(Of course the TSA is no Third Reich. But an argument that tries to justify real crimes is wrong whether the criminal is a bully shaking down school kids for lunch money or a mass murderer.)

If you're only willing to collect a paycheck from a perfect organization, then your home probably looks a lot like the one where your parents live.

Perfect? No. But we all have an obligation to make our living by a means that does more good than harm. Working for the TSA, which erodes civil liberties to perform security theater which create a false sense of security, is not such an occupation. It's not "somewhat broken", it's part of a fundamentally flawed approach to security.

There's two things that make air travel safer than it was in 2001: more secure cockpit doors, and the willingness of airline crew and passengers to fight rather than surrender control of a plane. The rest - the intense screening, the "no fly" lists, the confiscation of lighters and pocketknives - is a bunch of hooey.

Just because the TSA is somewhat broken doesn't mean the workers are idiots, brutes, or power mongers.

I didn't say "idiot". I said "ignorant". Very different, a person of substantial intelligence can still be woefully ignorant on important matters. In fact I'd say that covers quite a few people in the employ of various federal TLAs.

* One year in Iraq.
* "Filet mignon" healthcare for every single American citizen for five years.

About the same amount of money. not really a source, but a very informative read.

The US can easily afford to feed, clothe, and fully care for every one of its citizens. We--that is, the tyrannical majority--choose not to because of a mutated form of selfishness and an irrational fear of anything that sounds "socialist". Talk to people in the US, and ask them if they agree with this statement:

"I don't want my money going to pay for the healthcare of some welfare-queen mother of six who mooches off the state."

A rational person rightly sees that entire statement as a strawman. The typical american is nodding his or her head right now, because that single worthless human is the entirety of their understanding of the poor. Americans, to make a generalization, are retarded. (and I do apologize to any mentally handicapped people reading this, I shouldn't compare you to Americans) I am, by the way, a shamed citizen of the United States of America, but only until a more sane country opens her doors to me.

I can't find anything about an invasion of Burma. The invasion of Vietnam was backed by the US though. The US wanted to punish Vietnam for it's invasion of Cambodia. This list does not remotely compare to the interventions carried out by the US.

Take a look at this list. http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/US_Interventions_WBlumZ.html

The only way to separate infrastructure from services that use it are laws though.

Hardly. I could go start a co-op right now that was arranged as I described. The only way to force everyone, everywhere to adopt such a structure involuntarily, of course, is to pass laws making it mandatory. If that's what you want then we'll simply have to agree that our goals are mutually exclusive, however much our preferences may be aligned.

You disagree with me with your first word, "Hardly". Then you agree when you say "The only way to force everyone, everywhere to adopt such a structure involuntarily, of course, is to pass laws making it mandatory."

a co-op is, by definition, limited by its forced equality.

There is no force other than legal involved in co-ops. I voluntarily joined two co-ops, nobody held a firearm to my head saying I had to join. Nor does anyone use one to force me to shop at either one either. Actually, I'd guess most people don't know about co-op or don't know one in their area. I'd heard of co-op more than 30 years ago but until I moved I didn't know of any or how they worked. I almost stumbled on the first one I joined. In a health food store, which didn't sell any health food, I asked where I could find a store that had a good selection of organic food. I went there liked what I saw and learned it was a co-op, then when I could I joined. From there I learned of others in the area, and joined a second one.

At any tyme if I don't like how either one is run there's nothing forcing me to remain a member, not only that but if I even decide to leave I will get a refund of my membership dues I paid when I joined. There's no force and no coercion involved.

at the same time it's hardly ideal for every member's investment to be limited to the least common denominator the way it is in a co-op

Though I have only limited experience I know of no co-op where people will monetarily invest more or less than others. All of the co-ops I know have the same membership dues for everyone. Everyone pays the same and everyone has the same vote.

There is also a basic principle in capitalism that the greatest profit results from fulfilling the most urgent needs. Its corollary is that, in general, those with the greatest accumulation of past profits (i.e. those with the most to invest) tend to make the most efficient decisions. Forcing an equal share in the decisions when the members have manifestly unequal decision-making abilities is hardly efficient.

As I state above there is no unequal decision making abilities in a co-op, now some may be more effective in persuading others but that's true in C and S corporations as well. Ineffective decision making also is found in these corporations. Chrysler had to be bailed out by the governmen tin the 1980s because of bad decision making, and corporations seek banruptcy for protection for the sane reason. Also another principle in capitalism is a voluntary exchange, which is exactly what a co-op is all about. Notice how "coop" is part of "cooperation" co-op members voluntarily agree to cooperate.

Oh, I want to touch on one other thing that's related, the Corporation. Originally a corporation was granted a charter with the requirement that it benefited and improved society, the public good, or to serve a public purpose in some way. Amount the first corporations chartered was the Dutch East India Company and the Honourable East India Company in 1602 and 1600 respectively. They were chartered because they served the purpose of improving society by encouraging international trade. Both of these corporations were shipping companies and where prior to corporat

They've perverted it way beyond the original US design and intent. "Profits" were only one part, it wasn't the whole enchilada. In fact, we fought the revolution to not only get away from the "royals" and their edicts, but to get out from under the thumb of colonizing/exploitative corporations.

  In the beginning, corporations had to fulfill some public good, they were highly regulated, they couldn't own stock in each other, their charters could be revoked if they screwed up a lot easier, there were a lot more restrictions on them influencing legislation and elections, and etc.

  What we have now is people just blindly parrot the "greed is good and 'it's de law'" mantra. Nuts. I say we go back to the original idea and "incorporate" the civic duty and being responsible (and *loyal* to their own nation and peoples first for that matter) bits back into the mixture, and do it before it is too late. We have transnationals now that are more powerful than governments, including huge well armed mercenary army "corporations". How about that latest IBM set of patents, patenting how to screw over the US worker? That's crazy. Governments exist for all the peoples inside that governing body, not just the top wealthiest 1%, or that is the theory anyway. I say it's a good idea to go back to that model.

