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wrong, get a refund on your history lessons, radical islam not responsible for Pakistan but rather push lead by All-India Muslim league which was concerned with rights for muslims and also by the way led in promoting the democratic process for Pakistan.

only about 15 of the populace of Pakistan would be "radical" by any standard. The rest are "hippy muslims" that drink, smoke (and not just tobacco), watch porn, gamble etc.

I'm not sure you are defining "radical" the same as we would in the western world. Does support for punishing blasphemy and apostasy with the death penalty count as "radical"?

Shahbaz Bhatti was Pakistan's Minister for Minorities Affairs and he made his opposition to the blasphemy laws known, and he was assassinated in 2011.
Salmaan Taseer was the Governor of Punjab and he made his opposition to the blasphemy laws known. He was assassinated by his own security guard once again in 2011.

Now, before you declare that assassinations are often a fringe movement, lets look at the treatment of the guard that killed Taseer. Nearly 500 clerics praised the murder and called for a boycott of Taseer's funeral.

Also take a close look at the blasphemy cases brought up regularly in Pakistan. Very often the accused don't make it to trial or execution before they killed by an angry mob, or while under police 'protection'.

There are moderates in Pakistan that are opposed to the same radicals that we are. People like Sabeen Mahmud, Salmaan Taseer, Shabaz Bhati, and Benazir Bhutto all share many of our more moderate and tolerant views and values. The severity of the problems in Pakistan though are revealed in that same list as those moderates are increasingly ending up dead like EVERYONE in that list. We have survivors as well, like Malala Yousef, the young school girl shot in the face on her bus by the TTP. Of course, she is carying on from Britain right now because the TTP have sworn to finish her off should she return.

Oh, and it should be noted that everyone on that list save Shabaz Bhati were muslims as well. The severity of the extremism in that ?15%? is staggering and I also seriously question that the percentage is fairly characterized as merely 15%.

Moral equivalence ! Also known as the idea that stoning women and mining oil is the same : they're "both bad", and there really isn't any more to say on the subject than that. This absurd pseudo-atheist Jacobian standard must die (The Jacobins were famous for their absolute standards of good and evil, and magnitude doesn't matter. Stealing a loaf of bread is evil and so is massacring a kindergarten, and they're really just the same thing. This is the same thing here).

Ironic, and not in the funny way, that you should mention stealing a loaf of bread. In 1997, an American citizen was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for stealing a loaf of bread, and only released after serving 13 of those years due to an appeal by Stanford Law School's Three Strikes Project. His previous two convictions were in the previous decade before that, stealing a purse and trying to rob a man on the street, neither involving weapons or violence. The country that imprisoned him? The United States. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/17/gregory-taylor-homeless-m_n_684828.html

And if you might be hoping the above has to be some kind of "exception to the rule", I'm sorry, read this one: http://www.eurasiareview.com/29032013-you-have-the-right-to-remain-silent-the-united-police-states-of-america-oped/

That by and large I like the Americans I've met and talked with, makes me all the sadder that their government has turned - and continues to turn - oppressive and violent. Yeah, you guys aren't Evil. But you've been "paving the road with good intentions", and America never seems to be one for doing anything by halves when it could shake the world instead. Well, consider us shaken.

North Korea is not like a child, it's like a watchdog on a chain, guarding China's backyard.

If you don't understand that China is sending a 'get off my lawn' message to the US via the North Korean leadership, you're missing the point.

There are many articles on this, and laying the timing of all these NK threats and actions next to important events in the SE Asian sphere paints a pretty clear picture. E.g. this nuclear test is probably a reaction to the large joint SK-US military exercise going on.

First starting point I found:
http://www.eurasiareview.com/25012013-is-north-korea-chinas-secret-weapon-analysis/

This is a fantastic question, and indeed, the first question that ought to be asked in any discussion about Syria.

First of all, the idea that a revolution in a Muslim country would be anything even close to the Velvet revolution in Czechoslovakia (which resulted in Czech & Slovakia amicably separating) is one of the most inane assumptions anyone could make of Muslims. In Tunisia, where the Arab Spring started, this is what is going on today - from a country that was always assumed to be very Westernized, and far from Islamic, thanks partly to the efforts of its ex ruler Ben Ali. I'm no fan of Muammar Gadaffi, but in Libya, the way he was lynched pretty much demonstrated that those replacing him are no better than he was. In Egypt, the end of Mubarak has also meant an Islamic regime is on the verge of taking over that country, suppressing the Copts even more, and if they have their way, restarting their jihad against Israel. All the ignoramuses in the West who support these 'democratic' movements seem blissfully unmindful of the fact that these movements are also supported by al Qaeda. Reason is simple - what those people want is not political pluralism, and DEFINITELY NOT religious pluralism. What they want is Shariah states in their countries, and if there happen to be non Muslims there, to hell with them. Already, Christians have fled the newly US established 'democratic' Iraq for Syria, which they are now starting to flee for Lebanon. In Egypt and Tunisia too, Copts & Jews are getting ready to flee, if they haven't done so already. And if the Sunnis lose, retribution like the one by Gen Hafez al Assad in 1982 in Homs is likely to follow. So it's a struggle for survival for both sides.

The Arab League was pretty happy to support these 'democratic' movements in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, but a funny thing happened in Bahrein. Since that country is 75% Shia, the Arab league, which now has only one Shia government in it - Iraq - doesn't want democracy there. So when the Arab Spring spread there, the Arab League was quick to propagandize that that actually was an Iranian attempt to take over the country via its Shia proxys, and the Saudis sent in troops to prevent their monarchy from collapsing.

In Syria, what the Arab League alleged about Bahrein is even more true about Syria - in the converse sense. This is not an 'Arab Spring' type revolution, like in Eypt, Libya and Tunisia (where Jihadi elements came to power). It is a power struggle between the Sunni majority in that country, backed by Saudi Arabia and Turkey, vs a non Sunni coalition of Alawites, Druze, Syrian Christians and others led by the Baath party, and backed by Iran and Hizbullah. In short, it is a civil war, where both sides have everything to lose. If the Alawites lose, they will be massacred - already, there have been reports of Syrian Christians, Alawites and Shia being driven

Dr. Majid Shahriari, Dr. Fereydoon Abbasi, Dr. Massoud Ali-Mohammadi, Darioush Rezaeinejad, Dr. Ardeshir Hassanpour. Those are just the known ones.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/killing-irans-nuclear-scientists/story?id=14152453
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11860928
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2010/11/201011297228879910.html
http://www.eurasiareview.com/03102011-ahmadinejad-accuses-iaea-of-releasing-list-of-iranian-scientists/

The US Government? As of late, that has become a sort of pipe dream. We have revolutions and protests happening to try and secure more democratic ideals and oust the dictatorships and autocracies in Egypt, Iran, and several other prominent Arab/Muslim countries and states, but here in the US we are seizing innocent people's web sites and then pretending it didn't happen, enacting legislation that singles out groups of people by racial profiling them, have senators and governors trying to repeal health care reform, and are trying to find ways to change our laws and/or constitution to prohibit the free press and make it so they can't leak sensitive information anymore without facing jail time and possible treason charges, while we still have a "secret" government prison open at Guantanamo Bay holding prisoners against their will with no charges or due process, one of which died recently after 9 years of captivity, while we hold Bradley Manning in solitary confinement, possibly torturing him because he saw something wrong and decided it was horrible enough that the PEOPLE needed to know about it.

Where the fuck do I live again?

"they just figure out a way to make a shell company to hide the dangerous stuff in"

There are good precedents for this. Look at what happened after Bhopal (another non-accident that has striking parallels to Macondo well explosion).

Watch in slow-motion, the astonishing sleight-of-hand that magically makes liabilities disappear:

the UCC played strategy deftly unbeknownst to the learned Judges. It sought permission to sell its holding of 50.9 per cent in UCIL to an Indian company and use the proceeds to establish a trust, hospital, etc. The court approved it in May 1994 and the sale was put through by November 1994. It looked like a charitable gesture ... By this act of divestiture, UCIL had become a wholly Indian company. It had washed its hand off any Bhopal liability!

At this stage, the GOI should have taken precaution. ...

UCC itself would get out of the net in the next round. This was when it was taken over by Dow Chemicals in 2001. While this corporate change was taking place, there was no attempt to provide for the liability of UCC relating to Bhopal. Since UCIL had already been sold to an Indian group, Dow would not have bothered about Indian claims. ...

Normally multinationals take cover under corporate veils where identities are obfuscated or jurisdictions confused. In the case of UCC, it was both. They took cover for some time and, when the going was good, they sold themselves in bits and pieces leaving no trail for liability.