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And your reply is the classic tactic of naming anyone that dares critize actions of Israel, or Israeli citizens, as anti-semitic : Dissent and anti-semitism

Hardly. It isn't a favor to me when good jobs are lost to sweat shops in China only to be replaced by part-time minimum wage "associate" positions at your local Wal-Mart.

But still people go buying at Wal-Mart, even though it hurts them in the long run. Seems "Mainstreet USA" is filled by shops closed down by some local Wal-Mart.

Outsourcing takes money out of the middle/working class (in the form of good jobs) and redistributes it to the upper class (in the form of increased profits in lieu of decreased labor costs). It is certainly class warfare at its finest.

Indeed. From Films Can Help to Change the World :

Modern law endows economic institutions with legal rights of real, flesh-and-blood people. But if the corporation is a person -- what kind of person is it? A recent documentary film provides an alarming answer: the institution is "a person that is pathological by nature and by law, and systematically crushes democracy, freedom, rights, and the natural human instincts on which a decent life and even human survival depends."

Christ, learn how to check facts on what people tell you.
Common sense dictates: Believe nothing of what you hear and only half of what you see.

Here are some facts for you to check. Seriously, research them, I'm certain some of them may be false, but if any of them are true, well, then we are being repressed.

http://www.rense.com/general24/overtrepression.htm
http://www.workers.org/ww/2004/repressbox0624.php
http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?item ID=3493&sectionID=43
http://www.publiceye.org/liberty/repression/histor y.html

But Internet has given many a chance to circumvent the control of news/information, and actually inform themselves : Liberating the "Liberal Media"

As I recall, the British proposed some similarly silly rule requiring ISPs to "log everything" about 5 years ago.

I haven't heard of it since, so I presume the proposal died a whimpering quiet death unclaimed by anyone.

Free from any requirement to compromise, the Argentine president looks to one-up their old nemesis (of Falklands/Malvinas dispute) by actually trying to revive this rotting corpse of an idea.

What's next for Argentina? A clipper chip?

Of course, none of this compares with the tragedy of decades under juntas and the legacy of los desaparecidos.

Not to mention the economic collapse from naively expecting that IMF policies and democracy can co-exist.

Holy cow, you're right. See what happens on monday morning?

The conflict I was thinking of wasn't the iran-iraq war. Damnit. After a bit of googling, it was "the shi'a uprising". From globalsecurity.org:

"At the end of the 1991 Gulf War, President George Bush urged Iraqis to topple the Ba'ath regime, but the US did not back the Shiite uprising that ensued in southern Iraq, and the rebels were slaughtered. When the fighters of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), headed by Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, poured over the border from Iran. Fears of Iranian influence over Iraqi Shiites through SCIRI was a decisive factors in the US decision not to support the uprising. Grand Ayatollah Abu Gharib al-Qassem al-Khoei sent his son Ayatollah Abdul Majid al-Khoei to contact the Americans. When he reached French lines he was told Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of the allied forces, would meet him, but the meeting never took place. Afterwards, Al-Khoei went into exile."

That's the one. We said we'd help them in an uprising, but our help never materialized. As Iran came into Iraq, expecting help from Iraqi shi'a, they were met with lots of resistance.

Here's a link on the iran-iraq war and the US involvement. Also, the wikipedia page is relatively good on the specifics. The iran-iraq war was the one where the US had sold Iran almost all the weapons it had, and then when Iraq invaded Iran, the US saw an opportunity to fund and arm Iraq (since the soviets backed out of the partnership). That was when we shipped them all the biological weapons materials. See also link.

Entirely my mixup.

all are available on the web:
http://www.chomsky.info/audionvideo.htm
http://www.zmag.org/chomskyaudio.htm

zmag has further links to similiar audio files.

enjoy!

The accellerating attacs on civil liberties and human rights, in particular under Bush II, are very worrysome. The new General Attorney is the very same man that wrote in a memorandum that the Geneva Convention is obsolete when it come to "the war on terror". That torture could be done. Who are now the bad guys? It's sure is getting confusing :

"This so-called ill treatment and torture in detention centers, stories of which were spread everywhere among the people, and later by the prisoners who were freed ... were not, as some assumed, inflicted methodically, but were excesses committed by individual prison guards, their deputies, and men who laid violent hands on the detainees."