Here is a short overview history of US corporations,and here's another take on it. Google has a lot of choices there, chose those two at random from the top of the list.

Yes, we do that, but only if it serves our interests. The only way that would work is if the companies payed a living wage, which by and large they do not.

The US HAD TO invade Iraq for financial reasons. The US dollar is no longer backed by any resource. The United States is a net importer and doesn't have enough natural resources to back up the number of US dollars in circulation. The only thing propping up the dollar is the fact that oil is traded worldwide in USD. (If you want to buy oil, you must first buy US dollars.) The word is that Saddam was preparing to trade oil in Euros. If the United States allowed that to happen, the US dollar would collapse and inflation would soar out of control. Of course, the average American wouldn't understand a bit of this, so it's much easier to cook up some WMDs or other abstract threat.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Iraq/Iraq_dollar _vs_euro.html

The "abuses" did have a purpose, a lofty one at that.

So the means justify the means? Like the massacre of 200,000 East Timorese, one third of the population of East Timor? While the US didn't invade East Timor the US government under Pres Ford and Henry Kissinger encouraged and supported Indonesia's invasion of East Timor. They even supplied arms to Indonesia despite a congressional ban.

And the problems with doing a) and b) is that a primary role of corporations is to externalize their costs.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Rachels/The_Corp oration.html

So you have two groups of people (citizens and government employees) who sorta, kinda want to tax fairly and one group of people whose entire purpose for existing is to push those costs on to the other two. Who is going to win in this struggle?

Our problem with b) is that if you want a swimming pool and I do not. And I want a recycling program and you do not, we both end up with a swimming pool and a recycling program. Extend that to 300 million individuals and you end up with all sorts of wacky stuff. I think you would get a better result if you fixed the tax rate (which would require a constitutional amendment) and then let everyone scrabble over that fixed amount.

And then we have the problem of words.
If we say we tax activity "A", then people doing that activity find a way to change it just a little and then call it activity "A1". That applies in this case. Likewise, if we had a constitutional amendment limiting taxes, they would define a new word (usage fees, service fees.. who knows) instead of the word "tax" to get around the amendment.

You have people working 8 hour shifts to make a product that they sell for real money to consumers. But because it is phrased as "playing a game", they have managed to get away untaxed.

Likewise the gambling issue in S2 where lindens could be won gambling and then sold for real cash.

And let's turn it around... Say I start mowing lawns for 100,000 platinum in EQ? That's $21 value for a lawn mowing but it's just "EQ Plat", not "real" money. It takes me about 120 hours to earn 100,000 platinum so it's a very good deal for me, removes taxable liability.

The more virtual worlds we have- and the more time people send in them- the bigger this issue becomes.

I don't go to a real movie, out to eat, or to a real ball game- instead I spend 30 hours in a virtual world that week. Provided food, a place to live, and a good computer/network connection I could probably go 10 to 15 years doing almost nothing as far as the real world is concerned.

It's a fascinating issue.

Bolivia. And yes, the government claimed the rain water was for all people and did prohibit collection for personal use. All this relevant because it shows exactly the same kind of business model the distributors of entertainment and information wish to maintain. However, in the case of entertainment, it is far better to simply ignore them and keep your money, as opposed to starting a riot and getting people killed.

As opposed to billions of people starving, dying and otherwise suffering great misery from wars about things OTHER than energy?

About Cambodja, either you are lying, or you need to study more ... North Vietnam and China supported Pol Pot, not the US, sir.

Actually, you're the one full of bullshit here. The US not only suspected that their bombing of Cambodia would push Pol Pot to the top, but they actually expressed a desire for this in intelligence documents. The UN was falling over itself to accommodate him. Even decades later, they still hold a soft spot for the Khmer Rouge, so that activists such as John Pilger can say:

I watched Khmer Rouge officials welcomed back to Phnom Penh by U.N. officials who went to astonishing lengths not to offend them. Khieu Samphan, Pol Pot's henchman who once said that the only mistake the Khmer Rouge had made was not killing enough people, took the salute of U.S. and other U.N. troops as a guest of honor on United Nations Day in Phnom Penh.

It's true that at certain points, the North Vietnamese also supported Pol Pot. But that in no way means that the US didn't support him. They protected him politically ( the legacy of which we see in the above quote ), and also gave him weapons:
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/US _PolPot.html
http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/hermansept97.htm
http://www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/pol/pol potmontclarion0498.html

This is certainly no secret ...

After Vietnam fell, all of Indochina fell together to communism. Living standards dropped as usual, millions were executed.

Well, firstly, Indochina didn't fall to communism. Parts of it fell to state capitalism. And yes, under this system, living standards drop 'as usual'. The state is far better at oppressing workers than individual capitalists.

And today, southeast asian states who didn' become communist have orders of magnitude better living standards than those who choose the route to communism.

Well, as I already pointed out, they didn't turn to communism, but state capitalism. If they looked like they were evolving to communism, they would get the US up their arse as fast as Russia did in 1918, or Vietnam did many years later.

Funny thing is that the anti-protesters at that time, always failed to condemn the soviet and chinese support of the north Vietnamese,

That's because the biggest villain was the US. Sure, there were lesser villains, but you have to concentrate on the biggest one, to ease the suffering of the innocent people who were under attack from both the US, and their own governments. But the US was always leading the way in attacks on innocent people, so that's what people rallied around.

just like you today pretend that IRAN is not behind the terrorist attacks in Iraq.

Don't be fucking absurd! It was the US who launched the terrorist attacks on Iraq, NOT Iran. Iran has always SUPPORTED Iraq in this war.

but the Iraq people could be a lot better, and the US troops could have been gone home for a long time, if it weren't for the direct participation of Iran and Siria national in the insurgency

What Iran and others do have nothing to do with the length of the occupation, just as they had nothing to do with the invasion. The US and their coalition of the killing intend to stay in Iraq as long as politically and economically possible - no shorter. This was always their plan, and they are executing it perfectly.

