Amusingly, the US was founded to protect the citizenry from the government.
Text Evasion: The saddest part of the NY Times-instigated discussion of truth's place in the news is that it is a serious discussion about whether printing lies qualifies as news. If a politician lies the story should not spread the lie, but point out that he (or she) lied. Not that lying politicians is exactly news. Wouldn't the world have been a better place if the Times had headlined "Bush & Cheney tell more lies about Iraq!"?
Decryption: The US says it has told Israel not to attack Iran just yet intensified its coordination with Israel over policy on Iran.
Supplying Demands: In response to the expected decline in world petroleum demand caused by the effects of the worsening financial crisis in the euro zone, OPEC has cut its forecast for 2012's growth in petroleum demand by one tenth of one percent. OPEC is currently producing at its highest level in over 3 years. Norway, the world's eighth-largest oil exporter, expects its production will decline this year. Regardless of demand levels, according to Saudi Oil Minister al-Naimi, the price of power is $100 a barrel. Not the cost to produce petroleum, but the price they Saudis need in order to buy off their restless citizens and stay in power.
Discuss: "the use of fossil fuels should be made a crime against humanity"
Echo: John Bolton, the former Bush administration nutcase who went around assuring everyone that Saddam had WMD – nuclear, biological, yougurt-based, whatever - now says that the sky is falling and Iran is closer to being able to build a nuclear bomb than anyone but he and a few other neocons realize. The people pushing for war against Iran are the same neocons who pushed for the invasion of Iraq. Sorry, John, I gave at the office.
Allowance: My teen-aged granddaughters love their iPhones. Their parents love their iPads and Apple's iProfits. They, like CNBC announcers, like Steve Jobs, pretend not to know that Apple's iProfits are made by 13-year old Chinese kids living 15 to a 12 by 12 foot dorm, working 16 hours a day for 70 cents an hour. Hey, I bet there's an app for that.
Crime Beyond Punishment: Authorities in Florida suspect that an arsonist destroyed one of the oldest cypress trees in the world. The 3,500-year-old tree, known locally as “The Big Tree,” went up in flames early Monday morning, Sometimes I'm not overly proud to be human.
3 comments:
the story you cite mentions iPhones - but are there cellular phones which are made under substantially better conditions? seriously, i'd like to know, as it looks like i'm going to have to get a new one
I doubt there are any electronics of any sort that"are made under substantially better conditions". Or much of anything else.
ckm
An older Nokia phone, was for the most part built in Europe, by adults in safe, efficient factories who were paid high wages and enjoyed good benefits. But they did that by borrowing heavily against the future earnings of their 13 year old children and the children of these 13 year olds'.
These kids will never enjoy the luxury lifestyle of their predecessors. But that is for another day to worry about.
So you can feel good about using an old Nokia if you think abusing children not yet born is any better than abusing a child now to get a modern smartphone.
You can't have an acceptable answer to your question until such time as the cost shifting arbitrage that masquerades as global commerce is replaced with an equitable system where pure honest math decides this is equal to that at every point of longitude and latitude.
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