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AT&T CEO Attacks Network Neutrality
Verteiron writes "The former CEO of AT&T, Ed Whitacre, had some interesting remarks to make about Net Neutrality during his parting speech. Choice quotes include his plans for getting anti-neutrality legislation through: "Will Congress let us do it?" Whitacre asks his colleagues. "You bet they will — cuz we don't call it cashin' in. We call it 'deregulation.' "
More information on AT&T's attitude problem and a video of the speech are available. There's no sign that his replacement is any better."
Why does AT&T hate America?
I guess if they wanted to change, the old boss could have done that; Since they don't want to change the company's direction, it's just logical to get a new CEO with the same mind.
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
I once tried attacking network neutrality, however I ended up in hospital having a wifi antenna removed from parts indescribable.
liqbase
no other companies will work with AT&T since they are evil and who would want to be associated with an evil company...oh wait...
:-) It's a joke....relax...
C:\>ping google.com
Resolved "google.com" to [64.233.167.99]
Hello! Welcome to AT&T PingSelect(tm). Please enter in milliseconds your desired ping time to website "google.com".
>25
Unfortunately, website "google.com" is not available at that ping time. Please contact the website administrator and advise them to upgrade their AT&T PingSelect(tm) package if you wish to ping website "google.com" at this value. Please select another time in milliseconds.
>50
Unfortunately, website "google.com" is not available at that ping time. Please contact the website administrator and advise them to upgrade their AT&T PingSelect(tm) package if you wish to ping website "google.com" at this value. Please select another time in milliseconds.
>100
Pinging google.com [64.233.167.99] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 64.233.167.99: bytes=32 time=100ms TTL=247
Reply from 64.233.167.99: bytes=32 time=101ms TTL=247
Reply from 64.233.167.99: bytes=32 time=101ms TTL=247
Reply from 64.233.167.99: bytes=32 time=100ms TTL=247
Ping statistics for 64.233.167.99:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 100ms, Maximum = 101ms, Average = 101ms
C:\>
Reminds me of Bush's candid comments we got to see in Fahrenheit 9-11. "This is an impressive crowd - the haves and the have-mores. Some people call you the elites; I call you my base."
Question: did this guy know there was a camera rolling?
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I mean look at how well "deregulation" worked in the airline industry? More people can fly, flights are cheaper, to more destinations... crammed into tiny airplanes with more people... lousier food... more delays... bad customer service... bankruptcies... never mind.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
For those Americans here who are of voting age, I suggest you start voicing opinions to congress speak to your management if you are in the telco/networking field and make noise. All this "wah wah wah" on a forum is pointless. Sure I can hear you, the trolls can hear you, but I doubt political parties can hear you. Start filling up those blogs of parties who want to "strike a pose" on the technology sector "We're hip... We have a blog" ... Oh so you do Senator Whatever... Start /.'ing them for straightforward answers, comments and plans. Anything else is just linenoise
Infiltrated dot Net
I suggest we combine some tactics that are known to work.
Back in ancient times, the UAW would target ONE company for a strike, in order to get an agreement that could be used later as leverage with the others. Say what you like about the state of the auto industry today, but the tactic worked with great effect.
Next, we have the NRA, and their targeted boycotts. When they were unhappy with Smith and Wesson's push for high-tech gun locks, they instituted a very effective boycott. Their manufacturing slowed to a crawl as sales tanked. S&W was sold at a fire sale price as a result. The CEO landed at some lawnmower company. I heard the NRA considered boycotting the lawnmowers as well.
We can't boycott all of the ISPs at the same time, but we COULD pick one and boycott them. Even the dimmest bulb in the executive suite can understand poor revenue and trace it back to customer unrest.
Wow CEO of telecom says "We want more control and more money"
What a surprise.
"You bet they will -- cuz we don't call it cashin' in. We call it 'deregulation.'
I don't call it customer satisfaction. I call it screw'n them over.
I hope the fuzzier minded GOP congressmen don't get too confused on this - the "deregulation" banner AT&T are flying under sounds good but consider the financial equity markets: heavily regulated and you won't find an investment banker (paragons of free market capitalism) who'd want it any other way. Certain foundation structures like markets, networks need to be regulated to keep them neutral, transparent & useful. This enables freedom, paradoxical perhaps but pretty obvious.
Now, after a lot of ISP/webhost consolidation, some of the biggies want to reintroduce performance tiering. To differentiate commodity IP transport into various service levels. That's elementary marketing to capture increased revenue from those customers willing to pay more.
I'm far from certain this is a bad thing. Instead of everyone having the same (erratic) latency, some people will pay for better, and the rest will get slightly worse. Frankly, I'm far more concerned about preserving competition between ISPs at all levels, from comsumer last-mile broadband up through the long-haul links.
The people running these companies always espouse the advantages of the free market, how essential it is for their survival. And yet, these same jerks will be the first ones crying for government protection the second they start feeling threatened. All this serves to do is erode confidence in the free market system. Inevitably, once people start catching on to what's going on they start calling for excessive government control which can end up doing more harm than good. You'd think these idiots at these companies would be wary of that sort of backlash. Ultimately, it's not the system that's the problem but rather lobbyists, corrupt politicians, and an ignorant population.
That's the ultimate problem here. People don't know this is going on, first of all. I suppose the media doesn't deem it exciting enough to report this. But it wouldn't make a difference if they did because most people likely wouldn't care. Even worse, they probably wouldn't even see anything wrong with what AT&T wants to do.
People have gotten so used to paying for every little thing that they be able to justify AT&T's position. I suspect that's one of the underlying motivations for this trend. Companies are realizing just how tolerant consumers are of this nonsense. I've read that recent studies have found that consumers are growing increasingly comfortable with monthly payments. A company can raise rates on a regular basis and few complain.
People like to whine about gasoline prices, but Americans are still paying far less than most of the rest of the world. And it's still cheaper per gallon that a lot of other things they consume. They're getting screwed worse in other ways and don't even realize it or even care. It's frustrating sometimes to see all this ignorance and to see this disdain for the people on the part of the politicians.
So a good friend of mine works for the phone company here in my region. His attitude toward net neutrality is the same as the "former"CEO. I can understand their side of the story though.
Let's say that your company spent BILLIONS of dollars rolling out new Fibre across the nation and then you were told that you cannot charge for access to that net?
Deregulation isn't always a bad thing but in this case i think it will destroy many a business that can't or won't pay to play with the big-boys.
Call your reps my fellow Americans, this is still our country!
When AT&T merged with Bellsouth, they agreed to Net Neutrality for 30 months. I'll bet, because this is the pattern with the ILECs and particularly SBC and AT&T (SBC and AT&T merged), that they do their darnedest to get tollbooth legislation in before the window ends. Why? Why not wait? Because these guys just absolutely do things that way. If they do something above-board and honest, it leaves them with a bad taste in their mouths.