The massive participation of Iraqis on the last election show that they are relieved of bei

I don't know how you quantified "better", but all studies with actual data and metrics suggest exactly the opposite: in the US we pay the most and receive the least.

One quote I found with a 30s Google search:

"By all the usual measures of health-life expectancy, infant mortality, childhood immunization rate- we do worse than most Western countries. The only plausible explanation is how health care is financed and delivered. The American health care system is staggeringly wasteful and inflationary. The United States is unique in treating health care as a market commodity distributed according to the ability to pay instead of as a social good distributed according to medical need."

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Health/Health_wa tch.html

That site includes links to other articles, etc.

Let's assume the technical problems of switchgrass-to-ethanol are solved, and we can actually get the 10,000 litres/ha yield (which is actually a net yield of something more like 7,500 if you take into account EROI). The USA uses roughly 20 million barrels of oil a day - that's 3,200 million litres per day (just for simplicity, we'll assume a litre of ethanol is equivalent to a litre of crude). So you need 320,000 hectares - 800,000 acres - just for one day's crude demand. To produce a year's demand, you'd need 292 million acres of switchgrass. That is a equivalent to a square 675 miles to a side, and nearly four times the area on which corn is currently grown.

With regards to stream-bed hydro, my point is simply that the energy extracted from it - worldwide - will be lost in the noise. It is such an irrelevancy to global energy demand as to not be worth more than a moment's consideration for anybody other than the vanishingly small number of people who can benefit from it.

While there may be plenty of individual environmentalists who are comfortable with nuclear power (indeed, I would count myself as such a person), every single one of the major environmental organizations have opposition to nuclear power as a policy and as an active campaign. As a semi-random sample, we have:

• Greenpeace
• The Sierra Club
• World Wide Fund For Nature
• The Green Party of the USA - indeed, pretty much every party thus titled around the world.
• To give an international perspective for you, in Australia, the premier environmental NGO is the Australian Conservation Foundation, who are strongly opposed

Maybe there are internal debates about the topic currently going on in these organizations, but if so it hasn't resulted in any actual changes in policy yet.

Yeah, but the alternative is worse. Your worryingly powerful "Christian" right wants to slash taxes and limit federal power as a means of largely relegating the governments' role to military matters, while they take over everything else. Read this and bear it in mind next time you see them spouting their coded bullshit.

Except that the only artists who even stand a chance of getting a cut of the 'pirate tax' are those that have signed with major studios. This is just another way for the big, established corps to raise the barrier to entry for any upstarts. Corporate socialism at its finest.

No really... "getting bad here" is nothing like "getting better" there.
I completely agree it is getting worse here. Vote out the republicans- vote for 3rd party where it will make a difference.
Republicans have somehow wed religion to oppression and corporatism using abortion and gay rights to allow torture (of foreign nationals) and a gross expansion of government power.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Human_Rights/Sha nghai_Surprise.html

The government's all-out war on Falun Gong, a spiritual sect dedicated to meditation and breathing exercises, has been well publicized. But rarely mentioned is the fact that Beijing's security services have routinely tortured and murdered Falun Gong adherents. The Chinese authorities reportedly have locked hundreds of Falun Gong supporters in psychiatric hospitals and force-fed them drugs; imprisoned thousands more in the world's largest system of labor camps; and quietly executed several Falun Gong practitioners. ///
Details of Chinese executions are shocking: According to Wang Guoqi, a pathologist who formerly worked for a Chinese army hospital, doctors frequently harvest the organs of executed prisoners, none of whom consented to organ donation. He tells of a doctor removing a kidney from a still-breathing prisoner who had survived the initial gunshots. After the organ was removed, the condemned man was left to die. ///
"There are hundreds of little brush fires burning," warns David Zweig, an expert on rural China at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. "Will they become a blaze?"

Are you saying that the U.S. has forced abortions, political executions (with the executee's family being billed for the fucking bullet), wholesale cultural genocide (Do you know the chinese are hauling ethnic chinese by the trainload into tibet to overrun the place? Look up "tibetan spaniel" sometime to see how the fucking chinese have clubbed to death the entire population of tibet's beautiful native dogs), wholesale censorship of the press and Internet, massive "reeducation" (read: concentration) camps

support for mass-murderer dictators (Pol Pot, "Our Dear Leader", etc.).

If you travel a lot, it becomes clear that different parts of the world have news broadcasts with a different slant.

Manufacturing Consent

The next plane that needs to go is that d*** A-10 warthog, spewing nuclear garbage all over the place. Of all the absolutly stupid things to do, throwing depleted uranium radioactive garbage around as a weapon. There are a s**tload of retards in the military (as far as I'm concerned, the only thing lower than being in prison is whoring yourself out to the military... that's why judges use to give criminals that option)... but it had to take one serious SOB with no morals at all to approve this kind of monster:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-10_Thunderbolt_II

There are so many human rights violations around this plane its not funny. A lot of people are breathing in the crap from this flying death dealer and I dare say kids for a long time to come will be digging out these DEPLETED URANIUM bullets from the sand and carrying them around playing with them. Carrying around a piece of nuclear radioactive waste thinking its a toy.

The military is putting out a massive under the radar covert SPIN effort to claim DU has negligible toxic effects at all but its all a bunch of bs. Anyone with half a brain knows that junk coming out of a nuclear reactor is going to be radioactive as hell and you shouldn't make some thing like a bullet out of it that is going to be lost and then found later by someone who has no idea what it is.

Moral irresponsibility. And these SOBs want to judge the world and brand it with their corrupted and denigrated brand of freedom.

