Bush is already to the half million point in civilian deaths in Iraq. It may not be 6 million Jews, but it's certainly no walk in the park for the citizens of Iraq. The U.S. obviously through policies pre-dating Bush (I don't like Clinton much either) incarcerates both in numbers and per capita far more people than any other western country. Our cops have also tasered hundreds of people to death in the last decade, created unemployment and suffering for those who dare to speak out etc. Unfortunately I think Bush (and the U.S. government post WWII) on a scale of Hitler to Ghandi is far closer to Hitler than Ghandi
Bush giving himself power to declare martial law and suspend the constitution is not some left right squabble like abortion rights or burning the flag, rather it is a concern to Americans of all political stripes. Whether you are a bircher, Libertarian, Green, Barry Goldwater Conservative, Pat Buchanan Supporter, or black block anarchist the president giving himself the power to declare military law in any locality is a very frightening prospect. It gives Bush the potential to be as vile as Hitler, that's not saying he's used that potential yet, but no president should be given the potential to utilize that much power, it's at fundamental odds with the freedom the founding fathers fought for. THAT is why people here are comparing Bush to Hitler unfortunately it's not a terribly flawed metaphor when he has signed into law the option to seize dictatorial powers.
Yes this would make it even worse though which is why I find it alarming. Lets put our techie skills into streaming community access t.v., community radio, serious investigative journalism, etc. Youtube I think is hopeful, this just scares me.
This is exactly the sort of thing that will lead to more corporate consolidation of the news which is a nightmare. The one working example we have of automated news broadcasting on a wide scale is clear channels automatic radio stations. Guess what happened during hurricane Katrina that's right there were very few small towns with local news coverage. Far from more automatic news we need more local news which requires more feet on the ground not less. Note this is not a jerimad against technology, technology can make local news coverage easier through things like indymedia.org
See Moyer's PBS special on the dangers of media consolidation.
It's not so much the cgi reporters I object to as the automatic compilation of the news. Selecting and compiling a serious investigative news report requires a lot of human nuance and judgment to construct a narrative that AI algorithms simply don't poses yet.
Having said that though I think anything that leads to more dehumanization and less authentic human stories is double plus bad. IMO we ought to use technology to communicate and enhance our humanity through a better understanding of science, literature, history, music, etc. To use technology to move towards becoming a soulless borg is the nightmare sci-fi dystopias like Neuromancer warned us of, was anyone listening? Hint Gibson typed his manuscript on a manual typewriter and saw his vision of the future as dystopian not desirable, automatically selected news read by lego looking soulless non humans is I think the first baby steps towards that dystopia.
I agree Orwellian. If our so called intelligent slashdot readers can't see that this would be the death of investigative journalism and long form news that makes us think about world events deeply then we are all in serious trouble. Hint the reason U.S. politics is so screwed up and yes in both major parties is shallow bumper sticker slogan politics. If all news is "headline" news this will only get worse.
If we still had a 4th estate that practiced long form investigative journalism and really dug for facts there might be 650,000 more people alive in Iraq right now. Something to think about...
Ding, ding, ding news is a real live human being who knows history, culture, science and politics deciding what is relevant and providing context and background information to the bare facts. This is the worst sort of use of technology akin to new speak in 1984 that makes us all a little less intelligent and insightful the farther it progresses. So mod parent up!
Are you really trying to say ubiquitous fingerprinting is a Libertarian position!!!!!!????? Libertarianism at it's best is about preserving freedom, ubiquitous fingerprinting is as anti-freedom pro government intrusion into private affairs as you can get. This is more like Keystone Cops meets 1984 than anything worthy.
Why are dissing v.w. diesel rabbits? If everyone in the U.S. drove such an efficient automobile that got 45+ mpg (and in 1983) global warming and "peak oil" would be non topics and likely they wouldn't be 655,000 dead people in Iraq. People like you that see cars as fashion accessories are a big problem with the U.S. (U.S. citizen here).
