It's a social one.

The solutions to our problems of resources and population exist already. What is not there is any will, collective intelligence, or desire (by the powerful) to implement them. We are currently engulfed in a wave of neoliberal Friedmanite economics which precludes any planning (which can be described as the application of knowledge to meet goals and solve problems). The Market is supposed to handle it all. But it can't. It is a beast with no brain. And so we muddle on.

nkennedy is right. You can't eat knowledge. No new magic bullet technology is going to come and save our butts. Not even GM (see http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/exposed-the-great-gm-crops-myth-812179.html)

We will just have to muddle on some more until we suffer enough to overthrow those who profit most from the status quo.

Guatemala's president Arbenz cleverly initiated land reform by forcibly buying fallow land from the largest landowners at the prices declared by the landowners themselves on their tax documents. United Fruit had of course been lowballing this figure to cheat on their taxes.

Arbenz was a democratically elected president. He gave the Mayan majority, perhaps for the first time, a voice in the government. What the US and United Fruit did was a crime, plain and simple. It precipitated 30 years of civil war and tens of thousands of deaths. This article is useful in pointing out one fact: Bush is not breaking any new ground. He is just more brazen than his predecessors.

rockstar8989 says:

the nationalized oil companies - who control 80% of the world’s oil reserves - have not done a good job at maintaining their production capacity.

It is not the job of government, as I understand it, to look out for the interests of foreigners. They are supposed to be looking out for the interests of their own people. Why should it be in the interest of Mexico, Venezuela, et. al. to maintain production, hold down prices, and share profits with foreigners? Their prime directive should be to maximize the value of their own resources. And inviting in foreign oil companies to deplete their resources even faster and for less certainly does not meet this criterion.

I suppose there is no harm in asking countries to act against their own best interests for the purpose of enriching our corporations, but we shouldn't expect compliance unless we use force. And we know how well that works, don't we? We've bred resentment and hatred doing this. But I forgot. It's all because of "islamofascism."

...that the juries (this is the second to deadlock in this case) will not return an outright acquittal for such a weak case. That means that there are enough people on these juries who will readily accept and tenaciously cling to any argument given them by the government, and calls into question the fairness of any federal trial involving the highly inflamed charge of terrorism.

I don't believe we should absolve John Yoo of anything. He had a choice, he could have resigned his position, but he was either too much of a coward to do so, or he believed in what he was doing, which is worse.

But Glenn is absolutely right, he is not alone. The responsibility is collective. GWB of course bears ultimate responsibility. But all those who supported him and enabled his actions, knowing full well what he was about, are also responsible. Earlier there was a long discussion about what is a centrist. Doesn't matter. Did you vote for W in '04? That does matter. We all knew full well what his regime had done to that point: Geneva Conventions "quaint"; rendition; Guantanamo; Abu-Grhaib; Warrantless surveillance; Indefinite detention without trial for US citizens. All these things were common knowledge by then.

And even before Bush, we were at it. Do you excuse the School of the Americas? Do you dismiss those who have wished to close this abomination as fringe kooks? Do you think it's OK for us to teach these inhuman techniques to others? Do you support our "right" to interfere in the affairs of other countries, impose "regime change", etc.?

If you can answer "yes" to any of this, you have some soul-searching to do. We all do. We all have much to answer for. Willful ignorance won't cut it. We need to hold our leaders accountable for these policies and stop making excuses for them and for ourselves. Fear is no excuse. There is no courage without fear. It's time we showed that we really are the "Home of the Brave", that our principles are more important that base fearmongering.

It's McCain, so he "pivoted." If it's a Democrat, the term "flip-flop" would certainly have made an appearance.

These "Principals" have their spiritual antecedents in the instructors and manuals used at the School of the Americas (officially the "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation") in Ft. Benning, GA. There we have trained Latin American military thugs to do just these sorts of things for years and years.

It is important in placing the blame for our current torture regime that we not stop at Bush & Co. They did not come up with all this on their own. We already knew how, have trained others in the techniques, and have seen them applied by our "allies" in Latin America. It is not for nothing that the neocons have been calling for the "El Salvador Option" to be applied in Iraq.