The real freedom the world and every individual wants is to be left alone by the US and its Pax Americana imperial campaign of lies and corruption.

http://thirdworldtraveler.com/Book_Excerpts/Books_ by_Subject.html

You must be blissfully unaware of the past 5-6 years of administration appointees. I almost envy you. Nearly ALL appointees over any sort of regulatory watchdog, scientific fact-finding, or pork-laden government spending bureau of the government has been an industry lobbyist of some sort who is assured to make sure that said industry (which donates lots of money to the Republicans) will make out like a bandit (literally) on the taxpayer's dime or taint and all evidence that gets in the way of said industry's profits.

Read more here:
Bush Has Appointed Over 100 Lobbyists as 'Regulators'
WhiteHouseForSale.org | Contributors and Paybacks Articles
Evidence that this has been a pattern of behavior as far back as when he was governor.
Some info on two of the officials reviewing the Dubai Ports World deal
An even longer list of crony appointees

The Bush administration is one of the more shameful examples of cronyism in modern US history. The term "conflict of interest" doesn't begin to cover it. Then, when you can't find a person with experience as an industry shill, you can always go to political advocates with no experience in the field (but solid Bush support):

Michael Brown's two political appointees deputees in FEMA
A petition for Bush to make political appointments with a list of 6 good examples
The Hertiage Foundation even endorsed making political appointees over experienced civil servants in 2001! ...No really, 7 ridiculous arguments straight from the horse's mouth! (How's FEMA workin' out there, HF?)
Why, just look how many Heritage Foundation flacks are now in the administration.

Any wonder why the DHS hasn't done hardly anything useful, why FEMA had someone with no emergency relief experience installed as it's head, why scientists are abandoning NASA, the EPA, the CDC, etc. in droves, and why hundreds of IRS agents that audit capital gains and estate taxes have been downsized? It's government with the wheels taken off -- oriented explicitly to do nothing but enrich special interests by people who have publicly stated that that's all they believe the government exists to do in the first place.

What, you didn't think they meant that they'd try to STOP it when they said that, did you? Yeah, I was fooled too, but not anymore. It's time we get people back in power who believe that the government is meant to serve the people. People who believe that it's part of the solution and not part of the problem. Otherwise, as we've seen, the temptation to just exploit "the problem" is just too much.

A lot of us artists don't agree with the copyright laws at all. In fact, a lot of us don't agree with the legal goon system, period. It disgusts me at how easily geeks want and search for ways to cave in against the massive police state instead of fight it with every core inch of their being.

Geeks for one thing are better educated that the proletariat, they have seen the images of depleted uranium babies on the net, of the lies by politians, of the miltary gun videos brought back from the war of people in gunships shooting unarmed civilians on the ground and laughing about it. The government is a criminal despot, the military is its weapon in global domination, and the so called fraudulent justice system is its way of furthering its control over conquered territories on the fine grain level of individuals and people. There is nothing just about the justice system. Get that through your mind from the get go.

Sure they go after criminals, and are quite happy to, it gives them a moral leg to stand on for their power game. They go after innocent people to, and enemies of the state. Mainly they want to justify reserving all the power for themselves and none for you. Theft is illegal for the private citizen, but legal for the governement (eminent domain). Slavery is illegal for the private citizen, but millions of prisoners work every day in prison as slaves without pay and under durress. Murder is illegal for the private citizen, yet the CIA School of Americas carry out assisination covertly and untold amounts of people are euphamistically neutralized as "enemy combatants". Child molestation is illegal, and yet the military shoots thousands of tons of "depleted uranium" nuclear waste (depleted being a euphamism) around indiscriminatly, causing the grossest and most vile of genetic mutations in children for thousands of years to come.

For one thing, who here can say they have ever been asked to vote on one single law, period. Ever? No not ever. Who here can say they have ever had much of a choice in their so called representative government. I'm sorry, but having an election every 4 years does not cut it, nor does reducing your choice of canidates down to two, the least possible number and still be able to call it a choice (yeah, right, I don' think so, and both of them are scumbag long time political animals from what I can tell).

I don't know about the rest of you but forget it, I'm not abiding by any laws that I had absolutely no say so whatsoever in creating.

Laws are a criminal way to control people via fear, internalize control over you, and project power.

If you don't want your media in the public domain, never release it off your harddrive. Period. Once you do, data wants to be free, to travel, to be replicated a immutably in carbon copies a thousand times... that is its strength.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/wiki.phtml?title=Double speak

http://www.anarchistblackcross.org/pdf/abciar.pdf

http://thirdworldtraveler.com/Book_Excerpts/Book_E xcerpts.html

http://www.joshwolf.net/blog/

http://blip.tv/file/get/Insurgent-1YearAgo133.mov

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfetZYt7BuU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YxFQhTUmek

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=depleted+ uranium+babies&btnG=Search

Its better that we see these videos now, than 30 years from now when its too late. Heck yes there will be a backlash.

I don't know about you, but those napalm bombs being dropped on civilian houses in Vietnam ARE civilian houses... heck, that countryside and houses look just like rural Georgia to me...

http://websrvr20.audiovideoweb.com/avwebdswebsrvr2 143/news_video/fallujah_ING512K.mov

From ThirdWorldTraveler.com
http://thirdworldtraveler.com/Book_Excerpts/Book_E xcerpts.html

The US military has no business in IRAQ. None whatsoever. None in Afganistan. The military's purpose is to defend the country, not wage wars overseas in far away places that have absolutely nothing to do with the defense of this country. I'm sorry, but most Americans DO NOT support the military. Just look at all those cars out there on the road WITHOUT ribbons on them and WITHOUT American flags.

No, I don't need you to protect me. I don't need the government to protect me and I did not ask the government to protect me. I can protect myself. In fact, when you get down to it, the only person that is going to protect you is you yourself (and its going to be from your own government, not a foreign power, that you need protection. Who do you turn to then?)

