You got the first part 100% right, the second part is when Israel comes around like a beggar with their hands outstretched asking for billions in U.S. tax payer dollars we should say NO, period, end of story. It's very interesting how our so called conservative right wing HATES our very own American people if they are on welfare, yet we have given tens of billions of dollars to Israel in the last decade to support THEIR people on welfare while they steal other peoples land according to every other country in the world except the U.S. and Israel. Yes that's right the Israelis are the worst sort of welfare recipient, the thief. Think about that neo-con, the next time you diss on our own American black people claiming falsely that they have no work ethic and that they resort to crime,and they need to "fix" their culture, etc. The biggest welfare recipient criminal thief of them all is Olmert. Does that mean Israel needs to "fix" it's culture. No? You are a hypocrite then oh neo-con, I'm shocked, shocked I tell you...
In fact maybe those saved billions could be used for clean drinking water and other survival needs for Muslim people, then they might like us instead of hating us. It's amazing how if you give someone who is thirsty a glass of water they like you, and if you kick their ass they want to kick your ass in return. Did neo-cons ever take a basic psychology class or even watch they way their class mates behaved in school and they learn ANYTHING about being decent human beings? No I thought not...
Of course if their governments actually tried to DO anything about the poor working conditions like raise their minimum wage you'd decry their "interference in the free market." You can't have it BOTH ways asshole, i.e. blaming the government for the situation AND preventing them from solving it, CHOSE. Do you like a living wage in which case the government is doing something about the poor working conditions, or do you like an unregulated market in which case it's not the governments fault (they are doing the nothing you want) but the corporations CHOICE that the working conditions are so shitty. Basic logic try it some time it does a mind good.
I'll start this off by saying I'm a HUGE Apple "fan boi," I have an ibook, a dual G5 tower, and an ipod nano that I think run circles around my PIII dual boot Dell box.
Having said that I'm VERY disappointed in the leopard preview. HTML stationary in mail.app is a BIG step backwards, it reminds me of the worst spyware infested XP running outlook express boxes owned by pre-teen girls (OMG Ponies). Yep I know there are some very smart sophisticated calculus crunching pre-teen girls, but as a demographic average I don't think that is where interface design should be targeted.
Virtual desktops BIG yawn my free and ethically superior GNU/Linux Ubuntu desktop has virtual desktops, already no waiting for a 2007 release.
Time Machine the big "dazzling" feature with it's file versioning looks like a slightly more refined version of the atrocious Windows restore of Windows Millennium edition days. While it might be handy, I can back up myself thanks, how much HD space will this monster eat on top of my regular backups? And yes I am running out of hard drive space thank you very much, it doesn't take too many digital SLR photo shoots on a gig flash card to max out a 160 gig drive and a 200 gig backup.
And...
I waited what 18 months for this? The big secret feature better be REALLY big like a 50% performance improvement using "thread farming," or a complete implementation of the Windows api under OS X or I'm not buying, I'll just stick with Tiger that's already better than XP or Linux and skip the 150 buck minor update.
Here are some facts about working conditions at Nike factories in Vietnam:
"NIKE shoe production in the Third World -- the facts
Indonesian workers make $2.46 a day 10,000 Indonesians went on strike to protest wages that are below subsistence level. "If I don't work overtime, I can't survive," says Baltazar at PT Hasi Nike factory in Jakarta. He works an average of 40 overtime hours a week.
Vietnamese workers make $l.60 a day 1,300 workers at the Sam Yang factory went on strike to demand a one cent per hour raise in wages. Other issues include excessive and illegal overtime and compensation for working with hazardous material.
Chinese workers make $1.75 a day There is no minimum wage in China and when abuses are discovered, the whole factory disappears. "The supervisors will get nervous and move the work to another province. It's impossible to monitor factory conditions," says Asia Monitor Resource Center in Hong Kong.
You pay over $100 for shoes that cost less than five dollars to make.
As a consumer, you can change Nike's unfair labor practices. Write: NIKE Inc. One Bowerman Drive Beaverton, OR 97005
PHILIP KNIGHT, CEO of Nike is the sixth richest man in America. He is worth 5 billion dollars and profits off the backs of sweatshop laborers. NIKE is the biggest shoe company in the world because it operates in countries where it is illegal to organize and collectively bargain for better wages and working conditions. NIKE can afford to pay endorsers like Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and Monica Seles a combined total of over 60 million dollars to brand themselves with the swoosh.
Call NIKE at: 1-800-344-6453 (press 3 for comments) Demand that NIKE pays overseas factory workers a living wage for an eight hour work day. Vietnam and China should get $3.00 a day and Indonesia should get $4.00 a day.
For More Information contact Global Exchange: 415-255-7296, E-mail: gx-kimberly@globalexchange.org Address: 2017 Mission Street, Ste. 303, San Francisco, 94110 Website: www.globalexchange.org *****
Questions and answers about NIKE
Where does Nike produce shoes? 1- During the 1970's, most Nike shoes were made in South Korea and Taiwan. When workers there gained new freedom to organize and wages began to rise, Nike looked for "greener pastures." It found them in Indonesia, China and most recently Vietnam - countries with no protective labor laws, endless supplies of cheap labor, and authoritarian leaders who outlaw independent labor unions. 2- By 1992, Nike had eliminated nearly all of their U.S. work force in favor of low-wage Asian producers.
Why pick on Nike, if all shoe companies are the same? 1- The Asian-American Free Labor Institute in Indonesia says Nike factory workers file more complaints about wage violations than any other shoe company. 2- Nike has been in Vietnam for less than two years and already one factory official has been convicted of physically abusing workers, another fled the country during a police investigation of sexual-abuse charges and a third is under indictment for abusing workers, as reported in the New York Times. 3- Nike, the biggest shoe company in the world, spends $978 million a year on marketing ploys that "empower" women and inner-city youth to buy overpriced shoes that are made with sweatshop labor. 4- Nike has a responsibility to abide by humane labor practices as defined by their Code of Conduct which says "in the area of human rights...in the communities in which we do business - we seek to do not only what is required, but what is expected of a leader." A leader would not lower human rights standards to maximize profits.
