This collection draws together contemporary research into queer theory and practices, as they intersect with new media and communication technologies. It provides a synthesis of critical debates in these fields followed by empirical analyses of current and historical internet activities. These include, among others, a study of changing leathersex identities as meeting spaces moved from bars to online chat rooms, an investigation of the dynamics of racial identity as social sites moved from text-based to visually-based media and the tensions between community and audience identities inherent in commercial affinity portals. The chapters investigate the relations between the technical, legal and industrial organization of online media and the queer practices that they facilitate. While scholarly and theoretically rigorous, its rich empirical detail makes Queer Online vital reading for activists and members of queer communities, in the academy and beyond.

The US and its citizens are addicted to debt much as a drug addict is hooked on heroin. Unless the US achieves rehabilitation, this failing alone will ensure that the USA will continue to decline relative to many other countries. Liberals are now firmly in control in the USA. In this political climate, there is no indication that our debt will not continue to increase dramatically. The modus operandi is to give a short term fix to all problems by dramatically increasing debt. The present financial crisis, itself caused by excessive debt is being fixed by even more debt. The burden for the few who pay taxes will become increasingly onerous and increasingly unacceptable for future generations. The best and the brightest will turn away from the USA, increasing the US relative rate of decline. Much that has been achieved in the USA since the end of the Second World War has been achieved by people not born in the USA. In future, the USA increasingly will not be the destination of choice for people with the most to offer. Instead it is the destination for illegal immigrants at the other end of the social scale.

The USA is considered ugly by the rest of the world because it makes no effort to control its gluttony. In the USA, 25% of the world's energy is consumed by 5% of the world population. The USA also leads the world in obesity and in debt. The USA does not pay for its insatiable consumption. Despite its great opportunities, the USA has a high percentage of free loaders who pay little or no income taxes. They have become home owners through debt that they have not worked and saved to afford, through policies of US Liberal government. The ensuing tsunami is now engulfing the lessfortunate people throughout the world, who are genuinely poor and are now having to suffer the consequences of our worthless paper debt instruments, while the USA takes on huge new debt to continue to feed its addiction instead of facing up to the reality of living within its means.

Under Obama, the national debt has increased to $12 trillion and will be $21 trillion by 2019. Even still Liberal Washington with Obama at the helm is now debating whether to create more social programs they can't afford.
The dollar's decline is indicative that the United States is no longer the dominant force in the global economy. China is the largest creditor to a heavily indebted U.S. government. World living standards will grow faster than ours, as will global wealth. Capital will move abroad, leaving U.S. unemployment at high levels. That is the cost of Liberal ideology.
By 2030, China will surpass the U.S. in the size of its economy. Global power follows economic strength. Even still, Obama is willfully accelerating the decline of the USA as the global power. China thrives because it is hungry, dynamic, unwilling to accept failure and convinced that it should be a leading force in the world. That is why America thrived a century ago. Today, such hunger and dynamism are less evident in American life and are being replaced by a welfare mentality as Obama seeks personal popularity and ego satisfaction by being an apologist for what he perceives as US shortcomings and by ceding authority to the United Nations.
The next crisis has already started. The vast printing of money has begun to depress the value of the dollar. The economy will appear to recover from the subprime crisis and recession by mid to late 2009. It will though be the calm before the real storm as a consequence of Obama's wild spending. In the early part of the next decade, America will enter a depression, with stocks reaching new lows. Housing prices will not recover and housing will remain a poor investment. A global bull market will not return until the end of the next decade and by then everything will be worth much less in dollar terms because of its declining value.
Obama was elected to be President of the USA. What he has done is totally polarize the country - worse than any President in 40 years. The people who feel disenfranchised most are those who drive the capitalist engine which has made the USA the most successful country in the world. That is a disastrous dynamic.
Obama was elected as a do-gooder: audacity of hope, diplomacy, disarmament, income redistribution, climate change and international-back-pedaling. We will now reap the consequences. Obama is lost in knowing how to handle conflict throughout the world. Afghanistan will become Obama's Vietnam. Obama has no answer to the Taliban or al-Qaeda. Do-gooders believe that everyone has good intentions. Such was Chamberlain's belief when he negotiated "peace for our time" with Hitler in 1937.

The swooning frenzy over Barack Obama as President of the United States is an artificially created absurd wave of self-deception. His cult following is bereft of reason and devoid of facts. He is a celebrity in the mold of an intelligent, articulate Paris Hilton. In no way does he resemble a statesman. Each day in the age of Obama takes us further into lawlessness, situational constitutionalism and institutional derangement. We are turning into a banana republic where the rule of law is replaced by the tyranny of the majority. The political machination of Liberals, in the name of an economic recession that they are manipulating is undermining our founding principles. President Obama is accumulating massive power in Washington justified by the need to save the nation with a whirlwind of activity. He is recklessly over compensating, throwing trillions of dollars around for a quick fix which will be a millstone around the necks of future generations. He then dishonestly claims that the USA will arise stronger than before. When traveling abroad, President Obama has an arrogant humility. He portrays a proud but flawed United States, using a refrain of past mistakes of his predecessor to generate personal popularity. He talks about the nation's darker periods of slavery and repression and its past sanction of torture that he has ended. Chicago Politics have come to the White House. No president in the past 40 years has done more to polarize America so much, so quickly. Afghanistan is sliding back to its pre-9/11 days that allowed the country to become a safe haven for al-Qaeda leaders plotting terrorist attacks. Obama's soft shoe confusion will also be a disaster in neighboring Pakistan where nuclear bomb technology is available.