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Egypt is progressive religiously; it has a large Christian population.

However, its government has been holding its people under a "state of emergency" since 1980.

Indeed. Consider this. The economic losses to banks alone from the Financial crisis are estimated at 4 trillion. Total property crime in 2009 adds up to 15 billion

It would take over 200,000 people working 24/7 from birth till their 90th birthday at $25/hr to replace that $4T figure.

They've essentially stolen the lives (assuming time==money) of hundreds of thousands of people. Can we just try them for mass murder and execute the people responsible? :P

Indeed. Consider this. The economic losses to banks alone from the Financial crisis are estimated at 4 trillion. Total property crime in 2009 adds up to 15 billion

That's less than half a percent! When you look at it this way, it's not disproportionate to suggest that the entire law enforcement budget of the United States be spent on bringing these criminals to justice. Yet, in most cases the people responsible for crashing the entire economy get million dollar bonuses for it.

Honestly, the only way I can interpret this is that it's intentional. Our system is not intended to provide justice at all. It exists only to protect the wealthy. We have no justice system in the US, we have an exploitation system.

Nine page NYTimes article on how they handled wikileaks and Assange.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/magazine/30Wikileaks-t.html?ref=world

No, the one originally reported on was the appeal. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/us/27dungeons.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/magazine/30Wikileaks-t.html?pagewanted=all

Exactly... http://www.nytimes.com/opensecrets should be at least mentioned...

Thanks for the David Drake suggestion. I don't especially recall reading anything by him, though I have "The World Turned Upside Down" which he helped edit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Drake
Anyway, I'll have to look through my sci-fi collection. I can guess I've read similar things though. Maybe his stuff might be similar to themes in the Bolo (honor) or Beserker (survival) series? Or stuff like by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, like in The Mote in God's Eye (and the sequel someone mentioned to me recently, where biogenetic change of the Mote's was a theme)? Jack L. Chalker's Well World series also talks about the interplay of genetics, environment, and culture.

The non-fiction book (and DVD) called "The Pleasure Trap" by Doug Lisle (and a coauthor) talk about a human brain adapted for scarcity and not abundance (and the obesity epidemic being an example of things going wrong).
"The Pleasure Trap: Mastering the Hidden Force That Undermines Health & Happines"
http://www.amazon.com/Pleasure-Trap-Mastering-Undermines-Happiness/dp/1570671508
http://www.healthpromoting.com/Articles/articles/PleasureTrap.htm
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx

Another similar book (but with less good advice, but more general):
"Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpos"
http://www.amazon.com/Supernormal-Stimuli-Overran-Evolutionary-Purpose/dp/039306848X

Also related on how people may turn to compulsive addictive-seeming behaviors in stressful environments:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park

Anyway, how we express our genes is still related to environment and mind. So, even if there is a potential for violence, we have options as to what we do with out feelings.

Gregory Clark has a theory of evolution related to capitalism, btw (I'm not saying I agree, but it relates to your point):
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/07/science/07indu.html?pagewanted=print
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Clark_(economist)#A_Farewell_to_Alms
"A Farewell to Alms (the book's title is a non-rhotic pun on Ernest Hemingway's novel, A Farewell to Arms) discusses the divide between rich and poor nations that came about as a result of the Industrial Revolution in terms of the evolution of particular behaviors originating in Britain. Prior to 1790, Clark asserts, man faced a Malthusian trap: new technology enabled greater productivity and more food, but was quickly gobbled up by higher populations. In Britain, however, as disease continually killed off poorer members of society, their positions in society were taken over by the sons of the wealthy, who were less violent, more literate, and more productive. This process of "downward social mobility" eventually enabled Britain to attain a rate of productivity that allowed it to break out of the Malthusian trap."

