"...traditional anti-war bias found in the mainstream media?"
WTF are you smoking and where can I get some? The US media has always been (and always will be) a cheerleader for every war the US government engages in.
The real issue here is not that the Pentagon sought to entrench their own paid mouthpieces in every corporate media outlet--but that the mainstream corporate media was willingly complicit in this propaganda campaign and utterly failed to provide any alternate viewpoints against the war.
All of the information the US government put out to argue their case for war has been proven false. Plenty of information and sources refuting these official lies were available *before* the war began. Yet the media failed to provide anti-war voices the same platform and megaphone that they all-too-willingly gave to stooges working for the Pentagon and corporations that stood to benefit from the war.
Of course, this is the history of the media under capitalism in a nutshell. Truth (or facts, if you prefer) and the public interest are always trumped by the profit motive and corporations' inherent interest in supporting whichever government they depend upon for largess.
Neither Clinton nor Obama are promising single payer health care. They both propose half-assed privately run plans which ensure the for-profit health care industry remains intact. Their plans will do little to move us toward a genuine national health care system. Hardly surprising considering the vast sums of money they both receive from the industry.
Soldiers should form a union. The military treats them like garbage--they have no rights, inadequate health care, often inadequate equipment and are forced to perform immoral and illegal acts. When caught, it is *they* who go on trial and not the civilian and military leaders who ordered the crimes.
I'm sure plenty of people will argue that they shouldn't have a union because it will hurt "readiness" or something like that. After all, we need unquestioning killers to defend America, right? Wrong. I can't recall the last time the US military was actually used to defend America. Instead it is used around the globe to oppress and kill, and it only benefits our wealthy rulers to have their unquestioned obedience. If it actually came to defending the US from an invasion, the soldiers would have every reason to step up and defend their country. (But seriously, we spend more on our military than the entire rest of the world combined. What military would invade us?)
Here's a novel solution: stop bombing people. Not only will we reduce the number of people that want to bomb us in return, we can save half a trillion dollars annually from slashing the military budget and closing every overseas military base. With all that extra cash we can afford all kinds of security, not to mention national health care, schools, repairing infrastructure, jobs... you name it. Of course, we also may find we don't need as much security.
The people of Iraq have a right to resist their occupiers by any means necessary. If a government with a century-long history of aggression and crushing democracies were to invade your country, I'm sure you'd agree. That anyone would develop technology to aid the occupiers is shameful. If anything, try to come up with a computer model for ending the war and imprisoning its architects and enablers.
How about an unprovoked war of aggression that has murdered over 1 million Iraqis and forced 4-5 million more from their homes (out of a starting population of 26 million or so)? When has Iran done anything as bad as that?
The only reason you don't think the US is as bad as Iran is probably because you received a mediocre education that glosses over all the terror the US government has inflicted on millions of people over the past 200+ years. Go read Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States" and then come back and try to argue that the US isn't "as bad as" Iran.
According to Martin Luther King Jr, "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today [is] my own government." (ref: http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html) It is as true today as it was when he spoke those words in 1967.
So, let's get our definitions straight. Because one person's "terrorist" is another person's "freedom fighter." The US government itself (including most members of the White House and Congress) have inflicted more terror and violence on the world than any tiny group of religious extremists (one might even argue that the White House itself is a group of violent religious extremists). Now, how many engineers are there in Congress? A handful?
The article that forms the basis for this thread is nothing more than junk psychology based on faulty premises and bad data.
There should be some provision in the GPL license to prevent use by militaries. Free, open source software should be used to help people, not oppress and murder them!
There's a lot of back and forth here about what's fair and what isn't, who's right and who's wrong. Let's cut to the chase. Corporations are for-profit entities whose job is to maximize profits. Their profits are generated by exploiting their workers--paying them less than what their labor is worth. Workers get screwed over with every paycheck. The easiest way for corporations to increase profits is to squeeze their workers--by speeding up work, requiring longer hours or reducing pay. The *only* means workers have to improve their working conditions is by organizing themselves and withdrawing their labor--in other words, forming a union (and striking). Only the workers can be counted on to look after their own interests, and their only weapon is the strike. The simple fact is that the bosses need the workers to create their profits. Unless the workers fight back then management will continue to walk all over them.
