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"... where workers collectively manage the means of production without bosses or owners."

And, as such, its not as much about the product as the organization producing the goods. It is about not having such a great need for leadership roles and giving the stake-holders more room at the table.

I would like to make the case that we no longer need representives in D.C. - that tech exists which
eliminates the reasons why the 'house' has to exist at all. We can still keep congress, but the function of these critters is by-gone from times when distance from home district to D.C. was
a considerable factor. That no longer is the case and the electorate would be better served by a different (open-n-transparent) process, by referendum.

That, to me, is an anarchistic alternate approach.
Eliminate Senatorial and Congressional elections in your State. Have a mixed panel of R-n-D's that disseminates pending federal legislation and presents it in clear coherent ways to the citizens,
then let them vote on it on a given day.
Give every resident a "voting card" that can be swiped (once) at a gas station, library or ATM. Swiping means 'yes', not swiping (not voting) means no. A certain percentage implies passage.

That's an anarchistic alternative that works for me; take the elections, all the campaigning, the PACs and the Parties completely out of the picture. Just stick a 20" display in the chair with a big thumb that goes up or down and let the people at home decide directly using an open and transparent process.

I am not anti-capital, I believe in commerce and economies. What we have now is corruption beyond shame. Anarchy has less to do with economic model as with social organization; or 'social ecology' as the term currently in fashion.

There's a lot of thought regarding this in my neck of the woods. Not saying all that input is necessarily better, or less fraught with unintended consequence, but it can't be worse than the sorry state we're in now.

http://www.freesocietycollective.org./
http://www.homemadejam.org/renew
http://www.anarkismo.net/
http://www.ainfos.ca/
http://www.zmag.org/AWatch/awatch.htm

In closing, I'd like to note that every idealistic
notion branded as 'wishful thinking' today usually becomes the only pragmatic solution of tommorrow.

Be well, enjoy your reality.

while i've never heard of E'Prime Aerospace, but if you want to look at an example of privatization hurting society, then look up info on water privatization in El Salvador. i first read about this issue about 5-6 years ago (when the water supply was first privatized), but the problem doesn't seem to have gotten any better over the years.

other examples of this include India, where the World Bank is also pushing the government to privatize Delhi's water supply, as well as Pakistan, where the WTO and other IFIs are pushing for privatization of health care against the protest of doctors and other medical professionals. Pakistanis have also recently been swindled by foreign investors when Pakistan Steel Mill was privatized at far below the market price. likewise, there is strong public opposition against the privatization of Pakistan's Oil & Gas Development Company. however, all of this is just the latest episode in a string corrupt privatization dealings by the Pakistani dictator which has cost the Pakistani people over $23.8 billion in national income and domestic resources.

another example of the harm of privatization can be seen in post-soviet Russia, where the privatization of national assets have made a handful of people disgustingly rich while the rest of society bears the cost of this ransacking of public infrastructure and lack of industry regulation.

it just seems ridiculous to me that public assets should be auctioned off to the rich at 1/1000th their market value while public institutions like schools, hospitals, transportation infrastructure, etc. remain chronically underfunded. and certain things like the water supply and other public utilities serve a more important purpose than creating lucrative profits for transnational conglomerates, especially in countries where people can barely afford to eat.

while i've never heard of E'Prime Aerospace, but if you want to look at an example of privatization hurting society, then look up info on water privatization in El Salvador. i first read about this issue about 5-6 years ago (when the water supply was first privatized), but the problem doesn't seem to have gotten any better over the years.

other examples of this include India, where the World Bank is also pushing the government to privatize Delhi's water supply, as well as Pakistan, where the WTO and other IFIs are pushing for privatization of health care against the protest of doctors and other medical professionals. Pakistanis have also recently been swindled by foreign investors when Pakistan Steel Mill was privatized at far below the market price. likewise, there is strong public opposition against the privatization of Pakistan's Oil & Gas Development Company. however, all of this is just the latest episode in a string corrupt privatization dealings by the Pakistani dictator which has cost the Pakistani people over $23.8 billion in national income and domestic resources.

another example of the harm of privatization can be seen in post-soviet Russia, where the privatization of national assets have made a handful of people disgustingly rich while the rest of society bears the cost of this ransacking of public infrastructure and lack of industry regulation.

it just seems ridiculous to me that public assets should be auctioned off to the rich at 1/1000th their market value while public institutions like schools, hospitals, transportation infrastructure, etc. remain chronically underfunded. and certain things like the water supply and other public utilities serve a more important purpose than creating lucrative profits for transnational conglomerates, especially in countries where people can barely afford to eat.

