I am really glad that the United Kingdom voted to leave the EU. I have been listening to the English complain about the EU for more than 20 years. I was and am feed up with it. It was as if they thought that they were being taxed without representation. I hope that the people of Scotland now reconsider their independence question and vote to leave the UK.
That a country of 150 million 70 year old alcoholics and drug addicts, who could not drive safely if their life depended on it, with an average life expectancy of 55, could even be a threat to Monaco let alone a country in the EU, such as Estonia, is completely preposterous. The media in the US has been frightening the American people with a Soviet then Russian boogeyman for decades.
Have you ever seen Youtube videos of how Russians drive. If you pay close attention you will see even those not having accidents are not having accidents through pure luck. It should be clear that the only people that the Russians are capable of threatening are other Russians.
Without the use of nuclear weapons NATO could defeat Russia in 20 minutes. Putin has improved things since coming to power. It was 10 minutes before he took power.
Furthermore the exact same thing could be written about Iran except that the the average age would be 15 and it would be described as a country of drug addicts and alcoholics, who could not find their way from their bedroom to their living room unless their are looking through a video camera.
The last time that I checked devout balanced well mannered children become that type of adults that are exactly designed for service to an empire not a republic.
Furthermore a woman does not need to wear a Burqa to raise children that can question authority, know when the adults around them are feeding them a line of BS, and have compassion for those less fortunate than themselves, and have the wisdom to know how to fix a problem and not make it worse.
Since settng the example of wearing a burqa is such an incredibly bad example to set for children it is all the evidence that sane people need to to see that the parents of children growing up in households in which the mother is wearing a burqa need to be removed from that home.
Any husband that would insist on his wife wearing a burqa needs to be imprisoned for spouseal abuse.
The leaders of a society are responsible for helping to develope the members of a society (and vice versa) therefore they are responsible to prohibiting behaviors that are detrimental to that goal. If a woman is arrested for burqa wearing she can try to win a jury nullification aquital.
The reasons the French Parliament banned the burqa are sound. If there are women who would rather not leave their home for fear of arrest, government social workers need to make contact with these women and treat their phobia of being seen in public without a Burqa. If such treatment is unsuccessful what conclusion could possibly be drawn other than these women are unfit mothers.
Not only should all children be removed from their custody,
for the safety of the children, these women should be involuntarily committed to a psychiatric institution to cure them of their delusions.
Yes I am fully aware that such tactics would have made Stalin proud. I really do not care. The idea that every tradition of every culture needs to be respected is bull.
Once upon a time there might have been a time and place that burqas made sense. Now wearing burkas make no more sense than the old Chinese custom of binding women's feet.
FYI I recieved a letter today from a German Peace Organization run by the Mennonites claiming that Turkey is attacking the PKK and taking no precautions what so ever to shield civilians from colateral damage.
Ok. let us say that reports that methane is currently being released in large amounts from the northern trundas are eggagerated. Has anyone figured out how much methane would be released from those parts of the trunda that come in contact with sea water once the sea level rises say 15 centimeters? What about once sea level rises 30 centimeters?
I imagine that the sea water would thaw out those parts of the trunda that it comes in contact with. I wonder how spongy the trunda is. If it is spongy I would it not soak up even more sea water and thaw out even parts above sea level?
I have seen film footage of helicopters flying over the artic region and looked at maps of the area. It does not appear to be very high ground.
WTF? If this is how many people will die per million humanity will not even notice global warming. These figures are so low not even Africans would notice global warming as a threat to their lives. Something is amiss.
This repört appears on a day that it was headlined on Yahoo that temps. in the northern hemisphere were 2 degrees C above pre industrial levels. For Feb. These reports went on to claim that temps. this much above average would not likely continue.
Well, the graph that was posted here on IC a few days ago would seem to indicate otherwise.
Mira, look, it is reali not all that complicated. If Iran wants to reamain stable for the next 37 years it has to choose between two courses of action with reguards to ecomomics. It can follow the path set forth by the ecomomics department of the University of Kansas City as expounded by such ecomomists as Michael Hudson and Warren Mosler. Or, it can follow the advice of those ecommists who have developed Parecon who are led by Michael and Robin Hahnel.
In the short run there is really only one choice. That is to implement the polocies set for by Michael Hudson and his team.
Like everyone else, the Iranians will probalby chose to ignore my advice. If they do what I expect them to do, then Khameni will not really be in charge of the Islamic Republic all that much longer.
It is completely unethical for any revolutionary leader to give young people the idea that they should be striving for greater democracy in a just society, if we understand democracy as allowing the masses to determine national economic policies. If democracy is understood as allowing for freedom of speech, or freedom of the press, a reasonable degree of tolerance can be granted.
The masses of people are completely untrained in understanding economic dynamics. In fact history shows that the masses have great difficulty in figuring out what is good for them. Any person in a position of power who would tell the masses that they deserve to have a say in how their society is run is a flat out liar. Even giving the expectation that freedom of speech or the press should be absolute is very irresponsible. A wealthy man should not be allowed to spread dangerous ideas just because he owns a printing press or TV station.
Only those who have recieved a life time of proper training in philosophy, economics, sociology, psychology, and military matters is potentially qualified to sit on a Central Committee and decide what national policies will be.
The problem of humanity is that those who become the experts can not be trusted anymore than the masses. HIstory has shown that the experts almost always use their expertise and their positions at the top of massive institutions to take advantage of the masses. The masses are defenceless. Even though they may know that they are getting screwed they are totally incapable of determining who the people are that are qualified to lead thier society.
The solution to this problem does not lie in the mistaken idea of one man one vote. That concept is just a euphamisim for one idiot one vote.
