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What is an emergency?
What is combat?

As examples of this administration's loose practices with the dictionary, consider the following:

This administration defines militant to be any boy or man killed by a drone, irrespective of the dead's actual beliefs.
http://www.salon.com/2012/05/29/militants_media_propaganda/

This administration claimed that the Libyan war was not a war to avoid getting Congressional approval.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/us/politics/16powers.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

So exactly how is this administration going to define "emergency" and "combat?" We already have a hint from the leaked memo that "imminent" (*) does get its ordinary dictionary definition. If the same is true of the other terms, Holder's reassurance amounts to nothing but empty words to make the discussion go away.

(*) http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/04/16843014-justice-department-memo-reveals-legal-case-for-drone-strikes-on-americans?lite

From the memo: "The condition that an operational leader present an 'imminent' threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future,"

Or that "due process" as used in the constitution does not mean judicial process, just any kind of process, such as the president making a decision in private based on secret accusations without any oversight.

http://www.salon.com/2012/03/06/attorney_general_holder_defends_execution_without_charges/

Arbitrary execution.
It happens weekly -- what do you think Terror Tuesday is all about. And one for certain was completely innocent 16yo American born boy. The government knew so much about him when it killed him, that it claimed he was 21.
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/abdulrahman-al-awlaki-death-10470891#ixzz2ABHMgELN
http://www.salon.com/2011/10/20/the_killing_of_awlakis_16_year_old_son/

Arbitrary indefinite detention.
Obama tried to close the facility at Gitmo and MOVE the PRACTICES to the Thompson Federal Supermax in Illinois. Don't feed me that bullshit about GOP obstruction and he tried to "close GITMO" where people understand "close" to mean "stop the practices" rather than merely continue the practices at a new location.
http://www.aclu.org/national-security/creating-gitmo-north-alarming-step-says-aclu
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/06/obama-promise-close-guantanamo-worse

Libya, and the War Powers Act. Obama conveniently redefines war.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/19/obama-libya-lawyers-war-powers_n_879951.html
http://www.nationaljournal.com/nationalsecurity/house-rejects-authorization-of-libya-intervention-20110624

http://www.salon.com/2011/07/07/bradley_manning_american_hero/

To be fair, one must also take into account that they have been actively working against and sabotaging Iranian nuclear efforts. The estimates may well be off, but not by as much as you're suggesting.

Various U.S. and Israeli "insiders" have been warning of the imminent threat of an Iranian nuclear bomb since fracking *1984*!!! These so-called estimates have reached the status of pure fantasy. Iran may indeed some day build a nuclear weapon - in which case all of these estimates will have been just as accurate as Mr. Carroll's infamous stopped clock.

http://www.wideasleepinamerica.com/2010/12/phantom-menace-fantasies-falsehoods-and.html
http://www.salon.com/2010/12/05/israeli_predictions_iranian_nukes/

Do you remember what happened when he actually tried to close it? Congress refused to let it happen.

It's 2013, and people are still repeating that tired fucking lie? Do you also think that Obama was "forced" into supporting military detention and naming Monsanto execs to the FDA?

Seriously? You think the reason Obama hasn't closed down Guantanamo is because he is appeasing right wing extremists?

Of course that's not the reason why he hasn't closed Gitmo. Obama hasn't closed Gitmo because he himself is a crazy right wing extremist.

This just shows how overreaching our federal government has become. Minimum wage should be a local issue (and is for a lot of states) because the cost of living differs from state to state so greatly.

You mean: so southern states (and Teabagged ones like Michigan and Ohio) can compete in a race to the bottom, luring employers to relocate with the promise of complaint wage slaves. Even more than they already do.

Which, unless you're a Walton, is just cutting off your nose to spite your face. Even if you're a good little boostrapping self-reliant Randian elitist, you're still just one layer in the pyramid, resting on the layers below you. Without a minimum wage, there is no floor, which means your own standard of living is at risk as well.

Depends on who you know.

Here are two links that support my statements. There are lots more. The stats for out-of-wedlock birth and STDs are easy to find.

http://consumerist.com/2009/03/05/which-state-consumes-the-most-online-porn/

Now go look at the gallup poll about which states are the most religious, just published this week:

http://www.salon.com/2013/02/15/nations_most_religious_are_also_the_most_depressed_partner

PopeRatzo - Some evidence of either of your claims?

Here you go:

http://consumerist.com/2009/03/05/which-state-consumes-the-most-online-porn/

Now go look at the gallup poll about which states are the most religious, just published this week:

http://www.salon.com/2013/02/15/nations_most_religious_are_also_the_most_depressed_partner

For future reference, all this information can be found via google. You just type in what you're looking for.

