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I agree with most of your post but there is also evidence the plant was poorly maintained - Tepco admitted to falsifying maintenance records among several other misdemeanours.

TEPCO was also warned of the risk to the generators and did nothing to mitigate them - and still got an extension to their license (the 40 year old reactors' license had expired).

Hopefully something good will come out of this - Vermont (U.S. state) wants to refuse a request for a 20 year extension to the license of a similar design plant. A bit of backbone from our bureaucrats and politicians coupled with planning and foresight would go a long way in removing the stigma from nuclear (imo).

On a lighter note, we should take our manga comics more seriously - it appears one had predicted the Fukushima incident.

While sympathetic to the fact that Sabu's children may have influenced his decision, he didn't understand how Sabu could have put his family at risk in the first place. "Why would you get involved with something like this if you had kids that relied on you?" he asked. "If I had kids I would get a 'responsible' job/hobby."

It appears that his children and their future were used against him to coerce him into snitching on LulzSec.

It appears that Sabu's children were an exploited liability. Would you risk your loved ones for your ideals? Or is your answer still simply and obviously "fuck snitches"?

And since you're quoting imaginary Disney characters, I'll remind you <Scarface spoiler alert> of the scene in Scarface where they're going to blow up a car of a politician's family in order to stop legislation but at the last moment Scarface realizes there are children in the vehicle and instead shoots the bomber in the face? Yeah, Scarface is a traitor at that point but ... you know ... he's a conflicted man with an internal conflict between morals and money. Sabu could have very much so been in a similar position.

Please note, this Sabu character appears to be an unsavory character with delusions of grandeur who maybe should have his children taken away from him anyway but ... well ... that doesn't mean the situation is completely black and white.

This would be an excellent opportunity for Iceland, which has been working on become a haven for free speech, to drum up a few million dollars worth of business for their ccTLD.

Why haven't I ever seen a study done on this? Oh, probably because there's a whole market (and political party) around guilting certain consumers into buying these products.

The short answer is that you've not paid much attention. Maybe your prejudices cause you to avoid environmentalist media and thus contribute to you now knowing what they're actually all about? Besides, it seems like you're referring to Democrats (or Greens, if you're outside USA) but the "buy a new car - now environmentally friendly!" is consumerism and benefits car manufacturers... thus your finger might be pointing too far left.

Anyways, the recycling-vs-new is pretty well-researched topic. What's the carbon footprint of ... a new car? is what I first came up when googling (first try of keywords: "a new car environment", it was 4th result or so) but you can find plenty of more, if you're actually interested. And as you can see, that link is to a very mainstream site, so it's not like "the green journalists" would somehow be keeping this stuff off the news.

I'll end with two pieces of trivia:
1) Buying a cloth bag is more environmentally friendly than buying a plastic one only if you intend to use it well more than 100 times.
2) Talking about carbon footprint of having pets is pretty much the easiest way to create ****storms among the environmentalists.

Most death in the UK is from cardiopulmonary related issues. These are often not preventable (something one can delay, or trade for another category) - typical human end of life stuff. After that is cancer - some of this is access to care (particularly early access), but much of which is still luck of the draw. Government can sponsor research, and it can improve access to care, but a lot of current cancer related death isn't something that can be impacted by the government very easily. Accidents however are something that is, by comparison, dead easy to influence from the government perspective (new laws, enforcement of existing law). So, of the examples you've listed and the stat's I've linked to here - it's a dumb simple selection for traffic as the most effective point of government interaction. Not that the other (and harder) problem's shouldn't be addressed, but I would think traffic is a logical emphasis rather than an illogical obsession.

Related to where I live, the UK does rather well compared to the US - about half of the accidental death rate as ours (5%).

Thought you meant Museum of Engineered Orgasms.

After taking the prescribed pills, notonly have the nefarious Italian disinformation transmissions stopped coming from my espresso maker and shampoo bottles, but I also have become importent, which has sadly caused mearly half ofmy girlfriends, wives and mistresses to desert me. Good riddance,they were probably secret Italina agents anyway who left when they could no longer program my toaster-oven to hypnotically deceive me. Better fewer but better, I say.

"mearly half ofmy girlfriends, wives and mistresses"? Yeah, Silvio, I know you got tossed out of office; is that why you're so angry at Italy?

"The problem is clear," wrote the US ambassador to Tunisia, Robert Godec, in July 2009, in a secret dispatch released by Beirut's al-Akhbar newspaper: "Tunisia has been ruled by the same president for 22 years. He has no successor. And, while President Ben Ali deserves credit for continuing many of the progressive policies of [predecessor] President Bourguiba, he and his regime have lost touch with the Tunisian people.

Here's the deal. We get lots of information all of the time, and the government dutifully plays the game of "officially" denying the truth because they are trying to play the difference; sometimes for good, sometimes for bad.