Most people who hear this quote today assume it was uttered by a senior officer of the Bush administration. Instead, it comes from one of history's greatest mass murderers, Rudolf Hoess, the SS commandant at Auschwitz. Such a confusion demonstrates the depth of the United States' moral dilemma in its treatment of detainees in the war on terror.

You say democracy is inferior to the market because in a democracy your vote does not count if you lose. Well, in the market, there is property. That is the essence of the market. However, most property in the market is jointly owned. And such property is controlled through VOTING. Ever heard of shareholders or owners VOTING? Happens all the time with publicly and privately owned entities. From corporations that sell their stock on the NYSE to condo homeowners' associations. Many such entities are organized to control jointly owned property. And guess what? Just as in democracy, there are winners and losers in such market-oriented VOTING procedures. You need to grow up and realize that your libertarian utopia is just a ideological canard promoted by powerful institutions in order to ideologically ensnare the naive. You are one of these naive, just as I used to be. Read. Learn. You can start here

Wow, if the US really cares so much about UN resolutions that it will go to war for them, these countries are therefore, most definitely, next on the list. Who wants to remind them what happens to countries that violate UN resolutions when the US is still around?

Okay. Here it is.

In 2000, "issue awareness"--knowledge of the stands of the candidate-producing organizations on issues--reached an all-time low. Currently available evidence suggests it may have been even lower in 2004. About 10 percent of voters said their choice would be based on the candidate's "agendas/ideas/platforms/goals": 6 percent for Bush voters, 13 percent for Kerry voters (Gallup). The rest would vote for what the industry calls "qualities" or "values," which are the political counterpart to toothpaste ads.

You're distracted by the movies, which have nothing to do with the science of global climate change. It's like sending a guy to Washington because he played a killer robot from the future convincingly. The chaos starting to become evident in our atmosphere is the subject of lots of increasingly alarming science from not only reputable scientists, but from the overwhelming consensus of their community. As well as the head of oil giant Shell. And the head of insurance giant Lloyd's. Some serious predictions show the Antarctic is melting at a rate now that will raise the seas 15' in the next 100 years. That means a 50% chance the Gulf Stream change, dropping temperature by 5'C - which itself means a 70% chance that the Gulf Stream will stop completely by 2200. Those probabilities are very high - well beyond the threats we otherwise take deadly seriously. Denying it as some kind of Hollywood stunt wouldn't even rate a grade B movie plot.

How about this ?
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?Sectio nID=57&ItemID=7205

[the] Economist, reliably the most insightful English-language news publication ...

I read the Guardian Weekly. Quite basic news. Real insights are in the Z - Magazine If you're up for a subscription, subscribe here. The Economist mostly offers straightforward right-wing myths and propaganda. Quite easy to spot, so Hemos surprise me.

Stephan

[the] Economist, reliably the most insightful English-language news publication ...

I read the Guardian Weekly. Quite basic news. Real insights are in the Z - Magazine If you're up for a subscription, subscribe here. The Economist mostly offers straightforward right-wing myths and propaganda. Quite easy to spot, so Hemos surprise me.

Stephan

Here we go. From an interview (April 2003 ) vith Noam Chomsky , University Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, founder of the modern science of linguistics and political activist :

Ramachandran :The idea that Iraq represents any kind of clear and present danger is, of course, without any substance at all.

Chomsky : Nobody pays any attention to that accusation, except, interestingly, the population of the United States.

In the last few months, there has been a spectacular achievement of government-media propaganda, very visible in the polls. The international polls show that support for the war is higher in the United States than in other countries. That is, however, quite misleading, because if you look a little closer, you find that the United States is also different in another respect from the rest of the world. Since September 2002, the United States is the only country in the world where 60 per cent of the population believes that Iraq is an imminent threat - something that people do not believe even in Kuwait or Iran.

Furthermore, about 50 per cent of the population now believes that Iraq was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre. This has happened since September 2002. In fact, after the September 11 attack, the figure was about 3 per cent. Government-media propaganda has managed to raise that to about 50 per cent. Now if people genuinely believe that Iraq has carried out major terrorist attacks against the United States and is planning to do so again, well, in that case people will support the war.