The U.S. withdrew the inspectors dumbass. And then even Bush himself admits there were no WMDs, and that the war was against international law, something former weapons inspectors like Scott Ritter and Hans Blix were desperately trying to get the word out about before the war even started. See for example:
But of course the MSM wouldn't give either of them a platform to speak, there was too much money to made by Cheney's oil buddies to allow for any critical coverage of Bush's plans for aggression against Iraq in the run up to the war. ALL the MSM cheered the war from NPR to Fox and repeated Chalabi and Curveball's lies verbatim, do you remember? I do.
Planned obsolescence ring a bell? I'm not saying all things are going downhill BTW, processors are faster and more energy efficient, so are many cars. In a similar fashion most newer houses and appliances are built to higher standards of energy efficiency and this is a good thing. But the build quality has gone down on more than a few things and no digital camera can yet reach the resolution or tone range of an old Hasalblad or Leica camera. For those things that do have a lower build quality one has to wonder if the energy invested in building them more often to replace the worn out ones outweighs any energy efficiency gained in their use over their lifetime. Is there even a discussion of planned obsolescence in the modern generation used to the fast change of the digital age?
While you have a valid point for many things there are a few things that were actually made better in earlier times. For example Marantz, Sansui, and Pioneer amplifiers and recievers from the 70s have MUCH better transformers and power supply capicators than the junk made by the same companies today. It's possible to get stereo equipment on the high(er) end like NAD, high end Yamaha, Rotel, Creek, etc that have decent electronics, but the days of solidly built mass produced amplifiers are gone. I'm a relatively young guy but you'll pry my 70s era Marantz receiver from my cold dead fingers.
In a similar fashion certain cars have gone down in quality as well. The Mercedes 300 D 5 cylinder diesels from the late 70s through mid 80s would go 500,000 miles on a fairly regular basis, the same for old gas Volvo engines. I highly doubt the modern lighter weight vehicles from the same companies are going to be as durable.
And of course many of us geeks miss the old solid IBM keyboards from the early 80s, though of course we don't miss the 8080 processor or 640 K of ram.:)
Yes modern equipment may be more energy efficient which is a big plus the actual build quality has gone down in a few products.
I'm not denying what the jerk did was horrible, disgusting, and sick, what I'm questioning is whether it's a crime. He undertook no physical action and no one was actually harmed. What I'm saying is the long arm of the law ought to be reserved for real crimes that cause real physical harm to some one. When we start locking people up for what they say then the age of telescreen is perilously near. Ban this jerk from a forum, of course, lock him up in jail for his hideous disgusting speech, I don't think so. Would the Brits have locked up William Burroughs for his novels graphically describing him having anal sex with little boys while shooting up heroin? Keep the government OUT of our thoughts and textual expression thank you very much.
The best way to answer cretins like this is banning then from forums and either ignoring them or if they actually manage to get followers with more speech. All this does is make this asshole a martyr and a hero to the skinhead assholes who actually do attack people and cause real physical harm to innocent people. This sort of thing makes anti racist work harder not easier.
Yes lets retroactively punish countries for something they did decades ago I suggest we start with the U.S. for killing 2 million civilians in Vietnam and for committing genocide against our native people, and Britain for the untold suffering of British colonialism triple dumbass.
I'm a Green lefty and here is my perspective on this, while I find racism abhorant speech acts cause physical to harm to on one, OTH the governments of the U.S. and the U.K. have KILLED tens of thousands of Muslims in an unprovoked war of aggression. Lets lock up war criminals who actually kill tens of thousands of mainly poor innocent Muslim civilians BEFORE we even consider banning speech acts?
Yes this guy is undoubtedly a great big dumbass to post hate speech on a forum commemorating the death of an innocent person. Whether being a giant jackass is a crime though I think should be open to the highest levels of doubt. Would reading Huckleberry Finn also be a crime in Britain since it contains the N word and an aborted lynching scene? Shouldn't we on the left be focused on educating people against doing actual physical racist crimes and not on censoring thoughts? IMO this only makes legitimate anti racist work look bad.
Are the Greens disorganized? Yep, and it's sad. But what other alternative do we have if we want to see sustainable decentralist humanist policies that aren't in the old left big government mold? When push comes to shove I don't trust Libertarians on economic issues even though I respect their anti-state, anti empire, pro freedom positions.
Have any good cripple jokes asshole?... And you wonder why a substantial majority of people in the U.S. loath Republicans now. And no the spineless weak ass Dems are no better.