Aren't the workers happy to have the factory jobs? 1- Workers risk retaliation and further repression by staging strikes to protest Nike's unfair labor practices. In April 1997, 10,000 Indonesian workers went on strike over wage violation. In the same month, 1,300 workers in Vietnam went on strike demanding a one cen
Do you know why the terrorist do and try to do these these terrible things to Britain and the U.S? It's because we have made a tribal war between the Jews and the Muslim world our business when it is none of our business. If we withdrew our monetary support from Israel who is holding the Golan heights, the west bank, and Gaza against the wishes of 60 U.N. resolutions, and we also stopped supporting repressive regimes like Saudi Arabia, I guarantee that the Jews and Muslim's would fall back to fighting amongst themselves and leave us entirely alone. Perhaps this sort of straight talk will make people uncomfortable but I think it's time to break the taboo and speak of these matters plainly and to the point.
Although I consider myself a decentralist Green if I were President of the U.S. I would make an isolationist "conservative" like Pat Buchanan Secretary of State. My FIRST speech as president would be something like the following:
"My fellow AMERICANS, good evening
The United states of America is facing serious internal crises in the 21st century such declining energy supplies, 40 million people who have no access to basic health care, and declining educational standards. From now on the U.S. in a bi-partisan fashion is going to focus on it's own internal affairs and leave other nations and their outdated tribal conflicts to themselves. If other people of the world want to involve themselves in failed nation building exercises that is their choice, but the United States of America shall not participate in these missions and shall maintain a stance of armed neutrality towards other countries like Switzerland while we get our own affairs in order. Focusing on our own affairs will allow us to reduce our military budget by 50% in the first year of my Presidency, allowing us to keep former president Bush's tax cuts to help the economy expand while also allowing us to start drawing down the deficit. If the coming years prove to be peaceful we will slowly start further reductions in the military budget that are the long delayed "peace dividend" we were supposed to receive at the end of the cold war. These funds will be used to build a high speed train system to increase the U.S.'s energy independence to deal with global warming, and reduce our dependence on oil from the troubled middle east. Next we will start a program of HMO vouchers so the poorest among us can gain access to needed health care while retaining the finest privately held medical system in the world. Finally we will increase teacher salaries immediately by 20% and earmark billions to improve the conditions of our schools so the United States can maintain it's edge in global economy in the now maturing information age.
I look forward to a healthy and prosperous future for the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
Thank you and good night."
I think sort of stance has a good chance of pleasing both small government isolationist true conservatives, and liberal lefties who would like us to focus more on domestic policy. What's more and getting back to the original topic it will keep us out of the pointless irrational conflicts in the middle east. You don't see people burning Swiss flags on the streets of Beirut, do you?
10 dollars a day from google ads, geez that must pay for electricity for one server. I hope you are making more with the annoying banner ads I filter out using adblock
"Couple dozen," why that's just the ax to grind collection in the forier, my ax to grind collection stretches to the horizon and disapears into the twilight, and that's just the first dozen miles of a hundreds of miles long collection of axes to grind. Surely the sheer number of crimes committed by U.S. based multinational corporations, and our criminal government that has invaded or overthrown another countries government EVERY year since WWII if printed on very thin paper would stretch to the moon and beyond.
For example:
TIMELINE
1929: The culture we lost Secretary of State Henry Stimson refuses to endorse a code-breaking operation, saying, "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail."
1941: COI created In preparation for World War II, President Roosevelt creates the Office of Coordinator of Information (COI). General William "Wild Bill" Donovan heads the new intelligence service.
1942: OSS created Roosevelt restructures COI into something more suitable for covert action, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Donovan recruits so many of the nation's rich and powerful that eventually people joke that "OSS" stands for "Oh, so social!" or "Oh, such snobs!"
1943: Italy Donovan recruits the Catholic Church in Rome to be the center of Anglo-American spy operations in Fascist Italy. This would prove to be one of America's most enduring intelligence alliances in the Cold War.
1945: OSS is abolished The remaining American information agencies cease covert actions and return to harmless information gathering and analysis.
Operation PAPERCLIP While other American agencies are hunting down Nazi war criminals for arrest, the U.S. intelligence community is smuggling them into America, unpunished, for their use against the Soviets. The most important of these is Reinhard Gehlen, Hitler's master spy who had built up an intelligence network in the Soviet Union. With full U.S. blessing, he creates the "Gehlen Organization," a band of refugee Nazi spies who reactivate their networks in Russia. These include SS intelligence officers Alfred Six and Emil Augsburg (who massacred Jews in the Holocaust), Klaus Barbie (the "Butcher of Lyon"), Otto von Bolschwing (the Holocaust mastermind who worked with Eichmann) . The Gehlen Organization supplies the U.S. with its only intelligence on the Soviet Union for the next ten years, serving as a bridge between the abolishment of the OSS and the creation of the CIA. However, much of the "intelligence" the former Nazis provide is bogus.
Gehlen inflates Soviet military capabilities at a time when Russia is still rebuilding its devastated society, in order to inflate his own importance to the Americans (who might otherwise punish him). In 1948, Gehlen almost convinces the Americans that war is imminent, and the West should make a preemptive strike. In the 50s he produces a fictitious "missile gap." To make matters worse, the Russians have thoroughly penetrated the Gehlen Organization with double agents, undermining the very American security that Galen was supposed to protect.
1947: Greece President Truman requests military aid to Greece to support right-wing forces fighting communist rebels. For the rest of the Cold War, Washington and the CIA will back notorious Greek leaders with deplorable human rights records.
CIA created President Truman signs the National Security Act of 1947, creating the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Council. The CIA is accountable to the president through the NSC -there is no democratic or congressional oversight. Its charter allows the CIA to "perform such other functions and duties as the National Security Council may from time to time direct." This loophole opens the door to covert action and dirty tricks.