Note, we've gotten to this strange point where people think any mention of WWII evokes Godwin's Law. The law was originally intended to stop unthinking analogies, not apt analogies, nor, as in this case, contextualized ethical examples or moral dilemmas.

Thus, I am forced to hereby invent and evoke a new law: Greenwald's Law.

It's time "cyber" whistle-blowers get traditional whistle-blower protections.

Don't worry, they'll be removing traditional whistle-blower protections soon enough, to level the playing field. See

The moral lessons to be drawn from Star Wars are not very helpful.

That one links to this Salon article: http://www.salon.com/2000/05/26/free_love/
I've always wondered, is that article for real, or is it an elaborate troll itself?

Your post is a little confusing to me, but I hope you haven't fallen for the lie that Obama wanted to end the practices of Gitmo. Obama did try to close Gitmo and Congress stood in the way, but it was a type of "closing" where those practices were merely imported to a Federal Supermax in Illinois, not a "closing" in the sense of ending the practice of indefinite due process free detention. It was a very clever bit of politics on Obama's part -- something an uncritical Democrat could latch on to in the tribal GOP v. DNC clownfight.

see: "Welcom to Gitmo North"
http://www.salon.com/2009/12/15/gitmo_3/

This is another good example of abusive DMCA take down requests circumventing due process. RIAA and MPAA abuse the law to suppress our creativity
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk862BbjWx4
  and are destroying our cultural heritage.
http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2001/11/48625?currentPage=all
To top it off, their outdated business model unfairly reimburses the artists for their hard work.
http://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/
Copyright needs to be reformed. Some changes that I'd like to see are:

  * Abolish the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
  * Intellectual property should be taxed like real property. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oew-weaver20feb20,0,1675278.story It is an asset with a value, right? If you no longer make enough to pay your taxes on it, it goes to the state.
  * Copyrights are supposed to be an incentive to create. One that lasts unto your grandchildren are a dis-incentive, because not only are you not creating any more once you are dead, neither are your descendants. Copyright should last half a working lifetime (20 years), so that you have to get off your ass and make new stuff.
  * Someone who makes copies without permission should pay a fine, but it should be at the regular royalty rate for the item x copies made. So upload a song, it's iTunes price x number of downloads, with perhaps a factor of 3 penalty to discourage doing it, not $150,000 per copy.

If you feel the same way, you can make a difference by donating to the EFF
https://supporters.eff.org/donate
or at least signing this petition urging reform.
http://www.fightforthefuture.org/fixcopyright

"Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves."
-Abraham Lincoln

He was there because his family moved there. He was participating in a barbecue when he was murdered. He had been trying to find his dad for some time because he missed him.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2097899,00.html
http://www.salon.com/2011/10/20/the_killing_of_awlakis_16_year_old_son/

News reports, based on government sources, originally claimed that Awlaki's son was 21 years old and an Al Qaeda fighter (needless to say, as Terrorist often means: "anyone killed by the U.S."), but a birth certificate published by The Washington Post proved that he was born only 16 years ago in Denver. As The New Yorker's Amy Davidson wrote: "Looking at his birth certificate, one wonders what those assertions say either about the the quality of the government's evidence -- or the honesty of its claims -- and about our own capacity for self-deception."

And of Al Awlaki himself? He was killed because of his youtube postings. Freedom of speech, so long as you don't say stuff the Feds hate. That list of things the Feds hate? Sure to grow.

case in point TCP/IP vs OSI

TCP/IP was quickly created by some students and released into the world, and then improved on.

Actually, the specs were created by a bunch of people including at least three Ph. D.'s, and there were several independent implementations, including one done at Bolt Beranek and Newman for UNIX; the latter one was subsequently modified by some students at Berkeley (I have the impression that, in addition to Bill Joy, Sam Leffler worked on the 4.2BSD TCP/IP stack) and offered as part of BSD UNIX, and the rest was history.

There have been 0 executive orders made recently. The last executive order President Obama made was Executive Order #13635 on Dec 27th, 2012 and concerned federal employees' pay. Many news organization incorrectly reported that Obama signed 23 executive orders when in fact he did not. They have now changed their wording to say executive actions. At least one reporter, from Salon.com, admitted to incorrectly reporting this.

http://www.salon.com/2013/01/17/the_23_executive_orders_that_weren%E2%80%99t/
http://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/executive-orders/
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Category:Executive_orders_of_Barack_Obama

http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-freedom.htm "With most of the rank and file employees replaced by robots and eliminated from the payroll, all of the money flowing into a large corporation has only one place to go -- upward toward the executives and shareholders. The concentration of wealth will be dramatic when robots arrive."