As a /. geek I'm sure you now are able to Google for the actual polls yourself. And before you claim that Chomsky's number are made up, I suggest you actually learn more about the man.

Striking. Barry Deutsch did a funny cartoon on exactly this subject almost two years ago. Is this life imitating art or is it a running gag in the US?

Hope I dont come across as insulting but the bottom line is it is a class war. The example of Saddam Hussein killing Turks and Kurds was the same thing, those with power and money wanting to put down Iran. They used Saddam, gave him the horrible weapons he used against both Irani soldiers and Iraqi civilians. It doesnt matter if the perps were solely from the Reagan administration or the Thatcher administration or the French or Russian. The bottom line is and was that human beings (western ppl like you and eastern ppl like the poor iraqi and irani saps) are considered expendable and unless we the people stop allowing those in power to use us we (regardless of which nation state we belong to) will continue to be killed to further someone elses agenda. I hope I didnt sound patronizing but from where I stand, Bush Blair Saddam the Saudi leaders Ariel Sharon , the late Arafat are all equally culpable and all equally evil. Please read the following if/when you have some spare time.
Mesopotamia. Babylon. The Tigris and Euphrates by Arundhati Roy
Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy (Buy One, Get One Free) by Arundhati Roy

That was the url for zmag itself. Here is the ZBLOG url

Blogs, websites, yeah. Not much tv news for me, though. I don't have cable, so no jon stewart for me. Anyway, he is pretty much a hack himself. He never talks about populist or leftist economics, from what I can tell. He is a "social liberal", not an "economics liberal." He looks at things from a social leftist perspective, i.e., a politically correct perspective.

THat is what is wrong with the democratic party today--they cater to the socially leftist latte-sipping yuppies and yuppie wannabes. Social leftists are all about gay rights, women's rights, affirmative action, abortion rights, tree hugging, war from a social leftist perspective, as opposed to a economics leftist perspective. Yeah, some of the democratic party activists like you see online are both, but the media hardly ever shows that side of it. It is almost all social leftism.

Does Jon Stewart ever mention a wealth tax or progressive taxation? OK, he has a comedy show. not an academic show. But I know that he works socially leftist thought into his show. So why not economic leftist thought? Because he is fairly rich, and economic leftism would take away some of his money?

Anyway, here is the best blog: Zblog! of Znet. Good stuff there! :-)

then ask why Kofi Annan and company were personally involved in the Oil for Food scandal.

There is absolutely no evidence that Kofi Annan has personally profited from the oil-for-food program.

Remember, this program was set up at the behest of the US, with support from the UK and was, according to UNICEF, responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?Sectio nID=15&ItemID=6861

>The Antibushites use it as if it were an article of faith
What conservatives need to start understanding: not everything is about electoral politics. It's not just a case of "Bush is teh suX0r".
Try and think outside those very limited parameters.

>I've seen various activists hold press conferences and spout all sorts of fantasy figures, and not a single reporter questions any of them. No one asks "how were these figures obtained".
this one did. And came to a very different conclusion than you.
Of coarse this person is coming from a leftist perspective, but that doesn't mean you should ignore what they say. Ever consider that your own idealogical biases may have come in to play regarding your own analysis of this?

Worst would be to help recalling a democratically elected president in another country.

The mass murders and deportations of Albanians did not occur until after NATO bombings. There had been a conflict, ethnic in nature, but the casualties were not high until after NATO got involved. The "ethnic cleansing" was anticipated by NATO commanders as retalliation from their bombings; it is not known whether they just assumed Serbia would back down, or whether they were just indifferent.

See Edward Herman's "The NATO-Media Lie Machine" if you are interested.