However, that does not explain the Haudenosaunee. In general, "sexual selection" can drive a lot of evolution, as can just random changes, or other non-obvious things.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_selection

Do whales and dolphins kill each other off? Still, I'm not saying humans don't have various different proclivities. But even then, environment and culture can shape how they are expressed. James P. Hogan's Voyage from Y

That's an interesting point, I hadn't considered the Nazi doctor's research. After reading up on the subject, I'd have to conclude that we should, in fact, throw out any data derived from such unethical research. In fact, that's already been done. Quoting

The Nazi data on hypothermia experiments would apparently fill the gap in Pozos' research. Perhaps it contained the information necessary to rewarm effectively frozen victims whose body temperatures were below 36 degrees. Pozos obtained the long suppressed Alexander Report on the hypothermia experiments at Dachau. He planned to analyze for publication the Alexander Report, along with his evaluation, to show the possible applications of the Nazi experiments to modern hypothermia research. Of the Dachau data, Pozos said, "It could advance my work in that it takes human subjects farther than we're willing."14

Pozos' plan to republish the Nazi data in the New England Journal of Medicine was flatly vetoed by the Journal's editor, Doctor Arnold Relman.15 Relman's refusal to publish Nazi data along with Pozos' comments was understandable given the source of the Nazi data and the way it was obtained.

Luckily in your case, Reiter actually didn't contribute anything:

Even if Dr. Reiter had not been a Nazi, it is not clear why he deserved having his name attached to the arthritis syndrome. Dr. Reiter's report was not the first, and he drew a serious, erroneous conclusion about his patient's diagnosis. Dr. Reiter initially concluded that the syndrome was caused by a spirochete, which he found in the military officer's blood, and named it spirochetosis arthritis.
But when the symptoms failed to respond to the then-standard anti-syphilis drugs, Dr. Reiter abandoned his belief in a spirochetal cause and concluded that his patient had something else -- now known by his name.
In 1965, Dr. Verna Wright, a British rheumatologist, repeating a comment made 12 years earlier in another scientific report, wrote: "Reiter's paper made a negligible, if not somewhat misleading, contribution to the subject."

Throwing out Reiter's research on the subject wouldn't change anything, and anyway there's no indication his research on that syndrome was unethical.

Back to peta though, it is a bit unfair of me to say they're hypocrites for accepting medical treatment derived from animal research, especially in the case of life-saving medicine.

For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos ("IP content"), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook ("IP License"). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.

Please note that IP and consent to represent commercially are two different things. Facebook says you grant them unrestricted use of your copyrighted photo. That is it. By nature this is easy, whenever you take a photo you have the copyright for it unless you were contracted by a parent company to take the photo for them, in which case they retain copyright.

What this does not ask for nor guarantee is that every picture you take includes a model release of the subject. This is not required for uploading a photo on facebook, and as such facebook can not use photos commercially. At least in my country what they are proposing is illegal, and judging by the Virgin Mobile case in America which someone else linked to it's not legal there either.

Not quite. The photographer holds the copyright. People in the pictures have a right to publicity, but its considered separate from the actual copyright on the photo. Like in the Virgin Mobile case, they legally had the copyright but did not have consent from the model, aka "right to publicity".

The Iranians continue in their attempts to spread their revolution to other countries. They were/are assisting insurgents in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places. They control the powerful state within a state that is Hezbollah in Lebanon. I believe they are also working in Central and South America. Their presence in so many other places is useful in more ways than one.

I think you will find this video revealing....there are plenty more at MEMRI worth seeing.

That would probably run counter to some existing Russian laws against desecration of human remains...

But burial - sure, why not?

No, I'm talking about one of these:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/12/garden/12amish.html

Which is actually no better than any other $20 space heater, but claims to lower your energy costs.

This summary is ridiculous. Can we get a little more fact and a little less whining please?

Yes the rich are different, they went and did something to earn their money instead of sitting and pouting about how the little man can't get ahead! In America, 80% of millionaires are first-generation rich. They are people from every walk of life who behaved rich instead of acting rich.