I seem to remember taking anyone's personal property (phones, or otherwise) is called THEFT. And that supercedes and "policy" anyone may have about anything.

----

This message sent from a sub $100 ANARCHY PC (486/linux/opera 5.1). I get them for free from schools (sweet irony), recycle them, install an old (486 runnable) version of linux on their 640mb harddrives and NIC, and set the default webpages to either polical information pages or wikipedia (wikipedia rocks). Oh yeah, and spray on glue a photocopy of a huge ANARCHY SIGN on the side of the case. THe ANARCHY PC. Give them back to the kids, who deserve it. After all, they've all had a slander game run on them, told they were stupid and needed to be "educated", and after that their freedoms for the next 12 years were taken under that bullshit guise.

Information, of any sort, is power. Power to resist. Power to fight the police state back.

Sample URL I default set browsers to:

http://thirdworldtraveler.com/Book_Excerpts/Book_E xcerpts.html

Remember, education is made MANDATORY in this country, to feed them a diet of pablum about democracy and that they live in a land of consent, when really its all a sham, they never were given the opportunity to vote on even a single law, and yet they are forced to live in such a state. If you are forced to go somewhere, and then forced to abid by some policy, and then forced to have your posessions removed from you... well...

I would never sent my kids to school. They don't teach you to think critically for yourself. They teach you to feedback "right" or "wrong" answers.

I encourage everyone to setup homebased computer recycling projects and build ANARCHY PCs and give them to teenagers or anyone that has no computer at all.

ANARCHY does not equal CHAOS. ANARCHY equals freedom. The freedom to be left alone. To pursue your own destiny without interference.

I would say the quote is most likely not attributed to Abraham Lincoln; it would have to have been said sometime after the 1886 California court ruling in the case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad that made corporations legally equal to individuals.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Corporations/Kno wEnemy_ITT.html/

That it was said so long ago and is more true now, though, should give one pause.. that someone saw it coming so long ago.

U.S. weapons contractors have .. cashed in by pursuing a few simple strategies:

1) exaggerating the threats faced by the United States;

2) marketing their weapons systems as the answer to national security problems ..

3) exploiting well-cultivated relationships with Pentagon officials ..

Profits of War Feb 2004

Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northop Grumman

How many companies are making billions off of this war?

You live in a capatilistic society. Somebody is always making "billions" off of something.

How many of them have direct relations and interests with members of the Bush cabinet or republican leadership?

Probably most of them, truth be told. But if you look, you'll probably see that just as many of them have ties to the Democrats. But that has nothing to do with anything.
Betchel, for example, is one of the biggest contruction/consulting companies in the world. I don't know about their specific involvement in Iraq, but I'm willing to bet they have a sizeable chunk of the business over there. And you can bet that they massauge their contacts with the Democrats just as much as they do with the Republicans. It's good business for them to do so. The same goes for any other company ......... so having "direct relations" with the Republican leadership means nothing - they all do, and always will.

They won't rebuild the local brick factories, but instead ship in american made bricks! Almost all of the reconstruction contracts are going to American companies.

So who would you like to see the work go to? The French? Germans? Any other country that has done nothing but look down their nose at what you were doing, but still want some of the "rewards"?

They even worked to bypass international law specifically designed to prevent the pillaging of other countries by forcing them to sign long-term contracts with the companies of the invading state

Who's pillaging what? The Americans are putting a shitload more INTO Iraq now then they're taking out. Any cursory perusal of a newspaper or TV broadcast, and the constant complaints about the cost of the war, will tell you that.

I won't even attempt to argue against the fact that Saddam was a bad person, who should not have been in power. But when you consider how many other leaders in the world there are that are similarly evil, why would we choose this one to destroy? What reasons did we have for invading Iraq instead of, say, North Korea? Or Iran? Or possibly intervening in Rwanda?

You do what you can. The US could invade Iraq. And it did. It would not be as easy, or even necessarily possible, to invade North Korea. Iran I think is becomming possible now. But whether or not I think that would be justified is someting else
Rawanda is a whole other matter. General Romeo Dallaire http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Heroes/Gen_Romeo _Dallaire.html pleaded with the UN for troups on the ground in Rawanda - his request was denied. He asked for the freedom to do what was required with the troops that he DID have - and again, was denied. The result was genocide. I think the world - the UN, the US, everybody else - dropped the ball on that one and should ALL be ashamed of themselves for sitting idly by and watching a genocide that was so easilly preventable it's not funny.

The Rawanda example also, in a backhand sort of way, just illustrates my point about the whole Iraq thing ...... if the US (or anybody else that had the capability - the requirement was so small that pretty well any western industrialised nation could have done it) had put troops on the ground without UN sanction to prevent the genocide, I think they would have been generally applauded. But when they essentially do the same thing in Iraq, it's evil, bad, and monsterous. The only difference that I can see if that Rawanda didn't hae oil, and Iraq does - therefore, it's a plot to get Iraqi oil.

Don't get me wrong, removing Saddam is a good thing. But that doesn't mean there weren't a lot of other, less happy reasons for invading.

I agree with you there. But as I said when this thread started, It's never a bad idea to do the right thing, ev

From this A: some stats on weapons sales to our "friends" including the UAE: * $2 billion of AMRAAMs, ammunition and bombs to complement a previous $6-8 billion F- 16 fighter jet sale to the United Arab Emirates. The U.A.E. has also demanded the computer coding for the F- 1 6s which would enable it to modify or replicate the jet's intelligence. If the U.A.E. gets the source code, other buyers will be sure to want it too.

what's sad is that I can't find a list from OUR government.