Actually, right now the Republican party _has_ been pulled to the center.
Premptive war, tax cuts and increased military spending despite a huge deficit, rollbacks on civil liberties, ever-increasing influence for religious fundementalists... if this is the center than God help us all.

the democrats have been nearly entirely taken over by the radical left
You have to be joking.
Take some time to read what's going on in the radical left - here and here are good places to start (BTW - when I checked the counterpunch link, the headline was "The Democratic Party: an Advanced State of Decay"). The big rift going on with those people right now is whether or not voters should back Kerry in swing states so Bush doesn't get elected - all under the pretense that Kerry is horrible and any sane person would rather vote for Nader or the Green Party. The assumption is that Bush = Kerry = Capitalist Pigs.
At any rate, the plans of the Democratic Party do not coincide with the radical left AT ALL. These absurd proclamations that Marxists, hippies and Anarchists are secretly running the Democratic agenda are baseless. The Democratic Party is run by the DNC, which is a centrist, business-oriented group. Which is why we have John Kerry running for president instead of Howard Dean.

It's a perfectly natural reaction for anyone to look at "the other side" and see their exremists as behind everything that goes on. A good example of this is the situation in Israel. Lots of leftists think that the radical settlers control the government - while in reality they are talking about assasinating Sharon because they feel he is giving too much to the Palestinians. Or the Red Scare in the US, when McCarthy had congress and the public convinced that die-hard communists were behind every labor movement and human rights group. While expansionist settlers do help shape Israeli policy, and some labor organizers were communists, radicals do not run the world.

Well said!

However... the government would have too much to lose if it were to outlaw all TV/Radio/films/newspapers/et cetera, as they can be very useful for spin/propaganda.

The same goes for the Geneva Convention, and US strong opposition to the International Criminal Court. In Bush & Co.: War Crimes and Cover-Up we have

But evidence of war crimes by the Bush administration - notably Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush - continues to emerge. And in spite of Bush's renunciation of the International Criminal Court, many people around the world are clamoring for Bush and his deputies to be held accountable. In the words of Yale law professor Bruce Ackerman: "It is one thing to protect the armed forces from politicized justice; quite another, to make it a haven for suspected war criminals."

Thats funnny there was no outrage from the left and democrats in general when Clinton bommbed Iraq, and Serbia..

Right about the Democrats, wrong about the Castro-supporting left. The far left (Ali, Chomsky, etc) was vocally opposed to the bombings of Iraq and Serbia.
If you meant the Dr. Phill-watching, Hillary-Clinton supporting, yuppie limoseine-liberal "left", you were right. But the pinkos were at least consistant on this one.

Hm, I can't say I share your interpretation of that quote.

First of all, you need to look at the context. This speech is quite obviously an attempt to smooth over the tense international situation with recycled, fluffy rhethoric, with very little credibility to back it up. I'm not going to do a complete dissection of the speech, but just to pull out a couple of random examples:

"The American people respect the idealism that gave life to this organization. And we respect the men and women of the U.N., who stand for peace and human rights in every part of the world."

The US may find it convenient to use UN resolutions as a justification for their actions when it suits them. But when the General Assembly and Security Council votes against US interests, often overwhelmingly so (ie only the US, sometimes with Israeli support, opposed), the US vetoes the vote and dismisses the UN as irrelevant. The US doesn't seem to have anything but contempt for "the idealism that gave birth to [the UN]".

"Today, the Iraqi and Afghan people are on the path to democracy and freedom."

The current US administration often uses freedom and democracy as a justification for their actions. However, history shows that the one and only criteria for how "good" a country is is how well they serve US interests - freedom and democracy is never part of the assessment, as the US relationship with Saudi Arabia clearly demonstrates (as well as the links i posted earlier).

So Bush's words are rather meaningless once you investigate the actions of the US, instead of simply listening to the rhethoric. Now, to the actual quote:

"For too long, many nations, including my own, tolerated, even excused, oppression in the Middle East in the name of stability. Oppression became common, but stability never arrived. We must take a different approach."

I must say that there is a huge difference between "tolerating oppression" and overthrowing a democratically-elected governmment and installing a brutal dictator (which arguably led to the Iranian revolution in 1979). And the stability Bush mentions surely must be stability for US interests rather than stability of the region (the illegal US support for Iran during the Iran-Iraq war most certainly was not in the name of stability).

Now, the US definitely isn't the only country with blood on it's hands, Europe's history is even more brutal, and Stalin's Soviet Union surely was no picnic either. However, in recent times US has had unprecedented power, and it is vital that the US uses it's power in accordance with and support of international law and humanitarian principles, rather than undermining them.

