Slashdot Mirror
The FBI's Newest Tool — Google Images
lee317 writes "The FBI recently used a photograph of Spanish politician Gaspar Llamazares as an example of what Osama Bin Laden might look like today. According to Reuters, Special Agent Jason Pack said a forensic artist had been unable to find suitable features from the FBI's database of photographs and used a picture from the Internet instead. That photo turned out to be one of Llamazares, who apparently looks strikingly similar to what the FBI thinks Bin Laden would look like with a few extra years on him. 'I am stupefied the FBI has used my photo — but it could have been anyone's — to compose a picture of a terrorist. It affects my honor, my own image and also the security of all us,' Llamazares said."
We should constantly live in fear of tribal men in caves 8000 miles away at all times. It's the new American way.
The same can be said for capitalism. Indeed, all economic systems inherently favor those who exploit flaws in the system to gain power and money or goods. Even the barter system. Short of having so much abundance that everyone's needs are fully met, there will always be people who are willing to abuse the system for personal gain. It's not even clear that this would go away even with such abundance.
Power attracts the corrupt and the corruptible. All economic systems require someone to have power to maintain order the system, whether it's the judges in a tribal barter system, the leaders of Russia's communist party, the heads of corporations, etc. Therefore, abuse of any economic system is guaranteed, given sufficient time.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Oh, that wasn't the only reason. Add trade embargoes, cold war, foreign intervention and so on - every time a communist country emerges suddenly half of the world tries to destroy its political and economical base.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
not that it can work on the scale of a country...
No pure ideology works on the scale of a modern country (pop > ~1,000,000)
Pure democracy doesn't work for anything larger than Ancient Athens. Democracy still has pretty good ideas that are worth implementing in a system to govern a large populace. Communism is the same thing.
Just because the US was in a 40-year penis-waving battle with a country that claimed to be communist doesn't mean anything. Open Source certainly borrows much of its core ideology from communism. Linux, Firefox, Apache, etc all seem to be working quite well for me.
You see the same thing with Socialism. "La-la-la, health care, Obama, socialism, I can't hear you!". We've had socialist fire protection service in the US for 200 years. Everybody pays, everybody is covered, and that works much better than the alternative systems of the past.
Communist. Democratic. Socialist. Capitalist. Fascist. Republican. Anarchist.
Why worry about the labels? Take the best ideas from all of them and mix them to make a system that works.