1948: Covert-action wing created The CIA recreates a covert action wing, innocuously called the Office of Policy Coordination, led by Wall Street lawyer Frank Wisner. According to its secret charter, its responsibilities include "propaganda, ec
P.S. just to clarify for example a Libertarian might say, well if you want to hike you ought to own the area you are hiking in, but that's clearly absurd for two reasons:
a) If I want to do say a multi-day hike into the Rocky mountains then I need to own 500 square miles of Colorado? Get real!
b) It implies that the only people with rights are property owners. Do we really want a society with restricted fundamental rights for non property owners, where an increasing amount of land is walled off and is private gated space? To me a society with endless surveillance cameras and private gated communities and no public space, is no better than Orwell's surveillance society where the government is doing the spying and controlling. In fact in many ways the ultimate Robert Nozickesque
Libertarian society of all private ownership is naught but a photographic negative (that's film for you young 'uns) of a completely government controlled society like Communism. Do you start to see why I say property-tarian and NOT Liber-tarian and that the word Liberty is untrue in the name?
I don't think you quite get my sig, I actually honor the Libertarians questioning of governments role in society. I regularly visit the Libertarian run antiwar.com and lewrockwell.com, and I have a great deal of respect for Ron Paul and Paul Craig Roberts who would be considered Libertarians by many. What bothers me is that many so called Libertarians seem to put the interest of property owners BEFORE liberty despite calling themselves "Liber-tarians." That bothers me because I find large property owners often restrict the freedom of those with little or no property by doing things like destroying wilderness areas thus destroying my freedom to hike, polluting the air and water thus restricting my freedom to drink water and breath, and mistreating their workers thus restricting those peoples right to live decent lives, etc. That is why I think that sort of Libertarian ought to call themselves a propertyarian and not a Libertarian because the rights of property owners is their FIRST priority, not liberty. If Libertarians truly put liberty FIRST then I would embrace them, but then they'd be anarchists not Libertarians.
Perhaps the vast audience of hundreds of thousands of people reading slashdot might be interested in seeing if your are capable of refuting my points? Or are you going to buy them all books as well? Either you are incredibly generous and loaded with cash to buy a 100,000 econ text books, or you forgot you were on a very public forum, take your pick. I served HARD, the ball is in your court. You can feel free to not take a swing at the ball at all, no skin off my nose.
I think in some ways it IS is simple as Fox and Rush Limbaugh. After all how do you think people were motivated to change what used to be a small government Republican party that while I didn't always agree with it, I at least respected, into a right wing authoritarian killing machine that justifies torture and pre-emptive war? Simple propaganda, they repeated the same message over and over again, the classic big lie technique, and before you know it society CHANGED, and the Republicans were the one "capitalize" on the changed society, changing themselves in the process. The media also heavily promoted a meme of greed is good in the movies and tee vee in the 80s 90s and oughts. Eventually an entire generation GREW UP on a constantly repeated message of greed is good, might equals right, and the ownership of property implies you are superior and don't need to follow the same rules as the little people, and this new generation doesn't even know any better or that any other idea has even existed. I suppose you can also factor in the schools for failing to counter this message effectively but the message itself was promoted by the corporate media to promote the interest of it's advertising sponsors. And of course the interest of the advertising sponsors is maximum shareholder return on investment by any means fair or foul. For a more detailed and articulate analysis of how this plays out see Noam Chomsky's book "Manufacturing Consent."
Finally what's truly ironic is society did NOT change in a truly "market" direction despite the sputtering of "conservatives," after all what's the biggest welfare scam on the planet? Military contracts, and Haliburton's "rebuilding," of Iraq. Those are the people really living on the dole as welfare queens.
Of course Goebbels is a bit much much I *like* waving red flags in front of these bull (headed) people just to make them snort. I figure if their philosophy enables actual suffering in the real world there is nothing wrong with pressing them and making them psychologically uncomfortable which is mere shadow of the suffering of say working in an unventilated sweatshop for 12 hours. Trollish? Perhaps, I personally think people who are blatant assholes and what's more arrogantly proud of their asshole philosophy deserve to be trolled a little. Really they deserve to be behind bars and read victim impact statements from all their untold thousands of victims but THAT is a whole other thread.
Who said anything about better? I want art to be MORE widely shared in a more egalitarian way. I am truly sad for you if you cannot tell the difference between a moving and intense Balinese Gamelan concert and corporate television schlock designed to numb your senses like American Idol. It doesn't make me better I just feel lucky that I have experienced art that has moved me deeply and has expanded what it means to be human for me. I hope many people of all races, cultures, sexual preferences, classes, and countries can have equally intense experiences and abandon the mind numbing drug of American television and American pop culture. A society that makes no effort to always transcend itself through artistic experiences that provoke reflection and that glorifies war is in SERIOUS trouble like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, both of which banned "decadent" art and insisted on propaganda as the only allowable form of expression. Joseph Stalin said when I hear the word culture I reach for my pistol. Is that really the way we want to go in the U.S.? Fox news ring a bell?
If that were true Porkies 3 would cause the same level of reflection as War and Peace. Obviously this isn't true and it's the act of reflecting on our humanity as a potentially life changing experience that differentiates art from entertainment. Unfortunately this has gotten tied up in all sorts of nasty class warfare but that doesn't have to be the case, anyone can read Shakespeare and really understand it, or hear hear Mozart and say understand the development of a sonata if it is explained patiently and non boringly by a good teacher. Further I would say many things are art that might not normally be classified as art for example Sonic Youth's new CD Rather Ripped contains lyrics on what relationships mean in the age of eye blink attention spans that makes you reflect seriously while also rocking. Public Enemy's Fear of Black planet tells some of the best stories of ghetto life ever put into any medium. Art doesn't have to boring!!! But it is not mere entertainment like Britney Spears that encourages a person into either mawkish sentimentality or sheer ape like lust using cliched words that bring nothing new into the world. There is a difference between entertainment and art whether you chose to acknowledge it or not, if you limit yourself to strictly entertainment you are missing out on experiences that can move you at the deepest level inexpressible in language.
Few video games cause that sort of transformation, perhaps Myst that I have seen. I'd also be interested in seeing the interactive 3 d world the Residents created in the mid 90s but I have never actually seen it.
Having a non relativist view that differentiates good art from bad art may be controversial, but I firmly believe that people who have been exposed to both and make an effort to understand both entertainment and art will be able to differentiate the two EVERY time though it may be difficult to explain to people what the difference is they none the less they get it.
