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It has been reported many times that the budgets of the secret agencies of the U.S. government are hidden in appropriations for other items. You and I certainly have no way of knowing how much money is spent.

The NSA is an agency that is allowed to lie. The secret agencies of the U.S. government are allowed to put mis-information in U.S. newspapers. How can you determine when they are telling the truth? I don't think you can.

There are no laws that effectively govern secret agencies, because what they do is secret. No one can know whether they lived by the law.

The NSA spies on everyone, you, me, and everyone in the world. This is an issue for everyone, not just U.S. citizens. The NSA is an agency that respects no boundaries. The NSA is part of a worldwide secret police force. It is an example of the U.S. emphasis on being adversarial rather than cooperating.

The result has been extremely expensive and devastating. The U.S. helped Saddam Hussein become strong, then killed 150,000 Iraqis when he became too strong.

We often hear about secret activities of the U.S. government after it is too late to object. The U.S. supported the killing of president Mossadegh of Iran, and supported an extremely weak man, the Shah. (See Iran 1953: Making it safe for the King of Kings), for example.) This provoked a revolution in Iran that was hostile to the U.S. Citizens of the U.S. were kept hostage. The U.S. secret agencies' secret answer to the anti-U.S. sentiment was to support Saddam Hussein of Iraq against Iran.

When executives do things openly they make lots of mistakes, and are sometimes held accountable, usually in a very peaceful way, and often by their own staffs. When executives do things in secret, there is little accountability, and the mistakes can become huge.

Not only did the U.S. kill 150,000 Iraqis, the U.S. killed more than 2,000,000 Vietnamese during its war in Vietnam. As I said in an earlier post, the U.S. has invaded 13 countries in the last 30 years.

Invading countries and killing the residents and destroying their property is not a way of relating I consider socially skilled. Why do the citizens of one country think they can kill the citizens of another? If killing is the answer, can't the U.S. ask a better question?

The interference in the affairs of other countries by the secret U.S. agencies has prompted some people to retaliate. These people who retaliate are called "terrorists" in the U.S. The terrorists make everyone in the U.S. less safe. So, U.S. citizens have, in some ways, gotten less security for the money that they spent.

The violent attitude has spread to the internal police forces in the U.S. When some religious fanatics decided to do stupid things in Waco, Texas, the U.S. government responded by bringing in very violent-minded people. The result was death.

There were people who didn't like the activities of the U.S. police forces in Waco. There were people who were psychologically de-centered by these activities. One of them bombed a U.S. government building in Oklahoma. So then the U.S. government killed him.

Secrecy encourages people not to trust. Violence encourages violence.

Secrecy in government does not work. It should be minimized or eliminated. The main issue here is not whether the NSA sometimes does terrible things, or whether one country should maintain secret police forces (the NSA and CIA and others) in all the other countries. The issue is that we have no way of knowing what secret agencies do. When what they do is wrong, they don't even need to hide their mistakes, because everything is already secret.

There in no intent in this to claim that people in the U.S. are better or worse than people anywhere. The main point is only that huge amounts of money combined with secrecy result in huge mistakes.

With the large number of blackhats likely to be in the population of those pissed-off about the way things have been going, I'm surprised that the RIAA and its major members still have intact web prescence. Not that I'm advocating or condoning civil disobedience as a means of political action. Oh, and I'm also surprised to see that the MPAA site is up.

"The high school years must be the most important years in shaping
the social consciousness of young people, because at no other level
do parents and school officials become more hysterical at the possibility
that the students will be exposed to ideas which challenge the authority
of government, of school administrations, of parents"

-Howard Zinn

/nutt

1) McDonald's may be the "international symbol of globalization" but as far as evil corporations, they are one of the more benign ones out there. After all, all they provide is food for people who are *willing* to pay for it because they want to eat it. Not only that, but while keeping recipes fairly standardized, McDonald's purchases most of its food from local sources, thus actually helping to contribute to the agricultaral economy that Jose is so fighting to protect. Besides, what's wrong with providing access to "American" food to people outside the U.S.? New Yorkers pride themselves on having Indian/Chinese/whatever food as good as from the native country. Yet how come no one's bombing the local chinese takeout counter as a "symbol of homogenization and mediocrity"? Although McDonald's may seem banal and mediocre to us in the U.S., it's seen as exotic around the world. Just like the crappy food sold in sidewalk food stalls on the streets of Ethiopia is seen as exotic and unusual here.

2) If you really want to speak out about the evils of globalization and the wholesale, naked pursuit of cash without any concern for anything else, there are plenty of companies to choose from. For example, ever hear of Dutch Shell? They are a European oil company that also happens to be the largest oil company in Nigeria. Being that large, you'd think that they would use their power to push Nigeria toward better governance and fewer human rights abuses. Yet they actively support the Nigerian military regime (with everything from money to arms), have looked the other way at the numerous human rights abuses, and has returned very little of the billions of dollars worth of oil that it has extracted from the country back to the local Nigerians. They continue to do this despite extensive international condemnation of the Nigerian government, thus helping to prop up a military junta that the international community is trying to remove. But as long as the oil flows to power distant SUV's and cars, who cares, right? But people choosing to eat Big Macs? The Horror!!
Check out these links for more info:
http://www.cohdn.ca/news/1-1/6.html
http://www.pirc.co.uk/shellmar.htm
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Boycotts/Flames_ Shell.html

3) This guy is a trade unionist who was protesting the U.S. regulating the import of french cheese. In other words, he wants to throw McDonald's out of France but wants French cheese unfettered access to U.S. markets. See the hypocrisy? This guy isn't protesting globalization. He's protesting the fact that it's the Americans who are doing the globalization. If the entire world spoke French, ate the cheese that he grows in his farm, and washed it down with champagne purchased from his beloved country, he'd have no problems with that. Ironically, Americans are lot more culturally diverse than the French. After all, we have no qualms adopting words like "que pasa?" and "hasta la vista" (and of course "cojones" :-) from a foreign language while the French have an entire government organization dedicated to keeping the French language pure of such cross-cultural "contamination". The French defending cultural diversity? Please....

4) Finally, even if despite all this, you wished to protest McDonald's, this is the stupidest way to do so. First of all, I question the moral foundation of a person who resorts to violent means to achieve his supposedly moral purpose. But even setting that aside, from a purely Machiavellian point of view, he still went about things the wrong way. As other posters have pointed out, what will really hurt McDonald's is bad publicity, and government action (e.g. denying building permits, etc.) If this so-called champion of farmers was able to document how McDonald's was hurting the livelihood of local farmers and was destroying their ability to live, and this was publicized, he would have done far more damage to McDonald's than his current actions. But of course that actually takes some hard work. Much easier to lob a little bomb and go down as a "martyr". So he bombed one store and went to jail for it. So what? McDonald's will simply build another one. Indeed, I wouldn't be surprised if this sleepy little town became a tourist attraction simply because of its newfound notoriety. And what will those tourists eat? ;-)

I apologize in advance if this message sounds like a troll, because it isn't. I'm just fed up with people who adopt a cause without really thinking about it and then wonder why things don't change. Hell, even the people protesting Nike were smarter than this guy. After all, they were protesting a serious characteristic of globalization (child labor) and they went about it in a way that brought about change, however small. This guy has done nothing good for the anti-globalization movement and to hold him up as a hero of the movement insults those who are actually doing something productive.

Trust me, I'll be the first one to argue that globalization has its problems (although I'll also argue that there are many benefits :-). But to protest McDonald's as the epitome of those problems only cheapens the very real concerns that need to be addressed.