There is no solution for preventing nut cases from comming to power. There is a solution for preventing nut cases from being able to do any damn stupid thing that they want to.
The solution is jury nullification. It is in the jury box that the citizen of a nation can carry out the sacred duty of protecting the nation from stupidity. In the jury box the jury should not only be allowed to decide if a person actually did with what (s)he is charged with but whether or not the law itself is a just law.
The jurors will not get to hear sound bites or slogans but will get to hear a complete and comprehensive explination of the issue from two opposing attornies. Some juries will make bad decisions. But, over the long run quasi dependable patterns will emerge.
Of course I know that people do not like to be told that they are idiots, politcally speaking. Of course I know that attacking the idea that democracy is obviously a form of government better than all the others is attacking a sacred cow. Yet it is the duty of a responsible person to say what is true not to say what people want or expect to hear.
I am capable of explaining in great detail the theoretical reasons that one man one vote does not work worth a shit. I am also capable of explaining in great detail why one dollar one vote (libertarianism) does not work worth a shit either. I could do the same for socialism, theocracy, or even anarcho-communism. That would make the post much to long however.
The important thing for you the reader to remember is the next time you see tanks in the streets toppling a government, it is in your best intrests to cheer. If those on top of the tanks promise to implement jury nullification and abolish the Federal Reserve cheer very loudly.
Words have different meanings to different people. This is what you said meant to me. I really really do not want the Baathist regime in Syria to be able to stay in power. I really really really do not want any of the current Islamic groups fighting the Baathist Regime to be able to achieve power.
What this secretly means, and it could be so secret that you do not want to admit it to yourself, is that at least for a while longer you want the Baathist regime to stay in power. I am qualified to say this based on my training at H&R Block income tax school.
How many people were there on the planet when Rumi said that? The world has 7 billion now and it is quickly headed to 10 billion unless something unexpected happens first. If the world does not change fast something unexpected is almost inevitable. Then no one will have the time to change themselves. At least not while still alive. As their corpses rot their pyhsical appearences will change very fast indeed.
The message of social and political systems change needs to go out to those that are most resistant to it, first and formost law enforcement officers, second the clergy.
I really like your take on how the conservative mind understands social security, medicare, veterans benifits and the military industrial complex and the like. That really helped me understand how conservatives can appear to me to be such hypocrites and how they can not see what I see.
I am not sure yet how to make use of this knowledge but I think I will eventually figure it out.
I do not see a problem for Catholic politicians at all.
Catholics have been letting what the Pope says go in one year and out the other for decades if not centuries.
Some people have charged that the Free Syrian Army is, or perhaps one should say was, a creature or the CIA. Other people have gone to some trouble to try to discredit this line of thinking.
I find it hard to overlook 50 years of CIA history. The CIA is an organization that makes a habit out of overthrowing governments that the leadership of the USA is not pleased with.
When a woman says that a person has raped her the natural thing to do is to believe that it is probably true. A trial is needed to try to confirm the allegation of course as some women especially in the Jim Crow era were known to have lied.
It is not hard to imagine that Prez. Assad had a lot of enemies inside of Syria dating back to his father's era.
It is also not hard to imagine that Prez. Assad and his backers would think that those challenging his rule could be encouraged by the CIA. It is also not hard to imagine that anyone familiar with the stories of CIA involvement in the overthrown of governments in the past could suspect CIA involvement in Syria even before Assad started killing peaceful protestors.
Therefore from the point of view of Assad and his supportes his attack on the protestors was a pre emptive attack. The attack was clearly a criminal act and a strategic mistake. Considering who his father was it was a mistake that he was probably destined to make. He is what his last name says that he is.
None the less the civil war in Syria is a battle ground of the US Global War or terror against the planet. In this war Israel and Saudi Arabia are important US allies. The entire planet, including most of the US population are victims of this war of terror, but at the moment Iran, Russia, and Venezuela are the targets in the cross hairs. Assad would have fallen long ago were he not seen by Iran and Russia as an important Ally in their defence.
Barak is spewing lies. The first thing that is totally off is that these comments portray Israel as an independent country.
The second lie is about who it was that has been sabotaging some of the US attacks on Iran. The third lie is about when these attacks were sabotaged. The lie that they were dissuaded from launching an attack on Iranl because of joint military maneuvers does not even make the slightest bit of sense. Any one with a bit of sense would know that joint military maneuvers have a long lead time.
So his lie would expect us to believe that they had initially planned an attack during a time that they knew that they would not go forward with an attack. Hahhahahhaha!
So that would make it logical to conclude that Barak knew that these lies would be leaked out.
So what is the real agenda of these lies? I will have to think about that for quite a while before I can come up with the likely answer.
The babble of Generals could be a sign that they do not have self awareness. A lack of self awareness is a charachteristic of a machine. Such statements would seem lke babble to anyone who has not accepted the idea that we are all struck inside of a computer simulation. But if we are inside of a computer simulation, it would certianly be possible thta the software running the simulation would give some "people" in the simulation an awareness of what they were doing and others no awarness of what they are doing because the computer itself, or somone outside of t ecomputer is maintaining the awarness of what they are doing. Such an explination would clarify why seemily literate people in high places can not learn even the most basic lessons of world history correctly. Or, how they can live with themselves after betraying their society day after day after day. These leaders not only have no awareness of what they are doing they have no awarness what so ever.
I wonder if another potential clue that would give someone away as being an android that is run from outside our dimension of the universe, like a puppet, would be that they never make a spelling mistake or grammatical error because their writing is done by the computer running our simulation and therefore would automatically be error free.
Now it is true that I do not know where in the heck that the computer which is running our simulated universe is located. But, I do know the password to get in once I find it.
The password is 4-7-18-26-50 PB3.
