(V):

Consumer capitalism has fallen into a system of discardable items that are meant to last for a few years. In that way consumers must constantly keep replacing what they buy every few years.

If we go back a few years, say the 1970s, people would have thought it was stupid to buy a piece of electronics (like a calculator) only to replace it or throw it away in two or three years. Now we routinely buy cell phones, MP3 players, etc., and we know that after two or three years they will be "obsolete".

There was a time when people would reuse everything. My grandmother would wash plastic bags and reuse them over and over until they were in tatters and could not be used any more.

15 years ago a computer would cost $3000-4000 (at least 2000 pounds in the UK). If you had told those consumers that their computer would be obsolete in six months, they would have refused to buy them. Now computers are cheap and there are so many old computers that we don't know what to do with all that plastic.

Plastic windows became popular (at least here in Canada) because they are more energy efficient. Plastic is a poor transmitter of heat compared to metal, so in our cold weather plastic windows make sense. However, they last less. It used to be that brick and mortar was the preferred way to build homes. Here in Canada the construction industry shifted to plywood and particle board. It is more energy efficient, but after 30 or 40 years homes literally fall apart. Brick lasts centuries. Companies like Home Depot have made billions by convincing home owners to replace or renovate homes with materials that will need to be replaced in a few years.

I think it is environmentally unsustainable. The more garbage we make, the more pressure there will be to find a place to put that garbage. Shipping it to India might be OK for industrialized nations trying to sweep the problem under the carpet, but sooner or later all that garbage will come back to haunt everyone, just like Radon gas in homes built over covered landfills.

I find V's comments interesting. China is very different today from what it was 40 years ago. From the Cultural Revolution to capitalist superpower. China might be ruled by the Communist Party, but China is one of the most "free enterprise" countries in the world. Compared to most western nations, China has very lax laws for opening and operating a business. For this reason China seems to have a more liberal policy towards business than many western nations and in China you can literally buy and sell anything.

In comparison, many western nations have complex laws, and opening and operating businesses is relatively complicated and expensive. We have a lot more laws for protecting workers, the environment, etc. In that sense most western industrialized countries (including the US) are a lot more "socialist" than China is. We also have much more powerful centralized banking systems and economic controls in place.

China's change was the product of Deng Xiaoping's policies when he became head of the Communist party after Mao's death. Deng Xiaoping was educated in France. It was in France that he was exposed to Marxism, but I imagine that his stay there also gave him a sense of the potential in industrialized capitalism. He brought western ideology, both Marxist and capitalist, to China.

Of course, the lack of regulations has caused a lot of problems with the environment and public health. Quality control is good in China, but there are also big lapses and dishonesty. In fairness, I don't think China is worse than any other country. I have seen some really poor quality products made in North America and Europe. We pollute a lot more than China does, and we have had serious issues of public health and quality control.

Speaking of stuf muffins, Count Vlad Putin should be counted among them! I guess there are stud muffins not just outside the Democrat ranks, but also outside the US:

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/090806/world/eu_russia_putin_celebrity_1

Tuesday:

> Aren't Gore and B. Clinton just the studliest of all stud muffins?

I am sure Monica L. agrees that B. Clinton is better than a lemon-poppy seed muffin.

I thought Barack Obama was considered quite the SM too, in fact, he might be right up there, in the range of a buttered crumpet with strawberry marmalade on top.

The question is, are there any Republican stud muffins?

Artful Dodger:

> Capitalism doesn't cause wars. People do.

First, what causes capitalism? People do. Wars are fought due to the greed for wealth and power. Everything else is just an excuse. You can quote ideology, but once you see who is making money, the causes of war are obvious. There isn't a single war that was not fought to acquire territory, or natural resources, or subjugate a people. Ideology (or religion) were always just excuses.

Greed and selfishness are the cause of war. Capitalism is a system that glorifies greed and selfishness as "free enterprise" and Adam Smith's "invisible hand". Then capitlism perpetuates war, and the capitalists of the world have little interesting in ending the arms trade and the wars that make them rich.

It is true, war has existed since cavemen could pick up sticks and whack each other on the head. Capitalism has caused many wars too, like all systems preceding it. Contemporary capitalism is guilty not just of creating wars and profitting from them, but also of failing to make any progress to end war. There is a reason why the countries with the biggest weapons manufacturers in the world have refused to sign and ratify treaties to end the small arms trade, the manufacture of land mines, the use of cluster bombs, etc. Those are all "best sellers"!

gogul:

> So what?

The point I was trying to make is that the world financiers are making huge fortunes by promoting war, then war will not end under capitalism. As long as war is business and profit, then we will have it and millions will go on dying. Industrialized nations would never accept a change in the economical system. Capitalism is here to stay, and by extension, war is here to stay too. Without war there would be massive unemployment and an economic contraction that would leave capitalism bankrupt.

Pedro Martínez:
> The EU was established in 1993.

I recommend that you look at the Wikipedia entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_union

The EU was offically established in 1993, but the impetus to form it goes back to the end of WW II and the Paris Treaty of 1951. The legal framework on which the EU was formed took decades of negotiation.

> Are you saying that the Nazi view of the world has an impact on what the
> European Union officials consider in deciding what countries should be admitted
> to the EU?

No, I said that Europeans put aside some of the old prejudices that were emobdied in the Nazi racist view of the world. I never said that Nazi views influenced the decision of which countries should join, but rather that countries like Germany moved forward and put aside their old prejudices.

As a Czech, you must know very well the views of Nazis with respect to Slavs. I recommend that you look at this Holocaust entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust#Slavs

Please read carefully what was posted. I am not reflecting prejudice against Slavs, but rather pointing to the fact that during the war Nazis were putting Slavs in concentration camps.

I was also pointing to the fact that the word "bohemian" was used as a derogatory term against poor people, and it reflected prejudice against Gypsies coming from Bohemia.

Pedro Martínez:
Just to clarify, I never compared the EU to the US. By perfect I mean that people do not necessarily want the same currency or political system, and for that reason some aspect of the EU are still being worked on.

I didn't say that Europeans formed the Union to stop war, but rather that Europeans stopped fighting and formed the Union. The EU has its origins in political, economic and idelogical principles that go back to the 19th century. It took two world wars to show European people that working together was better than fighting, and the motivation for the formation of the EU was there even before those wars.

> What old prejudices? And what has the admission of the Slavic countries to the
> EU to do with the holocaust???

Adolf Hitler and the Nazis had a deep hatred of Slavic peoples. There was a time when it would have been impossible to suggest people in Germany that they would share the same currency and even some of the same laws with Czech or Polish people. We also have to remember that the Holocaust went beyond Jews. Gypsies, Slavs, Communists, and other peoples were targetted by the Nazis. Millions of Slavs died in and out of concentration camps.

Some of the prejudice is still remnant in terms like "Bohemian", a term used to describe "the untraditional lifestyles of marginalized and impoverished artists, writers, musicians, and actors in major European cities". This was "a common term for the Romani people of France, who had reached Western Europe via Bohemia". Of course, the Kingdom of Bohemia was located in waht today is the Czech Republic. It was that kind of prejudice that the Nazis used against Gypsies and Slavs. The EU has made a lot of progress in moving against that prejudice and discrimination.

GTCharlie:
Yes, human history is a history of war, and all along somebody always became wealth producing weapons. Our capitalist system has perpetuated war and solidified it as one of the main driving forces of the world economy. We still manage to convince ourselves that we fight wars in the name of higher principles (like freedom, democracy, peace, etc.); however, the true driving force behind war has always been and will always the acquisiton of wealth and power. Higher principles and ideology are in the end just excuses.

(V):

The "war to end all wars" was fought twice. WW I was not enough to make Europeans hate war long enough to stop hating each other. So they fought WW II and when they saw the destruction they brought on themselves they became sick enough of war to at least stop fighting for 64 years.

At least some of the lesson was learned, and now we have the European Union. It is not a perfect union, but at least the superpowers are not at each other throats any more. The fact that they are willing to welcome Slavs into the Union means that some of the old prejudices are slowly dying, and people still feel shame in the killing of Jews and Gypsies.

Still, we as human beings are slow to learn our lessons. Unfortunately, we have lost some perspective on what war does to countries and people. We saw this in Iraq. More fire power was rained down on Iraq in the first 80 hours of the war than all the combined firepower used by all participants in WW II. It seems unreal, and yet it is true.