Some solutions I've cataloged: http://www.pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html
The most obvious is a "basic income" like they have some of in Alaska with the Alaskan Permanet Fund: http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund

It's kind of surprising how much politicians think they can get away with now in the USA. There is still massive unemployment and they think they can push through legislation like this. Why not instead, say, just mandate that all US companies be willing to pay for two months of employee training a year, to level the economic playing field and promote the growth of the US workforce? And also mandate vacation time as well?
http://www.salon.com/2010/08/25/german_usa_working_life_ext2010/
""Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?": America's misguided culture of overwork ... Germany's workers have higher productivity, shorter hours and greater quality of life. How did we get it so wrong?"

Personally though, I'm all for throwing open the borders. The issue is making H1Bs second-class citizens. If you want to import workers, make them citizens when they step off the boat. And give everyone a basic income. It's an experiment, but its hard to imagine doing much worse than what we have.

What ever happend to "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free"? Why not ake the USA into the "Australia Project" Marshall Brain wrote about in Manna?
http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2012/05/12/bush-convicted-of-war-crimes-in-absentia/

http://www.salon.com/2011/11/23/bush_and_blair_found_guilty_of_war_crimes_for_iraq_attack/

two-tiered justice system — the way in which political and financial elites now enjoy virtually full-scale legal immunity for even the most egregious lawbreaking, while ordinary Americans, especially the poor and racial and ethnic minorities, are subjected to exactly the opposite treatment: the world’s largest prison state and most merciless justice system.

"...it's also like a combination of the Truman Show and They Live. One massive reality distortion bubble that nobody is aware of.
And the whole discussion, just as the voting choices, always revolves around two options that are only differing in something entirely beside the point, giving the citizens choices for all aspects of their life, except those that aren't meaningless. Everything is condensed down from picking a fuzzy varying area in a multi-dimensional gradient space to a one-dimensional binary choice. With you being called at least "Hitler" for picking the "wrong" one. Let alone trying to think outside that box.
It's ludicrous."

See my comment posted earlier above, or also this by Morris Berman:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/01/18/the-parable-of-the-frogs/
"In the case of the United States, the imposition of rules and limits on individual behavior to protect the commons is not, at present, a realistic prospect; the population is simply not having it. But how much longer before this freedom of choice is regarded as an impossible luxury? In fact, no crystal ball is required to predict the future here. The tragedy of the commons -- what Hardin called "the remorseless working of things" -- is that a society such as that of the United States won't undertake serious changes even when it is sitting on the edge of an abyss. It has to actually be in the abyss before it will entertain such changes; i.e., it has to be faced with no choice at all. It seems unlikely now, but things are probably moving faster than we realize. In terms of population, energy, food, resources, water, social inequality, public health, and environmental degradation, a crunch of the type I am referring to may be only twenty years away."

By that author:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1118061810/
"During the final century of the Roman Empire, it was common for emperors to deny that their civilization was in decline. Only with the perspective of history can we see that the emperors were wrong, that the empire was failing, and that the Roman people were unwilling or unable to change their way of life before it was too late. The same, says Morris Berman, is true of twenty-first century America. The nation and its empire are in decline and nothing can be done to reverse their course. How did this come to be? In Why America Failed, Berman examines the development of American culture from the earliest colonies to the present, shows that the seeds of the nation's "hustler" culture were sown from the very beginning, and reveals how the very tools that enabled the country's expansion have become the instruments of its demise. "

BTW, Germany is a legacy of what the USA used to be:
http://www.salon.com/2010/08/25/german_usa_working_life_ext2010/
"How did Germany become such a great place to work in the first place?
The Allies did it. This whole European model came, to some extent, from the New Deal. Our real history and tradition is what we created in Europe. Occupying Germany after WWII, the 1945 European constitutions, the UN Charter of Human Rights all came from Eleanor Roosevelt and the New Dealers. All of it got worked into the constitutions of Europe and helped shape their social democracies. It came from us. The papal encyclicals on labor, it came from the Americans. ..."

Yet we in the USA should not lose hope:
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1108-21.htm
"In this awful world where the efforts of caring people often pale in comparison to what is done by those who have power, how do I manage to stay involved and seemingly happy? I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we should not give up the game before all the cards have been played.

"It's not my fault, I was just following orders."