There is a phenomenon called, "elite consensuses ", of which the media suffers from. Here is the article: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Media_control_pr opaganda/Media_Control.htm l

I'll bite, the government ought not to have any secrets. All these secret spying missions like interfering with other governments only lead to blowback. For a list of countries where the U.S. has intervened since WWII see:

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/US_Interven tions_WBlumZ.html

This is "why they hate us," that and our unquestioning support for Israel and our lust for their oil. Everything else is government propaganda. So yes if there were no secrets, and we were a small republic like the founders intended we would live in a much more peaceful world. That's something Noam Chomsky and Pat Buchanan can agree on and if the rest of the American public would wake up to we would all be better off

There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part, you can't even tacitly take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears, and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus. And you've got to make it stop.

Microsoft enjoyed more than $12 billion in total tax breaks over the past five years. In fact, Microsoft actually paid no tax at all in 1999, despite $12.3 billion in reported U.S. profits. Microsoft's tax rate for the past two years was only 1.8 percent on $21.9 billion in pretax U.S. profits.

General Electric, America's most profitable corporation, reported $50.8 billion in U.S. profits over the past five years, but paid only 11.5 percent of that in federal income taxes. That low tax rate reflected almost $12 billion in corporate tax welfare for GE.

IBM reported $5.7 billion in U.S. profits in 2000, but paid only 3.4 percent of that in federal income taxes. In 1997, IBM reported $3.1 billion in U.S. profits, and instead of paying taxes, got an outright tax rebate. Over the past five years, IBM enjoyed a total of $4.7 billion in corporate tax welfare.

In the US, corporate taxes (state + federal) are about 40%! 40%!
Maybe you meant 4%, not 40%?

even more...
If big corporations actually paid 35 percent of their U.S. profits in federal income taxes, as the tax code ostensibly requires, corporate income taxes this year would total at least $308 billion. But actual corporate-tax payments this year are expected to be only $136 billion. In other words, this year (and next), for the first time since the early 1980S, corporate-tax loopholes will actually cost the U.S. Treasury more than the amount companies pay in income taxes.

Check out for more examples.

How about this?

The more you learn!

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Nader/CutCorpWel fare_Nader.html

        Hijacking local democracy

        Perhaps nothing illustrates the ruthlessness and shameless power plays of the corporate welfare kings than their extortionate demands for state and local subsidies on threat of picking up and moving elsewhere.

So far it sounds like a professional sports team/franchise.

...an especially-made-for-Allen Washington state referendum to approve $300 million in public subsidies to build a football stadium for his Seattle Seahawks.

      Oh, it IS...

      I don't condone or defend this action (the private leveraging of public funds) in any way, but this (threatening to leave, "we need better facilities so The Public can better enjoy Major League Sports, it'll make more jobs," bla bla bla) is Standard Operating Procedure for most any major sports team in any major city to get a better stadium and such.

Hijacking local democracy

Perhaps nothing illustrates the ruthlessness and shameless power plays of the corporate welfare kings than their extortionate demands for state and local subsidies on threat of picking up and moving elsewhere.

And no case illustrates the hijacking of democratic procedures more clearly than billionaire Paul Allen's buying of an especially-made-for-Allen Washington state referendum to approve $300 million in public subsidies to build a football stadium for his Seattle Seahawks. Mega-billionaire Allen, co-founder of Microsoft with Bill Gates and one of the richest men in the world, bought the referendum both literally and figuratively.

In a stunningly brazen maneuver, he paid the state of Washington for the costs of running the special referendum election in June 1997. Although later challenged as a violation of the state's constitution, the state Supreme Court upheld the private financing of the election. But even the Supreme Court majority which upheld the constitutionality of the election purchase blanched at its political ramifications. "Troubling questions may arise, such as whether any wealthy entity could persuade the legislature to place a measure on the ballot provided the costs of the election were paid," wrote Justice Barbara Madsen for the majority.

Having paid for the issue to get on the ballot, Allen then waged a $6.3 million campaign-the most expensive in Washington state history-to convince voters to support the $300 million public subsidy to the stadium. He devoted $2.3 million to radio and TV ads. In total, Allen outspent opponents of the referendum by a 42-to-1 margin.

Allen's investment proved just enough: Washington voters, initially opposed by overwhelming numbers to the idea of public funding for the stadium, approved the referendum with a 51 percent majority.

All sorts of abuses are discovered, perpetrated by our governments, years after the event when people core to the event have grown old, died, and the event itself sort-of fades from relevance.

Sometimes it leaks out early.

People say, "Oh, do you have a conspiracy theory, do you think people really gather together in a room and meet each other?" Certainly they meet all the time. They meet at the Bohemian Grove and the Bohemian Club in San Francisco. They meet at the Knickerbocker Club in New York. They meet at the White House. They meet at the Council on Foreign Relations. They meet at the Trilateral Commission and elsewhere. They're constantly meeting and confabulating, and selecting the right people for the right positions, the big policy-making positions in government. They're constantly setting up policies, what to do and how to do it and how this best protects the powers-that-be and the money-that-is. They don't rule entirely the way they would like to. If they ruled entirely as they'd like to, they would have wiped out social security twenty years ago. They still have to deal with the popular vote to some degree and these are precious democratic rights.

Interested in reading about blowback? There is a book by that title: Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire.

Notes: Excerpts from the book.

There are many books about blowback. That is one of the better ones. There is so much material that no one book even comes close to covering all of it.

Osama bin Laden said he was motivated to strike back at the U.S. when he watched the U.S. government's bombing of Beirut, Lebanon. I didn't even know the U.S. Navy was involved in war in Beirut until some news story reported bin Laden's complaint.

I'm against all violence. Those Americans who believe in violence, however, must realize that people who are attacked may decide to be violent in return.

Thirty years ago, if the U.S. government had prepared for peace as vigorously as it prepared for war, the wars would not have happened, I think.

IG Farben
Ford
US Arms Sales to Iraq
Oil Companies in Nigeria
US/UK Subversion of Democratic Iran for Oil Companies

I don't recall anyone asking for the public's opinion on these business practices.