I think that war will be there for as long as there is capitalism , because war is business. I don't see how the big superpowers can survive economically without war. Can you imagine the massive unemployment and profit losses if suddenly everyone stopped buying weapons? Entire cities in industrialized countries would end up unemployed. The biggest and most powerful corporation in the world would go bankrupt. Boeing, Lockeed-Martin, Ford, GM, Daimler, Microsoft, General Dynamics, General Electric, Siemens, Basf, Dow, and many others. All the big names in capitalism would be hit hard because everyone is got its fingers stuck in the war pie.

Civil wars always have foreigners involved for several reasons. Some will backup one side, such as the British backing up the loyalists, or the US backing up the Pakistani army against the Taliban. In those cases the reasons are political.

During the Cold War, the civil wars in Central America saw several countries involved. The US, the British, the Canadians, the French, the Germans, the Israelis, they all had interests there. The CIA provided training for the military and traded weapons and drugs, and for that reason the US had the finger pointed at it through the Cold War.

Today we have forgotten wars such as the civil war in the Soviet Union involving Adzerbaijanis and Armenians fighting over Nagorno-Karabak. In that war western powers and Iran backed and supplied the Adzerbaijanis, while the Russians backed the Armenians. Cold War politics and Islamic extremism fueled foreign involvement, and curiously, both the west and Iran backed the same side.

I find that in most civil wars, somebody is getting rich at the expense of the parties involved in that war. The IRA bought weapons, as did the Loyalists, and there were thirds parties that made money supplying them. It is not different in Afghanistan and Pakistann today. The Taliban, who fought against the Russians in the 1980s, are now buying Kalashnikov rifles Russian smugglers, while the Pakistani army is buying its weapons from the US. Then corrupt Pakistani army officers are selling American weapons to the Taliban. In the mean time who makes the money? Weapons manufacturers of course!

(V):

Perhaps thinking more carefully, rather than just "organized religion", I would say "organized ideology". Stalin's Communism had many of the traits of the organized fanaticism that we see in other places. It could be the head of the communist party, or a supreme spiritual or political leader. The uncertainty in a person's beliefs is reinforced by a large group of believers who obey an ideology blindly. Religion can become ideology, and it seems that once happens the ethical and moral aspects of religion are cast aside. Churches, temples, mosques, political parties, etc., they breed blind obedience and ostricize those who do not believe in the same thing. Those with different beliefs become an enemy that must be destroyed. That is how God-fearing men can commit murder, and convince themselves that they are doing it in the name of God, or some greater good, as Communists did with "freedom from Capitalist oppression and human equality".

I feel that western society is falling prey to a blind belief in freedom and democracy as ideology. That blind belief is used to justify governments spying on their own citizens. Massive armies and weapons of mass destruction become necessary to "protect those higher principles". Our governments manufacture intelligence to justify wars, and individuals are detained without trial. We must protect freedom and democracy at any cost. Is there a line that we can cross in our devotion to higher ideals? I think it comes to personal belief and faith in a system. We believe in freedom and democracy, so we must do whatever it takes to keep them.

For those people who don't know abot the hacker, here are some links. This first link at Wikipedia gives a good overview:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_McKinnon

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/08/02/british.hacker.mckinnon/index.html?section=cnn_latest

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8180427.stm

http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/news/display.var.2523487.0.Hacker_Gary_McKinnons_mother_accuses_Johnson.php

Some things I didn't know. He has Aspereger's Syndrome, a form of Autism. He is accused of hacking into Pentagon and NASA computers in the US right after the 9/11 attack. The Pentagon wants him extradited and tried as a terrorist.

gogul:

I entirely agree with you. Greed and the pursuit of power seem to corrupt just about every good thing humanity has done in the past. Religion, science, medicine, etc. for the powerful these are merely tools to subjugate the masses.

I think when it comes to religion we have to remember that religion means different things for different people. There is "individual belief", which is what each and every person believes to be true. There is "theology", which tries to interpret religion in general terms. There is "organized religion", large groups of people following the teachings of some religious or spiritual leader.

Karl Marx called religion "the opium of the masses". His statement was an expression of theh frustration he felt when he saw religion being used to keep poor people subjugated. It was the wrong use of religion that turned many people into atheists.

Science is not much better. Chemistry can be used to synthesize and design medicinal drugs that can save millions of lives. It can also be used to design poisons, toxic gases, explosives, and other weapons. Chemistry is a tool and how we use it determines its value and meaning.

Medicine is the same. You can use medicine to save lives, or you can use medicine to make a profit. Medicine is a weapon too, and biological weapons remain one of the biggest threats to humanity.

We have some very intelligent men (scientists, doctors, religious leader, politicians, businessmen, etc.) and they use their intelligence as a tool to acquire welath and power.

I think that in the end we as human beings are very good at making excuses. "We will develop nuclear weapons to defend themselves from ouur enemies who are determined to destroy us." We developed those weapons, and later we don't know what to do with them. We convinced ourselves that the weapons were indispensable, and now we cannot live without them because we live in a constant state of fear.

Terrorists want to get nuclear weapons and use them in the name of God. It would be unfair to blame God for the things that human beings do. God gave us freedom to act, and organized religion is used to take that freedom away and make us slaves of religion as ideology. It is why I dislike organized religion, and I prefer individual belief. Individual belief makes people independent of the herd mentality. Nobody should be used like a sheep to die or be exploited in the name of God.

I think that how we as individuals see death has a lot to do with faith. I have always tryied to imagine how the first human beings saw death. The first human being to have a sense of "self" would have seen animals die and say "I will die some day, what will happen to me then."

Then a terrible realization must have occurred. "I don't know what happens to me after I die." This question has plagued humanity since its earliest beginnings, because once we die we have no sensory perception of the universe, and the living have no way to communicate with the dead.

This is where religion was born. The earliest religions believed in "resurrection". Warriors and hunters in prehistoric times were buried with their weapons and possessions, sometimes even their hunting dogs and hawks. They believed they would be resurrected some day and when they woke up from their long death everything they had would be with them. The Egyptians formalized that belief and constructed their pyramids and mummified their pharaohs, thinking that they would come back some day.

Of course, they did not. Then we have the rise of other religiens like monotheism. In monotheism (Judeo-Christian or other types) human beings have a "soul". The "self" survives beyond death, because the God that created humans is merciful and wants to save them somehow. This is why we get one chance at physical life, because once the body dies, there is no need for the body any more.

Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism and other religions of India believed that the "self" (or soul, called atman in Sanskrit) did not exist. Instead human beings became so attached to the physical world that once the body died, the person would "reincarnate" in a new life somewhere else. This cycle of death and rebirth led to great suffering in living beings because as we live we lose all those things we are attached to. Then the concept of "nirvana" and "enlightenment" came in. If a person became enlightened, the cycle of death and rebirth would end.

Of course, we have atheists who deny all religion and see life as a one chance to exist and then it ends with death. Atheism started in ancient Greece, but it reached its highest philosophical forms in the 19th and 20th century.

In the end it all comes down to faith, what we believe is a reflection of what we have learned through life. Doubt is part of human existence, and organized religion has used doubt as the most powerful weapon for political control.

You cannot be sure that God exists and that God will save you, so organized religion attempts to give people that certainty. In doing so it often used its influence over individual belief to promote political and economic objectives.

Today we see Al Qaida and other terrorist organizations use religion to promote their political objectives, but western society is full of examples of the abuses of organized religion. Crusades, the burning of witches, pastors in churches telling people to vote for a certain candidate, etc. Manipulation has taken many forms, and it has been done by all religions at some point or another. Every major religion spread itself through war (except for Buddhism with its strict adherence to non-violence, although some historians have argued that too).

Next time we see Al Qaida, we have to realize that they are not selling death to their followers, but the certainty of salvation after death. All those virgins waiting in paradise after death are the reward for acting in a way that promotes their political and economic objectives. I have nothing against religion or belief in God, but organized religion promoting blind obedience and conformity, that to me is an aberration.

Euthanasia will always be a touchy subject. Here in Canada it is illegal, and we had a few cases where the legal system saw itself torn in the debate of suffering versus merciful death. I know that if I was suffering and I knew there was no cure I would prefer to die, rather than prolonguing my suffering and that of my family. However, if somebody in my family was seriously ill and suffering, I don't know if I could assist them to die. I think it will always be an extremely difficult subject, like abortion and other things related to death.

Artful Dodger:

In reply to this:

> If the "carbon footprint" is a bit crazy (it's not scientific and it's nonsense.
> Carbon dioxide is plant food. The environmentalists treat it like it's a polution.
> And Co2 levels are DOWN. Temps are up. Where's the connection?