The original intent of not drawing Mohammad was so that people would remember to worship God and not Mohammad. Yet the effect of this rule could be seen by non Muslims as having an effect exactly the opposite of that which was intended. Yet Muslims could reply we are not worshiping Mohammad by making a special rule that applies to him and no one else. We honor Mohammad we do not worship him.
OK good, if a Sunni Muslim, especially a Salafist, can understand that then they are capable of understanding that Shias and Catholics do not worship saints they honor saints. If Sunni Muslims do not worship Mohammad then Secularists do not worship Plato, Thomas Paine, or Charles Darwin, or Kemal Attaturk, they might respect them.
What this boils down to is that some Muslims, those who take offence from seeing Mohammad drawn, should learn is that freedom of speech is more important than God's messenger because to make Mohammad more important than freedom of speech hinders people from finding God.
Sadly, I do not really expect any of those people who need to learn the lesson to actually learn it. I have seen a comparable problem in the USA with those who get really upset with flag burning. For such people in the USA the symbol is more important than what the symbol should stand for. If the stories that were recently printed here on informed comment are true, Mohammad put up with a lot of abuse during his early ministry with out retaliation. That sounds to me like a person who would not have wanted to become a symbol more important than the values that he wished to spread. Would he not say if he were here today that the values of truth and fairness are more important than my reputation?
That question might seem like a good place to end my comments. But a further consideration must be included in the name of full disclosure. There can be limits on speech. Proposing aggression clearly is a legitimate limit.
Speech that is insulting clearly is has not crossed the thresh hold of legitimate censorship. But there can be a legitimate exception to this rule. That is insulting speech which is promoted by the government. An example of this rule is the flying of flags which commemorate the confederidiocy from state government buildings.
Is the display of a drawing of Mohammad on a city owned bus or subway the same as flying the stars and bars from a state capitol building? I will wait to see some responses before i try to answer that question myself.
What the imperialists will say is that this LTC (ret.) William Astore WAS only a LTC. Colonels are a dime a dozen and this particular one is outneutered 100.000 to 1.
New trees growing in the same manure as old trees, subject to the same temptations and the same lack of oversight.
If I understand the banking problem correctly the banks assets did actually vanish in to thin air because the so called assets were nothing more than pieces of paper saying that a house or a company was worth X amount of dollars when the house or company was really only worth 5% of X amount of dollars and the banks could no longer pretend otherwise. Therefore 95% of many so called assets just disappeared in to thin air. OK they did not really disappear because they were never there to start with but we live in a society that really likes to play make believe so badly that it ends up living a make believe reality. (to please the bosses)
This is smoke and mirrors. The banks should have become the property of the US government when they were bailed out. If the bill were successful the banks would still be owned and run by the same smelly people.
Such numbers are making the mouths of America's leaders drip with anticipation.
Such numbers are totally insignificant if not completely meaningless to a clear majority of the American Population.
If that is what the numbers are we are in for a ground war.
I would advise the Iranian Government to test a nuclear device at the earliest possible moment.
The American government will use the mantra that our war is with the leaders of Iran not the people of Iran. Despite the needless and massive suffering that will be inflicted on the people of Iran.
You just wrote nine reasons that make the leaders of the USA look forward to going to war with Iran.
I have not felt this sick, or powerless, since I heard that units at Ft. Useless were being sent to the middle east in 2002.
One very important thing was left out of this quiz. In the 1970s the Sha of Iran pushed for much higher oil prices for the OPEC nations. Not long after that he was overthrown. It is my impression that there are many Iranians who draw a connection between these two facts and conclude that the CIA was not only behind the overthrow of the Iranian government in 1953 but in 1979 as well. The motive for this overthrow being that the Sha had betrayed the Americans. This is certainly not an unconvincing narrative. Perhaps others can comment on exactly how widespread this belief is among Iranians both inside and outside Iran. Some even take this story one step further and say that the US Government and the Iranian Government are actually partners in crime and that all the public disputes between them are just disinformation designed to keep the Iranian Government in power.
Thank you for your reply. In addition to being interesting it caused me to notice that I contradicted myself in my previous comments. If our nations level of wealth would have been higher had we not been an empire then by implication it would mean that the OVERALL the wealth had been accumulated by hard work, efficiency and thrift. It would not show exactly who had been hard working, and thrifty or just dishonest.
Whether our nations overall level of wealth was achieved honestly or dishonestly it was in either case made possible through the use machines powered by cheap but polluting energy.
We were smart enough to make the machines. We were self interested enough to make sure that for several decades the energy resources not located in the USA went to power those machines rather than to build or power machines outside of the USA. As time passed more manufacturing was shipped out of the USA and the machines to build consumer products were built and run in other countries. Greater profits went to some in the USA and losses of profits went to many others.
The American 1870s could be repeated all over again on a world wide scale.
If America did not have an empire I can easily imagine one thing that would have been different. We would have had to have paid oil exporting countries more for their oil. That would have led to different economic dynamics in the USA, Europe and Japan, and also in the Middle East, especially the Arab Gulf states.
I wonder how many people would be interested in speculating on how history would have been different if the USA had not overthrown the Iranian government in 1953 and gone on to become a world wide empire? I wonder if Juan would give us space for this thought experiment? Who nose where it might might Go. Although we are wandering off the subject of justice for African Americans we might be wandering in to the subject of justice for Africans.
That is a quite interesting link. Of all of the stats that get trotted out in the discussions on the subject of African American integration or lack of integration in American society the one that I think is most important is median wealth. A families median wealth is is a much more important indicator of the economic health of a family than income. For many families there can be significant variations in income from one year to the next.