I wish I had mod points to mod you up, but alas I don't. While highbrow may be an elietest and pretentious term it does contain a kernel of truth which is that cultural artifacts should attempt to touch our deepest emotions and have qualities that transcend the time and place where they were written and not just appeal to the puerile base glandular responses of excitement, hate, or lust. For example a novel like Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky makes us reflect on deep issues of spirituality, the rights of the basest and most vile people, and what it means to be a decent person in a world of strife and conflict. This IS different than a t.v. program like E or a video game like Grand Theft Auto which mainly appeal to twitch and glandular responses and not only don't involve reflection but actively discourage reflection.
I personally believe some video games do reach the level of art like Myst that was mentioned before, I also think games like Sim City encourage us to think about things from architecture, to the quality of life in a cit,y and if they aren't exactly art at least qualify as a culture product.
I also agree with the parent that you don't have to be of a particular class to enjoy "high brow" art, I make less than the U.S. poverty level and enjoy both Mozart and Tool, and see no inherent contradiction there at all. Perhaps what we need is a less loaded term for art and other culture that engages us at a higher level than the kitschy trash pop that Americans seem to produce to such excess. Not all culture has to be "high brow" there is of course a place for mindless escapist entertainment, but if a society ENTIRELY lacks culture that forces a person to reflect then we are probably in deep trouble at a level that can scarcely be expressed in human language.
Cynicism is heavily promoted by the corporate media especially Fox, which makes sense from their standpoint, after all if people are made to feel helpless and complacent they won't agitate for higher wages, women's rights, the environment, net neutrality, an end to outsourcing, or other pesky things our corporate elite and it's handmaiden the government can't be bothered to deal with.
Your argument conveniently leaves out the fact that many factory workers in third world countries were at one time independent farmers whose livelihoods were destroyed by WTO agreements that allowed the dumping of cheap GMO'd agricultural products in their markets thus destroying their livelihood. Once their livelihoods have been destroyed they are easy pickings for multinationals who rove the world in a predatory fashion looking for the lowest possible wages and thus creating downward pressure on wages throughout the world that is exploited by people with high incomes in the west.
Again I don't see you jumping on any boats to work a 12 hour shift in a sweat shop, though that would certainly be more "productive" of an actual real good than your shilling for the forces of oppression and suffering.
The far right in the U.S. tries to make much of individual crimes and has promoted the idea of the victim impact statement:
This is fine as far as it goes, but I propose an extension, a victim impact statement for all the victims of corporate and U.S. government crimes. Under this arrangement victims of U.S. multinational corporations and would have a public forum to speak of the abuses they suffered at the hands of factories subcontracted to U.S. multinationals, in addition victims of U.S. war crimes such as the innumerable bombings of civilians in Iraq would also be given an opportunity to speak and to confront those responsible for their suffering. This follows from basic logic, after all if victim impact statements are designed to allow victims to have some sort of closure for their suffering ought those who have caused the most suffering be the first in line for having to hear from their victims? Despite the airtight logic of this proposal I doubt apologists for globlization will put it on their agenda anytime soon. After all we wouldn't dare actually hear what the true impact of globlization is on the ground, far better to look at charts whose numbers point, up, up, up, right? Although no proper formal program of this type exists you can read of the stories of the victims of globalization at:
After all accountability and responsibility are only for the little people, upper middle class Americans and other people in the west needn't bother with such trifles as responsibility for their actions, and accountability for the suffering and death they have caused right?
Your economics seems to be the same old crap of rationalizing the terrible destruction cause by speculators like Soros:
"The foreign ministers of the 10 ASEAN countries believed that the well co-ordinated manipulation of currencies was a deliberate attempt to destabilise the ASEAN economies. Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad accused currency speculator George Soros of ruining Malaysia's economy with massive currency speculation"
and shilling for people who don't want to see a living wage like they have in Europe and gasp it hasn't destroyed their economies as economists predict (you write the same on your blog) in fact the Euro is up and the dollar is down, funny that.
Your economics is the same old crap that has rationalized terrible misery and destruction as other economics, after all it's not you that has to live in their car after working 25 hours a week at Wal Mart right? As long as it's all benefit for the upper middle class like you, and all suffering for all those brown and poor people you just don't give a rats ass. So you can take your foul propaganda for the terrible suffering caused by globalization both here in the U.S. and in the third world and shove it up your ass. Economics textbook have more "use value" as toilet paper than reading material.
I notice you are still fuming and stalling and not refuting my 5 points, that wouldn't be because you are incapable of responding to poor wittle me, a mere peasant non economist would it?
No wealth is actual things, you have expanded a line on a graph not actual wealth. It's exactly this sort of thinking by economists that create fiascos like trading in currency derivatives where the money "value" expands with out adding any actual physical productive capacity to the world. Then the money value becomes detached from the actual productive capacity of the society and the bubble eventually breaks leading to the loss of real fortunes and real heart ache in the world.
So in sum you can keep your economy textbook because as far as I'm concerned it's filled with harmful fantasies that enable real suffering suffering the world. If you want to give me a gift send me some real beans and rice I can eat, that is actual wealth and not just a line on a graph. I know you mean well by offering the gift of the book but despite your good intentions economics textbooks are filled with toxic memes that bring heart ache and ruin to the world. I had econ 101 in college and that was quite enough I assure you.
Cat got your tongue? If it's so easy to refute go to it, don't stall for time. Your infinite glass of water in an attempt to refute #1 in your previous response was none too encouraging. Lets say all wealth becomes virtualized as your infinite glass of water seems to imply. Obviously it must at some point become virtual by simple logic as no physical token for wealth could expand infinitely on a finite world. Will I trade a hard drive full 1s and 0s for an actual house? No I don't think so. No porn is THAT good.:) And no cheating and saying the hard drive contains the plans to build a jet, for that just refers back to the material world, and the ACTUAL wealth is the real thing the jet plant.