Well, I've rambled on far too long already. If you are interested in a critical analysis of US foreign policy I'd recommend reading Noam Chomsky - you may not agree with everything he says, but the facts he presents are quite illuminating.

Noam Chomsky has his blog: Turning the tide.

The Daily Kos (Scoop software)

The Washington Monthly (Movable Type)

Chomsky's Turning the Tide (pay to play: ironic? no, he's just to busy to respond to anonymous comments)

The Washington Note (MT; by a good friend of Josh Marshall)

Ed Fitzgerald's Unfutz (MT maybe; has the best poll aggregations)

Indeed. This is a very informative book, which concludes that the media have a power-friendly bias. I've yet to see a detailed, convincing rebuttal of the conclusions.

The book is quite heavy weight, and anyone looking for a lighter, more accessible introduction to the subject should get a copy of the film documentary "Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media" (available on Amazon).

To elaborate a little on some of the ideas in the parent post... in a totalitarian society it doesn't matter what you think - if you step out of line, the torture chamber will take care of things. In modern Western society we don't have such brutal means of control, so it's far more important for those 'with power' to concern themselves with what people think. Hence the importance people with real power and wealth place on influence over the media. And they do influence the mdeia through a number of means.

Much of the modern media, for example, takes the form of huge corporations, ecah themselves being part of larger conglomerates: the tv networks, newpapers, and so on. They make their money through advertising, and if they start to lose advertising (because of their content), their profits dip. If that happens, CEO's get fired. And so on.

There are also litigious avenues that can be used to influence the media, as well as others. It's well outline in Ed Hermann's propaganda model.

And it's not a so much a conspiracy, as a feature of the system.

See also:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/audiointerviews/profi lepages/chomskyn1.shtml
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/mc/index.cfm
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/interviews/9602-big-id ea.html

Indeed. This is a very informative book, which concludes that the media have a power-friendly bias. I've yet to see a detailed, convincing rebuttal of the conclusions.

The book is quite heavy weight, and anyone looking for a lighter, more accessible introduction to the subject should get a copy of the film documentary "Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media" (available on Amazon).

To elaborate a little on some of the ideas in the parent post... in a totalitarian society it doesn't matter what you think - if you step out of line, the torture chamber will take care of things. In modern Western society we don't have such brutal means of control, so it's far more important for those 'with power' to concern themselves with what people think. Hence the importance people with real power and wealth place on influence over the media. And they do influence the mdeia through a number of means.

Much of the modern media, for example, takes the form of huge corporations, ecah themselves being part of larger conglomerates: the tv networks, newpapers, and so on. They make their money through advertising, and if they start to lose advertising (because of their content), their profits dip. If that happens, CEO's get fired. And so on.

There are also litigious avenues that can be used to influence the media, as well as others. It's well outline in Ed Hermann's propaganda model.

And it's not a so much a conspiracy, as a feature of the system.

See also:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/audiointerviews/profi lepages/chomskyn1.shtml
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/mc/index.cfm
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/interviews/9602-big-id ea.html

I urge you to read documents that have now been released relating to Nicaragua (US displaced popular govt), Iran (US displaced democratic govt), Indonesia (US assisted displacement of democratic govt, replaced with tyrant who, by own admission, quickly killed over 500K people), Laos, Cambodia... The list goes on.

None of this is reported. WHY!

Noam Chomsky provides some good insight into this, ideas that are parallel, but deeper, that this article.

What you just said is actually 100% false. Nearly every poll I've seen that bothered to ask the question has confirmed that Iraqis do not want the United States to pull its troops out of Iraq immediately precisely because they believe that without U.S. troops the security situation would be that much worse.

Unsuprising. Since you are counting percentages, you get a 0 out of 1 for contradicting yourself.

Seriously, no one can say with any legitimacy whatsoever that they can't see any increase in freedoms and opportunities.

Did you even know that in the oft-mentioned coalition in 1991 U.S. troops made up an even higher percentage of the total forces than they have in this conflict?

No. URL?

...at one point [Goldberg] strays into territory that can actually be put to a test. That's when he claims that the media "pointedly identify conservative politicians as conservatives," but rarely use the word "liberal" to describe liberals.

