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It is not a matter of "pretend". Iraq factually was NOT supporting terrorism or killing US citizens until after the US military entered Iraq and started killing people who tried to interfere with their military objective of destroying the entire country. Once the US was there, it immediately became a magnet for radicals in neighboring areas who were eager to fight against the US, but this was not the case until after the invasion.

Let us not forget the drone strikes that the Obama administration made VERY heavy use of. Their PRIMARY PURPOSE was to kill specific people. https://www.cfr.org/blog/obama...

All in all, this post is very unfactual. Much as I would LIKE it to be true, it just isn't.

The same UN that facilitated illegal oil for money trades with Iraq under Saddam to make Kofi Annan's son wealthy. Which led directly to the reasons for the US invasion of Iraq.
Details

That UN that supports corruption for their leadership's personal gain even if it causes war and mass causalities? The fact that they haven't done anything about that incident shows the UN isn't about keeping peace, they are about collecting money and power and not above doing so unethically.

Data

Liberals clicking the above link are going to have an aneurism. Keep on supporting the civilian killer in chief, Obama.
542 drone strikes
3,797 killed
324 civilians mis-targeted

But they weren't Obama supporters, so killing them (including a US citizen that was never given a trial) is ok (liberal logic).

DAPA was shot down by a circuit court and the Supreme Court split 4-4 on it with no opinion.

Interesting... I can't find prior rulings on deferred action programs at this time. There have been a great many. Someone did sue the Clinton administration and lose, and on pretty good grounds.

The fun part is people complain about these rules and assert that they're at odds with the law, and we often just pass laws making these rules the law. I've encountered people on the campaign trail that tell me that's stupid and I need to focus on enforcing the law; I point out that enforcing the law is the Judicial's problem, executing it is the Executives, and that the job I'm going for is making the law--which means when I say it's fine and several hundred others in the room nod in agreement, that is the law.

Good catch, though. I'm working off fourth-hand information in this case, and should seek better sources.

Infrastructure upgrades are different if you are talking the bond market support or major investment, which isn't what NAFTA is.

Because power, water supply, and wastewater systems supporting factories are not infrastructure. Because the factories manufacturing those goods are not themselves infrastructure. Because the transportation systems involved in import and export are not infrastructure.

We are talking short term markets for selling commodities and finished goods that cross the border with little to no import duties.

We're talking about myopic anonymous cowards with little business experience extolling things that simply are not true.

Think physicians selecting which insurance providers to accept as a result of tumultuous politics every 2 to 4 years.

Think physicians building hospitals and purchasing diagnostic equipment.

In a more ideal world, a long term agreement would keep everyone happy and focused on providing goods and services rather than supply chain and back office support, but the reality is that with finite resources, every country needs to be able to adjust mid-course and maintain competition that benefits the total economy.

The total economy, you say?

"Some jobs are lost due to imports, but others are created, and consumers benefit significantly from the falling prices and often improved quality of goods created by import competition. A 2014 PIIE study of NAFTAâ(TM)s effects found that about 15,000 jobs on net are lost each year due to the pactâ"but that for each of those jobs lost, the economy gains roughly $450,000 in the form of higher productivity and lower consumer prices."

How is Iran a rogue nation? Here's a start:
It's a state sponsor of terrorism.
It has an unaccountable paramilitary force, the Revolutionary Guards, who regularly attack and detain foreigners, among others.
They flirt with nuclear proliferation, to the extent that Israel has unilaterally attacked them in the past.

Any one of these would be enough to label it a rogue nation.

Slippery slope arguments are for dopes.

It is undisputable that Germany is on a slippery slope.

At first, only Nazi propaganda was outlawed. The new "Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz" now also makes “evidently unlawful” content illegal and forces Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms to remove it or be fined. It is unclear what is meant by "evidently unlawful" but it is definitely no longer just confined to Nazi propaganda.

Textbook slippery slope.

The Obama administration never bombed Syria. They bombed other countries, but not Syria.

Syria was bombed many times by the US in 2016. Citations here and here.

According to this Obama dropped over 12,000 bombs on Syria last year.

Yes Boss.

Just business as usual, Boss.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/may/25/exxonmobil-climate-change-scientists-congress-george-w-bush

http://www.cfr.org/climate-change/political-interference-climate-change-science-under-bush-administration-december-2007/p15079

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17926941

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/bush-appointee-at-nasa-resigns-over-censorship-6109603.html

Don't forget the $50 Billion in job losses to offset the $25 B in gains. We tried this crap with NAFTA etc and it only benefits the rich.

People who actually have studied this and know something about it disagree with you.

I don't blame you, it is an easy mistake to make because benefits are diffuse while costs are concentrated and easy to identify, especially due to the inadequacy (in the USA) of the trade-adjustment assistance program.

Wrong. Try 2006. See http://www.cfr.org/iraq/islami... That is very new compared to the baathist party from the 50s and its slightly later split into Iraqi and Syrian regimes.

Really? Ok AC - back it up.

I will backup up my statements - The CFR - the ones who are behind LOTS of things have this to say:
"The self-proclaimed Islamic State is a militant movement that has conquered territory in western Iraq and eastern Syria, where it has made a bid to establish a state in territories that encompass some six and a half million residents. Though spawned by al-Qaedaâ(TM)s Iraq franchise, it split with Osama bin Ladenâ(TM)s organization and evolved to not just employ terrorist and insurgent tactics, but the more conventional ones of an organized militia."

Ref:
http://www.cfr.org/iraq/islami...

Hmmm sounds like my assertion is 100% right on ISIS coming from Al-Qaeda....
Me 1
AC 0

Hmm my assertions about Osama Bin Laden, the Mujahedeen, the CIA - correct.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Al-Qaeda has its origins in the uprising against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Thousands of volunteers from around the Middle East came to Afghanistan as mujahideen, warriors fighting to defend fellow Muslims. In the mid-1980s, Osama bin Laden became the prime financier for an organization that recruited Muslims from mosques around the world. These "Afghan Arab" mujahideen, which numbered in the thousands, were crucial in defeating Soviet forces"

Ref:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...

Me 2
AC 0

So looks like all my assertions are correct of the trail of Mujahedeen (lead by Osama Bin Laden) --> AL Qaeda (lead by Osama Bin Laden) --> ISIS is correct.

I have a TON of more references to backup my statements.... So AC - what do you have?

I am American, but let me point out several things:
1) I agree with you about CHina. They are a total disaster for North America. They manipulate their money, which prevents an eqalization from occuring; they dump on our markets, which is criminal; they push inferior products that would be considered illegal down in Mexico, let alone in America or Canada; In addition, when Clinton-China went through, there were 90 tariffs. Now, there are over 500 tariffs directed specifically at the west. Agreements with china need to be stopped, or they need to be enforced.

2) that NAFTA has been overall a good deal for North America, but Canada has actually done the best at it.
If anything, Canada has seen the strongest gains among the three NAFTA countries, though, again, it is difficult to attribute direct causation, particularly given that Canada and the United States had a free-trade deal that predated NAFTA. Canada is the leading exporter of goods to the United States, U.S. and Mexican investments in Canada have tripled, and Canada has added 4.7 million new jobs since 1993. Canadian manufacturing employment held steady, though the "productivity gap" between the Canadian and U.S. economies wasn't narrowed: Canada's labor productivity stood at 72 percent of U.S. levels in 2012 despite Canada's highly educated work force [PDF].
Here is another assessment of many.

3) we need to STRENGTHEN NAFTA, not weaken it. In Particular, I would like to see us require similar labor and environmental laws that Canada has. And if we are going to do more FTAs, it should be done not by individual nations (i.e. mexico, canada, or america), but by NAFTA as a whole, since 1 FTA impacts the other.

4) Considering how important climate change is, I would love to see NAFTA implement a tax on ALL manufactured goods based on where the worst sub-part comes from. It should be a tax that starts low, but increases every year (or more). And it should be done as a %. Likewise, the data needs to be real verifiable numbers, not guess work, or based on what govs report. As such, it should be based on OCO2. Finally, it should be normalized on a sane metric, not per capita, but emissions per GDP. By having NAFTA do this, it would quickly cause all nations to lower their emissions since if they have high emissions per $ GDP, it will cause their goods to be expensive and manufacturers will quit using their sub-parts.

"the money magically appears out of thin air."

The financial sector creates $30 trillion a year out of thin air. The world capital total is approaching $1 quadrillion, over an order of magnitude greater than world GDP. Financial firms are creating tens or hundreds of trillions of dollars out of thin air, and backstopping it with public money creation by the Fed (which opens unlimited swap lines with the ECB, Bank of England, and other central banks).

Sources: A World Awash in Money, The Spread of Central Bank Currency Swaps Since the Financial Crisis.

Hey look.
A bigot modded up by four other bigots.

but look and read and learn first

No. you. http://www.cfr.org/global/glob...

And let's not just ignore the US's hand in destabilizing the region and exacerbating the conflicts you're referring to.

Note that the ECB regularly borrows huge sums of dollars from the Fed, because European banks need dollar-denominated funding. See http://www.cfr.org/international-finance/central-bank-currency-swaps-since-financial-crisis/p36419#!/

I didn't know there WAS a Bible Belt in Europe, especially the Netherlands.

FWIW, there's even a "church-tax" (fees collected by the government on behalf of a church) in many European countries including the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden) and Austria, Italy and Germany. Rules vary, but participation of the population in state affiliated churches is north of 67% in some countries, although there has been a recent trend of people leaving churches in European countries if it allows them to avoid paying these "taxes".

Of course paying the tax and actual active membership in a church are two different things. Apparently in Europe, there are lots of passive members that continue to simply just pay the tax (presumably for traditional reasons) inflating the membership rolls of the churches and overstating their influence...

As for vaccines, I don't think there is much different underlying sentiment in European vs the USA-ans. is primarily an issue where there is a big push to be current on vaccines when entering school in the USA, where in most European countries the focus is in the (public) healthcare system. Perhaps both the USA and Europe, attendance to school is still more universal than attendance to healthcare (even if both are "free") and the resulting diseases bear this out.

Troops in Middle East:
"How many U.S. troops were stationed in and around Iraq when Baghdad fell?
The Pentagon said April 8 that some 340,000 U.S. servicemen and women were under the authority of the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), which covers a region stretching from the Horn of Africa through the Persian Gulf and into Central Asia. GlobalSecurity.org, a defense information website, estimated that about 235,000 of these troops were engaged in the Iraq war."
http://www.cfr.org/iraq/iraq-u...

Wealth:
David Rockefeller $3 Billion
http://www.forbes.com/profile/...

Charles Koch $42.6 Billion
http://www.forbes.com/profile/...
David Koch $42.6 Billion
http://www.forbes.com/profile/...

Their combined wealth is 28.4 times the wealth of David Rockefeller

Your conspiracies have eaten holes in your brain, just deal with reality and you will find that you have been deluded and distracted

You're kidding, right?

http://rt.com/news/194424-usa-...
http://www.cfr.org/japan/sino-...

Today, Japan's nuclear energy infrastructure makes it eminently capable of constructing nuclear weapons at will. The de-militarization of Japan and the protection of the United States' nuclear umbrella have led to a strong policy of non-weaponization of nuclear technology, but in the face of nuclear weapons testing by North Korea, some politicians and former military officials in Japan are calling for a reversal of this policy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J...

The Council on Foreign Relations recently had its Annual Lecture on Science and Technology: the topic was "Artificial Intelligence and the Rise of Robots". The panelists were Rodney Brooks (MIT), Abhinav Gupta (CMU), and Andrew McAfee (MIT). The video is available. Robophobia was one of the main themes.

Boko Haram has stated openly they are an Islamic group and are trying to form an ISIS like African Caliphate . What more do you need to see the truth?

Have a look at http://www.cfr.org/nigeria/bok... . Yes, Boko Haram is a very violent and abhorrent group (or rather a set of groups) right now, but they weren't always like that. Their current actions also have little or nothing to do with Islam (a bit like how "spreading democracy" had little to do with the Iraq war). At the same time, the Nigerian "Joint Task Force" of Nigerian police, army and private security forces (primarily funded by oil companies) is regularly accused of "summary executions, use of excessive force, and widespread arrests of suspected extremists, many based on little or no evidence" (words of the US Department of State, not mine) in the Niger delta (where Boko Haram is active). The paragraph in which that sentence appears also sketches the situation after 2009 (when Boko Haram became violent) quite well.

The JTF has been active since 2003 though, and some people directly argue (albeit in a mess of many missing/broken links that make it hard to check several argued points) that they basically made Boko Haram into what it is today with the objective of being able to justify the use of excessive force against them.

I still have to read up more on it from different sources, but from what I've read until now it seems that really has very little to do with Islam. It's just the banner they use due to their origins, just like we in the West (not just the US) justify almost all of our actions with "helping democracy", "supporting human rights", "increasing free trade" etc, even when that banner doesn't cover the actions at all. In many cases, it's mainly a cultural reference to something that the people involved (on the "aggressor's" side) can identify with as "good" or that they can relate to.

With the increasingly violent actions of some of the radical offshoots of Islam like ISIS and BOKO HARAM, how long do you think it will be before we have Senators asking for ISIS to be kept in check? And what if that look for ISIS extends to inside the US? Then what?

Oh, in addition to the other post, regarding the "expansionist policy" of the "evil Putin" I'd highly recommend reading: this articles published by the CFR (Council on Foreign Relations, one of the leading think tanks specializing in FR in the western world http://www.cfr.org/about/).
The article is behind a registration or paywall (that's nice of them), but you may use a2072188@trbvm.com as login and slashdot as password to access it.

The unit of the DEA that distributes the information is called the Special Operations Division, or SOD. Two dozen partner agencies comprise the unit, including the FBI, CIA, NSA, Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Homeland Security. It was created in 1994 to combat Latin American drug cartels and has grown from several dozen employees to several hundred.

SO the FBI, CIA, NSA, IRS, and DHS all work together to stop drug trafficers. There's a conspiracy theory if I ever saw one...

Oddly enough, when American citizens are killed by the thousands as a response to direct actions of their freely elected democratic government, its called "terrorism"

"Terrorism" is a method — targeting (rather than accidentally hitting) enemy civilians has been frowned upon since shortly after the WW2.

What you're saying is that anyone that suffered directly from decisions made by the US governments has the legitimate right of shooting down *any* american

I am saying nothing of the kind. My point was not, that Gazans all "deserved to die" because of their vote — I was simply responding to mrspooni's claim, that "Palestinian people as a whole are not Hamas". They are Hamas or Hamas-sympathizers and do deserve the burdens of war. Any other country in the region would've summarily killed (Syria, Iraq) or expelled (Kuwait, Jordan, Saudi Arabia) such people — Israel's restraint is, if anything, inhumane.

And now we can go back to those "direct actions" of our freely elected government, which, in your opinion, justify killing Americans. Which actions are those? Bin Laden's major grief with the US, for example, was — America's desecration of the holy soil of Saudi Arabia, which we defiled with our infidel boots. Is that a good reason for you?

Its not the hater's portrayal when you have western media covering it [...] Are you really convinced that Hamas has a super-duper propaganda machine that is bigger and more efficient than Israel's/US machine

Hamas has inherent propaganda-advantages:

• they are the underdog, whom "low-information" spectators always prefer;
• their non-military policies (inasmuch as they are known at all) are Socialist, bringing every "low-information" bum with a Che Guevara T-shirt on their side;
• Western countries have a much bigger share of Arabs and Muslims now, than even 20 years ago — who all sympathize with their "brethren"

After starting — and loosing — several "real" wars in the 20th century, Arabs have given up on the "honest" battlefield success. They've switched all their efforts into terrorism on one hand and propaganda whining on the other. They are succeeding.

Shit happens when you bomb one of the most densely populated areas in the world, and they don't care.

Retaliation will hit any area in the world, from where thugs shoot at somebody. Israel's retaliation will try to hit the thugs only, but it is not, of course, guaranteed... That the area is "densely populated" should be the concern of the shooters, not of those, who defend themselves and their country.

If you look at military spending as a percentage of GDP, Israel spends 1.5x as much as the US.

If you look at military spending as a percentage of GDP, the U.S. in 1952 spent 2.5x as much as Israel does today: http://i.cfr.org/content/publi...

And in 1952, the threat of the U.S. homeland being invaded was much less than the current threat of the Israeli homeland being invaded.

Here's Heritage's numbers.

Federal entitlements are driving this spending growth, having increased from less than half of total federal outlays just 20 years ago to nearly 62 percent in 2012. Three major programs—Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security—dominate in size and growth, soaking up about 44 percent of the budget.

BUT interest on the current debt is also increasing the debt and along with entitlements, it is crowding out other spending.

The thing with entitlements though, is that most of that spending is on old people and is increasing due to our changing demographics.

But we also need to keep in mind that Medicare was expanded greatly under Bush in 2003, greatly increasing the costs. So lets not put all the blame on Obama.

We should also realize that the old people have considerable political clout - hence why you NEVER hear ANYTHING about Medicare or Social Security when the Tea Partiers are demanding budget cuts. That is why you can keep going back and every President of both parties has tapped into taxpayer money to buy the old people's vote.

Poor people on the other hand, have virtually no political clout and are looked upon as lacking moral fiber and deserve to have their programs cut. And why the attacks are continuing on "Obamacare". As a side note, my wife's clinic has actually started doing MORE business (and actually getting paid) because of Obamacare. See, when a medical provider doesnt get paid, they just pass the costs on to the rest of us in the form of higher fees. But that another post .....

Never the less, I see many many criticisms about government spending and vague references to entitlement programs and no mention of the true burdens on our government.

OH! War spending. Here is an interesting article about that and to make it short: nobody knows how much or how it is afftecing the economy.

After controlling for offshoring levels, our estimates indicate that H-1B admissions at the current levels are associated with about 5% lower short-run wages for computer programmers and systems analysts
http://www.cfr.org/united-stat...

No, that would have nothing to do with it, of course...

Well, the evidence would suggest not, since morons like yourself have been keeping their kids from getting vaccinated, and yet autism has continued to rise.

They have, however, managed to prove that failing to vaccinate does promote disease

Huh? What do you mean? How are those two things related?

If the Crimea had voted against the Act of Declaration of Independence of Ukraine they could vote for independence. Then they could vote to join the Russian Federation.

Please Joe, there's a difference between "assurance" and "guarantee", besides it being an unratified agreement

The difference being that in the case of assurances if one country breaks the agreement the other countries are not bound to come to Ukraine's aid. Had it been a guarantee they would have been. So you are saying it is ok to tell a country what you want to get them to give up their nuclear weapons and then ignore the agreement when it suits you. I don't agree.
How about this quote from the text of the memorandums

The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America reaffirm their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, and that none of their weapons will ever be used against Ukraine except in self-defence or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations;

Repeat after me: this is not an invasion.

The Kariv pack is about troops on bases and not in the countryside. They may be justified in Sevastopol but not the rest of the Crimea. It became an invasion the second troops left Sevastopol.
 

the *democratically elected* president of Ukraine asked Russia to use military force

You mean the president who attempted to go against the wishes of the people in signing the trade deal with Russia instead of the one with the EU. The president who used troops to kill 83 Ukrainians. The president that was removed from power by the democratically elected parliament? The Ukrainian parliament has 450 seats of which 380 voted for removal. When the parliament removed him from office he had no authority to authorize foreign troops on Ukrainian soil. Viktor Yanukovych was democratically elected and democratically removed.
I also like how you edited the last quote. Here it is in full;

Sergei Aksenov, the pro-Russian prime minister of the Crimea region, has declared that he is in control of all military, police and other security services in the region. But he appealed to Russia's president for help in keeping peace there.

Hiding something? Maybe the Prime Minister is trying to take advantage of the turmoil to get what he wants but not necessarily what the people want. I doubt he was elected with Russian troop deployments in the minds of the voters.

By the way, here is a quote from one of your http://www.wnd.com/2014/03/oh-...">referenced articles

Yeltsen also signed in 1994 the Budapest Memorandum, which was to guarantee the territorial integrity of Ukraine.

No. That is not what is happening. Almost all the proposed reductions are to fighting troops. Almost no cuts are to the bloated defense bureaucracy that make up the core of the MIC's revolving door. Hagel wants to reduce the muscle while protecting the belly fat. He is going about it all wrong anyway. Rather than trimming a little here, and a little there, it would be much better to completely eliminate a few big misguided programs. Killing the trillion dollar F-35 boondoggle would be a great place to start.

You're joking, right? We've been "trimming" from defense for the past 70+ years (now near an all-time low in defense spending):

http://i.cfr.org/content/publi...
http://object.cato.org/sites/c...

You claimed they destroyed EVERYTHING!!!!

No, strawmanner, I did not. I said they "practiced destruction of all" religions and places of worship. And they killed many people and destroyed many buildings, I never said they got around to destroying everything.

a) China has no official state religion

Since we're being literal, I'll go ahead and point out that this is not really accurate, either. China actually has 5 "recognized" or "official" religions. They are Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Catholicism, and Protestantism, and they consider the practice of any other religion illegal.

US militarism? Think again.

http://i.cfr.org/content/publications/July2013/010_national_defense_1948.png
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/mo-budget.htm

In the 1980s, the peak US military spending was 8% of GDP. OTOH, the Sovs pumped 15-17% of GDP into it's military.

But, you say, the US had/has a much larger economy than the USSR (and now Russia)... sure, because capitalism generates more wealth for more people than communism.

Oh, wait. That's what "economically fairER" means!

........... (Epic Fail on this blog/posting)

This nonsense, and other nonsense:

http://www.cfr.org/presidents-and-chiefs-of-state/killing-conspiracy/p31884

Oh, wow, doods, we need listen to a CFR stooge, or a Bretton Woods Committee (brettonwoods.org) stooge, or a Peterson Institute stooge, or a Trilateral Commission stooge, or a Group of Thirty (group30.org) stooge......

Why not just say, The Plutocarcy Says..... as opposed to having yet another paid-liar claim crapola?

About that "state doing terrorism" thing, here is a correction for you.

Spending too much time sitting on your butt probably kills more people than tobacco. Will we be seeing less of you? Probably not. Does it then need to be outlawed? It would appear you should support that.

State Sponsors: Iran

Hezbollah are Iran's pet terrorists because they do things like blow up civilian airliners, attack international embassies, launch rockets into neighborhoods and bomb buses in civilian neighborhoods. The list of terrorist acts that Iran has committed through their Hezbollah proxy is thousands of items long.

That you could possibly say they are anything other than a terrorist organization leads me to believe your either a troll, Iranian government agent, the most ignorant person I have ever met on the Internet or so deluded as to need checking into a mental hospital.

You should note that is only possible if the Iranian government gives in to its general inclination towards terrorism and hatred of the United States. (Talk about low hanging fruit.)

Who is al Qaida to you? ...Who do you think they are? Friend? Enemy? No idea? Don't want to take sides?

You should take that question to Obama, congress. As this post above, so graciously points out:

"Al Qaeda" is a term of convenience. The Libyan "rebels" were 70+ % Jihadi "Al Qaeda".

The Syrian "opposition" is 80+ % "Al Qaeda" - funded by Qatar and Saudi, for the same regional purposes, with a generous assist from these CIA heroes, that you rush to defend.

http://syriareport.net/fsa-al-qaeda-fighting-under-the-one-flag/
http://www.cfr.org/syria/al-qaedas-specter-syria/p28782
http://rt.com/news/qaeda-militants-kill-fsa-commander-979/ [rt.com]

They laugh at your ignorance, and they count on it.

"Al Qaeda" is a term of convenience. The Libyan "rebels" were 70+ % Jihadi "Al Qaeda".

The Syrian "opposition" is 80+ % "Al Qaeda" - funded by Qatar and Saudi, for the same regional purposes, with a generous assist from these CIA heroes, that you rush to defend.

http://syriareport.net/fsa-al-qaeda-fighting-under-the-one-flag/
http://www.cfr.org/syria/al-qaedas-specter-syria/p28782
http://rt.com/news/qaeda-militants-kill-fsa-commander-979/

They laugh at your ignorance, and they count on it.

If only there were some options other than nuclear fission and burning brown coal in an open pit!

Oh, wait, there are.

Here in reality, decentralized heterogenous power production would be inherently better for human culture and society, since it has less tendency to create economic disparities large enough to engender wholesale regulatory capture or militarization of power production, has fewer military vulnerabilities, and employs more working people gainfully (instead of funneling money to banksters), and would potentially allow a less expensive grid to carry more total power.

Solar, wind, hydro, and most importantly carbon-neutral biomass energy plants spotted all over the country on a true "smart grid" is the way to go. Solve dozens of social and economic problems while eliminating the pollution caused by burning petroleum.

Incidentally, I'm not the first to figure this out. Nikola Tesla talked about the idiocy of burning limited resources in 1915, before we compounded the problem by building terrestrial fission plants.

Try http://www.cfr.org/intelligence/fusion-centers/p12689 for the layers of funding, state "fusion-centers" vs federal "fusion-centers" ideas/overlap and other federal efforts.

I think the Obama bashing is coming out because Obama said he was going to bring about change that America needs and he even spoke out specifically against secret spying on citizens. No one (well few) think that a Republican in the Whitehouse would be any better since nearly all of the opposition against the Patriot Act renewals has come from the democrats.

http://www.cfr.org/us-election-2008/obamas-speech-woodrow-wilson-center/p13974

Bush' comment was something like (after Obama was elected, but not yet installed): He'll change his mind the more classified information he gets access to.

I *really* wonder what those in power know that we don't. Almost every politician, in almost every country, seem to think the surveillance state is a good snf necessary thing.

Obama Obama Obama. Enough with this partisan nonsense. Watch the documentary 'Enemy of the State', what 16 years old now or more, this surveillance is nothing new. You don't get to call yourselves the land of the free when you're being monitored around the clock in case you might say or do something upsetting to your betters. And no I don't care if terrorists are the excuse, if you're going to put the USA on a pedestal, hold yourselves to a higher standard than totalitarians.

I think the Obama bashing is coming out because Obama said he was going to bring about change that America needs and he even spoke out specifically against secret spying on citizens. No one (well few) think that a Republican in the Whitehouse would be any better since nearly all of the opposition against the Patriot Act renewals has come from the democrats.

http://www.cfr.org/us-election-2008/obamas-speech-woodrow-wilson-center/p13974

That means no more illegal wire-tapping of American citizens. No more national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. No more tracking citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war. No more ignoring the law when it is inconvenient. That is not who we are. And it is not what is necessary to defeat the terrorists. The FISA court works. The separation of powers works. Our Constitution
works. We will again set an example for the world that the law is not subject to the whims of stubborn rulers, and that justice is not arbitrary.

This Administration acts like violating civil liberties is the way to enhance our security. It is not. There are no short-cuts to protecting America, and that is why the fifth part of my strategy is doing the hard and patient work to secure a more resilient homeland.

Yet not only is he aware of the secret spying programs, he is actively defending them.

Ever heard of targeted killings of Americans using drones? http://www.cfr.org/counterterrorism/targeted-killings/p9627 The thing about helicopters is there is a pilot that you can shoot back at if your life is in jeopardy. And of course, the government never gets it wrong do they? http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/06/AR2007090601386.html

You just don't have the security clearance to view the evidence. And because such evidence will raise nasty questions about how it was collected.

Well, not all the evidence anyway. The fact that some evidence exists at all reveals important things about how it was uncovered.

For the purposes of illustration, suppose the US was able to listen in on a North Korean spy that had just delivered a load of man portable anti-aircraft missiles to an al Qaida cell*. If the al Qaida leader had told the North Korean spy that he had a plan to shoot down a passenger jet at San Francisco airport, and the spy reported that back to headquarters, the US could intercept that message and know about it. There might be enough information in the spy's report (to whom the missiles were delivered, where, when, what they would be used for) to lead to an arrest of the terrorist. But if the source of the information leading to the arrest was made public, then North Korea would know that it didn't have secure communications with its spies in the field, and would change its codes and/or communication procedures. If it did that, the US would lose its ability to conduct surveillance of the spies of a hostile nation, which would be a pretty important thing to lose. There can be plenty of conundrums that arise from this sort of thing.

* Manual found in Mali suggests al-Qaida training to use surface-to-air missile. State Sponsors: North Korea

Relist North Korea As a Terrorist Sponsor

...Pyongyang kidnapped at least 10 Japanese citizens and harbored Japanese Red Army terrorists since the 1970s. Until 2008, the Bush administration routinely cited the kidnappings and the presence of Japanese Red Army terrorists as justification for including North Korea on the list.

CRS cites reports describing North Korean attempts to smuggle conventional arms, including machine guns and anti-tank rocket launchers, to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (Tamil Tigers), a U.S. Government designated foreign terrorist organization in Sri Lanka. Those reports indicate the Sri Lankan navy intercepted and attacked three North Korean ships carrying arms in separate 2006 and 2007 incidents.

North Korea’s relationship with Hizballah, an Iranian terrorist proxy that is also designated a terrorist organization by the U.S., continues. CRS cites 2006 and 2007 reports detailing an extensive program by North Korea to provide arms and training to Hizballah. The training provided to Hizballah cadre lasted months and included officials such as Hassan Nasrallah, Hizballah’s secretary-general. North Korean trainers masquerading as the Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation went to southern Lebanon to teach Hizballah terrorists how to develop and construct underground military facilities.

You are the troll. And a very low-value poster. The Guardian link refers to a nano-diamond creation device supplied by Russia for industry, and which "western" intelligence tried to spin as related to weapons research. Here is the thorough debunking from Moon of Alabama. [moonofalabama.org] The "reporting" on nano diamonds was spanked SO BADLY by this blog, that all traces disappeared from press and punditry before November ended.

My posts do tend to have a very low value for perpetuating the lies and distractions used to defend the terrorist sponsoring and would be genocidal Iranian regime. I don't see that as a negative. The MoonbatofAlabama blog didn't really serve much purpose other than to provide another distractions to fool the unwary.

Vyacheslav Danilenko – Background, Research, and Proliferation Concerns

In the debate about the November 11 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards report, some have falsely implied that Vyacheslav Danilenko did not know anything about nuclear weapons, or that he worked solely on nanodiamonds from the beginning of his research career, even though he worked at Chelyabinsk-70 for almost thirty years.1 The open source record demonstrates that these statements are incorrect and that Danilenko was involved in developing and using inwardly converging high pressure explosions and diagnostic systems to measure their effectiveness vital to the development of Soviet nuclear weapons. As such, the open source record supports that when he assisted Iran in the 1990s, he was an ex-Soviet nuclear weapons expert. Given his background, Danilenko should have had reason to believe that his knowledge and expertise related to high explosive compression in nuclear weapons could be misused by the Iranians, even if he limited himself to advising on strictly non-nuclear weapon applications.

In his statement to the IAEA Danilenko denied helping Iran build nuclear weapons but he admitted that he could not exclude that the information he provided was used for other purposes. Despite his denials, the IAEA suspects he helped Iran more than he has admitted so far. . .

Russian scientist Vyacheslav Danilenko’s aid to Iran offers peek at nuclear program

http://www.cfr.org/energy/global-uranium-supply-demand/p14705

The uranium market declined significantly through the 1980s and 1990s because of the end of the Cold War arms race as well as a cessation in construction of new nuclear plants. Disarmament of nuclear-weapons stockpiles added surplus weapons-grade uranium to the market, which led to a price drop as low as $7 a pound. Much of the fuel currently powering U.S. reactors, for instance, was originally intended for warheads atop Soviet ballistic missiles.

...the fun part is that, for a while, this led to mining/processing companies not actually supplying the amounts needed per year. As the flow of HEU from established stockpiles was slowing down, this led the market price to spike - I'm still kicking myself for not investing in uranium-linked financial instruments (for some silly reason they don't just let people buy uranium hexafluoride like many other commodities ;-) ) over the last few decades. Note that recently, due to less-than-expected new reactor building, and a ramp-up in mining/processing, the price has stabilized a bit, but for a while there was a small fortune to be made if you read the supply/demands right.

I think that most of the problems stem from a number of issues:

1.North Korea resolutely states that what it has with south Korea is an "armistice", a temporary cessation of open hostilities which can be withdrawn on a whim, NOT a peace treaty;
2. as per 1. above, it has liberally sprinkled the south of hostile acts even recently, witness the sinking of a south Korean corvette;
3. It recently tested a long range ballistic missile by sending it flying over Japan, not the most sensible thing to do;
4.Given the UN embargo, and the geography, north Korea can only survive at the whim of two countries, neither of which is south Korea and/or the USA, namely China, and to a lesser extent, Russia.

I think that the pointy heads are not wondering if the present dictator is better or worse than his forefathers, or if he is stark raving mad. Anybody here thinking that the north Korea military is NOT thoroughly infiltrated by Chinese agents? My take is that should kim jong .3 turn mad, his life expectancy could be measured in seconds.
Another issue is closely related to point 3 above: why on earth the Chinese should have allowed the north Koreans to be so openly hostile to neighbours and the USA? it will cause trouble for them sooner or later. I am already flabbergasted that the USA, in a quiet sort of way, has not gotten to the Chinese ear that they could be apt to treat North Korea as their "renegade province" [pun intended], refuse any further contact with them, and invite all the ASEAN members to a quiet dinner somewhere. the only possibility of seeing south Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines at the same table should be sufficient to give them enough fits to squeeze north Korea into getting quiet.