Usually when we talk of global warming people tend to get the wrong idea. It is a gradual warming that has occurred since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Here is a graph that shows what the anomaly is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png

From the 1920s to the present the average atmospheric temperature in the world has gone up about 1 degree centigrade. It does not sound like much, just 1 degree. However, it is a lot if we consider that we are heating up an entire planet. I recommend the full Wikipedia entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming

The problem with global warming is not that it will kill everything on Earth. Carbon dioxide and methane are not mustard gas or some toxic substance.

Estimates of the effect of global warming say that we could see a further increase of 1.1 to 6.4 degrees centigrade over the next 100 years.

What is the effect of that? It is not like everything will get cooked or roasted. The problem is that as the temperature goes up, the rate of evaporation of water goes up. In many areas of the world the soil is not able to retain moisture the way it used to and those areas are slowly becoming deserts.

As global warming makes its slow advance, more areas will become arid and agriculture will suffer. The Earth is already having a hard time providing everyone with food. Advances in plant breeding and genetic engineering have made the growing of food easier, but global warming threatens to destroy about 30% of the arable land of the world. That means 30% less food, and by the end of this century the population of the world could be 3 times what it is now. 30% less food and 3 times the number of people is not a joke.

There is a lot of skepticism about this and some scientists doubt it is actually happening and they think the warming mighht be part of a much greater climate cycle. However, the statistical data do point to emmissions of carbond dioxide, methane and other gases as the most likely causes of the warming.

There is also a lot of debate about how to reduce those emmissions. Industrialized countries are willing to reduce emmissions, if populous countries like China and India reduce their emmissions too. Emerging economies like China, india and Brazil are unhappy with the caps because it means that they will have to limit their economic growth.

I am a chemist and I think that global warming is the product of human industrial activity, the use of cars and other means of transport, and the overuse of electricity. However, I also think that we have to be realistic and see that people need those things. The problem with this is that it is a politically charged issue because politicians cannot agree on how to proceed.

Those that want the environment protected at any cost want tough caps imposed. Those that have been lobbyed by oil and energy companies will oppose any action. Squeezed in between are the people of the world who will some day see their grandchildren suffer if something is not done. As always, it is poor people who will pay the price for the agricultural catastrophe that could happen if something is not done.

I think ultimately the only solution will be to teach people to waste less energy. We all love to leave the lights on, run electrical appliances 24 hours a day, drive two block to buy a soda, etc. I am sure that if we all accounted for how we use energy, we would find that 50% of the energy we consume is wasted.

We also need to stimulate companies and universities thaht do research into ways to reduce the amount of gases we emit. That means that the goverment has to take our hard-earned tax dollars and put them to work properly. That will always be a difficult thing, because politicians are influenced by special interests, and taxpayers might be skeptical of how the money is being spent.

I think the first thing we have to notice is that all over the world, regardless of which country or culture, there could be free health care for everyone, and enough food for everyone, if we stopped wasting money on weapons.

I noticed that in the US (I might be wrong in this) those who oppose universal health care complain about its cost and those same people said nothing when the likes of Haliburton was overcharging the American public for the war effort. Money wasted in weapons and war is money that is not going to health care or education or more useful things. The $38,000 toilet in some army barracks points to a wasteful war economy and a general lack of concern for what happens to the poor of the world when so much of our money goes into war.

Anybody who says that somebody nearly died in Canada because of the health care system here is just using excuses to undermine the health care system. Living here in Canada I can say that we have one of the best health care systems in the world. It is universally available and everyone, rich or poor, can have excellent care. The big problem here is that when the Canadian version of Reaganomics hit Canada in the 1980s and 1990s, the government cut funding to hospitals. A lot of medical staff lost their jobs and many hospital beds closed down. Now the problem is that those beds need to be restored, and the government is trying to weasel its way out of paying for it. Of course, they have no problem wasting billions in Afghanistan!

Because there are less hospital beds, people have to wait for operations and other medical procedures. I wish those people would go developing countries where being poor means you will never be able to afford an operation at all. If those people who complain received a bill for the actual costs of the operation, they would die of a heart attack. It says something when a $20,000 operation is given to you for only $42 per month. No wonder medical insurers want to avoid the universal health care system like a plague.

gogul:

> Republicanism is a social movement. The Republicans, a party of traitors.

I think that passing a simple condemnation of right wing republicanism is rather unfair. While I disagree with many of the things that Republicans (or Conservatives here in Canada and England) stand for, their place in history is different from what many people think. While the "neoconservatives" under George W. Bush are seen in a very negative light outside of the US, the history of the Republican Party is very interesting.

Back in the mid-19th century the Unites States had 3 political parties, and those were divided into factions:

The Whigs were a political party that followed the ideas of John Quincy Admas and they favored the modernization of industry and the banking system. Abraham Lincoln joined this party in 1832 and in 1837 he started campaigning against slavery.

The Republicans were divided into two camps. The "radical REpublicans" believed in agressive modernization of industry and in punishing the souther states harshly in accounts of slavery and the civil war. The "moderate Republicans" believed in a more lenient approach with the south and work to end slavery by reconstruction after the civil war.

The Democrats were divided into the "northern democrats" who favored an end of slavery but who refused to support war against the Confederacy. The "southern democrats" were the dominant political party in the south and they campaigned and fought to keep slavery alive.

Abraham Lincoln joined the Republican Party in 1856 and in 1861 he assumed office as the 16th president of the United States. Abraham Lincoln was extremely influential in the early development of the Republican Party and the ideological basis that led to the end of slavery. Abraham Lincoln also opposed the Mexican-American War and he saw that war as illegal and a form to grab land from Mexico through military expansion.

Lincoln's brilliance as a politician was based on his ability to reconcile several aspects of American politics at the time. He convinced the northern Democrats to stay out of the war, while he held off the aggressive radical Republicans who wanted the south crushed mercilessly. At the same time he moved popular support towards the moderate Republicans who wanted modernization and an end to slavery without crushing the south. As a Republican, Abraham Lincoln was without question the most brilliant politician the US had in the second half of the 19th century.

After the war the Republican party led reconstruction efforts and fought off the Ku Klux Klan which at the time had broad support through the south. The Republican Party came to dominate American politics through the second half of the 19th century.

It is very interesting because in the 19th century the southern states were dominated by the Democrats, while in more recent times the Republicans attract much of the vote in that part of the US.

The change in Republican politics started at around the time of Theodore Roosevelt. He had been Secretary of the Navy during the Spanish-American War and the expansion of American power into places like Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Phillippines and Panama gave him a view of the world in which American naval superiority was the best way to ensure that American political and economic interests were protected outside the US. It is out of his ideological stance that the Republican Party changed its main ideological basis from the 19th century moderates to the more radical views that we see today in the "neoconservatives".

During Theodore Roosevelt's presidency (1901-1909) there was a change in the Democrats too. Many of the "progressives" inside the Republican party defected to the democratic party in view of the rise in more radical Republicanism. This led to the defeat of the Republicans in 1912 when Woodrow Wilson became president under the Democrat Ticket.

As you can see, the Republicans were never quite the same way we see them today. Neither were the Democrats. The Republicans were moderate and became radical. The Democrats were reactionary and became progressive.

Czuch:

> You make it sound like just having been voted in with a simple low majority
> gives him a blank check to do whatever he pleases, and we should know
> what to expect based on promises, no questions asked?

Every democracy suffers from the same problem. People elect a president (or prime minister or whatever) and once they assume office they do whatever they want. Election promises are often good only for a short time, and once the election is over things change. The "will of the people" counts only for as long as it is politically or economically convenient to those in power.

For this reason I see democracy as a process in which people vote to chose their dictator. There are three main differences between modern democracy and traditional dictatorship.

The first is that the dictator does not have absolute power. He must convince those that oppose him that his ideas are sound and viable. That is the point of congress, senate, parliament, etc.

Second, the dictator is not there forever but only for as long as he can be reelected. In some countries people curtail the length of the dictators stay in powere even more than in the US. For example, many Latin American countries do not allow reelection at all. Others, like Canada, allow as many reelections as possible as long as the political party in power obeys constitutional law.

Third, the dictator must at least pretend to make an effort to follow the people's will and avoid oppressing the people. The dictator does not have to follow the will of the people and more often than not external influences from wealthy and powerful individuals count more. (For example, lobbyists, special interest groups, etc.)

Modern democracy is at best a crude attempt to solve a very old problem. How do you give people power and say in the government without removing all power from the rich and powerful? Modern democracy was born in Europe after the French Revolution, as a response to the people demanding a say in the government and going into revolution if their demands were not met.

The war in Iraq was not imposed or shoved down the throat of the American people. Just before the war 64% of the American public supported the war, and George W. Bush had an approval rating of 82%, the highest in American history.

However, the war was imposed on the people of the UK. Over there over 80% of the population opposed the war. With under 20% support, Tony Blair's decision to go to war was entirely dictatorial.