In fact, I did find a big disparity in the way the press labels liberals and conservatives, but not in the direction that Goldberg claims. On the contrary: the average liberal legislator has a thirty percent greater likelyhood of being identified with a partisan label than the average conservative does. The press describes Barney Frank as a liberal two-and-a-half times as frequently as it describes Dick Armey as a conservative. It gives Barbara Boxer a partisan label almost twice as often as it gives one to Trent Lott. And while it isn't surprising that the press applies the label conservative to Jesse Helms more often than to any other Republican in the group, it describes Paul Wellstone as a liberal twenty percent more frequently than that.

There's more in Nunberg's article, if you care to read it.

I was reading slashdot, and he left a message for me.

Give me all your money - I know who you are. ps. I accept paypal

So I clicked away as fast as I could and started reading fark - but he was one step ahead.

If you don't give me all your money I'll disable your SETI@home account!

I was terrified. This guy was good. So I thought I'd try something else, I went to google news - how was he doing this? There in the headlines:

iraqWarDeathToll++;
Stem Cells blocked by extremists citing Satan - Christopher Reeve unavailable for comment.
I Said Send Me Your Money.
jobsAvailable--;

I'd had enough, I turned off my computer and ran to a newspaper.

95% of the money in the world controlled by 5% of the population, 50% controlled by 1%.
Economic middle-class taxes and expenses rising - wages stagnant.
Super-rich get tax break on overseas investements.
Incumbent campaigns to convince citizens that they will be rich - fights for lower taxes.

And I realized there wasn't anyone stalking me. The messages weren't directed at me alone, but at me as a member of the economic middle-class. I thought I was a bully's target, and I guess in a way I am. I'm personally affected by every corrupt policy, every writ of habeas corpus, every war, every genocide.

VOTE, if you care.

What we really need are some mods for America's Army, like AA: KP and Latrine Duty or AA: Abu Ghraib.

And of course, like AA : Slaughtering Civilians In Falluja :

It (clinic) started with just three doctors, but since the Americans bombed one of the hospitals, and were currently sniping people as they attempted to enter/exit the main hospital, effectively there were only 2 small clinics treating all of Falluja. The other has been set up in a car garage.

As I was there, an endless stream of women and children who'd been sniped by the Americans were being raced into the dirty clinic, the cars speeding over the curb out front as their wailing family members carried them in.

One woman and small child had been shot through the neck -- the woman was making breathy gurgling noises as the doctors frantically worked on her amongst her muffled moaning.

The small child, his eyes glazed and staring into space, continually vomited as the doctors raced to save his life.

After 30 minutes, it appeared as though neither of them would survive.

One victim of American aggression after another was brought into the clinic, nearly all of them women and children.

This scene continued, off and on, into the night as the sniping continued.

what they're doing is a perfectly viable form of non-violent direct action. they're using technology to create the world they want rather than asking for it. i think they're doing a great thing.

would you say that interrupting the workings of the Nazi party is a bad thing? how about interrupting the working of some unnamed party who rounds up individuals off the street, without trial, and holds them in jail for years without access to lawyers, torturing them all the while?

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&edition=us&ie=as cii&q=guantanamo+&btnG=Search+News

should we protect the speech of mass murderers who indiscriminately kill innocent people?

http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2003/s821954.htm
http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?item ID=5308&sectionID=15
http://iraqbodycount.net/

this is the digital equivalent of blocking a street to interrupt the convention. they're just holding people responsible for their actions. believe me, most of the world is vey much in support of trying to stop our government right now.

lastly, should we try to physically stop a government which is even willing to jail people for LINKING to contraband information?

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=sher man+austin&btnG=Google+Search

This is completely false. The much publicized PIPA poll that linked the source of news to beliefs showed that 50% of Americans believed there was some link between Saddam and al Qaida (which means that half the nation believes there is no link).

How about this, this, and this? At least half thought that some of the hijackers were Iraqi. My apologies for saying "most" before. Only some thought that most were. As for half believing there was no link, apparently 36% couldn't answer the question.

I can't believe you're trying to say that the U.S. public is/was well informed about the war in Iraq. Look at where everyone gets their information from.