Even if that's the case and this is nothing but a thinly veiled plot to steal product knowledge, I have no problem with China using their power to extort western companies. After all, China's population (and indeed the rest of the third world) has been extorted by Western companies for the better part of two centuries now, so if you ask me, it's about time profligate western nations got a taste of what it's like at the other end of the stick.

They're just giving back what they got, now that they're big enough.

Don't be stupid. If the justification for going to war with Iraq were UN resolutions being broken, it can be nobody but the UN to decide that war is an appropriate response.

Let's also have a look at UN Resolutions being violated by countries other than Iraq as listed in an article form 2002.

Israel: 31 violations between 1968 and 2002
Turkey: 23 violations between 1974 and 2001
Morocco: 15 violations between 1990 and 2001

Are they next on your list?

Look clearly much of what I've said is opinion, but I wouldn't go so far as to say I presented it as fact, I think I've labeled it as opinion when it was, or when I presented it as fact, pointed out that I had no actual evidence to back it up, so don't criticise me for the ethics of the methodology I use to present my ideas.

You claim I present opinion as fact, but you'll notice that I explain why I believe what I do and I invite you to disagree. So while I may have said "five years ago bush lied to us" if you just read on a bit you'll notice what I mean by this:

Now on to examples of news and "news". I quickly navigated to Fox's homepage and saw this prominently displayed:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,369885,00.html

If you want to give me examples from other news sources, they're all welcome of course. Fox is just an easy target for me. Here's more of what I would like to see:

http://www.zmag.org/zmag/viewArticle/17795

Of course this is really just an op-ed where the author sides with me, but the point is that serious issues are being addressed in the article. For whatever reason Fox decided to display the link I showed you (significantly). The fact that they would present that at all causes me to raise an eyebrow, but more shocking to me was that it was by far the most prominently displayed article on their homepage, the only article displayed with a picture and text. In a different location on the page they had an article on Iran (titled: U.N. Official: Iran Attack Would Set Mideast Afire). Was it displayed as prominently? No actually. It was a link off on the side mixed among several others. Why is destruction therapy a more important issue than the reprecussions of a US invasion of Iran?

Everything I've said here is pretty obvious to me, I'm not sure why it's not to you. If it's because you've never thought of it this way, you should keep your eyes open over the next few months and see what you think. Otherwise, I don't know what to tell you.

I don't think the whole war plan was around oil, but that it was a major factor. And it wasn't necessarily a war to get more oil, limit the supply and raise prices equals profit as this article http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/17717 illustrates.

"Worse"? Both capitalism and communism can be, and often are, terrible.

For example, economist Amartya Sen, who won a Noble Prize, did a comparison of India's democratic capitalist experiment with that of the Chinese famine, and the Chinese communist experiment. His work "Hunger and Public Action" estimated the deaths caused by the famines in China to be around 16.5 to 29.5 million. Most estimates regarding the total deaths from the Chinese communist experiment are said to be around 100 million.

Although India didn't have a famine similar to China, Sen notes that "as far as morbidity, mortality and longevity are concerned, China has a large and decisive lead over India", and that "India seems to manage to fill its cupboard with more skeletons every eight years than China put there in its years of shame".

In other words, the democratic capitalist experiment in India from 1947 resulted in more deaths that the entire Communist track record since 1917. By 1979, there were an estimated 100 million deaths in India already.

And before we forget, the Russian capitalist experiment that was prescribed by advisers such as the IMF and World Bank resulted in approximately 3.4 million Russian deaths until about 1998, while others put the figure up to about 15 million premature deaths, with a projected decline of 30% in the population over the coming decades.

The fact is, both systems have had terrible track records.

Maybe people will (continue to) do things for incentives other than wealth? I like to think that when we finally get rid of capitalism, people will be more likely to pursue their actual interests and talents and not just what can get them the most cash.

But if more cash is really your thing, there's a system called Participatory Economics (Parecon) that gives more to those who contribute more.

No, sorry, "Japanese Only" signs are very common in Japan these days, unfortunately. And YES, finger printing is racist, because it will mainly apply to foreigners, i.e., non-Japanese people. I have lost all respect for Japan, and I am ashamed to drive a Japanese car http://k.lenz.name/LB/archives/000973.html http://www.wordpress.tokyotimes.org/?p=1900 http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=6669 http://www.debito.org/misawaexclusions.html Open your eyes.

It is evolving faster than probably any language ever has before, and the rate of its change is likely to increase.

• The language reforms
  
• Massive importation of loan words
  
• Influence of manga on culture
  
• The massive effects of the rapid changes to traditional Japanese social hierarchies on "respect language."
  
