Basically, don't talk to the police without a lawyer present. Period. I mean, I'm not going to stonewall a cop that pulls me over for a broken taillight, but if the line of questioning goes any further than what's immediately relevant to said taillight, that's when I shut up. And you can guarantee that I will be videotaping the entire encounter! Cops are under no obligation to tell you the truth about anything; it's up to you to know what your rights are in a given situation and assert them.
According to the New Yorker story http://www.newyorker.com/magaz... after the police read a suspect his Miranda rights, only about a third exercise it. I couldn't figure out why.
I have noticed that on a lot of TV police programs, the cops start interrogating the suspect and he doesn't exercise his right to be silent. They treat it as if it's an intellectual game and the suspect has to convince the cops of his innocence. It's like TV cop programs are propaganda for the cops to convince people that the "right thing" to do is to convince the cop that you're innocent.
Liberia has a 42% literacy rate, no jobs and extreme poverty. So can corruption really be fought in these conditions? I'm just thinking education is bigger priority.
If you think literacy and education is the key question, you should have been a Communist. Every Communist country in the world raised their literacy rate to close to 100%.
The Soviets even set up a pretty good western-style education system (along with other social services and infrastructure) in Afghanistan. They taught girls and boys together, by male and female teachers, in complete equality of the sexes. They used Soviet textbooks, which (certainly in science and math) were among the best in the world.
Of course that all ended when we drove the Communists out of Afghanistan and turned it over to the Mujahadin. The Mujahadin became the Taliban, drove the girls and woman teachers out of the schools, shut down the schools, and based what little education there was on memorizing the Koran.
How much extra did you have to pay the last time you renewed your driver's license? The last time you took a bus? How much kickback do you pay your boss every week to keep your job? When a loved one is in the hospital, how much does the nurse demand directly from you to make sure they get fed?
The last time I bought health insurance, I paid about twice as much as the same insurance would cost in Canada or the UK.
That's because when we have "health care reform," like (most recently) Obamacare, the "stakeholders," who contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to the campaign contributions of both candidates, figuratively sat down at a table in a smoke-filled room and worked out a system that would give each of them a piece of the action, each of which brought up the cost.
So the insurance industry, through their lobby America's Health Insurance Plans, got the franchise for selling health insurance, for which they got about 30% of our health care dollar, compared to Canada. The drug industry, through their lobby Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers Association (PhRMA), escaped price controls for Medicare and Medicaid, and are now able to charge $100,000 and even $300,000 for a drug that you need to stay alive for a year. The doctors, through their professional associations, got rates that give $300,000 a year incomes to specialists (but not general practitioners, whose incomes are close to UK levels). The hospitals got to charge patients rates based on Chargemaster, and to give their CEOs salaries that are often hundreds of millions.
I think campaign contributions in exchange for these handouts are corruption, and I can't understand how they're significantly different from, say, a Nigerian government official demanding 5% of the dollar value to approve a government contract to build a hospital.
I don't know how the US got that body count. At one time, they ordered the hospital morgues not to release any information to the press. It wasn't very open or transparent. They had a motivation to keep the numbers low. If somebody dies and doesn't get taken to a hospital morgue, is he counted? If somebody is killed in the country, and is buried in a grave in a private burial, is he counted?
The studies reported by the New England Journal of Medicine and Lancet were done by epidemiologists who had worked in war settings before, and they had a good design. They went around to actual households and asked the occupants whether anybody had died.
The NEJM came up with 150,000 deaths, and the Lancet came up with 650,000. Those are the best numbers available -- so the best estimate is somewhere between those two numbers, I think.
But the question is, who killed more, Islamic terrorists or Western terrorists? I think the Westerners are ahead.
If we all chip in, maybe we can afford to have a senator, too? I mean, you can get a high class hooker for a thousand bucks, how expensive can one of those whores be?
Eliot Spitzer was only paying $1,000 an hour, and that was for one of the premier escort services.
There is definitely a crowdsourcing opportunity here. Big donors give $100,000, and they get $100 million back in government favors. The little guy should have an opportunity to get the same kind of return.
Until the 1990s, Iraq had perhaps the best university system in the Middle East...
And what happened in August, 1990?
Anyone? Anyone?
Iraq invaded Kuwait, which lead to the destruction of most of the Iraqi Army, massive damage to the economy and infrastructure, and harsh international sanctions
What happened was that, after Iraq invaded Kuwait with U.S. approval, the U.S. invaded Iraq, with destruction of the economy, and international sanctions. This was directly caused by the U.S.