I give that legislation (if it passes) 29 months from the merger date. If we get past 30 months, it'll never pass.
Well, all you Americans tell me that your country is special because you have a magic written constitution. And in this it says that Americans must always be allowed to carry guns.
Your comentators all give the reason for this as a means of defending yourselves against government tyranny. So, when are you going to start using them and justify the clause? Or do we have to come over and do it for you?
Some 20 years ago, I had lunch with Ed. Sat right next to him. I was a snot-nosed new hire and he was pumping me full of "Bell Juice".
Anyway, he told me his biggest dream was to reunite AT&T. I thought "yeah, right", but looking back, it is clear that he was going to do anything he could to make his dream a reality. He did it.
Not that I think AT&T remerging was a good idea, but I admire his tenacity.
That said, I wish AT&T was broken up again. It's really annoying when I'm having DSL problems, which AT&T Internet Services can't seem to fix, so they blame the phone company (Also AT&T) and my telephone (Again, carrying the AT&T brand label). When I point out to the manager that they're all AT&T, and why can't they get together and fix the problem, I was told "big companies don't work that way". AAAARRRGGGHHH!!!!!
Including CmdrTaco? This is obviously a joke, so please don't take those quotes seriously ...
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
Unfortunately my non-AT&T ISP throttles my bandwidth to any page than mentions AT&T. It took me 30 minutes just to post this.
You want access to public easements to run your fiber? You play by common carrier rules. The public owns that land and are granting you temporary, paid rights to use it and reserve the right to revoke it at any time, including seizing ownership of anything on that land. You lose temporary rights when you start serving yourself instead of serving the public.
If you don't like the rules, don't play them. Other companies will step up where you fail and provide the service the public demands and deserves.
I say we pay any company that doesn't want to be regulated and commit to net neutrality can pull out now at no cost. The amount of money invested into providing internet service for the public will be tallied and then all cuts and grants given to the company for the purpose of providing internet services will be subtracted from that tally, along with any profits the company gained through providing internet services to the public. If the final number is above 0 then that means the company hasn't made a net profit and so the government will give them the balance, otherwise they get to walk away with a bit of extra coin in their pocket. Then the government can either run the internet itself or give it to a private company that will follow a few simple rules. I'm sure there are many companies that would leap at the chance to get their hands on all of that cabling.
Let's pray to God Oh heavenly father, bless all us rich people especially AT&T and energy for we are better than everyone else and people with more money are better than those without money... may all the poor burn in hell and rich people go to heaven in your rich name...AMEN
Except Iraq proves you're not sitting it out and are instead rushing in to claim the 20th century's gold. I'm sure many throughout the world would be quite happy if you didn't lie yourself into another oil grab.
Maybe it was when the courts broke up their happy family? Now that they got it back together they are out for revenge? AT&T Part VI: Ma Bell Lives?
s/©//g
which is: ubiquitous encryption. Developers need to get behind initiatives
like BTNS (do a google search). Encrypt everything, and what is your
service provider going to do? This is a test, there is a response, but
it's even more difficult that protocol filtering.
We have a problem, this air neutrality thing. Air -- made of oxygen and other gasses -- is a valuable commodity. We all pay for it, since it's cheaper for us to pollute recklessly, but we don't. Why can't we charge for it? Neutral air is a threat to our economy and the basis of our great nation.
I think I was just born in the wrong time. I don't understand the motivation for our economy, for our government, for our mass media. It seems like we have lost sight of what really gives life importance, and I miss that vision of clarity of that importance I had during childhood. C'est la vie, but how does the story end?
technical writing / development
Let's put apart the issue of whether net neutrality would be good / bad for the Internet. Do we want the government involved in regulating the Internet ? HELL NO! It is government regulation that made AT&T what it is today. Regulating for net neutrality would be like curing a burn with a flamethrower.
\u262D = \u5350
Cause he's right and it's a good idea.
It's called AOL, and people voted against it with their dollars.
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Mussolini
AT&T and all the big telcos can have their net neutrality repealed. In return, AT&T and all the telcos will give back all of the government's money, adjusted for inflation and bearing the prime rate of interest, that was given to them as investments, tax breaks, and other "incentives" to build up their network. Shake on it?
I can't think of much less funny than the prospect of something analogous to this. Shitbags like Whitacre should be called out for their disgustingly open money grabs. As should their associated bagshits in Congress. Make it loud and clear: the US pioneered the internet, and users here expect, nay DEMAND, that our TAXPAYER FINANCED public networks be available under the most non-descriminatory conditions that can be arranged. This is not negotiable.
While Whitacre and his ilk are busy partying away megamillions, and brazenly demanding even more even though little has been done since 2000 to extend broadband reach here, other countries are passing us by to benefit from our investments.
A modest suggestion: AT&T, try plowing a billion or two back into the infrastructure in this country instead of whining for the ability to double/triple dip on connection charges, and you'll likely notice that your market grows without customers wanting to tar/feather/dismember you and piss on your grave.
Perscriptio in manibus tabellariorum est.
One of my clients wanted an explanation of the net neutrality debate. I told her to consider a place where everyone rode buses (Internet) to get to their destination and there were several different bus services (ISPs). Most bus services offered monthly passes to ride the bus as much as you wanted and buses had individual speed limits set by the individual bus companies. Some people paid extra for passes on higher speed buses. Some budget-conscious people bought less expensive passes for slower speed or less reliable bus services. A few bus services had passes with monthly limits on number of miles. Some bus services sold unlimited monthly passes, but secretly only gave slow buses to customers who rode the bus too much
Now imagine someone had a free public library (Google) that was very popular, so popular in fact that more and more bus passengers wanted to go to that library. Bus companies found that they were carrying lots and lots of people to the library who were using their unlimited monthly passes.
Now also imagine that a store opens that gives away free books. Books are heavy and when people bring home huge books on the bus, the bus runs slower and costs more for the bus company.... but the customer gets it all for their flat-rate monthly pass.
So the bus companies are having to drive more miles and carry heavier loads than they planned... they aren't making money with the flat-rate monthly passes. What should they do?
Network neutrality says a bus company needs to raise the rates on the monthly passes, use mileage limits, or go to tiered services with different rates for different capacities because all destinations they carry people to should be treated equally (neutrality). What AT&T wants to do, is charge the LIBRARY and the STORE for causing so many people to take the bus to their location and for giving away free books that are heavy and more expensive for the buses to carry.
And the problem is there are not enough bus services available to each person... many only have a limited choice of 1 or 2 decent ones (cable, DSL), with lots of REALLY slow ones (dialup).
it is about to end soon, so there is legislation to keep it.
So there isn't any change, despite what you seem to be hearing.
And NN is about not caring what you're carrying. Although it could be argued that QoS is advantageous, what do I care if someone is playing HL2 with low ping when I want to send an email? I'm paying as much per byte as the gamer but they're getting a better service from it.
