I'm European. As far as I'm concerned you can keep your troops and guns at home, thank you very much.

I'm pretty sure most of my fellow Europeans feel the same.

But then, where would you spend all those shiny weapons your military-industrial complex keeps making and selling you?

Dude, do you live in Portugal? That's exactly what they've been doing over here.

As a screaming example, our few transportation companies that are still public: Every time there's strike, there's hate stories in every media about how they should be privatised and all those workers fired, because they are leeches, they make too much money, don't want to work, etc. etc. etc. All those companies are technically bankrupt and the workers are blamed for running the company into the ground with too many benefits, bla, bla, bla.

However the story is pretty different. Our governments in the latest decades, being right-wing or Socialists (which is right transvestite as left), have been holding the transfers of money from ticketing, forcing the companies to make bank loans to keep operations running. After all these years, the companies are spending a lot more in loan interests than wages.

The solution to this? Easy. The government will take over all those companies' debt and privatise them really cheap (because nobody wants an "unprofitable" company full of "lazy" employees). The private groups that buy them will fire half of the staff, treat the remaining staff like cattle, increase tariffs to sky high levels, reduce the service to ridiculous minimums and then demand huge subsidies from the government because they are running such a "ingrate and unprofitable" public service.

Supreme irony, the privatised companies receive money from the state for every passenger they carry and also for the others they've lost due to their shitty service and excruciating tariffs.

That pretty much describes it. Every public service that was privatised here in Portugal followed the same route. They used to be public services, now they're huge private monopolies that make gigantic profits, bully customers like they're shit and crush any shred of competition that may arise.

We have the most fanatic neoliberal government of all times. They should hang pictures of Rand, Hayek and Friedman over their desks and salute them when they enter the office every morning, in the (not so unfamiliar) Fascist style.

The supreme irony: They recently privatised what was left of our state electricity company. Guess who bought it? A state-owned Chinese company! So, according to the Supreme Dogma of the Holy Free Market, our state can't have a presence in our economy, but the Chinese state can!

Try wiping your hands between eating a donut and using your phone.

Take it easy, just kidding...

I'd like to see your garden. Looks like it may make a great football field.

Just because it is old, maybe 3 years, and newer ones are better doesn't mean it needs to be replaced.
I don't just get an "ohh shiny" new tv because it is newer.
When it breaks in maybe 5 years from now I might replace it.

Ad hominem. Best sign of lack of arguments.

Venezuela and Zimbabwe are Communist? And in what parallel universe are those the nations in the worst state? And what does one have to do with the other?

You're right. Our economic model is completely perfect and we should never ever do anything but sit on our asses and let it be. After all, the IMF keeps telling me that everything's gonna be alright. And when did the IMF ever fail a prediction?

1. GMO crops may have poorly understood unintended consequences. They cross-reproduce with other plants and spread their genes throughout the environment.
2. They are proprietary, turning farmers into corporate patent slaves.
3. They encourage monoculture, at the expense of biodiversity and food safety.
4. They discourage a varied diet, to the expense of public health.
5. This case, if it goes forward, will create a precedent and encourage the generalisation of GMO throughout the world, posing as a panacea to world hunger. This allows world leaders to continue ignoring the real problem, which is unfair distribution, not food scarcity.

Most people I know find it funny. Maybe you are the problem.

Strawman.

Non-sequitur. But since we're at it, the Roman Empire was the cause of great economic, social and technical progress in Europe, Asia and Africa. It was so great we should have stuck to it forever! Why evolve to anything else? But don't worry, again thanks to Capitalism, a lot of Europeans are going back to starch eaters.

WTF? What Reds are you talking about?

I know it's false. That's why I called it a joke.

I'm all for technology improving people's lives. But many times, technology is overkill and used only because of corporate interests. There are simpler solutions, but then someone would not be making a shitload of money from them, so they're not used.

Drug dealer business practice: the first fix is always free.

The real problem is this kind of complicated, expensive and dangerous "solution" when simply introducing other crops that naturally provide vitamin D would fix the issue.

Reminds me of that old joke about the US spending millions of dollars to develop a pen which can write in space, and the Soviet cosmonauts simply using a pencil.