It is in the accumulation of wealth that American society has failed African Americans the most. It is not hard to understand the main reason behind this. It takes a decent amount of income just to be able to save money over the short term. (one month to one year) This amount would of course vary depending on ones location. It then takes even more money to save money over the long term. (one year to twenty years)
The Republican implication is that African Americans have not as a whole played the cards in their hand well. My experience from observing people is that very few people make it through life playing the cards in their hand well.
I would be interested in seeing the income table that you linked broken down by age. A household of two senior citizens for example will generally not have the same income as a couple in their 50s. Two senior citizens also usually do not need the income as a couple in their 50s.
Another thing that is sad about this is the overall level of wealth accumulated in the USA was not accumulated due to honest hard work, efficiency and thrift. This level of wealth has been accumulated while the USA has been a global empire.
The implications of that might not be obvious. It is possible that had we not been a global empire are nations level of wealth might have been even higher because we would not have squandered wealth on global wars. It is also possible that our level of wealth would have been lower because the benefits of the empire as a whole might have exceeded the costs. Who has done an honest accounting?
One thing seems likely to me and that is neither the benefits nor the costs of this empire have been shared equally. The net benefits of some have clearly been much greater than others.
This is a good start to a needed discussion. I would like to make some comments about your second idea first. A lot of public housing is apartment buildings. So if the occupants of these apartments get ownership of them coops will have to be established to maintain the common infrastructure. Can these
coops avoid bankruptcy when unemployment rates are so high in areas where most people live in public housing? In China everyone has a job and I imagine that in England during the Thatcher era the job situation was not as bad as it is in US inner cities.
I saw a suggestion some time ago on the University of Kansas City Economics website that suggested that the US government can and should have a national job guarantee program. I do not remember any of the details of this proposal. There seems to be a Socialist implication to the suggestion which is fine by me but I can easily imagine that the US Republicans would tar and feather it as socialist even if that was not at all the case. One detail that I would have to wonder about with this suggestion is how do you get the people with the right qualifications to match the jobs?
It has been reported that in Germany although there are job openings and many unemployed in Germany the skills of those
who are unemployed do not match the skills needed to fill the jobs which are also difficult to fill with immigrant labor because most skilled immigrants from developing countries speak English as a second language not German and therefore have little desire to immigrate to Germany. Even though this proposal of giving public housing to the occupants needs some more work I think that eventually it should be adopted.
Now about your first proposal to legalize drugs. I was a member of the Libertarian Party for about 20 years so I certainly have a lot of sympathy for this position. Now i am more of a fence sitter. My Grandfather was an opium addict.
No one really cared. He was so old the attitude of the family was hey when you get to be that old you can do anything you damned well please because you are living on borrowed time anyways.
The thing with illegal drugs is that most of them are harmful. So even if they were legal making a living out selling them is still dishonorable. I myself do not want to see the African American Community prospering through the sale of harmful drugs any more than I would want to see them prospering through prostitution or serving as mercenaries for corporate profits. I would not be ashamed for America if we were only talking about organically grown marijuana but even that is questionable. But just as we having a legal age for alcohol, perhaps we can have different legal ages for different kinds of drugs, for example 21 for marijuana, 60 for opium and cocaine, 80 for heroin, and 90 for those drugs even worse than heroin.
Well I guess I should cut my comments off here or some people might get the impression that I am a mouth peace for George McGovern or Eugene McCarthy.
Yes I forgot to consider that when we build new things we are creating assets that have to have a value put on them something that the conservatives always fail to do and progressives often fail to do because they are so used to hearing conservative wailing about the phony size of the deficit. Of course we have a deficit when we refuse to acknowledge the value of all of the things that our money has built.
I see something much more insidious going on here.
If George C. Marshall and the Generals and Admirals of their day had really believed that military officers were trustees of the nations liberty then we would not have the type of military that we have ruling America today, which is a southern confederacy military. If they had really meant what they said George C. Marshall and the other Generals and Admirals of his day would have chosen officers with the character to place the needs of American society ahead of the phony needs of the US military.
Instead by 1947 or 1948 we already had the national security state. Since the end of the second world war we have had a military that has not be led by trustees but by parasites at best and mass murderers at worse.
We had Genralisamo Eisenhower give us a warning about the threat that the military industrial complex posed to our nation in his farewell address. For that he was once a hero of mine.
But I now see such comments in a different light. He was mocking the American people. He new that the military industrial complex was not a future threat because he new that they were already in control. Had he really believed that the military industrial complex was a potential threat to the American people he would have taken obvious steps to prevent it from posing that threat. Did Gen. Eisenhower or Gen. Marshall take any of the necessary steps to keep the military on a short lease? Is that answer to that question not obvious.
That answer that is obvious is that in the US military there is and probably always has been one set of standards to show publicly and quite another set of standards to achieve covertly.
Con men often publicly proclaim to be extremely religious people. They often perform acts of religious devotion. That is exactly what they are acts. The public behavior of con men and of high ranking US military officers is nothing more than an act designed to get people not to question the con.
Generals might have designed the system but field grade officers maintain it.
The Nazis made killing Jews a high priority in nineteen fourty four because it was the only thing of the many things that they wanted to do that was going well.
The leaders of the USA have learned nothing since then. They spend their time worring about and blowing up middle eastern hillbillies because the know that is all that THEY are capable of doing and the refuse to recognize that there are (were) others that can do (could have) what needs to be done except win elections.
"but here is proof that the Bible was written late.......and projects latter devleopments in to the distant past."
Do you expect people who do not even accept evolution to accept anything that is touted as truth that the Bible has errors?
Wow that is cool, at least three foreign governments recieved products of that surveillance. I wish that I could have been so lucky. A fource multiplier to the fourth power.
