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Obama Admin spin to protect Hillary. There was no riot at all outside the Libyan embassy. It was a planned attack -- had nothing to do with a stupid youtube video either. It's about getting revenge on people who kill you. You'd do the same thing given half a chance to a Chinese embassy if China treated us like we treat others.

Anyway, the whole lie about the embassy is "anchor and adjust" -- tell a lie to get people anchored to an idea, then when the truth comes out, people will adjust their thinking to maintain belief in the original bullshit, like "a video is all it takes for an attack -- such savages!"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/20/obama-officials-spin-benghazi-attack

The pervasive attitude is, "bin Laden, a hero, was murdered, and by the very people that made him a hero."

Yep. That's the attitude. It has nothing to do with things like
"The US practice of striking one area multiple times, and evidence that it has killed rescuers, makes both community members and humanitarian workers afraid or unwilling to assist injured victims."
because that's a minor detail no one would worry about.

All the problems we are having with food production are directly related to factory farming.

We're not actually having any problems and the price fluctuations that are occurring are not caused by so-called 'factory' farming. The problem is that high yield agriculture is concentrated in too few places.

Consider hogs; 80.9% of all hog production comes from two places; the US and China. One is coping with an outlier drought and the other is dealing with a rapidly growing domestic demand for meat. That leaves the rest of the planet out in the cold.

The solution is rising prices. Nations and people that have complacently relied on a few "bread basket" sources of supply have discovered fresh motivation for producing commodities. There is a boom in S. American agriculture as a result. This phenomenon is planet wide.

This is ultimately a good thing. Less reliance on those few traditional "break basket" nations will create supply stability, to say nothing of the self sufficiency of new third world bread baskets.

You, being the rich, comfortable malcontent you've been trained to be, will see this as a tragedy, while you simultaneously accelerate the process with your ill considered policies. As with the evacuation of our industry, the evacuation of our agriculture to the third world has begun.

So go to work and dream up lots of new regulation for domestic agriculture in your home nation. Don't stop until anything more productive than a hobby farm has been eradicated. The rest of the world will take up the slack because people are going to feed themselves whether you like it or not.

I'd simply point out that UK high schools have surpassed their intro course and ask them at what point they plan to give you a better education in computers than a foreign government can give its kids.

If you really wanted to go the extra mile and spend a little bit of money on this "letter" you could buy a small SD flash card and spend $25 on a Raspberry Pi and work through this tutorial as you work through your intro course. Then when you're done you can get the Raspberry Pi to start and have the sole purpose be to display your letter to the staff. Just mail them the Raspberry Pi, the flash card, a USB to USB Micro cord and a short HDMI cable. Just write instructions to plug it into a USB port and monitor then in the letter explain how you used the GNU Toolchain and wrote the rest of this code yourself. It might be too much for some of the other students but it was cheaper than the textbook. If you can do it then your once great alma mater is selling its students short.

A letter can be crumpled up and thrown away. A Raspberry Pi can as well but I guarantee it's going to hurt like hell ;-)

What utter bullshit. May I refer you to this article by Naomi Klein:

The mainstream media was declaring continually "OWS has no message". Frustrated, I simply asked them. I began soliciting online "What is it you want?" answers from Occupy. In the first 15 minutes, I received 100 answers. These were truly eye-opening.

The No 1 agenda item: get the money out of politics. Most often cited was legislation to blunt the effect of the Citizens United ruling, which lets boundless sums enter the campaign process.

No 2: reform the banking system to prevent fraud and manipulation, with the most frequent item being to restore the Glass-Steagall Act – the Depression-era law, done away with by President Clinton, that separates investment banks from commercial banks. This law would correct the conditions for the recent crisis, as investment banks could not take risks for profit that create fake derivatives out of thin air, and wipe out the commercial and savings banks.

No 3 was the most clarifying: draft laws against the little-known loophole that currently allows members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations in which they themselves are investors.

When I saw this list – and especially the last agenda item – the scales fell from my eyes. Of course, these unarmed people would be having the shit kicked out of them.

I was never a card-carrying OWSer, and was typically disparaging of them in fact, but they certainly did have specific policy changes in mind, many of which I would say are pretty consistent with the agitators at (ostensibly) the other end of the political spectrum. So it is not at all surprising that those specifics have been largely obscured by the media.

uarter of a million Indian farmers that committed suicide because of Monsanto's GM

Indian farmer suicides not GM related, says study

new analysis suggests that if anything, suicides among farmers have been decreasing since the introduction of GM cotton by Monsanto in 2002...It also found that the adoption of pest-resistant Bt cotton varieties had led to massive increases in yield and a 40% decrease in pesticide use.

So stop repeating this false rumor, because you may be killing people by doing so.

What is the real reason for the suicides at all? Perhaps it is the state-owned institutions that dominate the banking sector and capital markets...

The report identifies a lack of financial support for farmers as a key problem leading many to borrow money from loan sharks at crippling interest rates.

Bad link above should be: Income inequality growing faster in UK than any other rich country, says OECD

It's Obama's fault for oversimplification of the problem and with his Democratic cohorts, Pelosi, Reid et al. for doing a lot of backroom deals to push bad legislation through. Do we all want affordable health care? Yes! Do we want to be able to make sure that we can get care for pre-existing conditions? Yes! Do we want 16000 new IRS agents enforcing the insurance mandate? No.