"I support free basic clinics staffed by nurse practitioners"
Congratulations at least you aren't a complete Libertarian wing nut social Darwinist who has no compassion for people who aren't doing so well in the global economy.
I think we might be able to do even a little better and have HMO vouchers for our very poorest citizens run at the state level such as they have currently in Oregon. The system works reasonably well and I actually took part in it when I was a substitute teacher in Oregon. It was a relief knowing that I could get basic medical treatments like flu shots without having to wonder if it was going to cut into my rent or food money. The HMO voucher system also preserves a private medical system so the level of health care provided isn't too dragged down by government bureaucracy. Although there is some government involvement in the health care system at least it isn't as great as single payer socialized medicine. And having the plan run at the state level decreases somewhat the centralization of bureaucracy involved. Is it perfect? Probably not but it seems like a good compromise between having 50 million uninsured in the U.S. and going over to European style socialized medicine.
What's going to pay for all this? How about cutting our military budget down to about a third of it's current size? All this giant bloated military that interferes in other sovereign countries does is generate blow back and hatred of the U.S. You don't see anyone burning Swiss flags in the street do you? Cutting our Federal tax burden would free up money to pay at the state level for for an increased medical safety net. And isn't transferring government functions from the Federal to state level with vouchers what "conservatism" was supposed to be about in the first place? I sincerely think that there is are real possibilities of open minded leftists and paleo-cons who believe in the U.S. as a small republic and who are against centralization and globalization coming up with creative solution to the destructive effects of globalization. That sort of listening and give and take I would think of as a true moderate position, unlike the phony balony "moderates" like McCain and Hilary who support globalization with no safety net, more imperial war, etc.
To get back on topic I do think this sort of problem solving is needed to deal with the deleterious effects of globaliztion. Unlike a pure leftist I don't care if the downtrodden are taken care of by public or private agencies as long as they are ACTUALLY taken care of. The problem with Bush's compassionate conservatism isn't so much the theory, but that it's badly underfunded, and violates the separation of church and state by getting religious organizations involved. If corporations and the elite are going to gain tremendous windfalls from corporate globaliztion it seems to me that they also have some obligation to take care of those incapable of hacking it in the global economy. If they don't and leave people to become homeless and without health care then they ought not to be surprised when people people hate them and riot. Remember what happened to Marie Anttonette when she said let them eat cake. Being out of touch with the suffering caused by the system in place can leave you at the peril of those who suffer.
On a more positive note here some links to Oregon health plan:
Why not tariff goods from China? Are you in favor of buying goods made by unpaid slaves in Chinese prisons? This use of slave labor drives down wages and ethical standards in the whole market as everyone has to compete against a country that has "free" (as in beer) labor. This creates terrible incentives to drive down out standard of living here in an effort to make our products competitive with those produced by slaves. Is that really the way we want to go, abrogating all morality in favor of the market? Why not tell the Chinese to piss off and find our own new market equilibrium outside the corrupting influence of having to compete against goods made by people earning slave wages? Or are we willing to sacrifice ALL of our ethics to the great god of the market? If we are really so corrupt as to sacrifice all our values to the market why did we bother to end slavery here, work for a 40 hour work week, etc? Globalization is forcing us to chose which of our values is most important, treating people in a humane fashion and working withing a sustainable environment, or raw productivity. Thus far we have chosen raw productivity which IMO is an immoral choice. How dare the right talk about "moral clarity" when it endorses buying slave produced goods?
One final question for the pro globalists why is the market exempt from the moral strictures that bind us in all other actions from such things human bondage?
And what's wrong with being anti-establishment if the establishment makes errors and commits crimes they ought to be called on it right? The whole purpose of the media or 4th estate is to be a check on government power, i.e. the establishment:
"Thomas Carlyle in in On Heroes and Hero Worship (1841) writes,... does not... the parliamentary debate go on... in a far more comprehensive way, out of Parliament altogether? Edmund Burke said that there were three Estates in Parliament, but in the Reporters' Gallery yonder, there sat a fourth Estate more important than they all." [1]
This was not Carlyle's first use of the term. If, indeed, Burke did make the statement Carlyle attributes to him, Burke's remark may have been in the back of Carlyle's mind when he wrote in his French Revolution (1837), "A Fourth Estate, of Able Editors, springs up." [2] In this context, the other three estates are those of the French States-General; the church, the nobility and the commoners, although in practice the latter were usually represented by the middle class bourgeoisie."