Only in the US.

The rest of the world had seen your ill-fated War on Drugs, your absurdly high prison population, your tendency to sentence men to death even though many of them are innocent, your habit of carrying out dangerous experiments on unsuspecting citizens , your habit of supporting dictatorships in other countries, ...

The US has not shone so brightly as it likes to believe for many years. That you could not see your current situation coming doesn't mean the rest of the world had intentionally blinded itself as well.

Objectivity is hard to come by, but if you keep a critical mind and check your own facts you can find plenty of information on the subject. A lot of it is filled with very personal opinions, but again, when facts are cited you can follow up on them and the picture will start to emerge.

Frankly, it's not really that hard to figure out. Simply look where US forces have been deployed. Look into the surrounding politics of the situation.

For starters I'd say look into the events surrounding the Vietnam war. This was the first war that really brought the insanity of US foreign policy to the public at large. There is plenty of information on it.

Look up the events surounding the invasion of Granada & Panama. Look into the details of the Iran/Contra scandal, especially the Iran hostage crisis and Regan staff negotiations with the hostage takers.

South America is particularly furtile ground for understanding the corporate greed and brutality of US foreign policy.

Look into the details surrounding both invasions of Iraq. Look into the US/Iraqi politics pre invasion.

In short, there is not much I can do to make checking the facts easier for you. It's really not that hard. You just need to want to do it.

One of the easiest things to do is to stop reading American media and switch to almost any other media source. You will find much more objective reporting at the very least.

Finally, a book that is fairly well cited you might want to read is "Killing Hope: U.S. Military Interventions Since World War II" by William Blum (http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/William_Bl um.html).

Kind Regards

Support ethnic cleansing in Palestine and help censor the American press!
If you are at an American University or further education college we are currently recruiting active censorship drones to spy on fellow students, lecturers and guest speakers on behalf of the Israeli government.

We can actively stifle democratic thought and criticism of Israeli fascist oppression.
-But only with your help!

Free housing.
In six short weeks we can show you how to build a rogue state by demolishing existing homes in Palestine and building new houses on top!

We are currently looking for experienced bulldozer drivers with a large western bank balance to emigrate to the expansionist state of Israel and call it home.

Simply choose a plot of land and start building! Its easy peesy!!

If your chosen plot is currently occupied by a Palestinian family, dont worry
-simply build over them!

Its as easy peesy as eeny meeny miney mo!


We can protect your future residential developments on occupied land with fully experienced snipers in full body armour and appropriately armed Apache helicopters kindly donated by the American public.

If you are an American citizen with a view to emigrating to warmer climes and a view of the Mediterranean, you may also be eligible for a fraction of the 3,000,000,000 (yes thats 3 Billion!) dollars donated every year by American tax payers to help support our broken-ass state.
Due to our endless appetite for weapons of mass destruction our economy is unsustainable and we require your contribution and support. WMDs don't come cheap you know. It costs a fortune to terrorise a whole region.
Our military personnel can barely afford to maintain our arsenal of 200 nuclear weapons, spy satellites and attack submarines.

Give a man a gun and he can kill a Palestinian child. Give him a helicopter and he can kill them all.

Part-time vacancies available
We are currently in construction of the world record breaking apartheid wall surrounding the largest ethic ghetto since Krakow.
The Israeli military is hiring expatriates preferably with a military background to monitor the prisoners and maintain watchtowers and sniper nests. If you are blinded by a covetousness of other peoples land, but yet have a keen eye with a sniper scope you would be the ideal candidate for our border watchtower guard division.

We need your help. Sponsor an Israeli colonizer.
Do it today.

P.s.
if anybody criticises you, just point a finger an call them anti-Semite.
It worked for the Liberty.

Better background on Singlaub (though the facts about him in that weird page are accurate). Singlaub has made a career out of fumbling "anticommunism" into boondoggles, while lining his pockets and mouthing excuses. He's not trustworthy to protect the US, or to explain why he isn't.

In many cases, [police]

turned a valuable crime-fighting tool into a personal search engine for home addresses, for driving records and for criminal files of love interests, colleagues, bosses or rivals.
. . . .
Part-time Memphis police officer Scott Woods.... [used the database] to find out personal information about a woman he met on the Internet....
. . . .
Woods later told the woman he had followed her home the night before, according to police records. He called her by her middle name, which she had not told him. He described her height and weight. And he went on to call her at home and work up to three times a day, according to police and sheriff's records.

But there are laws in place to prevent these abuses.

[Orange County, Florida, Sheriff Kevin] Beary was so upset by [a critical Letter to the Editor] that he had his staff look up [the letter writer's] address using driver's license records and fired off a letter to her.

"I never in any way sent that letter to you with the intent of intimidating you. Please know that I am confident I was within the purview of the Florida Public Records Law when I obtained your mailing address. I sincerely regret the fact that my letter upset you," Beary wrote.

Violators of the driver's privacy act can be sued in U.S. District Court for damages of at least $2,500, punitive damages, attorney's fees and all other relief the court determines to be appropriate.

But sheriff's officials said that it was legal to look up Gawronski's address on the driver's database. Sheriff's spokesman Jim Solomons said responding to a resident's concern is well within Beary's official duties.

Ok, so maybe those laws have loopholes. But all he did was send her an intimidating letter. Cops would never use databases to do worse.

Prosecutor's Office Uses Database to Smear Prosecutor's Political Opponent,
Police Lieutenant Charged With Abusing Database to Influence Elections
Cop Uses Database to Find Woman's Unlisted Phone Number -- Gives It to Woman's Ex

A few bad apples. The databases wouldn't be used to frame political opponents.

[A U.S. Federal Court jury]

concluded that the FBI and the Police had framed the two activists in an effort to stifle Earth First! and stop participation in 'Redwood Summer', a planned campaign of non-violent direct action against the destruction of old-growth forest.