Anyway, one way around it would be to tunnel my email over the HL/VOIP/Whatever express port. Kind of like when SOAP happened: http was no longer web pages but a gaping hole in your security.
So even QoS isn't justified unless it is sold as a separate channel: e.g. get basic broadband @4Mb/s and for another 5% get a VOIP channel @64kbs. Or, using traffic shaping, but 4Mb/s with a guarantee of 1Mb/s.
TFA, looks like a serious article - listing quotes repeated in slashdot story. Curious
about the accompanying video I click on that. Well surprise! That "video" is a PARODY (funny).
Am I missing something here?
Republicans attack Democrats, Democrats attack Republicans, Microsoft attacks OSS, Iran attacks Israel and US policies, Rosie attacks the Donald, blah, blah, blah...
To post news without editorializing in the post? Slashdot loves net neutrality, we all know. Even if I agree it's a good idea, I can still do without the "More information on AT&T's attitude problem..."
Makes me wish you could moderate OPs or at least give some sort of direct feedback of the same sort.
The dark ages called... They want their AC back.
we need Gore to run for President. He created the internet; so, I'd expect him to protect it.
Why is it getting warm in here?
Kudos to you for making your biases clear. I wish more of others would do the same.
As for GM, Ford and Chrysler the negative effects of the unions extend way beyond financially hijacking the company's future. The unions also lobbied for, and won, workplace rules that placed rigid limits on worker flexibility. So for example at a Toyota or Nissan factory every worker on the floor is expected to spend some time on every machine in the plant so they'll know how to work it to fill in for someone else if they're out sick/vacation...etc. It also helps break up the mind numbing and physically dangerous repetitious monotony of the job. With the American factories this was until say 5 or 6 years ago strictly forbidden. If a manager tried to get the guy who say put the fenders on to move over to the job of putting the doors on a union steward could be called to "remind" the manager that wasn't allowed and threaten stronger action if the manager didn't listen. This hamstrings management's ability to RUN THE DAMN COMPANY.
ALL autoworkers in this country make more than an honest buck. Both the ones working for the Japanese companies and the American companies. The American autoworkers at the moment have the edge on benefits. Of course these benefits aren't going to last much longer as all of the big three are heading towards bankruptcy. What has to be remembered here is these are factory laborers. They're not doing brilliant work here. Its the equivalent of putting sandwiches together at Burger King or McDonalds. Every step of their jobs has already been planed out for them for maximum efficiency and profitability. Its mind and soul killing work. When Henry Ford first created the assembly line he had to pay so much originally because turnover was so high and it wasn't because of physical injuries either. It was just so MONOTONOUS that it was driving people crazy. Its a little better now but the fundamental point of the work hasn't changed, just about ANYONE can do the job. Its extremely simple. Its physical work not mental. This is why wages should not be so high. Simple supply and demand. There's a lot of supply of workers and limited demand. The unions have disconnected that reality from the American part of the industry and thats a big part of the reason why GM, Ford and Chrysler are suffering.
Another thing that should be mentioned is that this isn't the kind of work you should aim to have for life. It pays well for a reason, its dangerous. Make what you need so you can go to school and get a much safer less strenuous occupation or at the very least have enough awareness of your surroundings to move to a company that isn't repeatedly teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
The US Profiteered from the wars in Europe TWICE. Next time you check, don't use Hollywood as your source.
Don't forget the results of deregulating the power grid.
But I'm sure once the general public starts to feel the effects of it, they'll blame Canada for that too.
You can't take the sky from me...
What its about is ISPs faced with the rapid growth of sites like YouTube which their network just cant handle.
They have 3 options:
1.They can increase their prices so that they can afford to expand their network so it can handle the increased amount of multimedia traffic.
2.They can introduce limits on how much you can download so that your $x per month only includes 10GB of transfers or 5GB of transfers or whatever.
or 3.They can throttle access to the high bandwidth multimedia sites unless those sites are willing to pay money to the ISP to cover the fact that the ISPs network cant handle the traffic.
The ISPs don't want to pick option 1 because they would loose customers to other ISPs who didnt pick option 1 (or with networks that aren't yet congested enough for the ISP to need to pick an option)
They don't want to pick option 2 either because most consumers don't have a clue how much bandwidth they are using or how much data they are transferring (unlike, say, phone calls where costs are based on how long you are on the phone which is an easy thing to measure). So if ISPs start setting limits, they would loose customers who would think "I don't want to be hit with a bill at the end of the month and I don't have a clue how much I am downloading so I will find an ISP that has no such restrictions"
So, ISPs faced with increasingly congested networks want to be able to throttle back speeds to known high bandwidth sites. That or have the site pay up to get better treatment.
Anyone who says net neutrality is about QoS or common carrier or anything else is wrong. The issue at stake here is simply that ISPs want to throttle high bandwidth sites and protocols unless they are paid money by the owners of those sites.
They hate us 'cause we're *over *there -- we've been bombing San Antonio for 10 years. I'm suggesting we listen to our enemies and the CIA when it teaches about blowback...
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
I seriously doubt that. Most of the world does nothing, and then whines when we ultimately do what they wanted to do in the first place. There were legitimate reasons for going to Iraq. As a Canadian I spoke with just prior to the war beginning said, Saddam and his family are no good. His own son enjoyed feeding people to a wood chipper feet first and twisting mens arms off.
The reasons for us going to war weren't correct, but you can be sure that oil had very little to do with it. Anytime there is a war in a major oil producing country the price of oil spikes. This really does not benefit us at all. How it is that people assume that it is a matter of oil, when the oil producing nations are the ones which end up with windfall profits is beyond me.
And at any rate, the Australians and British were just involved in this as we were, but yet we are the ones that take all of the heat for it. I don't see the rest of the world taking on Darfur, eventually when we have the man power, we will probably be the ones that have to go in and clean up that mess.
When we send troops we get yelled at for being heavy handed, when we just want to send money we get yelled at for trying to buy our way out of harms way. I don't think that people at this point here really believe that this is anything other than anti-Americanism. If a different country were doing it I would be shocked if people took this sort of a tone over it. Mostly because as the BBC pointed out a while back, the Chinese have anti-satellite weapons, the Russians have a huge nuclear arsenal, and the British have a program of spying on their own citizens that puts anything we could do to shame; but it is clearly us bad Americans that are the worst in the free world.
This Internet's like a great big pussy just waiting to get fucked. I should've come here years ago.
Apologies to the worthy script. None are offered to Ed "cuz" he sounds more like a gangster than the leader of one of the world's largest companies. Shame!
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
'cause the barriers to entry in this market are so incredibly high that you often have no choice. If two providers (the cable and DSL co for a region) do this, that's sufficient.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
You can't take the sky from me...