In Canada 80% of the people opposed the war and Jean Chretien (the prime minister) refused to go to war. The Bush administration criticized him greatly, but he was merely following the will of the Canadian people.

As we can see, democracy is an imperfect system. A lot of people will dislike Obama now, but his actions are not different from those of many other presidents and prime ministers, both in and outside of the US. People who oppose him will feel he is imposing his will, but then many people felt the same way during the Bush administration.

In case the link below does not work for some of you:
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25817632-2862,00.html

Apparently the problem of cyberbullying has been on the increase in some Australian high schools. I think that in cases where victims are driven to suicide the bullying has been going on for long periods of time and outside of the Internet. The Internet seems to become an aggravating factor and ity is used as a further avenue to victimize those already being bullied in schools.

It seems that the government in Australia is studying the problem and trying to help parents and teachers identify the problem. In one of the stories in that same newspaper it said that teens were using Facebook as a way to bully other children and as a way to spread malicious gossip against their teachers.

I think the only way to deal with this is for parents to pay close attention to what their kids do online. I see no other way to prevent this because once kids are out of school their actions are beyond the control of their teachers.

Bernice:
Do you have a link that might give more details? I am wondering if she was also being bullied in school or in her neighborhood.

We know that in the Internet there is as much if not worse predatory behaviour than there is outside the Internet. Anonimity can provide bullies with a way to shield their actions.

I am curious because if she was being bullied, would just stop using the Internet be easier than suicide? Obviously there were other factors involved besides bullying. I imagine that maybe she was suffering from depression, or she felt that there was no adult she could turn to for help.

As with many cases of bullying, it probably was done by one of her peers. It is probably why she felt it was so devastating. It is quite likely that the problem spread outside just the Internet. Kids who commit suicide because of bullying are often being victimized by several people and in a way that humiliates them physically and emotionally before their peers.

I think that the government would have a hard time regulating this. In a school or neighborhood a bully can potentially be charged with assault, but in the Internet a defense lawyer would simply argue that the girl should just have stopped logging in. As with other forms of bullying, educating children on not doing it and on defending themselves from bullies is probably the only thing the government could do.

Czuch:

> Its just that many people, myself included, believe that those numbers pale
> in comparison to the death toll had nothing been done....

I agree with you in this. I think there are few people out there who will think that Saddam Hussain was harmless. He was dangerous, not to the US, but to his neighbors and to the Iraqi people.

I know that on the surface it might seem that I am constantly pointing the finger at the US. In reality I see the war in Iraq as a continuation of the same political and economic conditions that have determined human history going back to antiquity and ancient empires.

I think the big difference between the war in Iraq and other wars is that this war was fought in the public eye through telesion, the Internet and other means of communication.

We question the motivation of the war because many details of foreign policy, business interests and military intelligence became visible to the public.

The Bush administration chose to fight the war in the public eye and to mount a massive propaganda campaign aimed at convincing the American public and the world that the war was justified. I think the Bush administration made two mistakes in the public relations campaign preceding the war:

First, they chose to believe faulty (or manufactured?) intelligence that could not be corroborated before the war.

Second, they lost patience with the UN's lack of decisiveness and resolve.

If the Bush administration had chosen its intelligence more carefully and allowed the UN to come around and support the war, then the public view of the war would be different.

The Bush administration gambled that WMDs were there and that once Saddam was defeated the WMDs would be found and the war would be fully justified. They called Saddam's bluff, and then found themselves with no evidence of WMDs.

A lack of a proper exit strategy, together with a total lack of vision with regards to iraqs internal ethnic makeup, led to sectarian violence and insurgency.

Dubious business connections, conflicts of interest, corruption in reconstruction efforts and other questionable business connections have made a lot of people question the motivation behind the war.

The honest truth is that I personally have mixed feelings about it. Saddam was an early ally, and later a mortal enemy of the US. Lots of people have died, been wounded, become homeless, etc. Those things make me see the war (and every other war) as a bad thing, but removing Saddam was certainly the right thing to do.

(V):

> And to why Saddam didn't want inspectors...

We have to remember that Saddam Hussain did allow UN inspectors into Iraq. Initially UNSCOM did the inspections and oversaw the destruction of biological weapon manufacturing facilities:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Special_Commission

UNSCOM was disbanded in 1999 and replaced with UNMOVIC:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Monitoring,_Verification_and_Inspection_Commission

Although UNMOVIC had confirmed that Iraq had dismantled all WMD facilities and destroyed its arsenal, the Bush administration went ahead with the war.

Scott Ritter and David Kay (both prominent weapons inpectors in Iraq) refuted the existence of WMDs after 1998, while Hans Blix was ambigous in his assesment of Iraq's WMD capabilities.

Iraq did allow inspectors and complied with UN resolutions, but what really caused a problem was Iraq's inability to account for about 5% of its WMDs. It was that unaccounted 5%, and faulty intelligence that led to the war.

Czuch:

> Maybe you will tell us? I dont believe that the civilian toll dead at the direct hands of
> US military(coalition of the willing) is as high as you might believe.

The issue of the death count in Iraq is highly dependant on who did the counting and how. Estimates of deaths range from about 100,000 to 650,000. I recommend looking at the article in Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_conflict_in_Iraq_since_2003

In 2006 The Lancet, a famous medical journal, published a peer-reviewed statistical analysis of the mortality rate in Iraq and came with a number of 654, 996 total deaths caused by the war. 601,027 were due to violence. 31% of those were done by the Coalition. That would be about 200,000 civilians killed by the Coalition.

Other surveys like the Iraq Body Count estimate a more conservative number of about 100,000. Other surveys push the number as high as 1,000,000 people. The problem is that few deaths are officially recorded, and many deaths are difficult to attribute to Coalition forces, the new Iraqi security forces and sectarian violence.

I tried to find surveys done by the US Department of Defense but so far I have not found any official estimates. If somebody can find them it would be interesting to compare them.

The dead are not the only casualties of the war. There people who are wounded, left disabled. psychologically traumatized, homeless, impoverished, etc. Those people are often ignored. The dead are one aspect of a war. The living who suffer are another aspect, and most people seem to ignore that too. I have idea of how many people have died as a result of hospitals being destroyed, lack of medicines, lack of food, lack of clean water, homelessness, disease, etc. If those people were included in the death toll, then the numbers jump to well over one million. Those are not deaths caused directly by violence, but as a result of the war.

GTCharlie:

Perhaps what I am getting at is that war crimes have become mired in moral and legal relativism. Milosevic was a war criminal of the worst kind and what he did is heinous and inexcusable.

The question is, if waterboarding was a war crime during WW II, did it stop being a war crime during the War on Terror? Japanese soldiers were sent to prison for waterboarding American POWs. Somehow in all the legal wrangling of the Bush administration the Patriot Act made it acceptable.

At the same time, we have done nothing to stop the Russians or the Chinese from oppressing their Moslem minorities. We have turned a blind eye to it because atrocities committed during the war in Iraq were swept under the carpet.

The Abu Graib scandal is merely the tip of the iceberg and most of the photographs were never seen by the public because of censorship. Iraq is no better than Vietnam was. I ask, does anyone know how many people have been killed in Iraq? Does anyone care? How many people must be killed before a war becomes a crime?

We have seen war planes bomb Iraq and sat there as if it were mere entertainment. Those nice fireworks on CNN do not show human death in real terms. The number of dead in Iraq is certainly a lot more than there were during the Balkan wars. The Coalition of the Willing has dispatched a lot more people to their death than Milosevic ever did. So, are we really better than he was?

Extraordinary rendition is nothing new. It was used during the cold war as the US shifted communist insurgents from one Latin American country to another. For example, Salvadoran communists would be sent by the CIA to Honduras or Guatemala for interrogation and torture. Back then there was no Internet and CNN was in its infancy, so such occurrences, like most Cold War atrocities, went unknown.

The Bush administration did two things that allowed extraordinary rendition to take place. First, it classified all enemies captured during the war in Afghanistan as "unlawful combatants". By exploiting technicalities in the law governing the Geneva Convention the Bush administration made all prisoners of war "unlawful" meaning that their human rights would not be protected by the Geneva Convention.

This is how the Guantamo Bay prison (and later Abu Graib) came to be. To do this the Bush administration needed approval from Congress and the Supreme Court. The appointment of Alberto Gonzalez to the Supreme Court made it possible for such legal manouvering to take place.

Waterboarding is a really old torture technique going back to the Spanish Inquisition. The US developed a modern method during the Vietnam war. It was used as a torture and interrogation technique against the Vietcong. It was further refined through the 1980s in Latin America as political prisoners were interrogated to stop local Communist parties from suceeding in carrying out their revolutions. A good example was Chile where dictator Agusto Pinochet used it against civilians and suspected communists.