• The modern industrialization of Japan.
  

Talk about a myopic view of what's happened over the last seven years. Given the Real ID Act, all the RICO laws, all the drug enforcement laws, and tack on all the post 9/11 legislation and you have yourself a bona fide police state. I am no longer protected from illegal searches and seizures, I can be stripped of my citizenship and shipped off to remote place with little to no hope of ever getting a lawyer, let alone a trial.

The fact of the matter is that Congress has forgotten what the constitution means and the Executive branch became two branches of government without any referendum to approve this change. The constitution applies to the government, it's irrelavent where I am, where you are, where anybody is, the U.S. government is bound by the constitution.

Of course over the last seven years what remained of the constitution and more specifically the bill of rights is gone. Last I checked the only right that remained was that we were still free from the burden of having to house soldiers. Habeas Corpus has been suspended indefinitely, the rights of the press have been trampled to high hell on numerous occasions. Link one, link two, and link three, are all just a couple of examples of hundreds of instances of censorship. Combined that with National Security letters forcing some U.S. citizens to give up their customers and thus their livelihood without any compensation or recourse.

We have definitely lost significant freedoms, you notice them when you open a bank account, you'll notice them in hospitals and fingerprints are now required all over the place.

You can use all the racial slurs you like, people will hate you but you won't be thrown in jail because of it. It's the fact that the majority don't notice the loss of protections that scares me. The people that can't put all the pieces together because they are either too lazy or too absorbed with their own lives to realize what's going on around them. We are most definitely not safer now than we were and there are strong arguments out there that we are even worse off for a creative criminal. Do you really think a terrorist would target a plane again? They would target something new where we don't have high security because we don't have high security on it. The only thing the security is doing for airlines is bankrupting them because people hate to go to airports. Then of course the airlines try to cut back on costs by reducing services making the flights even more unpleasant and then the government has to bail them out because so much business relies on flight transportation.

An investor for the company I work for actually rented and flew his own plane because U.S. Air was so incompetent they overbooked his flight twice so he couldn't fly down here for a time sensitive meeting. Combine that with my boss wanting to go to the lake for the weekend so he was going to fly there, it was about a 45 minute flight. After three engine failures resulting in delays he hopped in one of his cars and just drove the two hours or less.

In short, the constitution including the Bill of Rights is being used as TP by the administration and congress and no one is willing to do anything about it. I'd like to say election time will correct the misgivings of the past but given that both democrats and republicans share the blame for the erosion of our liberties there is very little hope we will get any of it back anytime soon. Perhaps when the baby boomers are out of office the next generation will have the good sense to improve things. We'll see, awareness of the problems is where it all begins.

I sincerely hope more realize what's going on in the world around them. Religion has been driven out of the federal level, it is resurgent at the local level, that is perfectly legal so as long as I get to vote on it I

During World War Two, firms were experiencing labor shortages. The normal way of fixing a labor shortage, raising wages, was impossible because of wartime price controls. So the government allowed Companies to give workers health care tax free in lieu of wage increases. This little quirk is why you don't see such a policy in any other nation in the world.

Oh really, no other country's employer offer health insurance? What's this then?

People who reside in Japan must join either their employer's health insurance scheme or National Health Insurance, which is managed by the city, town or village.

Yet this is still way too expensive for workers who are currently facing major reforms in China's medical insurance system that are far from perfect and unlikely to meet such costs. Moreover, migrant workers are generally not included in employer health insurance schemes;

Even in China employers offer health insurance for their employees, though not to all.

If a company chooses to pay with health insurance, and the worker agrees, then that is fine. But that is not why we see widespread employer provided health-care. Suppose that if instead of health-care, you were paid with money. You would then be taxed on this money, and you now have around 30% less money to spend on health care. But if you are given the health care directly through an employer, you are not taxed (because of WW2 era rules). Because of this, it makes overwhelming sense to buy your health care through your employer.

Ok, I can see why employers, those who can afford it, will offer insurance. However employees can still get insurance from employers cheaper than they can on their own. As for income tax and having to pay more if you get paid more by the employer, so you can get your own insurance, that's another matter. Personally I'd eliminate all personal earned income tax. Because corporations offer their owners, shareholder or stockholders, limited liability I'd require corporations to pay income tax. Problem solved.

What is wrong with this? First, companies usually negotiate a single HMO or insurance company for all of their employees in exchange for some kickbacks. So these employees are stuck with a single insurance, and if they don't like it, competing companies are at a 30% disadvantage. So employer related health insurance companies have quite a bit of wiggle room in terms of service and price before hand. There are exceptions, like Google and American Airlines, but in general, most companies act in such a way.