I am all for deregulation (ya ya mod me down), but AT&T needs to expect that if the market becomes deregulated, that means anybody should be able to lay line down and offer services.
If AT&T starts double (and triple dipping) Google (just an example) could come in, lay down a combination of fiber and wireless and offers a services that are pro network neutrality.
Then the market could let consumers decide which one they want. Instead of government bureaucrats in a city trying to second guess a thousand miles away.
But you ignore the fact that if we did nothing, the face of Europe would be VERY different today.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Remember those flash cartoons during the early days of the Napster "pirating" issue with Metallica and the Napster Bad cartoons? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napster_Bad!. Huge piles of money in the background and big companies screaming that net neutrality bad ...
Bark less. Wag more.
How it is that people assume that it is a matter of oil, when the oil producing nations are the ones which end up with windfall profits is beyond me.
That comes down to two things:
1) The reasons for war given were questionable at the start, and ended up being completely off. Oil is the most valuable thing to us that Iraq has, hence the assumption. Also remember, gaining more control over the supply of oil might be worth paying more for it. Don't just think current price, think future price.
2) When the US installed the new government in Iraq, they privatized many things that were previously run by the government. Many of which were sold to US based companies.
You seem to think that when people claim that "we" went to war for oil, that means that the US went to war for cheaper oil for its citizens. That is not what we mean. We mean that the rich and powerful took us to war to procure a reliable source of oil to sell to US citizens for outrageous profits. See the difference? There is no we. There is them getting rich, and you getting fucked.
And it's not just oil. We have outsourced much of our armed services to private contractors. The military industrial complex is having a field day, and making record profits. Citizens are scared into accepting all sorts of draconian restrictions. Huge bundles of cash simply disappear. The wealthy and well connected profit. And we lose rather than gain security.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
As a possible explanation of why we Americans are talked about the most, remember that we also have the most well developed (maybe overly developed) news and information system in the world. I'm not sure but I'd guess that our (generally) staunch stand in favor of free press has us being reported on by the most people to the most people. Couple that with the fact that just about every news item reported these days can be viewed on a worldwide basis and you can see why America's 'dirty laundry' gets aired much more often than most other countries of our caliber.
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." -Anon.
Hang on, are you saying that Iraqis are the "murderous, rage infected and hyper-religious chimps"? Because I went all the way through that post before it occurred to me that that you weren't talking about Americans (I am an American, and I am proud of my country, but only up to about 1969. After the moon landing, it's been a pretty steady downhill)
Where pointing out that the emperor has no clothes gets you modded "Offtopic."
Drink your Kook-Aid, YeeHaW_Jelte, and stop steering the conversation toward the truth.
You've been warned.
I don't care why you're posting AC
How it is that people assume that it is a matter of oil, when the oil producing nations are the ones which end up with windfall profits is beyond me.
Exxon is an oil producing nation?
:(){
Ah, what refreshing naiveté. The major assholes in the Bush administration are all associated with Big Oil. Even Colin, who they dropped like a black man at a KKK rally, is in bed with Big Oil. If the prices go up in the mideast, they go up here, too. Perhaps you will recall that US oilmakers are making record profits while at the same time charging record prices and claiming that the price hikes reflect their costs. That should be sufficient support for my argument.
It's not just about oil. It's also about the military-industrial complex, which cannot produce profits when there is not a state of war. And it's about Halliburton being chosen by fiat (not Fiat, mind you) as the company to rebuild Iraq.
Yes, it's strikingly similar to the situation vis-a-vis computer geeks and Microsoft.
In both cases, the bad reputation has been earned.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'm sorry, but the war was motivated by oil. It won't result in cheap, plentiful oil for the US, but it keeps it out of the hands of India and China.
It isn't about getting oil. It's just about denying it to others who cannot afford it. It's the same reason we aren't in Sudan, where legitimate genocide is just being ignored. China and India have that oil all locked up. Sudan is where they produce. Why the fuck would we want to help our economic rivals? We don't. This is global politics.
...sure would be a shame if anything were to happen to that telephone pole of yours that's sitting on my property. You wanna talk free market, let's talk about how much that piece of my real estate you're using is worth.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
We went to war for the oil, the side effect was we got rid of a few bastards. . . There are plenty of other bastards that need to be striken from the face of the earth, but we (america) don't go after them because there is not benefit to the upper ups.
crap.
The core problem is that general use of the internet is slowly requiring more and more bandwidth as sites get fancier and more media heavy. Then there's VOIP and other web applications. Gone are the days of mostly text websites with a few pictures or maybe some Flash. It's not specific sites like YouTube that are the problem.
The ISPs and governments need to start facing the facts that the Internet in general is starting to require more and more bandwidth period. They need to upgrade their hardware and stop talking about laying fiber across the continent, and just do it already.
The Internet is evolving to strain the infrastructure originally put in place for it. The solution is not to stifle that growth, but to upgrade infrastructure to keep pace or even prepare for the future of video on demand and whatever other fun stuff comes next.
We went into Europe twice in the early half of this century in order to prevent the exact thing we went into Iraq to accomplish. You can't use one to justify the other.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
This is not accurate. The pension plans were created voluntarily by the car companies, who feared that union-controlled plans was a threat to the autonomy of business owners. From Malcolm Gladwell's article in the New Yorker:
Unions certainly have their faults, but in this case the car companies have only themselves to blame. What is really scary is the way the story that the unions forced the automakers into a bad deal has become accepted as fact.
It's sad, but IMHO everyone is so busy shooting at the wrong demon that we're ignoring the REAL monster: monopoly access to last-mile infrastructure.
Everyone's favorite example of why we need net neutrality is "we have two real choices for internet access: cable and DSL, both of which are run by big greedy companies that want to create walled gardens and extort sites like Google into paying for access". The thing is, that situation only exists BECAUSE in many parts of the country, you can choose between cable and DSL, but can't choose the company that's actually sitting at the other end of your local loop and providing your access to the internet itself. If cable and DSL were forced to sell local-loop access under open, content-neutral pricing and forced to decouple TV and local phone service from access to the cable/line itself (so you could have DSL without phone service, and/or cable internet without TV), our problems would largely be solved. OK, maybe not the problems faced by people who still don't quite understand the difference between "AOL" and "The Internet", or who think the internet begins and ends at Internet Explorer, but at least the problems of the reasonably-urban Slashdot technorati elite (because as a group, we WILL pay $20/month more to use an ISP whose upstream access is provided by multiple companies with promiscuous private peering of their own).
Force unbundled open access to last-mile infrastructure, and the whole issue of net neutrality becomes moot, and the problem solves itself. There's so much fiber, owned by so many competing parties, sitting in the ground right now that NOBODY could truly create an impenetrable walled garden or strip determined internet users of an escape route as long as small ISPs are guaranteed access to a full-speed connection between their rack at the NAP and the end user (who SHOULD have the ability to prioritize data from other sources if desired, since there are plenty of situations where it would be useful and desirable for end users... as long as THEY, not the last-mile provider, can set the priorities).