Slashdot Mirror
You got the first part 100% right, the second part is when Israel comes around like a beggar with their hands outstretched asking for billions in U.S. tax payer dollars we should say NO, period, end of story. It's very interesting how our so called conservative right wing HATES our very own American people if they are on welfare, yet we have given tens of billions of dollars to Israel in the last decade to support THEIR people on welfare while they steal other peoples land according to every other country in the world except the U.S. and Israel. Yes that's right the Israelis are the worst sort of welfare recipient, the thief. Think about that neo-con, the next time you diss on our own American black people claiming falsely that they have no work ethic and that they resort to crime,and they need to "fix" their culture, etc. The biggest welfare recipient criminal thief of them all is Olmert. Does that mean Israel needs to "fix" it's culture. No? You are a hypocrite then oh neo-con, I'm shocked, shocked I tell you...
In fact maybe those saved billions could be used for clean drinking water and other survival needs for Muslim people, then they might like us instead of hating us. It's amazing how if you give someone who is thirsty a glass of water they like you, and if you kick their ass they want to kick your ass in return. Did neo-cons ever take a basic psychology class or even watch they way their class mates behaved in school and they learn ANYTHING about being decent human beings? No I thought not...
Of course if their governments actually tried to DO anything about the poor working conditions like raise their minimum wage you'd decry their "interference in the free market." You can't have it BOTH ways asshole, i.e. blaming the government for the situation AND preventing them from solving it, CHOSE. Do you like a living wage in which case the government is doing something about the poor working conditions, or do you like an unregulated market in which case it's not the governments fault (they are doing the nothing you want) but the corporations CHOICE that the working conditions are so shitty. Basic logic try it some time it does a mind good.
I'll start this off by saying I'm a HUGE Apple "fan boi," I have an ibook, a dual G5 tower, and an ipod nano that I think run circles around my PIII dual boot Dell box.
Having said that I'm VERY disappointed in the leopard preview. HTML stationary in mail.app is a BIG step backwards, it reminds me of the worst spyware infested XP running outlook express boxes owned by pre-teen girls (OMG Ponies). Yep I know there are some very smart sophisticated calculus crunching pre-teen girls, but as a demographic average I don't think that is where interface design should be targeted.
Virtual desktops BIG yawn my free and ethically superior GNU/Linux Ubuntu desktop has virtual desktops, already no waiting for a 2007 release.
Time Machine the big "dazzling" feature with it's file versioning looks like a slightly more refined version of the atrocious Windows restore of Windows Millennium edition days. While it might be handy, I can back up myself thanks, how much HD space will this monster eat on top of my regular backups? And yes I am running out of hard drive space thank you very much, it doesn't take too many digital SLR photo shoots on a gig flash card to max out a 160 gig drive and a 200 gig backup.
And...
I waited what 18 months for this? The big secret feature better be REALLY big like a 50% performance improvement using "thread farming," or a complete implementation of the Windows api under OS X or I'm not buying, I'll just stick with Tiger that's already better than XP or Linux and skip the 150 buck minor update.
Here are some facts about working conditions at Nike factories in Vietnam:
"NIKE shoe production
in the Third World
-- the facts
Indonesian workers make $2.46 a day
10,000 Indonesians went on strike to protest wages that are below subsistence level.
"If I don't work overtime, I can't survive," says Baltazar at PT Hasi Nike factory in Jakarta. He works an average of 40 overtime hours a week.
Vietnamese workers make $l.60 a day
1,300 workers at the Sam Yang factory went on strike to demand a one cent per hour raise in wages. Other issues include excessive and illegal overtime and compensation for working with hazardous material.
Chinese workers make $1.75 a day
There is no minimum wage in China and when abuses are discovered, the whole factory disappears. "The supervisors will get nervous and move the work to another province. It's impossible to monitor factory conditions," says Asia Monitor Resource Center in Hong Kong.
You pay over $100 for shoes that cost less than five dollars to make.
As a consumer, you can change Nike's unfair labor practices.
Write: NIKE Inc.
One Bowerman Drive
Beaverton, OR 97005
PHILIP KNIGHT, CEO of Nike is the sixth richest man in America. He is worth 5 billion dollars and profits off the backs of sweatshop laborers.
NIKE is the biggest shoe company in the world because it operates in countries where it is illegal to organize and collectively bargain for better wages and working conditions.
NIKE can afford to pay endorsers like Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and Monica Seles a combined total of over 60 million dollars to brand themselves with the swoosh.
Call NIKE at: 1-800-344-6453 (press 3 for comments)
Demand that NIKE pays overseas factory workers a living wage for an eight hour work day.
Vietnam and China should get $3.00 a day and Indonesia should get $4.00 a day.
For More Information contact Global Exchange: 415-255-7296,
E-mail: gx-kimberly@globalexchange.org
Address: 2017 Mission Street, Ste. 303, San Francisco, 94110
Website: www.globalexchange.org
*****
Questions and answers about NIKE
Where does Nike produce shoes?
1- During the 1970's, most Nike shoes were made in South Korea and Taiwan. When workers there gained new freedom to organize and wages began to rise, Nike looked for "greener pastures." It found them in Indonesia, China and most recently Vietnam - countries with no protective labor laws, endless supplies of cheap labor, and authoritarian leaders who outlaw independent labor unions.
2- By 1992, Nike had eliminated nearly all of their U.S. work force in favor of low-wage Asian producers.
Why pick on Nike, if all shoe companies are the same?
1- The Asian-American Free Labor Institute in Indonesia says Nike factory workers file more complaints about wage violations than any other shoe company.
2- Nike has been in Vietnam for less than two years and already one factory official has been convicted of physically abusing workers, another fled the country during a police investigation of sexual-abuse charges and a third is under indictment for abusing workers, as reported in the New York Times.
3- Nike, the biggest shoe company in the world, spends $978 million a year on marketing ploys that "empower" women and inner-city youth to buy overpriced shoes that are made with sweatshop labor.
4- Nike has a responsibility to abide by humane labor practices as defined by their Code of Conduct which says "in the area of human rights...in the communities in which we do business - we seek to do not only what is required, but what is expected of a leader." A leader would not lower human rights standards to maximize profits.
Aren't the workers happy to have the factory jobs?