WOW! You've given me something to think about, I hadn't thought of it that way before. Combined with Medical Savings Accounts, one on a very short list of things Bush has proposed I like the other being to allow workers to privatize some of their social security, it could work. Of course if earned income weren't taxed MSAs and SS wouldn't be needed. I just hope I can remember what you said later, damaged memory.

We have two options to fix this: 1) Get rid of the tax loophole, so that people are taxed on the health care benefits they receive, or 2) Allow all health-care spending to be tax exempt. Personally, I prefer the first one, as the second one will distort demand for elective surgery, but I don't care very much either way, as long as one of them is done.

Personally I prefer my third choice, get rid of personal earned income tax.

By the way, I have issues with any 3rd party payment scheme, any honest doctor will agree.

So do I, if a person is responsible for paying for their own healthcare they will be more careful. Maybe not all but I'd hazard to guess many people would exercise more preventive healthcare, live a healthier lifestyle, and when needed would do more shopping for healthcare providers.

Given that Israel is the most flagrant violator of UN resolutions, perhaps they'll listen to this. Oh crap, this isn't a political site, is it? *Runs away from the pitchfork weilding mods*

The real problem is that huge american companies are NOT willing to find out the truth, whatever it is. Why? Because if it turns out that global warming COULD be caused by them, and that it COULD have negative consequences for the rest of the world, they COULD lose their big buckets o' money.

Remember the case of the girl that wasn't given an MRI scan to see if she *COULD* have cancer, even when she was bleeding and had awful headaches? One month later she was dead. Why? Negligence. The same is happening to the planet. Floods here, floods there, and the people who can make a difference, don't give a damn.

It's completely fine to try out heresies in science. Say there wasn't a big bang. Say black holes don't exist. Say the Earth is flat. Say we have two moons, I couldn't care less! But right now, and specifically with global warming, we're talking about the destiny of the whole planet. The planet needs to be diagnosed, and fast. Is it ok to be an alarmist? To announce doomsday news? To scare everyone?

If it turns out that Global Warming isn't true, that we can pollute the air as much as we want without consequences, I'd be REALLY glad to be wrong! I'd celebrate! You can kill all the global warming theory supporters, including me. Fine by me. But if we're right... what will happen if the US doesn't listen? And we're running out of time. Is the corporations' money worth destroying the Earth? Is it?

In the end, it's all about money. Science isn't relevant, unfortunately.

China and India pollute substantially less per person than any EU country or the US.

So? They're growing at a much, much faster rate. And the statement you chose - that it would be like saying, "We got to industrialization first, so we're the only ones who get to benefit! Oh and you have to clean up just as much as us even though we've made a bigger mess," - is telling, but it's actually the opposite of that: it's more like, "We got to industrialization, but we'll allow other developing economies to artificially pollute much more, leaving Western economies at an even greater disadvantage than they are now when competing."

One day, when India and China are serious polluters they will curb emissions.

Oh, they will? Really? Who's going to make China curb emissions? And China has plenty of problems now.

So yeah, it's not "fair" if China, especially considering the force it is already, isn't held to any standards at all; or, rather, would you find it surprising that there are other factors to consider in the US not simply wanting to happily allow a severe competitive disadvantage, and frames the discussions based on that? This isn't a "Republican" issue or a matter of "misuse" of scientific data. It's an issue of pure economics. Might it be treated more gingerly by more liberal politicians? Sure. But it wouldn't be a lot more than lip service, because no matter who is in office, the economic and other threats from China in particular are very real, and emissions are but small part of that equation.

You play a very cute smartass, but really, fine, I'll roll with that.

Chavez is nothing more than a protodictator who will soon take Venezuela down the same path Castro took Cuba, into poverty and oppression.

...

We've been through this before folks, socialism/communism leads to nothing but bad things. The fact that he throws some heating oil at the Kennedys changes nothing.

First off, it seems like you really have no idea what kind of government is setup right now in Venezuela, because it hardly resembles something like Cuba. Do yourself a favour, go do some research on the topic at hand, realize that when you actually look at things Chavez has done more to help his country and his peoples than most world leaders can boast of these days.

Seems many of them built factories only to find them understaffed after a few months. The available labor (at that price) was quickly swallowed up by the first few factories, and those that built later found themselves stuck with colossal factories and a snooty labor force that demanded higher wages before they'd consider it. Natural market forces are a bitch when you're a wealthy scion expecting a guaranteed profit.