And spare me the usual claptrap about how shitty unions are--yeah, many are bureaucratic, collaborate with management and are out of touch with their members. Most of them waste their members' dues on Democrats instead of organizing drives and fighting for real gains. But that doesn't change the fact that through hard work, organizing and grassroots democracy, workers have the power to win concessions from management. Once a better contract is won it is necessary for workers to remain involved in their union and prevent it from degenerating into a bureaucratic mess.
Capitalism is a system based on exploitation. The capitalists' profit come from paying workers a fraction of what their labor is worth. The entire system is organized to transfer wealth from the bottom to the top. You cannot have great wealth without great poverty. The only way to end poverty (and racism and war) is through socialism--a system organized from the bottom up, where workers (those who produce *all* of society's wealth) democratically decide how to run society and distribute the goods we collectively create.
And before anyone dredges up "communist" China or the USSR, understand this: neither of those countries are/were communist. They are capitalist, only it is the state itself that is the capitalist. A layer of privileged bureaucrats exploits the mass of workers in order to enrich themselves. They use the rherotic of socialism to keep the populace docile--just like politicians in the US use rhetoric of democracy for the same purpose. That doesn't mean we actually live in a democracy (far from it--if we did, then we'd have a single-payer healthcare system and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would be over right now).
not to mention their employees in Congress pass bankruptcy and other legislation favorable to them. bankrupted by those medical bills? boo hoo. just be thankful we don't throw people in debtor's prison (yet).
it is exploitation because you are not paid what your labor is worth. that is how capitalism works, in a nutshell. the owner of the factory doesn't perform any necessary labor--he just cracks the whip, collects his profits from other's labor and laughs all the way to the bank.
Class isn't about how much money you make or your ethnicity. Class is all about one's relation to the means of production. If you own a factory, then you exploit labor in order to make a profit--you're a capitalist. If you are forced to sell your labor power for a living, then you're working class. "Middle class" is an invention that tries to segment the upper-income portion of the working class into a separate group and argues that they have different class interests than other working class people--which isn't true (although it doesn't preclude "middle class" people from having false consciousness--holding ideas that they have more in common with the capitalists). All working class people have an interest in a clean environment, safe working conditions, free universal health care, an end to war, equal pay for equal work, better education, jobs, etc... The ruling capitalist class has no interest in those things because their interest is in gaining more profit.
US voters elected a democrat majority in congress in 2006 with a mandate to end the war in Iraq. instead of listening to the voters they are debating how to continue funding the war until 2008. why should we care what they do with their primary? it doesn't matter because no matter the outcome of the elections their party will continue to support the interests of a tiny wealthy elite over those of the working class majority.
Your dictionary definition aside, the people that the US is killing in Iraq (650,000 at last count by the reputable medical journal The Lancet) are regular, ordinary people. Most of the so-called "insurgents" are people fighting an illegal foreign occupier--or the puppet regime we installed that lacks popular support.
As for your laughable comment about the police... I say disband the police! Their primary purpose is to uphold and defend the highly unequal status quo in society. They do not prevent crime or make the public safer (far from it--they often brutalize and oppress the public). The roots of the modern police force have far more in common with the colonial slave patrols that wealthy planters hired to return escaped slaves. Throughout US history the police have been a tool used by the ruling class to manipulate elections, crush union organizing, murder/discredit political dissidents and infiltrate/destroy popular movements. Society would be better off without them.
Read "Our Enemies in Blue" by Kristian Williams and open your eyes.
Please.
Get YOUR facts straight. 72% of soldiers in Iraq want to be home now. http://www.zogby.com/NEWS/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1075
Define "democracy" however you want, but the simple fact is that a majority of the public opposes the war (verify this with nearly any poll taken in the last year--or witness the public ousting the Republicans from Congress in the last election), and yet "our" government continues to fund and escalate the war--an inherently undemocratic outcome that is expressly against the will of the people.