1- Workers risk retaliation and further repression by staging strikes to protest Nike's unfair labor practices. In April 1997, 10,000 Indonesian workers went on strike over wage violation. In the same month, 1,300 workers in Vietnam went on strike demanding a one cen
Do you know why the terrorist do and try to do these these terrible things to Britain and the U.S? It's because we have made a tribal war between the Jews and the Muslim world our business when it is none of our business. If we withdrew our monetary support from Israel who is holding the Golan heights, the west bank, and Gaza against the wishes of 60 U.N. resolutions, and we also stopped supporting repressive regimes like Saudi Arabia, I guarantee that the Jews and Muslim's would fall back to fighting amongst themselves and leave us entirely alone. Perhaps this sort of straight talk will make people uncomfortable but I think it's time to break the taboo and speak of these matters plainly and to the point.
Although I consider myself a decentralist Green if I were President of the U.S. I would make an isolationist "conservative" like Pat Buchanan Secretary of State. My FIRST speech as president would be something like the following:
"My fellow AMERICANS, good evening
The United states of America is facing serious internal crises in the 21st century such declining energy supplies, 40 million people who have no access to basic health care, and declining educational standards. From now on the U.S. in a bi-partisan fashion is going to focus on it's own internal affairs and leave other nations and their outdated tribal conflicts to themselves. If other people of the world want to involve themselves in failed nation building exercises that is their choice, but the United States of America shall not participate in these missions and shall maintain a stance of armed neutrality towards other countries like Switzerland while we get our own affairs in order. Focusing on our own affairs will allow us to reduce our military budget by 50% in the first year of my Presidency, allowing us to keep former president Bush's tax cuts to help the economy expand while also allowing us to start drawing down the deficit. If the coming years prove to be peaceful we will slowly start further reductions in the military budget that are the long delayed "peace dividend" we were supposed to receive at the end of the cold war. These funds will be used to build a high speed train system to increase the U.S.'s energy independence to deal with global warming, and reduce our dependence on oil from the troubled middle east. Next we will start a program of HMO vouchers so the poorest among us can gain access to needed health care while retaining the finest privately held medical system in the world. Finally we will increase teacher salaries immediately by 20% and earmark billions to improve the conditions of our schools so the United States can maintain it's edge in global economy in the now maturing information age.
I look forward to a healthy and prosperous future for the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
Thank you and good night."
I think sort of stance has a good chance of pleasing both small government isolationist true conservatives, and liberal lefties who would like us to focus more on domestic policy. What's more and getting back to the original topic it will keep us out of the pointless irrational conflicts in the middle east. You don't see people burning Swiss flags on the streets of Beirut, do you?
You mocked me for having "axs to grind" and I pointed out using some actual evidence EXACTLY why that's the case.
10 dollars a day from google ads, geez that must pay for electricity for one server. I hope you are making more with the annoying banner ads I filter out using adblock
http://adblock.mozdev.org/
errrr never mind...
No response, I love the smell of burning economists arguments in the morning, it smells like...
victory.
"Couple dozen," why that's just the ax to grind collection in the forier, my ax to grind collection stretches to the horizon and disapears into the twilight, and that's just the first dozen miles of a hundreds of miles long collection of axes to grind. Surely the sheer number of crimes committed by U.S. based multinational corporations, and our criminal government that has invaded or overthrown another countries government EVERY year since WWII if printed on very thin paper would stretch to the moon and beyond.
For example:
TIMELINE
1929: The culture we lost
Secretary of State Henry Stimson refuses to endorse a code-breaking operation, saying, "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail."
1941: COI created
In preparation for World War II, President Roosevelt creates the Office of Coordinator of Information (COI). General William "Wild Bill" Donovan heads the new intelligence service.
1942: OSS created
Roosevelt restructures COI into something more suitable for covert action, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Donovan recruits so many of the nation's rich and powerful that eventually people joke that "OSS" stands for "Oh, so social!" or "Oh, such snobs!"
1943: Italy
Donovan recruits the Catholic Church in Rome to be the center of Anglo-American spy operations in Fascist Italy. This would prove to be one of America's most enduring intelligence alliances in the Cold War.
1945: OSS is abolished
The remaining American information agencies cease covert actions and return to harmless information gathering and analysis.
Operation PAPERCLIP
While other American agencies are hunting down Nazi war criminals for arrest, the U.S. intelligence community is smuggling them into America, unpunished, for their use against the Soviets. The most important of these is Reinhard Gehlen, Hitler's master spy who had built up an intelligence network in the Soviet Union. With full U.S. blessing, he creates the "Gehlen Organization," a band of refugee Nazi spies who reactivate their networks in Russia. These include SS intelligence officers Alfred Six and Emil Augsburg (who massacred Jews in the Holocaust), Klaus Barbie (the "Butcher of Lyon"), Otto von Bolschwing (the Holocaust mastermind who worked with Eichmann) . The Gehlen Organization supplies the U.S. with its only intelligence on the Soviet Union for the next ten years, serving as a bridge between the abolishment of the OSS and the creation of the CIA. However, much of the "intelligence" the former Nazis provide is bogus.
Gehlen inflates Soviet military capabilities at a time when Russia is still rebuilding its devastated society, in order to inflate his own importance to the Americans (who might otherwise punish him). In 1948, Gehlen almost convinces the Americans that war is imminent, and the West should make a preemptive strike. In the 50s he produces a fictitious "missile gap." To make matters worse, the Russians have thoroughly penetrated the Gehlen Organization with double agents, undermining the very American security that Galen was supposed to protect.
1947: Greece
President Truman requests military aid to Greece to support right-wing forces fighting communist rebels. For the rest of the Cold War, Washington and the CIA will back notorious Greek leaders with deplorable human rights records.
CIA created
President Truman signs the National Security Act of 1947, creating the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Council. The CIA is accountable to the president through the NSC -there is no democratic or congressional oversight. Its charter allows the CIA to "perform such other functions and duties as the National Security Council may from time to time direct." This loophole opens the door to covert action and dirty tricks.