A pro establishment media is not doing job in a democracy. Sadly most of our media from "liberal" CNN/NYTs/PBS to the right Rush Limbaugh/Fox is not doing it's job.
One has to wonder what the true U.S. unemployment and underemployment rate is? Remember "discouraged" workers aren't counted, nor are those working part time who can't afford housing and who thus end up couch surfing, living at their parents, temporarily in motels, in their cars, homeless, etc. When you factor all these people in I suspect the percentage of people suffering in the U.S. from our harsh employment conditions balloons up to 15-20%. And those 15-20% don't have access to health care and are likely to wind up in the street unlike Europe. Doesn't look so great now does it?
I actually have less problems with trade with Japan than I have with most globalization. Here is why, Japan DOES pay their workers a fair wage, and thus they don't exert nearly as much downward pressure on U.S. wages as trade with India or China does. My problem isn't with trade per sae it's with large corporations using wage arbitrage to drive wages down leading to suffering everywhere while they pocket the tremendous profits from this suffering and then once the bonanza is over they move into the next country without regulations to protect their workers, rinse, repeat. It's quite literally a process of looting the world. Trade with Japan leads to less of this arbitrage pressure on U.S. wages and environmental regulations. That's why one of the sayings of the anti-globalization movement is fair trade, not free trade. Fair trade is pretty much possible with Japan (though they ought to stop whaling), not with China, India, Vietnam, Thailand, etc.
It wasn't "youth riots" it was young people protecting their labor rights from erosion from pressure from globalization, and they were successful, hurray.
Slashdot Mirror
Bush is already to the half million point in civilian deaths in Iraq. It may not be 6 million Jews, but it's certainly no walk in the park for the citizens of Iraq. The U.S. obviously through policies pre-dating Bush (I don't like Clinton much either) incarcerates both in numbers and per capita far more people than any other western country. Our cops have also tasered hundreds of people to death in the last decade, created unemployment and suffering for those who dare to speak out etc. Unfortunately I think Bush (and the U.S. government post WWII) on a scale of Hitler to Ghandi is far closer to Hitler than Ghandi
Bush giving himself power to declare martial law and suspend the constitution is not some left right squabble like abortion rights or burning the flag, rather it is a concern to Americans of all political stripes. Whether you are a bircher, Libertarian, Green, Barry Goldwater Conservative, Pat Buchanan Supporter, or black block anarchist the president giving himself the power to declare military law in any locality is a very frightening prospect. It gives Bush the potential to be as vile as Hitler, that's not saying he's used that potential yet, but no president should be given the potential to utilize that much power, it's at fundamental odds with the freedom the founding fathers fought for. THAT is why people here are comparing Bush to Hitler unfortunately it's not a terribly flawed metaphor when he has signed into law the option to seize dictatorial powers.
Yes this would make it even worse though which is why I find it alarming. Lets put our techie skills into streaming community access t.v., community radio, serious investigative journalism, etc. Youtube I think is hopeful, this just scares me.
This is exactly the sort of thing that will lead to more corporate consolidation of the news which is a nightmare. The one working example we have of automated news broadcasting on a wide scale is clear channels automatic radio stations. Guess what happened during hurricane Katrina that's right there were very few small towns with local news coverage. Far from more automatic news we need more local news which requires more feet on the ground not less. Note this is not a jerimad against technology, technology can make local news coverage easier through things like indymedia.org
t rality.html
See Moyer's PBS special on the dangers of media consolidation.
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/moyersonamerica/net/neu
It's not so much the cgi reporters I object to as the automatic compilation of the news. Selecting and compiling a serious investigative news report requires a lot of human nuance and judgment to construct a narrative that AI algorithms simply don't poses yet.