Assange does a little too much patting himself on the back, but in the end, he's right: the confirmation of the truth, out of the lying horse's mouth no less, means a great deal to the people who have been living under dictatorships for decades. Dictatorships that the insane cowardice, greed, and apathy of Washington DC have been perpetuating to keep their geopolitical calculations in balance so you can I can dig deeper into the hole of dependence on cheap oil, cheap labor, and so that American interests (which usually means "business interests" because they have little to do with freedom or Freedom) are attended to.

If Wikileaks didn't mean anything, the US government wouldn't be spending millions of dollars and political capital trying to hang Manning, the alleged leaker, and Assange, a foreign citizen who they probably have a sealed indictment against.

And if you think Stratfor seems childish and inane and is therefore suspect, just listen to the pathetic ramblings of Richard Nixon sometime. The fools and idiots running the country are sometimes just that: powerful men with stupid, backwards, and outdated ideas, who gladly scheme to kill and pillage because they think they know what is "right."

Perhaps Stratfor's Mexico reporting is what drew the ire of Anonymous?

Anonymous retreats from Mexico drug cartel confrontation (Note: since Stratfor was hacked the Stratfor link in the Guardian article no longer links to the specific article.)

I try to not overlook "bruised egos" as a motive. Ever.

Because the average patient doesn't have the background to understand what they're getting themselves into

I thin it is partly that, but probably a much greater part is pure politics. The conservatives and religious types hold much of the voter base, especially in the bible belt and heartlands of the US. A strong approach to "limit the evils of scientists" in political speeches goes a long way to garnishing some of those votes. This isn't new at all, with movement as early as 2006 during the Bush administration when the US was limiting this type of research, but the EU was pushing boldly ahead. However, more recently, they banned patents which came around due to stem cell research which is sort of good and sort of bad - it means that companies are less likely to invest as heavily into the research, but it means that all government funding will certainly be to the benefit of the population.

You may be remembering the Wikileaks cables.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/29/wikileaks-cables-china-reunified-korea

The two officials, Chun said, were ready to 'face the new reality' that the DPRK [North Korea] now had little value to China as a buffer state – a view that, since North Korea's first nuclear test in 2006, had reportedly gained traction among senior PRC [People's Republic of China] leaders. Chun argued that in the event of a North Korean collapse, China would clearly 'not welcome' any US military presence north of the DMZ [demilitarised zone]. Again citing his conversations with [the officials], Chun said the PRC would be comfortable with a reunified Korea controlled by Seoul and anchored to the US in a 'benign alliance' – as long as Korea was not hostile towards China. Tremendous trade and labour-export opportunities for Chinese companies, Chun said, would also help 'salve' PRC concerns about a reunified Korea.

The only thing China really wants from NK is to act as a strong buffer against the capitalistic influence of SK,

And a sock puppet to export nuclear and missile technology to Syria, Iran, Hamas, Burma and probably a few other places.

History is also full of believers that set out to really study scripture and end up rejecting the dogma for overly complicated; much of it amounts to the number of angels on a pinhead. Modern neurology has shown that belief is an a-priory sentiment and rational people create arguments after the fact to support it; the sharpest the thinker is, the better the argument.

We all know that scholars have been creating rationalizations since Paul of Tarsus for Catholicism, and since much longer for monotheism in general; Religion got a head start of several centuries on atheism based on the scientific method, which is only about 300 or 400 years old.

What scares the shit out of me is that the most careful rational thinkers (like you seem to be) who happen to have a religious sentiment can so easily fall to the trap of a "viral" belief system which is self-sustaining and self-consistent without requiring a connection to reality (yes I've read the likes of Dawkins, and consider it just a likely model and not a proven certainty; certainly something to ponder on). Specially when it makes them support a power-grabbing organization which uses the circular reasoning of "1) You have to believe in Holy things [the original, valid sentiment], 2) the Church says it's Holy, 3) therefore you have to believe what the Church says", and which was a power-grabbing organization long before it was in any way related to the Holy business.

I find troublesome accepting this argument as the only valid one, when alternate explanations exist and are equally logical, but don't require that particular syllogism as an unmovable axiom (and are usually not incompatible with the original belief either). Given two equally logical explanations, why would you stay with the more complex one, if not for your emotional attachment to it?

I'm tired of seeing these stupid comments every time an article on statistics is brought up. Clearly, a bunch of scientists doing studies along these lines know less about statistics and research design than some random Slashdot poster. Gee. Get over yourself.

Are you sure?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/09/bad-science-research-error

But in just this situation, academics in neuroscience papers routinely claim to have found a difference in response, in every field imaginable, with all kinds of stimuli and interventions: comparing younger versus older participants; in patients against normal volunteers; between different brain areas; and so on.