1948: Covert-action wing created
The CIA recreates a covert action wing, innocuously called the Office of Policy Coordination, led by Wall Street lawyer Frank Wisner. According to its secret charter, its responsibilities include "propaganda, ec
P.S. just to clarify for example a Libertarian might say, well if you want to hike you ought to own the area you are hiking in, but that's clearly absurd for two reasons:
2 04872-9747219?v=glance&n=283155
a) If I want to do say a multi-day hike into the Rocky mountains then I need to own 500 square miles of Colorado? Get real!
b) It implies that the only people with rights are property owners. Do we really want a society with restricted fundamental rights for non property owners, where an increasing amount of land is walled off and is private gated space? To me a society with endless surveillance cameras and private gated communities and no public space, is no better than Orwell's surveillance society where the government is doing the spying and controlling. In fact in many ways the ultimate Robert Nozickesque
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465097200/002-0
Libertarian society of all private ownership is naught but a photographic negative (that's film for you young 'uns) of a completely government controlled society like Communism. Do you start to see why I say property-tarian and NOT Liber-tarian and that the word Liberty is untrue in the name?
I don't think you quite get my sig, I actually honor the Libertarians questioning of governments role in society. I regularly visit the Libertarian run antiwar.com and lewrockwell.com, and I have a great deal of respect for Ron Paul and Paul Craig Roberts who would be considered Libertarians by many. What bothers me is that many so called Libertarians seem to put the interest of property owners BEFORE liberty despite calling themselves "Liber-tarians." That bothers me because I find large property owners often restrict the freedom of those with little or no property by doing things like destroying wilderness areas thus destroying my freedom to hike, polluting the air and water thus restricting my freedom to drink water and breath, and mistreating their workers thus restricting those peoples right to live decent lives, etc. That is why I think that sort of Libertarian ought to call themselves a propertyarian and not a Libertarian because the rights of property owners is their FIRST priority, not liberty. If Libertarians truly put liberty FIRST then I would embrace them, but then they'd be anarchists not Libertarians.
Perhaps the vast audience of hundreds of thousands of people reading slashdot might be interested in seeing if your are capable of refuting my points? Or are you going to buy them all books as well? Either you are incredibly generous and loaded with cash to buy a 100,000 econ text books, or you forgot you were on a very public forum, take your pick. I served HARD, the ball is in your court. You can feel free to not take a swing at the ball at all, no skin off my nose.
I think in some ways it IS is simple as Fox and Rush Limbaugh. After all how do you think people were motivated to change what used to be a small government Republican party that while I didn't always agree with it, I at least respected, into a right wing authoritarian killing machine that justifies torture and pre-emptive war? Simple propaganda, they repeated the same message over and over again, the classic big lie technique, and before you know it society CHANGED, and the Republicans were the one "capitalize" on the changed society, changing themselves in the process. The media also heavily promoted a meme of greed is good in the movies and tee vee in the 80s 90s and oughts. Eventually an entire generation GREW UP on a constantly repeated message of greed is good, might equals right, and the ownership of property implies you are superior and don't need to follow the same rules as the little people, and this new generation doesn't even know any better or that any other idea has even existed. I suppose you can also factor in the schools for failing to counter this message effectively but the message itself was promoted by the corporate media to promote the interest of it's advertising sponsors. And of course the interest of the advertising sponsors is maximum shareholder return on investment by any means fair or foul. For a more detailed and articulate analysis of how this plays out see Noam Chomsky's book "Manufacturing Consent."
Finally what's truly ironic is society did NOT change in a truly "market" direction despite the sputtering of "conservatives," after all what's the biggest welfare scam on the planet? Military contracts, and Haliburton's "rebuilding," of Iraq. Those are the people really living on the dole as welfare queens.
Of course Goebbels is a bit much much I *like* waving red flags in front of these bull (headed) people just to make them snort. I figure if their philosophy enables actual suffering in the real world there is nothing wrong with pressing them and making them psychologically uncomfortable which is mere shadow of the suffering of say working in an unventilated sweatshop for 12 hours. Trollish? Perhaps, I personally think people who are blatant assholes and what's more arrogantly proud of their asshole philosophy deserve to be trolled a little. Really they deserve to be behind bars and read victim impact statements from all their untold thousands of victims but THAT is a whole other thread.
Who said anything about better? I want art to be MORE widely shared in a more egalitarian way. I am truly sad for you if you cannot tell the difference between a moving and intense Balinese Gamelan concert and corporate television schlock designed to numb your senses like American Idol. It doesn't make me better I just feel lucky that I have experienced art that has moved me deeply and has expanded what it means to be human for me. I hope many people of all races, cultures, sexual preferences, classes, and countries can have equally intense experiences and abandon the mind numbing drug of American television and American pop culture. A society that makes no effort to always transcend itself through artistic experiences that provoke reflection and that glorifies war is in SERIOUS trouble like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, both of which banned "decadent" art and insisted on propaganda as the only allowable form of expression. Joseph Stalin said when I hear the word culture I reach for my pistol. Is that really the way we want to go in the U.S.? Fox news ring a bell?
If that were true Porkies 3 would cause the same level of reflection as War and Peace. Obviously this isn't true and it's the act of reflecting on our humanity as a potentially life changing experience that differentiates art from entertainment. Unfortunately this has gotten tied up in all sorts of nasty class warfare but that doesn't have to be the case, anyone can read Shakespeare and really understand it, or hear hear Mozart and say understand the development of a sonata if it is explained patiently and non boringly by a good teacher. Further I would say many things are art that might not normally be classified as art for example Sonic Youth's new CD Rather Ripped contains lyrics on what relationships mean in the age of eye blink attention spans that makes you reflect seriously while also rocking. Public Enemy's Fear of Black planet tells some of the best stories of ghetto life ever put into any medium. Art doesn't have to boring!!! But it is not mere entertainment like Britney Spears that encourages a person into either mawkish sentimentality or sheer ape like lust using cliched words that bring nothing new into the world. There is a difference between entertainment and art whether you chose to acknowledge it or not, if you limit yourself to strictly entertainment you are missing out on experiences that can move you at the deepest level inexpressible in language.
Few video games cause that sort of transformation, perhaps Myst that I have seen. I'd also be interested in seeing the interactive 3 d world the Residents created in the mid 90s but I have never actually seen it.
Having a non relativist view that differentiates good art from bad art may be controversial, but I firmly believe that people who have been exposed to both and make an effort to understand both entertainment and art will be able to differentiate the two EVERY time though it may be difficult to explain to people what the difference is they none the less they get it.