I've never seen this story (about labor "drying up" quickly) even in the most left-slanted historical accounts. I strongly suspect you're just making it up. Again, considering that completely unskilled children could do most of the work, it's extremely unlikely that (highly risky) political lobbying is the path of least resistance.

Yup, it's gotta be the parasites. But why are they suddenly killing off all the bees?

Some are saying (not me, I don't know enough about it) it could be genetically modified food crops.

The rationale being that genes have been demonstrated to jump species, specifically, even, from crops into microbes in the guts of bees (RTFA).

Just posting this because I heard about it and it sounds somewhat reasonable, not because I'm advocating against genetic modification of anything.

The content is the advertising. The fill is the car chase or the sex scene or something, that's supposed to keep you going between ads.

I think you need to learn more about Dershowitz. Perhaps this little blurb from Beyond Chutzpah will suggest itself as useful reading.

The core analysis of Beyond Chutzpah sets Dershowitz's assertions on Israel's human rights record against the findings of the mainstream human rights community. Sifting through thousands of pages of reports from organizations such as Amnesty International, B'Tselem, and Human Rights Watch, Finkelstein demonstrates that Dershowitz has systematically misrepresented the facts.

It sounds to me that with phrases like "Arab bigotry and terrorism and has defended the only free, democratic country in the Middle East" that you have an agenda on this issue. Further, anytime you paint an entire group with the same brush (with the possible exception of groups that are defined solely by bigotry - which is not the case with Arabs), you yourself are being a bigot.

I don't have an agenda. I can see that both Arabs and Jews are doing terrible things that should stop. I also recognize that there is a huge difference in power - with Israel getting U.S. military support and apparently applying the same standards of morality (that it is okay for the U.S. or Israel to commit acts of terrorism because they are really defending themselves from the terrorism of others). I'm sorry but that dog won't hunt.

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

FTA: "We want to be able to explore different ideas, different connectivity patterns, different operations in these areas..." Building this system of interconnected processors is not 'building a brain' or even 'building the cortex.' The scientists/engineers are buidling a scaled down, highly abstracted implementation of a certain subset of subsystems of the brain, none of which are well understood. This is good exploratory science, laudable in its goals, but it is a laughable proposition that this system will be even a rudimentary modeling of the real world. A [human] brain is a highly integrated set of systems, whose most interesting attribute is [arguably] that it allows humans to think. Whatever this silicon system [or any subsequent system, no matter how advanced] achieves, 'thinking' [as in the common-sense definition] will not be one of its abilities; that is, unless you wish to engage in a semantics game... Turing knew this... see Chomsky's "Language and Thought: Some Reflections on Venerable Themes"... relevant excerpts here http://www.zmag.org/CHOMSKY/pp/#C1

I find it doubtful that you will find a viable candidate that leans far enough to the left to garner the support of the crypto-communists over at Znet.

The editor of Zmag, Michael Albert, has been a consistent and harsh critic of Marxist-Leninism. Here he debates a representative of one of the more moderate communists parties (the ISO). Most of the people published in Zmag are social democrats, anarchists, and other non-Marxist left wing radicals. Zmag is probably less communist than The Nation, and certainly less so than the countless Trotskyist party papers. Nader is seen as the most viable third party candidate in recent years and he often writes for Zmag.

As much as I hate the situation in Tibet, I can't help but recall the bombardment of Somalia by the US a few days back. I am guessing that you are American otherwise you wouldn't use such phrases as "nobody sorry about that" when innocent victims are caught in conflicts which only serve US strategic interests.

Try to get past the "invasion" bit (though the US actually invaded many countries by proxy, but that's not the issue) and realise how many people have died as a direct result of a hungry hegemon seeking ever more power. Since WWII, the US bombed 24 countries. http://www.futurepower.org/us_government_violence. html

That is not to say China shouldn't be blamed for the horrific things they did, but by any standard, the US has done several orders of magnitude worse at the planet's scale (while the Chinese were more or less local in their attacks).
More insight on the current US-Chinese cold war http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?Sectio nID=103&ItemID=11864

The best I could find is:

http://www.infouse.com/disabilitydata/disability/1 _1.php coupled with this explanation:

http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Feb2004/duboff0204.html
http://www.westgard.com/essay60.htm

The 20% number is the total number of workers with any kind of disability. That doesn't mean that 20% is unemployed, that they are listed with some kind of disability. This is NOT the number of people removed from the labor force for disability reasons. Those people must be 'detached from the labor force' in that they are not actively looking for work. A disabled person who is actively looking for work will be counted as unemployed. I can't find reliable figures for just how widespread that is.

Here is how the unemployment numbers are arrived at:

http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm

What about hundreds of Iraqi people's lives that were lost? That doesn't count eh?

