Simple Middle East Peace Solutions

1. - for every child killed in Israel and Palestine a holy site should be bulldozed and put through a pulverizer, then mixed with nuclear waste so not even relics can be accessed for a few million years; the recent atheistic and other critics of the 3 great monotheistic religions have a point.
2. - if another 100 children die. Jerusalem should become a much needed international nuclear wasted dump and Israelis and Palestinians should spend at least 40 years relocated to the Sinai desert in tent cities, until a new generation demonstrates it understands that a child's life is worth more than a holy site.
3. - secular socialists and other Israeli and Arab leftists (there was a recent meeting of Israeli Arab leftists) should be granted at least the equivalent of the billions in money and support poured into Islamic groups like the mujhadeen in Afghanistan for strategic Realpolitik reasons during the cold war. The secular non-theistic strain in the Middle East must be rebuilt,
4. As a matter of fairness, the same rule should apply elsewhere such as in India and Sri Lanka, even though some of the parties are not strictly monotheists. Maybe the atheists have it right: all religion is primarily a destructive force when you tally up history.
   

The Wimpiest Revolution with the Biggest Impact?

The anti-globalization revolution of 1999 snd 2000 seemed stillborn in its aftermath. After successfully shutting down some sessions of the World Trade Organization(WTO meeting in the Battle of Seattle in 1999, subsequent protests in Quebec and Genoa were curtailed by massive military style police crackdowns that kept protestors out of sight and earshot of delegates, and overrode freedom of speech. Police chiefs around the world were mindful of the fate of Seattle's police chief at the time, ignominy and dismissal. Then the September 11 attacks came and the press declared the anti-globalization movement dead in the wave of sympathy for the victims and the anti-revolutionary mood. Indeed subsequent anti-globalization efforts were pale and small. Even some progressive and leftist pundits declared the efforts of the young anti-globalists shallow and unsustainable .

But the Battle of Seattle coincided strangely with the end of the power, even the decline, of the era of ever more encompassing and powerful, international, neo-liberal trade agreements. No agreement was reached in Seattle, even though the the meetings eventually convened, and some blamed the protests and the lame duck Clinton's too peaceful response to them. Since then the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs(GATT), WTO and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have suffered repeated failures and losses of influence. though the failure of Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) dubbed NAFTA on steroids by its nemesis Maude Barlow, who just recently was appointed as the UN's Senior advisor on water, actually faltered in 1998, its successful David character, Maude Barlow of the Council of canadians, was a major influence and intellectual supporter of the following year's anti-globalization movement. Poor Latin American and other countries saddled with huge debts, and forced to abandon social programs following IMF bailouts with strings attached, rebelled against further interventions in spite of their continued need. And now some declare the decline of global capitalism as we know it.

Was the massive international globalization structure fragile in some way. Was it near a tipping point in 1999?

The unprecedented, 10 million strong, global 2003 protests ahead of the Iraq war looked and felt like the anti-globalization protests. Again, the impact seemed minimal and even protestors were demoralized when their efforts did not stop the invasion. But would US and world public opinion have swung so massively against the war later if the predictions of trouble ahead implicit in the protests and the support and limelight it gave to the small minority of investigative reporters criticizing the reasons for the war and the war's conduct in the face of the huge US public relations propoganda machine, without the seemingly ineffectual protests.

One wonders if the ancient Romans poo pooed the impact of the early Barbarian sackings as the attackers withdrew.

US election thoughts

As an international observer, I wonder if the international viewer ratings for the US election will surpass the Oscars or the soccer World Cup or whatever the record is until now.

Robert F. Kennedy and Greg Palast

In 2004 on the morning of election day, Palast listed states and counts of votes which were already discounted or suppressed totalling in the millions. Fortunately he and Robert F Kennedy are proactive issuing a 7 page comic book (linked to below the article above) "stealing back your vote", so voters can actively secure their vote, and do more than shake their heads.

When major scary things are happening, many are in denial as in 2004. Democrats, in my view, seem to accept they have to win a cushion of 5-10% of votes to counter the suppression, rather than fight back vigorously and use the "c" word, conspiracy, which you can't use in polite company and get invited back to the cocktail party. They are fighting more vigorously this year, but the form of "the crunch", when and if it comes, is always different and surprising, and that is when we may see if Obama, unlike Gore and Kerry in 2000 and 2004, is a street fighter (or not). Someone should send him an emergency bullhorn. :>

Michael Moore, working for Dem legislature candidates in Michigan expressed some of this: in Friday on Democracy Now:

Michael Moores feeling:

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/10/31/academy_award_winning_filmmaker_michael_moore

MICHAEL MOORE: Right, yeah, I know. It seems that—it seems to feel like the Republicans aren’t going to have a very, very good time on Tuesday night. And she’s, of course, obviously, one of the extreme cases of why they’re in deep, deep trouble.

But I have no sense of optimism, as I sit here. You know, way too many times in the past, we’ve gotten far too giddy way too soon. And I am just not going to succumb to that feeling right now. I mean, I hope. I hope it all looks good on Tuesday, but for many reasons, there is a chance that McCain will win on Tuesday. And we have to operate with that attitude in mind, because—I mean, let’s face it. People on our side usually aren’t as driven to involve themselves in a political process that they view, somewhat cynically, as not having operated in the best interests of the people. And so, they’re not often as—often—not as much as the other side is motivated to go to the polls, whereas the other side, under, you know, strict orders from, they believe, the voice of God that’s in their head telling them that they must go to the polls and vote for these good people or remove the heathens that are in violation of whatever it is they’re listening to in their head. So, I’m telling you, I think that’s pretty powerful. They’ve been very successful at it. They’ve always been well funded. They’re very smart about it. They are committed. They are up at the crack of dawn, and they will be on Tuesday. Trust me. We have not lived under the Republicans for twenty of the last twenty-eight years by their side being a bunch of slackers. That’s not the case. So they will be out in full force. And I don’t think we need to wake up on Wednesday with that feeling that we all know too well, that—you know, “Woah, what happened? What happened?” I just—I think that’s happened one too many times.

political affiliations, isolation and attachment, health: Interesting survey or secondary data topic

Are affiliates of right wing or social Darwinist parties more lilkely to suffer from certain chronic preventable illnesses or risky habits like smoking than left leaning affiliates. Does a philosophy that stresses individualism and personal responsibility and personal wealth accumulation (philosophically or in Buddhist terms isolation and attachment) lead to the isolation and guilt over personal faiure associated with some illnesses. If so, in the US one could offer health insurance based on long term political membership and have degree of risk predictability.

Some related observations:

- lots of lefties smoke, drink and overeat too
- poverty is mostly associated with ill health, 2 exceptions being risk of car accidents and alcohol consumption; right wing views are associated positively with wealth I seem to recall
- are right wing views associated with fatalism and disbelief of the research showing that lifestyle changes (or collective/legislative/enforcement against hazards like pollution) can affect health?

ranked choice polling could lead to ranked choice voting

Could polls which say "how would you rank the candidates if your vote would always count eg you could vote green or libertarian and you did not have to fear the most worst if you did not vote for the least worst". Unlike proportional, ranked choice or instant runoff voting leads to a near majority for the winner. at least as a second or third or 4th choice and could be the real way to foster "radical" (in the Harry Belafonte sense) change we can believe in and alternative parties. Excellent Wikipedia entry here.

LHC why can't we just observe collisions in space?

Physicists - please answer my question:

too much noise? - we need 300 feet of rock? could it be done on an asteroid or the moon with a little tube collecting cosmic particles and sending them into a drilled chamber- could we have spent 8 billion developing a satellite and detector that couldl filter out the noise and detect lots of particles?

Because the safety argument that it happens anyway in upper atmosphere assumes it happens at the same concentration - if we are concentrating collisions to any degree beyond that the safety argument, that it happens every day in upper atmosphere falls short.

population crash movement - moratorium on childbirth

It is politically unacceptable to talk about powerful incentives to discourage childbearing, as filmmaker Nina Paley noted in discussing her powerful 2002 animation. The Stork.

Three or four decades ago programs to give $50 to desperately poor third world women to be sterilized became the textbook case of uninformed non-consent. Population control also became associated with racism, genocide and eugenics, for example see this discussion. Zero population growth was a popular movement in the 1970s (if only more had listened), but who is calling for a committed movement to stop or greatly curtail all childbirth for a generation, given our global warming and mass extinction reality. It certainly beats wars, disease, famines and runaway global heating as an outcome even if it precipitated its own economic and elder care crises. As a near senior citizen, I would gladly forgo better medical and financial care and die happy if I knew major measurable steps to save the environment were under way. And I think a lot of young people are prepared to put off or forgo the pleasures and pains of family life, of a traditional human life, for one or 2 generations to save the world, no less than those who fought the Nazis, if enough women signed on, It could cause a bit of credible, measurable real demographic and economic collapse, but also fairly immediate environmental and social advantages would happen simultaneously. In a decade or 2 the next generation could begin to live like happy, non-violent pirates in the ruins and booty of the now emptier cities and towns as beautiful savannas and jungles reclaimed some of what they yielded before to sprawling housing and farms. A few maverick environmentalists continue to bring up population collapse as a very good thing.

Governments like Canada continue to tout 19th century policies that encourage population and economic growth, But I think the criticisms about racism can be overcome by rolling out the campaign to the vastly greater resource-consuming developed countries first. If France, the US, Canada Australia and so forth lead the way with cobwebs on the maternity wards, and making the short term economic and lifestyle sacrifices, then the rational objections to reintroducing vigorous population control measures everywhere would fall away. A lot of health resources go into maternity, so maybe I would even not have to give up some of cheaper, more cost-effective medical attention as I age.

Dirty Canadian Tar Sands kill ducks and the climate

My Brother on Afghanistan and Kipling

What the heck is going on in Britain? Coal and national ID

the story

and an opinion

Well, people said Brown was worse than Blair, that Blair did a deal to pursue regressive policies to get Brown's support when he ran for party leader or something like that as I recall. Ominous that it is announced at the Adam Smith Institute which was behind Margaret Thatcher's privatization and eighties version of the ownership society. I remember a speech circulated in the Saskatchewan civil service where I worked under right wing Grant Devine's government by someone from the Adam Smith Institute. He was touting the public stock offerings in BOAC and other British privatizations of public corporations.

And a national ID program with fingerprints and biometrics beyond anything the US neocons can practically hope for and targeting non-Europeans? Do they really think the existence of the EU covers this return to old racist treatment of non-white immigrants and citizens? British progressives should say, you mean by non-European, non-white. I have a sneaking suspicion the ID card may stop at the 1st phase, non-Europeans, bowing to human rights concerns at the point where it affects whites.

A friend of mine was an Iranian refugee going to high school in Britain in the 80s while waiting for his parents to be allowed to leave Iran. He was very glad when his parents finally were able to escape to the US and he was able to leave Britain, where he said it got worse every year under Margaret Thatcher's politically motivated policies tightening restrictions on the immigrant population.

How to cancel Real's Rhapsody

Go to help A-Z , cancel my account and phone the number which is 1-866-597-5465 and tell the nice customer service people you want to cancel. There is no online way to cancel and I could find no other link for cancellation except buried deep within help. Earlier today, I tried via the "edit account" and a screen offered a subscribe button for a service I already had! Needless to say I did not push the button and turned to the help instead, so maybe another screen after the subscribe button offered a way to cancel, though the customer rep said you could only cancel by phone.

Real should be ashamed of themselves. BTW I got 4 months of a total of 6 months of $15 bills refunded by taking the 5 extra minutes to escalate to a supervisor, which was appreciated. I had offered to forgo the refund if they would provide an obvious way for everyone to cancel online, but of course the help dept could not do that.

A quick search revealed others on real networks own support thread with similar problems:

from Mar 2007

Another thread on Rhapsody as recent as Dec. 2007 discussed the ethics of the lobster trap cancellation policy, easy to sign up for free trial, but very hard to find your way out.

Finally this amusing investigation in PC World by Tom Spring included an attempt to cancel Rhapsody account and another real product, both of which proved difficult.

A representative of RealNetworks, told him it was an single mistake . When he showed them it happened twice they promised to investigate both incidents,

Very good - investigations underway; only problem is Spring's article is dated December 22, 2006.