Its not taxes keeping the little man down, its attitude. Get up, leave the cave, find something and kill it! There is limitless opportunity, even in a bad economy.

Before any of you accuse me of being Bill Gates in disguise, I'm actually just a recent college graduate who's almost 50k in debt. I'm not gonna be here forever though, and I don't blame other people for my lack of wealth! I just can't stand the politics of envy.

Butchered? Civilians, children and reporters butchered with hollow point bullets, you're fine with that. Showing the world it's happening, you call that butchery.

Let me guess.... "collateral murder"?

The "civilians" were armed insurgents, apparently associated with running firefights and rocket attacks through the night. They were also probably in violation of curfew, which would once again make them targets. (You noticed how empty the streets were, right?)

The children should have been left behind by the insurgents attempting to rescue their comrades.

By accompanying the insurgents, and without marking themselves, the reporters made themselves targets. They weren't attacked because they were reporters. That was a risk they took upon themselves when they decided to accompany violent extremists fighting against the Iraqi government.

The lot of them were apparently engaged with the apache's 30mm automatic cannon. The military doesn't use hollow point bullets (Geneva & Hague Conventions, and all that).

2 Iraqi Journalists Killed as U.S. Forces Clash With Militias

Clashes in a southeastern neighborhood here between the American military and Shiite militias on Thursday left at least 16 people dead, including two Reuters journalists who had driven to the area to cover the turbulence, according to an official at the Interior Ministry....

The American military said in a statement late Thursday that 11 people had been killed: nine insurgents and two civilians. According to the statement, American troops were conducting a raid when they were hit by small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades. The American troops called in reinforcements and attack helicopters. In the ensuing fight, the statement said, the two Reuters employees and nine insurgents were killed.

''There is no question that coalition forces were clearly engaged in combat operations against a hostile force,'' said Lt. Col. Scott Bleichwehl, a spokesman for the multinational forces in Baghdad.

Butchery? No. If you want to know true butchery, look at Al Qaeda's attack on the Yezidi.

A U.S. air strike killed a senior al Qaeda militant who masterminded truck bombings on Iraq's minority Yazidi community last month that killed more than 400 people, the military said on Sunday.

"On September 3, a coalition air strike killed the terrorist responsible for the planning and conducting of the horrific attack against the Yazidis in northern Iraq on August 14," military spokesman Rear Admiral Mark Fox told a news conference.

Iraq's government has put the death toll at 411 from the suicide bombings, although the Iraqi Red Crescent has said it could be more than 500. The bombings in the villages of Kahtaniya and al-Jazeera were the deadliest militant attacks in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

A U.S. military statement named the mastermind as Abu Mohammad al-Afri, adding he was the al Qaeda "emir", or prince, in the area where the bombings took place.

Or Al Qaeda's attacks on markets: Al Qaeda use two Down's syndrome women to blow up 99 people in Baghdad markets

Do you have any words for Al Qaeda's actions? Genocidal might fit, as they want to rub out the Yezidi as a people & belief system. What about the attack on the market?

Al Jazeera

New York Times

Any question on why Americans and Arabs have completely different perceptions of the same conflict?

start by reading his 'thank you' note, made me noxious.

Even China is automating to cut costs: http://plasticsnews.com/china/english/headlines2.html?id=1278958338
"In the wake of labor unrest, Chinese factories are adding automation to control rising labor costs. It was bound to happen. China, once considered one of the lowest-cost automotive producers because of its supply of cheap labor, is becoming another example of rising expectations as workers demand their share of the country's growing industrial prosperity."

It is the fiscal logic of mainstream capitalism in its final death spiral...