Having said that though I think anything that leads to more dehumanization and less authentic human stories is double plus bad. IMO we ought to use technology to communicate and enhance our humanity through a better understanding of science, literature, history, music, etc. To use technology to move towards becoming a soulless borg is the nightmare sci-fi dystopias like Neuromancer warned us of, was anyone listening? Hint Gibson typed his manuscript on a manual typewriter and saw his vision of the future as dystopian not desirable, automatically selected news read by lego looking soulless non humans is I think the first baby steps towards that dystopia.
I agree Orwellian. If our so called intelligent slashdot readers can't see that this would be the death of investigative journalism and long form news that makes us think about world events deeply then we are all in serious trouble. Hint the reason U.S. politics is so screwed up and yes in both major parties is shallow bumper sticker slogan politics. If all news is "headline" news this will only get worse.
If we still had a 4th estate that practiced long form investigative journalism and really dug for facts there might be 650,000 more people alive in Iraq right now. Something to think about...
Ding, ding, ding news is a real live human being who knows history, culture, science and politics deciding what is relevant and providing context and background information to the bare facts. This is the worst sort of use of technology akin to new speak in 1984 that makes us all a little less intelligent and insightful the farther it progresses. So mod parent up!
Are you really trying to say ubiquitous fingerprinting is a Libertarian position!!!!!!????? Libertarianism at it's best is about preserving freedom, ubiquitous fingerprinting is as anti-freedom pro government intrusion into private affairs as you can get. This is more like Keystone Cops meets 1984 than anything worthy.
Why are dissing v.w. diesel rabbits? If everyone in the U.S. drove such an efficient automobile that got 45+ mpg (and in 1983) global warming and "peak oil" would be non topics and likely they wouldn't be 655,000 dead people in Iraq. People like you that see cars as fashion accessories are a big problem with the U.S. (U.S. citizen here).
The U.S. withdrew the inspectors dumbass. And then even Bush himself admits there were no WMDs, and that the war was against international law, something former weapons inspectors like Scott Ritter and Hans Blix were desperately trying to get the word out about before the war even started. See for example:
w eapindex.htmt m
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0305-01.h
But of course the MSM wouldn't give either of them a platform to speak, there was too much money to made by Cheney's oil buddies to allow for any critical coverage of Bush's plans for aggression against Iraq in the run up to the war. ALL the MSM cheered the war from NPR to Fox and repeated Chalabi and Curveball's lies verbatim, do you remember? I do.
Planned obsolescence ring a bell? I'm not saying all things are going downhill BTW, processors are faster and more energy efficient, so are many cars. In a similar fashion most newer houses and appliances are built to higher standards of energy efficiency and this is a good thing. But the build quality has gone down on more than a few things and no digital camera can yet reach the resolution or tone range of an old Hasalblad or Leica camera. For those things that do have a lower build quality one has to wonder if the energy invested in building them more often to replace the worn out ones outweighs any energy efficiency gained in their use over their lifetime. Is there even a discussion of planned obsolescence in the modern generation used to the fast change of the digital age?
While you have a valid point for many things there are a few things that were actually made better in earlier times. For example Marantz, Sansui, and Pioneer amplifiers and recievers from the 70s have MUCH better transformers and power supply capicators than the junk made by the same companies today. It's possible to get stereo equipment on the high(er) end like NAD, high end Yamaha, Rotel, Creek, etc that have decent electronics, but the days of solidly built mass produced amplifiers are gone. I'm a relatively young guy but you'll pry my 70s era Marantz receiver from my cold dead fingers.
:)
In a similar fashion certain cars have gone down in quality as well. The Mercedes 300 D 5 cylinder diesels from the late 70s through mid 80s would go 500,000 miles on a fairly regular basis, the same for old gas Volvo engines. I highly doubt the modern lighter weight vehicles from the same companies are going to be as durable.
And of course many of us geeks miss the old solid IBM keyboards from the early 80s, though of course we don't miss the 8080 processor or 640 K of ram.
Yes modern equipment may be more energy efficient which is a big plus the actual build quality has gone down in a few products.