"The Future Force Warrior will be a responsive and formidable member of an invincible battle space team" (emphasis mine)

That the world operates under a free market is a myth my friend.

Think: US taxpayers pay for the military budget. Military helps invent things for the tech industry (like the Internet). Tech industry uses this free R&D to profit. That is the government subsidizing businesses. Not strict free market.

Think: Import/export tariffs.

Think: The recent article on Slashdot describing public subsidies of football stadiums.

Academics can be as dangerously biased as anyone else. A trawl through academic history in the 1930's and the whole sorry "arian race" saga shows just how easily 'academia' is corrupted.

Here is an article, The Corruption (and Redemption) of Science , about more recent problems in science. But some of those problems, like funding, appears to be age old....

FAIR is good for matter of fact type analysis, but for more analytical approach I read zmag.

It has my kind of "bias"... a bias that does not rationalize imperialism through convenient morality.

Plus, there are still hundreds of unaccounted-for surface-to-air missles hiding somewhere.

I'd at least wait until the SAM caches are found and the CPA misinformation stops.

Then, read James Lowen's _Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your High School History Texbook Got Wrong_ to see how your mind has unknowingly been filled with nationalist and consumer crap (despite your technical proclivities). Also check out Howard Zinn. Learn to live simply and frugally so you have more options:

If you have started doing all that, by now you are primed to begin to question what education really means.

And further, to even question why people need to work and what it should mean to do useful things.

You'll have time to read great minds like Bertrand Russel and Freeman Dyson.

Then you can accept you are still stuck in a stupid system.

But you'll be positioned to make the best of it and yet still see how the world can be a made better place to for the bulk of humanity and other creatures.

Always remember in your darker hours to at least ask yourself the question, "Can life be made worth living?" And in your brighter hours, remember to ask yourself if you are playing a finite (to win) game or an infinite (to play) game?

And, finally, for continual inspiration, read _Voyage From Yesteryear_ by James P. Hogan.

Now go out and take some educated risks to try to make life worth living -- despite your future happiness possibilities already almost being ruined by being convinced you that you are "bright" just because you know some technical things (same thing almost happened to me).

It could also be deliberate deception. Noam Chomsky calls this the doctrine of change of course.

The content of the doctrine is: "Yes, in the past we did some wrong things because of innocence or inadvertence. But now that's all over, so let's not waste any more time on this boring, stale stuff."

The doctrine is dishonest and cowardly, but it does have advantages: It protects us from the danger of understanding what is happening before our eyes. --Noam Chomsky

The quote about "the past is over" is interestingly typical of Dubyaspeak. It sounds like nonsense, but if you look at it closely, it's actually the most pernicious form of deception. It would be very convenient for his puppet masters if we were to all forget about all that old boring stuff from history, wouldn't it?

I may not have phrased that perfectly, I didn't mean that the PATRIOT act stops all free speech, but as shown here they do have the power to silence you if you are involved in a PATRIOT act case. It's a slippery slope.

An extract from that article: ACLU lawyers and their client are also disputing a section of the law that prohibits an entity that receives a National Security Letter request for information from telling anyone about the request. Ironically, this gag order is the same rule that prohibits the ACLU and John Doe from talking about many aspects of their case.

In the specific case of the First Amendment, read about the Kasky vs. Nike case, where a Kasky used a California law to sue Nike for allegedly false statements about sweatshops. Nike tried to have the case dismissed in a CA court as violating its First Amendment rights, i.e. they claimed the First Amendment give it the right to lie, while at the same time not admitting they lied. The CA court disagreed, and ruled the statements in question (a letter from a Nike executive to press) were "commercial speech" and not subject to the same level of protection as First Amendment protected speech. Nike appealed to the US Supreme Court, which at first accepted to hear the case, then later reversed itself and punted it back to the CA Supreme Court to first decide on whether Nike did in fact lie or not. Thus, the question of whether corporations have full First Amendment rights has not yet been definitely settled.

Whether it should or not is a value judgment. Opinions differ. I personally don't believe it should apply to non-humans, but I can see how groups like the ACLU or the EFF would be muzzled if they did not have rights (oh wait, this is happening already).