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You're wrong, because the groups you're not talking about are conservatives, bullies, warriors for Christ, "freedom fighters" and so on. They *do* those things. ACT-America, Christian Action Network, John Birch Society, Oath Keepers, Justice Foundation, Christian Exodus, Agenda21Today, AFN, GOOOH, NCAUNT, WTP, TURF, AOF...are all violent right-wing groups.

But you'll never speak of them, will you? You'll claim that it's a "purely" left-wing thing, you'll wave your hands over the KKK, but wait a second, they're not the only group, now are they? (The Right-wing isn't stupid, they know the KKK brand is tainted, so they stick on a new label.)

In fact, you'll go into hysterics when their conduct is documented and reported.

And it isn't even limited to the US.

Yet you are entirely and utterly silent.

No word at all from you.

Oh, and one of your video was a fake.

But hey, I'm sure you can rant over a cake.

Pakistan's alarming social media death sentence

In a first verdict of its kind, a Pakistani court sentenced a man to death for committing blasphemy on Facebook.

...

A counterterrorism court handed down Saturday the verdict to Taimoor Raza, a Shiite Pakistani from the eastern city of Okara, for posting "derogatory" remarks about Sunni religious figures and the prophet of Islam's wives.

...

Ahhh, Islam. Soooo tolerant and open minded.

Meanwhile, let's bash Christianity - somebody said mean things about the artist that created Piss Christ!!!

If you look at the 7/7 bombers, or the Manchester bomber, they were heavily invested in British culture and most of our values.

I'm calling bullshit on this. The Manchester bomber - Salman Abedi - is the one with which I'm familiar. He was from a traditional, "super religious" family, according to his neighbours. Even leaving aside the matter of which religion it was, being devoutly religious is already antithetical to mainstream British culture - and the fact that the family kept up a traditional Libyan lifestyle after immigrating suggests that they didn't really take on British culture, except for a few of the more superficial ones, like football and console games.

Unfortunately, the aspect of modern British culture that he did take on was social-justice activism: he lodged a complaint about Islamophobia on the part of a teacher who expressed disapproval of suicide bombings. There seems to be a worrying, and increasing, alliance between radical social-justice activists and Islamist terrorists.

Sources: A, B.

the majority of murderers and terrorists in the west are... Westerners. [...] Look at that Ander Breivik guy. Killed nearly 100 people

Anders Breivik's shooting spree in Oslo was, in fact, the third-largest attack in Western Europe since 2001 (source). Of the top ten attacks in this era by death toll, seven have been ideologically motivated by Islam, one (Anders) was extremist right-wing, and the other two were unaffiliated or unclear.

So the majority of terrorists in Europe come from the 10%-or-so of the population that are Muslim. And within that, the evidence suggests (see Salman Abedi), the terrorists come from the small subset who are devoutly religious, never really integrate into their host communities, and react negatively to any criticism of Islam, or even of violence done in the name of Islam.

Name one American the Russians drone murdered.

I hope, you don't insist on it being done by drones, which Russia does not really have — and what it does have, it uses for intelligence-gathering and artillery-coordination only. But, here, I'll list a few:

• Joseph Stone, an American paramedic who was killed in eastern Ukraine on April 23
• Mark Gregory Paslawsky, the sole American fighting on the Ukrainian side of the war in the east of the country, died from injuries sustained in battle in the town of Ilovaysk on Tuesday.

You can also safely chalk up a sizeable fraction of American deaths in the Middle East to Russians — but we may not know the exact details of their coordinating ISIS and other terrorists against the US for decades...

Now, why is it indicative of anything? Why don't you list the Americans killed by American government — and we'll compare that to the Russians killed by Russia... Ah, you are an American — protected by these people you despise — and not worrying about what Russians do to others? Ok, do you suppose, all an enemy can do is kill? How about spying — on your country? How about lying online with millions of "voices" through hijacked accounts?

GTMO like prisons

Darling, GITMO is a tropical paradise compared to the installations run by the enterprise formerly known as GULAG.

Tell me about the Russian detention without charges + torture program.

What exactly would you like to know?

Now explain why would you rather have the CIA on your stuff?

Because whatever abuse you may accuse CIA of was aimed at the sworn enemies of the US and our allies, not US citizens, however politically active and oppositiony...

We don't really care that much when people insult the president, and we can think badly of such people or goodly of them. That part doesn't matter.

Some of us remember differently.