I read the BMJ and Lancet every week, 2 British medical publications. Many of their readers were Iraqi doctors, because Saddam sent a lot of doctors to the UK for medical training. So they were getting a lot of direct information on the situation in Iraq, from doctors who mostly hated Saddam, but were concerned about the welfare of their patients back home.
The Wall Street Journal also had lots of reporters in Iraq who gave first-hand accounts, which were consistent with what the BMJ and Lancet were writing.
that Saddam magnified the effect of by diverting money intended for food and medicine to buying weapons and building many large, expensive palaces.
The problem wasn't with money, it was the embargo. Doctors were complaining that they couldn't give radiology treatments for breast cancer, because the embargo prohibited them from getting medical radiology sources. The WSJ sent somebody over to a border inspection station, and he said that they were turning back imports of toy cars, because the cars had batteries in them.
The medical journals estimated that the embargo caused 100,000 deaths, mostly Iraqi children, because the embargo prohibited the import of chlorine and other chemicals used it water purification. They died of infant diarrhea, which is what happens without clean water. The U.S. also bombed power plants that were needed to run water purification plants. These facts are uncontested.
Saddam wasn't "diverting" money from food and medicine, any more than the Bush Administration was diverting money from food and medicine to our military (the Iraq war cost $3 trillion, according to Nobel laureate economist Joe Stiglitz). Saddam had real military needs, since he was fighting with Iran (with U.S. encouragement) and he had to keep the Islamists under control.
From your article:
Iraqi universities began their decline in the 12 years after the 1991 Gulf War. As the international sanctions regime cut off journal subscriptions and equipment purchases, academic salaries fell precipitously, and 10,000 Iraqi professors left the country. Those faculty who remained were increasingly closed off from new developments in their fields.
The terrible situation Saddam created was made even worse by the Islamists and insurgents.
You're mixing up your dates. Iraq in general, including the university and health care system, was having problems during the embargo. (But Saddam had a good social welfare system, and he took care of peoples' basic needs.) According to the BMJ and Lancet, they were still delivering good health care up to GWB's invasion.
The killings you're talking about took place after 2003, after Saddam was killed and when George W. Bush was the dictator of Iraq. Is somebody complaining that the Islamists and insurgents are killing people? Well, what do you know, when you invade a country and take over its government, you have Islamists and insurgents moving in and you have to know what to do about them. Bush and his war-wimp advisers had no idea this could happen, and when it did happen they had no idea what to do about it. Bush has to take full responsibility for this.
The other thing Bush did to destroy the Iraqi health care
That's right. Iraq actually had a valid complaint about Kuwait's pumping oil in a way that interfered with Iraq's oil. The U.S. told Sadam Hussain to settle it with Kuwait himself. Then when he followed U.S. advice, they went to war with him. There was no U.S. interest in getting involved. Kuwait bought influence.
In a now famous interview with the Iraqi leader, U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie told Saddam, ‘[W]e have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.’ The U.S. State Department had earlier told Saddam that Washington had ‘no special defense or security commitments to Kuwait.’ The United States may not have intended to give Iraq a green light, but that is effectively what it did."
The war was justified, as usual, with lies, like Nayirah's story about the incubators, which she later admitted was a lie, created by one of Kuwait's lobbying and PR firms, Hill & Knowlton. http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/...
Are you aware that the U.S. war in Iraq was responsible for the deaths of 150,000 (according to the New England Journal of Medicine) to 650,000 (according to The Lancet) Iraqis, mostly civilians?
While a massacre of 2,000, or even 12, is horrible, the massacre of 150,000 (or 650,000) Iraqis as a result of the U.S. invasion is also horrible (especially when I know that my tax money is going to pay for it, and therefore all Americans are responsible for it).
Are you OK with 150,000 deaths?
I think the problem is the way you frame your question.
Are you asking me what I think of Western civilization? As Gandi said, "I think it would be a good idea."
Iraq still had engineering and medical schools after it was liberated. The Bush administration facilitated partnerships between Iraqi institutions and those in the US and Europe, ending Iraq's isolation from the international community and helped its efforts to rebuild after the long night of Saddam's rule.
http://www.thebulletin.org/web... An education in occupation By Hugh Gusterson Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 2 February 2012 Until the 1990s, Iraq had perhaps the best university system in the Middle East. Saddam Hussein's regime used oil revenues to underwrite free tuition for Iraqi university students -- churning out doctors, scientists, and engineers who joined the country's burgeoning middle class and anchored development. Although political dissent was strictly off-limits, Iraqi universities were professional, secular institutions that were open to the West, and spaces where male and female, Sunni and Shia mingled. Also the schools pushed hard to educate women, who constituted 30 percent of Iraqi university faculties by 1991. (This is, incidentally, better than Princeton was doing as late as 2009.) With a reputation for excellence, Iraqi universities attracted many students from surrounding countries -- the same countries that are now sheltering the thousands of Iraqi professors who have fled US-occupied Iraq.