How often? Nieuwenhuis looked at 513 papers published in five prestigious neuroscience journals over two years. In half the 157 studies where this error could have been made, it was. They broadened their search to 120 cellular and molecular articles in Nature Neuroscience, during 2009 and 2010: they found 25 studies committing this fallacy, and not one single paper analysed differences in effect sizes correctly.

These errors are appearing throughout the most prestigious journals for the field of neuroscience. How can we explain that? Analysing data correctly, to identify a "difference in differences", is a little tricksy, so thinking generously, we might suggest that researchers worry it's too longwinded for a paper, or too difficult for readers. Alternatively, less generously, we might decide it's too tricky for the researchers themselves.

Why is it wrong for a Slashdot poster to have a conversation over the statistics involved when the headline is so sensationalist? What if someone reading stops taking sleeping pills that are helping them sleep and then get needlessly killed by insomnia because of bad statistics? Can't there atleast be a discussion on the statistics used?

I am tired of seeing stupid comments like yours that actually don't refute anything and instead attack the poster and call scientists infallible and above question.

This is not how you properly bash camera quality in a Nokia phone. Learn from this fellow: the iPhone photos are clearly better, because the little piggies are more vividly pink! And the white background is pink too! The dull picture from the Nokia just does not deliver it the way the user wants to see his porcelain piggies!

This Sunday Times article is just the latest in a string of Rupert Murdoch media outlets (mostly the Wall Street Journal) posting exaggerated and questionably-researched stories about "hacking scandals" at large internet companies like Facebook, Google, Microsoft, etc. The strategy seems to be to distract the public from real hacking scandals at News of the World and other Murdoch owned properties and make it appear that hacking is a normal activity for successful companies. What, you thought that scandal was old news? More details continue to get out (despite Murdoch's attempts to cover it up).

Do you really think that the Arabs living under bad governments needed someone to tell them that they had badly run corrupt governments

Strawman argument. The claimed effect of Wikileaks wasn't to "tell them how bad their government was", it was to "confirm" it. There is a difference between suspecting that your leaders are corrupt, and actually seeing classified intelligence reports from another country's diplomats detailing the exact corruption that is going on, and basically stating that your government operates more like the Mafia.

Would the revolution have happend without Facebook? Possibly - Berlin Wall fell long before people commonly had access to email. But does that mean that Facebook wasn't a factor? Obviously not: the fact that something was possible without X (where X is Facebook, Wikileaks etc.) does not mean that X was not a factor in this particular case.

Nobody is claiming that the Arab Spring happened because of Wikileaks, or because of Facebook or the internet. What people are claiming is that these things were contributing factors. Amnesty International named Wikileaks, the Internet, technology and journalism as being catalysts of the Arab Spring It's also worth pointing out that Qaddafi accused Wikileaks of being behind the Arab Spring in Tunisia, so it's not as if it's only Wikileaks supporters who saw Wikileaks as being a factor. Julian Assange has said Wikileaks played a role, but was not the major factor in the Arab Spring:

He said WikiLeaks had ''played a significant role'' in the uprisings sweeping the Arab world by publishing secret documents about those countries' authoritarian regimes, but the site was not the major factor in the movements.

''It does look like we played a significant role in it. That said, the tinder of the Middle East was drying,'' he said, crediting the internet and satellite TV stations like al-Jazeera with major roles in the uprisings.

Even those who reject the Wikileaks factor do admit it "may have played a minor atmospheric rule":

There’s been a lot of speculation, notably in the U.S., over the role social media played in the Tunisian revolution (it sure feels nice to say those two words.)

Wikileaks may have played a minor atmospheric rule in baring to the whole world what was whispered about the Ben Ali regime’s corruption, showing that US diplomats were aghast at the mafia nature of his regime.

Social media, from Twitter and Facebook to video upload sites, were crucial in spreading the word about what happened in a country where the press was tightly muzzled. It generated tremendous amounts of solidarity in the Arab world in beyond. But it’s just a means of communication, not a driver in itself.

At the end of the day, Tunisians took the streets because they had enough. They risked getting shot and beaten with no guarantee of success. And it’s likely that if they hadn’t heard about events around their country through Twitter and Facebook, they would have heard it by telephone.

You mean the ones that acted as the catalyst for the Arab Spring?

We keep hearing that from fans and boosters of Wikileaks, but it simply isn't true. Do you really think that the Arabs living under bad governments needed someone to tell them that they had badly run corrupt governments when it was a fact that assulted them nearly every day of their lives? Do you not know that many of those countries had been simmering under revolution or revolt for years? I guess the "White Man's Burden" is still with us in the form of "Wikileaks".