I'm not denying what the jerk did was horrible, disgusting, and sick, what I'm questioning is whether it's a crime. He undertook no physical action and no one was actually harmed. What I'm saying is the long arm of the law ought to be reserved for real crimes that cause real physical harm to some one. When we start locking people up for what they say then the age of telescreen is perilously near. Ban this jerk from a forum, of course, lock him up in jail for his hideous disgusting speech, I don't think so. Would the Brits have locked up William Burroughs for his novels graphically describing him having anal sex with little boys while shooting up heroin? Keep the government OUT of our thoughts and textual expression thank you very much.
The best way to answer cretins like this is banning then from forums and either ignoring them or if they actually manage to get followers with more speech. All this does is make this asshole a martyr and a hero to the skinhead assholes who actually do attack people and cause real physical harm to innocent people. This sort of thing makes anti racist work harder not easier.
Yes lets retroactively punish countries for something they did decades ago I suggest we start with the U.S. for killing 2 million civilians in Vietnam and for committing genocide against our native people, and Britain for the untold suffering of British colonialism triple dumbass.
Iraq had NOTHING to do with 911 dumbass.
I'm a Green lefty and here is my perspective on this, while I find racism abhorant speech acts cause physical to harm to on one, OTH the governments of the U.S. and the U.K. have KILLED tens of thousands of Muslims in an unprovoked war of aggression. Lets lock up war criminals who actually kill tens of thousands of mainly poor innocent Muslim civilians BEFORE we even consider banning speech acts?
Yes this guy is undoubtedly a great big dumbass to post hate speech on a forum commemorating the death of an innocent person. Whether being a giant jackass is a crime though I think should be open to the highest levels of doubt. Would reading Huckleberry Finn also be a crime in Britain since it contains the N word and an aborted lynching scene? Shouldn't we on the left be focused on educating people against doing actual physical racist crimes and not on censoring thoughts? IMO this only makes legitimate anti racist work look bad.
Are the Greens disorganized? Yep, and it's sad. But what other alternative do we have if we want to see sustainable decentralist humanist policies that aren't in the old left big government mold? When push comes to shove I don't trust Libertarians on economic issues even though I respect their anti-state, anti empire, pro freedom positions.
Have any good cripple jokes asshole?... And you wonder why a substantial majority of people in the U.S. loath Republicans now. And no the spineless weak ass Dems are no better.
"I support free basic clinics staffed by nurse practitioners"
Congratulations at least you aren't a complete Libertarian wing nut social Darwinist who has no compassion for people who aren't doing so well in the global economy.
I think we might be able to do even a little better and have HMO vouchers for our very poorest citizens run at the state level such as they have currently in Oregon. The system works reasonably well and I actually took part in it when I was a substitute teacher in Oregon. It was a relief knowing that I could get basic medical treatments like flu shots without having to wonder if it was going to cut into my rent or food money. The HMO voucher system also preserves a private medical system so the level of health care provided isn't too dragged down by government bureaucracy. Although there is some government involvement in the health care system at least it isn't as great as single payer socialized medicine. And having the plan run at the state level decreases somewhat the centralization of bureaucracy involved. Is it perfect? Probably not but it seems like a good compromise between having 50 million uninsured in the U.S. and going over to European style socialized medicine.
What's going to pay for all this? How about cutting our military budget down to about a third of it's current size? All this giant bloated military that interferes in other sovereign countries does is generate blow back and hatred of the U.S. You don't see anyone burning Swiss flags in the street do you? Cutting our Federal tax burden would free up money to pay at the state level for for an increased medical safety net. And isn't transferring government functions from the Federal to state level with vouchers what "conservatism" was supposed to be about in the first place? I sincerely think that there is are real possibilities of open minded leftists and paleo-cons who believe in the U.S. as a small republic and who are against centralization and globalization coming up with creative solution to the destructive effects of globalization. That sort of listening and give and take I would think of as a true moderate position, unlike the phony balony "moderates" like McCain and Hilary who support globalization with no safety net, more imperial war, etc.
To get back on topic I do think this sort of problem solving is needed to deal with the deleterious effects of globaliztion. Unlike a pure leftist I don't care if the downtrodden are taken care of by public or private agencies as long as they are ACTUALLY taken care of. The problem with Bush's compassionate conservatism isn't so much the theory, but that it's badly underfunded, and violates the separation of church and state by getting religious organizations involved. If corporations and the elite are going to gain tremendous windfalls from corporate globaliztion it seems to me that they also have some obligation to take care of those incapable of hacking it in the global economy. If they don't and leave people to become homeless and without health care then they ought not to be surprised when people people hate them and riot. Remember what happened to Marie Anttonette when she said let them eat cake. Being out of touch with the suffering caused by the system in place can leave you at the peril of those who suffer.