...many people think the New York Times is anti-corporate, and the Wall Street Journal is pro-corporate.

Both are pro-corporate. I also said that the NYT is somewhat left leaning. The Wall Street Journal is the leading publication of the Business press; they directly represent the largest earing organizations on earth. The New York Times is the leading publication of the literate elite, a group with is mostly comprised of the same professionals and leaders that run corporations, but which also includes some academics and other intellectuals.

Both publications are far to the right of the American people. Most Americans support greater unions representation, more government funding of personal health care, higher taxes on the wealthy, and a withdrawal from Iraq. You have to turn to more obscure publications to find these issues even discussed. Most Americans, however, don't read newspapers. They get their news and opinion from TV. Television marginalizes real issues even more than the press does. It's just infotainment.

There's still a small Socialist and Communist press in the US, but it just prints party line propaganda for the most part. You have to turn to something like Z magazine, if you're looking for a articulate anti-corporate reporting.

during the cold war, your enemy had nuclear weapons and threatened to use them!

The United States left Saddam Hussein in power after the acts he was on trial for occurred. God, you are dumb.

Of course, that is why the show trial was cut short -- so Saddam Hussein could not call all of his witnesses and put the evidence on the table of the United States having supplied and supported him during the Iran-Iraq War which lead to millions of people dying. But don't tell Republicans that Donald Rumsfeld shook Saddam Hussein's hand. They just don't want to hear it.

George Bush has shown himself to be a clear and present danger to the freedom of the American people and the world. He belongs in prison. His supporters are, for whatever reason, no different from those who did not speak up during Hitler's regime.

Tell the more than 300 people being held in the Guantánamo Bay concentration camps who didn't speak up. And keep on supporting the occupation of Iraq, just like a coward, with no concern for the people dying there.

Iran had submitted a draft resolution asking the U.N. to condemn Iraq's chemical weapons use. The U.S. delegate to the U.N. was instructed to lobby friendly delegations in order to obtain a general motion of "no decision" on the resolution. If this was not achievable, the U.S. delegate was to abstain on the issue. Iraq's ambassador met with the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Jeane Kirkpatrick, and asked for "restraint" in responding to the issue - as did the representatives of both France and Britain.

But the agency quickly moved into action. Noting that the Baath Party was hunting down Iraq's communist, the CIA provided the submachine gun-toting Iraqi National Guardsmen with lists of suspected communists who were then jailed, interrogated, and summarily gunned down, according to former U.S. intelligence officials with intimate knowledge of the executions.

Many suspected communists were killed outright, these sources said. Darwish told UPI that the mass killings, presided over by Saddam, took place at Qasr al-Nehayat, literally, the Palace of the End.

Are you on Crack? USA largest polluter in the world? Yeah when you look at numbers like per person polution. When you look at total polution out put china and India both top the US by a large margin May I suggest you at least google pollution. (or visit mexico city)

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID =9509
http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=5058
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environment_of_China
http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/20 06/jun/science/tw_chineseair.html

but maybe this one is the most recent.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,7369,16051 46,00.html

The ample reasons are listed in the link. Why invent your own strawmen?

You are a true moron if you think a government which openly proclaims genocide should have anything nuclear.

You are the moron if you believe that. The only thing that springs to mind to make you believe that is the story about the Iranian leader wanting to wipe Israel off the map. Shame it was a deliberate mistranslation (more info)

Now, I'm sure there are extremists in Iran who say what you think represents the whole nation. These people are not in charge however. They are no different from Jerry Falwell, Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones. There are extremists on all sides and if you filter your view to only these you get a completely jaded picture. And that is what is being deliberately done by your government, in the exact same way that the Iraq propaganda was done. They want you to fear the Iranians in the same way that duck and cover made you fear the soviets. For some of us this repetition is getting a bit boring.

Hummm, I think you have been free market/profit motive theory indoctrinated.

I used to believe the free market is always best in every situations theoretical redirect as well. I was raised that way. However, after I chanced to read a few follow up studies and have got out and learnt to think on my own, I have come to believe the scientific approach is the only way to go: a theory, while it might be a good starting point, is only as good as it works in reality.

Under this measure, ya ya, ra ra, free market is always the best has a lot of answering to do. For example, a quick google for "cost of healthcare canada us" paints an interesting picture: the administration overhead costs in US and Canada are 31% and 17% respectively; the per capital expenses for health care is $2548 and $1886 (USD) respectively; the average life expectancy is 77.0 and 79.3 respectively; and the Harris polled population satisfaction relative to other industrialized nations is least and most respectively.