Waterboarding used to be illegal. In 1983 law enforcement personnel who used waterboarding were sentenced to 10 years in prison. After WWII Japanese soldiers were sent to prison for using waterboarding against American POWs.

The Bush administration lowered the classification of waterboarding and made it "benign". A torture technique that goes back for hundreds of years became acceptable.

The Bush administration got away with this by getting around the Geneva Convention and by convincing the American public that waterboarding is not torture and is an essential interrogation technique against terrorists.

Well, might is right. The people who held power during the Bush administration are above the law. Slobodan Milosevic was tried for crimes against humanity, and all he did is in essence the same that American troops have done in Iraq and Afghanistan. Milosevic tortured and killed islamic fundamentalists trying to break Serbia apart. If Milosevic had done so during the Iraq war, he would have been ignored just as the world ignored what the Russians did in Chechnya against separatist moslems, or what the Chinese did in Western China against their moslem minority.

Artful Dodger:

> Because one of the arguments for water boarding is that it is to be used
> only as a last resort and only when there is good reason to believe that
> lives are at stake. I have no sympathy for people who want to kills us.

In other words, information obtained under duress is acceptable in order to save human life. It might be inadmissible in court, but it is acceptable because human life has been saved. The right to life of the victims takes precedence over the human rights of the prisoner. "Innocent until proven guilty" does not apply. Waterboard first, ask questions later, because human lives are at stake.

Then, waterboarding has failed and the suspect is still refusing to give us information. It is time for the hot irons and psychotropic drug injections. Since the "method of last resort" failed, should we find another "last resort" after that?

I find the argument that waterboarding is rather benign as somewhat shallow. Who decides what harmful means? A doctor working for the Pentagon tells us that waterboarding is no more harmful than falling in the deep end of the swimming pool and wading to the edge of the pool. Another psychiatrist comes out and tells us that the spychological damage could leave a person scarred for life. Should we wait 50 years and then ask victims how they feel?

On the other hand, the military has sent a clear message to other people around the world. If the military can use dubious interrogation tactics, so can everyone else. Somewhere in the world somebody will be waterboarded and when somebody asks why a government will manufacture evidence and say the person was guilty. We will have to live with that as an acceptable risk.

Terrorist around the world will say "Look at what the American military did. They torture people." Then waterboarding will become a symbol under which terrorists will justify their actions, just as Abu Graib and Guantanamo Bay are used in terrorist propaganda.

(V):
What I am trying to get to in my posts is that if we say that waterboarding is not torture, then it is an acceptable interrogation technique and should be used whenever the state decides it is suitable. I want to see those who defend or oppose waterboarding make some good arguments answering my questions. I see some of us claiming a high moral ground, but if waterboarding saves lives, then should it be acceptable? Those who support waterboarding have said that it is OK to go even further, but is there a limit? When does waterboarding (or other similar techniques) become or stop being acceptable?

Case 1:
The police have caught a thief suspected of a string of robberies at convenience stores. Since he has refused to confess to his crimes during interrogation, the police decide to waterboard him to elicit a confession. He confesses to his crimes and goes to jail.

Case 2:
A suspected serial killer has refused to confess to his crimes during normal police interrogation. The police decide to use waterboarding to make the serial killer confess and disclose the location of dead victims that have not been found by the police. He confesses and is sentenced to death.

Case 3:
A child serial rapist has abducted a child. If the police do not find the child it could die. The police caught the suspect and decide to waterboard him. The suspect discloses the location of the child and is sent to jail.

Case 4:
A communist agitator has been organizing workers to join unions. He is also suspected of organizing demostrations against the government. The military capture this man and waterboard him to make him disclose the location of his associates. The man confesses and he and all his associates are sent to prison.

Case 5:
A man is supected of being a member of the communist party and organizing guerrilla operations against the government. He is captured and waterboarded to make him disclose the location of the guerrilla command and all of his revolutionary comrades. He confesses and is sent to prison. His comrades were never found.

Case 6:
An radical anarchist is suspected of carrying out bombings against banks. This has disrupted the businesses of banks and cost millions in property damage. He confesses to his crimes during waterboarding and is sent to prison.

Case 7:
A man is suspected of being a member of Al Qaida and of having information in a bombing that could leave hundreds of people dead. He is subjected to waterboarding, but refuses to confess claiming that he is innocent. During the course of investigation it is found that he is indeed innocent and he is set free.

I divided my cases as follows:

Case 1: a common criminal
Case 2: a dangerous criminal with no victims in imminent danger
Case 3: a dangerous criminal with a victim in imminent danger
Case 4: a political prisoner not implicated in acts of terrorism
Case 5: a political prisoner suspected of acts against the government
Case 6: a political prisoner commiting acts of terrorism
Case 7: a suspected terrorist who is later found innocent

So my questions are:

If waterboarding is not torture, why are the police and other law enforcement agencies not allowed to use it when interrogating prisoners (cases 1, 2 and 3)?

Why is waterboarding not used to put extremely dangerous criminals away (case 2)?

Is waterboarding acceptable to save a human life (see case 3)?

Is waterboarding acceptable for undesirable political views or political prisoners (case 4)?

Is waterboarding acceptable for any military action involving guerrilla warfare or insurgents (case 5)?

Are all forms of terrorism (including mere economic terrorism) a good reason to use waterboarding (case 6)?

What do we do is somebody is subjected to waterboarding and is later found innocent (case 7)?

I find that waterboarding is one of those areas that some people see as black and white, and other see as grey. I am curious to see some opinions.

Case 1:
A terrorist has been captured by American intelligence officers. There is strong reason to believe that this member of Al Qaida has information about a bombing that could leave hundreds of people dead. Since benign interrogation techniques failed, waterboarding is used to obtain information and protect the safety of the American public. Protecting the American public takes precedence over the Geneva Convention and the UN Convention Against Torture.

Case 2:
Iranian intelligence have captured an American intelligence officer doing reconnaisance at a suspected nuclear facility. Iranians belive that a military strike is imminent and that hundreds of Iranians would be killed. Since benign interrogation techniques failed, the Iranians use waterboarding to obtain information from the American agent. Protecting the Iranian public from the largest army in the world and the largest arsenal of weapons of mass destruction takes precedence over the Geneva Convention and the UN CAT.

In case 1 Americans are threatened by terrorists bent on acts of destruction. In case 2 Iranians feel threatened by American military might. Americans believe it is their right to protect themselves from terrorists. Iranians belive that they have the right to pursue nuclear deterrent as a way to protect themselves (something that the US has had since WW II).

The question is, if waterboarding was used in both cases, who is right? Both sides feel threatened. Is waterboarding OK if our side does it, and wrong when our enemies use it?

Like somebody said earlier, the enemy plays hard ball. Is this not a slippery slope? If waterboarding fails, should we pull out the dusty old rack and the thumb screws?

Dumping of food as a way to manipulate prices is not new and it goes back through history back to Roman times and probably even earlier. Dumping of food as waste has been used as a way to maintain high prices and the 20th century saw a lot of it, specially in the late 1970s and 1980s when there was deflation in world commodity prices.

There is a general article on Wikipedia with regards to food waste:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_waste

According to that article in the UK about 17.6% of the food ends as waste, while in the US 14-15% has been estimated. The situation in many other industrialized countries is not much better. It is terrible considering that one of the latest UN reports estimated that nearly 848 million people in the world are malnourished.

http://www.fao.org/newsroom/common/ecg/1000923/en/hungerfigs.pdf

Fish and chips recipe:
Take haddock (or another nice fish). Dip it in batter and fry it deeply. Take potato pieces and fry them deeply. Serve with vinegar or even better, tartar sauce (the real stuff based on mayonaisse).

All that oil might be considered junk food, but my taste buds disagree. It certainly beats tofu with brussel sprouts!

In reponse to this comment:

> For all the hype, this fact seems to make the "torture" claim insignificant.
> Waterboarding cannot kill and was only used in extreme cases.

I have read the interesting posts. It occurred to me to go and find the definition of torture and see if waterboarding falls under that definition.

According to the United Nations Convention Against Torture torture is defined as:

...any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him, or a third person, information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in, or incidental to, lawful sanctions.

I think waterboarding does cause severe pain and suffering. The pain might not be physical, but it certainly is psychological. Since it was part of an interrogation procedure, it was used to obtain information. It was used to coerce information or confession from captives and it was done by intelligence agents acting on behalf of the government.

It was out of this definition that waterboarding became classified as a form of torture.

I think the litmus test would be as to alternative applications of the procedure by governments other than that of the US. Suppose that an American soldier or intelligence officer was captured by an enemy and subjected to waterboarding. Would it be acceptable then?

There is no doubt in my mind that waterboarding and similar techniques are used not only by the US, but by many countries around the world. By the legal definition under the UN CAT (see above) I think waterboarding is torture. If we say that it is OK for our side to use it, then we should not be surprised when our enemies start using it against us.

Czuch:

> The notion that a woman has a right to do with her own body as she wishes,
> i will not argue, and so too for a man..... but an unborn child is not a part of a
> womans own body, the womans body is simply the incubator for the unborn baby....

If women are mere incubators of babies, then women must be things. You should read your own statement. I can buy an incubator from a medical supplier. Should women be bought and sold? A woman is more than an incubator. It is what sustains the fetus' life. For approximately the fist two trimesters the fetus needs the woman to survive, and in the last trimester survival outside of a woman's body does require an incubator.

> how can a sperm, injected into a woman by a man, be then called part of the
> womans body???

The fate of sperm in a woman's body is well known. Most of the sperm are consumed by the immune system so in a sense they do become a part of a woman's body. The one (or more) spem that fertilize the egg enter the egg and become a zygote. The egg starts as part of a woman's ovary until ovulation releases it. Technically speaking, except for the DNA and a small fraction of proteins in the sperm, all of the baby's tissues come from the woman's body. Is the baby then part of a woman's body? It is certainly made from it.

I find that most abortions are probably unnecessary, but in some cases abortions are difficult choices.

A girl of 13 is pregnant. At the time of conception she might have been too old to realize the consequences of having sexual intercourse. Should she have a child or an abortion? There are people who adopt, but do we have the right to subject a child to the pain of childbirth?

A woman is pregnant and doctors determine that the child has a genetic condition that will predispose the child to a painful, debilitating disease throughout the child's life. Should the woman have an abortion and spare the child a lifetime of suffering? What is worse for the child, abortion or disease? Some genetic conditions can give children a chance for a full life, but some are painful and devastating.

Another woman is sick and gets pregnant. If she attempts to carry the pregnancy to term, she could die. Should she risk her life to give birth? Should she accept her fate and risk dying?

A woman was sexually assaulted and became pregnant against her will. Should she have a child she never asked for? Should she go through the risk and pain of childbirth even though she never asked for it?

I find that in many cases people tend to see abortion as the product of some woman not willing to take responsibility for her actions. Perhaps people see a middle-class woman who got pregnant carelessly and now does not want to face the responsibility of having a child. In reality most abortions are a lot more complex than that. In most cases women face difficult circumstances that nobody has the right to judge unless they are walking in their shoes.

Pro-life advocates sometimes paint abortion as the murder of children. People on the Pro-choice side are not advocating abortion as a whim or a game, but rather as matter of a fundamental right of a woman. I have not met any pro-choice people personally, but I doubt any of them thinks abortion is good. I never met a woman who said "Gee, I really want to have an abortion, it might be fun."

The issue is extremely complex. I think it will always be. However, I think that giving or denying women the right to an abortion will accomplish nothing if we fail to educate boys and girls from an early age on how to protect themselves and how to avoid unwanted pregnancy. Sexual education should be an essential means to prevent unwanted pregnancies. My only criticism of some (but not all) Pro-life advocates is that they oppose both abortion and sexual education in schools. They expect people to refrain from sex, and that seems unrealistic to me.

In response to this comment:

> it is the liberals telling us how we have to keep the big dogs alive
> because the little dogs rely on them???

I consider the recent round of bailouts to be neither the result of liberals (or democrats) nor of conservatives (republicans)

As I recall the course of events, initially there were failures in some huge financial institutions such as Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. The Bush administration came to their rescue and turned them back into public companies. This reverse privatization was the first symptom of things being very wrong.

After that we had problems with big banks such as the Bank of America, UBS Payne Webber, Wachovia and eventually the big one, J.P. Morgan. The Federal Reserve opened the cash window and let out about 400 billion in loans to keep banks afloat.

George W. Bush convened a high level meeting with Ben Bernanke (Chairman of the Federal Reserve) and Henry Paulson (Secretary of the Treasury). They drafted a proposal for the bailout. The bill went to congress and it was narrowly defeated because of opposition from both Democrat and Republican representatives.

George W. Bush convened a second meeting. This time he also called John MacCain and Barack Obama. They interrupted their campaigns and in the meeting they redrafted the bill with stipulations for continuity of policy after the election. Meaning that regardless of who was elected the bailout would go forward.

The bill went to the senate and it was passed to everyone surprise. The bill was expected to fail because there was opposition from both liberal and conservative senators.

Democrats charged that the bill was nothing more than using tax dollars to prop up banks, while ignoring important needs of the working public such as education and health care. Republicans charged that the involvement of the government in sustaining private companies was a form of socialism and that free market forces should let the system find equilibrium and that meant letting banks fail.

The bill was drafted by both Democrats and Republicans during the Bush administration, and it was opposed by both Democrats and Republicans.

While all this was going on, the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, the Swiss Central Bank, the Central Bank of Sweden, the Central Bank of Russia, the Central Bank fo the People's Republic of China and many other central banks drafted similar bailouts and opened their cash windows. There were unprecedented lowerings of interest rates.

This was a case where capitalists, communists and socialists of different colors and stances worked together to pump cash into the world's financial system and avert another meltdown that threatened to be worse than the crash of 1928.

The bailout is a phenomenon that started with the Federal Reserve in the US, but eventually spread itself around the world.

If all the cash that was released into the system fails to revive the economy, and the banks fail to repay their loans, there will be a lot of finger pointing to see who is to blame. Barack Obama will take the brunt of it, because he is the president. One would hope that John MacCain, George W. Bush, Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson would take the blame too. So should Gordon Brown and Mervyn King (Governor of the Bank of England), and for that matter all the other politicians and economists around the world who took part in what has the potential to become the biggest economic disaster in modern history.

Artful Dodger:

In response to some comments:

> I don't trust him. I think all this stimulus crap will bite the US in the butt.

Entirely agree with this. Initially this stimulus package and the baiolout for the banks was put forth by the Bush administration at the end of 2008. As I recall MacCain and Obama interrupted their campaigns for one entire weekend to agree on how the stimulus package would continue after the election and both candidates pledged to release the 800 billion regardless of who was elected in the end. I think it is unsustainable. Releasing more money into the economy will fuel inflation and the money released so far has done nothing to slow down the rise in unemployment. More stimulus means a bigger deficit, and more unemployment means less tax revenues. The administration is a catch-22 situation. The solution is let companies fail and let the economy take the hit and start over. Saving banks, car companies and monopolies wil not help working class people or small businesses, and it is from those segments of the economy that the recovery will come in the end.

> One way to cripple America is to bankrupt her. That's where this huge
> spending President is heading.

The runaway spending started in 2001 when George W. Bush saw the surplus he inherited from Clinton as a license to print money. Then 9-11 happened and the was in Afghanistan and Iraq decimated the accounts balance. Both Bush and Obama have budgeted as if the 2000 surplus was still there. They have let Ben Bernanke talk them into giving so much money to banks that now tax payers are literally paying taxes to support banks that gouge their savings in the end.

George W. Bush is to blame for this. This situation was created before the election. I think Obama is making a serious mistake by playing the bailout game. If banks (car companies and others) fail to pay back the bailout money, then taxpayers will take the brunt of it.

> As to Al Frankin: ... The democrats disputed legitimate votes and the courts
> sided with the democrats.

Is it just me or does this sound a lot like the 2000 election? Back in 2000 the Democrats asked for a recount and lost. Now the Republicans asked for a recount and lost. So far the Reblicans are winning. They got a president, while the Democrats got just a senator!

In response to Czuch's question:

> Whats the solution then???

I think the answer to this question is ideologicaly charged. How we as human beings are going to solve the problems and ineffficiencies in the Capitalist system is complex because it is colored by how we see socialism and the role of the state in regulating the economy and the business environment. Politicians do know that this problem exists and I have seen some opinions about it. I can start perhaps with what I will call the "pessimistic and radical view".

Among the more hawkish neoconservatives in Washington there is this belief that the current economic relations between China and the US will eventually lead to military conflict. There is a perception that the US is in an economically unmanageable situation because its foreign debt has become too great to manage properly without causing hardship for millions of working Americans. If at some point China decides that it is time to collect on the debt, the only response viable will be a war because the US will not be able to pay such a huge debt. To me this is a destructive and pessimistic view because it implies that China is a hostile, unreasonable power with nothing but evil intentions towards the US. Thus the more hawkish right-wingers see war as the only outcome.