On a more positive note here some links to Oregon health plan:
http://www.ehealthlink.com/OregonHealthPlan/
http://www.oregon.gov/DHS/healthplan/index.shtml
Why not tariff goods from China? Are you in favor of buying goods made by unpaid slaves in Chinese prisons? This use of slave labor drives down wages and ethical standards in the whole market as everyone has to compete against a country that has "free" (as in beer) labor. This creates terrible incentives to drive down out standard of living here in an effort to make our products competitive with those produced by slaves. Is that really the way we want to go, abrogating all morality in favor of the market? Why not tell the Chinese to piss off and find our own new market equilibrium outside the corrupting influence of having to compete against goods made by people earning slave wages? Or are we willing to sacrifice ALL of our ethics to the great god of the market? If we are really so corrupt as to sacrifice all our values to the market why did we bother to end slavery here, work for a 40 hour work week, etc? Globalization is forcing us to chose which of our values is most important, treating people in a humane fashion and working withing a sustainable environment, or raw productivity. Thus far we have chosen raw productivity which IMO is an immoral choice. How dare the right talk about "moral clarity" when it endorses buying slave produced goods?
One final question for the pro globalists why is the market exempt from the moral strictures that bind us in all other actions from such things human bondage?
And what's wrong with being anti-establishment if the establishment makes errors and commits crimes they ought to be called on it right? The whole purpose of the media or 4th estate is to be a check on government power, i.e. the establishment:
... does not... the parliamentary debate go on... in a far more comprehensive way, out of Parliament altogether? Edmund Burke said that there were three Estates in Parliament, but in the Reporters' Gallery yonder, there sat a fourth Estate more important than they all." [1]
"Thomas Carlyle in in On Heroes and Hero Worship (1841) writes,
This was not Carlyle's first use of the term. If, indeed, Burke did make the statement Carlyle attributes to him, Burke's remark may have been in the back of Carlyle's mind when he wrote in his French Revolution (1837), "A Fourth Estate, of Able Editors, springs up." [2] In this context, the other three estates are those of the French States-General; the church, the nobility and the commoners, although in practice the latter were usually represented by the middle class bourgeoisie."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_estate
A pro establishment media is not doing job in a democracy. Sadly most of our media from "liberal" CNN/NYTs/PBS to the right Rush Limbaugh/Fox is not doing it's job.
One has to wonder what the true U.S. unemployment and underemployment rate is? Remember "discouraged" workers aren't counted, nor are those working part time who can't afford housing and who thus end up couch surfing, living at their parents, temporarily in motels, in their cars, homeless, etc. When you factor all these people in I suspect the percentage of people suffering in the U.S. from our harsh employment conditions balloons up to 15-20%. And those 15-20% don't have access to health care and are likely to wind up in the street unlike Europe. Doesn't look so great now does it?
I actually have less problems with trade with Japan than I have with most globalization. Here is why, Japan DOES pay their workers a fair wage, and thus they don't exert nearly as much downward pressure on U.S. wages as trade with India or China does. My problem isn't with trade per sae it's with large corporations using wage arbitrage to drive wages down leading to suffering everywhere while they pocket the tremendous profits from this suffering and then once the bonanza is over they move into the next country without regulations to protect their workers, rinse, repeat. It's quite literally a process of looting the world. Trade with Japan leads to less of this arbitrage pressure on U.S. wages and environmental regulations. That's why one of the sayings of the anti-globalization movement is fair trade, not free trade. Fair trade is pretty much possible with Japan (though they ought to stop whaling), not with China, India, Vietnam, Thailand, etc.
You gave me two new vocabulary words in "wage arbitrage" a very succinct formulation for what I've been trying to say for years.
It wasn't "youth riots" it was young people protecting their labor rights from erosion from pressure from globalization, and they were successful, hurray.