But we all know that those Earth Firsters are, essentially, terrorists. Why should terrorists be protected by laws? The FBI doesn't frame peaceful protesters!

More ominously,

the FBI suggested that "legal" efforts to deal with [Martin Luther] King [Jr.] might not be enough. "It may be unrealistic," the memorandum went on, to limit ourselves as we have been doing to legalistic proofs or definitely conclusive evidence that would stand up in testimony in court or before Congressional Committees...
. . . .
[FBI officials] agreed to use "all available investigative techniques" to develop information for use "to discredit" King. Proposals discussed included using ministers, "disgruntled" acquaintances, "aggress

In many cases, [police]

turned a valuable crime-fighting tool into a personal search engine for home addresses, for driving records and for criminal files of love interests, colleagues, bosses or rivals.
. . . .
Part-time Memphis police officer Scott Woods.... [used the database] to find out personal information about a woman he met on the Internet....
. . . .
Woods later told the woman he had followed her home the night before, according to police records. He called her by her middle name, which she had not told him. He described her height and weight. And he went on to call her at home and work up to three times a day, according to police and sheriff's records.

But there are laws in place to prevent these abuses.

[Orange County, Florida, Sheriff Kevin] Beary was so upset by [a critical Letter to the Editor] that he had his staff look up [the letter writer's] address using driver's license records and fired off a letter to her.

"I never in any way sent that letter to you with the intent of intimidating you. Please know that I am confident I was within the purview of the Florida Public Records Law when I obtained your mailing address. I sincerely regret the fact that my letter upset you," Beary wrote.

Violators of the driver's privacy act can be sued in U.S. District Court for damages of at least $2,500, punitive damages, attorney's fees and all other relief the court determines to be appropriate.

But sheriff's officials said that it was legal to look up Gawronski's address on the driver's database. Sheriff's spokesman Jim Solomons said responding to a resident's concern is well within Beary's official duties.

Ok, so maybe those laws have loopholes. But all he did was send her an intimidating letter. Cops would never use databases to do worse.

Prosecutor's Office Uses Database to Smear Prosecutor's Political Opponent,
Police Lieutenant Charged With Abusing Database to Influence Elections
Cop Uses Database to Find Woman's Unlisted Phone Number -- Gives It to Woman's Ex

A few bad apples. The databases wouldn't be used to frame political opponents.

[A U.S. Federal Court jury]

concluded that the FBI and the Police had framed the two activists in an effort to stifle Earth First! and stop participation in 'Redwood Summer', a planned campaign of non-violent direct action against the destruction of old-growth forest.

But we all know that those Earth Firsters are, essentially, terrorists. Why should terrorists be protected by laws? The FBI doesn't frame peaceful protesters!

More ominously,

the FBI suggested that "legal" efforts to deal with [Martin Luther] King [Jr.] might not be enough. "It may be unrealistic," the memorandum went on, to limit ourselves as we have been doing to legalistic proofs or definitely conclusive evidence that would stand up in testimony in court or before Congressional Committees...
. . . .
[FBI officials] agreed to use "all available investigative techniques" to develop information for use "to discredit" King. Proposals discussed included using ministers, "disgruntled" acquaintances, "aggress

"Personally, I don't have a problem with the security thing. It's just for the police, and I personally don't have anything to hide from them."

Presumably you're not a pretty girl, then. Thanks to Safety Cap (253500) for this story of a on-duty cop copying nudie pics for his off-duty enjoyment.

But that's only one cop. Click for the Top 10 List of Police Database Abuses.

It includes such charming cop activities as "Prosecutor's Office Uses Database to Smear Prosecutor's Political Opponent", "Police Lieutenant Charged With Abusing Database to Influence Elections", and "Cop Uses Database to Find Woman's Unlisted Phone Number -- Gives It to Woman's Ex"

But that's just local cops you say? We can trust the FBI, you say? Well, Martin Luther King couldn't.

And the FBI even tried to get the Mafia to silence Dick Gregory when he spoke against narcotic trafficking. And framed environmental activists. Not to mention COINTELPRPO, or the FBI helping Chicago police murder Fred Hampton in cold blood.

But that's all in the past you say? Well, if two years ago is "the past".

But you have nothing to hide, so I guess you're safe.

Tell that to "[m]ost of the 110,000 persons removed for reasons of 'national security' [who] were school-age children, infants and young adults not yet of voting age" forced by the U.S government to move to:
* Manzanar War Relocation Center
* Tule Lake War Relocation Center
* Heart Mountain War Relocation Center
* Minidoka War Relocation Center
* Topaz War Relocation Center
* Poston War Relocation Center
* Gila River War Relocation Center
* Granada War Relocation Center
* Rohwer War Relocation Center
* and Jerome War Relocation Center

You, know, mostly I let the links speak for themselves. I'm going to deviate from that this time, and I'll get modded down for it, but sometimes you just have to say it.

You don't deserve to vote. You don't deserve the nation created by Jefferson and Madison and Washington. You don't deserve to inherit the legacy of the brave men and women who sacrificed their lives to make America (more or less) free.

YOU DON'T DESERVE TO BE AN AMERICAN.

It's one thing if you realize that government is always a threat to liberty, and weighing the alternatives, reluctantly decide to cede more power to the government.

But you aren't doing that. With the whole frigging internet at your finger-tips -- much more than Thomas Jefferson ever had -- you can't even be bothered to type into Google "police surveillance abuse" and read the fucking history of your own fucking country.

Instead, you just blithely assume that since what you're doing isn't illegal yet that since you're not on a watch-list yet that the color your skin or your accent or your politics aren't "suspicious" yet, you can sit back fat and happy without giving thought to how this might affect others or even -- governments and laws do change -- yourself in the future.

And yet you get to go into a voting booth and pull the lever because of people who did know better and who made the hard choices and who often die