The United States government is the reason for the civil war in Iraq. We invaded and demolished much of the country and its economy. We disbanded the old military and government apparatus. The puppet government and constitution the US government set up in Iraq enshrines ethnic divisions, playing different factions off of each other. We use militias of one ethnic group against other ethnic groups, further heightening differences. This is classic divide-and-conquer strategy. All of the violence in Iraq and its consequences stem from the illegal invasion and occupation. The longer the US stays in Iraq the worse the situation will become. The US military is not a stabilizing force, nor is it rebuilding the country. There may temporarily be greater violence when we leave, but there will definitely be greater violence if we stay--and the Iraqis cannot form their own government and civil society under the yoke of a brutal occupation.
this silly device will not save lives and is a waste of time & money. the only device troops need to identify an "insurgent" (read: any person defending their homeland from an illegal foreign occupation) are their eyeballs. the vast majority of Iraqis (and Afghanis) want the US out of their country now (not to mention the vast majority of US troops want to be out now, along with the US public--so much for "democracy").
the way it works is: you pay the price of a CD a month and you get to listen to all the music you want to (that is available in Rhapsody's library--one of the largest, I believe). You can listen to your music at your desk, in your living room or on the go. No, you don't own the file, but that's not the point. How much do you spend on individual tracks or CD's in a month? $15 or more? For $15 you get all you want on Rhapsody. That's the selling point and AFAIK, there is no other *portable* music subscription service that compares.
It's not for everyone. If you're too l33t for drm or into the ownership society thing and must own every single bit on your hard drive, look elsewhere. If you don't give a crap and just want to listen to a huge variety of music for cheap, then this is a great deal. You can always use other methods of acquiring music to augment the huge Rhapsody library.
Our government is "crippled" by people wasting time on taboo web surfing? Give me a break. This is a distraction from far more serious issues.
The Senate just voted unanimously to approve another $70 billion for the Iraq war and a record $484 annual budget for Pentagon (the House approved it 394-to-22). Now THAT is a waste of money, and THAT is why there are no funds for programs a majority of Americans support, like universal health care, increasing money for schools, jobs and paying everyone a living wage.
Slashdot Mirror
"...traditional anti-war bias found in the mainstream media?"
WTF are you smoking and where can I get some? The US media has always been (and always will be) a cheerleader for every war the US government engages in.
The real issue here is not that the Pentagon sought to entrench their own paid mouthpieces in every corporate media outlet--but that the mainstream corporate media was willingly complicit in this propaganda campaign and utterly failed to provide any alternate viewpoints against the war.
All of the information the US government put out to argue their case for war has been proven false. Plenty of information and sources refuting these official lies were available *before* the war began. Yet the media failed to provide anti-war voices the same platform and megaphone that they all-too-willingly gave to stooges working for the Pentagon and corporations that stood to benefit from the war.
Of course, this is the history of the media under capitalism in a nutshell. Truth (or facts, if you prefer) and the public interest are always trumped by the profit motive and corporations' inherent interest in supporting whichever government they depend upon for largess.
Neither Clinton nor Obama are promising single payer health care. They both propose half-assed privately run plans which ensure the for-profit health care industry remains intact. Their plans will do little to move us toward a genuine national health care system. Hardly surprising considering the vast sums of money they both receive from the industry.
Soldiers should form a union. The military treats them like garbage--they have no rights, inadequate health care, often inadequate equipment and are forced to perform immoral and illegal acts. When caught, it is *they* who go on trial and not the civilian and military leaders who ordered the crimes.
I'm sure plenty of people will argue that they shouldn't have a union because it will hurt "readiness" or something like that. After all, we need unquestioning killers to defend America, right? Wrong. I can't recall the last time the US military was actually used to defend America. Instead it is used around the globe to oppress and kill, and it only benefits our wealthy rulers to have their unquestioned obedience. If it actually came to defending the US from an invasion, the soldiers would have every reason to step up and defend their country. (But seriously, we spend more on our military than the entire rest of the world combined. What military would invade us?)
The Viet Nam war was ended because soldiers organized and refused to continue fighting the war. Already active-duty soldiers and veterans are organizing against the current wars. They deserve our support, and hopefully someday GI's will have some rights and real say in military policy.
I call this prize throwing good money after bad.
Here's a novel solution: stop bombing people. Not only will we reduce the number of people that want to bomb us in return, we can save half a trillion dollars annually from slashing the military budget and closing every overseas military base. With all that extra cash we can afford all kinds of security, not to mention national health care, schools, repairing infrastructure, jobs... you name it. Of course, we also may find we don't need as much security.
