From an article from Salon.com:

"Beyond the state's dysfunctional system, the short answer is the rise of the hard-right GOP. Pushed far to the right by ideologues like Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, Grover Norquist and their ilk, California Republican lawmakers have staked out an absolutist line against taxes that makes governance nearly impossible. Lawmakers who believe and act on Reagan's famous line that "government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem," are walking oxymorons. Why expect anti-government Republican legislators to resolve a budget crisis when that crisis will result in their goal: the destruction of government? The floundering Governator may not be an extremist, but he remains in thrall to the members of his party who are."


It distresses me extremely to say this, but you know what this reminds me of? The Weimar Republic.

The Weimar Republic might or might not have survived under better conditions - perhaps if the Great Depression hadn't happened, it might have struggled on and reformed somehow.

But there were also several large parties in the Reichstag which wanted to take down the whole system of the government, and which in the end were able to block any legislature to resolve this mess. In the final years, the only way to get anything done was via presidential emergency degrees, but even that was not enough to save the Weimar Republic.

This image of Obama allegedly "checking out" a 16 year old girl at the G8 summit in Italy is currently making the rounds:



I want you all to bookmark this video showing what really happened, as I know, I just know that this image will be used for "swiftboating" attempts against Obama until the end of the next American presidential elections at the very least.

The Legend is already forming...

This is one of numerous examples - it describes how the majority Americans who had to file for bankruptcy because of medical bills actually had health insurance... but the insurance companies found reasons to weasel out of much or most of the payments by burying all sorts of exceptions in the fine print.

Government oversight can reduce such predatory behavior (even if it is unlikely to entirely eliminate it). In a Libertarian society where there is no oversight on such matters and anything is legal as long as two people agree on it by contract, it becomes easy to overwhelm suck^h^h^h^h customers by burying them in legal clauses. The only people who will be able to prosper in such a society will be people who have a legal knowledge equivalent to that of lawyers - and that means that anyone who isn't a lawyer will have to spend so much time on legal concerns that he will be unable to put all his energy into more productive matters.

Long interview here.

He is rather gloomy about most parts of the world (except the UK). But I found this part particularly noteworthy:

------------

PK: Well, the US doesn't have the same combination. But in Europe, Germany and Italy look comparable. France is better and Europe as a whole is considerably better.

WH: Germany matches Japan to an uncanny degree. You talk about the Nipponisation of the world economy: I'm not so sure. But I would talk about the Nipponisation of Europe via a German economy at its centre in the grip of the same problem - and that starts to be a global problem.

PK: Germany has huge inadequacy of domestic demand. Their economic recovery in the first seven years of this decade rested on the emergence of gigantic current account surplus.

How is it possible that Germany, which did not have a house price bubble, is having a steeper GDP fall than anyone else in the major economies?

The answer is that they depended upon exporting to the bubble regions of Europe, so they actually got side-swiped by the loss of those exports worse than the bubble regions themselves got hit.

It's Germany on a global scale that is the concern. We worry about the drag on world demand from the global savings coming out of east Asia and the Middle East, but within Europe there's a European savings glut which is coming out of Germany. And it's much bigger relative to the size of the economy.

WH: And on top there is an unique and unaddressed huge potential banking crisis. The Germans pride themselves on their three-legged banking system, but it is incredibly interlinked. The IMF warns that Germany could have to take at least $500bn of writedowns, which its banks have not begun to recognise. German banks hold a trillion dollars - maybe more - of maturing collateralised debt obligations that can only be refinanced by crystallising the losses. We've had RBS and you've had Citigroup. Germany's GDP will fall 6% this year - before the banking crisis has hit it.

------------

Unfortunately, he is right - the banking system of Germany is a huge mess and rife with corruption. The Hypo Real Estate is just the most blatant case - there have been too many banks - including too many owned by the various states - speculating with derivatives and other financial "tools" they didn't understand. And while the economy of Germany was never as focused on financial products as that of the UK and the USA, this will have a major impact on us all.

And the full impact of all this will likely only become apparent after the federal elections later this year...

On another forum (I'm not posting a link to avoid adding to the flames) where the environment and attempts to decrease birth rates were discussed, a poster opined this:

"There are no moral ways to even think of reducing the human population for several reasons.
1) It's racist and classist, it certainly isn't rich white people who are breeding like rabbits.
2) If you think there is already too many people, there really aren't any moral ways to fix that.
3) A static growth rate is completely impossible, so either humanity is growing or dying. Supporting the extinction of humanity is surely immoral, and any level of growth is going to a whole lot of apes.
4) It places the environment as a good unto itself outside it's benefit to humanity, ie your claiming the environment is more important than humanity. Consistently applying that position is clearly immoral.
5) There has been exactly one period in human history where humanity has outgrown it's resource capacity, right before the development of agriculture. After that any resource issues have come solely from poorly distributed resources and not insufficient resources or from unforeseen calamity. Which leads right back into the inherently racist and classist nature of Malthusian argument."


I'll leave counting the number of ways this is wrong as an exercise to the reader.

Here is an article on the stance of China when it comes to reducing CO2 emissions.

Excerpt:

"China and the U.S. are jointly responsible for more than 40 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. China’s emissions are outpacing that of the U.S., but Beijing argues that a large chunk of this is caused by export- driven manufacturing and has suggested that purchasing countries should be responsible for tackling those emissions."

It seems to me that the simplest way for the purchasing countries to "tackle those emissions" is to put a carbon tax on all imports from China. Is this really what the Chinese government wants?

To much of the Muslim world, the American military is Skynet.

North Korea tears up ceasefire agreement

My heart goes out to all those close to the border - the people of both countries, as well as the US servicepeople stationed there.

My heart also goes out to a friend and co-worker from North Korea who worked at our department for nearly three years. He finished his PhD in Material Science two weeks ago.

He left for his home yesterday.

Apparently, Donald Rumsfeld started his progress reports on the Iraq War with Bible Quotations.

You can see some of the pages here.

A few years ago, Portugal legalized a number of drugs, and in combination with freely offered therapy seems to have made some impressive advances in reducing drug use.

This might be useful data for Americans to consider - from what I've read in Misha Glenny's "McMafia", the "zero tolerance" policy of US legislators seems to have been a spectacular failure.

Obama wanted mustard on his hamburger!

...


No, there is no need for me to comment this further.

The ruling German government coalition of Christian Democrats and Social Democrats have once again agreed to make gun control laws more restrictive. And this time, they also want to make Paintball and LaserDom (a game of laser tag) illegal. And why did they do that?

Because these games "simulate killing".

...

But hey, why stop there? Why not outlaw snowball fights? After all, throwing snowballs simulated throwing rocks at other people! And role-playing games are even more devious - not only do you "simulate killing" with them, but many games have committing criminal acts and getting away with then as a central activity!

But really, if they really want to cut down on people "simulating killing", they should stop the Draft. These parties who are now writing this law are the same parties that have steadfastly refused to abolish conscription in Germany for the last few decades - but why? After all, "simulating killing" is the whole point of Basic Training!

I've played LaserDom once. And I was also drafted. And during my time of military service, I learned a lot more about killing people than I would ever have learned playing LaserDom.


I'm really sick of this government continually restricting the rights of responsible, adult German citizen. As long as we don't harm anyone, whatever we do in our free time is none of their business!

Onion Article from January 21st, 2001:

Bush: 'Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over'

Inspired by this thread.

I've mentioned before that I think that Libertarianism has only a chance of actually working in societies with a very low population density. Here is an example that illustrates this.

The availability of efficient transportation is vital for the smooth functioning of any advanced society and economy. Any material goods you create must be transported to your customer, and the faster and cheaper you do that, the better.

Governments can purchase the land required for railroads and highways (as well as ports and airports) through the power of eminent domain if necessary. Any corporations which want to build a similar piece of infrastructure in a Libertarian society, on the other hand, need to negotiate which each land owner separately - and if the owner doesn't want to sell, they are out of luck.


Let's say there is a pressing need for a new road to be built between two major cities - they trade a lot with each other, but the current infrastructure is choking on the traffic. If the new road cannot be built, economic growth will be impeded.

Case 1: Low population density. Let's look at this satellite image of rural Ohio. The lots of farmland are large, and if someone refuses to sell, it should usually be possible to build an alternate route with only minor curves.

Case 2: High population density. Satellite image of rural Bavaria. Here the lots of land are much smaller, drastically increasing the time spent negotiating with individual land owners. And if some of them refuse to sell, the route will quickly have to take a very complicated zig-zag structure which won't do anything to speed up traffic at all - thus making the whole road pointless.

In this case, there are only two options:

- Accept that the infrastructure won't be getting any better, and live with the lesser economic opportunities as corporations flock to places with better infrastructure.
- Accept that there needs to be some sort of authority that can force the farmers to sell. And that's a task that can only be given to a government, which in democratic societies is at least responsible to all citizens.

It's all good and well to hold up property as an inviolable principle. But in practice, this would result in dysfunctional economies in too many regions. Thus, a pure Libertarian state would likely end up being less economically viable than nations with a more pragmatic approach.

This made my day.

Yet another indicator that the whole "Bush system" needs to be shot, drowned, staked, and buried at a crossroads:

Why Two Bush Appointees Are Refusing to Leave.

Thank whatever gods might be listening that Bush will be gone tomorrow.

Read about it here.

This week's terrorist attacks in Mumbai are on most people's minds at the moment. I was reading through the comments page on Al-Jazeera to get some idea what people in other parts of the world are thinking about this. Here are some samples:

"I think that Govt of India which is fast becoming a world power can start to look at the root of most of these attacks which are senseless and brutal. The main cause is the problem of Kashmir's self determination as per the UN should be addressed at a whirlwind pace. Those who feel frustrated with the injustice try to fight back."
- love2u4free, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

"It is likely that these were a mix of local Indian Muslims and Pakistanis. But instead of threatening Pakistan and declaring war on all Jehadis (read all Muslims), it is time to ask why things came to such a head. Many Indian Muslims rightly feel aggrieved about e.g. Mumbai (1993) and Gujrat (2002). Thousands of Muslims were murdered in cold blood in these places, and inquiry reports, e.g. Srikrishna report, have barely been acknowledged let alone implemented. And what Indian military does in Kashmir in well documented."
- SKS, Bangalore, India

"If you want to have a secular peaceful india, get rid of Hindu fanatics who have been constantly massacring muslims since post independence, in 60 years India has seen more then hundred thousands riots, mainly done by Hindu terrorsit brigades, why not india take actions against them? If India needs to be peaceful, the Hindus of India needs to learn peace with Muslims, if they dont stop aggression and oppression of Muslims, this will go on and on."
- David Ishmail, Perth, Australia

"In India there are more Hindu terrorists than Muslim terrorists but still all Muslims are terrorists has become reason behind harassing Muslims. There is a grave injustice and mentality to alienate Muslims in India. Indian Hindus crude, anti-Muslim bigotry and mindless sympathy for Hindu Terrorists is what has been fueling the idea of terrorism among Muslim youths educated /no educated like-wise. Many indigenous Muslim terrorist groups have formed because of Muslim's ethnic cleaning done by Hindu extremist govt that ruled India few years ago, and still ruling few states."
- Gazi, Auckland, New Zealand (Aotearoa)

"Put yourself in the shoes of the Muslims who are in the receiving end. I cannot help remembering that in an election in the beautiful U.S., that the crowds rejoiced and cheered the war criminal, George Bush and elected him a second time as president. It is high time that young pseudo Christians and Zionist Jews all over the world decide what they want to be proud of. Until that happens, tragedies like the one in Mumbai will happen over and over."
- Angela, Mexico

" India will still take US & Israel as its masters if the present Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is still around. He has been used by these masters to put the blame on Pakistan for the terror attack. US had supplied billions of fire arms to Israel & Israel had supplied these billions of fire arms to India. Israel has win the heart of Manmohan Singh to place more Jews centres in Mumbai & other Indian cities. While Israel has used these centres to create chaos in India by organising terror attacks without the knowledge of Manmohan putting the blame to an Islamic country, making them logger head with each other. Israel & US who had been influenced by Zionism will create activities aiming to destroy Islamic countries worldwide hiding behind the self created fake slogan of WMD, War on Terror, Nine Eleven, Holocaust, Nuclear Weapons, Democracy & Humanitarian. India should keep itself away from this influence otherwise it will be the victim of the Jews & Zionism destructive evil activities."
- john palaque, Perth, Australia

"The people from the west should stop voting those thugs who love to invade, bomb, loot and rape the precious Muslim owned resources. The ball is always in the court of western democracies. It is their job to act and stop your leaders who are thugs. Very simple. You should stop supporting the criminal acts of Israel. The ball is in your court. Your call sir."
- truth, Beijing , China


I think all these comments are missing the point (or are just plain wrong, such as the "Zionist conspiracy" guy). These attacks weren't about Kashmir, or the Gujarat massacre. They aren't even about the USA or Israel, though all these points will no doubt be used as justification in propaganda.

No, they were done for one main reason: Provoking war.

Throughout history, there have been fanatical religious groups who could only see the world as a battleground between their religion (or even their own splinter group of that religion) and the rest of humanity. As a result, they see war as the natural state of the world, with everyone being either with them, or against them. Right now, the most prominent of these fanatics happen to be Muslims for a variety of reasons (though you could hear echoes of the same mentality within the Bush administration from time to time...).

During the recent attacks, the terrorists choose their targets deliberately and carefully. They went after foreigners to attract the greatest possible international attention, and humiliating India before the world. They choose Mumbai as a location because it is such an important financial center - and any disruption there would inevitably have significant repercussions for the economy of India. The economy of India is already slowing down, and these attacks will reduce foreign investment and tourism, ultimately hurting far more Indians than the gunfire and grenades themselves were capable of.

Their hope is that these attacks will do to India what the 9/11 attacks did to the USA - provoking the country into a costly, lengthy, and unnecessary war. That this will inevitably kill a lot more Muslims in the future does not matter to the masterminds behind this - all they want is that their global conflict escalates. It is in war that such groups prosper and gain more followers, and they win everybody starts a war to get at them.

Let us hope that wiser heads will prevail in India than they did in the United States after 9/11.

From this RPGNet Tangency thread (you need to be logged in to read it in its entirety):

First poster: "I receive the impression that a non-trivial number of Americans, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, honestly believe that bad things only happen to bad people."

Second poster: "Since the premise of "socialist" ideas is to help people who have bad things happen to them, and the right wing basically runs on the principle that we shouldn't help them, because they deserve it, then you're damn right.

The other reason this message is so marketable is it implies that "if good things happen to me, it's because I'm AWESOME". And selling the idea that you're a special snowflake is very easy."