I am really glad that the United Kingdom voted to leave the EU. I have been listening to the English complain about the EU for more than 20 years. I was and am feed up with it. It was as if they thought that they were being taxed without representation. I hope that the people of Scotland now reconsider their independence question and vote to leave the UK.
That a country of 150 million 70 year old alcoholics and drug addicts, who could not drive safely if their life depended on it, with an average life expectancy of 55, could even be a threat to Monaco let alone a country in the EU, such as Estonia, is completely preposterous. The media in the US has been frightening the American people with a Soviet then Russian boogeyman for decades.
Have you ever seen Youtube videos of how Russians drive. If you pay close attention you will see even those not having accidents are not having accidents through pure luck. It should be clear that the only people that the Russians are capable of threatening are other Russians.
Without the use of nuclear weapons NATO could defeat Russia in 20 minutes. Putin has improved things since coming to power. It was 10 minutes before he took power.
Furthermore the exact same thing could be written about Iran except that the the average age would be 15 and it would be described as a country of drug addicts and alcoholics, who could not find their way from their bedroom to their living room unless their are looking through a video camera.
The last time that I checked devout balanced well mannered children become that type of adults that are exactly designed for service to an empire not a republic.
Furthermore a woman does not need to wear a Burqa to raise children that can question authority, know when the adults around them are feeding them a line of BS, and have compassion for those less fortunate than themselves, and have the wisdom to know how to fix a problem and not make it worse.
Since settng the example of wearing a burqa is such an incredibly bad example to set for children it is all the evidence that sane people need to to see that the parents of children growing up in households in which the mother is wearing a burqa need to be removed from that home.
Any husband that would insist on his wife wearing a burqa needs to be imprisoned for spouseal abuse.
The leaders of a society are responsible for helping to develope the members of a society (and vice versa) therefore they are responsible to prohibiting behaviors that are detrimental to that goal. If a woman is arrested for burqa wearing she can try to win a jury nullification aquital.
The reasons the French Parliament banned the burqa are sound. If there are women who would rather not leave their home for fear of arrest, government social workers need to make contact with these women and treat their phobia of being seen in public without a Burqa. If such treatment is unsuccessful what conclusion could possibly be drawn other than these women are unfit mothers.
Not only should all children be removed from their custody,
for the safety of the children, these women should be involuntarily committed to a psychiatric institution to cure them of their delusions.
Yes I am fully aware that such tactics would have made Stalin proud. I really do not care. The idea that every tradition of every culture needs to be respected is bull.
Once upon a time there might have been a time and place that burqas made sense. Now wearing burkas make no more sense than the old Chinese custom of binding women's feet.
FYI I recieved a letter today from a German Peace Organization run by the Mennonites claiming that Turkey is attacking the PKK and taking no precautions what so ever to shield civilians from colateral damage.
Ok. let us say that reports that methane is currently being released in large amounts from the northern trundas are eggagerated. Has anyone figured out how much methane would be released from those parts of the trunda that come in contact with sea water once the sea level rises say 15 centimeters? What about once sea level rises 30 centimeters?
I imagine that the sea water would thaw out those parts of the trunda that it comes in contact with. I wonder how spongy the trunda is. If it is spongy I would it not soak up even more sea water and thaw out even parts above sea level?
I have seen film footage of helicopters flying over the artic region and looked at maps of the area. It does not appear to be very high ground.
WTF? If this is how many people will die per million humanity will not even notice global warming. These figures are so low not even Africans would notice global warming as a threat to their lives. Something is amiss.
This repört appears on a day that it was headlined on Yahoo that temps. in the northern hemisphere were 2 degrees C above pre industrial levels. For Feb. These reports went on to claim that temps. this much above average would not likely continue.
Well, the graph that was posted here on IC a few days ago would seem to indicate otherwise.
Mira, look, it is reali not all that complicated. If Iran wants to reamain stable for the next 37 years it has to choose between two courses of action with reguards to ecomomics. It can follow the path set forth by the ecomomics department of the University of Kansas City as expounded by such ecomomists as Michael Hudson and Warren Mosler. Or, it can follow the advice of those ecommists who have developed Parecon who are led by Michael and Robin Hahnel.
In the short run there is really only one choice. That is to implement the polocies set for by Michael Hudson and his team.
Like everyone else, the Iranians will probalby chose to ignore my advice. If they do what I expect them to do, then Khameni will not really be in charge of the Islamic Republic all that much longer.
It is completely unethical for any revolutionary leader to give young people the idea that they should be striving for greater democracy in a just society, if we understand democracy as allowing the masses to determine national economic policies. If democracy is understood as allowing for freedom of speech, or freedom of the press, a reasonable degree of tolerance can be granted.
The masses of people are completely untrained in understanding economic dynamics. In fact history shows that the masses have great difficulty in figuring out what is good for them. Any person in a position of power who would tell the masses that they deserve to have a say in how their society is run is a flat out liar. Even giving the expectation that freedom of speech or the press should be absolute is very irresponsible. A wealthy man should not be allowed to spread dangerous ideas just because he owns a printing press or TV station.
Only those who have recieved a life time of proper training in philosophy, economics, sociology, psychology, and military matters is potentially qualified to sit on a Central Committee and decide what national policies will be.
The problem of humanity is that those who become the experts can not be trusted anymore than the masses. HIstory has shown that the experts almost always use their expertise and their positions at the top of massive institutions to take advantage of the masses. The masses are defenceless. Even though they may know that they are getting screwed they are totally incapable of determining who the people are that are qualified to lead thier society.
The solution to this problem does not lie in the mistaken idea of one man one vote. That concept is just a euphamisim for one idiot one vote.
There is no solution for preventing nut cases from comming to power. There is a solution for preventing nut cases from being able to do any damn stupid thing that they want to.
The solution is jury nullification. It is in the jury box that the citizen of a nation can carry out the sacred duty of protecting the nation from stupidity. In the jury box the jury should not only be allowed to decide if a person actually did with what (s)he is charged with but whether or not the law itself is a just law.
The jurors will not get to hear sound bites or slogans but will get to hear a complete and comprehensive explination of the issue from two opposing attornies. Some juries will make bad decisions. But, over the long run quasi dependable patterns will emerge.
Of course I know that people do not like to be told that they are idiots, politcally speaking. Of course I know that attacking the idea that democracy is obviously a form of government better than all the others is attacking a sacred cow. Yet it is the duty of a responsible person to say what is true not to say what people want or expect to hear.
I am capable of explaining in great detail the theoretical reasons that one man one vote does not work worth a shit. I am also capable of explaining in great detail why one dollar one vote (libertarianism) does not work worth a shit either. I could do the same for socialism, theocracy, or even anarcho-communism. That would make the post much to long however.
The important thing for you the reader to remember is the next time you see tanks in the streets toppling a government, it is in your best intrests to cheer. If those on top of the tanks promise to implement jury nullification and abolish the Federal Reserve cheer very loudly.
Words have different meanings to different people. This is what you said meant to me. I really really do not want the Baathist regime in Syria to be able to stay in power. I really really really do not want any of the current Islamic groups fighting the Baathist Regime to be able to achieve power.
What this secretly means, and it could be so secret that you do not want to admit it to yourself, is that at least for a while longer you want the Baathist regime to stay in power. I am qualified to say this based on my training at H&R Block income tax school.
How many people were there on the planet when Rumi said that? The world has 7 billion now and it is quickly headed to 10 billion unless something unexpected happens first. If the world does not change fast something unexpected is almost inevitable. Then no one will have the time to change themselves. At least not while still alive. As their corpses rot their pyhsical appearences will change very fast indeed.
The message of social and political systems change needs to go out to those that are most resistant to it, first and formost law enforcement officers, second the clergy.
Kissinger is only 92?? I thought that he was 92 in 1972.
I really like your take on how the conservative mind understands social security, medicare, veterans benifits and the military industrial complex and the like. That really helped me understand how conservatives can appear to me to be such hypocrites and how they can not see what I see.
I am not sure yet how to make use of this knowledge but I think I will eventually figure it out.
I do not see a problem for Catholic politicians at all.
Catholics have been letting what the Pope says go in one year and out the other for decades if not centuries.
Some people have charged that the Free Syrian Army is, or perhaps one should say was, a creature or the CIA. Other people have gone to some trouble to try to discredit this line of thinking.
I find it hard to overlook 50 years of CIA history. The CIA is an organization that makes a habit out of overthrowing governments that the leadership of the USA is not pleased with.
When a woman says that a person has raped her the natural thing to do is to believe that it is probably true. A trial is needed to try to confirm the allegation of course as some women especially in the Jim Crow era were known to have lied.
It is not hard to imagine that Prez. Assad had a lot of enemies inside of Syria dating back to his father's era.
It is also not hard to imagine that Prez. Assad and his backers would think that those challenging his rule could be encouraged by the CIA. It is also not hard to imagine that anyone familiar with the stories of CIA involvement in the overthrown of governments in the past could suspect CIA involvement in Syria even before Assad started killing peaceful protestors.
Therefore from the point of view of Assad and his supportes his attack on the protestors was a pre emptive attack. The attack was clearly a criminal act and a strategic mistake. Considering who his father was it was a mistake that he was probably destined to make. He is what his last name says that he is.
None the less the civil war in Syria is a battle ground of the US Global War or terror against the planet. In this war Israel and Saudi Arabia are important US allies. The entire planet, including most of the US population are victims of this war of terror, but at the moment Iran, Russia, and Venezuela are the targets in the cross hairs. Assad would have fallen long ago were he not seen by Iran and Russia as an important Ally in their defence.
Barak is spewing lies. The first thing that is totally off is that these comments portray Israel as an independent country.
The second lie is about who it was that has been sabotaging some of the US attacks on Iran. The third lie is about when these attacks were sabotaged. The lie that they were dissuaded from launching an attack on Iranl because of joint military maneuvers does not even make the slightest bit of sense. Any one with a bit of sense would know that joint military maneuvers have a long lead time.
So his lie would expect us to believe that they had initially planned an attack during a time that they knew that they would not go forward with an attack. Hahhahahhaha!
So that would make it logical to conclude that Barak knew that these lies would be leaked out.
So what is the real agenda of these lies? I will have to think about that for quite a while before I can come up with the likely answer.
The babble of Generals could be a sign that they do not have self awareness. A lack of self awareness is a charachteristic of a machine. Such statements would seem lke babble to anyone who has not accepted the idea that we are all struck inside of a computer simulation. But if we are inside of a computer simulation, it would certianly be possible thta the software running the simulation would give some "people" in the simulation an awareness of what they were doing and others no awarness of what they are doing because the computer itself, or somone outside of t ecomputer is maintaining the awarness of what they are doing. Such an explination would clarify why seemily literate people in high places can not learn even the most basic lessons of world history correctly. Or, how they can live with themselves after betraying their society day after day after day. These leaders not only have no awareness of what they are doing they have no awarness what so ever.
I wonder if another potential clue that would give someone away as being an android that is run from outside our dimension of the universe, like a puppet, would be that they never make a spelling mistake or grammatical error because their writing is done by the computer running our simulation and therefore would automatically be error free.
Now it is true that I do not know where in the heck that the computer which is running our simulated universe is located. But, I do know the password to get in once I find it.
The password is 4-7-18-26-50 PB3.
Brian, also consider how fast the rain falls.
wouldn't that depend on how one defines Roman Catholic?
The original intent of not drawing Mohammad was so that people would remember to worship God and not Mohammad. Yet the effect of this rule could be seen by non Muslims as having an effect exactly the opposite of that which was intended. Yet Muslims could reply we are not worshiping Mohammad by making a special rule that applies to him and no one else. We honor Mohammad we do not worship him.
OK good, if a Sunni Muslim, especially a Salafist, can understand that then they are capable of understanding that Shias and Catholics do not worship saints they honor saints. If Sunni Muslims do not worship Mohammad then Secularists do not worship Plato, Thomas Paine, or Charles Darwin, or Kemal Attaturk, they might respect them.
What this boils down to is that some Muslims, those who take offence from seeing Mohammad drawn, should learn is that freedom of speech is more important than God's messenger because to make Mohammad more important than freedom of speech hinders people from finding God.
Sadly, I do not really expect any of those people who need to learn the lesson to actually learn it. I have seen a comparable problem in the USA with those who get really upset with flag burning. For such people in the USA the symbol is more important than what the symbol should stand for. If the stories that were recently printed here on informed comment are true, Mohammad put up with a lot of abuse during his early ministry with out retaliation. That sounds to me like a person who would not have wanted to become a symbol more important than the values that he wished to spread. Would he not say if he were here today that the values of truth and fairness are more important than my reputation?
That question might seem like a good place to end my comments. But a further consideration must be included in the name of full disclosure. There can be limits on speech. Proposing aggression clearly is a legitimate limit.
Speech that is insulting clearly is has not crossed the thresh hold of legitimate censorship. But there can be a legitimate exception to this rule. That is insulting speech which is promoted by the government. An example of this rule is the flying of flags which commemorate the confederidiocy from state government buildings.
Is the display of a drawing of Mohammad on a city owned bus or subway the same as flying the stars and bars from a state capitol building? I will wait to see some responses before i try to answer that question myself.
What the imperialists will say is that this LTC (ret.) William Astore WAS only a LTC. Colonels are a dime a dozen and this particular one is outneutered 100.000 to 1.
New trees growing in the same manure as old trees, subject to the same temptations and the same lack of oversight.
If I understand the banking problem correctly the banks assets did actually vanish in to thin air because the so called assets were nothing more than pieces of paper saying that a house or a company was worth X amount of dollars when the house or company was really only worth 5% of X amount of dollars and the banks could no longer pretend otherwise. Therefore 95% of many so called assets just disappeared in to thin air. OK they did not really disappear because they were never there to start with but we live in a society that really likes to play make believe so badly that it ends up living a make believe reality. (to please the bosses)
This is smoke and mirrors. The banks should have become the property of the US government when they were bailed out. If the bill were successful the banks would still be owned and run by the same smelly people.
Such numbers are making the mouths of America's leaders drip with anticipation.
Such numbers are totally insignificant if not completely meaningless to a clear majority of the American Population.
If that is what the numbers are we are in for a ground war.
I would advise the Iranian Government to test a nuclear device at the earliest possible moment.
The American government will use the mantra that our war is with the leaders of Iran not the people of Iran. Despite the needless and massive suffering that will be inflicted on the people of Iran.
You just wrote nine reasons that make the leaders of the USA look forward to going to war with Iran.
I have not felt this sick, or powerless, since I heard that units at Ft. Useless were being sent to the middle east in 2002.
One very important thing was left out of this quiz. In the 1970s the Sha of Iran pushed for much higher oil prices for the OPEC nations. Not long after that he was overthrown. It is my impression that there are many Iranians who draw a connection between these two facts and conclude that the CIA was not only behind the overthrow of the Iranian government in 1953 but in 1979 as well. The motive for this overthrow being that the Sha had betrayed the Americans. This is certainly not an unconvincing narrative. Perhaps others can comment on exactly how widespread this belief is among Iranians both inside and outside Iran. Some even take this story one step further and say that the US Government and the Iranian Government are actually partners in crime and that all the public disputes between them are just disinformation designed to keep the Iranian Government in power.
Thank you for your reply. In addition to being interesting it caused me to notice that I contradicted myself in my previous comments. If our nations level of wealth would have been higher had we not been an empire then by implication it would mean that the OVERALL the wealth had been accumulated by hard work, efficiency and thrift. It would not show exactly who had been hard working, and thrifty or just dishonest.
Whether our nations overall level of wealth was achieved honestly or dishonestly it was in either case made possible through the use machines powered by cheap but polluting energy.
We were smart enough to make the machines. We were self interested enough to make sure that for several decades the energy resources not located in the USA went to power those machines rather than to build or power machines outside of the USA. As time passed more manufacturing was shipped out of the USA and the machines to build consumer products were built and run in other countries. Greater profits went to some in the USA and losses of profits went to many others.
The American 1870s could be repeated all over again on a world wide scale.
If America did not have an empire I can easily imagine one thing that would have been different. We would have had to have paid oil exporting countries more for their oil. That would have led to different economic dynamics in the USA, Europe and Japan, and also in the Middle East, especially the Arab Gulf states.
I wonder how many people would be interested in speculating on how history would have been different if the USA had not overthrown the Iranian government in 1953 and gone on to become a world wide empire? I wonder if Juan would give us space for this thought experiment? Who nose where it might might Go. Although we are wandering off the subject of justice for African Americans we might be wandering in to the subject of justice for Africans.
That is a quite interesting link. Of all of the stats that get trotted out in the discussions on the subject of African American integration or lack of integration in American society the one that I think is most important is median wealth. A families median wealth is is a much more important indicator of the economic health of a family than income. For many families there can be significant variations in income from one year to the next.
It is in the accumulation of wealth that American society has failed African Americans the most. It is not hard to understand the main reason behind this. It takes a decent amount of income just to be able to save money over the short term. (one month to one year) This amount would of course vary depending on ones location. It then takes even more money to save money over the long term. (one year to twenty years)
The Republican implication is that African Americans have not as a whole played the cards in their hand well. My experience from observing people is that very few people make it through life playing the cards in their hand well.
I would be interested in seeing the income table that you linked broken down by age. A household of two senior citizens for example will generally not have the same income as a couple in their 50s. Two senior citizens also usually do not need the income as a couple in their 50s.
Another thing that is sad about this is the overall level of wealth accumulated in the USA was not accumulated due to honest hard work, efficiency and thrift. This level of wealth has been accumulated while the USA has been a global empire.
The implications of that might not be obvious. It is possible that had we not been a global empire are nations level of wealth might have been even higher because we would not have squandered wealth on global wars. It is also possible that our level of wealth would have been lower because the benefits of the empire as a whole might have exceeded the costs. Who has done an honest accounting?
One thing seems likely to me and that is neither the benefits nor the costs of this empire have been shared equally. The net benefits of some have clearly been much greater than others.
This is a good start to a needed discussion. I would like to make some comments about your second idea first. A lot of public housing is apartment buildings. So if the occupants of these apartments get ownership of them coops will have to be established to maintain the common infrastructure. Can these
coops avoid bankruptcy when unemployment rates are so high in areas where most people live in public housing? In China everyone has a job and I imagine that in England during the Thatcher era the job situation was not as bad as it is in US inner cities.
I saw a suggestion some time ago on the University of Kansas City Economics website that suggested that the US government can and should have a national job guarantee program. I do not remember any of the details of this proposal. There seems to be a Socialist implication to the suggestion which is fine by me but I can easily imagine that the US Republicans would tar and feather it as socialist even if that was not at all the case. One detail that I would have to wonder about with this suggestion is how do you get the people with the right qualifications to match the jobs?
It has been reported that in Germany although there are job openings and many unemployed in Germany the skills of those
who are unemployed do not match the skills needed to fill the jobs which are also difficult to fill with immigrant labor because most skilled immigrants from developing countries speak English as a second language not German and therefore have little desire to immigrate to Germany. Even though this proposal of giving public housing to the occupants needs some more work I think that eventually it should be adopted.
Now about your first proposal to legalize drugs. I was a member of the Libertarian Party for about 20 years so I certainly have a lot of sympathy for this position. Now i am more of a fence sitter. My Grandfather was an opium addict.
No one really cared. He was so old the attitude of the family was hey when you get to be that old you can do anything you damned well please because you are living on borrowed time anyways.
The thing with illegal drugs is that most of them are harmful. So even if they were legal making a living out selling them is still dishonorable. I myself do not want to see the African American Community prospering through the sale of harmful drugs any more than I would want to see them prospering through prostitution or serving as mercenaries for corporate profits. I would not be ashamed for America if we were only talking about organically grown marijuana but even that is questionable. But just as we having a legal age for alcohol, perhaps we can have different legal ages for different kinds of drugs, for example 21 for marijuana, 60 for opium and cocaine, 80 for heroin, and 90 for those drugs even worse than heroin.
Well I guess I should cut my comments off here or some people might get the impression that I am a mouth peace for George McGovern or Eugene McCarthy.
Yes I forgot to consider that when we build new things we are creating assets that have to have a value put on them something that the conservatives always fail to do and progressives often fail to do because they are so used to hearing conservative wailing about the phony size of the deficit. Of course we have a deficit when we refuse to acknowledge the value of all of the things that our money has built.
I see something much more insidious going on here.
If George C. Marshall and the Generals and Admirals of their day had really believed that military officers were trustees of the nations liberty then we would not have the type of military that we have ruling America today, which is a southern confederacy military. If they had really meant what they said George C. Marshall and the other Generals and Admirals of his day would have chosen officers with the character to place the needs of American society ahead of the phony needs of the US military.
Instead by 1947 or 1948 we already had the national security state. Since the end of the second world war we have had a military that has not be led by trustees but by parasites at best and mass murderers at worse.
We had Genralisamo Eisenhower give us a warning about the threat that the military industrial complex posed to our nation in his farewell address. For that he was once a hero of mine.
But I now see such comments in a different light. He was mocking the American people. He new that the military industrial complex was not a future threat because he new that they were already in control. Had he really believed that the military industrial complex was a potential threat to the American people he would have taken obvious steps to prevent it from posing that threat. Did Gen. Eisenhower or Gen. Marshall take any of the necessary steps to keep the military on a short lease? Is that answer to that question not obvious.
That answer that is obvious is that in the US military there is and probably always has been one set of standards to show publicly and quite another set of standards to achieve covertly.
Con men often publicly proclaim to be extremely religious people. They often perform acts of religious devotion. That is exactly what they are acts. The public behavior of con men and of high ranking US military officers is nothing more than an act designed to get people not to question the con.
Generals might have designed the system but field grade officers maintain it.
The Nazis made killing Jews a high priority in nineteen fourty four because it was the only thing of the many things that they wanted to do that was going well.
The leaders of the USA have learned nothing since then. They spend their time worring about and blowing up middle eastern hillbillies because the know that is all that THEY are capable of doing and the refuse to recognize that there are (were) others that can do (could have) what needs to be done except win elections.
Cool I like the new click to edit creature.
"but here is proof that the Bible was written late.......and projects latter devleopments in to the distant past."
Do you expect people who do not even accept evolution to accept anything that is touted as truth that the Bible has errors?
Wow that is cool, at least three foreign governments recieved products of that surveillance. I wish that I could have been so lucky. A fource multiplier to the fourth power.