People aren't going after him for the rest of his monologue, which was also very insulting, and they don't complain about John Oliver or Bill Maher when they face the camera and rattle off insults with no wit or insight.

Yes, they are, and yes they do.

It's the explicit profanity, and Colbert knows better.

You only care because Colbert hurt your precious Turnip's feelings, and yet we know better, because of this one time.

Yeah, that's a tip-off.

Canada, Germany, Norway, etc. have higher tax rates for the wealthy

Top marginal income tax rates are about 53% in the US, significantly higher than both Germany and Norway. Worse yet, top marginal income tax rates in Europe start applying to people in the middle class, often barely above the median. Furthermore, comparisons to Canada and Norway, two resource-rich countries in favorable locations and with small populations, are invalid anyway; we couldn't run the US like Canada or Norway if we wanted to. The only really valid comparison of the US is to the EU as a whole, rather than cherry-picking the wealthiest European states. Otherwise, you ought to compare the US to at least the larger countries, like France and Germany.

and their MEDIAN incomes are about the same or higher than USA

Among industrialized Western nations, the US has some of the highest pre-tax MEDIAN incomes in the world. More importantly, the income tax burden on low and average income earners is substantially lower in the US than in Europe, and Europeans pay massive and regressive VAT taxes on top of that. German/Scandianvian style social welfare states are paid for by the middle class. (Note that the Tax Foundation actually understates US taxes.)

and WITH better social safety nets.

The US has one of the highest amounts of per capita social spending in the world, higher than all of Europe and most of the Nordic countries. Even as percentage of GDP (an invalid comparison because it's absolute spending in $PPP that actually matters), US spending is very high. Countries like Germany have cut their social safety nets massively because they found that generous social safety nets result in people staying out of the workforce. And the services you get from the government in Europe are shitty: long wait times, limited choices, demeaning rules.

We don't have to theorize, their middle is doing better.

No, we don't need to theorize. Have you actually lived in Europe? And I don't mean as an American expat with full access to American opportunities whenever you want to? I have. The European middle class is highly taxed, has limited economic opportunities, and is less economically well off than the US middle class. Much of the European middle class lives below the US poverty line (that is, when you don't cherry-pick Norway and Luxembourg for your comparisons.) The situation in Europe is grim, both economically and politically. And if the US were really as repressive and miserly towards the working class and the middle class, it wouldn't be the migration destination of choice for so many people.

And your plan as I said has no impact on what other people will do, or have been doing. China does not give a shit about your position, they care about economic power and growth (as well as protecting that power with Military).

China coal consumption declines for third straight year, and solar capacity grew 81.6 per cent, wind capacity grew 13.2 per cent in 2016 compared to 2015. The China excuse has lost its lustre.

China builds worldâ(TM)s fastest supercomputer without U.S. chips
Chinaâ(TM)s New Supercomputer Puts the US Even Further Behind

The next one is going to be 10 times as fast:
Tianhe-3 will be 10 times faster than the current fastest supercomputer in the world, the Sunway TaihuLight

And then you learn that DDT has become less effective so they are looking for another solution because of that.

Sorry, by African countries continued to use DDT with a net result less effective than you realize.

The BND works with the NSA. The BND really don't want too many people in the EU or Germany or German gov working out their skill set or what they do with/for the NSA.
http://www.dw.com/en/merkel-te... (16.02.2017)
So the constant political talking point of the "Russian" ip range, timezone, code litter is politically better to have in the international and local tech media.
If not Germans might ask about the quality of data protection and network security in Germany.
Talking about Russia keep Germany asking about new German data protection laws, German funding to counter all advanced private sector crypto, networks, security funding, domestic politics, jobs, domestic telco security issues.
Then reality finally emerges and the tech media talking points are exposed.

How well did the NSA staff educate staff in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK or even the now trusted EU teams about state of US crypto?
Would Germany have the ability given its funding changes?
"Germany to pour cash into mass surveillance" (08.09.2016)
http://www.dw.com/en/germany-t...
"particularly decrypting what the report calls "non-standardized telecommunications,""

Other nations still hire their crypto experts on merit so the institutional expertise in say Australia, the GCHQ is still good enough to work on what their national interests. Their staff will be directed to protect their nations mil projects, US mil exports, trade deals. 1950's thinking on working with the NSA will face reevaluation due to the national interest.
The EU and German staff are the real issue for US gov/party security. They have seen the insides of too many US brands and got generations of US experts to help them with any US device/service in use in Germany/EU/UK.
Could Western embassies in the USA be used as spy hubs to collect on the US as other nations experts alter decades of understandings and treaties with the NSA?
Who can the US trust to report any EU or 5 eye nations raw product collected direct from the US? Can the FBI, CIA, mil and NSA counter the EU and other friendly nations doing collect it all on US political and gov leaders?
The easy way to find out is to do a reverse look up of the collection product from the EU, Australia, NZ, the UK and see if they have collected from the same brands/crypto in the wild without NSA help. If found, many other nations have that skill they are collecting everything in the USA.

How good are all US gov/mil workers at stopping older generations of upgraded Tailored Access Operations (TAO) efforts on their own US networks from unexpected 5 eye nations hidden servers?
How many UK teams got placed in the USA in the 1950-90's? How many US gov/mil/political workers are still happy to work for the UK years later and what trusted US gov/mil position did they advance to years later?

Replying to the false narrative Russia keeps putting out:

I guess they would be defending Crimea and other Russia territory from attacks over the border.

There was nothing to defend since it isn't their territory. It's Ukrainian soil and Ukraine wasn't attacking Russia, let alone even threatening Russia.

However, since the Russian invasion and occupation of Crimea there has been wholesale arrests of Crimean Tartars, the television, radio and other Tartar news sources have been shut down, and their businesses stolen.

Got Crimea back,

There was nothing to get back. It wasn't Russia's to begin with.

got involved in Syria and seems to have resolved it

By deliberately bombing hospitals and civilians, yes, that is one way.

and installed his choice of leader in the White House.

Agreed. Putin did a fantastic job on the gullible rednecks in the U.S. which shows how far this country has sunk.

while removing sanctions and doing deals to boost the Russian economy.

Also agreed. That is what Russia needs most right now because with oil prices still being low, Russia just might run out of money in the coming year. We know the sanctions have been have been having an effect so Putin had to do whatever he could to make sure Hillary Clinton didn't get in since she would have increased sanctions as well as possibly provide military support to Ukraine.

http://www.dw.com/en/german-sc...

Christmas is a part of many cultures, so it must be taught at least as such (which is all that I want my kids to know about it). They deserve to be taught about the Winter Solstice and Buddhist festivals for the same amount of time, if any mention of religion happens, IMHO.

Turkey is an extremely moderate Muslim country. Erdogan is afraid and he does have huge problems all around, but there aren't any easy solutions when there are external wars with neighbors and internal wars with fundamental Muslims wanting more Islam in daily life and European moderates who can take or leave all religions.

I have faith in the Turkish people to figure this out for themselves. If they need help, NATO needs to be there. I am very, very, concerned that I haven't been able to reach any of my Turkish friends for about 4 months. They are probably keeping their heads down, since their family runs a liquor store. Yes, Turkey isn't like most other Islamic countries.

Though last time I was in Istanbul, we did get tear gassed. The army wasn't aiming at us, but we were down hill from some protesters and the gas stays close to the ground.

Slightly more realistic.

http://www.dw.com/en/great-bar...

> The EU let in 900,000 in 2014 and over 2 million in 2015, not Germany.

Wrong.
http://www.dw.com/en/two-milli...

> You are an idiot.
Are you gonna apologise since clearly you're the one who is wrong?

> FYI: I'm german ...
That just makes your ignorance worse, since its your country.

Correct; you could google it yourself, instead of asking me to.

And I would find one misleading news story. How is that evidence of a large-scale, government-controlled desinformation campaign?.

About 258,000 results (0.49 seconds), according to Google over here. Doesn't Google work over there?

Here's the first page, with sources ranging from The New York Times to The Guardian to Der Spiegel::
http://www.atlanticcouncil.org...
https://www.theguardian.com/wo...
http://khpg.org/en/index.php?i...
http://www.dw.com/en/german-me...
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
http://www.spiegel.de/internat...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08...
http://uaposition.com/kharkiv-...

You made a claim, you have flimsy evidence to back it up.

Since you're unwilling to look at any of the 258,000 results, I doubt that anything I can post is likely to affect your position.

http://www.dw.com/en/alice-coo...

There is always the devil you know :)

This is the kind of stupidity I see from American companies all the time. Here in Europe...

The business mindset between the countries may be different with different trade-offs.

Perhaps the USA is best at being "cowboys", breaking into new industries, while Europe is better at longer-term infrastructure.

It is common sense but, in the end, the person who tried to do this ended up being fired!

Keep in mind that the situation is way worse for the sailors, who will be competing inside of Guanabara Bay. This is what the water looks like. It is not unusual for sailors to get in contact with water - particularly, in the case of windsurfers. Check out what happened to this German sailor in a training event last year.

...and then, of course, there is the security situation.

The whole situation is absolutely ridiculous.

Yes, why not? You want to police people to see if they're spending it "right"? That's why we have so many problems with welfare programs now, and why welfare has high administration costs.

We already have that in effect, with the EITC. What improvements does UBI or NIT bring compared to EITC?

If we really had the political will to reform our social safety net, we could do it like Germany did, which is to consolidate our entire welfare system into a simple means-tested cash program, together with case worker supervision and a requirement to take jobs that the government finds for you. That system was introduced by the moderate left in Germany, and it has worked well.

Of course, why would we even bother? When you count government assistance, there is very little poverty in the US. While welfare is a big chunk of money and an ugly-as-sin behemoth, social security, Medicare/Medicaid, and ACA are far bigger problems.

Of course, there, too, we could learn a lesson from Europe, where governments have figured out long ago that the only way to finance a social safety net is to impose high taxes on the middle class. It's only snake oil salesmen like Clinton and Sanders that pretend we can finance this stuff by only taxing the rich.

It was all about bashing Monsanto — the "evil" company, that specialized in GMO seeds and holds thousands of patents.

European competitors in particular were so afraid of it rising, they started a PR campaign to mongering fears of GMOs. The campaign created public's perception so negative, some countries (France, Germany) ban GMOs outright and vandals attack growers. Lately Monsanto (and DuPont) must've started fighting back, because American media began defending the technology — even calling its opponents "anti-Science" (where have I heard that before?).

But now that a German firm is seeking to buy Monsanto, Europeans need to be disabused of their misconceptions too.

GMO-haters have nothing but FUD — they've heard it is (or may be) dangerous, but don't know why — somebody told them... See also "chemtrails" and "Trump is racist".

Unfortunately, even in the US food can not be labeled "Organic", if it contains GMOs...

Do you even read the news? You ignorant moron!!
Here's some news for you illiterate moron:
http://www.dw.com/en/austria-a...
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...

As for the rest of it, you learn some economics 101 and some money and banking 101. Its futile talking to an ignorant moron.

Here for example. The search term I used was "german inflation fear"

But there is a lot of concern about security at German nuclear plants. http://m.dw.com/en/safety-chec...

Good question, and I think this is because VW management has essentially escaped without criminal charges

That is only because the criminal investigation has not found any indications that they were aware. The people who were responsible will probably face charges.

What the ever living fuck.

From this page that might have been mangled by Google Translate for all I know wrt France:

The endeavor to identify its genetic fingerprints of a person when he is not a soldier killed during an operation conducted by the armed forces or related training, for purposes who are neither medical nor scientific or outside of an investigative measure or investigation conducted during legal proceedings is punishable by one year imprisonment or a fine of 1500 Euros.

The same penalties is the fact to disclose information relating to the identification of a person using genetic prints or to proceed with the identification of a person using genetic prints without authorization holder referred to in Article L. 1131-3 of the code of public health.

You are delusional. We don't want americans coming to europe, we want to throw americans out.

Oh, I agree: many Europeans are xenophobic, bigoted, and anti-American; you seem like a good example.

I'm referring to government policies, like the ability to study for free and the Blue Card.

It doesn't matter if you are a blue or red american, either way we don't want you here.

Well, being originally European, I could easily come back if I wanted to. But I left to get away from people like you.

It will be us in Schleswig-Holstein (North Germany), as we reached 100% renewable (for electricity) last year. And our friends in the north. Denmark are able to reach the same goal in a matter of years. By 2025 we will reach 300% of the electric energy production, which in fact would at least based on calculations cover all the primary energy used in Schleswig-Holstein.

Great, why don't you disconnect from the rest of the grid and use only renewables? Of maybe did you depend on coal plants to make your 'renewables' feasible?

You're almost right, but it isn't a coal dependency.
They're not going to disconnect from the grid because that would cut them off from Norway.
http://www.dw.com/en/norway-to...
http://www.tennet.eu/nl/grid-p...

>Weren't the Fukushima reactors by Westinghouse, and of American design?

NO. I believe one and three were the early GE torroid at the bottom designs, two was Japanese, hitachi I think. The GE's are less robust than later designs.
Two was probably leaning towards taking more effort to control since it used MOX (mixed oxide) fuel. After being bombarded some of the inert portion of the fuel is bred into material that's more active than the active portion (gives off an additional neutron when hit by one)

One of the cleanup concerns is that experiments have shown that the mix of melted fuel and boron (neutron absorbing material to poison reaction) isn't a uniform mix, but it more stratified in layers. The increases the chances of critcality bursts during removal. It means they'll probably have to do things like keeping it all covered in a solution loaded with boron (boric acid etc). It's very messy business.

There was a coverup in France where the situtation in 2014 was more serious than reported. The control rods jammed and the only way to shut down was with lots of boric acid. Few in the U.S. say anything about whether MOX fuel is used. Generally the reactors were made for it. Some need additional control rods to be able to use it. Using MOX fuel makes use of the alternate oxides obtained in recycling spent fuel, and from retired weapons.
Germany, which has already started a planned phase-out of NPPs, has many not too happy about the nearby French plant, or a Belgian plant running with cracked containment. (The later pressed into use due to a shortage of generating capacity)

http://www.dw.com/en/reports-f...

Japan had all, more than 50, plants offline since 2011, with some just coming back online recently. It looks like being built on a fault is getting another one decommissioned. They've been getting by on natural gas. Most of the NPPs won't go back online. Besides meeting better standards, local goverments have to consent to operation. Also getting opposition, there are plans to build FORTY coal-fired plans. Mercury levels in Mid-west U.S. rainfall have risen in the last decade, and are mostly attributed to air from China. Virtually every lake in California has excessive Mercury levels, but much of that is due to it's use in extracting gold in the 1800's. Gold dissolves in mercury; the mercury can be evaporated in a furnace (exhaust separately condensed for recycling) leaving the gold. That process was abandoned due to the extreme health consequences for workers. "Protection" in the old days amounted to things like limiting workers to one week a month at furnace duty.

Three top utility officials in Japan are being prosecuted over their fault in the 2011 disaster.

Well then, you should welcome me to your club.. Your panic is duly noted. Wake up, white people!

Remember when I wrote that people in the UK and Europe were afraid of reporting, investigating, or prosecuting immigrants for fear of being called racists? You just demonstrated my point with your little race baiting comment.

Rotherham: In the face of such evil, who is the racist now?

The Yorkshire town where 1,400 girls have been sexually abused by Asian men is a byword for depravity – all because people wouldn’t rock the multicultural boat

Rotherham child abuse scandal: 1,400 children exploited, report finds
A 'new dimension' of sexual assault in Cologne
Germans outraged by mayor’s advice for women after raft of harassment
It’s not only Germany that covers up mass sex attacks by migrant men... Sweden’s record is shameful

Racist alarmism is much more fun.

When did Islam become a race? Oh, I remember, when it became a way for the Gutmensch* to dodge any serious discussion about cultures.

*New German word of the year:

"Gutmensch" was selected because, in connection with the current refugee crisis in Germany, it defames "tolerance and helpfulness as naïve, dumb and worldly innocent, as having a helper syndrome or as moral imperialism," the jury president, linguist Nina Janich, told the press.

There isn't much genuine "poverty" in the US anymore.

US: 1 in 30 children experience homelessness each year, citation: http://new.homelesschildrename...
Denmark: 0.001 % homelessness for the entire population (all ages), source: http://www.sfi.dk/rapportoplys...
Germany: 0.003 % homelessness for the entire population (all ages), source: http://www.dw.com/en/homeless-...

FYI; 1 in 30 = 0.03, meaning the US has 10 times as many homeless children, as Germany have homeless people in total...
(Yeah, I'm not sure all these numbers of perfectly comparable, feel free find better ones)

And yes, families homeless families probably more of an issue in eastern Europe. But they are taking serious steps to do something about it.
US certainly has the resources to fix homelessness, but chooses not to do so! Poverty is still an issue, because as a country you've decided not to help the poor.

WTF is this suposed to be??!? Some half-assed attempt to blurr the real issue? The new epitome of the Chewbacca defense? Seriously?

Who the fuck cares about some marginal greenhouse gas per calorie consumed ratio when meat 'production' is proven to have an abysmal eco-balance-sheet over all??
Water polution, megacorp-driven livestock food monoculture, pathogens, the meat-industry driven anti-biotics disaster, etc.

Water polution with meat production alone is actually close to that of a chemical plant.

The truth is, no matter how you spin it, the eco-balance of meat production is abysmal. Period.

Letuce is a filler - you don't eat it for calories. Calories per weight wise letuce is a serious underperformer.
That's what potatoes or plant proteins are for. Or meat, if you prefer.

More and more people are cutting back their meat consumption and vegan is the new vegetarian. Because our planet is going to hell and meat and its production has become dangerous for your health.

Bottom line:
This article is meat industry propaganda non-sense and beyond pointless for any reasonable debate on the real issues of mass-meat production.

"Germany doesn't have "police brutality"

Almost a million Google hits for "police brutality in germany"

So the 2000 complaints each year about police brutality are not true?

http://www.dw.com/en/preventin...

Just because they post with real names (do they really?) doesn't prevent people from using hate speech on Facebook. The times when people used to act with more civility on the Net because they used their real names are long gone.

However, the bogus software and lawsuits extend beyond the US. Canada and Australia, for instance. http://www.dw.com/en/lawsuit-t...

1st) Europe should force the wealthy ME countries like the UAE to take these refugees. There are plenty of extremely wealth muslin countries. They should be able to take these refugees in. These countries usually have very poor human rights records but, if you are desperately fleeing a war to save your family, can you really afford to be so picky?

2nd) DW is estimating that the refugee crisis will cost Germany alone 10 billion euros this year. If we are talking about that kind of money, I have a cheaper option. Use the EU military power to set up safe zones in Libya and Syria and send all the refugees to those areas. In the case of Libya, there would be plenty of oil to fund the new administrative area and provide good services to the refugees.

3rd) Sit down with Turkey and sort out the Kurdish issue. Create a new Kurdistan encompassing the Kurdish regions in Syria and Iraq and set up military bases in this new country. This would give us a safe territory to send at least some of the refugees back to.

All of these, in my opinion, are much better options than taking all these refugees in. The only people who are profiting from this are the people smugglers. Each migrant/refugee Europe takes in provides the incentive for more people to attempt the perilous journey. If there was 100% failure rate and everybody who arrived was sent back, nobody would attempt to get to Europe

Unfortunately, while some do, many loud and prominent ones do not. Greenpeace is the most obvious example. See especially their opposition to ITER: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/press/releases/ITERprojectFrance/, http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/nuclear-reaction/lockheed-martins-compact-nuclear-reactor-yet-/blog/51074/, http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/22/fusion_greenpeace_no/.

The Sierra Club which is in many ways more moderate than Greenpeace weakly opposes such fusion also http://www.sierraclub.org/policy/energy/nuclear-power, and while their main argument is that it is too expensive compared to more conventional renewables, they also cite "The dangers posed by the probable releases of tritium used by fusion plants, the problems with decommissioning these plants" which only makes sense if you both don't fully understand how little tritium is being used and how think that the plants will be highly radioactive like conventional fission plants.

Sortir du nucléaire, one of the major French anti-nuclear groups are basically treating ITER and fusion in general very close to how they treat fission power. See e.g. http://www.dw.com/en/france-wins-nuclear-fusion-plant/a-1631650

The environmental movement has done a lot of good and continues to do a lot of good. But there is a definite anti-technology bent in some parts and general anti-nuclear bent which is very unfortunate. There are some environmentalists who understand the potential benefits of fusion and how it is different than fission power, but it is definitely not all of them and certainly doesn't include some of the most prominent organizations.

Actually, his support in polls is down to 45%. His "strong economic record" was built on the back of high oil prices and hence is steadily falling apart in this new low price regime.

The estate tax is only one source of discontent. The natives really could care less about it, their biggest gripe is the continued destruction of their lands for oil extraction and power generation. The unions are mad at Correa's attempts to strip them of their power. Senior citizens groups are mad about cuts to pensions. And lots of people in general are mad at his attempts to repeal term limits and his actions against free speech, an independent press and an independent judiciary that have made Ecuador's global rankings in these regards plummet during his term.

It sounds laughable, but a lot of accidents DO happen and they DO cause harm to people. There are plenty of places that either already have laws in place or they're working towards them. See here and here for more info.

I remember reading a while back about drunk cycling being a commonplace issue in Russia, to the extent that authorities began considering requiring licenses for riding a bike (similar to the way driving licenses work). I can't find a source for it now, so take that with a grain of salt.

If cycling is to become popular enough to displace driving to any significant degree, we need to take whatever impact it may have seriously.

Funny you mention that. I was recently looking at the products of this company, which makes their own sort of 'wifi cellphone', as it were.

Apparently, they've been around for some time now. I don't think this industry is "dead," either...