What's going to happen when a billion+ Chinese get a taste of prosperity and then lose their jobs to machine? Judging by the USA, not much... The unemployed will just suffer and die I guess... Is that the "hopeful" end to all this? Can't we hope for something better? There are other options for progressive change as I outlined, but here is a sci-fi story by Marshall Brain about two of them, suffer and die vs. a basic income as a right of citizenship:
    http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

Also, people like to do a lot of jobs like raise good food, but our society and its economic model won't allow them (or at least makes it really hard) because the quality of the actual work experience itself is discounted:
    http://www.californiadreamseries.org/rfc.htm
    http://www.hulu.com/ripe-for-change

There was no net job growth in the USA for the entire last decade (despite rising population). That has never happened before in the USA. Yet, productivity in terms of the US GDP grew 40% (with the benefits almost entirely going to the business owners/investors). Why should that trend not continue? Mainstream economists, even liberal ones like Paul Krugman, seem pretty much oblivous to the implications. Offshoring is a huge red herring they are chasing...

Part of why mainstream economists don't have clue:
    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/business/economy/04econ.html?_r=1
"But in the wake of the recent crisis, a few economists -- like Professors Reinhart and Rogoff, and other like-minded colleagues like Barry Eichengreen and Alan Taylor -- have been encouraging others in their field to look beyond hermetically sealed theoretical models and into the historical record. "There is so much inbredness in this profession," says Ms. Reinhart. "They all read the same sources. They all use the same data sets. They all talk to the same people. There is endless extrapolation on extrapolation on extrapolation, and for years that is what has been rewarded." "

Because being a lawyer or a businessperson sucks. And as an aside, want to know how well those budding lawyers are doing? http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/business/09law.html?_r=3&src=me&ref=business

"Guns are for self defence" is pure myth. Actually it's worse than that, it's idiocy.

Says the idiot?

Many, many examples of citizens carrying guns as being a plus
to the overburdened police department.
[ http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/09/nyregion/09wheelchair.html?_r=1 ]
[ http://www.registerguard.com/csp/cms/sites/web/news/cityregion/25792735-41/combs-barista-braziel-affidavit-dutch.csp ]
[ http://www.8newsnow.com/story/13865042/man-thwarts-robbery-by-shooting-at-suspect ]
[ http://voices.washingtonpost.com/crime-scene/anne-arundel/would-be-dunkin-donuts-robber.html ]

Just do your own googling and draw your own conclusions;
citizen gun shot perpetrator OR robber OR thief [ http://news.google.com/news/search?&q=citizen+gun+shot+perpetrator+OR+robber+OR+thief ]
^ fails hard in bing, no boolean? [ http://www.bing.com/search?q=citizen+gun+shot+perpetrator+OR+robber+OR+thief ]

-AI

They do now, but pretty soon they'll unionise...

It won't be too soon, after what the FBI did this week.

Bill Gates, 1998: "About 3 million computers get sold every year in China, but people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though. As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1023-212942.html

Bill Gates, 2007: "It's easier for our software to compete with Linux when there's piracy than when there's not."
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/technology/article2098235.ece

Steve Ballmer, 2001: "Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches. That's the way that the license works."
"Microsoft CEO takes launch break with the Sun-Times" (1 June 2001) Chicago Sun Times

Barack Obama, 2011: "So we were just in a meeting with business leaders, and Steve Ballmer of Microsoft pointed out that their estimate is that only one customer in every 10 of their products is actually paying for it in China. And so can we get better enforcement, since that is an area where America excels -- intellectual property and high-value added products and services."
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/01/19/press-conference-president-obama-and-president-hu-peoples-republic-china

The numbers, 2009: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/19/software-piracy-in-china/


Microsoft wants hegemony in China over free (and freedom-respecting) options like GNU/Linux. It has always viewed piracy as a way to achieve this goal, but it doesn't have any real plan to turn those pirated copies of Windows and MS Office into revenue. Are they changing strategies and trying to muscle China now? Or is the U.S. gov't playing hardball for its own reasons? Or is it all just bullshit sabre-rattling? A real crackdown on Windows bootlegging would almost certainly make GNU/Linux the dominant platform in China. Parts of the Chinese gov't have pushed the Red Flag Linux distro in the past (specifically to avoid Windows licensing costs in Internet cafes), and there has been plenty of talk about the arrogance of Microsoft and the West, along with fears of potential backdoors in Windows. I'm sure the Chinese would prefer to be distributing a homegrown distro rather than having to pay up when Microsoft and the U.S. gov't come to collect.

http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/11607

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/6491195/Al-Gore-could-become-worlds-first-carbon-billionaire.html

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/al-gore-joins-the-vc-game-as-kleiner-perkins-partner/

There's plenty more. Gore stands to make hundreds of millions, if not billions from various green projects but most notably from carbon trading. Of course, it's not a conflict of interest, a politician would never lie to fleece the public, he's just "putting his money where his mouth is", poor fella, so just give him a break will you? I don't think he has any friends.

You have an artificial guilt complex like so many that follow religions.

No, I have an understanding of science, the ability to read and analyse for myself, and the capacity to think beyond my own selfish ends - both in the present and extrapolated to mine, and my descendents' futures.

The hard facts

Oh dear, here we go again...

that the arctic summer holes are now closing

Are you talking about ozone? Because that has absolutely nothing to do with climate.

If you're talking about arctic sea ice, you're completely wrong.

the south pole overall has been cooling for over 30 years

Wrong. On average, antarctic monitoring stations on land have seen warming. The ocean temperatures around antarctica are absolutely clear.

You may be confused because antarctic ice is thickening. That's entirely consistent with predictions, though. A warmer planet does not mean everywhere changes in the same way. Warm air causes more evaporation from oceans, and more precipitation in places (in the case of the antarctic, more snow makes thicker ice). However, that gain is nothing compared to losses elsewhere.

You simply cannot extrapolate from individual local phenomena to the global climate, you have to look at the entire picture, which is very clear.

This article explains the science well:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Why-is-Antarctic-sea-ice-increasing.html

that sea level rise has been going on for thousands of years since the last ice age

That's a logical fallacy. One cause (the end of an ice age) having resulted in sea level rise in the past does not discount another cause (anthropogenic emissions) resulting in sea level rise now.

If you're actually interested in educating yourself (which I'm starting to doubt) the NYT ran an accessible feature that got the science right last November:

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/science/earth/14ice.html

that more glaciers are growing than retreating

Categorically wrong. There are always localised fluctuations, but globally, we're losing glacier mass at an astonishing rate.

that mount killimanjaro's ice shrinkage is entirely a local phenomenon driven by land use

Remember what I said about local fluctuations? Look at the global picture and open your eyes. Possible localised causes around KMJ do nothing to change the extremely clear pattern of global glacier loss due to temperature rise.

are lost on you because you have a self-destructive and society-destructive false belief, fueled by hucksters with an agenda for money and power, in the "sin" of man using his mind to better his life.

Way to open and close with an ad-hominem.

Or in order to promote investment in the green energy companies they're invested in.

This looks like something that Nintendo's lawyers told them they had to do, kind of like that warning in every videogame manual that everybody ignores, which cautions that games have the potential to trigger seizures. It makes it harder for somebody to sue, claiming "Your system is the reason my kid needs glasses!"

In fact, the notion that the 3ds could harm a normal child's eyes does not make a lot of sense. There's no evidence to support it, and some evidence against

Why not throw "target" in there with a surveyor's mark! Did Palin take over /. while I wasn't looking?

You are promoting an atmosphere of fear and hate.

It was a knife fight anyway, so he brought a gun.

Obama brings a gun to a knife fight

“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” Obama said in Philadelphia last night.

June 14, 2008.

Oh, and the Arizona shooter? A full-fledged US-flag-burning, Bush-hating, 9/11 Troofer MORON:

He became intrigued by antigovernment conspiracy theories, including that the Sept. 11 attacks were perpetrated by the government and that the country’s central banking system was enslaving its citizens. His anger would well up at the sight of President George W. Bush, or in discussing what he considered to be the nefarious designs of government.