I thought as a society we had long ago decided that was not an excuse.

Haven't you heard ? In this century, the US only prosecutes those who are following orders. Those giving the orders are apparently totally immune. This started with Abu Graib and continues, literally, to this Friday.

http://www.salon.com/2013/01/11/stop_talking_about_hitler/

I doubt you will read it, if you do you will deny it of course.

"(given that's a republican politician): how much for "law enforcement" and what proportion for "mental health"?"

I propose an excellent compromise, one so good that paleoconservatives, jackbooted neo-fascist boot boys, and aging flower children will come together in harmony!

Apparently, roughly half of the people shot by cops are mentally ill. Since being shot is one of the more severe possible cop reactions, and the homeless, erratically behaved, and otherwise troubled are more likely to end up in proximity to the cops, it seems quite likely that many of the ones being shot are among the more severely ill, and that cops also deal(somewhat less violently) with a wide range of the mentally ill population. Thus, we can simply spend all the money on cops and Tazers; but reclassify police as an arm of the medical community's 'mental health outreach' system(an hour-long training video and a simple multiple-choice test may be required here). At a stroke, we get more cops, more perp beat downs, and the biggest apparent increase in mental health resources in the entire history of public health!

May I recommend this article
      http://www.salon.com/2013/01/14/the_nra_once_supported_gun_control/

The parent says

That's what the second amendment is about. Not self defense, not hunting, not skeet shooting. Protection from tyranny. It's a recognized right for the people to possess the means to revolt should they choose.

Not so, according to the cited article. The second amendment was not intended to let you battle the government, but let you fight with a militia to supprt the government.

The NRA’s first president was a northern Army General, Ambrose Burnside. He was chosen to reflect this civilian-militia mission, as envisioned in the Second Amendment, which reads, “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” The understanding of the Amendment at the time concerned having a prepared citizenry to assist in domestic military matters, such as repelling raids on federal arsenals like 1786’s Shays Rebellion in Massachusetts or the British in the War of 1812. Its focus was not asserting individual gun rights as today, but a ready citizenry prepared by target shooting. The NRA accepted $25,000 from New York State to buy a firing range ($500,000 today). For decades, the U.S. military gave surplus guns to the NRA and sponsored shooting contests.

Here's another interesting piece from said article.

The NRA’s fabricated but escalating view of the Second Amendment was ridiculed by former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger—a conservative appointed by President Richard Nixon—in a PBS Newshour interview in 1991, where he called it “one of the greatest pieces of fraud—I repeat the word ‘fraud’—on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”

Burger would not have imagined that the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008—13 years after he died—led by libertarian activist Justice Antonin Scalia—would enshrine that “fraud” into the highest echelon of American law by decreeing that the Second Amendment included the right to own a gun for self-protection in one’s home.

“In Financial Crisis, No Prosecutions of Top Figures.” It asks: “why, in the aftermath of a financial mess that generated hundreds of billions in losses, have no high-profile participants in the disaster been prosecuted?” And it recounts that not only have no high-level culprits been indicted (or even subjected to meaningful criminal investigations), but few have suffered any financial repercussions in the form of civil enforcements or other lawsuits. The evidence of rampant criminality that led to the 2008 financial crisis is overwhelming, but perhaps the clearest and most compelling such evidence comes from long-time Wall-Street-servant Alan Greenspan; even he was forced to acknowledge that much of the precipitating conduct was “certainly illegal and clearly criminal” and that “a lot of that stuff was just plain fraud.

two-tiered justice system — the way in which political and financial elites now enjoy virtually full-scale legal immunity for even the most egregious lawbreaking, while ordinary Americans, especially the poor and racial and ethnic minorities, are subjected to exactly the opposite treatment: the world’s largest prison state and most merciless justice system.

It has come to my attention that the entire Linux community is a hotbed of so called 'alternative sexuality', which includes anything from hedonistic orgies to homosexuality to paedophilia.

What better way of demonstrating this than by looking at the hidden messages contained within the names of some of Linux's most outspoken advocates:

• Linus Torvalds is an anagram of slit anus or VD 'L,' clearly referring to himself by the first initial.
• Richard M. Stallman, spokespervert for the Gaysex's Not Unusual 'movement' is an anagram of mans cram thrill ad.
• Alan Cox is barely an anagram of anal cox which is just so filthy and unchristian it unnerves me.

I'm sure that Eric S. Raymond, composer of the satanic homosexual propaganda diatribe The Cathedral and the Bizarre, is probably an anagram of something queer, but we don't need to look that far as we know he's always shoving a gun up some poor little boy's rectum. Update: Eric S. Raymond is actually an anagram for secondary rim and cord in my arse. It just goes to show you that he is indeed queer.