The people of Iraq have a right to resist their occupiers by any means necessary. If a government with a century-long history of aggression and crushing democracies were to invade your country, I'm sure you'd agree. That anyone would develop technology to aid the occupiers is shameful. If anything, try to come up with a computer model for ending the war and imprisoning its architects and enablers.
How about an unprovoked war of aggression that has murdered over 1 million Iraqis and forced 4-5 million more from their homes (out of a starting population of 26 million or so)? When has Iran done anything as bad as that?
The US has a long and sordid history of overthrowing governments and oppressing people abroad, not to mention at home. The FBI and police have routinely been used to infiltrate, subvert and destroy social movements, not to mention murder their leaders.
The only reason you don't think the US is as bad as Iran is probably because you received a mediocre education that glosses over all the terror the US government has inflicted on millions of people over the past 200+ years. Go read Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States" and then come back and try to argue that the US isn't "as bad as" Iran.
According to Martin Luther King Jr, "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today [is] my own government." (ref: http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html) It is as true today as it was when he spoke those words in 1967.
So, let's get our definitions straight. Because one person's "terrorist" is another person's "freedom fighter." The US government itself (including most members of the White House and Congress) have inflicted more terror and violence on the world than any tiny group of religious extremists (one might even argue that the White House itself is a group of violent religious extremists). Now, how many engineers are there in Congress? A handful?
The article that forms the basis for this thread is nothing more than junk psychology based on faulty premises and bad data.
There should be some provision in the GPL license to prevent use by militaries. Free, open source software should be used to help people, not oppress and murder them!
There's a lot of back and forth here about what's fair and what isn't, who's right and who's wrong. Let's cut to the chase. Corporations are for-profit entities whose job is to maximize profits. Their profits are generated by exploiting their workers--paying them less than what their labor is worth. Workers get screwed over with every paycheck. The easiest way for corporations to increase profits is to squeeze their workers--by speeding up work, requiring longer hours or reducing pay. The *only* means workers have to improve their working conditions is by organizing themselves and withdrawing their labor--in other words, forming a union (and striking). Only the workers can be counted on to look after their own interests, and their only weapon is the strike. The simple fact is that the bosses need the workers to create their profits. Unless the workers fight back then management will continue to walk all over them.
And spare me the usual claptrap about how shitty unions are--yeah, many are bureaucratic, collaborate with management and are out of touch with their members. Most of them waste their members' dues on Democrats instead of organizing drives and fighting for real gains. But that doesn't change the fact that through hard work, organizing and grassroots democracy, workers have the power to win concessions from management. Once a better contract is won it is necessary for workers to remain involved in their union and prevent it from degenerating into a bureaucratic mess.
Capitalism is a system based on exploitation. The capitalists' profit come from paying workers a fraction of what their labor is worth. The entire system is organized to transfer wealth from the bottom to the top. You cannot have great wealth without great poverty. The only way to end poverty (and racism and war) is through socialism--a system organized from the bottom up, where workers (those who produce *all* of society's wealth) democratically decide how to run society and distribute the goods we collectively create. And before anyone dredges up "communist" China or the USSR, understand this: neither of those countries are/were communist. They are capitalist, only it is the state itself that is the capitalist. A layer of privileged bureaucrats exploits the mass of workers in order to enrich themselves. They use the rherotic of socialism to keep the populace docile--just like politicians in the US use rhetoric of democracy for the same purpose. That doesn't mean we actually live in a democracy (far from it--if we did, then we'd have a single-payer healthcare system and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would be over right now).
If you can afford thousands of dollars on equipment, why not just buy CD's and rip them with FLAC? Or better yet, have your butler rip them for you!
Wow, capitalism in action.
not to mention their employees in Congress pass bankruptcy and other legislation favorable to them. bankrupted by those medical bills? boo hoo. just be thankful we don't throw people in debtor's prison (yet).
it is exploitation because you are not paid what your labor is worth. that is how capitalism works, in a nutshell. the owner of the factory doesn't perform any necessary labor--he just cracks the whip, collects his profits from other's labor and laughs all the way to the bank.
Class isn't about how much money you make or your ethnicity. Class is all about one's relation to the means of production. If you own a factory, then you exploit labor in order to make a profit--you're a capitalist. If you are forced to sell your labor power for a living, then you're working class. "Middle class" is an invention that tries to segment the upper-income portion of the working class into a separate group and argues that they have different class interests than other working class people--which isn't true (although it doesn't preclude "middle class" people from having false consciousness--holding ideas that they have more in common with the capitalists). All working class people have an interest in a clean environment, safe working conditions, free universal health care, an end to war, equal pay for equal work, better education, jobs, etc... The ruling capitalist class has no interest in those things because their interest is in gaining more profit.
US voters elected a democrat majority in congress in 2006 with a mandate to end the war in Iraq. instead of listening to the voters they are debating how to continue funding the war until 2008. why should we care what they do with their primary? it doesn't matter because no matter the outcome of the elections their party will continue to support the interests of a tiny wealthy elite over those of the working class majority.
Your dictionary definition aside, the people that the US is killing in Iraq (650,000 at last count by the reputable medical journal The Lancet) are regular, ordinary people. Most of the so-called "insurgents" are people fighting an illegal foreign occupier--or the puppet regime we installed that lacks popular support.
As for your laughable comment about the police... I say disband the police! Their primary purpose is to uphold and defend the highly unequal status quo in society. They do not prevent crime or make the public safer (far from it--they often brutalize and oppress the public). The roots of the modern police force have far more in common with the colonial slave patrols that wealthy planters hired to return escaped slaves. Throughout US history the police have been a tool used by the ruling class to manipulate elections, crush union organizing, murder/discredit political dissidents and infiltrate/destroy popular movements. Society would be better off without them.
Read "Our Enemies in Blue" by Kristian Williams and open your eyes.
Please. Get YOUR facts straight. 72% of soldiers in Iraq want to be home now. http://www.zogby.com/NEWS/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1075 Define "democracy" however you want, but the simple fact is that a majority of the public opposes the war (verify this with nearly any poll taken in the last year--or witness the public ousting the Republicans from Congress in the last election), and yet "our" government continues to fund and escalate the war--an inherently undemocratic outcome that is expressly against the will of the people. The United States government is the reason for the civil war in Iraq. We invaded and demolished much of the country and its economy. We disbanded the old military and government apparatus. The puppet government and constitution the US government set up in Iraq enshrines ethnic divisions, playing different factions off of each other. We use militias of one ethnic group against other ethnic groups, further heightening differences. This is classic divide-and-conquer strategy. All of the violence in Iraq and its consequences stem from the illegal invasion and occupation. The longer the US stays in Iraq the worse the situation will become. The US military is not a stabilizing force, nor is it rebuilding the country. There may temporarily be greater violence when we leave, but there will definitely be greater violence if we stay--and the Iraqis cannot form their own government and civil society under the yoke of a brutal occupation.
uh, no--what we NEED to do is vacate this battlefield that we created and have NO right to be on.
this silly device will not save lives and is a waste of time & money. the only device troops need to identify an "insurgent" (read: any person defending their homeland from an illegal foreign occupation) are their eyeballs. the vast majority of Iraqis (and Afghanis) want the US out of their country now (not to mention the vast majority of US troops want to be out now, along with the US public--so much for "democracy").
IF Fox were to do anything about Sudan it would be to push for an invasion, not relief. Of course, invasions don't bring peace, only more devastation.
the way it works is: you pay the price of a CD a month and you get to listen to all the music you want to (that is available in Rhapsody's library--one of the largest, I believe). You can listen to your music at your desk, in your living room or on the go. No, you don't own the file, but that's not the point. How much do you spend on individual tracks or CD's in a month? $15 or more? For $15 you get all you want on Rhapsody. That's the selling point and AFAIK, there is no other *portable* music subscription service that compares.
It's not for everyone. If you're too l33t for drm or into the ownership society thing and must own every single bit on your hard drive, look elsewhere. If you don't give a crap and just want to listen to a huge variety of music for cheap, then this is a great deal. You can always use other methods of acquiring music to augment the huge Rhapsody library.
Our government is "crippled" by people wasting time on taboo web surfing? Give me a break. This is a distraction from far more serious issues.
The Senate just voted unanimously to approve another $70 billion for the Iraq war and a record $484 annual budget for Pentagon (the House approved it 394-to-22). Now THAT is a waste of money, and THAT is why there are no funds for programs a majority of Americans support, like universal health care, increasing money for schools, jobs and paying everyone a living wage.