More moderate views say that if China is given enough time, its population will move from a "producing" population to a "consuming" population. As the economy in China grows the rate of consumption will increase and that will open avenues for products to be sold to China and bring the trade deficit into balance. Evidence of this is seen in both the expansion of local businesses in China and the increase in demand of certain luxury consumer goods (e.g. cellular telephones, televisions, computers, etc.)

There is another view, and this is the one I subscribe to, which sees the current economic relations between China and the US as part of a much greater, and much older economic process. This process is called "economic integration". It is a concept that was born first from a Marxist view of economic systems and then it developed further in the Soviet Union in the 1950s after WW II. The theory is that as time is passing the entire world economy is in a process of "globalization". Originally economic systems arose locally and in isolation, then as time passed different economies came into contact and as they engaged in trade and exchange a process of adjustment had to take place. If enough time is allowed to pass, these economies merge into one larger economy.

The evidence of this is very strong and we all have heard of globalization and the formation of large economic blocks such as the European Union. The process of economic integration requires for nationalistic or local interest to concede ground to the much greater interests of the whole economic block.

The shifting of labour force from the US, Japan and Western Europe into China and India is driven by the self-interest of large corporations, but its ultimate effect is a process of economic integration in which all the economies involved become so interdependent that it becomes impossible to separate one from the other.

We saw this in the latest crisis in the economic system. As the American economy slid into recession, the demand for Chinese goods dropped suddenly and China also experienced a shrinkage in its economy.

As China and the US exchange more and more capital, eventually it will become impossible to separate one economy from the other and the US and China will end with a fully unified and integrated economy.

Many capitalist economists don't like this idea at all because it implies that western capitalism and communism end in an economically inseparable state, and that means a politically inseparable state.

If the current crisis in the world economy is not resolved, we will see a situation in which the state will have to intervene fully to keep the world economy afloat and that will mean moving from local central banks (like the Federal Reserve or the Bank of England) to a larger central bank regulating the world economy. We will have a "World Reserve" that will regulate banking and interest rates on a worldwide scale. We already saw this with many large cenatral banks lowering interest rates at exactly the same time and central bankers meeting to discuss common strategies to fight the crisis.

Parallel to this there will be regulatory bodies that will have to enforce labour laws on a worldwide scale to ensure that wealth is distributed more evenly and to minimize wage disparities that are further fuelling the current crisis and causing hardship for millions of people around the world. Many people are already complaining that there were massive bailouts for banks, car companies, real estate and mortgage companies, etc. However, the poor of the world get no bailout and they go on being poor. So the only way forward is to ensure that there is more wage equity in other places around the world.

Such an aggresive and global form of the state scares many people and is seen as a form of "socialism" and an "engineered economy". There is great political opposition to any "socialist" measures to fix the world economy.

In response to these comments:

> I am sure if I had a billion people working for me who I could steal from
> (their productivity wise) I could assume a bunch of the US debt as well.

> I just have an image of some poor Chinese kid, up to his thighs in rice paddy,
> runny nosed on a cold morning, thinking how wonderful his government is
> because they can afford to buy the debt of the US

I heard this idea of "China buying US debt" being tossed around during the election. Barack Obama used it a lot more that John McCain.

There is a general lack of understanding about how China came to hold billions of dollars of "US Debt".

Back in the 1960s China was a nation in a state of collapse. Having come out of a bad revolution and a "cultural revolution" China found itself with almost no industry, no agricultural production and a lack of a good educational system and technology. Western economicsts knew that China did have one asset which was worth a lot. This was its people. With a high population China was sure to come out of its problems if China could channel all those people into industrial production.

Richard Nixon made that historic trip to China and later Deng Xiaoping (the communist leader educated in France) agreed to allow foreign investment in China. After the fall of the Berlin wall, western companies rushed to open factories in China because with an average salary of 800 USD per year China offered one of the lowest labour costs in the world.

Western companies have made trillions of dollars manufacturing goods in China. Rather than calling this "we are exporting jobs overseas" or "we are exploiting Chinese people", western economists invented a sanitized term: "Outsourcing".

The US has "outsourced" so much of its production to China that now the capital flow to China exceeds anything that they could afford to buy from the US by approximately 45 to 50 billion USD per month. American politicians cry fould saying that China has protectionist policies in place but the reality is that China does not need much along the lines of manufactured goods. China buys billions of dollars of grain and legumes from the US, but agricultural products are valued relatively low. American manufactured goods have become in essence luxury goods. The average Salary of Chinese workers does not allow them to buy cars or computers, so the balance of trade is out of whack.

Since the US debt is now growing at 40-50 billion per month in trade and capital exchange, the Chinese are not stupid and they are heavily hedging their holding of Us dollars by purchasing massive amounts of treasury bills and federal reserve bonds.

American politicians point the finger at China and the Chinese government, but the reality is that the debt is being fuelled by our consumption and the greed of large monopolies that have shifted all of the manufacturing to places like China, India and Vietnam. They do it because people in those countries are poor and when you are poor it is easy to be exploited.

Should the Chinese government raise their minimum salary? That would cause massive inflation in the US because the manufacturing cost would go up, and companies like Walmart oppose anything like that. Should the Chinese government take measures against foreign companies that exploit Chinese workers? The American government has already taken China to arbitration to the WTO when they tried to impose restrictions on foreign companies. Walmart fought tooth and nail to stop the Chinese government from passing a law requiring that Walmart employees in China join local unions.

Pointing the finger at China is unfair, because our side is as much to blame as theirs. I will believe in pointing the finger on the day when the American government (and other western governments) requires American companies to honor minimum salaries on a worldwide scale. On that day unfair labour advantage will end and American companies will pack up their bags and bring manufacturing back to the US, and the US will stop "selling its debt" to countries like China, India or Korea.

Artful Dodger:
> The US can't win:

This is true in the sense that our western governments have played a political game in which they want to prove to their voting puublics that they are acting with the best intentions. I call this the "Peace Keeping Syndrome". Being a Canadian I blame Canada to a great extent for this because the "Peace Keeping Movement" at the UN was spear-headed by Canada.

Our governments used military force to bring about relative peace to certain parts of the world. In particular Lebanon, Cyprus and others. The UN was successful in stopping some military conflicts, but the UN charter forbid a foreign power from coming in and changing the internal political system. That meant letting dictators (or any government) do as they pleased inside their country. Peace keeping was not an option unless the conflict spread outside of a countries borders.

Things did change with Iraq. Saddam Hussain invaded Kuwait and the UN Charter allowed military action against him, but it forbid removing him from power. It is why George Bush (Sr.) did not order the army to enter Bagdad.

George W. Bush and his administration did try to get backing from the UN. They engaged all possible diplomatic channels and in the end convinced 49 countries to form a coalition. The big problem was that the intellegence (or lack of it) was bad. The threat that Saddam posed externally turned out not to exist. If the had found WMDs things would be different now. The actions would have been militarily justified.

In all of this you will notice the great effort spent in justifying military action, both at home and abroad. That is the "Peace Keeper Syndrome". We want to enforce peace. We want to enforce democracy, rule of law, freedom, etc. We want to enforce things that are abstract ideological constructs.


> It's a small world after all. And it's getting smaller. The US must do something,
> along with the international community, to stop the thugs of the world.

We get to the heart of the matter. We MUST do something. What if we didn't? The thugs would run over things. Yet to stop the thugs we must become thugs ourselves. We want to save the world, and use force to do it. We want to have it both ways. Go to war and impose our system on others, but we want to be called lovers of peace and democracy at the same time. Our politicians know this and they try their best to convince us that the idelogical justifications are what matter. The ulterior motives (like oil and power) should be ignored.


> N. Korea is a good case in point. You people feel safe with these thugs having
> nuclear arms?

Perhaps at this point we get to a case of hypocrisy and double standards. It is OK for countries that already have nuclear weapons to keep them for "national protection and defense". The assumption is that we are sane, rational, peace-loving nuclear powers. The other guys are dangerous thugs. The truth is that nuclear powers have a monopoly of military might and they want to keep it.

If Iraq had truly had WMDs, would the US have truly gone to war?

Our excuse is simple:
"We have WMDs, but the thugs should not get their hands on them because then the thugs can attack us."

We want to keep our deterrent we don't want others to have it. I guess our presidents will always be sane, and our failsafe systems will always be there. North Koreans really want to use nuclear bombs against us. They are all insane and they have a death wish!

> Czuch: I guess it depends somewhat on how you define 'imperialism'....