It should, at least, give one pause for thought.

PS: I know we feel invested in our viewpoints (which, ironically, are not usually ours in any sense of the word, but, rather, those of our parent's and our early educator's), however, there is nothing inconsistent or wrong with changing them as we feel fit. My favourite philosopher quote is something to the effect of "of course I don't feel the same as I did yesterday -- today I know more."

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/462311
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID =10515
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_and_American _health_care_systems_compared
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Canada
http://bcn.boulder.co.us/health/healthwatch/canada .html
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/living/US/healthcar e031020_poll.html

(and so on)

Sorry, you lost me there.

Pakistan DOES have a stockpile and no one is hinting at taking theirs away.

> So you can pretty much stick a fork in the idea that the 10th Amendment reserves you any rights that Congress can't take away.

Exactly, it was proved once again when Military Commissions Act 2006 was passed: rollback habeas corpus, use torture, and provide immunity for US officials from torture prosecution.

Could you give specific examples of intervention that you speak of?

Should we turn our back on a legally founded country because the people who sold or evacuated the land in the hopes of fighting to gain it back say so?

Or are you suggesting that Hezbollah is really the true military wing of Lebanon.

Actually, the hope should not come from proxies or rebels but from the people themselves.

Good plan. Let's see how this works out. I'm betting about as well as it did for the Germans and Japanese, though.

Granted, the US is moderately socialist, however, one segment of society living off another segment of society is ripe for abuse and societal strife.

Lucky you.

In the United States, they call those folks 'Democrats'.

I think few Americans right now realize that congress is working, yesterday and today, on passing (not just writing or introducing, but passing, it's already through the house and now up for vote in the senate) a bill that will end habeas corupus and legalize torture:

http://news.google.com/news?q=torture+bill+senate+ habeas&hl=en&hs=GCv&lr=&safe=off&client=firefox&rl s=Swiftfox:en-US:unofficial&sa=X&oi=news&ct=title
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?Sectio nID=40&ItemID=11071
http://www.upi.com/SecurityTerrorism/view.php?Stor yID=20060924-060744-4556r
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/09/26/AR2006092601475.html

Habeas corpus is one of the oldest tenets of western civilization, predating the U.S. Constitution and even the Magna Carta, and it says, simply, that if someone is to be held in custody by the state, there must be a demonstrable reason for their imprisonment. It is the basis of "probable cause," "warrants" of arrest, and your right to a trail to establish your guilt or innocence.

This bill not only legalizes torture acts against enemy combatants by the U.S. government, it also gives the president and the secretary of defense the authority to unilaterally decide who is an enemy combatant, without review, oversight, process, or documentation of any kind, and to act on that decision, without trial, documentation, or any means of appeal. The standard for being an enemy combatant is essentially that you don't "support" America in some way or another, not according to some objective standard of evidence, but again according to the personal impression of either the president or the secretary of defense. This includes American citizens.

Once they decide you are an enemy combatant, you can be picked up, with no warrant or probable cause, no evidence, and no process other than "the feds said you don't support America." They no longer need evidence. Under this statute no right to trail or judicial review will exist (because you are now like those at Gitmo, rather than a citizen), and you can be tortured at will.

This is what the senate is working on YESTERDAY AND TODAY. It's likely already too late to affect the outcome, but if you haven't yet it might be a good day to call your senator and say that you OPPOSE the bill that legalizes arbitrary indefinite detention at the whim of the president and the legalization of torture.

1. RMS and the FSF (which are one and the same for all practical purposes) talk
   about "free software". What they are truly fundamentally about is
   creating a comprehensive category of software which is completely free from
   corporate/business control, and which individual users can completely control in
   all aspects as they wish.
   
   His fundamental motivation is an anti-corporation, pro-individual/community
   point of view. The fact that the mechanism for enabling his version of
   "free software" is the GPL and a common pool of open source is
   secondary. If he could have gotten a global law enforced that all corporations
   must release all their source code freely on the Internet, that's what he would
   have done, instead of GNU and GPL.
   
   RMS is an absolutist on this point. He truly sees this as good vs. evil, and as
   a belief system about which there can be no question.
   
   To help understand this, http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID =9350
   read this interview.
   
   This is where the insistence that DRM and "Trusted Computing" and
   software patents must be abolished comes from. These are all tools that
   corporations use to protect their property. RMS does not believe they should
   have property like this... that it should all be made available to users with no
   control by corporations.
   