I wish I had mod points to mod you up, but alas I don't. While highbrow may be an elietest and pretentious term it does contain a kernel of truth which is that cultural artifacts should attempt to touch our deepest emotions and have qualities that transcend the time and place where they were written and not just appeal to the puerile base glandular responses of excitement, hate, or lust. For example a novel like Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky makes us reflect on deep issues of spirituality, the rights of the basest and most vile people, and what it means to be a decent person in a world of strife and conflict. This IS different than a t.v. program like E or a video game like Grand Theft Auto which mainly appeal to twitch and glandular responses and not only don't involve reflection but actively discourage reflection.
I personally believe some video games do reach the level of art like Myst that was mentioned before, I also think games like Sim City encourage us to think about things from architecture, to the quality of life in a cit,y and if they aren't exactly art at least qualify as a culture product.
I also agree with the parent that you don't have to be of a particular class to enjoy "high brow" art, I make less than the U.S. poverty level and enjoy both Mozart and Tool, and see no inherent contradiction there at all. Perhaps what we need is a less loaded term for art and other culture that engages us at a higher level than the kitschy trash pop that Americans seem to produce to such excess. Not all culture has to be "high brow" there is of course a place for mindless escapist entertainment, but if a society ENTIRELY lacks culture that forces a person to reflect then we are probably in deep trouble at a level that can scarcely be expressed in human language.
Cynicism is heavily promoted by the corporate media especially Fox, which makes sense from their standpoint, after all if people are made to feel helpless and complacent they won't agitate for higher wages, women's rights, the environment, net neutrality, an end to outsourcing, or other pesky things our corporate elite and it's handmaiden the government can't be bothered to deal with.
...corporate and U.S. government crime.
Your argument conveniently leaves out the fact that many factory workers in third world countries were at one time independent farmers whose livelihoods were destroyed by WTO agreements that allowed the dumping of cheap GMO'd agricultural products in their markets thus destroying their livelihood. Once their livelihoods have been destroyed they are easy pickings for multinationals who rove the world in a predatory fashion looking for the lowest possible wages and thus creating downward pressure on wages throughout the world that is exploited by people with high incomes in the west.
Again I don't see you jumping on any boats to work a 12 hour shift in a sweat shop, though that would certainly be more "productive" of an actual real good than your shilling for the forces of oppression and suffering.
The far right in the U.S. tries to make much of individual crimes and has promoted the idea of the victim impact statement:
http://crime.about.com/od/victims/a/impact.htm
This is fine as far as it goes, but I propose an extension, a victim impact statement for all the victims of corporate and U.S. government crimes. Under this arrangement victims of U.S. multinational corporations and would have a public forum to speak of the abuses they suffered at the hands of factories subcontracted to U.S. multinationals, in addition victims of U.S. war crimes such as the innumerable bombings of civilians in Iraq would also be given an opportunity to speak and to confront those responsible for their suffering. This follows from basic logic, after all if victim impact statements are designed to allow victims to have some sort of closure for their suffering ought those who have caused the most suffering be the first in line for having to hear from their victims? Despite the airtight logic of this proposal I doubt apologists for globlization will put it on their agenda anytime soon. After all we wouldn't dare actually hear what the true impact of globlization is on the ground, far better to look at charts whose numbers point, up, up, up, right? Although no proper formal program of this type exists you can read of the stories of the victims of globalization at:
http://globalexchange.org/
After all accountability and responsibility are only for the little people, upper middle class Americans and other people in the west needn't bother with such trifles as responsibility for their actions, and accountability for the suffering and death they have caused right?
Your economics seems to be the same old crap of rationalizing the terrible destruction cause by speculators like Soros:
i s
"The foreign ministers of the 10 ASEAN countries believed that the well co-ordinated manipulation of currencies was a deliberate attempt to destabilise the ASEAN economies. Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad accused currency speculator George Soros of ruining Malaysia's economy with massive currency speculation"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_financial_cris
and shilling for people who don't want to see a living wage like they have in Europe and gasp it hasn't destroyed their economies as economists predict (you write the same on your blog) in fact the Euro is up and the dollar is down, funny that.
Your economics is the same old crap that has rationalized terrible misery and destruction as other economics, after all it's not you that has to live in their car after working 25 hours a week at Wal Mart right? As long as it's all benefit for the upper middle class like you, and all suffering for all those brown and poor people you just don't give a rats ass. So you can take your foul propaganda for the terrible suffering caused by globalization both here in the U.S. and in the third world and shove it up your ass. Economics textbook have more "use value" as toilet paper than reading material.
I notice you are still fuming and stalling and not refuting my 5 points, that wouldn't be because you are incapable of responding to poor wittle me, a mere peasant non economist would it?
Beans and rice are actual things, please send me actual things, thank you.
No wealth is actual things, you have expanded a line on a graph not actual wealth. It's exactly this sort of thinking by economists that create fiascos like trading in currency derivatives where the money "value" expands with out adding any actual physical productive capacity to the world. Then the money value becomes detached from the actual productive capacity of the society and the bubble eventually breaks leading to the loss of real fortunes and real heart ache in the world.
So in sum you can keep your economy textbook because as far as I'm concerned it's filled with harmful fantasies that enable real suffering suffering the world. If you want to give me a gift send me some real beans and rice I can eat, that is actual wealth and not just a line on a graph. I know you mean well by offering the gift of the book but despite your good intentions economics textbooks are filled with toxic memes that bring heart ache and ruin to the world. I had econ 101 in college and that was quite enough I assure you.
Cat got your tongue? If it's so easy to refute go to it, don't stall for time. Your infinite glass of water in an attempt to refute #1 in your previous response was none too encouraging. Lets say all wealth becomes virtualized as your infinite glass of water seems to imply. Obviously it must at some point become virtual by simple logic as no physical token for wealth could expand infinitely on a finite world. Will I trade a hard drive full 1s and 0s for an actual house? No I don't think so. No porn is THAT good. :) And no cheating and saying the hard drive contains the plans to build a jet, for that just refers back to the material world, and the ACTUAL wealth is the real thing the jet plant.
An amazingly content free ad hominem attack you just made on my argument, do you care to actually refute my 5 points?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem