Slashdot Mirror

I'm glad they released all this material, because *this* is chock-full of useful info....

https://www.cia.gov/library/re...

Yes the fun of foreign remote viewing. Stargate Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://www.cia.gov/library/re...

The largest religious group in Germany is "no religious affiliation".

From CIA World Factbook:

Protestant 34%,
Roman Catholic 34%,
Muslim 3.7%,
unaffiliated or other 28.3%

Or wikipedia:

Christianity is the largest religion in Germany, with an estimated 59.4% of the country's population in 2015 (66.8% at the 2011 census).

Elected officials in the U.S. aren't evaluated for security clearance, they are granted access to the information by virtue of being in the position. More info here and here.

The male Russian life expectancy is actually around 64. It dipped mid 90s but has rebounded up to 64.7.

of the book of faces.

It's a book of faces after all, not a book of facts.

For that, we have the CIA World Factbook https://www.cia.gov/library/pu...

which interestingly is now confirming what I always suspected: That we have never been at war with Oceania.

In case anyone is keeping score at home, according to the CIA

Ukrainian 77.8%, Russian 17.3%, Belarusian 0.6%, Moldovan 0.5%, Crimean Tatar 0.5%, Bulgarian 0.4%, Hungarian 0.3%, Romanian 0.3%, Polish 0.3%, Jewish 0.2%, other 1.8% (2001 est.)

So maybe 1.8% black or African-American....err, African-Ukrainian? African-Asian? Probably not. I suspect most of them are just as white as the native Ukrainians and Russians and Polish people.

An interesting article about being a black American in Ukraine: A cop in Ukraine said he was detaining me because I was black. I appreciated it.

RTFM!

Yeah, and he's wrong too.

Why? The Russian government got what DNC has about Trump to be able to counter any arguments preemptively.
It is pretty evident that Russia supports Trump. I have no idea why but any propaganda from Russia so far have been in Trumps favor.

No proof but it's not rocket-science to realise that

1. Russia some pretty serious problems with Muslim Wahhabist Terrorists. Russia has a Muslim majority Counties on it's boarders (12,577 mi of boarders) Kazakhstan and a Muslim population in Azerbaijan, Other countries with significant Muslim population only one Country away include Turkey, Iran, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

2. Under the Obama (as POTUS) - Clinton (as SoS) the Wahhabists which includes the House of Saud, have greatly increased their power and influence. Russia has significant oil-gas reserves and petro-exports are a significant portion of the Russian economy so the Saudis are a competitors as well.

3. The Saudis have bragged about having financed 20% of Clinton's Campaign, in addition to contributions to The Clinton Foundation. This makes Hillary seem available to the highest bidder and Russia's pockets are very shallow right now.

4. Deep down inside Trump is a negotiator even though He talks Iconoclast vs. Clinton who talks negotiator but deep down is an iconoclast; so Trump can be worked with, Clinton not so much.

5. Personally I think Putin just plain hates Obama as a pussy-whipped piece of apologist shit and Clinton as a ball-busting Feminist Lesbian who doesn't know her place.

The worse that can happen to Russia with Trump in office is they'll have to put their expansion on hold for 8 years and the best is the need for buffer countries on their boarders will greatly diminish due to the US breaking the back of the terrorists or becoming the sole lightning rod.

This sounds like a joke, but in the case it isn't, do you have any links? I would love to read what they had.

It was the space program that was in effect before Johnson gutted it to turn the SR-71 into a bomber and the mafia started the rockets or jets jingle to try and get the country over a presidential assassination, Johnson actually did warn that there were guys doing absolute secret stuff after they took out JFK but that went unheard. Turning Blackbird into a bomber didn't happen, Jack Branham (Radar Man), wouldn't let them do it. OXCART was a space program that was building reconnaissance aircraft for the CIA and was intended to do that until satellites took over recon and then was supposed to be moved into NASA. Great uncle Jack Branham kept the program on the down low in USAF after he cancelled CIA SR until he let NASA take a look at it but they had already begun fabrication of the shuttle airframe, after that happened knowledge of it's existence began to circulate in the open. Very little about what happened back then out in the open and we lost my grandfather which is what ended the program in the CIA. This was per him in 1992 when I got to meet him after they had begun to wind down the program. RIP Jack Branham '96

Here's a FOIA doc on it: http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/...

My great uncle went by his handle behind everything, dude was a ghost so no there isn't going to be much out there and I have recently released information as to what was really behind the loss of my grandfather and it didn't have anything to do with the JFK hit, it was a repeat crime by the mafia. There isn't any documentation on it but you can go see for yourself in Virginia City there are museums and one of them has stairs that go down to the right, there are two underground river plugs there, one goes to Tahoe and the other goes to Pyramid lake north of Reno, my great grandfathers initials are on the one that goes to Tahoe and that happened a half century before we lost my grandfather on north Tahoe. Lost my father in 2013 so he isn't here to say 'shh' anymore like he did back in '92 at my great uncles place in Wisconsin which was the last I spoke of it, I am not bound by the national security apparatus so I get to talk about it.

just simple incompetence.

Wrong... It's Simple Sabotage.

You all need to reverse that old meme... The government is acting maliciously

Hey, some of grandma's recipes are pretty damn good. In fact the grandma that writes the best recipes should get the press card... I think that's perfectly fair, don't you?

I sorry, but you got it wrong. It's dastardly stupidity

Security theater is simple sabotage, a way to detain people, so yes, it does have a purpose.

Flying is extremely safe. The biggest threat these days is the pilot

Ah yes... Everything is working exactly as designed... Thank you for your, submission, yeah, that's it... Bwaaahahahaaaa!

No, seriously, thanks...

First off, China, in fact, any other nation, does not get to decide how we tax our goods. We decide that, just as they decide on their massive amounts of tariffs that they have in place today.
Secondly, while China IS America's 3 %, they are a SMALL %. Canada is around 20%, while China is 8%, which is not enough to care, esp. when China dumps 20% on us.
And again, EU has nothing to do with America's taxation on ALL OF OUR GOODS. And the dems will very likely be in control next term. My guess is that they will be happy to do the right things, if given a choice

Now, as to burning oil and coal by 3rd world nations, That argument is total BS.
The reason is that the vast majority of 3rd world nations do NOT have lots of oil and coal. As such, the majority of their electricity comes from Hydro. And if you go look at the emissiosn / $GDP, many of them are in the middle, not at the bottom. So, who is at the bottom? Mostly BRIC and South Africa but esp. China. These nation's increased their output via using coal and oil in inefficient and uneconomical means. So, a tax on all goods based on what nations/ US states they come from, would force them all to clean up their act.
Finally, by starting this LOW, and increasing it YEARLY, it gives ALL NATIONS and US STATES time to change. At the same time, this rewards those nations/states that clean up QUICKLY, or are already low and keep it low.
With this approach, it means that if a nation continues to build new coal plants they will pay a price down the road as the economy will slowly decrease. OTOH, if a nation adjusts, then they will be rewards with no taxes.

So, it is time for you far lefties to quit following foolish paths. Hell, even James Hansen dislikes what you fools are doing. He knows that you are destroying the globe.

I care neither how expensive it is to wire up the US as a whole nor how expensive it is to wire up Sweden as a whole. I do, however, care how expensive it is to, for example, wire up the New York metropolitan area and the Stockholm metropolitan area, or comparable low-density areas of the US and Sweden.

I don't give a fuck what you don't care about: the fact is that the USA has more people living outside of major metropolitan areas than the entire population of Sweden. If you don't think that's going to have an effect on broadband penetration numbers, then you aren't thinking, and no one should care what you have to say on this subject.

The USA has more people than the entire population of Sweden, period - heck, the state of Georgia has more people than the entire population of Sweden, as does the New York metropolitan area. The CIA World Factbook says that the urban population of the US was 81.6% in 2015 and the urban population of Sweden was 85.8% in 2015.

So rather a lot of the land area of which we have a lot doesn't have a lot of people in it, and a lot of those people aren't sprinkled all that liberally throughout that land area, and any thinking person would understand that asking how hard it is to wire up the areas where ~80-85% of the people live and how hard it is to wire up the areas where ~15-20% of the people live are separate questions that must be asked separately. The average population density of a country large enough to have Big Wide Open Spaces and dense cities is a statistic that any thinking person would realize is meaningless for any discussion of, for example, broadband penetration, because we're not talking about wiring up a country of an average of 35 people per square km evenly distributed throughout the country, we're talking about wiring up a country where ~80% of those people live in urban areas and ~20% don't. (BTW, Sweden's average population density, according to that World Bank page, is lower than that of the US, if you're into comparing statistics meaningless from the point of view of broadband penetration.)

So the first question is "Why is Internet service to metropolitan areas cheaper and faster in Asia and Europe than in North America?" The answer isn't "butbutbut look at how big the US is!" You don't have to wire up rural Montana to get cheaper faster Internet to San Francisco or Kansas City.

And it would also be interesting to see how different parts of the world do at wiring up their rural areas.

But people should just stop using "butbutbut look at how big the US is!" as a response to criticism of the quality, or lack of same, of US broadband. It's not as if all that land is uniformly populated; there's a very large variation in population density, so most of the US doesn't have a population density of 35 people per square km - most of it is either significantly above that value or significantly below that value. (Remember, the average human being has approximately one testicle and one ovary.)

"Wiring up the US for broadband" isn't a thing; we're not trying to wire up a large area with 35 people per km^2. For example, "wiring the San Francisco Bay Area for (better) broadband" is a very different thing from "wiring rural Iowa for (better) broadband"; the problems and solutions are probably going to be very different for those two projects.

They work in the CIA?

Plame's official CIA job title was "operations officer":

OOs clandestinely [emphasis mine] spot, assess, develop, recruit and handle human sources with access to vital intelligence.

[source].

What's more, she posed as a energy consultant when she traveled abroad. In other words Plame was what in the spy trade is called a "knock" -- No Official Cover. This means that unlike agents who pose as diplomats she was not covered by diplomatic immunity and was potentially liable to legal and other actions taken by target countries. The identities of NOC agents is one of the most sensitive pieces of information there is.

Robert Novak, the columnist who outed Plame, later started the meme that she was a mere analyst. This is a self-serving claim; had he believed that then he wouldn't be guilty of a felony under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. Movak was in effect pleading stupidity because the biographic references he admitted using listed a front company as her employer rather than the CIA. In fact in the column in question he correctly identifies her as an "operative", not an "analyst" -- a distinction which he was well aware meant that her job was clandestine.

The US doesn't recognize Palestine.

The CIA World Factbook does recognize The West Bank as a distinct entity, just not under the name Palestine.

Groups that believe that the West Bank and Gaza are a part of Israel, such as the Jewish Virtual Library, place the percentage of Muslims in Israel at 20.7% of the total Israeli population.

And how do you know they are not Muslim?

The summery said Israeli not Palestinian. The Jews wouldn't allow Muslims into their country.

According to the CIA world factbook, 17.5% of Israelis are Muslim.

No much different than of Predictive Policing, or Predictive Assessments, or Predictive Profiling, or Predictive Markets, or Datamining and Predictive Analysis and so on and so on...

News outlets keep referring to it as ungoverned. We were all taught to trust the news, so there should be little reason to research a fact that is repeated without being contradicted. Except, news outlets can be wrong.

News outlets have gotten very good at copy & paste. It isn't just within a single story passed around. They'll keep copy & pasting pieces from stories, assuming nothing has changed, and that the fact checkers at the previous publication did their job.

It's trivial to check with respected sources for correct information. If they did, they would see that the US resumed formal recognition of the Somalian government just over 3 years ago.

CIA World Factbook

US State Department

United Nations

First off, human want is basically infinite

You're running an extremely pedantic argument here. I'm going to make the completely baseless assertion that the average person could live a dignified life on $250/week. That works out to $13,000 per year. I've done it before and plan to do it again.

So let's head over to the CIA World Factbook entry for the USA. The population of the USA is listed as 321,368,864. There's a breakdown by age below that figure, and if we add up the population that's 15 and over we get 260,351,528. Double checking against the 0-14 year old demographic (61,017,336) looks good.

The point of generating the two different numbers is whether or not somebody wants to argue that childrens' parents should get an extra $250/week/child (this is dangerous imnsho) or nothing per extra child (not quite right either in my book, so let's pretend since I don't have an 18 and over population count that the 15-17 year olds represent some kind of additional income that would be given to parents per child, probably good to cap at 2 children).

Estimated GDP in 2015 was $17,970,000,000,000. (I'm not going to bother with significant figures here.) Now, IANAEconomist, so let's do one thing to that number: multiply by 68.8%, which was the portion of the GDP from household consumption. We get $12,363,360,000,000.

So, here is what I'm proposing: eliminate every welfare program in place (except healthcare, different debate), scrap minimum wage laws, and just give everybody $250/week. A lot of people will need to move out here to flyover country and that may upset the dynamics that allow me to assert that $250/week is enough to live a dignified life on. We'd probably also need to take up Mr. Trump's proposal to build a wall. Total cost given our two population counts to arrive at an annual cost of doing this: between $3,384,569,864,000 and $4,177,795,232,000, little over an order of magnitude less than GDP.

What I'm saying is that we don't need unicorns, rainbows, or Star Trek replicators (unless I've made some completely stupid amateur error because IANAEconomist) to be "post-scarcity enough" to implement a universal basic income tomorrow if we wanted to.

In before the "people are lazy bums who would just spend all day high on the couch" bugbear. (Frankly, when somebody runs this, it makes me think that they are not a very creative, inventive, or motivated person but like projecting their flaws on others.) People currently stay on welfare because the minute they obtain gainful employment, they stand to lose benefits of value that exceeds what any employer would offer to pay them. I have seen this happen first hand: somebody runs the numbers from their subsidized housing, welfare, etc, and concludes that they stand to lose if they start working. Trials of universal basic incomes show that many people keep their jobs because the dynamic is different: the basic income is in addition to what they earn. Other people innovate, showing a very important synergy with capitalism and the free market or become more involved in the community. As for the people who actually are lazy bums--there's nothing you can do about them. Better to house and feed them than spend upwards of $100,000,000 per year per individual by some estimates I've read (no idea the credibility there) on homeless services or incarceration.

My calculation may have been horrendously flawed (I'll expect to get flamed to death), but the point is that there are only two ways for an increasingly wealthy technological society to go: universal basic income Star Trek utopia or back to the dark ages due to wealth disparity. The only question is when the right time is to implement universal basic income. I'll accept arguments that 2016 isn't the right time; maybe 2030 or 2050 when I'll be retired anyway is.

It is not "incompetence"

In the United States, we have 2% agricultural workers. We export half our food; and textile and biofuel crop account for more than a third of our agricultural production. We import 17% of our food consumption.

That means 0.67% of the American population supplies 83% of the food we consume. Our major import sources include Canada (2% population is agricultural production) and Mexico (employs 13.4% of the population as farm workers, as of 2011). Canada has, by itself, 13% of the US food import share--leaving 5% to Europe, China, Mexico, and so forth.

That means the equivalent of approximately 1.6% of the U.S. population feeds the entire U.S. population. Let's call it 2%, and I'm wrong because it's *smaller* than 2%.

Here's the important bit, about technology, cut straight from Wikipedia:

Given the historic structure of ejidos, it employs a considerably high percentage of the work force: 18% in 2003, mostly of which grows basic crops for subsistence, compared to 2–5% in developed nations in which production is highly mechanized.

Developed nations--you know, the wealthy ones, not the blown-out backwaters what can barely hobble along on feudalism and haven't yet got running water working--are running 2%-5%, whereas less-developed nations use more labor to produce the crops needed to feed themselves.

You can, of course, lie through your teeth by using global numbers and including all those undeveloped subsistence farmers and low-tech societies to try to dismiss the impact of technology on a society's economic behaviors. It works as well as mixing bile into a pool and then claiming water is brown.

The economy in Northern Europe works because it's diversified with hundreds of millions of people working for millions of different companies doing tens of thousands of doing things.

The economy in Venezuela is in shambles because 40% of government revenue, 11% of GDP is based on oil exports. And oil just dropped from over $100/bbl to $35/bbl in less than 2 years. Diversification helps shield you from major fluctuations in a single economic sector, much less a single commodity. (A lot of the blame goes to the Venezuelan government though, for using those oil revenues for welfare programs instead of modernizing the country like Iran and many other OPEC nations do. Give a man a fish, feed him for a day, Teach a man to fish, feed him for life.)

Ironically, most of those oil exports are to the U.S. Venezuelan crude is heavy and loaded with sulfur. Very few refineries can process it, and most of those are in the U.S. So despite the hatred between the U.S. and Venezuela, the two are tied at the hip economically.

And famous chefs

Public Debt-to-GDP ratio:
USA: 71.2%
Spain: 97.6%

FIFY (using apples to apples comparison of public debt per GDP by the World Fact Book for 2014).

"So, the fact that Western economies make life longer...
Get your head out of your ass."

Exactly the kind of thing being talked about here: on these kind of topics people let them go by their gut feelings, even when hard data can be easily found.

Life expectancy at birth, years 1985-1995*1:
USA | Cuba
1985 74.56 | 76.34
1986 74.61 | 76.43
1987 74.77 | 76.34
1988 74.77 | 76.49
1989 75.02 | 76.53
1990 75.21 | 76.53
1991 75.37 | 76.59
1992 75.64 | 76.65
1993 75.42 | 76.65
1994 75.57 | 76.65
1995 75.62 | 76.65

So no, "western economies" doesn't make life longer and, in fact, USA has always done merely so-so in this regard: look at the OECD tables and you'll see it belongs to the awkward squad, and the OECD doesn't even publish data about USA's infant mortality rates, probably because they are outright embarrasing for a first world country*3.

*1http://www.indexmundi.com/
*2 https://data.oecd.org/healthst...
*3 https://www.cia.gov/library/pu...

Ok, two minutes of research on the Internet blows holes in your BS assertions:

Germany gets more than 36% of it's electric energy from renewable sources. It exports more electricity than it imports.

I ain't doing the rest of the homework for you, so go look for yourself at the numbers for the "INDUSTRIALIZED FIRST WORLD" for yourself. Don't forget hydro as a renewable source, either, because it is. Just because the U.S. has low numbers doesn't mean the rest of the countries are as stupid as we are. Renewables are here to stay and are a growing portion of the world's energy resources and will continue to grow. Your other assertions (without any credible sources other than your rectum) are laughable if they weren't so myopic and ignorant.

First this is a better ranking:
https://www.cia.gov/library/pu...

As you can see, the US is rated number 9 in the world. Not even in the top five. What you should know is that countries ranked highly on this list all have to take care of themselves. With no relevant exceptions, if the shit hits the fan... no one is coming to save any of these countries... they're on their own. And their spending reflects that.

You can't include first world countries in that ranking either except for the US because the US has treaty obligations to defend all first world countries. So naturally other first world countries spend less because we are obligated to protect them.

Its like would you build a pool in your backyard if your next door neighbor said you could use his anytime you wanted? Assuming that worked for you, then you'd just use his pool. Which is exactly what most first world countries do.

The only exception on the list might be Israel. The rest of the first world powers shamelessly mooch off the US.

Remember the recent Libya war. The French were much more gung ho about it than we were. We tried to stay out of it. But the europeans committed to it... and then they realized "oh wait, we don't have the logistics to support a military campaign even as close as north africa"... and that meant the US had to come to offer carriers, inflight refueling airplanes, and if we're doing all that we might as well just blow the shit out of Gadaffi's bullshit and end the whole farce as quickly as possible. The alternative was watching the Italians and French play with themselves.

Without the US, the combined forces of Europe could not take on so much as Serbia. Remember the Kosovo war? The combined forces of Europe could not breach Serbian airspace. Why? Because they had some old soviet AA missiles and the Serbs are tough fucking fighters. You want to defeat them... you need to do more than send strongly worded letters to them. And that required the US.

So what do you want here? You want the US to be as useless as the Europeans?

Look at this shit:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...

I mean... are you fucking kidding me? Fucking broomsticks. Let me tell you, in some shit hole third world country they'd not show up to training with fucking broomsticks. But in Germany in the 21st century... this is what we have to work with. And you suggest the US spend like them?

Your entire argument is wall to wall foolishness.

Vatican City? Before you claim it's not a country, the CIA apparently considers it to be one, at least in some ways, in its World Factbook. It lists the government of the Holy See and lists it last in the country comparison by area.

Maybe Switzerland?

Vatican City? Before you claim it's not a country, the CIA apparently considers it to be one, at least in some ways, in its World Factbook. It lists the government of the Holy See and lists it last in the country comparison by area.

Maybe Switzerland?

ref 1 ref 2

ref 1 ref 2

the human kind

SEX RATIO (MALE(S)/FEMALE) - at birth:
India: 1.12
China: 1.11
World: 1.07
E.U.: 1.06
U.S.A.: 1.05
source: CIA.

While there are more male than female births in India and China, the difference from the World's average is not so big as many people may thing (note for the "/." SJW's : i don't support killing females... o.k?!)

Oh my... do you really want to talk about the cold war?

Sure.

Yes, the US did undermine democracies during the cold war but only when they were seen to be allied with Soviets.

Seen by people with a clue, or seen by people who thought "willingness not to be hostile towards the Soviet Union" constituted an alliance, or seen by the predecessor to British Petroleum to be a bunch of pesky nationalizers?

Would it matter to you if I pointed out that a fair number of democracies were subverted by the soviets as well? I think not.

You are correct - it wouldn't matter because 1) I already knew it and 2) "they did it, too" is insufficient for me to overlook our doing it.

Would it matter if I said that the calculation was that if the soviets gained a foothold they'd use it to project power and undermine other countries?

No, because I'm not convinced that they would have gained that sort of foothold in, say, Guatemala or Iran.

The CIA World Factbook lists the fertility rate for Kuwait as 2.53 children born per woman, so it seems pretty unlikely that the average family there has 8 kids.

Meanwhile, the CIA (whose mission requires them to be more pragmatic and less capricious) has been pursuing a dedicated effort since 2009 to prepare for the [now inevitable] geopolitical perils that global warming will produce, and they have warned that global warming is the most significant threat to the national security of the USA.
https://www.cia.gov/news-infor...

Oh, and the intel agencies do have Entertainment Industry Liaisons. https://www.cia.gov/offices-of...

The NSA/CSS equivalent doesn't have a page I can find (not that I looked very hard), just an email address.

A few things:

First, Cuba's estimated PPP (purchase power parity) is of 10,200 USD equivalent or $850 a month. Low compared to the US? You bet it, but thats actually HIGHER than lets say Dominican Republic ($9,700), a similar country without a 50 years US embargo.

source

Second, you can't convert CUPs to CUCs and assume poor Cubans are living with a dollar a day, that would put them at the same level than the poorest countries in the world, while Cuba is one of the few countries in the developing world rated very high in the HDI.

source

The Cuban government subsidizes a *LOT* of things for the Cubans and as result it has created a huge mess of market segmentation where different actors pay different prices for the same product, in dependency of whether they are accessing a specific market (fully CUP subsidized, CUP free, social entity CUP, CUC individual, CUC government) and the currency fluctuations varies WIDELY, so just converting CUP to CUC at CADECA rate only gives you a small picture of whats going on.

Third, Cuban tourism industry is NOT 60% of the GDP... is about 6%.

source (Cuentas nacionales >> 5.7 PIB a Precios Constantes)

Finally, that $22 USD a month is based on the direct conversion of the average salary in CUC. That has nothing to do with average INCOME, which is relevant since there is a LOT of stuff going on in the black market and more or less everyone and their dog are doing something they shouldn't.

Other than that I more or less agree on the rest

Executive Order 12333
https://www.cia.gov/about-cia/...

(forgot to refresh...)

"constitution-based federal republic; strong democratic tradition"
https://www.cia.gov/library/pu...

Maybe you can reconcile the fact that China's literacy rate is 95% with your statement about how they cant speak mandarin?

Here the CIA fact book:
https://www.cia.gov/library/pu...

Literacy:
definition: age 15 and over can read and write
total population: 95.1%
male: 97.5%
female: 92.7% (2010 est.)

Here the world bank has it at 95% http://data.worldbank.org/indi...
So the world bank and CIA factbook agree.

Sure, both those sources could be incorrect because as you post, they never went to school.
You said the young speak mandarin while the old dont, but wouldnt that be in the CIA factbooks statistics as they are a measure of 15 and older?

Maybe you can look at the CIA factbook
Languages: Standard Chinese or Mandarin (official; Putonghua, based on the Beijing dialect)....

Since Putonghua is the "official" language, and they have a 95% literacy rate.. one can conclude 95% of them speak Putonghua right?

I don't know if you're getting your info from The Instutitute for Historical Review or Fox News, or somewhere like that, but we have the actual intercepts of communications in which Togo explicitly says to ambassador Sato that Japan is willing to surrender territories gained: Japan "has absolutely no idea of annexing or holding territories she occupied during the war." The War Department had these intercepts summarized/interpreted and ready for dissemination on 12 July 1945. This information was used and discussed in the run-up to dropping the bomb. We also have these discussions where the people deciding to drop the bomb or not considered the one request, to allow the emperor to live and remain considered "divine"; and we have the records of that committee rejecting this possibility. Further we have the Stimson memo that suggests that nukes be used to indicate to Stalin that he needs to slow down in Europe. Of course he knew we had the nuke, because his spies already had him building his own copy. Anyway, we've got all this info, and yet people still come back with, well, lies circulated by people who don't want to accept nuclear realpolitik. Here's the Togo-Sato intercepts: http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/.... I think you can get the rest of it here: http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/....

Regarding: Japan "has absolutely no idea of annexing or holding territories she occupied during the war."
I've never seen any indication that those words were actually made by Japan to Russia (or to anyone).
You should have noted from the links you gave that regarding asking Russia to negotiate a peace, "Hirota made no suggestion to that effect".

Look at the context of the intercept; it's just part of an communication from Tojo to a diplomat regarding what to say when making an attempt to keep Russia out of the US-Japan part of WWII, it's not actually an offer to Russia, nor is it an actual statement of Japan's desired outcome post-war. Read the whole thing again. In the other link you gave, "Another intercept of a cable from Togo to Sato shows that the Foreign Minister rejected unconditional surrender and that the emperor was not “asking the Russian’s mediation in anything like unconditional surrender.”

Keep in mind that the Allies had long made it clear that Japan could surrender at anytime.
Japan had that option. If they wanted peace, they could surrender. It's that simple.
The Japanese response to our peace offer, the Postdam Declaration, was for Prime Minister Suzuki tell the Japanese press the government's commitment to ignore the Allies' demands and fight on.

I do admit that I exaggerated - I do not know if Japan intended to keep all of China, but they did make it plain they intended to keep Korea, Taiwan and some other pieces for "economic necessities", and those lands that Japan considered to already should have been part of Japan.

Anyway, what I'm talking about the contacts and discussions made by representatives of Japan's Navy and apparently some of Japan's banks made in Switzerland through the BIS and Allen Dulles OSS etc.
These were independent feelers not officially sanctioned by Japan's government and therefore had no actual weight, but they did show that not all of Japan was in "fight-to-the-death" camp. However, the position taken by those persons making the feelers was opposite to the position taken by those in control in Japan and they were afraid of being called up for treason, which technically they were.
As far as I can tell the European feelers were disconnected from the Imperial government when Togo Shigenori became foreign minister after Hideki Tojo was sacked.

non-imperial government European feelers:
https://www.cia.gov/library/ce...

The CIA and FBI both have a very rich history of being 100% wrong on many things.

Here you have the CIA providing feedback on a book which reviews them very poorly (citing dishonesty).
https://www.cia.gov/library/ce...

Here you have the US Senate reviewing the CIA very poorly (citing dishonesty)
http://www.intelligence.senate...

Ironic that a "secretive and dishonest" organization counteracts a critical view of them as being "dishonest" when the US senate provides multiple examples of the CIA being dishonest.

So... the reason why the top infection rates for HIV seem like they're reserved for Africa is because Africa is a paradise for gays.

Yeah. You're making a lot of sense.

https://www.cia.gov/library/re... so that's not it