So Google will be available to cable users only? I don't see how that helps Google or regular consumers. And then you have to assume that the other major ISPs won't just match AT&T's offer (there's a good chance they'll do just that).
That solution will just split up the internet as far as consumers are concerned. Here's the sites you can get through AT&T: {__,__,__,...}; here's the sites you can get through Comcast: (__,__,__,...}; here's the sites you can get through Verizon: {__,__,__,...}; etc.
(IANAL)
And in other news ... AT&T has leaked information about their plans to buy the US interstate roadway system. "Not only will we be able to charge high tolls for all traffic when they enter and when they exit, but we'll also be able to charge all the cities for access ramp rights. That way we can get overpaid many times for the same thing, just like we do in the telecommunications sector. Highway neutrality is over."
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Hehehe ... let's try to leave Gladwell's article out of this. The blogosphere tore him a new one on that piece -- just check his crappy blog for his attempt to defend it.
But as for the substance of your claim, I don't see how it contradicts my position. The employer, we can agree, offered the company pension as a counterplan to the union pension, and the union accepted this as a valid substitution. Having a job-related pension was the union's idea. My point was that they could have simply used their clout to demand higher wages, and then applied that money to their own retirement accounts, held completely separately from the employer. No, the "Toledo area collective" plan doesn't count. That's still tied to Toledo area employment, with an added layer of unnecessary outside control.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Net neatrality is in the media, but unfortunately not the way we would like. Rather than being covered by reporters who would (hopefully) make some attempt at valid coverage, it is simply covered by the ISPs themselves, who have a vested interest in getting rid of net neatrality.
Example: Who here lives in the midwest and has Mediacom for their ISP? In Iowa and a number of other midwestern states, Mediacom is the big cable company, providing Internet and Television (and they are your only choice, unless you live in an area that can provide DSL). Mediacom (of course) runs commercials about itself on all of its channels for free whenever it feels like it. They are CONSTANTLY running a commercial about net neatrality, in which they do NOTHING but attempt to scare people into it without providing any real information. They never devote even one word to explaining what it is or what it means. Instead, they just make this lie (I'm probably not quite word for word, but I'm 95% there... this is almost exactly what they say, and the last sentence is the exact ending.):
"Net neatrality is a scheme by which the big business multimillion dollar corporations can take more of your money. Just remember: Net neatrality means YOU pay!" (emphasis NOT added by me) Oh, I should also point out that while making this lie, they show a picture of an executive throwing himself down on his bed with money literally raining down all over him.So yeah, I don't even know what to do about this sort of thing. The companies that control the Internet control the content on it, and when they are willing to constantly bombard users with blatant lies... I just don't know what you do about that or how you combat it. Sure, we can all talk about it freely on slashdot, but how do you tell Joe Voter to wake up and fight this if the only thing he sees are lying, one sided commercials every night when he watches his five hours of (corporate provided) TV. All I can say is that this situation really sucks for us.
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
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but you can be sure that oil had very little to do with it.
Are you trolling?
This war was about oil and nothing else. Saddam Hussein is a bad man, sure, but there are plenty of rulers around the world who are just as bad. The difference is that Saddam's badness gave us the justification for war to acquire oil.
Here are two main reasons why we went to war:
-The Saudi Royal family has become too powerful in the US due to our dependence on their oil.
-China is ramping up their industrial economy. They have replaced the US as the number one buyer of resources, which means that the US no longer gets the same place at the bargaining table.
In theory both of those problems can be resolved by the U.S. directly (or indirectly through a puppet government) controlling a major oil producing country.
The Iraq war was meant to give the US that control over middle eastern oil. The problem is that the war was poorly executed by callous men. Huge mistakes were made, stupid mistakes were made, and now our ability to control Iraqi oil is in jeopardy, and so is our national security and prosperity.
The Generation
I'd say something witty here, but I'm not that bright.
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Thank you for the link to Gladwell's blog. I did peruse the comments; from what I could tell, they took issue with his characterization of the dependency ratio - not with his historical account of the creation of the pension plans. So your summary is accurate:
But then you say:
Maybe they could have negotiated this - although,if the union were free to demand higher wages, I should think they would already have done so. Regardless, higher wages in the 1950s would not produce an unfunded liability for the car companies today. The car companies, not the unions, remain responsible for choosing to implement a pay-as-you-go system in the 1950s, then underfunding it. I don't see how the unions can be blamed for that.
And seeing which politicians are willing to sell out America on issues like this has given me a good idea of who not to vote for.
Sadly, the list is pretty damn long at this point.
It sounds like you're saying a simple market doesn't solve the problem of providing bandwidth supply to meet demand.
This might be the case, but I'm skeptical of the reasoning. I have yet to be convinced that telco ISPs really don't have the money to invest in their infrastructure -- are they really spending all their revenues on maintenance? I think they're just hoping to get away without providing additional service or have someone else subsidize this so they don't have to give up their margins.
Not to mention that approach #3 on your list (anti-net-neutrality) suffers from essentially the same problems that #1 and #2 do from the ISPs perspective -- if one ISP does it and consumers hate it, those that don't do it will gain customers.
Of course, that would be the market at work. Which is why some ISPs are looking to skirt the issue via collusion and legislation. In places where there even IS a market with more than 1-2 providers, which is the real reason I think markets won't solve this problem.
If there *IS* any place where the problem is legitimate and can be solved, I think it's either with option #1, where the ISPs suck it up and do what it takes to invest in keeping current.... or it's in the peering agreements between ISPs. I mean, hell... why should Google/YouTube be involved in this? As everyone and their dog points out, Google already pays their ISP (let's call them GISP), and probably quite handsomly. The mismatch comes between the balance of traffic flowing between the GISP and the rest of the ISPs between GISP and the consumer. If that peering agreement presents a problem for the other ISPs, then they ought to work it out with GISP. Google has nothing to do with it -- they already bought their bandwidth.
Tweet, tweet.
Great God Almighty!!!! Are you hopelessly nuts? We have almost little or no actual news reportage in the US today - especially as opposed to when I was a kid back in the '50s. How many Americans are aware of the (at least) 2 attempted assassination/coups of democratically-elected President Hugo Chavez by the Bush Administration (can you spell o-i-l???)? How many Americans are aware of the second attempt - led by undersecretary of state, Otto Reich and his Cuban-American squads? Erroneously reported in American news as Cuban dissidents being sighted in Caracas at that time!!!! Un-frigging-believable!!!
Great God Almighty!!! Free press??? WTF have you been smoking, dood??? Any intelligent American is forced to read the foreign press and blogosphere for any and all news as the only breaking news in America today concerns either Paris Hilton or the deposition of Anna Nicole Smith's corpse. Nothing, but nothing gets reported in the news.