Who buys the official story? A bunch of desert jockeys all of a sudden gain the capability to interfere with the internet on an international scale? WTF.
Those desert jockeys invented astronomy and optics.
Iraq had engineering schools and medical schools (until GWB destroyed them).
Pro tip: Don't ever get into a war with a country full of engineers.
I'm going to go to the web sites of President Obama and my representatives. Those web sites have "Comments" or "Send a Message" sections, in which you can send a message to those people. In the "Comments" sections of the web sites, I'm going to ask them to make electronic security a high priority.
When you send a message to your elected representative, be sure to include a campaign contribution of $10,000 or so. If enough of us did that, they'd pay attention.
If you think that they really believe in God, any more than Christians, Jews and members of Western religions do, then you should take a political science course. Religion is just an excuse to steal things from other people.
The only ones who believe that God bullshit are the dumb people on the bottom, like the ones who voted for George W. Bush and the Republicans against their own interests.
John Dean, the presidential counsel who ratted on Nixon, wrote a book about how the Republican party discovered the strategy of appealing to stupid religious hicks with a bait and switch on abortion, gays and other social hot-button issues, in order to manipulate them into voting for conservative candidates who would cut taxes on the rich along with government services that actually benefited the stupid religious hicks. Dean wrote a series of articles about this on Findlaw, if you want to look them up and read them free.
I appreciate your concern for myself entering into a voluntary contract with another party. You and your ilk are so wise. Thank you for bestowing upon us mere mundanes your knowledge. Without the state protecting me I would be stabbing myself in the eye with pens.
That's because every time we had an unregulated free market, starting at least in the 19th century, the competitors decided that instead of competing with each other in a free market, it was more profitable for them to merge and acquire each other, until we were left with one big monopoly in every industry, and the consumer had no choice other than to take it or leave it.
Maybe you have a religious faith that the most efficient economy is one in which a few greedy billionaire padrones run the world, but the majority of us don't share it and we want our elected officials to keep the Zuckermans and Gateses under control.
The government makes the tax laws and could, in theory, check that everyone has paid correctly.
They simply do not have enough information to do what you suggest. Unless they could track *every* transaction every taxpayer made, even when in cash, there is no way to be sure they could catch everything correctly.
Also, *some* people make money but don't get a paycheck so there is nothing to deduct money from.
Actually they do have enough information. Other countries do it. As the ProPublica story explains, the reason the IRS can't do it is that Intuit spent $11 million lobbying to prevent it.
http://www.propublica.org/arti... How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing by Liz Day ProPublica, March 26, 2013, 4 a.m
The government makes the tax laws and could, in theory, check that everyone has paid correctly. So why do we have to do this yearly ritual? How about the bizarre game of guessing how much to deduct from your salery and how many exemptions it needs to be - just have the correct amount deducted automatically.
Anyone with complicated finances, which would include any business, or who doesn't trust the government would still do it the same as now, but for most people it'd be far simpler.
Because as ProPublica reported, Intuit has spent over $11 million lobbying to prevent the IRS from offering us that service. That's why, every time we discuss electronic filing on Slashdot, we get posts from outside the U.S. saying, "Ha! Ha! Stupid yanks! We file our taxes automatically for free!! How's Obamacare going?" And the worst thing is they're right. We are stupid for letting corporations buy Congress and run the country.
http://www.propublica.org/arti... How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing by Liz Day ProPublica, March 26, 2013, 4 a.m
Imagine filing your income taxes in five minutes — and for free. You'd open up a pre-filled return, see what the government thinks you owe, make any needed changes and be done. The miserable annual IRS shuffle, gone.
It's already a reality in Denmark, Sweden and Spain. The government-prepared return would estimate your taxes using information your employer and bank already send it. Advocates say tens of millions of taxpayers could use such a system each year, saving them a collective $2 billion and 225 million hours in prep costs and time, according to one estimate.
The idea, known as "return-free filing," would be a voluntary alternative to hiring a tax preparer or using commercial tax software. The concept has been around for decades and has been endorsed by both President Ronald Reagan and a campaigning President Obama.
"This is not some pie-in-the-sky that's never been done before," said William Gale, co-director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. "It's doable, feasible, implementable, and at a relatively low cost."
So why hasn't it become a reality?
Well, for one thing, it doesn't help that it's been opposed for years by the company behind the most popular consumer tax software — Intuit, maker of TurboTax. Conservative tax activist Grover Norquist and an influential computer industry group also have fought return-free filing.
Imagine filing your income taxes in five minutes — and for free. You'd open up a pre-filled return, see what the government thinks you owe, make any needed changes and be done. The miserable annual IRS shuffle, gone.
It's already a reality in Denmark, Sweden and Spain. The government-prepared return would estimate your taxes using information your employer and bank already send it. Advocates say tens of millions of taxpayers could use such a system each year, saving them a collective $2 billion and 225 million hours in prep costs and time, according to one estimate.
The idea, known as "return-free filing," would be a voluntary alternative to hiring a tax preparer or using commercial tax software. The concept has been around for decades and has been endorsed by both President Ronald Reagan and a campaigning President Obama.
"This is not some pie-in-the-sky that's never been done before," said William Gale, co-director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. "It's doable, feasible, implementable, and at a relatively low cost."
So why hasn't it become a reality?
www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-maker-linked-to-grassroots-campaign-against-free-simple-tax-filing TurboTax Maker Linked to ‘Grassroots’ Campaign Against Free, Simple Tax Filing Intuit and its allies are continuing to work against proposals for what’s known as return-free filing. by Liz Day ProPublica, April 1
I don't know how they do things in the UK, but in the US many people in the film industry went to jail for being a member of the Communist Party, or for refusing to testify about it, or refusing to testify about the political activities of their friends. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Wasn't that, like, more than 50 years ago?
1. The anti-Communist movement eliminated not only Communists but anyone on the left from the U.S. entertainment industry, teaching profession, unions, etc., and has left its effects today. It moved the political center of gravity far to the right. It was particularly damaging to unions, where Communists had been some of the most effective leaders.
It also demonstrates how the U.S. doesn't allow people to express unpopular views, especially when they are politically effective.
2. The Holy Land Foundation case ended in 2009. They're still in prison. It was a brazen violation of freedom of religion and political association.
You're incorrect. The difference is clearly defined in all countries I'm aware of where such restrictions apply.
If you can't see a difference between "Meet me at the docks after lunch and we will kill all the jews" and "I believe all jews ought to be killed" then that is your problem. Voicing an opinion is, and always will be, outside the domain of governments to censor. Planning an attack on someone or instigating violence is not protected speech. Yelling fire in a crowded theater is not protected speech and only morons would suggest it is.
Freedom of speech means freedom to express an opinion without consequence from any institution legally mandated to enact sanctions.
Unfortunately, despite your assurances, people have gone to prison in the U.S. for those kinds of comments and less.
You should read the history of the anti-Communist movement in the U.S., and particularly the Supreme Court decisions that erased the distinctions between abstract advocacy and "conspiracy to overthrow the government." The most disgraceful was Dennis vs. U.S. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... . A majority of the Supreme Court decided that publishing newspapers and books, giving lectures and classes, and holding demonstrations, wasn't protected activity under the First Amendment, but was a conspiracy to overthrow the government by force and violence. Go read the dissent by Black and Douglas; they can explain it better than I can.
Today under U.S. law they simply have to designate someone a terrorist, and then anyone who gives that terrorist "material support" can be sent to jail for the rest of his life. "Material support" can be a web side containing the terrorist's writing.
Take a look at the Holy Land Foundation case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... where the founders were given prison sentences of up to 65 years, They were convicted in part on the basis of the testimony of two anonymous Israeli security agency employees.
Slashdot Mirror
Basically, don't talk to the police without a lawyer present. Period. I mean, I'm not going to stonewall a cop that pulls me over for a broken taillight, but if the line of questioning goes any further than what's immediately relevant to said taillight, that's when I shut up. And you can guarantee that I will be videotaping the entire encounter! Cops are under no obligation to tell you the truth about anything; it's up to you to know what your rights are in a given situation and assert them.
According to the New Yorker story http://www.newyorker.com/magaz... after the police read a suspect his Miranda rights, only about a third exercise it. I couldn't figure out why.
I have noticed that on a lot of TV police programs, the cops start interrogating the suspect and he doesn't exercise his right to be silent. They treat it as if it's an intellectual game and the suspect has to convince the cops of his innocence. It's like TV cop programs are propaganda for the cops to convince people that the "right thing" to do is to convince the cop that you're innocent.
I think you're going to have to take this to your college Freshman economics and political science classes.
I hope you can afford today's free-market tuition.
Liberia has a 42% literacy rate, no jobs and extreme poverty. So can corruption really be fought in these conditions? I'm just thinking education is bigger priority.
If you think literacy and education is the key question, you should have been a Communist. Every Communist country in the world raised their literacy rate to close to 100%.
The Soviets even set up a pretty good western-style education system (along with other social services and infrastructure) in Afghanistan. They taught girls and boys together, by male and female teachers, in complete equality of the sexes. They used Soviet textbooks, which (certainly in science and math) were among the best in the world.
Of course that all ended when we drove the Communists out of Afghanistan and turned it over to the Mujahadin. The Mujahadin became the Taliban, drove the girls and woman teachers out of the schools, shut down the schools, and based what little education there was on memorizing the Koran.
How much extra did you have to pay the last time you renewed your driver's license? The last time you took a bus? How much kickback do you pay your boss every week to keep your job? When a loved one is in the hospital, how much does the nurse demand directly from you to make sure they get fed?
The last time I bought health insurance, I paid about twice as much as the same insurance would cost in Canada or the UK.
That's because when we have "health care reform," like (most recently) Obamacare, the "stakeholders," who contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to the campaign contributions of both candidates, figuratively sat down at a table in a smoke-filled room and worked out a system that would give each of them a piece of the action, each of which brought up the cost.
So the insurance industry, through their lobby America's Health Insurance Plans, got the franchise for selling health insurance, for which they got about 30% of our health care dollar, compared to Canada. The drug industry, through their lobby Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers Association (PhRMA), escaped price controls for Medicare and Medicaid, and are now able to charge $100,000 and even $300,000 for a drug that you need to stay alive for a year. The doctors, through their professional associations, got rates that give $300,000 a year incomes to specialists (but not general practitioners, whose incomes are close to UK levels). The hospitals got to charge patients rates based on Chargemaster, and to give their CEOs salaries that are often hundreds of millions.
I think campaign contributions in exchange for these handouts are corruption, and I can't understand how they're significantly different from, say, a Nigerian government official demanding 5% of the dollar value to approve a government contract to build a hospital.
I don't know how the US got that body count. At one time, they ordered the hospital morgues not to release any information to the press. It wasn't very open or transparent. They had a motivation to keep the numbers low. If somebody dies and doesn't get taken to a hospital morgue, is he counted? If somebody is killed in the country, and is buried in a grave in a private burial, is he counted?
The studies reported by the New England Journal of Medicine and Lancet were done by epidemiologists who had worked in war settings before, and they had a good design. They went around to actual households and asked the occupants whether anybody had died.
The NEJM came up with 150,000 deaths, and the Lancet came up with 650,000. Those are the best numbers available -- so the best estimate is somewhere between those two numbers, I think.
But the question is, who killed more, Islamic terrorists or Western terrorists? I think the Westerners are ahead.
If we all chip in, maybe we can afford to have a senator, too? I mean, you can get a high class hooker for a thousand bucks, how expensive can one of those whores be?
Eliot Spitzer was only paying $1,000 an hour, and that was for one of the premier escort services.
There is definitely a crowdsourcing opportunity here. Big donors give $100,000, and they get $100 million back in government favors. The little guy should have an opportunity to get the same kind of return.
Until the 1990s, Iraq had perhaps the best university system in the Middle East...
And what happened in August, 1990?
Anyone? Anyone?
Iraq invaded Kuwait, which lead to the destruction of most of the Iraqi Army, massive damage to the economy and infrastructure, and harsh international sanctions
What happened was that, after Iraq invaded Kuwait with U.S. approval, the U.S. invaded Iraq, with destruction of the economy, and international sanctions. This was directly caused by the U.S.
I read the BMJ and Lancet every week, 2 British medical publications. Many of their readers were Iraqi doctors, because Saddam sent a lot of doctors to the UK for medical training. So they were getting a lot of direct information on the situation in Iraq, from doctors who mostly hated Saddam, but were concerned about the welfare of their patients back home.
The Wall Street Journal also had lots of reporters in Iraq who gave first-hand accounts, which were consistent with what the BMJ and Lancet were writing.
that Saddam magnified the effect of by diverting money intended for food and medicine to buying weapons and building many large, expensive palaces.
The problem wasn't with money, it was the embargo. Doctors were complaining that they couldn't give radiology treatments for breast cancer, because the embargo prohibited them from getting medical radiology sources. The WSJ sent somebody over to a border inspection station, and he said that they were turning back imports of toy cars, because the cars had batteries in them.
The medical journals estimated that the embargo caused 100,000 deaths, mostly Iraqi children, because the embargo prohibited the import of chlorine and other chemicals used it water purification. They died of infant diarrhea, which is what happens without clean water. The U.S. also bombed power plants that were needed to run water purification plants. These facts are uncontested.
Saddam wasn't "diverting" money from food and medicine, any more than the Bush Administration was diverting money from food and medicine to our military (the Iraq war cost $3 trillion, according to Nobel laureate economist Joe Stiglitz). Saddam had real military needs, since he was fighting with Iran (with U.S. encouragement) and he had to keep the Islamists under control.
From your article:
Iraqi universities began their decline in the 12 years after the 1991 Gulf War. As the international sanctions regime cut off journal subscriptions and equipment purchases, academic salaries fell precipitously, and 10,000 Iraqi professors left the country. Those faculty who remained were increasingly closed off from new developments in their fields.
The terrible situation Saddam created was made even worse by the Islamists and insurgents.
Killings lead to brain drain from Iraq - 17 Apr 2006
You're mixing up your dates. Iraq in general, including the university and health care system, was having problems during the embargo. (But Saddam had a good social welfare system, and he took care of peoples' basic needs.) According to the BMJ and Lancet, they were still delivering good health care up to GWB's invasion.
The killings you're talking about took place after 2003, after Saddam was killed and when George W. Bush was the dictator of Iraq. Is somebody complaining that the Islamists and insurgents are killing people? Well, what do you know, when you invade a country and take over its government, you have Islamists and insurgents moving in and you have to know what to do about them. Bush and his war-wimp advisers had no idea this could happen, and when it did happen they had no idea what to do about it. Bush has to take full responsibility for this.
The other thing Bush did to destroy the Iraqi health care
That's right. Iraq actually had a valid complaint about Kuwait's pumping oil in a way that interfered with Iraq's oil. The U.S. told Sadam Hussain to settle it with Kuwait himself. Then when he followed U.S. advice, they went to war with him. There was no U.S. interest in getting involved. Kuwait bought influence.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2011/...
In a now famous interview with the Iraqi leader, U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie told Saddam, ‘[W]e have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.’ The U.S. State Department had earlier told Saddam that Washington had ‘no special defense or security commitments to Kuwait.’ The United States may not have intended to give Iraq a green light, but that is effectively what it did."
The war was justified, as usual, with lies, like Nayirah's story about the incubators, which she later admitted was a lie, created by one of Kuwait's lobbying and PR firms, Hill & Knowlton.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/...
Are you aware that the U.S. war in Iraq was responsible for the deaths of 150,000 (according to the New England Journal of Medicine) to 650,000 (according to The Lancet) Iraqis, mostly civilians?
While a massacre of 2,000, or even 12, is horrible, the massacre of 150,000 (or 650,000) Iraqis as a result of the U.S. invasion is also horrible (especially when I know that my tax money is going to pay for it, and therefore all Americans are responsible for it).
Are you OK with 150,000 deaths?
I think the problem is the way you frame your question.
Are you asking me what I think of Western civilization? As Gandi said, "I think it would be a good idea."
Iraq still had engineering and medical schools after it was liberated. The Bush administration facilitated partnerships between Iraqi institutions and those in the US and Europe, ending Iraq's isolation from the international community and helped its efforts to rebuild after the long night of Saddam's rule.
http://www.thebulletin.org/web...
An education in occupation
By Hugh Gusterson
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
2 February 2012
Until the 1990s, Iraq had perhaps the best university system in the Middle East. Saddam Hussein's regime used oil revenues to underwrite free tuition for Iraqi university students -- churning out doctors, scientists, and engineers who joined the country's burgeoning middle class and anchored development. Although political dissent was strictly off-limits, Iraqi universities were professional, secular institutions that were open to the West, and spaces where male and female, Sunni and Shia mingled. Also the schools pushed hard to educate women, who constituted 30 percent of Iraqi university faculties by 1991. (This is, incidentally, better than Princeton was doing as late as 2009.) With a reputation for excellence, Iraqi universities attracted many students from surrounding countries -- the same countries that are now sheltering the thousands of Iraqi professors who have fled US-occupied Iraq.
Who buys the official story? A bunch of desert jockeys all of a sudden gain the capability to interfere with the internet on an international scale? WTF.
Those desert jockeys invented astronomy and optics.
Iraq had engineering schools and medical schools (until GWB destroyed them).
Pro tip: Don't ever get into a war with a country full of engineers.
For whomever is most law-abiding and least violent. It's a close call.
The catch is that it will stop federal forfeiture but not state forfeiture.
http://www.slate.com/articles/...
Jan. 16 2015 7:36 PM
Helicopters Don’t Pay for Themselves
Why Eric Holder’s civil forfeiture decision won’t stop civil forfeiture abuse.
By Leon Neyfakh
Is it OK with you if the French at least inconvenience the people trying to massacre them?
Are you French or are you just speaking for them?
I'm going to go to the web sites of President Obama and my representatives. Those web sites have "Comments" or "Send a Message" sections, in which you can send a message to those people. In the "Comments" sections of the web sites, I'm going to ask them to make electronic security a high priority.
When you send a message to your elected representative, be sure to include a campaign contribution of $10,000 or so. If enough of us did that, they'd pay attention.
If you think that they really believe in God, any more than Christians, Jews and members of Western religions do, then you should take a political science course. Religion is just an excuse to steal things from other people.
The only ones who believe that God bullshit are the dumb people on the bottom, like the ones who voted for George W. Bush and the Republicans against their own interests.
John Dean, the presidential counsel who ratted on Nixon, wrote a book about how the Republican party discovered the strategy of appealing to stupid religious hicks with a bait and switch on abortion, gays and other social hot-button issues, in order to manipulate them into voting for conservative candidates who would cut taxes on the rich along with government services that actually benefited the stupid religious hicks. Dean wrote a series of articles about this on Findlaw, if you want to look them up and read them free.
I appreciate your concern for myself entering into a voluntary contract with another party. You and your ilk are so wise. Thank you for bestowing upon us mere mundanes your knowledge. Without the state protecting me I would be stabbing myself in the eye with pens.
That's because every time we had an unregulated free market, starting at least in the 19th century, the competitors decided that instead of competing with each other in a free market, it was more profitable for them to merge and acquire each other, until we were left with one big monopoly in every industry, and the consumer had no choice other than to take it or leave it.
Maybe you have a religious faith that the most efficient economy is one in which a few greedy billionaire padrones run the world, but the majority of us don't share it and we want our elected officials to keep the Zuckermans and Gateses under control.
Why not publish the data wide open on the internet? (and if the government is interested, they can use it too)
Sure, I'd like to know which escort service Eliot Spitzer is using these days.
Andrew Cuomo too.
Maybe the technology we need is the guillotine.
The government makes the tax laws and could, in theory, check that everyone has paid correctly.
They simply do not have enough information to do what you suggest. Unless they could track *every* transaction every taxpayer made, even when in cash, there is no way to be sure they could catch everything correctly.
Also, *some* people make money but don't get a paycheck so there is nothing to deduct money from.
Actually they do have enough information. Other countries do it. As the ProPublica story explains, the reason the IRS can't do it is that Intuit spent $11 million lobbying to prevent it.
http://www.propublica.org/arti...
How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing
by Liz Day
ProPublica, March 26, 2013, 4 a.m
The government makes the tax laws and could, in theory, check that everyone has paid correctly. So why do we have to do this yearly ritual? How about the bizarre game of guessing how much to deduct from your salery and how many exemptions it needs to be - just have the correct amount deducted automatically.
Anyone with complicated finances, which would include any business, or who doesn't trust the government would still do it the same as now, but for most people it'd be far simpler.
Because as ProPublica reported, Intuit has spent over $11 million lobbying to prevent the IRS from offering us that service. That's why, every time we discuss electronic filing on Slashdot, we get posts from outside the U.S. saying, "Ha! Ha! Stupid yanks! We file our taxes automatically for free!! How's Obamacare going?" And the worst thing is they're right. We are stupid for letting corporations buy Congress and run the country.
http://www.propublica.org/arti...
How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing
by Liz Day
ProPublica, March 26, 2013, 4 a.m
Imagine filing your income taxes in five minutes — and for free. You'd open up a pre-filled return, see what the government thinks you owe, make any needed changes and be done. The miserable annual IRS shuffle, gone.
It's already a reality in Denmark, Sweden and Spain. The government-prepared return would estimate your taxes using information your employer and bank already send it. Advocates say tens of millions of taxpayers could use such a system each year, saving them a collective $2 billion and 225 million hours in prep costs and time, according to one estimate.
The idea, known as "return-free filing," would be a voluntary alternative to hiring a tax preparer or using commercial tax software. The concept has been around for decades and has been endorsed by both President Ronald Reagan and a campaigning President Obama.
"This is not some pie-in-the-sky that's never been done before," said William Gale, co-director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. "It's doable, feasible, implementable, and at a relatively low cost."
So why hasn't it become a reality?
Well, for one thing, it doesn't help that it's been opposed for years by the company behind the most popular consumer tax software — Intuit, maker of TurboTax. Conservative tax activist Grover Norquist and an influential computer industry group also have fought return-free filing.
Imagine filing your income taxes in five minutes — and for free. You'd open up a pre-filled return, see what the government thinks you owe, make any needed changes and be done. The miserable annual IRS shuffle, gone.
It's already a reality in Denmark, Sweden and Spain. The government-prepared return would estimate your taxes using information your employer and bank already send it. Advocates say tens of millions of taxpayers could use such a system each year, saving them a collective $2 billion and 225 million hours in prep costs and time, according to one estimate.
The idea, known as "return-free filing," would be a voluntary alternative to hiring a tax preparer or using commercial tax software. The concept has been around for decades and has been endorsed by both President Ronald Reagan and a campaigning President Obama.
"This is not some pie-in-the-sky that's never been done before," said William Gale, co-director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. "It's doable, feasible, implementable, and at a relatively low cost."
So why hasn't it become a reality?
www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-maker-linked-to-grassroots-campaign-against-free-simple-tax-filing
TurboTax Maker Linked to ‘Grassroots’ Campaign Against Free, Simple Tax Filing
Intuit and its allies are continuing to work against proposals for what’s known as return-free filing.
by Liz Day
ProPublica, April 1
Speech that is abusive or incites hatred is one of the things things that is limited.
Who decides when speech is abusive or incites hatred?
Some prosecutor or bureaucrat with an axe to grind, or sometimes a group looking for a scapegoat to blame for some tragic event.
That seems fair.
I was being ironic. No wonder Stephen Colbert quit using his character.
I don't know how they do things in the UK, but in the US many people in the film industry went to jail for being a member of the Communist Party, or for refusing to testify about it, or refusing to testify about the political activities of their friends. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Wasn't that, like, more than 50 years ago?
1. The anti-Communist movement eliminated not only Communists but anyone on the left from the U.S. entertainment industry, teaching profession, unions, etc., and has left its effects today. It moved the political center of gravity far to the right. It was particularly damaging to unions, where Communists had been some of the most effective leaders.
It also demonstrates how the U.S. doesn't allow people to express unpopular views, especially when they are politically effective.
2. The Holy Land Foundation case ended in 2009. They're still in prison. It was a brazen violation of freedom of religion and political association.
You're incorrect. The difference is clearly defined in all countries I'm aware of where such restrictions apply.
If you can't see a difference between "Meet me at the docks after lunch and we will kill all the jews" and "I believe all jews ought to be killed" then that is your problem. Voicing an opinion is, and always will be, outside the domain of governments to censor. Planning an attack on someone or instigating violence is not protected speech. Yelling fire in a crowded theater is not protected speech and only morons would suggest it is.
Freedom of speech means freedom to express an opinion without consequence from any institution legally mandated to enact sanctions.
Unfortunately, despite your assurances, people have gone to prison in the U.S. for those kinds of comments and less.
You should read the history of the anti-Communist movement in the U.S., and particularly the Supreme Court decisions that erased the distinctions between abstract advocacy and "conspiracy to overthrow the government." The most disgraceful was Dennis vs. U.S. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... . A majority of the Supreme Court decided that publishing newspapers and books, giving lectures and classes, and holding demonstrations, wasn't protected activity under the First Amendment, but was a conspiracy to overthrow the government by force and violence. Go read the dissent by Black and Douglas; they can explain it better than I can.
Today under U.S. law they simply have to designate someone a terrorist, and then anyone who gives that terrorist "material support" can be sent to jail for the rest of his life. "Material support" can be a web side containing the terrorist's writing.
Take a look at the Holy Land Foundation case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... where the founders were given prison sentences of up to 65 years, They were convicted in part on the basis of the testimony of two anonymous Israeli security agency employees.