Yeah, a flag-burning, Bush Derangement Syndrome-addled 9/11 Troofer gets his cues from Sarah Palin. More likely Keith Olbermann and Daily Kos, no?

So sorry to blow your meme up with facts.

"some kid"? Auernheimer has a Rolls Royce Silver Phantom and a history of major hacking successes. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html Some kid, indeed!

Maybe he lives in Arizona.

Where any person must submit papers that they are a legal US citizen. We've joked with the Hindi Indians at work that they better avoid AZ if they drive out west, but it's true. Unless they can produce their green card or SSN card, they could be detained.

If they are to drive out west as you say, shouldn't they have a drivers license? That is sufficient ID in Arizona, even an out of state license.

Maybe he lives in Arizona.

Where any person must submit papers that they are a legal US citizen. We've joked with the Hindi Indians at work that they better avoid AZ if they drive out west, but it's true. Unless they can produce their green card or SSN card, they could be detained.

GOOD!

Maybe he lives in Arizona.

Where any person must submit papers that they are a legal US citizen. We've joked with the Hindi Indians at work that they better avoid AZ if they drive out west, but it's true. Unless they can produce their green card or SSN card, they could be detained.

Album sales have dropped for four of the last five years, and while sales of digital singles are booming, that has not yet been enough to offset the drop. Music companies sold more than 350 million singles last year, a jump of 150 percent over the previous year's total.

Oh please! Linux has had 15 years and you STILL can't give away enough of the thing even at a cost of $0 to get beyond 1% You think MSFT pays guys like me hidden checks to sell Windows boxes? Nope to paraphrase an old campaign slogan its the apps and ease of use stupid which thanks to some bad design choices royally suck in Linux.

Do you realize you are expressing the same problem with Android [Linux] which is going to experience an explosive collapse in spite of the United States biggest Internet advertising agency's desperate efforts to get cellular to use it?

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2010/06/23/technology/personaltech/1247468111534/the-iphone-4.html

HTC has already reported cellular carriers are telling them they have too much Android. Android isn't making them many happy customers so deadly churn is increasing.

You have to literally buy the most expensive Android hardware available to get a decent experience compared to the iPhone4.

Cellular companies now want less Android in future products.

.

Apparently because the Vatican ordered you not to...

Yup, 1997 and they were still pretending that their precious "canon law", which has all the legal standing of the list of rules in some kid's clubhouse, takes precedence over civil punishment of known child rapists.

Its for a different reason; GS created a vehicle with exactly 499 investors to specifically skirt a rules that requires any company with more than 500 investors to be publicly traded. The SEC woke up for once in their lives and started poking around, rather than taking the heat, GS created the vehicle overseas, and only offered it to non US clients. Shady and circumspect to say the least. Heres more info: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/01/17/goldman-limits-facebook-investment-to-foreign-clients/

Yes. Well, mostly.

Physical music sales don't know they're already dead.

Check out this graph of music sales by format, 1973-2008. You can clearly see that each format grew, peaked, then was pushed to death by some new format. Cassettes killed vinyl. CDs killed cassettes. Digital downloads, provided they don't suddenly drop (and there's no indication that they will) are going to utterly kill CDs in the next few years. Since 1999, music publishers have made less and less money from CD sales.

Sure, you'll still be able to buy CDs - even in reasonably sized shops like HMV. There are any number of vintage vinyl shops trading today. But it's not where most of the money in selling music will be; the billions. That will be digital downloads.

I sort of wonder if this is an olive branch from Wikileaks to the US government. After all, the United States has been pressuring Switzerland to allow investigators to peek inside Swiss accounts for awhile now.

This isn't an olive branch at all. The US Government already achieved much of what it wanted in 2009.

A Swiss Bank Is Set to Open Its Secret Files
By LYNNLEY BROWNING - Published: February 18, 2009
UBS, the largest bank in Switzerland, agreed on Wednesday to divulge the names of well-heeled Americans whom the authorities suspect of using offshore accounts at the bank to evade taxes. The bank admitted conspiring to defraud the Internal Revenue Service and agreed to pay $780 million to settle a sweeping federal investigation into its activities.

It is unclear how many of its clients’ names UBS will divulge. Federal prosecutors have been examining about 19,000 accounts at the bank, but UBS ultimately may disclose the identities of only a few hundred customers. ...

As part of the settlement, UBS agreed to cooperate with a broad summons issued by the Justice Department to turn over the names. Under the terms of a so-called deferred prosecution agreement, the bank and its executives could be indicted if UBS didn’t identify the customers.

UBS has said it is closing the offshore accounts of its American clients. But under the deal with the United States authorities, the bank must provide periodic written evidence of that to prosecutors. UBS earned $200 million annually from the business.

Prosecutors suspect that from late 2002 to 2007, UBS helped American clients illegally hide $20 billion, letting them evade $300 million a year in taxes.

So no, this isn't Assange helping the US, it is Assange doing what he can to screw people with secrets (legal or otherwise).

I'm sure there is a word to describe the overall situation.... i.. something...

Under mansion arrest: Country bolthole lined up for WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange... as he begs judges not to reveal his address

Now Wikileaks suffers its own leaks - 12 Dec 2010

... a senior WikiLeaks activist told The Sunday Telegraph that she and others had resigned from the organisation because of their deep concern about its treatment of sources and "lack of transparency with relation to large sums of money".

This newspaper has learned that one of WikiLeaks's main funding channels, the Germany-based Wau Holland Foundation, has been issued with two official warnings by charity regulators after failing to file financial records....

WikiLeaks, which says its operating costs are about $200,000 (£125,000) a year, claims to have raised more than $1 million (£625,000) in donations in the first eight months of this year alone, before most of its highest- profile leaks were published.

Since then, according to one person connected with the group, further "serious amounts of money" have come in, mostly in small sums through the WikiLeaks website. However, in its four-year existence, the group and its associated organisations have never produced any accounts.

WikiLeaks promised to publish accounts in August, but did not do so. It now says it will provide them by the end of the year.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/business/worldbusiness/23krona.html
Stopping a Financial Crisis, the Swedish Way
“The public will not support a plan if you leave the former shareholders with anything,”
As for facebook, great as a data mining/freedom spreading subsidised interest of a few intelligence agencies riding useless privacy legislation?
Great for trend tracking, buzzword counts, herd interests, freedom fighter networking.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/14/facebook_trust_dumb/
Would a set of front companies be exposed by selling in the US?
Or is the US $ now going somewhere bad and 'top' people want to pump facebook with real cash on the way up?

The source I got it from was Chad Hermann's the Radical Middle blog, which itself was quoting other sources and had the mixed use of "wealth" and "income" terms.

I've seen similar numbers earlier, such as the NY Times (top 1 percent had 21.8 percent of income in 2005) and NY Times Economics Blog (top 1 percent had slightly over 20% of income and paid 40% of income taxes in 2007). The latter source links to the IRS data and also has some good charts.

The source I got it from was Chad Hermann's the Radical Middle blog, which itself was quoting other sources and had the mixed use of "wealth" and "income" terms.

I've seen similar numbers earlier, such as the NY Times (top 1 percent had 21.8 percent of income in 2005) and NY Times Economics Blog (top 1 percent had slightly over 20% of income and paid 40% of income taxes in 2007). The latter source links to the IRS data and also has some good charts.

Right. Tell that to the Iranians who just lost 984 uranium-enrichment centrifuges to a US/Israeli worm.

The official explanation from the British Foreign Office stated that the centrifuges were not lost, but merely resting, after a long squawk, and were pining for the fjords.

Norwegian centrifuges stun easily.

I guess they didn't read yesterday's new york times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/world/middleeast/16stuxnet.html

No.
So, who was actually hurt? Were there any casualties?

No one was hurt. Most Persian civilians went about their business. The Government had one of their projects set back. BFD.

Comparing that to war just dilutes what war really means just as much as the "War on Drugs", "War on Terrorism", and every other hyperbolic statement made by media, government and anyone else who has an agenda - like computer security people selling their services and wares.

A pair of British researchers have said states are only likely to use cyberattacks against other states when already involved in military action against them...

Right. Tell that to the Iranians who just lost 984 uranium-enrichment centrifuges to a US/Israeli worm.

I guess they didn't read yesterday's new york times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/world/middleeast/16stuxnet.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/04/us/politics/04palin.html?_r=1&ref=politics

She resigned because the multitude of unfounded investigations against her were costing the state money, costing her money, and taking her time away from running the state. She's said as much on multiple occasions, including in her book. She was 600k+ in debt to her lawyers, and the unfounded investigations, abusing Alaska's ethics laws, kept piling up.

Until it is fixed, perhaps the workaround is to include the URL as the hyperlink text in submissions referencing the NY Times. Like this: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/17/us/17gaming.html (non-subscribers should text-copy/paste the link).

Despite their exotic reputation, the vast majority of accounts were held by fairly ordinary folk (there seemed to be an inordinate number of german dentists). So while this may sound like a blow at the rich and powerful, there's going to be a lot of very unextraordinary middle class folk whose financial details are laid bare by this. Having a Swiss bank account is not illegal in itself.

From the New York Times coverage:

A former Swiss bank executive said on Monday that he had given the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, details of more than 2,000 prominent individuals and companies that he contends engaged in tax evasion and other possible criminal activity.

Emphasis mine. Elmer is doing this because he feels the list he has compiled is a list of unjust individuals and right now Wikileaks is doing all in their power to verify that these individuals are, in fact, tax dodgers. He says the list has 40 politicians and “pillars of society” worldwide among those two thousand.

You might want consider whether you'd like your finances laid bare before you acclaim this as another win for david over goliath.

Precisely why I ended the summary with "at the expense of privacy." And it's not just tax evasion. You do realize that if Julius Baer is associated with heinous criminals worldwide that it could get ugly on an international level, right?

There are more details here.

It is indeed a better link and was one I found in my Google Reader this morning. However, I also have noticed continuously that New York Times links provide me headaches and disappointment when used in Slashdot's submission process. Here's a recent example, earlier this morning I submitted a story about video games and mental health problems. Now in that submission I referred to a well written New York Times article an used this URL:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/17/us/17gaming.html

Every time I previewed it or edited it, it came out like that. But when I hit submit, it magically changed to this URL:

http://www.nytimes.com/glogin?URI=http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/17/us/17gaming.html&OQ=_rQ3D4&OP=70b1f348Q2FQ5D-2yQ5DgoksPooZQ27Q5DQ27W33Q5DW3Q5D3VQ5DisQ5D3VdQ241Q26rdQ25OZ14

What is going on? I've written to CmdrTaco about this and I thought he said they'd look at it ... like their system prefetches URLs or something? Makes adjustments to avoid TinyURL in the submission? Avoids redirects that might go to goatse? I don't know. What I do know is that if you go to the firehose and type in 'nytimes' as your search term you will find submission after submission with login/paywalled URLs exactly like the one above. Here's one and another and another ad infinitum.

So when you do this, people get upset they can't read the article and I heavily sympathize with them and generally consider my submission a failed attempt when that happens. So the solution? Don't link to the New York Times in submissions! I'll find some other site to send a billion Slashdot eyes at if they don't want their page views. It really is a shame because I love the New York Times and think they have some great writers but from the above it's evident the affection is asymmetrical.