Perhaps what I was trying to get at in my post is that empires have acted in a similar ways through history. The only big difference now is that empires no longer want to be called empires. We want to justify our actions based on some nobler, greater ideals.

Since the creation of the United Nations the way empires behave has changed. In the past if the British or the French or other western empires wanted to do something, they did and the consequences both at home and abroad were not scrutinized so much in the communications media.

Today we want oil, minerals, food and all the other commodities we need. Our governments and private corporations go out and get them the old fashioned way, through war and imperialist methods. However, the voting public wants good justifications for those actions.

As the voting public we want to go to war based on some high ideal and not just securing the supply of commodities. Consider the following two statements:

"We are going to war to protect our country from terrorism and from an evil dictator that threatens us with weapons of mass destruction. The protection of our democracy and our way of life depend in taking decisive action."

"We are going to war because there happens to be a dictator that is hostile to us and he controls the third largest oil reserves in the world. Several large, powerful oil monopolies will make billions while we control the supply and distribution of oil in the world."

The voting public would refuse to go war if the justification is imperialism, but the voting public will go to war if they feel their freedom and democracy threatened.

Our politicians have become pragmatic and cynical. That goes for both left and right wing parties. Conservatives, liberals, democrats, republicans, etc., they all now stand for the same thing, which is to convince the public that their actions are right no matter what.

We as the voting public have given them that power. I think the big problem now is that we do not want to be called imperialists because since WW II empires are "bad". There was a time when people were proud to be part of big empires. If we go back 100 years, many western nations saw imperialism as more desirable than democracy. That ideological change came about with WW II.

Czuch:

I find the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan interesting in the sense that the government has gone to such great lenghts to justify and legitimize the war.

It is very interesting that many Americans dislike being called an empire. That is understandable because the United States was born out of the War of Independence from the British Empire. An anti-imperialist stance was part of the founding of the United States and the ideology that followed was one of expansionism but opposition to imperialism. This was embodied in the Monroe Doctrine. This doctrine was introduced by President James Monroe in response to the expansion fo the British Empire in Latin America. As Latin American countries declared independence from Spain the British Empire attempted to expand and James Monroe took a clear anti-imperialist stance.

In 1836 the Republic of Texas allied itself to the British Empire in the hopes of surviving as an independent republic. The Mexican government was trying to regain control of the territory and alliance with the British empire was an option that Texan pursued. In 1845 President James Polk used the Monroe Doctrine to justify the Mexican-American War. In that was the United States gained a lot of territory and President James Polk had a very difficult time convincing politicians in Washington that expansion into the west was not an imperialist policy. This is where the doctrine of Manifest Destiny was born. The US was destined (even divinely ordained) to expand across North America, and that was used as a way to justify American imperialism in the 19th century and later in the 20th century as the US moved to fight against communism in Latin America.

There are speeches of that era in the White House website. The tone of James Polk's speeches is so similar to the speeches of George W. Bush. Instead of Iraq Americans dealt with Mexico, and instead of Saddam Hussain, Americans demonized Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, the Mexican president of that era.

Considering the historical and ideological nature of American expansionism, I see the United States as a "reluctant empire". The US pursues a clearly imperialist foreign policy, but to satisfy the ideological expectations of the voting public the government has to try its best to justify war before the public.

This is not a new phenomenon. Every empire in history needed to justify its actions.

The Greeks fought against the "barbaric Persians", even though the Persians were one of the great civilizations in history.

The Romans fought against the "barbarian tribes" and tried to "civilize" them. That implied that Celts, Germans, Iberians, Egyptians, etc. had no civilization.

Arabs fought against "infidels" and believed that God had destined Islam to expand across the world. This implied that Christianity was an unacceptable religion.

Likewise the Holy Roman Empire went into the crusades in the name of God, and called Arabs and Turks barbaric, in spite of the strengths and achievements of those cultures.

The Spanish empire killed millions of American natives and justified it in the name of God and civilization.

Napoleon occupied all of continental Europe under the call of "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite" (freedon, equality, brotherhood).

The Britsh Empire tried to bring the "civilized world" to its imperial acquisitions. I imagine that India and China were not civilized!

Josef Stalin sent millions to their deaths in the name of socialism, equality and the fight against imperialism.

Now we fight our wars in the names of freedom and democracy. That is the essence of ideology. It sells abstract concepts as concrete justifications for war. The US has fallen into that ideological trap too. Imperialism in the name of a higher principle.

Bwild:

I entirely agree. The war in Iraq, just like the war in Afghanistan, is over oil and who controls the monopoly of production and distribution in the MIddle East and Central Asia. It is no accident that the following oil connections are obvious:

George W. Bush - Arbusto Energy (Arbusto is Spanish for Bush)
Condaleeza Rice - Chevron Texaco, former member of the board of directors
Dick Cheney - Former CEO of Haliburton
Hamid Karzai - current President of Afghanistan, former executive for Unocal, a pipeline company acquired by Chevron-Texaco in 2004

It is also no accident that Lee Raymond, the former chairman of Exxon-Mobil, was also the largest individual contributor to both of George W. Bush's electoral campaigns.

It is also no accident that the people in the list above (together with some of the big players in the war like Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz) also had their money in the Carlisle Group, a private equity firm run by Bob Carlucci, former head of the CIA. Carlisle is also the company that represented the financial interests of the Bin Laden brothers in the US.

Terrorism and WMDs were a plausible excuse to go to war. However, all wars always boil down to who gets rich, and in the case of Iraq it was oil companies.

Some day the truth will come to light because the Freedom of Information Act will at some point force the government to declassify all the documentation that for now remains classified.

Czuch:
> Saddam had WMD, and used them???? Funny, he never gave the UN any evidence that he ever destroyed the ones not used
> Maybe thats why we all thought he still had some

In response to your comment, the CIA did have evidence that Saddam had ordered the destruction of his WMDs in 1995. I would recommend looking at an interview with Ray McGovern, a retired CIA officer who claims that in 1995 Saddam's son-in-law defected and said that Saddam had ordered the destruction of all WMD sites in 1991 to avoid their being found by UN inspectors after the Gulf War.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wHTNQrcCTA

That intelligence was deliberately ignored and set aside in favor of the now infamous "Downing Street Memo". It is claimed that this document was a fabricated intelligence report. This report claimed that Saddam had WMDs aimed at Kuwait and Israel. Wikipedia has a good description of the events about the memo:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downing_Street_Memo

We must also remember that David Kay, the Bush administration's weapon's inspector at the United Nations, resigned because he had warned the Bush administration that that Iraq probably had destroyed all its stockpiles of WMDs, and Colin Powell chose to ignore him.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kay
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Saddam_WMD_search

Ray McGovern did confront Donald Rumsfeld and had him on the ropes with the misuse of intelligence reports:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1FTmuhynaw

I think that intelligence was manufactured and that the decision-makers made a calculated risk. They thought that they could go to Iraq and find the WMDs after the war, even if they had no evidence that Iraq had any WMDs. Saddam was bluffing like he had done in the past. Then George W. Bush and Tony Blair called his bluff and were later confronted with Saddam having no WMDs. Since Bush and Blair could not prove that Saddam had anything, they manufactured intelligence to match war policies they had decided even before the 2000 election.

The US did have good reason to believe that Saddam had WMDs and that was because in the 1980s the US supported Iraq in its war against Iran. The Regan administration had sent Donald Rumsfeld several times to sign many agreements with Saddam Hussain. In the 1980s Donald Rumsfeld was CEO of AG Searle, a pharmaceutical company that sold to Saddam Hussain large-scale bioreactors that could be used to mnufacture anthrax and other biological wapons. Donald Rumsfeld knew that Iraq had that technology because it was his company that had sold it to Saddam. There is some famous footage of Saddam and Donald Rumsfeld shanking hands:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTldYbqlJc8

Colin Powell has admitted that the "burn notices" that should have been used to ignore bad intelligence were ignored. I think Powell's assessment was honest. The intellegence was believed, even if it was false.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZTLmOoPzjs

We must not forget also the Hutton Inquiry which investigated the death of David Kelly, the man accused of fabricating the intelligence in the "September Dossier", a British intelligence report claiming that Saddam Hussain tried to acquire Uranium in Africa. The questions surrounding that dossier and the death of its creator have bothered many people who believe in a conspiracy within the Blair government.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutton_Inquiry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr_David_Kelly
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_Dossier

I think that we will not know the truth about the intelligence failures until after George W. Bush dies. All that information will remain classified just as his father's involvement in the Bay of Pigs invation in Cuba remains classified, and Henry Kissinger's personal diaries and papers remain classified. The reason is that men in power do what they want, and they if necessary they will lie to the public to achieve their objectives. This is true everywhere, not just in the US.