2. 
   Linux is also licensed under the GPL (v2), but comes from a completely
   different motivation than RMS. Torvalds simply believes the open-source
   development model is the most effective way to create excellent software.
   Torvalds is just fine with corporations and businesses using Linux for profit,
   even if that means "controlling" some aspects of its use. He
   certainly has opinions on DRM, patents, and "Trusted Computing", but
   he's not going to let those get in the way of Linux development.
   
3. 
   So now starts the struggle for control of "what is the meaning of free
   software". RMS is clearly trying to re-establish his vision of the
   principles involved by pushing through GPL v3, because he's seen GPL v2 used in
   ways that offend his principles deeply. Is it too late? Has the FOSS movement
   taken off to an extent that he no longer controls it? Stay tuned.
   

Much of the online media is corporate ;-) But there are very good sites for with very good articles from authors interested in truth rather than not offending advertisers.

"alternative energy investments have been major failure and will continue to be major faliures as long as oil is cheap. Oil is getting cheaper as I write this" DarkOx

Not exactly true as the above comment points out. And if alternative energy is doomed to failure why did big oil get a tariff on ethanol being imported into the US and at the same time pushes to reduce domestic production. According to a number of impartial and reliable resources oil production has already peaked.

Oil is getting temperorly cheaper for the oil companies mainly because the US stole Iraqs entire oil supply and is currently selling it back to them. The value of the dollar is tied to the price of oil. Consequently the global markets are tied to oil. Anything to impact the price of oil would have disasterous consequences possibly leading to a total crash. Perhaps this is the real motive in big oils objection to alternative energy. These conditions can not be good for long term economic stability.

"a good energy investment for emotional reasons is just missing a good oppertunity .. emotions and morals have NO PLACE in the stock market"

According to this the disinformation comes chiefly from the other side.

I think you forgot to add [/ironic] ;-)

Charlie Chaplin was deported due to his anti-war opinions, while there was attempts to do the same for John Lennon. Now, imagine you are not famous, rich and happens to be a muslim.... (deportation)

The new documentary "The U.S. vs. John Lennon" tells the story of Lennon's transformation from loveable moptop to antiwar activist, and recounts the facts about Richard Nixon's campaign to deport him in 1972 in an effort to silence him as a voice of the peace movement. The filmmakers got lots of people to talk about Nixon and Lennon on camera, including Walter Cronkite, Gore Vidal, Mario Cuomo, George McGovern, Angela Davis and Bobby Seale, with G. Gordon Liddy representing the other side; the film also includes archival footage of Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover, and stars John Lennon and his biting wit and great music. It opens Sept. 15 in Los Angeles and New York City, and nationwide on Sept. 29. The story of Nixon's attempt to deport Lennon is relevant today because deportation, and the larger issue of immigrants' political rights, has become a central problem in American politics.

Sovereign states may have whatever weapons they wish, but when their leadership pronounces that their goal is to wipe out a neighbor state (Israel), it no longer becomes acceptable to the international community to allow such weapons programs to go forth.

here is a relevant quote:

"There are other factors that operate to increase coca production. Colombia was once a major wheat producer. That was undermined in the 1950s by Food for Peace aid, a program that provided taxpayer subsidies to U.S. agribusiness and counterpart funds for U.S. client states, which they commonly used for military spending and counterinsurgency. A year before President Bush announced the "drug war" with great fanfare (once again), the international coffee agreement was suspended under U.S. pressure, on grounds of "fair trade violations." The result was a fall of prices of more than 40 percent within two months for Colombia's leading legal export."

so you see, as i said, wheat was the major export up until the 1950s, when U.S subsidised wheat exports made it unviable for Colombian peasant farmers to produce wheat. Now George Bush is doing exactly the same thing to Coffee.

Apparently prevention (addressing socialogical causes) and treatment of drug addiction and abuse is 10-20 times more successful than criminalisation of the people involved. But it's more profitable for the U.S. government to throw "superfluous population" in jail, and maintain a thriving drugs industry in Colombia, whilst opressing the "superfluous population" there, rather than to give Colombia legitimate aid to rebuild an economy based on food crops. It is deliberate.

The government of the USA has already shown a proclivity towards watching its citizens. To be fair, this phenomenon isn't limited to the USA, but Bush has taken it to new levels.

We now know that the government secretly had printer manufacturers embed hidden ID codes on printer's output, thereby removing any possibility of anonymous document creation.

I wouldn't be surprised if some enterprising Bush-ite didn't see the possibility here of having *every* keyboard manufactured with some form of this technology embedded. Imagine if the government could tell what you were typing just by listening to your traffic.

Think of the terrorists we could stop! Think of the children!

Thought I should share this piece by a British journalist living in Israel. http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?Sectio nID=107&ItemID=10711