Forty and fifty years ago that testimony of Monica Goodling before congress (ya know, the one where she testified that the attorney general [Gonzo or AGAG], and the assistant attorney general both committed perjury, that there was massive election fraud ["caging"] and that the US attorneys were replaced to prevent any prosecution of past - and future - election fraud) would have been front-page news for days, if not months. Today, nothing........
"And all Iraqi military and civilian personnel should listen carefully to this warning. In any conflict, your fate will depend on your action. Do not destroy oil wells, a source of wealth"
George W. Bush, March 17, 2003
And you obviously need to watch this educational video. Pay attention to the part starting at 2:22.
You can't take the sky from me...
Engaging in a war in that region has resulted in a lesser amount of oil being available, higher prices for it and a much more difficult time procuring the amount that we are using.
A much better bet is that terrorism is a closer reason for us going in. Not they currently are or were imminently going to do so, but rather because they did in the past, and the hawkish amongst us have the perception the Iraqis won a sort of victory when we didn't invade them during the persian gulf war. It has far more to do with W trying to one up his father than it does with trying to secure more oil or stop terrorism.
The last war over there saw the destruction of huge quantities of oil, which will have a lasting effect upon the supply. And the subsequent restriction in Iraqi production has had an effect upon the world wide oil prices.
And I do stand by what I said. It isn't Exxon or BP or even Shell that are making the largest profits on the price increase it is the countries that control the oil fields in the Middle East that are.
The assumption that we would control the supply is one that hasn't in the past ever been borne out. We do typically receive a better deal, but the oil producing nations haven't historically given us a price that is low enough to justify freeing them. The main difference in prices between here and Europe is taxes. Even within the US, WA has some of the highest prices for fuel in the country and some of the highest taxes. Compare that to the South and the various areas with lesser taxes and the price difference corresponds closely.
anything other than anti-Americanism
You make it sound like that's automatically a bad thing. It's one thing to be anti-American for the hell of it, it's something entirely different when you point out that when we were talking about going to war, Wolfowitz expected $50-$100 billion a year from Iraqi oil: http://www.cantonrep.com/index.php?ID=236508
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
If it's all about oil, then where's the $1 gasoline? If everything is about the almighty barrels of oil, why wasn't that the first thing "liberated"?
Saddam and his family are no good. His own son enjoyed feeding people to a wood chipper feet first and twisting mens arms off.
This is truly awful, and I shed no tear for Saddam and his sons. But things don't actually seem better. And I think it was obvious going in that such was the case. I wish we had come up with a practical plan, but we didn't. We took the same old lazy road we've taken many times before: we're big and strong, we bring democracy, and God is on our side... how could we lose?
How it is that people assume that it is a matter of oil, when the oil producing nations are the ones which end up with windfall profits is beyond me.
Didn't the American oil companies record record profits last year? I don't really think that we went to war so that oil companies could make a little more money, but I do think oil had a lot to do with it. Specifically I think that the US wants US friendly people in control of oil producing nations, even if that is not good for the nation itself. The US has deposed popular leaders that were not US friendly and propped up unpopular leaders that were US friendly. So has the UK, and probably others. I think this feeds into the general sociopolitical illness in the middle east.
it is clearly us bad Americans that are the worst in the free world.
It's not a comparison game. If we do somthing shitty or stupid it's still shitty or stupid even if other people are doing worse. I am sharply critical of America... because I love it dearly. The tendancy to defend America from valid criticism reminds me of dickhead parents who can't recognize and address their kids' faults. Real love and respect means honesty and honestly we, America, could be doing better.
Cheers.
All I can do is shake my head these days when I hear stuff like this being touted as "free market". I am a fan of the free market, but what the free-market-absolutists don't understand is that the market isn't naturally free: it needs regulation to ensure that it stays free. Just like we need regulation to ensure that people are free.
If the market was naturally free there would be no need for government at all. I'm sure some hyper-libertarian just stood up and cheered. But the fact is that without any regulation whatsoever free markets disappear: no really, go check out what happens when there is no regulation in less developed countries: a small number of powerful people exercise their wonderful freedom in the truly free market to wrest control from everyone else and pretty soon you've got abusive monopolies and terriffic exploitation everywhere.
Sorry: but we need regulation to make sure the market stays competitive and free. This is the hightest calling of government, methinks: to ensure that the playing field does not get too tilted. This is what network neutrality is about. AT&T wants to be free enough to tilt everything so dramatically in their favor that others can no longer compete.
Anyone else remember when you could only rent your phones from an AT&T store? And there were only a handful of featureless models to choose from? And there were no technological advances in telephony for ages? Yeah: that's the "free market" that AT&T promotes.
Cheers.
If terrorism was a concern, why would Dubya leave the known terrorists in Afghanistan only to attack a "potential terrorist"?
We (yes we if you're American your money paid for it whether you like it or not) invaded a more or less innocent country because it was supposed to be an "easy win", haha hindsight is 20/20 isn't it. And with a puppet regime we could have had a bit more control in that area of the world.
Had we just continued killing them crazy Muslims that had attacked us first (of which I'm not entirely convinced anymore) America would be a little less hated today, not much but a little bit. Engaging in a war in that region has resulted in a lesser amount of oil being available, higher prices for it and a much more difficult time procuring the amount that we are using.
And I do stand by what I said. It isn't Exxon or BP or even Shell that are making the largest profits on the price increase it is the countries that control the oil fields in the Middle East that are. Wake up Muttley you're dreaming again. You're no Robin Hood and you're no Gungadin.
10 Billion PROFIT per quarter....But that's just what a company that size needs to make in order to survive.
Warning old news... http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/earnings/
Oblig Spaceballs quote. "It's my industrial strength hair dryer and I Can't Live Without it"
America today, is certainly the most corrupt it has ever been. I am convinced the only reason our elected leaders don't commit mass genocide, and all the other atrocities that are going on in these "third world" countries is because they haven't figured out #2 yet.
1. Genocide
2. ????
3. PROFIT!!!
Once the President (and it doesn't matter who it is, after Dubya there will be another corrupt "Statesman" elected. New boss, same as the old boss so they say) figures out #2 it'll happen, they'll blame it on "terrorists" or even better declare "war on poverty, or war on whoever".
You won't hear about it on the news at 10 though, well, unless Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan have something to do with it.
Linux Zealots: Smarter than Mac Zealots, but still zealots.
When is /. going to start their own BBS? Then we can avoid this whole intarweb thing. Make it such that subscribers get to read the stories 3 days before non-subscribers. The money received from the subscribers would go to pay for the inbound modem lines and news wire fees.
Yeah... screw the man. Oh wait... we would still have to use phone lines...
Hold on, I'll think of something...