Update the Second: It is also documented that Evil Sicko Gaymond is responsible for a nauseating piece of code called Fetchmail, which is obviously sinister sodomite slang for 'Felch Male' -- a disgusting practise. For those not in the know, 'felching' is the act performed by two perverts wherein one sucks their own post-coital ejaculate out of the other's rectum. In fact, it appears that the dirty Linux faggots set out to undermine the good Republican institution of e-mail, turning it into 'e-male.'

As far as Richard 'Master' Stallman goes, that filthy fudge-packer was actually quoted on leftist commie propaganda site Salon.com as saying the following: 'I've been resistant to the pressure to conform in any circumstance,' he says. 'It's about being able to question conventional wisdom,' he asserts. 'I believe in love, but not monogamy,' he says plainly.

And this isn't a made up troll bullshit either! He actually stated this tripe, which makes it obvious that he is trying to politely say that he's a flaming homo slut!

Speaking about 'flaming,' who better to point out as a filthy chutney ferret than Slashdot's very own self-confessed pederast Jon Katz. Although an obvious deviant anagram cannot be found from his name, he has already confessed, nay boasted of the homosexual perversion of corrupting the innocence of young children. To quote from the article linked:

'I've got a rare kidney disease,' I told her. 'I have to go to the bathroom a lot. You can come with me if you want, but it takes a while. Is that okay with you? Do you want a note from my doctor?'

Is this why you were touching your penis in the cinema, Jon? And letting the other boys touch it too?

We should also point out that Jon Katz refers to himself as 'Slashdot's resident Gasbag.' Is there any more doubt? For those fortunate few who aren't aware of the list of homosexual terminology found inside the Linux 'Sauce Code,' a 'Gasbag' is a pervert who gains sexual gratification from having a thin straw inserted into his urethra (or to use the common parlance, 'piss-pipe'), then his homosexual lover blows firmly down the straw to inflate his scrotum. This is, of course, when he's not busy violating the dignity and co

ego it would appear in this case.

Ego, or weak-sauce tautology? If it was ego, Manning would have been publicly running to some state-owned Russian newspaper, not anonymously handing the cables over to Wikileaks.

You didn't do it for conscience reasons, you did it for other reasons,

Again, anonymous release of mass corruption and criminality from the United States government and it's allies. How was it not done out of conscience?

While it seems to be taken as an article of faith on /. that extreme government crimes were revealed, I've yet to have anyone point them out to me.

So, your attention to detail has been as selective as your storyline.

That cable was released by WikiLeaks in May, 2011, and, as McClatchy put it at the time, "provides evidence that U.S. troops executed at least 10 Iraqi civilians, including a woman in her 70s and a 5-month-old infant, then called in an airstrike to destroy the evidence, during a controversial 2006 incident in the central Iraqi town of Ishaqi." The U.S. then lied and claimed the civilians were killed by the airstrike. Although this incident had been previously documented by the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, the high-profile release of the cable by WikiLeaks generated substantial attention (and disgust) in Iraq, which made it politically unpalatable for the Iraqi government to grant the legal immunity the Obama adminstration was seeking [to extend the Iraq war beyond the December 2011 deadline established by GWB].

http://www.salon.com/2011/10/23/wikileaks_cables_and_the_iraq_war/singleton/

The only thing that seems to get referred to is the "collateral murder" video which if you watch unedited clearly shows the opposite: There was no crime, the soldiers engaged per the rules of war (which are quite different from regular civilian laws).

What "rules of war" allow you first attack unarmed civilians in a country that's not yours, and then do your best to kill anyone attempting to rescue the dying? When other people do that we call it terrorism.

You are quite the prolific Concern Troll in this story, elucido. I hope somebody is at least paying you for it.

There are no war crimes and mass criminality in Cablegate. That is wishful thinking.

That's willful ignorance:

That cable was released by WikiLeaks in May, 2011, and, as McClatchy put it at the time, "provides evidence that U.S. troops executed at least 10 Iraqi civilians, including a woman in her 70s and a 5-month-old infant, then called in an airstrike to destroy the evidence, during a controversial 2006 incident in the central Iraqi town of Ishaqi." The U.S. then lied and claimed the civilians were killed by the airstrike. Although this incident had been previously documented by the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, the high-profile release of the cable by WikiLeaks generated substantial attention (and disgust) in Iraq, which made it politically unpalatable for the Iraqi government to grant the legal immunity the Obama adminstration was seeking [to extend the Iraq war beyond the December 2011 deadline established by GWB].

http://www.salon.com/2011/10/23/wikileaks_cables_and_the_iraq_war/singleton/

'Although none of the Wired articles ever mention this, the first Lamo-Manning communications were not actually via chat. Instead, Lamo told me that Manning first sent him a series of encrypted emails which Lamo was unable to decrypt because Manning "encrypted it to an outdated PGP key of mine" [PGP is an encryption program]."