Ask yourself why an industry like the health care industry has seen increases in costs much faster than inflation? Sure, the number of uninsured has risen but also some of these deals that were made allow the drug companies and others to not be challenged in terms of their costs. They will continue to rake in record profits and are allowed monopolies in this country that they shouldn't have. You think software patents are bad? How about the prohibition of importing drugs from say India? You have a licensed monopoly and they will rape you for every dollar.

Electronic Record keeping isn't bad, it's bad when you have fraud already and you don't work on closing that out before you give crooks another way to steal from us all.

Also, despite the "grand legislation" there are more uninsured as of 2011 then there were back in 2008 when they started tracking it.

Almost 18% of GDP is spent on healthcare in this country now and in comparison to other developed nations we spend more than our peers. Germany spends 10% of their GDP on Healthcare with 22% coming from private spending, meaning insurers and the government pay out 78%. In the US, 17.9% of GDP is spent on healthcare with 47% coming from private spending. It's an industry out of control and the whole Obamacare legislation won't fix it.

So, I don't just blame Obama, I blame the Democrats and the Republicans, in fact all of these idiots in DC and the statehouses who have allowed this to happen to us. I'll be retiring in 20 years, probably into a cardboard box. Why? Because I'll get free health care and I won't have to pay any taxes.

There has been plenty of talk about jailing (or worse executing/starving) AGM deniers, so why is this a surprise?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2133771/Columnist-says-global-warming-skeptics-houses-burnt-down.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jun/23/fossilfuels.climatechange

http://www.climatedepot.com/a/1174/Update-Romm-defends-remarks-as-not-a-threat-but-a-prediction--Strangle-Skeptics-in-Bed-An-entire-generation-will-soon-be-ready-to-strangle-you-and-your-kind-while-you-sleep-in-your-beds

Facebook users don't care, and get angry when you try to eduucate them. They think I'm crazy,, but mostly I post inane rubbish just to keep the data miners off kilter.. Spam away!

Just don't post anti-big-government opinions and Canadian rap song lyrics if you're a military veteran, or you could get the "Soviet dissident" treatment, and get thrown into a mental ward without warrant or due process.

http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/citizen-warrior/2012/aug/22/can-government-detain-you-over-facebook-posts/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/29/former-marine-facebook-sue-fbi

Thankfully for Raub, someone caught his detainment on video and it went viral. What if nobody had taken video? Would he still be doing the "Thorazine shuffle" and drooling on himself in a tranq'ed-out stupor in some mental ward doing a real-world remake of Jack Nicholson's role in "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest"?

Scary times we live in.

Strat

state thugs snatching people in the night

We prefer the term extraordinary rendition.

Somehow my links didn't make it into the post.

CO2 and CH4 concentrations in the atmosphere: http://www.skepticalscience.com/methane-and-global-warming.htm

CO2 and CH4 lifetime in the atmosphere: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jan/16/greenhouse-gases-remain-air

That's old stuff: http://www.livescience.com/11022-herb-quells-cows-methane-laden-belches.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/7873998/Curry-for-sheep-could-curb-global-warming.html
http://www.treehugger.com/green-food/new-cow-diet-reduces-methane-emissionsand-no-its-not-mms.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/jul/10/ruralaffairs.climatechange
Even garlic appears to help.

Apparently this year, an Olympics spectator was arrested for not smiling: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/aug/08/olympics-spectator-parkinsons-arrest-smiling

This could get confusing...
Travel Agent: Alright, that about sums it up. But a little word of advice before we part; when you arrive in the UK, be sure to keep a smile on your face.
Customer: But isn't that illegal?
Travel Agent: They're a little different over there. Ya know, they drive on the other side of road and such and eat scones.
Customer: Hmm. I don't know. I was once tazed by a TSA VIPR agent for smiling and it wasn't fun. I pissed myself in front of my kids.
Travel Agent: Good grief! Things are getting ridiculous around here, aren't they. Have you ever considered Iceland?
Customer: ...Iceland. Hmm. Yes, that sounds good.

First, I am very grateful for Wikipedia and would rather not imagine the world without it, even though one need only look back a decade to do so. As a fine and powerful, but fallible tool, it is like the scent of carrion to conniving circling buzzards -- and circling they be! Ahh, yes, the skies are clear you say; where are these buzzards?. Well, Chicken Little has been thoroughly plucked and I'm not following suit. Instead, I'll drop this link (this one too), say a few things, specifically that I suspect there is a problem, and hope this /. article will motivate some capable Slashers to do a little digging and telling, if they will.

The first link directs to a Wired article on Virgil Griffith, a CalTech grad student who did a little forensic prodding, tracing the IPs of certain chivalrous Wikipedia editors. While such agencies and corporations as the CIA and Microsoft have been observed doodling gleefully about, a plenitude of other interesting sources have too. Certainly the CIA and Microsoft are welcome to make appropriate edits to Wikipedia; however, what qualifies as "appropriate" could probably use a good public review.

The second link is simply damned interesting, IMO.

Warning: Rant Begins Here:
It beggars the mind of a bumbling patriot like myself to conceive jingo-seraphim such as Petraeus diverting their genial hoof garments hither domestic. And surely fables of Mocking Birds are no true tales of conniving buzzards. After all, elaborate psychological conditioning could never compete with the unhindered purity of the American phenotype shining so brightly amongst a world lightless without. No, it is not intentional manipulation that deserves credit for the strength of our glorious consumer might. It is far more likely the intrinsic virtue of any decent ape-in-transition to be just as we are, or worse to be fair. Critical-thinking is a disease which must be mitigated by central intervention, by those who know best. For the masses would be lost in an endless banquet of sodomy and cannibalism without the guidance of Malthusian oversight to cull them. Without such counsel, humanity would grovel in the sorry wake of cretins like Tesla, reeling through horrid century after century of wanton growth, like a wicked and vibrant cancer that cannot be controlled, spreading beyond the sweaty grasp of central planning and anthropoid politics. There is a stark and deep Universe beyond the smoke and mirrors of our terrestrial slave'osphere. The iron hand that presses your shoulder every time you gaze into that forbidden abyss of the anti-ape, it only strives to protect you. Baby, it's cold out there.

because I have seen exactly *ZERO* reviews out there.

blind or stupid? it might help to look...pwned!

"Let's keep some perspective here. They only sell one model at a time. All of the other vendors sell multiple models at the same time. The implication is that this is somehow the leading phone ecosystem or some such thing. In reality Apple doesn't even sell as many smart phones as Samsung alone, never mind all of the other vendors."

If you want to talk "ecosystem", let's compare app sales....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/appsblog/2012/jun/10/apple-developer-wwdc-schmidt-android

"In March 2012, Flurry crunched data from developers using its tracking tools in their apps, and claimed that given the same number of users per platform, a developer who got $1 on the iTunes App Store would get $0.23 from Google Play."

Web usage....
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/02/mobile_web_stats/

"Apple's iOS devices account for 65 per cent of mobile web traffic versus Android's 20 per cent, or the two operating systems are neck-and-neck at about a quarter of all mobile web traffic apiece."

Or you can even talk profit....

http://www.bgr.com/2012/08/06/apple-mobile-industry-profit-share-q2-2012/

So which ecosystem is better for Apple, developers, and advertisers?

It is ironic that a company that talks freely about openness is espousing a closed ecosystem.

Exactly, but Google has been doing so for a long time. They are only little about openness while most of their stuff is actually closed source and closed ecosystem. They have both and in a way that always suits them better. There are in fact more closed systems than open, just see Google's search engine, adwords/adsense, youtube etc.. They only use and support open source when they can't be bothered to do all the work. In a way they steal from open source projects and hardly ever bring anything back.

For me this clearly looks like Microsoftesque move by Google. They try to limit the market and hide behind the curtain of "compatibility issues" when companies rightly call them out of it. But Google does not want to change. Instead, they cry like a baby and try to limit competition in China from growing too much. At the same time we have honest companies like Microsoft who actually adjust to different markets and continue providing services even if they aren't the number #1. Just look at Bing - Microsoft doesn't make a huge hullabaloo about it all the time, no, they continue improving it and providing it to users. Google cries like a baby when it isn't number #1 somewhere.

Just look at what Google did in Russian markets.

Google plays a cunning game when intellectualizing about openness of the internet, says one of the founders of the Russian search engine Yandex. Google’s primary weapons to hinder competitors are its Chrome browser and Android platform.

Speaking with The Guardian, Ilya Segalovich, chief technology officer at Yandex, has accused Google of overindulgent use of its dominant position on the market to shut out rival companies in cyber space.

The California giant's mobile platform Android is a "strange combination of openness and not openness," Segalovich added.

and here about dirty tricks in Chrome browser

Segalovich suggested Google was guilty of foul play with its Chrome browser, which he said made it difficult for users to choose rival search engines, including Yahoo, Bing and Yandex, over its own market-leading product.

"You cannot [send any code] to Android, it's semi-open source. You cannot send anything, just see and watch [how the code is changed by Google] If you download an application it may not work properly if it's not Android marketplace.

So in fact this is old problem with Google's products. Other products too... Hell, just look at Google+. It's a perfect copy of Facebook and a product that greatly emphasizes closedness. They are even more closed than Facebook as currently they only allow very few developers to be make apps and games for Google+. I mean it's been like this for ages. It feels like they've given up all hope about Google+. They're just thinking how to phase it out now that they made the whole thing such a big thing, like including it in search results etc. But Google+ is dying.

Android is about the same shit Google has thrown at us multiple times. They only open it because they used Linux as the base. They wouldn't open it otherwise. In fact they've even ignored GPL multiple times when they've been late to open up their sources as required. Android is only open because it has to be.

Google tries to close it, be no mistaken. They require you to pay lots of money to Google if you want to use any of the Android trademarks, logos or name on your product. You don't get any of the Google apps if you don't pay up and stick to Google's "standards" (which are there to limit competition, like in this case). You don't even get to give your users access to Google Play so that they could buy and download apps and games. No, you don't g

The slope is long and slippery

The slippery slope argument is usually a bad one.

Not in this case. There is evidence that the slope is not only slippery, but steep, with a tail wind and a hoard of Daily Mail readers standing at the top willing to give a good shove to any hapless fool who they can get their hands on.

Some examples:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ore aka "Sorry we ruined your life and made you die, but it turns out that your stolen creit card was used by pedos. kthxbye"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/12/nick-cohen-simon-walsh-cps-pornography-prosecution aka "Let's haul some poor bastard over the coals and wreck his life to test a badly written new law"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_Investigatory_Powers_Act_2000 aka "You have no right to silence. But only if you're a terrorist. NOT hahaha! Also if we think you might be a pedo. Good luck proving you can't remember something"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coroners_and_Justice_Act_2009 aka "It's illegal if people think that it looks illegal even if it is provably legal otherwise. Good luck with that you filthy pedo lol"

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/6918001/Man-cleared-of-porn-charge-after-tiger-sex-image-found-to-be-joke.html aka "Friend sends you a legal joke video SO WE'LL RUIN YOUR LIFE!!!"

etc.

It is entirely clear that this slope is slippery and lunatics like Beresford take a perverted glee in adding libricant.

If a law can be used for ill, sooner or later it will be eve nif the MPs claim it won't.

If a law is broad, the only reason *you* haven't been prosecuted is blind luck, not because you haven't done anything wrong.

A funny thing to do would be to send some random data to this MP, and tell the police (anonymously) that you sent him encrypted kiddie porn for money. Make sure you snail mail a few copies on USB sticks as well, and include some legal but dubious stuff in the clear, too. Then the stupid bastard ought to have to prove his innocence under his own law.

That would never happen, but I can't think of anyone more deserving for it to happen to.

As someone posted above, this not extremely recent, and did not result in any death, but it's relevant. Now, to be fair, that's not even close to the attack in Libya. I'm just showing that Christianity is not immune to extremely violent fanaticism.

You also have to consider the context in which this episode in Libya happened -- religion is certainly a factor, but not the only one, and probably not even the most important one. Libya had a bloody civil war a year ago, and is still very unstable; this same US consulate has been attacked a few months ago.

1. Riots aren't always a bad thing when they precipitate the overthrow of autocratic regimes and create the possibility for self-rule. It remains to be seen the extent to which this is true of the "Arab Spring", but there's a distinct possibility that at least some of the affected states will see lasting and positive change.
2. It's not necessarily a given that a warming planet will lead to food shortages. Some guys in the U.K. seem to think we could see yields (for some crops) increase by 50% by 2050. They could very well be wrong. Or they could be right.

Since it is such a part of the history of /. I propose that we use the ASCII version of Goatse.

The logo is a picture, so why stick to the ASCII version? Just use the current slashdot logo, but instead of the letter o, have you-know-what. At that small size, it wouldn't even be obscene...

They even hinted at such idea, see very last item of "brainstorm" list:

Hey, if it's good enough for the olympics

To bad that's another well-debunked lie.

Moron.

Besides science discoveries, what of any importance is reported by the news?

War. Pestilence. Famine. Death.

The four horsemen of the apocalypse are already abroad in the world. And it matters that you know it. The electoral choices made by American people cast a long shadow - over the Middle East in particular, but over the world as a whole. And yet the US electorate is quite frighteningly ignorant of what happens beyond their borders. OK, I appreciate that part of the reason you don't read the news is that the principal news media available to you are on the whole dishonest, corrupt and trivial. But there are other news media (and news aggregators). The BBC, and many of the UK 'broadsheet' sites (e.g. Guardian, Telegraph) are English language, well informed and honest (note: I did not say 'unbiased' - nothing human is unbiased). Al Jazeera seems to be well informed and honest, too, and provides a usefully different perspective.

If we carry on as we're going, global warming and with provoking conflict, war, famine and pestilence will arrive in the United States in your lifetime. You have a duty to be informed - a duty to yourself, as much as to anyone else.

Spain used to be a police state under Franco, and I believe the guardia civil is still quite feared there, but even then I've never heard of them entering the home of a disabled army veteran and shooting him for no reason, and getting away with it.

I don't even know what case you're talking about, and I searched and could not find it. As for Spain: http://www.google.com/search?q=spain%20police%20brutality

Italy is notorious for its endemic corruption, but as far as I know, not to the extent that people fear the police. No doubt lots of police there have been bribed by the mafia, but even they don't shoot, taze, mace or kick citizens for no reason, and if they do, they will be investigated, unlike in the US, where police very often get away with police brutality.

Justice?: "Eleven years after Italian police savagely beat scores of protesters at the Genoa G8 meeting in 2001, leaving one British activist in a coma, an Italian court has upheld the convictions of senior officers for their roles in the raid.

The decision by Italy's cassation court, after an initial trial and an appeal, draws a definitive line underneath the violence, which Amnesty International described as the most serious suspension of democratic rights in a western country since the second world war.

The final sentences have been watered down by the statute of limitations and the accused will not be jailed, but a number of top-ranking officers now face five-year suspensions from duty."

By the way, your corruption perception index seems to be about corruption in general, and not specifically police brutality.

You're right, but it was the best I could come up with to get a listing, and I think this kind of thing goes hand in hand.

Yeah, you crammed it pretty much in nutshell. Also, the DoD being involved would only compound this gargantuan shit-sandwich. I think it may be wise to think long and hard before trusting an unaccountable department that has likely spent more than 2/3 of the national-debt (10+ of 16 trillion) and essentially needs conflict to survive. And when their ghouls start wailing about Digital Blackwaters, thinking should yield to shunning altogether. It seems the Pentagon would be all too satisfied having a nation of under-educated poverty-stricken dunces quivering behind the World's greatest military force. I don't think we should put any more power in the hands of those who are eager to declare war over "cyber attacks" until they can learn to distinguish "war" from "crime" and "crime" from bogus-copyright and free-speech and "terrorism" from honest journalism.

Science is based on the belief that there is a real world out there that has properties anyone can discover. What made this world "real" was that these properties did not depend on anybody's opinion, so you didn't have to give a damn about anybody else's opinion of your research either; you could discover the truth yourself, and be right even if everybody in the world disagreed with you.

Now we have social science. It's based on the belief that reality is defined by majority opinion. Naturally, one man's opinion is worthless, and only when a consensus is reached can you state that you know anything.

I'm afraid you completely misrepresent both science and what you call social science (but isn't). The problem is not whether the world is real: the problem is how can we know what these properties are.

Truth is not self-evident, as you imply. In fact, science does not produce "truths" at all: it produces theories. Scientists gather evidence and construct theories to explain the evidence. This is inductive reasoning: it can never be 100% certain.

Science isn't something "anyone" can do, as you imply: in many cases it takes a lifetime of expert training to be able to assess scientific evidence - and even then, there are honest disagreements and mistakes. Take your field of expertise. Can anyone make sound judgements? Is the common sense of the amateur dependable? I'll wager not.

So, we have scientists evaluating evidence, but they don't all agree. There is always evidence that doesn't quite fit. A scientific theory is never perfect. (If they did agree, if everything fit, then they would move on to something else because that particular problem would no longer be interesting!) With these scientistific experts disagreeing, how are we to decide who is correct?

Consensus. Communication. Agreement does not make things true in the world, but it is the best method we have for trying to judge whose truth is the right one. And it is imperfect.

You have fallen into two errors: First, of believing that once Truth is found that fact can be known and reliably communicated. Second, of believing that the only alternative is to believe nothing is true and reality is the invention of majority opinion. You are wrong on both counts.

Such misunderstandings lie at the root of anti-evolutionary belief, and sustain conviction that climate change science is a fraud. A non-expert believes he has found the one critical piece of evidence that disproves the consensus, and becomes convinced that this overturns the science. Science isn't calculus. It doesn't work like that.

The debate over evidence and whether it is possible to know Truth is an ancient one, reaching right back to Plato. One of the most important and influential scholarly works of the 20th century (and the source of the term "paradigm shift") is The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn. I highly recommend reading the whole book: every scientist should read it. There is a pretty good recent overview at The Guardian, of all places. (Though the last bit about science being data- rather than theory-driven is bunk. It is both.)

As for social science, fifty years ago it was caught up in the belief that it could discover scientific laws of society akin to Newton's laws of physics. Then in the 1980s and 1990s there was a widespread rejection of this position, which in many cases resulted in an extreme postmodern rejection of science as a special way of acquiring knowledge. Thankfully, both extreme positions have now been widely rejected.

http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/11/the-subsidized-food-pyramid.html
"The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has posted an easy-to-understand visual on its site that shows which foods U.S. tax dollars go to support under the nation's farm bill. It's titled "Why Does a Salad Cost More Than a Big Mac?" and depicts two pyramids -- subsidized foods and the old recommended food pyramid. It's interesting to note that the two are almost inversely proportional to each other."

Our tax dollars at work. :-( And then a lot of the rest of our tax dollars go pay to deal with the medical consequences... And then even more tax dollars go to pay for the cultural and psychological consequences (including aggressiveness and poor thinking) that also flow from poor nutrition:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2006/oct/17/prisonsandprobation.ukcrime
"Omega-3, junk food and the link between violence and what we eat; Research with British and US offenders suggests nutritional deficiencies may play a key role in aggressive behaviour"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2007/jan/19/health.medicineandhealth3

Sanitation is the greatest medical milestone of the last century and a half, acccording to a poll carried out by the British Medical Journal.

Sanitation was the clear winner among 15 milestones shortlisted by readers of the journal, including the development of vaccines, which has safeguarded many children's lives, and the invention of the contraceptive pill, which was a contributory factor to significant social change.

Getting shit away from us has saved more lives than hand washing and antiobiotics.

It's hard for people in the developed world to understand the conditions that exist throughout Africa and Asia.

"Steve jobs ... would have had bezos killed by his secret ninja assassins a long time ago"

You're forgetting about the pirates which travel the Amazon.

I'm not sure I follow. What does Prince Charles have to do with the government?

The news last week was that he's secretly consulted about certain laws. There's a FoI request to disclose the process by which he is consulted.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/aug/31/prince-charles-public-duty-private-power

Now, of course, he is going to have to consult with parliament on some issues â" but remember â" he only needs to consult.

huh?

Actually, it's the other way round : parliament has to consult the Queen and the Prince of Wales before introducing new legislation, to ensure there is no harm to their private interests. This little known Royal Veto has been described by constitutional lawyers as a "royal nuclear deterrent".

Charles' support for homeopathy is well known - he argued in favour of homeopathy before the World Health Assembly in 2006, endorsed a company peddling homeopathic "cures" for polio, and in 2010 was accused of secretly lobbying ministers for homeopathy to be provided by the NHS.

Unfortunately, he may propose laws which will be aye'd by those self-interested Tories and their yellow lickspittles. Yes, Minister isn't quite accurate - see how the DWP has basically become a spokesperson for IDS's personal Himmler-esque (*) philosophy.

Fortunately, Cunt is stupid and will not do such a good job of harming the NHS as Lansley, a true demon.

But, yes, the NHS remains a wonderful thing. And anyone who rejects national healthcare systems in principle is, without exception, either a buffoon or a sadomasochist.

(*) Since the Daily Mail (a popular British newspaper) overtly praised the government for its "arbeit macht frei" (sic) approach, it's difficult to accuse me of Godwinning the discussion.

Perhaps the GP is referring to North Korean abductions of Japanese citizens, or the time back in 1998 when they launched a missile over Japan.

"On hearing the "news" that Bruce Willis (you know, the film star) was going to hurtle into Apple's lift shafts (even if it doesn't have any - does it have any? Anyhow) and intended to sue the company so that he could leave his iTunes collection to his children, what did the world's news organisations do? Ask Bruce Willis? Ask his agent?"

"Nah. Why bother with that when you can just repeat the story? Much easier just to rewrite, rephrase and repeat. (This may remind you of something) Pretty much everyone seems to have done this. (Yes, yes. The Guardian too.)" link

More like Israel and South Africa working together to build nuclear weapons back in the 1970s.

Yep, the Democrats want us to go back to the days of racism, no rights for women, husbands beating their wives and getting away with it, no clean running water, healthcare and education for only the rich and whites, hatred towards gays and lesbians, and total deregulation for the banking system.

What has Obama done about the racist drug war?
http://www.newjimcrow.com/

Where is the Democratic outcry over Obama's due process free assassination program? Even when it targets Americans?

Where is the Democratic outcry over Obama's signature on the due process free detention law?

What has Obama done about toruturers and murderers?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/31/obama-justice-department-immunity-bush-cia-torturer

And why was it such a personal struggle for Obama to finally come to the Dick Cheney level of morality with respect to gay rights?
http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/05/gay-gop-group-obama-took-the-cheney-position-122968.html

You claim the GOP is evil and Democrats are not. You are fucking liar.

another guy accused of rape

Julian Assange has not been charged of anything by any authority of any kind. He is wanted for questioning on allegations of sexual misconduct Source

leaves the country when his lawyer tells him that he is wanted for questioning

Before leaving the country he consulted with the judge, who decided there was nothing holding him there and he could leave Swedish soil.

caught in Britain

Not caught, he turned himself to the police after it became clear that the illegal (or at least illegitimate) Interpol red notice was not going away. This, in the hope of resolving the matter.

then disappearing into some embassy

He did not disappear, he sought asylum. That's quite a difference.

in breach of his bail conditions

Because it was the only choice he had left to avoid being ultimately handed over to a country where he would be tortured or executed, thus breaching the Geneva Conventions

which _does_ make him a criminal in the UK

He has not been charged nor convicted of any crime by any government yet, not Sweden, not the USA, not even the UK as far as I can tell. (prove me otherwise)

On the other hand, Augusto Pinochet, charged by Spain for the killing of 3000 Chilean people, and torturing 30 000 more, including the raping of political prisoners with trained dogs, was not only not extradited by the UK but often drank tea with Margaret Tacher


This just goes to show you how much lies we are being fed by governments and medias alike. It's fairly easy to hear officials make the same mistakes as you did.
Not because they are ignorant. Then know very well the details of this case. They're not stupid. They just choose to deliberately lie.

You can agree or disagree with the importance of what Wikileaks does, and the importance of what Assange and Manning do for our society, but that doesn't make your claims any less WRONG

Obama has launched twice as many drone strikes in 3 years as Bush launched in 8!

Bzzzt.

Bush: 52
Obama: 291

That's 5.6x Bush's score in half the time.

http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/category/projects/drones/

That means he's killed twice as many terrorists.

That's pretty easy when you define "militant" to mean any male of military age irrespective of the beliefs, actions, or record. Essentially, all you have to be to be counted as a terrorist is be a non-infant male, but it sure sounds better in the headlines to say "militant" than "random innocent male kid".

http://www.salon.com/2012/05/29/militants_media_propaganda/

On the downside, he's killed twice as many innocent bystanders.

This is especially easy to do when one employs the classic terrorist tactic of a second bomb going off to get the rescuers or gangland notions that shooting up a funeral is a moral thing to do.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/20/us-drones-strikes-target-rescuers-pakistan

But hey -- he passed the Lilly Leadbetter Act! O-ba-ma!

(How's that lesser evil workin' out for ya?)

So if it's so obvious why hasn't any other company shown off its prototypes, like Apple has going back all the way to a 2002 iPad prototype ? If it's so obvious why nearly all of the tech world scoff at both the iPhone (eg. “The iPhone is nothing more than a luxury bauble that will appeal to a few gadget freaks." - Bloomberg) and the iPad ("little more than a giant iPhone." - Wired, and "In the end, I think that the iPad will eventually be regarded [as] product that Jobs should have left on the drawing boards." - TechRepublic.) when they were first released ? In the case of the iPhone much of the ridicule was even specifically aimed at the touchscreen interface, the very thing which you now claim was obvious : "it doesn’t have a keyboard which makes it not a very good email machine" - Steve Ballmer. Hindsight is always 20/20.

Actually, Iran has some amount of uranium available within the country, and it's apparently being mined at two locations. Also, if you were desperate enough, uranium could probably be mined from poorer deposits than those at a net energy gain, as long as you didn't care whether it was at a cost above market prices (and assuming you didn't have access to global market supply due to embargo, that might be attractive).

There's a subtle but definite trend by governments to paint cash as the currency of criminals.

Like the 'war on terror', the 'war on cash' always cites some form of morality as its justification. In the UK we recently had a political storm about cash payments to tradespeople being 'morally wrong'.

It's clear to my mind that this position goes beyond tax-collection benefits, and moves into the realm of ensuring all financial transactions fall into the uniquely-identifiable big-data indexable kind for just-in-case future use by law-enforecement. (Along with telecoms data, and all the other interesting information governments like to collect.)

Geekoid, from the way you argue I'm going to guess you're a circumcision fetishist.
http://www.circleaks.org/

No major health organisation (not even in Israel) recommends infant circumcision and the AAP has been criticised around the world.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/28/circumcision-the-cruellest-cut?newsfeed=true
http://www.circumcision.org/aap.htm
http://chhrp.org/index.php/news/childrens-health-human-rights-partnership-condemns-new-aap-policy-statement/

In the past the AAP has been deeply influenced by circumcision fetishists such as Edgar Schoen. He was chairman of the American Academy of Paediatrics task force on circumcision that published a report in 1989 recommending infant circumcision. He was not involved in 1999 when the policy position was reversed. It would appear the fetishists are back in though.

Most people don't even know what circumcision is so, what is circumcision?
http://www.noharmm.org/separated.htm

Lets have a look at some critical analysis of the African RCT's.
http://www.circumstitions.com/HIV-SA.html
http://www.circumstitions.com/HIV.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22320006
http://www.circinfo.org/africa.html

I suggest everyone pay close attention to the bit in the first page about men who were lost from study and bear in mind that their HIV status is unknown. If the RCT's have any value at all we would see benefits in the real world. Just looking at developed Western nations, Europe has the lowest rate of MGM while the USA has the highest. The USA also has the highest rate of HIV infection.
http://joseph4gi.blogspot.com.au/2011/05/where-circumcision-doesnt-prevent-hiv.html

Where is the benefit in the real world?

The reality is that the RCT's were not about combating HIV in Africa or anywhere, it is all about creating bogus 'scientific' evidence to bolster the practice of infant circumcision in the USA. Doctors can make a tidy extra income from it:
http://www.circumstitions.com/$$$.html

cosmetic and pharmaceutical companies purchase amputated foreskins and use then in the production of various products:
http://www.foreskin.org/f4sale.htm

You claim it's a lie that babies die from it:
http://www.circumstitions.com/death.html

Now let's look at a timeline of the miraculous claims that have been made for circumcision since the puritans introduced it to America to prevent masturbation.
https://sites.google.com/site/completebaby/medicalization

If circumcision is so beneficial, why has it been necessary to make so many false claims about it? The current claims of HIV protection are just a rehash of the claims in 1855 and 1949 that it protects against Syphilis.

You also arrogantly claim there are no complications in later life. I am middle aged, I was mutilated as a baby and I now find that I have so little sensitivity that I can't maintain an erection during intercourse. Most of the time I can't even feel if I am inside a woman. It has nothing to do with health or lifestyle factors. I swim long distance ocean races a

Sorry to mention it, but isn't the fact that the average American glutting on fast-food, doesn't exercise and is a workaholic moving the life expectancy down? I remember hearing that the current generation will be the first one for a while to live longer than its children. And I know ... citation needed.. and here it is
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/aug/13/usa.ewenmacaskill
and here http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/nation/life-expectancy-map/?hpid=z3

A better explanation is that the gene that expresses as homosexuality in males is really a "likes to fuck men" gene. In other words, that the sisters of homosexual men have enough more children to offset the dead weight of the homosexual men.

Example source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2004/oct/13/highereducation.research

Note that this only shows that the sisters have more children. The "likes to fuck men" interpretation is my own rhetorical flourish.

Do your own homework.
But Assange being a convicted criminal isn't exactly a secret - you have to have lived under a rock not to hear about the Nortel case, where he pleaded guilty on 24 of 31 counts and got convicted on 25.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jan/30/julian-assange-wikileaks-profile

As for citations on bail jumping, none is needed. You must still be living under a rock if you have escaped noticing that he jumped bail in the UK and went hiding in the Ecuadoran embassy. Again, no secret.

America is doing evil things. Those who do evil things deserve to die.

America as a whole deserves to die? I'm curious, when did you acquire a taste for genocide?

Those who do evil things deserve to die.

By the way, does that include Assange?

The treachery of Julian Assange

Julian Assange and Europe's Last Dictator

In December 2010, Israel Shamir, a WikiLeaks associate and an intimate friend of Julian Assange -- so close, in fact, that he outed the Swedish women who claim to be victims of rape and sexual assault by Assange -- allegedly travelled to Belarus with a cache of unredacted American diplomatic cables concerning the country. He reportedly met Lukashenko's chief of staff, Vladimir Makei, handed over the documents to the government, and stayed in the country to "observe" the presidential elections.

When Lukashenko pronounced himself the winner on 19 December 2010 with nearly 80 per cent of the vote, Belarusians reacted by staging a mass protest. Lukashenko dispatched the state militia. As their truncheons bloodied the squares and streets of the capital, Minsk, Shamir wrote a story in the American left-wing journal Counterpunch extolling Lukashenko ("The president of Belarus ... walks freely among his people"), deriding the dictator's opponents ("The pro-western 'Gucci' crowd", Shamir called them), and crediting WikiLeaks with exposing America's "agents" in Belarus ("WikiLeaks has now revealed how... undeclared cash flows from the U.S. coffers to the Belarus 'opposition' ").

The following month, Soviet Belarus, a state-run newspaper, began serializing what it claimed to be extracts from the cables gifted to Lukashenko by WikiLeaks. Among the figures "exposed" as recipients of foreign cash were Andrei Sannikov, a defeated opposition presidential candidate presently serving a five-year prison sentence; Oleg Bebenin, Sannikov's press secretary, who was found dead in suspicious circumstances months before the elections; and Vladimir Neklyayev, the writer and former president of Belarus PEN, who also ran against Lukashenko and is now under house arrest.

Did Assange at this point repudiate Shamir or speak up against Lukashenko? No. Instead he upbraided Ian Hislop for publishing an article in the Private Eye that exposed Shamir as a Holocaust denier and white supremacist. There was, he claimed, a "conspiracy" against him by "Jewish" journalists at the Guardian. Addicted to obedience from others and submerged in a swamp of conspiracy theories, Assange's reflexive reaction to the first hint of disagreement by his erstwhile friends was to hold malign Jews responsible.

Sweden Issues Arrest Warrant for WikiLeaks' Assange in Rape Investigation

Shall we presume that you support actions like this from Wikileaks then?

The treachery of Julian Assange

James Ball joined and thought that in his own small way he was making the world a better place. He realised that WikiLeaks was not what it seemed when an associate of Assange – a stocky man with a greying moustache, who called himself "Adam" – asked if he could pull out everything the State Department documents "had on the Jews". Ball discovered that "Adam" was Israel Shamir, a dangerous crank who uses six different names as he agitates among the antisemitic groups of the far right and far left. As well as signing up to the conspiracy theories of fascism, Shamir was happy to collaborate with Belarus's decayed Brezhnevian dictatorship. Leftwing tyranny, rightwing tyranny, as long as it was anti-western and anti-Israel, Shamir did not care.

Nor did Assange. He made Shamir WikiLeaks's representative in Russia and eastern Europe. Shamir praised the Belarusian dictatorship. He compared the pro-democracy protesters beaten and imprisoned by the KGB to football hooligans. On 19 December 2010, the Belarus-Telegraf, a state newspaper, said that WikiLeaks had allowed the dictatorship to identify the "organisers, instigators and rioters, including foreign ones" who had protested against rigged elections.

The proof of Assange and Shamir's treachery was strong but not conclusive. Given Shamir's history, there were reasonable grounds for fearing the worst. But even now, you cannot show beyond reasonable doubt that the state has charged this pro-democracy politician or that liberal artist with treason or collaborating with a foreign power because WikiLeaks named names.

One can say with certainty, however, that Assange's involvement with Shamir is enough to discredit his claim that he published the documents in full because my colleagues on the Guardian inadvertently revealed a link to a site he was meant to have taken down. WikiLeaks put the cables on the web last month with evident relish, and ever since I have been wondering who would be its first incontrovertible victim. China appeared a promising place to look. The authorities and pro-regime newspapers are going through the names of hundreds of dissidents and activists from ethnic minorities. To date, there have been no arrests, although in China, as elsewhere, the chilling effect WikiLeaks has spread has caused critics of the communists to bite their tongues.

In Ethiopia, however, Assange has already claimed his first scalp. Argaw Ashine fled the country last week after WikiLeaks revealed that the reporter had spoken to an official from the American embassy in Addis Ababa about the regime's plans to intimidate the independent press. WikiLeaks also revealed that a government official told Arshine about the planned assault on opposition journalists. Thus Assange and his colleagues not only endangered the journalist. They tipped off the cops that he had a source in the state apparatus.

Perhaps you have acquired a taste for some variety of leather yourself? (Let me guess: progressive, right?)

Assange is not entitled to ECHR protection because he is an Australian citizen.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2012/may/30/assange-extradition-halted

That's some stupid rubbish. See here http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/13/wikileaks-bradley-manning-defence-fund

I admit Wikileaks has been derailed by Assange's actions lately but before that they were solidly supporting Manning.