Ramen
Most of the world pays -much- more than $3/gal/3.79 litres. US gas is subsidized (then taxed, but subsidized nonetheless) and cheaper anyway. I heard people were paying >$4/gal (equivalent) several years ago in Europe.
To be fair, there are some great news outlets here in the US. The top three in my mind would be NPR (Morning Edition and All Things Considered), The Christian Science Monitor (ignore the name... it is a great paper for sectarians), and the New York Times. These stack up nicely to any new source I have seen in my travels. The average news source in other parts of the world are (on average) better than what most americans pay attention to, but we still do have great news organizations (here and there).
And in our defense, I do hear the same silliness from a lot of European new sources. I just had a lot of conversations with Austrian and Germans, and they thought that the US was getting a lot of free oil from Iraq (they are not even producing enough for themselves at this point), and that the 9/11 hit on the Pentagon was by a cruise missile.
Well, it 'may' be some smart thinking then. I mean, what would happen...the chaos, the complete falling apart of the US economy, etc, if the oil were cut off tomorrow? Pandemonium....
If that happened..to the US or any country, I'll be the citizens of that country would not think twice about begging the govt. to invade, blow up or whatever was required to turn the pumps back on, and start the flow again.
I heard a Carlin rant the other day that really made me think about that...about what would happen if the power were all cut off. If nothing else, his description of all the fun, with all those criminals, and psychopaths currently in all the prisons...suddenly couldn't be contained any more...you and your family would NOT be safe at home from predators like that roaming with a free hand to do as they pleased with you and your family...especially the females. Remember...there will be no cops and police to protect you.
Scary picture...kinda made me think if it was to ensure the oil flows....I can start to understand why.
If it was blood for oil....I wonder how many people who think that is horrible would instantly change their thoughts if the oil was suddenly no more?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
If it's all about oil, then where's the $1 gasoline?
That is a fairly rediculous statement. American citizens did not go to war for oil. The people with power in the US went to war for oil. So what makes you think that it is the citizens who would benefit? It is the people with power that benefit, such as the oil companies.
--
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
I answer both of your challenges with one comment: The news agencies report the news that makes money. How many of our fellow Americans do you think would turn the channel or skip the news article about someone on the hill breaking the law and getting away with it? The answer is most. I'm not defending it, I'm just postulating. As further proof of my theory, I offer the common occurrence in the US of a story being run to death. Every bit of it being reported in sensational ways to get more ratings and sell more papers, even though nothing new is being said.
If Americans took more interest in what actually happened in D.C., more news agencies would report it. Unfortunately, they don't. I don't know, but is it any different in the UK (with the glut of tabloid magazines vs legitimate news outlets)? In the US we have crap like Entertainment Tonight and the National Enquirer because people watch/read it. The consumers support what they want (whether is is worth while news or not). This is true throughout the US news systems, even your beloved blog-sphere. Repeat after me: someone reporting something doesn't (1) make it true or (2) make it news.
I'm not saying that it is better than any other system or time, but this is how I see it from here (in Nebraska, of all places). You do have to admit that reporting just about anything (real or fake, important or not) is protected in the US. You may face a civil case afterwards, but the government does not stop you from reporting it.
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." -Anon.
See subject.
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
You can't take the sky from me...
No, I'm not trolling. Oil really wasn't the main motivation for going in. Oil would have been a much more reasonable reason for us going in than the most likely reasons.
Engaging in a war in that region has resulted in a lesser amount of oil being available, higher prices for it and a much more difficult time procuring the amount that we are using.
Uhm, did you do any research before posting that? According the Department of Energy, the US imported about 8.8% MORE oil from Iraq in 2003 than we did in 2002. While the Iraqi oil industry is only exporting about 56% of the oil that they did in 2002, the United States is getting a larger percentage of it.
Engaging in a war in that region has resulted in a lesser amount of oil being available, higher prices for it and a much more difficult time procuring the amount that we are using.
The United States did not go to war to lower the price of gas at the pump. Citizens do not go to war, people in power do. So why would citizens benefit from the war? People in power benefit from war.
The oil companies actually benefit when the price of crude oil goes up. Lets say that you are an oil company that produces 1 million barrels of oil per day. If a barrel of oil sells for $20, then you make $20 million per day. Lets say that your expenses are $19 million per day, and you make $1 million profit per day.
If there is a war in the middle east, then lets say the price of a barrel of oil goes up to $60. That means they are now making $60 million per day for the exact same oil fields. Royalties to governments that lease the rights to drill would also go up (18% in the US), as would taxes (about 40%). That means their new expenses are $42.2 million per day. So with the war going on, they are now making $17.8 million in profit per day, instead of just $1 million.
So while the american public is paying an extra $1.50 per gallon in gas, these oil companies are making extreme profits. That is why we go to war for oil.
--
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
The quotes attributed to 'Big Ed' are from a fake speech, and the video of the speech is obviously fake... read the first comment on the blog, and follow the link embedded in the subject line.
You might want to complete that quote:
(my emphasis)
Say - you don't suppose the interest in Iraq's oil might have something to do with funding the rebuilding of Iraq?
Cute video. Some simple truths. And a really simplistic view of world politics. But it was entertaining. I'm thinking it goes over real well in propaganda circles.
Rebuilding what was shocked and awed is part of the cost of doing business, but it's not the motivation.
You can't take the sky from me...
The NY Times has had a series of reporters - not only over the past 6 years but for the preceding 30 years - who have turned out to be on the government's payroll. They heartily endorsed that (fortunately temporary) coup of a democratically-elected President Hugo Chavez - along with many of the NYT's other crimes - it ain't referred to as the New Whore Times for nothing!
Advise you to take a look at the next day satellite photo of the Pentagon (9/12/01). From the scorch marks on the roof still fresh - it is obviously an exact center, dead-on stroke into the western wall - the wall farthest from then Secretary Rumsfeld - and the only wall to be super-reinforced. Amazingly, the exact strike that would do the least damage - now if I was a suicidal terrorist and crack pilot - which one would have to be to have performed such an aeronautical maneuver - then I would have taken the far easier and far more devastating strike of simply aiming for the roof area and doing the most damage.
But then, I didn't plan it......Bottom line: It took forever to get any investigation (9/11 Commission) going because Bush didn't want it - Bush and Cheney refused to testify at the investigation under oath - Bush's first choice to head up the 9/11 Commission was the American business representative for the BinLaden Group - Henry Kissinger!!!!!
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Suggest you look into the original financing of their parent company, American Media, and also the Washington Monthly (there are probably others in that same category). Hint: C.I.A.
There are a tremendous number of poorly performing "news" outlets today that are underwritten by far rightwing nut outfits and families. None of these so-called news programs (infotainment, really) actually turns a profit. Suggest you bother to also look into the backgrounds and financing of all these so-called "think tanks" (e.g., Cato Institute, funding from Koch Industries, John Birch Society, original funding from the Koch family, etc., etc.)