What self-respecting hacker loses his old PGP key?

"After receiving this first set of emails, Lamo says he replied - despite not knowing who these emails were from or what they were about - by inviting the emailer to chat with him on AOL IM, and provided his screen name to do so."

"Lamo says that Manning thereafter sent him additional emails encrypted to his current PGP key, but that Lamo never bothered to decrypt them. Instead, Lamo claims he turned over all those Manning emails to the FBI without ever reading a single one of them.

What self-respecting hacker doesn't bother to read his email. Why would it be necessary at this point for Lamo to claim not to have read the emails?

"Thus, the actual initial communications between Manning and Lamo - what preceded and led to their chat - are completely unknown. Lamo refuses to release the emails or chats other than the small chat snippets published by Wired". link

Iran has funded and controlled terrorists in Argentina, Israel, India, Iraq, Kenya, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia.

You mean accused of funding terrorists. There's a big difference between claims and proof - or have you forgotten about "Nigerian yellow cake" and "aluminum tubes?"

But, lets go ahead and say that the worst things you claim about Iran are true - they'd still be the molehill next to the mountain of U.S. and Israeli aggression. Iran hasn't launched two bogus wars of choice in the last ten years or set up a world wide torture regime. Iran isn't running an apartheid state against half it's population.

As for terrorism again, wake us up when giant banks that have laundered money for Al Queda aren't granted sweeping immunity from prosecution, along with American shills for the terrorist group MEK.

• Biggest prison system in the world. Check.
• Due process free detention. Check.
• Due process free execution. Check.
• Glorification of the murder of "savages". Check.
• Entertainmentification of the murder "savages". Check.
• Destroying the war powers act so that the president has sole ability to engage in war. Check.
• Persecution of whistleblowers. Check

Authoritarian America, brought to you by the Adam-Lanza-in-Chief, president and leader of the New GOP (aka, Obama).

And yeah, some of you may be offended, but do note that Obama killed 14 women and 21 children exactly three years to the day prior to the Newton masacre using cluster bombs in Yemen under with the blessing of its dictatorial asshole leader, then managed to convice (personally contacted the Yemeni president) to keep the reporter who broke the story in jail. FN1. About cluster bombs, Obama tried to undermine a treaty banning, they're about as effective as landmines in blowing up innocents years after their deployment. FN2.

So the title fits: Obama is the Adam-Lanza-in-Chief. You think his tears were those of compassion? Maybe they were tears of guilt because in that masacre, Obama would play the role of shooter.

FN1: http://www.salon.com/2012/03/14/obamas_personal_role_in_a_journalists_imprisonment/

FN2: http://news.antiwar.com/2011/11/10/us-moves-to-overturn-ban-on-cluster-bombs/

Seems like every backward region I've ever been too has been awash in conspiracy theories, urban legends, and superstitious horseshit. Worked down in South America, where every illiterate countryside hick seems to think Americans are trying to steal their organs (resulting in shit like this). Worked in India, where half the hicks think that clean water is just a ruse to poison them. Even worked in a ghetto, where the rumor was that whitey was putting chemicals in menthol cigarettes to make black men sterile.

So it doesn't surprise me that backwater Pakistanis believe that Christians are out to give their kids drugs to make them hate Mohammad (or whatever other crazy crap runs through those heads), disguised as these things called "vaccines." Combine that with a CIA sleight-of-hand and a Taliban which is happy to use any excuse to show it's still relevant, and you get a lot of kids who are now going to die from a disease the rest of the world eradicated long ago.

Fuck, just look at this idiot as the perfect example of what happens when you mix base stupidity with just enough knowledge to be dangerous.

It's all well and good until said hillbillies start killing people or getting them killed.

Why does it seem there is one set of rules for the little people and another set for big business?

Here you go: With Liberty and Justice for Some. Aside from the book, Glenn Greenwald has a lot of interesting insights at Salon, and now writes for The Guardian.

Why does it seem there is one set of rules for the little people and another set for big business?

Here you go: With Liberty and Justice for Some. Aside from the book, Glenn Greenwald has a lot of interesting insights at Salon, and now writes for The Guardian.

The only thing that Barr did correctly was look up WHOIS info on the People's Liberation Front's website after an Anonymous guy claimed to be "Supreme Commander" of the PLF... When Barr confronted him, the guy claimed it was a joke, so Barr pointed to an innocent man instead. (Ars Tech article on the 'correct' Commander X.) Otherwise, Barr's tactics -- including analyzing what the people wrote -- gave him completely wrong answers.

The only thing that Barr did correctly was look up WHOIS info on the People's Liberation Front's website after an Anonymous guy claimed to be "Supreme Commander" of the PLF... When Barr confronted him, the guy claimed it was a joke, so Barr pointed to an innocent man instead. (Ars Tech article on the 'correct' Commander X.) Otherwise, Barr's tactics -- including analyzing what the people wrote -- gave him completely wrong answers.

Although community colleges are often low-cost, it is hard to find one that gives more than a 2-year degree. One of the reasons is that private colleges, such as University of Phoenix, have lobbied against it, since it would hurt their profits.

Reference: University of Phoenix' plot to corner the cheap education market

That's a common fallacy. There is no US statute, state or federal, that requires "maximising shareholder value"

There doesn't need to be a statute mandating it. You can sue on the grounds that they were negligent and/or incompetent. And in some cases such statements might be written into the company's bylaws.

But ultimately I agree with the parent- blaming Google/MS is pointless, what they are doing is perfectly legal. Normally such actions would be considered some type of Tax Fraud, but the tax code specifically allows them to do such things. The blame rests squarely on the shoulders of Congress- the entire body, not just one political party.

That's a common fallacy. There is no US statute, state or federal, that requires "maximising shareholder value"

I'm pretty sure people demand that US stop aiding any country who is murdering civilians (When they are made aware of it). Google Egypt gas cans made in us.

All of your examples seem to focus on Israel as a sole victim of criticism when it's really not. Russia, China and others have a lot of bashing of their own governments (although no one tries to equate criticism of China's government with some religion or ethnicity). Israel might appear more on the news (world and US) because it's a very relevant ally and placed right in the middle of THE US conflict zone of choice.

Relevant article regarding anti-semitism and any critique towards Israel's government

It's really hard to have an intelligent exchange just about anywhere, and you're becoming a poster child as to why.

Ever hear of "embrace, extend, extinguish"? Microsoft built in browser incompatibilities with an object tag for ActiveX to make sure Netscape and Opera performed poorly (Opera sued for that), MSN.com even served a different CSS to Opera visitors to make it look broken, for a while, you saw a blank screen on msn.com unless your user-agent string said MSIE, they extended and broke CSS favoring their own -ms- property extensions, they broke Java in browsers with J/Direct, they created Java development tools that stripped away all the cross platform intentions of Java (Sun sued for that), they planned to extinguish the HTML standard with their own free browser to "cut off Netscape's air supply" (Paul Maritz revealed this in a meeting with Intel), they extended and broke Kerberos to lock out other platforms from Windows 2000, they embraced and extended the AOL IM protocol to make AOL's own IM software stop working, they made a mess out of ISO-9660 with their Joliet extension (so you only see the 8.3 names in other platforms), they told Intel to withdraw VDI and threatened PC makers if they implemented it (look up Steven McGeady's testimony), Bill Gates told Andy Grove to shut down the Intel Architecture Labs driving CPU level Internet technologies without Microsoft's permission, Intel had to kill NSP, kill Java support, stop support for Netscape - all part of their illegal restrictive licensing agreements with OEMs to favor Microsoft and harm everything else, they signed up OEMs for a rebate on installing Windows on PCs in exchange for a fee they had to pay for any PC they sold without Windows, effectively making a PC without bundling Windows more expensive for the OEM to make (anti-competitive and illegal), Microsoft threatened Apple unless they abandoned the ability of QuickTime to play multimedia content on computers (they refused and Microsoft sabotaged QuickTime's functionality on Windows with misleading error messages and technical changes or bugs so that QuickTime software sometimes didn't work properly on Windows), they stuffed an ISO standards body to make OOXML (a compendium of Microsoft proprietary undefined digital glop) a "standard" which only they controlled (instead of the truly available ODF standard), Microsoft had fully developed FUD as a marketing strategy (announcing nonexistent products to head off something a competitor actually made or claiming competitive software will crash Windows), If you’ve bought a new PC lately, it probably came equipped with something called “Secure Boot” (UEFI), a feature which prevents you from running anything but Windows on the PC...

These people aren't very nice, relying on a mix of brilliant marketing, threats against OEMs (Microsoft thought they owned any PC right down to the metal), failings of competitors, vaporware and fraudulent illusions. Sure, Netscape had problems and so did Microsoft. They earned their success with their best office productivity software, but their biggest success came from bending everyone over and fucking them, including the customers. Good competition could have been here a lot sooner.

Extortion:
The Police Raided a 9-Year-Old to Confiscate Her Winnie the Pooh Laptop

Outrageously unfair fines:
$222,000 Music Piracy Fine Not Unconstitutional, Court Rules

Hypocrites:
The RIAA Pirated $9 Million Worth of TV Shows

Ripping off the artists:
Courtney Love does the math

Making sure shit floats:
How Payola Works Today... Or Why You Only Hear Major Label ...

The biggest pirates:
Canadian Music Industry Copyright Class Action Settled

Pushing the worst laws:
Rockmelt Blog | Why PIPA and SOPA are a Very Bad Idea Ã" And ...

So, pirate everything, boycott all of them, destroy the scumfucks.

Extortion:
The Police Raided a 9-Year-Old to Confiscate Her Winnie the Pooh Laptop

Outrageously unfair fines:
$222,000 Music Piracy Fine Not Unconstitutional, Court Rules

Hypocrites:
The RIAA Pirated $9 Million Worth of TV Shows

4. Ripping off the artists.
Courtney Love does the math

Making sure shit floats:
How Payola Works Today... Or Why You Only Hear Major Label ...

The biggest pirates:
Canadian Music Industry Copyright Class Action Settled

Pushing the worst laws:
Rockmelt Blog | Why PIPA and SOPA are a Very Bad Idea â" And ...

So, pirate everything, boycott all of them, destroy the scumfucks.

Your post (and that article) describe the failures of Scott J.

Your are correct, but think: Who appointed Scott J. Bloch to that position, who is protecting him in the courts, and who is appointing his replacement(s)?

Blame one man all you want, however it is the whole institution that has positioned itself against whistleblowers (as demonstrated beyond any doubt by the relentless bipartisan persecution of them).

Te hoped that writing a paper saying so would reassure Microsoft's critics in the technical community that Redmond wasn't planning to lock down the PC in order to satisfy Hollywood. And by making it clear that the people behind Microsoft's "trusted computing" push were not fans of DRM, Biddle hoped he could persuade the technical community to consider other, more benign applications of the technology he was building.

snip

It didn't work out that way. "I almost got fired over the paper," Biddle told Ars. "It was extremely controversial." Biddle tried to get buy-in from senior Microsoft executives prior to releasing the paper. But he says they didn't really understand the paper's implications—and particularly how it could strain relationships with content companies—until after it was released. Once the paper was released, Microsoft's got stuck in bureaucratic paralysis. Redmond neither repudiated Biddle's paper nor allowed him to publicly defend it.

At the same time, "the community we thought would draw a connection never drew the connection," Biddle said, referring to anti-DRM activists. "Microsoft was taking so much heat around security and trustworthy computing, that I was not allowed to go out and talk about any of this stuff publicly. I couldn't explain 'guys, we're totally on your side. What we want is a program that's open.'"

The so called "community" is and was rabidly anti-Microsoft regardless of the actual merits of the case. There are umpteen journalists(eg. Farhad Manjoo of Slate), who railed endlessly against Palladium, but when Apple implemented the Palladium spec to the letter in the iPhone and iPad, locked out developers and users from their own machines, the exact same people went "OOH SHINY" were falling all over themselves singing its praises.

See http://www.salon.com/2002/07/11/palladium/ and http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/03/new_ipad_how_apple_s_tablet_strategy_parallels_its_unbeatable_ipod_success_.html

Now we have the slow decimation of user and developer freedom led over the past 5 years by the iPhone, iPad, Kindle Fire, Nook,locked bootloaders on Android phones like the Droid, tablets etc., Windows Phone and now Windows RT. As they say, the first cut is the deepest, the war was lost when the public started buying iDevices in droves and they *still* can't keep them in stock. Now everyone can say if it's okay for the market leader Apple to do it, so can we. This is the harm with the "raise hell if it's MS, ignore and pump it if it's Apple etc." attitude of the community and Slashdot is no different for the most part. If, instead of playing fanboys and haters, if pundits and tech folks actually stood for openness like RMS did, we might have had a different future today.

The cat is out of the bag though. Apple charging 30% of even the services offered through apps is just the tip of the iceberg.