A Tunisian man named Mohamed Bouazizi is generally credited with starting the Arab Spring after he set himself on fire when the police confiscated his fruit stand in December 2010. Less than a month after his self-immolation – he eventually died – President Zine al Abdedine Ben Ali fled Tunisia after 23 years in office. Several other self-immolations quickly follow Bouazizi’s, particularly in Egypt where that revolution would start a little more than a month later. -- Moroccan Protesters the Latest to Set Themselves on Fire

The facts are that on 17 December last year, Mohamed, a market trader whose father had died when he was three and who had been helping to support his family financially since the age of 10, set himself on fire after a dispute with a government official over where he could sell his fruit and vegetables. At the time, it was widely reported that the municipal inspector, a woman named Fedia Hamdi with a reputation for strictness, had slapped Mohamed across the face – the ultimate insult in such a patriarchal Arab community. The confrontation seemed to pit an ordinary man, struggling to make a living, against the uniformed symbol of a corrupt regime. Bouazizi's suicide at the age of 26 was seen by many as an act borne of his intense frustration with authoritarian rule. It became the domino that fell and triggered a chain of revolutions across the Arab world. -- The slap that sparked a revolution

but my personal theory is that people who dismiss the international scientific consensus on global warming have faith that it's not happening, and figure that the "believers" are also arguing based on faith.

You could just ask some real skeptics, the kind who actually do science, why they dismiss the 'scientific consensus.'

the claim of 97% support is deceptive. The surveys contained trivial polling questions that even we would agree with. Thus, these surveys find that large majorities agree that temperatures have increased since 1800 and that human activities have some impact..... But what is being disputed is the size and nature of the human contribution to global warming.

It drives me crazy when people point to a survey like this that shows 97% consensus, and then say, "therefore scientists all think we should send a hundred billion a year to poor countries." There's no scientific consensus on that at all, nor is there any consensus that there will be a disaster as a result of AGW. If people even read the questions of the surveys they quote, they would understand this.

Did anyone else find the fact that '1984' was the first book pulled from Kindle users hilariously ironic? Made me want to cue up some Yahoo Tunes and reminisce in silence. Alas, I didn't opt-in and all my digital content still works... even after the servers become unprofitable and go silent.
 
Too bad the next generation will not have the choices/rights some deem worth giving away in the name of 'convenience'. Just because you don't value your privacy doesn't mean (*) Corp, LLC doesn't.

nothing even close to that quote ever appears

Some reactions were truely priceless though. On March 16, 2011, AnonGCB (1398517) wrote:

It's funny because what is happening in Japan is exactly why Nuclear Power is SAFE!

An earthquake 7 times more powerful than the biggest it was built for hit, and all that happened to the reactors that didn't shut down cleanly was a small amount of radioactive noble gases, which decay within minutes. Even if the cores DO melt, they're safely contained in ... wait for it... containment chambers!

People don't realize the amount of engineering that goes into nuclear to make it safe.

Well, containment chamber indeed! To which kannibal_klown (531544) answers:

Hey, I know it. But Joe Sixpack is gonna say "But look at their problems now, I don't want that here." Bla bla bla

I guess this courageous gentleman has bought some cheap real estate and moved to Fukushima since. Or perhaps not?

that comment did make me curious enough to see how Slashdot fares at predicting the future

Pretty bad it seems since the posts in question were submitted after the first two major hydrogen explosions. In fact this level of blind faith in nuclear technology, akin to crazy religious bigotry, might be one of the reasons these accidents (Chernobyl, Fukushima) happened in the past, and probably will again in the future.

At worse, there may be a 0.1% increase in cancer risk due to radiation for the locals

The number of direct radiation deaths is one way of assessing the risks associated with the technology, but not necessarily a very reliable one. What I found notable about The Fukushima disaster is that things went for a while inches away from possibly destroying Japan as a country it seems - imagine a situation where the greater Tokyo area would heave had to be evacuated for a couple of months for instance.

My dear chap, I've been following the peak oil story for years. I've read a few books on the topic. The things you are raising are those things you find out the first day that you hear about peak oil theory and start Googling.

The US passed it's peak oil production in 1970. Just as predicted.
http://truecostblog.com/2009/07/14/is-peak-oil-real-a-list-of-countries-past-peak/

Nothing will reverse that as all the easy oil has already been taken. Once upon a time they just has to drill a hole in Texas and oil would gush out. All the US oil now is hard. Deep sea, fracking, oil shale etc.

And most other oil producing nations have also passed their peak. For example my country, the UK with it's North Sea oil, passed it's peak in 1999.

You are of course aware of the huge oil projects started recently on private land in the US right?... The higher the price goes on oil... the more these projects are going to explode...

"The higher the price goes". There you are. You said it yourself, but didn't realise the implications. The price only goes up in real terms because the supply (production) has gone down. Extracting oil from these difficult sources are what happens on the way down the curve, after the peak.

This is all fully part of peak oil theory, it's not an argument against it.

Newt Gingrich can't talk his way out of peak oil. He probably doesn't even believe it. He just wants what every politician wants. Votes.

The oil industry generally don't admit to peak oil because they don't want governments and people to turn to alternatives, or be more frugal. The more demand for oil there is, the more profits they make.

The US military on the other hand has to live in the real world, where their ability to do their job relies on huge amounts of oil. And they have openly and a number of years accepted peak oil as a fact and shaped policy accordingly.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/11/peak-oil-production-supply

The thing about the military is that they are pretty much immune to the lies of politicians and big industry. They have access to all the top level information themselves.

Still, I know from other economic topics we've been talking about here that facts don't really matter to you, so I don't expect to change your mind on this one either. But do yourself a favour: read up on this topic. And don't just google. Pick up an actual book or two. Don't just read for talking points for arguments, read for you. This topic, more then any other, is going to affect your life over the next few decades.

What is the point of this long rambling nonsense exactly?

Apparently some people are proud of their stupidity.

It's becoming an alarming trend: see recent AAAS conference, for example.

Attacks paid for by big business are 'driving science into a dark era'

Researchers attending one of the world's major academic conferences 'are scared to death of the anti-science lobby'

Guardian link

He was actually doing pretty well until he said the economy looked like it was doing fine just before it collapsed. Of course Democratic partisans will say that he never had a chance, but as a middle-of-the-road decline-to-state voter it really looked like a close election up til then.

Are you kidding? McCain was a doddering mess of flip flopping incompetence that was disliked and distrusted by his own party. Running for the presidency after said party destroyed the economy, trashed the constitution, and became mired in endless corruption scandals.

2008 should have made the blowout of '64 look like a nailbiter in comparison....and it would have, but for three reasons:

1. Obama's race brought out the racist troglodytes - see the "birther" BS
2. The media loves a horse race and always gives the underdog a boost
3. Obama was too darned nice to clean McCain's clock

Unless you'd tell us with a straight face that if Obama confused Shiites with Sunnis no less than six times while running as the foreign policy candidate, called Petraus chair of the joint chiefs of staff, and went on about Iraq's border with Afghanistan (it's called Iran), that he would have gotten a free pass from the media and the Republican Party....

That would mean that the leaker definitely didn't work for RealClimate and could still have been a UEA insider.

That hypothesis would still require the "leaker" to have hacked RealClimate which indicates some hacking skills (and incidentally would also be an illegal act). There is also the matter of the data uploads to a server at a university in Russia which the "leaker" also had access to. And, this is not the first time that a fictional "mole" has been blamed to obscure the true source, McIntyre has admitted previously lying about a "mole insider" at CRU:

On 24 July, McIntyre says he received a freedom of information (FOI) refusal from CRU. He announced it on his website. The next day McIntyre announced that he had got hold of a mass of data.

He was initially coy about it. He said: "Folks, guess what. I'm now in possession of a CRU version giving data for every station in their station list."

The next day he said: "I learned that the Met Office/CRU had identified the mole. They are now aware that there has in fact been a breach of security My guess is that they will not make the slightest effort to discipline the mole."

This was a tease. There was no human "mole", just a security breach. Rotter in San Francisco later blogged that "In late July I discovered they had left station data versions from 2003 and 1996 on their server without web page links but accessible all the same. They were stale versions of the requested data ... just sitting in cyberspace waiting for someone to download."

McIntyre later admitted that "I downloaded from the public CRU ftp site ... No hacking was involved". Climate emails: were they really hacked or just sitting in cyberspace?

So in conclusion, yes, it is possible that there was a rogue sysadmin at CRU who suddenly decided to release a huge dump of emails from a backup server, and who was also a hacker who could break in to RealClimate, and who had some link to Russia. But the alternative hypothesis - that they just got hacked from outside - seems more likely, particularly as they have had external facing security issues in the past.

Here's an interesting recent article along the lines of your comment: Why the energy industry is so invested in climate change denial

"Put another way, in ecological terms, it would be extremely prudent to write off $20tn-worth of those reserves. In economic terms, of course, it would be a disaster, first and foremost for shareholders and executives of companies like ExxonMobil (and people in places like Venezuela)."

What would you not do for $20 trillion?

Chinese Brand 'Snow Beer' is the highest selling beer now.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/nov/21/beer-sales-budlight-snow-china

no I'd never heard of it either. I'd still rather have something crafted by a guy with a beard.

People have shown again and again that they will pay even if they can get it for free. See most of the pay-what-you-want deals or studies like this.

Yes, plenty of people will get it for free. It's irrelevant. We just need to ensure artists get paid enough to make it reasonable to produce new works, not that they get a cut from each and every single viewer.

Nothing wrong with killing animals for food....

My mind has been changed on the ethics of that and it was Peter Singer who convinced me of the fact. It's an argument rooted not only in minimizing harm to sentient creatures (and avoiding speciesism), but also on the arguably more distasteful issue another poster mentioned, that of how animals are treated in farms.

Singer's article here provides the latter argument, but I can't recall sources for his former argument. Perhaps here.

I am looking forward to the wide availability of lab-grown meat. It'll be an altogether more humane alternative to what we are engaging in now. Plus, on a personal note, it'll make me less of a hypocrite, because I still eat meat. As they say, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

The authenticity of the documents seems not to have deterred British Newspapers, who are all over this see for example:

  http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/feb/15/leaked-heartland-institute-documents-climate-scepticism

Which has republished the original document in question:

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/heartland_k-12_curriculum.jpg

A rather chilling read, when you consider the amount of money their sponsors are pouring into this effort.

The depth of the Climate Denier Conspiracy will continue to be big news as more and more of its internal operations are exposed and as the climate continues to grow warmer.

Several leading climate scientists have published an open letter (PDF) to the Heartland Institute.

Your post is very selective about the "facts". If enough people keep thinking your way, we are probably doomed for sure in an age where any disgruntled person can download a plague off the internet and feel justified using it out of either retribution or to achieve some objective that they think will make them "secure" by wiping out most everyone else who might in theory be a threat. Maybe we could try being nice to each other for a change and see how that works out for a while?
http://www.share-international.org/archives/cooperation/co_nocontest.htm

Or:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Galaxy#Prologue
" Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.
        And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small cafe in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.
        Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, the Earth was unexpectedly demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass, and so the idea was lost, seemingly for ever.
        This is her story."

Were you one of the protesters against the supposedly justified war against Iraq over non-existent weapons of mass destruction. If not, then what moral authority do you speak from? Who was the aggressor there? Hard to accept the implications. Based on your philosophy, how should the USA be labelled for that endeavor, and what should other countries do about that? Can you explain why most other countries consider the USA a far greater threat to world peace than most of the countries it invades?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/jun/15/usa.iran

Terrorist attacks have happened many times on US soil, including the US Capitol.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_United_States

They have also happened in other countries without those countries losing their democracies.

But sadly, the article suggests the worst terrorism these days seems to be coming *out* of the US Capitol and destroying the fabric of US society both economically and socially. See also:
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
"OK, what's this book about? It's about what's happened to the American government lately. It's about the disastrous decisions that government has made. It's about the corruption that rotted the Congress. It's about how traditional conservatism has nearly been destroyed by authoritarianism. It's about how the "Religious Right" teamed up with amoral authoritarian leaders to push its un-democratic agenda onto the country. It's about the United States standing at the crossroads as the next federal election approaches."

Just think about whether you are helping the terrorists win?

Major General Smedley Butler, United States Marine Corp, was an extraordinarily brave and devoted Marine who served the United States in an exceptional manner while in uniform, earning two Congressional Medals of Honor - the highest American medal for bravery on the battlefield. Out of uniform and in the realm of politics, however, citizen Butler involved himself in leftist fringe politics. I would be inclined to follow Major General Butler anywhere on the battlefield, but nowhere near a voting booth. In this regard he is like Chomsky, a man of exceptional virtual in his field, but a political crank (popular though he may be) and genocide denier.

. . . . Back in the 1930s, the U.S. Communist Party recruited a former Marine Corps general, Smedley Butler, to give speeches on the eve of World War II denouncing military preparedness as a capitalist racket. The idea was that by persuading an individual man of valor to propound shameful views, those views would somehow become less shameful. It didn’t work then. I doubt it will work now. - Wesley Who?

War is sometimes chosen for you by your enemies, not by some secret cabal in government or industry. Other nations and groups have their own plans, such as forcing Islamic conversion and Sharia law to replace the US Constitution on the US independent of anything the US does.

If the so called Military-Industrial complex is so powerful, why has the long term trend since World War 2 been towards decreased spending as a percentage of the economy?
Defense Spending as Percentage of GDP Well Below Historical Average

If there is no threat, why do we keep seeing arrests and convictions like this?

Federal agents arrest Amine El Khalifi; he allegedly planned to bomb Capitol
Federal authorities on Friday arrested a 29-year-old Moroccan man in an alleged plot to carry out a suicide bombing at the U.S. Capitol, the latest in a series of terrorism-related arrests resulting from undercover sting operations.

FBI’s Top Ten News Stories for the Week Ending January 27, 2012

Denver: Man Arrested for Providing Material Support to a Designated Foreign Terrorist Organization

Jamshid Muhtorov was arrested by members of the FBI’s Denver and Chicago Joint Terrorism Task Forces on a charge of providing and attempting to provide material support to the Islamic Jihad Union, a Pakistan-based designated foreign terrorist organization. Full Story

Baltimore: Man Pleads Guilty to Attempted Use of a Weapon of Mass Destruction in Plot to Attack Armed Forces Recruiting Center

U.S. citizen Antonio Martinez, aka Muhammad Hussain, pled guilty to attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction against federal property in connection with a scheme to attack an armed forces recruiting station in Catonsville, Maryland. Full Story

Washington Field: Man Pleads Guilty to Shootings at Pentagon, Other Military Buildings

Yonathan Melaku, of Alexandria,

Not just that but in OECD countries there are some $75 billion in directly identifiable taxpayer subsidies for fossil fuels every year.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/datablog/2012/jan/18/fossil-fuel-subsidy

No sure if anyone has, but India is aggressively pursuing it.

Citations

On the food thing before anyone asks:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/oct/11/how-will-the-world-feed-itself

Peak Oil:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v481/n7382/full/481433a.html

Tar sands:
http://news.yahoo.com/nobel-winners-urge-eu-leaders-back-tar-sands-110130470.html

Or, it means wages will be finally more expensive than machines (see the US manufacturing) and they'll make the same gadgets without exploiting anyone but without paying anyone either.

Not very likely? It's already happening...

They've been removed from Heathrow now (at least T5, the BA one). I believe Manchester is the only ones left.

As I understand it, only the X-ray systems have been removed (except in Manchester). The L3 and Smiths detection (millimeter wave) scanners are still very much authorized for use at LHR. So if they aren't in place at the moment, I'd be very surprised if they aren't there by next fall. Given recent comments by the UK transportation minister, I have zero faith in the UK becoming a place I will willingly travel to or through again by air unless several conservative party members of the UK government are ejected en masse in a landslide election, are tried before the Hague, and are forced to finish out the remainder of their lives in a hard labor camp for their crimes against humanity to serve as an example for other political leaders that would act against the public interest for their own political (and usually economic) gains.

That's the level of political upheaval that would be required to convince the sorts of mental defectives who would mandate forcible on-camera strip-searches as a prerequisite for travel that such actions are uncivilized and unjustifiable, no matter the perceived risks or rewards.

In other words, I'm not holding my breath.

here is the original guardian article which helped kick up the stink

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/feb/13/whitney-houston-album-price

thou to be honest Twitter was where it was originally tweeted about, with people initially blaming Apple.

here is a more recent article

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_162-57378242-501465/whitney-houston-itunes-prices-hiked-by-mistake-says-sony/

where Sony are saying it was all a mistake by some guy in England.

Your suggestion that we can't do anything is false, public opinion matters, from a few tweets Sony's stirred up the ant nest and now has to back pedal furiously.

Another example
Apple is having to do something to protect its sales due to bad publicity about the working conditions of the people producing its products.

Then there are the various civil wars that are taking place, last summers riots in the UK even the back pedalling on ACTA in Europe. All pretty much a case of a lot of little david's going up against goliaths and kicking arse.

The UK riots were an interesting one social media helped fan the flames but it also helped mobilise people to fight back and clean up with huge numbers of people taking to the streets with brooms to reclaim their communities.

The situation has changed where once the Goliaths could pretty much get away with anything and david pretty much muttered under his breath and was ignored. Now David tweets and posts on facebook and pretty quickly the discontent spreads and Goliath is having to back down.

David probably has more power to change things than ever before and governments and corporations are becoming uncomfortably aware that this is the case and having to act accordingly.

First I could find, but there are more: Study finds pirates 10 times more likely to buy music.

Oh, and allow me to point out:

Wisely, the study did not rely on music pirates' honesty. Researchers asked music buyers to prove that they had proof of purchase.

Soyuz is man-rated. Ariane 4 apparently never had the amount of instrumentation needed for man-rating.

Maybe we should stop pissing off people by trying to take over their countries?

When people buy a six pack of beer, it isn't to simply open the can - it is to drink the beer. The Islamist don't simply want the West/US out of any random location, or to stop "trying to take over their countries" (opening the can) - that is at most an intermediate step in reaching their goal. Their actual goal ("drinking the beer) is to turn the entire world Islamic and restore the Islamic Caliphate government that combines church and state. Read Bin Laden's letter to America - his first real demand is mass conversion to Islam, and after that he demands the US throw out the Constitution and implement Islamic Sharia law. They are not responding to invasion, they are on the offense attempting to overthrow the existing world order and impose their own.

HAMAS Targets Spain

Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos’ efforts earlier this year to remove HAMAS from the European Union’s terrorist list, have done little to change HAMAS’ agenda. It is not only Palestine that children in the West Bank and Gaza are asked to liberate; now they are asked to liberate Seville. The HAMAS children’s magazine, Al-Fateh, in a recent issue, (No. 66), tells the children about the city called Asbilia (Seville) and calls on them to free it, together with the whole country, from the infidels and to reinstate Muslim rule. . . . more . .

What liquid agent is a terrorist going to use to blow up a plane? Napalm? Or just set the plane on fire?

The Science Behind 3-1-1

They've done this at a few London Underground stations since 2005 and since 2004 on the Tyne and Wear Metro.

In London, the music was played over the existing announcement system's speakers, so it was horribly distorted. Fortunately, it was only around the station entrance, not the actual platforms, so I could wait in peace.

Direct link which bypasses the digg encapsulation (which doesn't work with noscript):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/feb/13/whitney-houston-album-price

But you have to admit, parents LET their kids dress and act like this, and the market caters to it, whether it is right or not, I will not enter into that debate right now.
http://www.torontosun.com/2011/05/09/nearly-onethird-of-childrens-clothes-sexy-study
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/apr/16/children-clothing-survey-bikini-heels
http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/08/19/french-line-offers-lingerie-for-girls-as-young-as-four/
http://www.playpink.com/games-for-girls/sexy-dress-up.html

This was just 5 minutes with google.

Well the original report (from the Guardian) reads:

Police in Kuala Lumpur said Hamza Kashgari, 23, was detained at the airport "following a request made to us by Interpol" the international police cooperation agency, on behalf of the Saudi authorities.

I agree, corruption and greed (internal and external) has been one of Africa's biggest problems. I'm sure that folks who are into anthropology and ethics have a great deal to study when they think about many African countries. Who's to blame? I'm sure there have been more than a few doctoral thesis written on that subject.

The idea that external influences should be taken away is a little like the the people in the US demanding that some national parks be returned to their natural state: what they don't seem to comprehend is that the "natural state" for these areas included regular burning of brush and culling of animal herds by Native Americans. External influences will always be a part of Africa.

Fun fact or data point: Who do you think is providing some of the most help, labor and engineering to help Africans rebuild their infrastructure? China.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/06/chinas-economic-invasion-of-africa

Bob Parsons on Guantamo Bay:

"The interrogation techniques at Gitmo are very mild."

(Note from Wikipedia: By May 2011 there had been at least six suicides and hundreds of suicide attempts in GuantÃnamo that are in public knowledge.)

"Key prisoners at Gitmo still have not talked -- because our interrogation methods are so weak."

(Are we really going to get into a sincere discussion about the efficacy of torture? What about we pause first at the idea of whether it's ethical?)

"Given the type of individuals we have incarcerated at Gitmo (all of them would love to gouge out your eyes-"

(including children and old men?)

Bob Parsons is the ugliest face of America. Hateful and uninformed, but pushing to make things work the way he thinks they should. Don't be like Bob. And don't empower him with your money.

Bob Parsons on Guantamo Bay:

"The interrogation techniques at Gitmo are very mild."

(Note from Wikipedia: By May 2011 there had been at least six suicides and hundreds of suicide attempts in GuantÃnamo that are in public knowledge.)

"Key prisoners at Gitmo still have not talked -- because our interrogation methods are so weak."

(Are we really going to get into a sincere discussion about the efficacy of torture? What about we pause first at the idea of whether it's ethical?)

"Given the type of individuals we have incarcerated at Gitmo (all of them would love to gouge out your eyes-"

(including children and old men?)

Bob Parsons is the ugliest face of America. Hateful and uninformed, but pushing to make things work the way he thinks they should. Don't be like Bob. And don't empower him with your money.

Wow, that's a compelling argument. I'd put it a step above "You are a doody head" and a step below "Nuh uh".

I suggest you go to Sweden and preach how you find homosexuality to be abhorrent and against "God's" will.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/20/three-muslims-convicted-gay-hate-leaflets
So here's your example about homosexuality and "God's" will. Those damn Britains are against free speech!

Or maybe go to Germany and say really love Hitler.

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

Quoting wikipedia:
The German penal code (Strafgesetzbuch) establishes that someone is guilty of Volksverhetzung if the person
in a manner that is capable of disturbing the public peace

• incites hatred against segments of the population or calls for violent or arbitrary measures against them; or
• assaults the human dignity of others by insulting, maliciously maligning, or defaming segments of the population

So yes, if you are saying I love Hitler and let's kill some Arabs in Berlin, you are in conflict with the law, which - in liberal/western european democraties - tries to protect his citizens against organised attempts to commit mass murder.

What TFA describes as the reason for detention would be protected in the UK and Germany.

Do you see the difference in the reasoning in countries like UK or Germany compared to Saudi-Arabia? They are fundamentally opposed in terms where your freedom is limited. A concept of human rights and secular law on one side and a concept of religious law / God's law on the other.