This is a parody quote from a Net-Neutrality site, he did not say that ??
Neo-conservatives drove America into Iraq in the hope that they would create a new democracy in Iraq that would inspire other Arab citizens in the region to overthrow their tyrannical governments and establish western style democracies with western style "free markets". I think that most neo-conservatives, including Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, and Feith actually believed this. I really do. And if they did believe these things, then it shows something truly scary about them, that they are profoundly detached from reality.
I remember hearing numerous neo-conservative opinion pieces before the war that promised that Americans would be welcomed in Iraq, and that the power of the free market would unlock Iraq's economy and change it into a modern democracy. However, any reasonably intelligent citizen with some knowledge of Iraq would realize that it was a repressive regime run by the Sunnis (20% of the population) which ruled over the Shiites and the Kurds (80% of the population). If you remove the Sunnis from power, then it is likely that the Shiites and Kurds would seek revenge. And it is easy to predict that the Sunnis, who have little oil in their normal territory, would be fearful of losing power, and would use their considerable military might to prevent the Shiites and the Kurds from gaining power in a stable country. This really should have been obvious to any informed person. Why then was it not obvious to the neo-conservatives?
I would argue that these "oversights" indicate that the neo-conservatives are like members of a cult, obsessed with their groups set of ideas to the exclusion of reality. They truly believe that market forces will solve the worlds problems, while at the same time making them wealthy. They believe that being selfish also serves the interests of society best. While there is some amount of truth to this assumption, overall it is not true.
Neo-conservatives live in their own isolated world, where they only hear the opinions of other neo-conservatives. They reinforce each others' views, increasing their certainties of their own world views. They live in a world of balance sheets, of profits and losses, of money. They rely more on profit margins than on real world facts to make their decisions. They ascribe almost mystical meaning to profits, believing that increasing profits always increase the well-being of society. They are extremists who take academic fields like econometrics from being merely utilitarian to being the sole means of managing a society. God help us if they gain complete power.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
I don't agree with Iraq, but you're making no sense.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
We went to Europe to stop Germany from forcibly overthrowing the governments of sovereign nations. We went to Iraq to overthrow the government of a sovereign nation. I have no love for the things Saddam was doing before he was removed from power, but no nation is going to keep a lasting democracy having it handed to them (and what we've done is quite a bit more sinister than that).
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
And imagine why so many have been talking, pleading, asking, and demanding that we do some bloody research!!! Our dependence on oil renders all actions taken in the gulf region suspect. No matter what the real cause was (good or bad, justifiable or not), most the world thinks the U.S. invaded Iraq to control access to oil.
I really wish our "leadership" had the balls to engage us in research and development to gain independence from those whose oil wealth enables great evil.
Are you as crazy as you sound? Have you checked to make sure that your tinfoil hat is properly aligned? Did the aliens tell you to say this?
Who brought up "think tanks?"
My theory is that money drives the media outlets, not news. I don't care if you think or don't think that the National Enquirer and Entertainment Tonight aren't monetary successes, but by my experience, there are many shee-ple out there who happily consume from both of those sources. If you want my opinion of a conspiracy, look at the success of Oprah and Dr. Phil. If there isn't a conspiracy there, I don't know where one would be.
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." -Anon.
"This really does not benefit us at all. How it is that people assume that it is a matter of oil, when the oil producing nations are the ones which end up with windfall profits is beyond me."
/ 2007/full_list/index.html
Err, I would disagree. Look up some oil company sales figures sometime;
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500
Everyone complains about the "evil" walmart, but Exxon had roughly the same total sales and over 3 times (closer to 4x) the profit margin. Chevron had a little more than half walmart's sales, but a profit margin 50% greater. Seems to me people besides just the oil producing nations are reaping windfall profits
Ma Bell, the NEW AT&T.
This issue isn't about how much I must pay my ISP for decent net connectivity.
This issue is about how much Google must pay my ISP for decent net connectivity.
AND this issue is also about how much you must pay Google's ISP for a decent connection as well. Don't forget that part.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
If the Iraqi people started an uprising against their government, would you be for our support of them with our own troops and weapons?
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
The reasons for us going to war weren't correct, but you can be sure that oil had very little to do with it.
The oil privatizing measures being forced upon Iraq by the US, for the benefit of outside access to the oil and to the detriment of a nationalized access, a historic in the region, indicates differently. This would not have happened without US involvement.
I'm perplexed by your logic....because oil prices have gone up, the Iraq war could not be about oil. Leaving aside the questionable case of the Iraq war being the cause of high gas prices in the US, high oil prices can be a benefit to the US, or at least those who have an interest in the oil conglomerates, i.e. the people behind the move into Iraq, so I would in no way say that this presumed result of the war is an argument against it being a war over oil.
And at any rate, the Australians and British were just involved in this as we were, but yet we are the ones that take all of the heat for it.
You forgot Poland.
But, true or not, it provides a compelling justification for the Iraq invasion, and therefore has taken a life of its own within the right wing, far out of proportion to its certainty. Plug hussein "wood chipper" into Google, and just about all of the top fifty hits take for granted that Hussein regularly fed his enemies to wood chippers.
Four questions:
1) Was Saddam Hussein a genocidal dictator? Absolutely.
2) Did his people suffer under his regime? Absolutely.
3) Is Iraq better off without him? That's hard to predict. It depends on what eventually replaces him. While there is plenty of room for improvement, the fact that the nation plunged into civil war once he was deposed indicates that he provided some stability to the country.
4) Should America depose dictators who mismanage their countries? No, for lots of reasons. First, our record for interfering with the internal affairs of other countries is abysmal. It would be bad enough if our interference was just good intentions gone bad. But it's clear that, despite the lofty rhetoric about freedom and liberty, we choose to interfere based primarily on the self-interests of the centers of power. We installed the Shah in Iran because the country chose to nationalize their oil industry, and now we're putting the screws to Iraq to ensure that their reserves fall into the hands of the multinational energy conglomerates. I don't think we've shown that we can use war powers responsibly, so I don't believe it should be up to us to decide who gets to rule other countries.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Well your "theory" falls completely apart when one observes all the money-making, popular media individuals and reporters who have been fired over the past 7 years. And the appropriateness of including think tanks is due to the usage of employees as media interview subjects.....
It would be better than the current situation. From best to worst, the options are:
-peaceful citizen uprising
-violent citizen uprising
-violent uprising with weapons and training supplied by foreign country
-violent uprising with weapons and training supplied by foreign country, and some of their troops as well
-invasion by foreign country at request of many citizens
-invasion by foreign country without request of citizens, for purely humanitarian reasons
-invasion by foreign country primarily for their benefit
We're somewhere between the last two, and leaning towards the last one now that the privatization of the Iraqi oil fields is finally on the table.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie