"be sure to visit regularly the Smart Mobs collective weblog"
Nice plug for the web site. Went there, some OK articles. Its kind of telling that there was a total of 4 comments to all of the articles currently on the front page. If you are plugging some kind of communication revolution shouldn't your web site show some kind of actual bidirectional communcation going on.
"there were net 21,000 jobs added to reported payroll in Feb."
A key point about even that modest number is it corresponds precisely to the number of new jobs created that same month. The net job growth in the private sector was zero.
A key facet of what little economic recovery there has been in the last year in the U.S. is that the U.S. economy is being massively pumped by tax cuts, low interest rates, massive deficit spending, and huge increases in government spending especially in defense and Iraq.
Part of the Bush adminstrations strategy is to force prosperity in the U.S. economy through artificial and unsustainable means, in particular massive deficit spending. The Republicans desperately want the economy to appear prosperous for Bush's reelection. It inceasingly appears as though it may not work in that even the bubbling stock market is now in a steep correction, no jobs are being created in the U.S. and the huge growth figures last year appear to be largely artificial again thanks in part to government spending.
It appears this strategy was another case of voodoo economics, trying to force prosperity through tax cuts and deficit spending. The best road to economic prosperity would be massive reductions in wasteful government spending and tax cuts for the working class who will spend the money in the U.S. and not invest it in China and India as is being done by big money at the moment.
Hate to point this out but you are citing propaganda from a right wing think tank, the CATO Institute. It was founded by the Koch family among others who own one of largest energy companies and polluters in the U.S.
The Koch's are best friends with the Bush family and huge backers of George W.'s reelection campaign. One of the elder's in this family had a little fling with Anna Nicole Smith.
One of the CATO directors is, or at least was, Rupert Murdoch head of the Fox network and their right wing propaganda news network.
These people have a vested interest in trying to downplay the consequences of outsourcing. The Cato Institute and the Bush administration are 100% pro big business and pro wealth. They are 100% indifferent to the welfare of the U.S. middle and lower classes, you know the people that work for a living, except they want Bush to get reelected so they NEED to churn out this crud in the hopes people will believe it and still vote for him. I'm assuming you must be upper middle class aspiring to the upper class or just dumb to believe it. The Bush administration has put out rosy labor projections every year they've been in office and NONE of the jobs they promised would be created by cutting taxes for the rich have been created. Correction they have been created but they are being created in China and India.
The current rush to outsourcing is unprecedented in U.S. history. It is the product of a perfect storm, cheap container shipping, cheap telecom, collapsing trade barriers and the opening of China's economy and its massive, cheap labor pool. Couple that with the fact U.S. labor has been priced out of the global labor market by years of inflation, prosperity and declining education. This is not a transient anomoly to dismiss. Its an accelerating trend. It is either naive or deceitful to contend that its business as usual and its nothing to worry about. It was not so long ago that the U.S. trade deficit was $50-$100 billion dollars and we were concerned. It is now $500 billion dollars and exploding. The U.S. simply can't sustain this hemoraging of cash indefinitely. The multinational corporations on the other hand don't care. You see they are for the most part now truly multinational, headquartered in the Caribbean and manufacturing wherever they can find the cheapest labor. If the U.S. craters they will just sell goods to the newly affluent Chinese and Indians, its a bigger market than the U.S. anyway and they are just now aspiring to by all the things American's already have. The execs and share holders will probably still get rich unless the Chinese and Indian execs manage to fox them too. Whatever happens they will be living in gated communities or the Caribbean and will be largely indifferent to the fact most American's are going to be pushed in to poverty in the next couple of decades. Most American's simply cant compete head to head with workers in China and India without working for what are poverty wages in the U.S. Maybe they could take solace in service jobs that have to be in the U.S. but the Bush administration is eager to launch a jobs program for Mexican labor to insure those jobs will also go to the cheapest possible labor. So you are going to have to train a very select class of jobs to make a good living in the next couple of decades, lawyer or an MBA heading for a position in a multinational are probably the best bets.
The Chinese economy ia already at 6 trillion and is expected to eclipse the U.S. and EU, now at a little over 10 trillion, in another 10-20 years. I doubt its going to take that long myself.
There has been a real loss of more than 2 million jobs under the Bush administration which hasn't happened since the great depression. It can be attributed to the overmployment of the bubble and 9/11 but there is simply no way the U.S. economy is going to create good jobs again with the current ru
I'd be inclined to believe the reporter's numbe4rs. If you look at the hundred billion price tag on the ISS, which was to put tin cans in LEO where everyone has gone before, and the half billion price tag for one shuttle launch I thourougly believe it will cost NASA a trillion to put a base on the moon OR go to Mars.
Now should it cost this much. No. But if NASA gets all these tax dollars they will be shoveled in one end and corrupt bureaucrats in the middle will be shoveling it out the other end to pork fed Boeing, Lockheed, NASA facilities and little contractors in every congressional district, which is how NASA shores up political support in Congress. They probably wont actually bend any metal though they will generate a giant mound of paper which if you were to put in one stack might be tall enough to reach the moon at least.
If there is something the U.S. should be outsourcing its the space program since the current NASA and its contractors simply can't do the job at a reasonable cost. The Russian's, Chinese and maybe India and ESA, especially the Russian's, could probably take a pretty good shot at the Moon and Mars if they had a couple hundred billion to spend.
If the U.S. wants to do a manned space program again they pretty much need to throw out all the current players and start a new team, like Kelly Johnson' old skunk works. First find someone like Kelly Johnson who knows how to engineer and get things done, then recruit the best engineers from around the world, put them in one place, give them goal and the funding and cut them loose(as in get rid of the constant political intereference and changes in direction that cripples NASA).
Not sure anything in my post qualifies for the standard/. conspiracy theory retort, most often used by people who don't have anything intelligent to say in rebuttal. The sabotoged pipeline in russia is from a recently published book and was widely covered recently.
Details on the supposed hacked printers in Iraq in the first gulf war are a little harder to find so it might be urban legend. The recount of the radio transponder in the printer was in a documentary I saw a while ago. There are also reports that it was a trojan horse in the printer, it may also be an april fools joke.
Here is one reference I can find that describes it as a joke but also covers the very real use of software as a waepon:
You make not like it but its a fact of life, especially in China. The Chinese government is aggressively mandating Linux and an elimination of dependence on Microsoft software. The reasons are multifold:
- Dependence on Microsoft software kills indigenous software development for a huge percentage of the software run on PC's, as in you can only develop high level, rather custom applications or try to compete head to head with Office and IE and you may not be very successful at it on top of Windows.
- It contributes to a trade deficit everytime you ship money to Microsoft. China in particular is going all out to make sure the trade balance with the U.S. is massively in its favor. This will eventually insure China's economic prosperity and the demise of the U.S. China, a while ago, realized it wasn't going to defeat the West with guns so its doing it economicly instead.
- Most third world countries simply can't afford to pay Microsoft's licensing costs, so if they use Microsoft software they are forced in to piracy. Microsoft in turn is trying to crack down on piracy in places like Taiwan, which turns ugly for businesses relying on pirated software. When all the ugliness hits the fan switching to Linux has become a BIG plus, especially no more expensive audits.
- The U.S. and its corporations can't be trused on two security fronts:
A. Microsoft software is a massive target for worms, virii and trojans
B. The U.S. government simply can't be trusted to not use Microsoft's software to install backdoors they can use to spy on and potentially sabotoge potential enemies. They do it ALL the time. An old example was transponders in printer sold to Iraqi radar trucks that allowed the U.S. pinpoint targeting. The most recent example is the U.S. sabotoged pumping control software they let the U.S.S.R steal. It was used it to trigger a several kiloton gas pipeline explosion in the Soviet Union resulting in massive economic damage and probably loss of life. Yes, in this case the Russians were stealing the software so maybe they deserved what they got, but there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING stopping the U.S. government from doing stuff equally bad, and much more widely distributed using MS softare. The only way foreign nations can prevent this is to get complete Windows source code access, audit the millions of lines themselves and then build and distribute their own Windows distribution, something which I doubt Microsoft is allowing with its limited source code initiative. Linux is vastly more appealing by comparison.
- Most of the world has started to really hate and distrust the Bush administration so they have a strong, purely political motivation to NOT BUY U.S.
"That's the way all self-proclaimed empires eventually go."
I did neglect to mention in the first post that the U.S. military is still very much a wild card in all this assuming the U.S. can keep bleeding the rest of the economy white to support it.
If the U.S. does start to collapse economicly it could well save its position through aggressive warfare. The most obvious and simplest path is to occupy, or install puppet governments in the top 4-5 oil producing countries. China is working hard to diversify its energy resources but its oil consumption is growing at a double digit annual percentage rate, one of the reasons oil prices are going up, so if you control the oil spigot you control the world's economy until the world wakes up and does the R&D and capital investment to end its dependency on a finite resource. Japan attacked the U.S. at Pearl Harbor precisely because FDR tried to shut off their oil spigot.
If the U.S. controls Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Iran, Venezuela and maybe the new big producers in Central Asia they would be half way there, Russia being the big oild producinv wild card.
The Euro is only doing well because the dollar is doing worse. Western Europe isn't going to fare any better against cheap labor than the U.S. Europe does have an advantage in that they can coopt the cheap labor in Eastern Europe to prop up the EU for a while, but the U.S. tried the same thing with NAFTA and Mexico and it didn't work in the face of even cheaper Chinese labor.
Fact is Chinese, and to a lesser extent Indian, labor is going to be a lot cheaper for a long, long time.
Western European government doesn't look any better than U.S. government. Western European labor is spoiled worse than U.S. labor. Just look at the massive amounts of time off most countries in Europe give and the near impossibility of firing anyone in France. About the only thing Socialism is good for economicly is health care.
Not to worry, American executives are going to get theirs in the end. They are somewhat blinded by the wonders of cheap labor at the moment to they point that they haven't realized they are exporting capital and intellectual property in to countries that would just as soon bury America as look at it.
It was a tolerable to export no brainer manufacturing to China but when they started exporting skill jobs, capital and intellectual property they signed their own death warrant. In industry after industry a critical mass of capital, intellectual property and expertise will develop in these outsourcing hotspots. When it does they will reach a point they don't need the obnoxius executives in the U.S. who are taking the lion's share of the wealth. They will, and in some cases already have, take all the expertise, talent, market insight and knowledge they've developed, start their own companies and bury their former American benefactors.
A key problem with American business is its become incredibly short sighted and is so fixated on quarterly results it simply isn't looking at the long view. They saw this huge boon in their bottomlines with cheap labor but they failed to realize in another decade or two executive in China will be calling the shots and they to will be expendable. Of course American execs, not being entirely stupid, are countering by wholesale looting of their companies now so they and their families will have all the money they need by the time their companies and the U.S. economy collapses. Hopefully they are also smart enough to park their wealth in something besides U.S. dollars. Warrent Buffet, one of the smartest business men in the world is betting heavily against the U.S.dollar with Berkshire Hathaway. He took a look at the half trillion dollar budget deficit and the half trillion dollar trade deficit and quickly realized the U.S. is currently being run by retarded chimps.
America had some huge advantages after World War II since it came out of that war unscathed versus the rest of the world, and in fact had been transformed in to an engineer rich, manufacturing dynamo by the war. The GI bill further pushed a well educated population that did lead the world. That huge advantage, and the prosperity it engendered, unfortunately corrupted America to the point it simply isn't globally competitive any more. The rest of the world meahwhile has recovered from the ravages of World War II and the Cold War, is hungry and is now very well educated compared to the U.S.
Add in to this the fact the U.S. government is now completely corrupted. Just look at the insanity, bribery and fraud perpetrated in last years Medicare bill. We are reaching the point the drug and healthcare industries have effectively purchased the government in the U.S. and health costs would drive a dagger in to American competitiveness if cheap overseas labor didn't. Health care and pharmacueticals appear poised to be among the few industries in the U.S. that will prosper in coming years.
Its unlikely the U.S. will pull out of its competitive tail spin without massive improvements in education, massive health care reform, and a complete gutting of our corrupted governemnt which is spending money like a drunk sailor. Unfortunately we've found a flaw in our two party system in that both the Democrats and Republicans are equally corrupt, and nearly indistinguishable from one other so we can't fix out government through the ballot box. If the U.S. doesn't get a cadre of smart people in power, with a mandate for reform we are doomed, and that isn't going to happen in this years election. Both main party presidential candidates are equally bad, so much so I would really rather take a chance on Nader though he doesn't really have the breadth and sobriety needed to really govern.
"Any community that creates such an unbelieveable fu#&ed up generation does not deserve to be treated as nicely as they are right now."
The arabs didn't create this fucked up generation. Britain, the U.S. and Isreal did when the Jews siezed the homes and property of the Palastinians and pushed them in to refugee camps and grinding poverty for generations.
If schools for Palastinian children started singing praises of the U.S. and Isreal it wouldn't make any difference since those children would still go home to 50% unemployment, grinding poverty, refugee camps, constant harassement and humiliation at the hands of the Israeli military and hopelessness.
Britain and the U.S. likewise created the mess that is Iran today. After World War II Britain controlled Iran and gave British Petroleum a sweet deal in which they got 90% of the revenue from Iran's oil fields and the Iranian's 10%. A nationalist government came to power and seized BP's assets for the obvious reason the British were looting Iran's one path to economic prosperity. The British asked the U.S. to intervene. U.S. procrastinated for a few years, long enough for BP's claims to be forgotten. Then the U.S. toppled the Iranian government, installed a ruthless, oppressive dictator, the shah of Iran, and promptly gave the oil contracts to U.S. oil companies. After decades of oppression the Iranian revolution overthrew the shah and they hate the U.S. with a passion to this day. Waging war for oil is not a new tactic.
The Arabs don't hate Britian and the U.S. for no reason. They hate them due to a century in which Britain and the U.S. royally screwed them at every turn. They also have a long memory that goes back to one wave after of another of Christain crusaders who murdered their way through the middle east century after century.
So what. Microsoft would transfer all of AOL's customers to MSN and AOL as we know it would be gutted and disappear. Microsoft wants to do this to get the customer base, get rid of its largest competitor in the ISP space, and start work on another monopoly.
"This has "monopoly suit" written all over it."
Maybe if there were a rational administration in power in Washington with a balanced viewed of the good and evil of big business. There isn't. This administartion's world view is big business can do no wrong (well except for one multibillion dollar accounting scandal after another). As long as Gates is one of the good old boys and pumps money in to Bush's campaign coffers there won't be a peep from the Feds about this. You need to recall the current administration gutted the last antitrust conviction of Microsoft as soon as they came in to power and Microsoft effectively got a free pass.
"Hell, maybe if Arab states would allow Palestinians and descendants who have been living in their territory since 1948 to naturalize and assimilate, both hosts and residents might be on their way to understanding that Israel ain't going anywhere."
So you are suggesting the Arabs and Palastinians should just give up and Palastinians should turn the other cheek to the fact they had their homes and land seized and were pushed out of their homeland, turned into refugees and stateless persons, or if they stayed in Isreal are subjected to constant, arrests, beatings, humiliation, unemployment and grinding poverty.
Here is a thought experiment to bring this issue home to American's. If Mexican immigration in to the U.S. were to accelerate and at some point they realized they out number gringo's and can overpower them. What exactly would you do if they seized your home and property and give to new Mexican immigrants. They push you in to Mexico and Canada without a visa and without any citizenship status. You would go from being secure in your home to being a destitute, homeless refugee and a stateless person. You go from having something to having NOTHING. I gaurauntee you would take up arms in a heart beat too. After a few years of desperation you too would lose all hope for the future and some of you would become suicide bombers too.
American's need to learn to see the world through the eyes of other people and walk for a while in their shoes.
""Tell" them? How? Why should they listen to us? You're also assuming that the actual people have" a choice in the matter."
Like I said, give the Palastinian people a carrot choice, an independent homeland free of Isreali oppression as long as they get rid of Arafat. The Palastinian's are currently incentivized to keep Arafat and fight Isreal. In their last attempt they put in a new weak PM, Sharon continued to shit all over them so they had no incentive to back him.
"No kidding. So you still think diplomatic processes are the best way of dealing with Arafat types?"
Sure don't. Of course you should have said "dealing with Arafat and Sharon types?" They are two of a kind.
"The U.S., Israel and Nazi Germany. Riiiiight. Next?"
As for the Isreal equivalency to Nazi Germany I'm pretty sure if you are Palastinian living in the occupied territories you would see the equivalence. About the only step Isreal hasn't taken is outright slaughter of Palastinians in concentration camps, which they obviously can't do due to the internal and external outrage that would ensue. The Isreali's do kill something like 3-4 times more Palastinians than Jews killed by suicide bombers. They are routinely women and children, a fact the western press routinely downplays while they obsess over every suicide bomb attack. Suicide bomb attacks are a horror but they are the only tool left to the Palastinians, facing an enemy with massive military superiority, whose goal is to do to them what was done to Jews thousands of years ago.
Isreal simply has to purge the Palastinians from Isreal one way or another or they will eventually become the majority and Isreali Jew's would have to institute apartheid to retain power.
The Isreaili's are well on their way to putting the Palastinians in to walled ghettos in the west bank, and effectively already have in Gaza. This will insure crushing poverty, humiliation and and no freedom for Palastinians for the indefinite future which will do nothing but breed suicide bombers who have NO HOPE and would rather die, and take Isreali's with them, than live.
As for the equivalency of Americ and Nazi Germany its certainly not evident within the U.S., yet, but again much of the rest of the world would see the equivalence. The U.S. is waging unprovoked aggresive warfare which is something not much seen since World War II. The U.S. has routinely, throughout this century, toppled one elected government after another to replace them with brutal right wing dictatorship which ARE indistinguishable from Nazi Germany in their internal repression, reference Guatamala, Iran under the Shah, Argentina, Chile, Haiti multiple times, Nicaragua, the list is almost endless. The Bush administration has been attempting to topple the Venezuelan government since Bush came to power in the U.S. Its almost inevitable they will start attempts to destabilize the new elected government in Spain since they fit the profile, socialist government very critical of the U.S. and the U.S. right wing simply can't tolerate governments that fit this profile, democracy be damned.
Today's U.S. is probably the first nation with a good chance of established a global empire, at the point of a gun, since the Axis tried it in the 1940's.
Stop backing Isreal unless they agree to an independent Palastinian homeland in the west bank and gaza with UN troops providing security and to preclude the new Palastinian state from posing a military threat to Isreal. Its not ideal but its a lot better then the current situation. Isreal is currently on a course to carve up the west bank in to walled palastinian ghettos only marginally different from the ghetto's Nazi Germany established for Polish Jews.
At the same time tell the Palastinians to disempower Yasser Arafat once and for all if they want their own state. Fact is he is massively corrupt, enriching himself on money coming in that should be going to ease Palastinian poverty. Arafat grievously wounded the world when he rejected the Clinton peace plan. It was the best deal the Palastinian people could've hoped for.
Were this system certain to accomplish this goal and not cause collateral damage to innocent people then I would agree. The problem is there is a great deal of doubt whether this system will do any of that. First off I really doubt wanted felons and known terrorists are going to get on an airline in the U.S. now unless they are stupid or have really good fake/stolen ID's.
Another problem is any sleeper cell terrorist who keeps their database entries clean will go through green and like greased lightening. As soon as Al Queada knows how the system works they are just going to work with and around it.
This is unlikely to stop any concerted terrorist but it will cause massive inconvience, loss of privacy and freedom for everyone else. Like most of the measures the U.S. has taken post 9/11 its designed to be a political campaign bullet to show how the current administration is protecting us from terrorism when they really aren't. It is designed to massively extend the tentacles of a growing police state in to everyone's lives. We can't really stop at airlines now can we. Since madrid we have to do subways and trains, and if we do trains we have to buses, and maybe at that point we should start putting check points on highways to nab the terrorists who might be driving car bombs. At this point the U.S. looks like Israel or Nazi Germany. For all of Isreal's security measures they STILL don't stop terrorist attacks. A major goal of terrorism and guerilla campaigns for centuries is precisely to provoke the responses we are seeing from the target government who become increasingly oppresive and unpopular, who trash their own economy trying to stop the unstoppable all of which enhances recruiting for the guerilla movement and encourages the population in general to get rid of the increasingly repressive government.
Another case that is going to burn many is if you are an innocent person who has an mismatch between the personal information you give at the counter and some unknown assortment of databases including commercial credit databases you will recieve yellow or red status, and if you get red you don't fly. If you move very often you know how hard it can be to keep all the personal information in these databases in sync. Instead of stopping terrorists this system is designed to punish people for not keeping all the credit agencies, who already weild unwarranted power over us, in sync. At this point its undefined how an innocent person will go about clearing the discrepency because the TSA will probably not tell you why you have been red flagged. If you need to fly for your job, welcome to unemployment.
This system also give various individuals and agencies of the federal government nearly arbitrary discretion to add you to a watch list and prevent you from flying indefinitely. This is done without a trial, without proof and without appeal. Some government drone or political hack gets ticked at you and they punish you by putting you on a watch list. This is an exceptional tool to punish and marginalize vocal political opponents of the current administation. Watch lists have already being used to prevent anti war activists from flying in the U.S. If there is a political activist who is traveling to speak engagements or protests this is a tool to radicly slow down their exercise of their 1st admentment rights.
Making airlines reasonably safe is already a well defined task:
- Armored locked cockpit doors - Screen passengers and luggage for explosives and weapons - Stop the out of control bureaucracy run amuck syndrome and focus the resources on the first two which are really easy to do.
Better yet, to win the war on terrorism compell a real peace in Isreal and the West Bank and get U.S. occupation troops out Islamic countries. If the U.S. and Isreal stop humiliating the Palastinians in particular and arabs in general that will dramaticly reduce the ability of islamic extremists to recruit for and fund their movement.
ANY script writer would be an improvement on the script writer for Jurassic Park. It was a great story concept and the special effects made it a block buster but the dialog was, for the most part, dopey.
Let's see, further inland from Galveston, lets trade the threat of a hurricane for the threat of a class 5 tornado. hurricane... tornado... hurricane... tornado. OK lets move it to California. hurricane... earthquake... hurricane.
These facilities are never going to be 100% safe.
A few weeks ago a researcher accidentally exposed herself to Ebola. How did they respond. Sent her home and told her to come back if symptoms developed.
I forgot to add the choice of targets for the Anthrax attacks is particularly intrigueing. As you recall it was two leading Democratic senators and several media outlets including NBC.
What would be accomplished by these particular targets? In the case of Democractic senators its extremely useful to insure Congress will vote your way when you come in later with claims Iraq has WMD's and is an imminent danger of using them aginst the U.S. and to insure Congress will vote lots of money for WMD research and defenses. Congress living with vivid recollection of its own Anthrax attack was much more likely to vote for war to defend the U.S. from this threat. It kind of explains why the Democrats rolled over when the time came to green light the Iraq war.
The same can be said for the media. They became much more sympathetic to the danger of WMD's than they would have been if they hadn't been attacked themselves.
An arguement could be made this was all "Good For America". Perhaps those in power were legitimately concerned about the danger of biowarfare attacks against the U.S. but felt they couldn't get the funding or priority placed on defenses unless they staged a little demo. Sure a few people died but in the national security establishment calculus that is a small price to pay to help protect America from all threats, foreign and domestic.
There are probably a wonderful thing when they are used to prevent epidemics and to develop countermeasures for biological attacks. Unfortunately there is always the chance that they are dual use, especially at places like Ft. Dietrick. If they are also being used to reengineer microorganisms to be more effective weapons then they aren't quite as noble as you paint them. The U.S. would like you to believe they stopped developement of bioweapons in 1969 but you would have to be an optimist to believe that is really the case since the U.S. consistently opposes any international effort to verify bioweapons labs are not being used for new weapons research.
Probably the most disturbing indictment of these facilities is that the Anthrax used in the attacks in the U.S. that followed 9/11 were traced back to the Ames strain of Anthrax which is American in origin and is used extensively at USAMRID, Dugway, and Batelle among others. A full list is here:
http://www.fas.org/bwc/news/anthraxreport.htm
The Anthrax attacks which have largely faded in to obscurity, unsolved, should be a source of deep concern to American's and the world. They might have been perpetrated by a roque wacko that had access to Anthrax in one of these facilities. Its pretty unlikely they were perpetrated by an Arab terrorist. They could have just as easily been a covert operation perpetrated by a misguided government agency designed to stoke fear of WMD's in the U.S. Coincidentally the Bush administration, right after this used the threat of WMD's as the rationale to attack Iraq though no significant WMD programs have been found there. They will, no doubt, continue to use WMD's as a rationale for preemptive warfare assuming they can get away with it after the bold faced lie the war in Iraq has proven to be.
WMD's are the perfect rationale for preemptive warfare. You can accuse any country of developing them and its impossible for the target country to prove they don't. Every nation in the world has dual use industrial equipment that can be redirected to chemical and biological weapons production and the Bush administration cynically uses this fact to suggest a target country is a danger because they have tanks thats could be used to ferment biological weapons, for example.
As much as the U.S. likes to get on the high horse about WMD's its still a fact that the U.S. has more of them than anyone and has used them in the past to kill large numbers of innocent civilians by nuking two cities in Japan full of civilians in particular.
Re:Oh, grow up!
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Melting Europa
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· Score: 2, Insightful
"The Big Evil Corporations also make the tools to help your body beat cancer"
Those same Big Evil Corporations also brought us a plethora of things which cause the cancers and illnesses they are also developing the drugs to treat at a profit, i.e. asbestos, cigarettes, PCB's, Dioxin's, dumping Chromium 6 in the ground water, etc. What is somewhat worse is that, even after they figured out these materials were dangerous they often strove to conceal this fact to insure continued profitibility and to avoid liability.
I guess my point being is both posters are taking an extreme position that is somewhat wrong. Blind trust of corporations to do the right thing is fundementally naive. They are fundementally driven by greed and the desire to make money. They will often do wonderful things in pursuit of that goal but they will just as often things that are horrible.
When it comes to geneticly modified food if its done very carefully it can yield wonderful results, food that is drought or pest resistance, food that will grow in famine ravaged areas where traditional crops are not. In some respects it is not very different from selective breeding, its just a much more powerful tool and with that power comes a much higher risk.
The key problem is mankind simple lacks the knowledge to fully understand or appreciate the potential unintended consequences of tampering with DNA. The scientist involved do have the knowledge to accomplish the task they set out to accomplish. They can change a DNA dequence to alter a protein to make the protein do what they want. But they dont have and may never have the knowledge to do this safely becaus e they wont understand the unintended and unexpected consequences this new protein will have when it encounters the immensely complex human body.
The biggest and most dangerous risk you hear about GM food is that it will trigger unexpected allergic reactions, often times very dangerous reactions, in some people who are not allergic to the un GM'ed food. Unfortunately there is a great deal of genetic diversity in humans and animals. When you introduce a food with new and different proteins in it you run a risk some percentage of the human population wont be able to eat it just like some people can't eat natures own peanuts.
It is also a source of deep concern about GM foods that they were supposed to be completely isolated from their un GM counterparts and it appears that those walls are collapsing for things like corn and soybeans. Once you start widely distributing wonder crops its an unfortunate fact of life farmers will get their hands on the new wonder seed and rapidly disregard the rules for raising GM crops. They are also striving to avoid paying the royalties to companies like Monsanto so strive to avoid advertising the fact they are using bootleg seed.
Bottomline is I wouldn't completely shun GM food since it may become essential to feeding an increasingly crowded planet, but I sure as HELL wouldn't blindly trust the corporations developing it to not make mistakes that could be potentially catastrophic. It is a deep concern that the companies engaged in this research are under great pressure to turn a profit with the fruits of their labor so they are very likely to cut corners that shouldn't be cut.
Russia sits on some of the worlds largest oil reserves. Now that Putin is attempting to regain control of it, partially by throwing the head of the largest oil company in jail, Russia may not be quite as bankrupt as everyone thinks they are. A lot of Russia's economic woes came from the chaos of transitioning to a market economy and the massive corruption that followed in which a few people pocketed vast wealth and everyone else went broke. I think you should also look closely at which country of the two is running the half trillion dollar annual budget deficit and the half trillion dollar annual trade deficit. The U.S. is starting to look like the country in the most economic trouble and its the one that is going to have to start massive cut backs in government programs to pay for George's tax cut and the retirement of the baby boomers, or it will eventually face bankruptcy. The U.S. simply cant continue to borrow money at the current rate unless it uses it military power to erase its debt at some point.
Its is a fact of life the U.S. pressured Russia into deorbiting Mir. It was effectively a condition of their partnernship in ISS. The U.S. didn't feel Russia had the resources to do both and they were, no doubt, deadly afraid Mir would continue to be the little engine that could versus the ISS which is the white elephant that can't. Here is the first reference I see in google. There are plenty of others:
http://www.reston.com/nasa/congress/07.22.98.sen se n.pr.html
As for the merits of Soyuz versus the shuttle, the Soyuz has killed substanitally fewer people and it costs a WHOLE LOT less to launch. It pretty ridiculous to use a half billion dollar shuttle launch to resupply the ISS and change the crew. The Russia estimate is $130 million to launch 3 Progress supply missions and 2 Soyuz missions per year. Obviously Progress can't carry the cargo the shuttle can but it still carries 2500 kilos at a bargain basement price. If the Russian space program had a fraction of what NASA wastes each year they could mount a serious space program.
"Did it ever occur to these politicians that we might need some way to actually deliver people to the ISS and service the Hubble? Furthermore, with Soyuz, there's no guarantees -- the Russians aren't exactly in the best shape in the world. I hate to rely on them... especially considering the lack of capacity/capability."
You've GOT TO BE KIDDING (TROLLING). Soyuz and the Russians are infinitely more reliable than NASA technicly and they've always found the funds to keep launching Soyuz. If the U.S. hadn't forced them to deorbit Mir they would probably still be using it.
About the only thing the U.S. has to worry about is the Russian's will tell the American's to take a hike and only fly non American astronauts as retaliation for the fact the U.S. has become an obnoxious dick under the Bush administration.
The Russians have started development of a six man Soyuz replacement which now appears to be the only avenue to fully man the ISS so their is some manpower to do something beside maintain it.
If I were to lay bets I would put all my money on the Russian effort versus NASA developing ANY new manned launch vehicle. NASA and its pork fed contractors have simply lost the ability to bend metal.
Slashdot Mirror
"be sure to visit regularly the Smart Mobs collective weblog"
Nice plug for the web site. Went there, some OK articles. Its kind of telling that there was a total of 4 comments to all of the articles currently on the front page. If you are plugging some kind of communication revolution shouldn't your web site show some kind of actual bidirectional communcation going on.
"there were net 21,000 jobs added to reported payroll in Feb."
A key point about even that modest number is it corresponds precisely to the number of new jobs created that same month. The net job growth in the private sector was zero.
A key facet of what little economic recovery there has been in the last year in the U.S. is that the U.S. economy is being massively pumped by tax cuts, low interest rates, massive deficit spending, and huge increases in government spending especially in defense and Iraq.
Part of the Bush adminstrations strategy is to force prosperity in the U.S. economy through artificial and unsustainable means, in particular massive deficit spending. The Republicans desperately want the economy to appear prosperous for Bush's reelection. It inceasingly appears as though it may not work in that even the bubbling stock market is now in a steep correction, no jobs are being created in the U.S. and the huge growth figures last year appear to be largely artificial again thanks in part to government spending.
It appears this strategy was another case of voodoo economics, trying to force prosperity through tax cuts and deficit spending. The best road to economic prosperity would be massive reductions in wasteful government spending and tax cuts for the working class who will spend the money in the U.S. and not invest it in China and India as is being done by big money at the moment.
Oops. Bad cut and paste that second link on the sordid history of the Koch family, founders of the CATO institute should be:
http://www.mediawhoresonline.com/koch.htm
Hate to point this out but you are citing propaganda from a right wing think tank, the CATO Institute. It was founded by the Koch family among others who own one of largest energy companies and polluters in the U.S.
http://www.counterpunch.org/behan01192004.html
http://www.counterpunch.org/behan01192004.html
The Koch's are best friends with the Bush family and huge backers of George W.'s reelection campaign. One of the elder's in this family had a little fling with Anna Nicole Smith.
One of the CATO directors is, or at least was, Rupert Murdoch head of the Fox network and their right wing propaganda news network.
These people have a vested interest in trying to downplay the consequences of outsourcing. The Cato Institute and the Bush administration are 100% pro big business and pro wealth. They are 100% indifferent to the welfare of the U.S. middle and lower classes, you know the people that work for a living, except they want Bush to get reelected so they NEED to churn out this crud in the hopes people will believe it and still vote for him. I'm assuming you must be upper middle class aspiring to the upper class or just dumb to believe it. The Bush administration has put out rosy labor projections every year they've been in office and NONE of the jobs they promised would be created by cutting taxes for the rich have been created. Correction they have been created but they are being created in China and India.
The current rush to outsourcing is unprecedented in U.S. history. It is the product of a perfect storm, cheap container shipping, cheap telecom, collapsing trade barriers and the opening of China's economy and its massive, cheap labor pool. Couple that with the fact U.S. labor has been priced out of the global labor market by years of inflation, prosperity and declining education. This is not a transient anomoly to dismiss. Its an accelerating trend. It is either naive or deceitful to contend that its business as usual and its nothing to worry about. It was not so long ago that the U.S. trade deficit was $50-$100 billion dollars and we were concerned. It is now $500 billion dollars and exploding. The U.S. simply can't sustain this hemoraging of cash indefinitely. The multinational corporations on the other hand don't care. You see they are for the most part now truly multinational, headquartered in the Caribbean and manufacturing wherever they can find the cheapest labor. If the U.S. craters they will just sell goods to the newly affluent Chinese and Indians, its a bigger market than the U.S. anyway and they are just now aspiring to by all the things American's already have. The execs and share holders will probably still get rich unless the Chinese and Indian execs manage to fox them too. Whatever happens they will be living in gated communities or the Caribbean and will be largely indifferent to the fact most American's are going to be pushed in to poverty in the next couple of decades. Most American's simply cant compete head to head with workers in China and India without working for what are poverty wages in the U.S. Maybe they could take solace in service jobs that have to be in the U.S. but the Bush administration is eager to launch a jobs program for Mexican labor to insure those jobs will also go to the cheapest possible labor. So you are going to have to train a very select class of jobs to make a good living in the next couple of decades, lawyer or an MBA heading for a position in a multinational are probably the best bets.
The Chinese economy ia already at 6 trillion and is expected to eclipse the U.S. and EU, now at a little over 10 trillion, in another 10-20 years. I doubt its going to take that long myself.
There has been a real loss of more than 2 million jobs under the Bush administration which hasn't happened since the great depression. It can be attributed to the overmployment of the bubble and 9/11 but there is simply no way the U.S. economy is going to create good jobs again with the current ru
I'd be inclined to believe the reporter's numbe4rs. If you look at the hundred billion price tag on the ISS, which was to put tin cans in LEO where everyone has gone before, and the half billion price tag for one shuttle launch I thourougly believe it will cost NASA a trillion to put a base on the moon OR go to Mars.
Now should it cost this much. No. But if NASA gets all these tax dollars they will be shoveled in one end and corrupt bureaucrats in the middle will be shoveling it out the other end to pork fed Boeing, Lockheed, NASA facilities and little contractors in every congressional district, which is how NASA shores up political support in Congress. They probably wont actually bend any metal though they will generate a giant mound of paper which if you were to put in one stack might be tall enough to reach the moon at least.
If there is something the U.S. should be outsourcing its the space program since the current NASA and its contractors simply can't do the job at a reasonable cost. The Russian's, Chinese and maybe India and ESA, especially the Russian's, could probably take a pretty good shot at the Moon and Mars if they had a couple hundred billion to spend.
If the U.S. wants to do a manned space program again they pretty much need to throw out all the current players and start a new team, like Kelly Johnson' old skunk works. First find someone like Kelly Johnson who knows how to engineer and get things done, then recruit the best engineers from around the world, put them in one place, give them goal and the funding and cut them loose(as in get rid of the constant political intereference and changes in direction that cripples NASA).
Actually most governments do MORE of this than you apparently think.
I'm not sure whether you are just trolling, you really are this naive or maybe you are just dumb.
Not sure anything in my post qualifies for the standard /. conspiracy theory retort, most often used by people who don't have anything intelligent to say in rebuttal. The sabotoged pipeline in russia is from a recently published book and was widely covered recently.
m e= article&node=&contentId=A10432-2004Feb26¬Found= true
o wn slg.pdf
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagena
Details on the supposed hacked printers in Iraq in the first gulf war are a little harder to find so it might be urban legend. The recount of the radio transponder in the printer was in a documentary I saw a while ago. There are also reports that it was a trojan horse in the printer, it may also be an april fools joke.
Here is one reference I can find that describes it as a joke but also covers the very real use of software as a waepon:
www.au.af.mil/au/database/projects/ay1995/awc/d
"I really take exception to this"
You make not like it but its a fact of life, especially in China. The Chinese government is aggressively mandating Linux and an elimination of dependence on Microsoft software. The reasons are multifold:
- Dependence on Microsoft software kills indigenous software development for a huge percentage of the software run on PC's, as in you can only develop high level, rather custom applications or try to compete head to head with Office and IE and you may not be very successful at it on top of Windows.
- It contributes to a trade deficit everytime you ship money to Microsoft. China in particular is going all out to make sure the trade balance with the U.S. is massively in its favor. This will eventually insure China's economic prosperity and the demise of the U.S. China, a while ago, realized it wasn't going to defeat the West with guns so its doing it economicly instead.
- Most third world countries simply can't afford to pay Microsoft's licensing costs, so if they use Microsoft software they are forced in to piracy. Microsoft in turn is trying to crack down on piracy in places like Taiwan, which turns ugly for businesses relying on pirated software. When all the ugliness hits the fan switching to Linux has become a BIG plus, especially no more expensive audits.
- The U.S. and its corporations can't be trused on two security fronts:
A. Microsoft software is a massive target for worms, virii and trojans
B. The U.S. government simply can't be trusted to not use Microsoft's software to install backdoors they can use to spy on and potentially sabotoge potential enemies. They do it ALL the time. An old example was transponders in printer sold to Iraqi radar trucks that allowed the U.S. pinpoint targeting. The most recent example is the U.S. sabotoged pumping control software they let the U.S.S.R steal. It was used it to trigger a several kiloton gas pipeline explosion in the Soviet Union resulting in massive economic damage and probably loss of life. Yes, in this case the Russians were stealing the software so maybe they deserved what they got, but there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING stopping the U.S. government from doing stuff equally bad, and much more widely distributed using MS softare. The only way foreign nations can prevent this is to get complete Windows source code access, audit the millions of lines themselves and then build and distribute their own Windows distribution, something which I doubt Microsoft is allowing with its limited source code initiative. Linux is vastly more appealing by comparison.
- Most of the world has started to really hate and distrust the Bush administration so they have a strong, purely political motivation to NOT BUY U.S.
"That's the way all self-proclaimed empires eventually go."
p l5 en/worldoilreservesevol.html
I did neglect to mention in the first post that the U.S. military is still very much a wild card in all this assuming the U.S. can keep bleeding the rest of the economy white to support it.
If the U.S. does start to collapse economicly it could well save its position through aggressive warfare. The most obvious and simplest path is to occupy, or install puppet governments in the top 4-5 oil producing countries. China is working hard to diversify its energy resources but its oil consumption is growing at a double digit annual percentage rate, one of the reasons oil prices are going up, so if you control the oil spigot you control the world's economy until the world wakes up and does the R&D and capital investment to end its dependency on a finite resource. Japan attacked the U.S. at Pearl Harbor precisely because FDR tried to shut off their oil spigot.
http://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch5en/ap
If the U.S. controls Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Iran, Venezuela and maybe the new big producers in Central Asia they would be half way there, Russia being the big oild producinv wild card.
The Euro is only doing well because the dollar is doing worse. Western Europe isn't going to fare any better against cheap labor than the U.S. Europe does have an advantage in that they can coopt the cheap labor in Eastern Europe to prop up the EU for a while, but the U.S. tried the same thing with NAFTA and Mexico and it didn't work in the face of even cheaper Chinese labor.
Fact is Chinese, and to a lesser extent Indian, labor is going to be a lot cheaper for a long, long time.
Western European government doesn't look any better than U.S. government. Western European labor is spoiled worse than U.S. labor. Just look at the massive amounts of time off most countries in Europe give and the near impossibility of firing anyone in France. About the only thing Socialism is good for economicly is health care.
Not to worry, American executives are going to get theirs in the end. They are somewhat blinded by the wonders of cheap labor at the moment to they point that they haven't realized they are exporting capital and intellectual property in to countries that would just as soon bury America as look at it.
It was a tolerable to export no brainer manufacturing to China but when they started exporting skill jobs, capital and intellectual property they signed their own death warrant. In industry after industry a critical mass of capital, intellectual property and expertise will develop in these outsourcing hotspots. When it does they will reach a point they don't need the obnoxius executives in the U.S. who are taking the lion's share of the wealth. They will, and in some cases already have, take all the expertise, talent, market insight and knowledge they've developed, start their own companies and bury their former American benefactors.
A key problem with American business is its become incredibly short sighted and is so fixated on quarterly results it simply isn't looking at the long view. They saw this huge boon in their bottomlines with cheap labor but they failed to realize in another decade or two executive in China will be calling the shots and they to will be expendable. Of course American execs, not being entirely stupid, are countering by wholesale looting of their companies now so they and their families will have all the money they need by the time their companies and the U.S. economy collapses. Hopefully they are also smart enough to park their wealth in something besides U.S. dollars. Warrent Buffet, one of the smartest business men in the world is betting heavily against the U.S.dollar with Berkshire Hathaway. He took a look at the half trillion dollar budget deficit and the half trillion dollar trade deficit and quickly realized the U.S. is currently being run by retarded chimps.
America had some huge advantages after World War II since it came out of that war unscathed versus the rest of the world, and in fact had been transformed in to an engineer rich, manufacturing dynamo by the war. The GI bill further pushed a well educated population that did lead the world. That huge advantage, and the prosperity it engendered, unfortunately corrupted America to the point it simply isn't globally competitive any more. The rest of the world meahwhile has recovered from the ravages of World War II and the Cold War, is hungry and is now very well educated compared to the U.S.
Add in to this the fact the U.S. government is now completely corrupted. Just look at the insanity, bribery and fraud perpetrated in last years Medicare bill. We are reaching the point the drug and healthcare industries have effectively purchased the government in the U.S. and health costs would drive a dagger in to American competitiveness if cheap overseas labor didn't. Health care and pharmacueticals appear poised to be among the few industries in the U.S. that will prosper in coming years.
Its unlikely the U.S. will pull out of its competitive tail spin without massive improvements in education, massive health care reform, and a complete gutting of our corrupted governemnt which is spending money like a drunk sailor. Unfortunately we've found a flaw in our two party system in that both the Democrats and Republicans are equally corrupt, and nearly indistinguishable from one other so we can't fix out government through the ballot box. If the U.S. doesn't get a cadre of smart people in power, with a mandate for reform we are doomed, and that isn't going to happen in this years election. Both main party presidential candidates are equally bad, so much so I would really rather take a chance on Nader though he doesn't really have the breadth and sobriety needed to really govern.
"Any community that creates such an unbelieveable fu#&ed up generation does not deserve to be treated as nicely as they are right now."
The arabs didn't create this fucked up generation. Britain, the U.S. and Isreal did when the Jews siezed the homes and property of the Palastinians and pushed them in to refugee camps and grinding poverty for generations.
If schools for Palastinian children started singing praises of the U.S. and Isreal it wouldn't make any difference since those children would still go home to 50% unemployment, grinding poverty, refugee camps, constant harassement and humiliation at the hands of the Israeli military and hopelessness.
Britain and the U.S. likewise created the mess that is Iran today. After World War II Britain controlled Iran and gave British Petroleum a sweet deal in which they got 90% of the revenue from Iran's oil fields and the Iranian's 10%. A nationalist government came to power and seized BP's assets for the obvious reason the British were looting Iran's one path to economic prosperity. The British asked the U.S. to intervene. U.S. procrastinated for a few years, long enough for BP's claims to be forgotten. Then the U.S. toppled the Iranian government, installed a ruthless, oppressive dictator, the shah of Iran, and promptly gave the oil contracts to U.S. oil companies. After decades of oppression the Iranian revolution overthrew the shah and they hate the U.S. with a passion to this day. Waging war for oil is not a new tactic.
The Arabs don't hate Britian and the U.S. for no reason. They hate them due to a century in which Britain and the U.S. royally screwed them at every turn. They also have a long memory that goes back to one wave after of another of Christain crusaders who murdered their way through the middle east century after century.
"AOL is an albatross"
So what. Microsoft would transfer all of AOL's customers to MSN and AOL as we know it would be gutted and disappear. Microsoft wants to do this to get the customer base, get rid of its largest competitor in the ISP space, and start work on another monopoly.
"This has "monopoly suit" written all over it."
Maybe if there were a rational administration in power in Washington with a balanced viewed of the good and evil of big business. There isn't. This administartion's world view is big business can do no wrong (well except for one multibillion dollar accounting scandal after another). As long as Gates is one of the good old boys and pumps money in to Bush's campaign coffers there won't be a peep from the Feds about this. You need to recall the current administration gutted the last antitrust conviction of Microsoft as soon as they came in to power and Microsoft effectively got a free pass.
"Hell, maybe if Arab states would allow Palestinians and descendants who have been living in their territory since 1948 to naturalize and assimilate, both hosts and residents might be on their way to understanding that Israel ain't going anywhere."
So you are suggesting the Arabs and Palastinians should just give up and Palastinians should turn the other cheek to the fact they had their homes and land seized and were pushed out of their homeland, turned into refugees and stateless persons, or if they stayed in Isreal are subjected to constant, arrests, beatings, humiliation, unemployment and grinding poverty.
Here is a thought experiment to bring this issue home to American's. If Mexican immigration in to the U.S. were to accelerate and at some point they realized they out number gringo's and can overpower them. What exactly would you do if they seized your home and property and give to new Mexican immigrants. They push you in to Mexico and Canada without a visa and without any citizenship status. You would go from being secure in your home to being a destitute, homeless refugee and a stateless person. You go from having something to having NOTHING. I gaurauntee you would take up arms in a heart beat too. After a few years of desperation you too would lose all hope for the future and some of you would become suicide bombers too.
American's need to learn to see the world through the eyes of other people and walk for a while in their shoes.
""Tell" them? How? Why should they listen to us? You're also assuming that the actual people have" a choice in the matter."
Like I said, give the Palastinian people a carrot choice, an independent homeland free of Isreali oppression as long as they get rid of Arafat. The Palastinian's are currently incentivized to keep Arafat and fight Isreal. In their last attempt they put in a new weak PM, Sharon continued to shit all over them so they had no incentive to back him.
"No kidding. So you still think diplomatic processes are the best way of dealing with Arafat types?"
Sure don't. Of course you should have said "dealing with Arafat and Sharon types?" They are two of a kind.
"The U.S., Israel and Nazi Germany. Riiiiight. Next?"
As for the Isreal equivalency to Nazi Germany I'm pretty sure if you are Palastinian living in the occupied territories you would see the equivalence. About the only step Isreal hasn't taken is outright slaughter of Palastinians in concentration camps, which they obviously can't do due to the internal and external outrage that would ensue. The Isreali's do kill something like 3-4 times more Palastinians than Jews killed by suicide bombers. They are routinely women and children, a fact the western press routinely downplays while they obsess over every suicide bomb attack. Suicide bomb attacks are a horror but they are the only tool left to the Palastinians, facing an enemy with massive military superiority, whose goal is to do to them what was done to Jews thousands of years ago.
Isreal simply has to purge the Palastinians from Isreal one way or another or they will eventually become the majority and Isreali Jew's would have to institute apartheid to retain power.
The Isreaili's are well on their way to putting the Palastinians in to walled ghettos in the west bank, and effectively already have in Gaza. This will insure crushing poverty, humiliation and and no freedom for Palastinians for the indefinite future which will do nothing but breed suicide bombers who have NO HOPE and would rather die, and take Isreali's with them, than live.
As for the equivalency of Americ and Nazi Germany its certainly not evident within the U.S., yet, but again much of the rest of the world would see the equivalence. The U.S. is waging unprovoked aggresive warfare which is something not much seen since World War II. The U.S. has routinely, throughout this century, toppled one elected government after another to replace them with brutal right wing dictatorship which ARE indistinguishable from Nazi Germany in their internal repression, reference Guatamala, Iran under the Shah, Argentina, Chile, Haiti multiple times, Nicaragua, the list is almost endless. The Bush administration has been attempting to topple the Venezuelan government since Bush came to power in the U.S. Its almost inevitable they will start attempts to destabilize the new elected government in Spain since they fit the profile, socialist government very critical of the U.S. and the U.S. right wing simply can't tolerate governments that fit this profile, democracy be damned.
Today's U.S. is probably the first nation with a good chance of established a global empire, at the point of a gun, since the Axis tried it in the 1940's.
Stop backing Isreal unless they agree to an independent Palastinian homeland in the west bank and gaza with UN troops providing security and to preclude the new Palastinian state from posing a military threat to Isreal. Its not ideal but its a lot better then the current situation. Isreal is currently on a course to carve up the west bank in to walled palastinian ghettos only marginally different from the ghetto's Nazi Germany established for Polish Jews.
At the same time tell the Palastinians to disempower Yasser Arafat once and for all if they want their own state. Fact is he is massively corrupt, enriching himself on money coming in that should be going to ease Palastinian poverty. Arafat grievously wounded the world when he rejected the Clinton peace plan. It was the best deal the Palastinian people could've hoped for.
Were this system certain to accomplish this goal and not cause collateral damage to innocent people then I would agree. The problem is there is a great deal of doubt whether this system will do any of that. First off I really doubt wanted felons and known terrorists are going to get on an airline in the U.S. now unless they are stupid or have really good fake/stolen ID's.
Another problem is any sleeper cell terrorist who keeps their database entries clean will go through green and like greased lightening. As soon as Al Queada knows how the system works they are just going to work with and around it.
This is unlikely to stop any concerted terrorist but it will cause massive inconvience, loss of privacy and freedom for everyone else. Like most of the measures the U.S. has taken post 9/11 its designed to be a political campaign bullet to show how the current administration is protecting us from terrorism when they really aren't. It is designed to massively extend the tentacles of a growing police state in to everyone's lives. We can't really stop at airlines now can we. Since madrid we have to do subways and trains, and if we do trains we have to buses, and maybe at that point we should start putting check points on highways to nab the terrorists who might be driving car bombs. At this point the U.S. looks like Israel or Nazi Germany. For all of Isreal's security measures they STILL don't stop terrorist attacks. A major goal of terrorism and guerilla campaigns for centuries is precisely to provoke the responses we are seeing from the target government who become increasingly oppresive and unpopular, who trash their own economy trying to stop the unstoppable all of which enhances recruiting for the guerilla movement and encourages the population in general to get rid of the increasingly repressive government.
Another case that is going to burn many is if you are an innocent person who has an mismatch between the personal information you give at the counter and some unknown assortment of databases including commercial credit databases you will recieve yellow or red status, and if you get red you don't fly. If you move very often you know how hard it can be to keep all the personal information in these databases in sync. Instead of stopping terrorists this system is designed to punish people for not keeping all the credit agencies, who already weild unwarranted power over us, in sync. At this point its undefined how an innocent person will go about clearing the discrepency because the TSA will probably not tell you why you have been red flagged. If you need to fly for your job, welcome to unemployment.
This system also give various individuals and agencies of the federal government nearly arbitrary discretion to add you to a watch list and prevent you from flying indefinitely. This is done without a trial, without proof and without appeal. Some government drone or political hack gets ticked at you and they punish you by putting you on a watch list. This is an exceptional tool to punish and marginalize vocal political opponents of the current administation. Watch lists have already being used to prevent anti war activists from flying in the U.S. If there is a political activist who is traveling to speak engagements or protests this is a tool to radicly slow down their exercise of their 1st admentment rights.
Making airlines reasonably safe is already a well defined task:
- Armored locked cockpit doors
- Screen passengers and luggage for explosives and weapons
- Stop the out of control bureaucracy run amuck syndrome and focus the resources on the first two which are really easy to do.
Better yet, to win the war on terrorism compell a real peace in Isreal and the West Bank and get U.S. occupation troops out Islamic countries. If the U.S. and Isreal stop humiliating the Palastinians in particular and arabs in general that will dramaticly reduce the ability of islamic extremists to recruit for and fund their movement.
ANY script writer would be an improvement on the script writer for Jurassic Park. It was a great story concept and the special effects made it a block buster but the dialog was, for the most part, dopey.
Let's see, further inland from Galveston, lets trade the threat of a hurricane for the threat of a class 5 tornado. hurricane ... tornado... hurricane ... tornado. OK lets move it to California. hurricane ... earthquake ... hurricane.
These facilities are never going to be 100% safe.
A few weeks ago a researcher accidentally exposed herself to Ebola. How did they respond. Sent her home and told her to come back if symptoms developed.
I forgot to add the choice of targets for the Anthrax attacks is particularly intrigueing. As you recall it was two leading Democratic senators and several media outlets including NBC.
What would be accomplished by these particular targets? In the case of Democractic senators its extremely useful to insure Congress will vote your way when you come in later with claims Iraq has WMD's and is an imminent danger of using them aginst the U.S. and to insure Congress will vote lots of money for WMD research and defenses. Congress living with vivid recollection of its own Anthrax attack was much more likely to vote for war to defend the U.S. from this threat. It kind of explains why the Democrats rolled over when the time came to green light the Iraq war.
The same can be said for the media. They became much more sympathetic to the danger of WMD's than they would have been if they hadn't been attacked themselves.
An arguement could be made this was all "Good For America". Perhaps those in power were legitimately concerned about the danger of biowarfare attacks against the U.S. but felt they couldn't get the funding or priority placed on defenses unless they staged a little demo. Sure a few people died but in the national security establishment calculus that is a small price to pay to help protect America from all threats, foreign and domestic.
There are probably a wonderful thing when they are used to prevent epidemics and to develop countermeasures for biological attacks. Unfortunately there is always the chance that they are dual use, especially at places like Ft. Dietrick. If they are also being used to reengineer microorganisms to be more effective weapons then they aren't quite as noble as you paint them. The U.S. would like you to believe they stopped developement of bioweapons in 1969 but you would have to be an optimist to believe that is really the case since the U.S. consistently opposes any international effort to verify bioweapons labs are not being used for new weapons research.
Probably the most disturbing indictment of these facilities is that the Anthrax used in the attacks in the U.S. that followed 9/11 were traced back to the Ames strain of Anthrax which is American in origin and is used extensively at
USAMRID, Dugway, and Batelle among others. A full list is here:
http://www.fas.org/bwc/news/anthraxreport.htm
The Anthrax attacks which have largely faded in to obscurity, unsolved, should be a source of deep concern to American's and the world. They might have been perpetrated by a roque wacko that had access to Anthrax in one of these facilities. Its pretty unlikely they were perpetrated by an Arab terrorist. They could have just as easily been a covert operation perpetrated by a misguided government agency designed to stoke fear of WMD's in the U.S. Coincidentally the Bush administration, right after this used the threat of WMD's as the rationale to attack Iraq though no significant WMD programs have been found there. They will, no doubt, continue to use WMD's as a rationale for preemptive warfare assuming they can get away with it after the bold faced lie the war in Iraq has proven to be.
WMD's are the perfect rationale for preemptive warfare. You can accuse any country of developing them and its impossible for the target country to prove they don't. Every nation in the world has dual use industrial equipment that can be redirected to chemical and biological weapons production and the Bush administration cynically uses this fact to suggest a target country is a danger because they have tanks thats could be used to ferment biological weapons, for example.
As much as the U.S. likes to get on the high horse about WMD's its still a fact that the U.S. has more of them than anyone and has used them in the past to kill large numbers of innocent civilians by nuking two cities in Japan full of civilians in particular.
"The Big Evil Corporations also make the tools to help your body beat cancer"
Those same Big Evil Corporations also brought us a plethora of things which cause the cancers and illnesses they are also developing the drugs to treat at a profit, i.e. asbestos, cigarettes, PCB's, Dioxin's, dumping Chromium 6 in the ground water, etc. What is somewhat worse is that, even after they figured out these materials were dangerous they often strove to conceal this fact to insure continued profitibility and to avoid liability.
I guess my point being is both posters are taking an extreme position that is somewhat wrong. Blind trust of corporations to do the right thing is fundementally naive. They are fundementally driven by greed and the desire to make money. They will often do wonderful things in pursuit of that goal but they will just as often things that are horrible.
When it comes to geneticly modified food if its done very carefully it can yield wonderful results, food that is drought or pest resistance, food that will grow in famine ravaged areas where traditional crops are not. In some respects it is not very different from selective breeding, its just a much more powerful tool and with that power comes a much higher risk.
The key problem is mankind simple lacks the knowledge to fully understand or appreciate the potential unintended consequences of tampering with DNA. The scientist involved do have the knowledge to accomplish the task they set out to accomplish. They can change a DNA dequence to alter a protein to make the protein do what they want. But they dont have and may never have the knowledge to do this safely becaus e they wont understand the unintended and unexpected consequences this new protein will have when it encounters the immensely complex human body.
The biggest and most dangerous risk you hear about GM food is that it will trigger unexpected allergic reactions, often times very dangerous reactions, in some people who are not allergic to the un GM'ed food. Unfortunately there is a great deal of genetic diversity in humans and animals. When you introduce a food with new and different proteins in it you run a risk some percentage of the human population wont be able to eat it just like some people can't eat natures own peanuts.
It is also a source of deep concern about GM foods that they were supposed to be completely isolated from their un GM counterparts and it appears that those walls are collapsing for things like corn and soybeans. Once you start widely distributing wonder crops its an unfortunate fact of life farmers will get their hands on the new wonder seed and rapidly disregard the rules for raising GM crops. They are also striving to avoid paying the royalties to companies like Monsanto so strive to avoid advertising the fact they are using bootleg seed.
Bottomline is I wouldn't completely shun GM food since it may become essential to feeding an increasingly crowded planet, but I sure as HELL wouldn't blindly trust the corporations developing it to not make mistakes that could be potentially catastrophic. It is a deep concern that the companies engaged in this research are under great pressure to turn a profit with the fruits of their labor so they are very likely to cut corners that shouldn't be cut.
Russia sits on some of the worlds largest oil reserves. Now that Putin is attempting to regain control of it, partially by throwing the head of the largest oil company in jail, Russia may not be quite as bankrupt as everyone thinks they are. A lot of Russia's economic woes came from the chaos of transitioning to a market economy and the massive corruption that followed in which a few people pocketed vast wealth and everyone else went broke. I think you should also look closely at which country of the two is running the half trillion dollar annual budget deficit and the half trillion dollar annual trade deficit. The U.S. is starting to look like the country in the most economic trouble and its the one that is going to have to start massive cut backs in government programs to pay for George's tax cut and the retirement of the baby boomers, or it will eventually face bankruptcy. The U.S. simply cant continue to borrow money at the current rate unless it uses it military power to erase its debt at some point.
n se n.pr.html
Its is a fact of life the U.S. pressured Russia into deorbiting Mir. It was effectively a condition of their partnernship in ISS. The U.S. didn't feel Russia had the resources to do both and they were, no doubt, deadly afraid Mir would continue to be the little engine that could versus the ISS which is the white elephant that can't. Here is the first reference I see in google. There are plenty of others:
http://www.reston.com/nasa/congress/07.22.98.se
As for the merits of Soyuz versus the shuttle, the Soyuz has killed substanitally fewer people and it costs a WHOLE LOT less to launch. It pretty ridiculous to use a half billion dollar shuttle launch to resupply the ISS and change the crew. The Russia estimate is $130 million to launch 3 Progress supply missions and 2 Soyuz missions per year. Obviously Progress can't carry the cargo the shuttle can but it still carries 2500 kilos at a bargain basement price. If the Russian space program had a fraction of what NASA wastes each year they could mount a serious space program.
"Did it ever occur to these politicians that we might need some way to actually deliver people to the ISS and service the Hubble? Furthermore, with Soyuz, there's no guarantees -- the Russians aren't exactly in the best shape in the world. I hate to rely on them... especially considering the lack of capacity/capability."
You've GOT TO BE KIDDING (TROLLING). Soyuz and the Russians are infinitely more reliable than NASA technicly and they've always found the funds to keep launching Soyuz. If the U.S. hadn't forced them to deorbit Mir they would probably still be using it.
About the only thing the U.S. has to worry about is the Russian's will tell the American's to take a hike and only fly non American astronauts as retaliation for the fact the U.S. has become an obnoxious dick under the Bush administration.
The Russians have started development of a six man Soyuz replacement which now appears to be the only avenue to fully man the ISS so their is some manpower to do something beside maintain it.
If I were to lay bets I would put all my money on the Russian effort versus NASA developing ANY new manned launch vehicle. NASA and its pork fed contractors have simply lost the ability to bend metal.