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Again, it's only a local phenomenon [...]

So, how exactly is glaciers melting around the world a local phenomen?

Germany does invest in nuclear fusion research:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,599211,00.html

Germany is already phasing out coal power, so no. Because of how rapidly they're doing their nuclear phaseout, there will probably be more coal in the short term, but Germany has made it clear that it intends to replace them with solar and wind, and has announced a boost in investment in these sectors.

Non-Americans don't even have the same business models that drive traffic to US sites. They don't even have per-story comments [...]

It would have been sufficient to RTFA to see that you are wrong. Underneath the text even the Google translation shows quite prominently "Read comments (162 posts)". Let us visit the largest German news websites that I can name off the top of my head and click on an exemplary story to see who has per-story comments:

• Süddeutsche Zeitung: check
• Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: check
• Die Welt: check
• Der Spiegel: check
• Focus: check
• Stern: no
• TAZ: check
• Tagesschau online: check

7 out of 8 have per-story comments. This business model has very much arrived here.

David Leigh and Dumbshit-Borg are either pathetic and self-serving dupes, or sickening quislings

Indeed. According to Der Spiegel , the encrypted file was among those taken from Wikileaks by Domscheit-Berg when he acrimoniously left to start his own rival Openleaks site. It was then released by Openleaks using volunteers to seed torrents of many of their files. Meanwhile, David Leigh of The Guardian published the password which Assange had given him, thereby apparently breaking an agreement of confidentiality. Later, an Openleaks-associated news site let people know where the key to this particular file could be found.

Smelly sticky shit is indeed flying, but it looks like a side effect of Assange/Wikileaks being stabbed in the back by Domscheit-Berg/Openleaks and David Leigh of The Guardian. Whether the stabbing occurred by coordinated malice or combined stupidity and incompetence is still a little uncertain. Either way, it's hard to blame this directly on Assange/Wikileaks.

The Schneier article is very speculative and doesn't have many facts.

DER SPIEGEL has a much better and more detailed account: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,783778,00.html

It's worth noting the German government sometimes allows Nazi imagery to be used, so long as it's clearly not pro-Nazi. For instance, a couple of years ago, there was a production of The Producers in a theater in Berlin that Adolf Hitler used to frequent.

According to what i understand: The leak is confirmed (1) independently and also by one of the WL partners (4), which claimes it was in relation to Daniel Domscheids Bergs (DDB) return of this data and a human error on the side of wikileaks which resulted in a password and the data being published. It has been known to insiders for some time, claims a known german tech Journalist who wrote (3) in a comment to (1), direct link to his commen (6). Several of these suggest that the handling of the data which was returned by DDB to Wikileaks and the uncontrolled release of the data an password were the reasons for DDB to destroy the remaining WL data instead of returning it. Other sources claim he is wrong.

(1) http://netzpolitik.org/2011/leck-bei-wikileaks-bestatigt/

(2) https://netzpolitik.org/2011/leck-bei-wikileaks/

(3) http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/34/34398/1.html

(4) http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/0,1518,782923,00.html

(5) http://www.golem.de/1108/85993.html

(6) http://netzpolitik.org/2011/leck-bei-wikileaks-bestatigt/#comment-434548

Oh, did anyone mention DDB, as only the 2nd person ever, got kicked out of the Chaos Computer Club?

More info, happened just a few days ago:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,780289,00.html

I love the simple and functional design of the Casio F-91W too. Using it for ages, and just got a replacement. Just one thing: if you travel to the US, better leave it at home to avoid trouble. They're pretty nervous over there with that model.

Germany doesn't have any solar thermal power stations. You are probably thinking of small scale heating for individual buildings, not large scale power generation. What power company is it, BTW? Last year 17% of power in Germany was from renewables. No power company is 100% renewable because even if all its own generators are it would still have to buy in power from fossil and nuclear sources to meet demand.

Isn't the energy market deregulated anyway? I can choose which power company supplies me, can't you? It seems unlikely that the government would allow a monopoly supplier to put bills up by such massive amounts.

Germany globally doesn't have... here we have widely rolled out solar thermal co-generation for new developments and for the administrations. You are right that it isn't electricity co-generation tho, it is communal hot water and heating. The local utility is the supplier of pretty much all infra services (roadworks, bus, natural gas, compost, swimming pools, water, sewers...), it used to be a branch of the local government until it got bought by RWE (one of the biggest suppliers in Germany). The prices have gone up, the service has gone down. The installations were booked/paid before the privatization of the sector, due to the long delays between project launch and project completion. A few of those projects were actually launched before the reunification, to give you an idea of the time scales. It actually produces enough energy for the town, the surrounding villages, and a part of the landkreis (district, I would guess).

I can choose to get gouged by the local utility and get service in the same day or switch to an alternate supplier and be stuck in the middle of the blame ping-pong when there is an issue (while only saving 10% tops with no warranty they won't raise the price without warning). The physical infra is all managed by the local utility and their technical teams are busy enough with their own customers so they don't rush when you're from an alternative supplier. The same problem exists for DSL with T-Online and all the various 3rd party suppliers... I can get the service relatively fast by sticking with T-Online or switch to a 3rd party and lose connectivity for days at end until the blame ping-pong match is settled. German companies are extremely efficient at the blame ping-pong match, if one could harness the energy generated by that... Germany would be able to supply electricity to the rest of the world.

Who are these people? Not Greenpeace, unless you can provide citations to the contrary. Greenpeace isn't really interested in that sort of thing anyway, that is Friends of the Earth territory.

You have built a straw man. I'm sure you can cite a few nutters to support any position you choose, but they don't represent any mainstream point of view.

One example of such nutters who created a 3500 pages of complaint titles.

I'll try to find the list of renewable-related projects that were blocked by the German Green party in the last few years. It is common enough that the Chancellor had to publicly ask the Green party to stop blocking renewable projects after announcing the nuclear phase out... but I'm sure the German Green party doesn't represent any mainstream point of view.

I was actually in Japan when the earthquake hit, so I am quite familiar with what happened and the impact it is continuing to have. The opposition to chemical agriculture is that not only have they proven dangerous in the past (e.g. DDT) but there are viable, if somewhat less efficient, alternatives. EU farm subsidies are being reformed to encourage responsible and minimal use of pesticides etc. where possible, and the mainstream view (at least in the UK) of society is that "organic" foods are better for the environment and human beings. The E Coli outbreak has nothing to do with that though, and MRSA existed for a de

http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,412954,00.html

Thanks... that's a good article.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,412954,00.html

Sure, you picked out some problematical quotes. Thanks for checking out the page.

And it's true that when a house is on fire, you may do different things than you do to prevent fires. But, the reality is that life and property losses are way down in the USA not because we have better firefighting techniques (although we do) but mainly because we design buildings and their contents differently and we have smoke detectors, fire prevention awareness training, and things like that.

There is always a huge risk going down the path of using fire to fight fire. Look what is happening in Israel/Palestine which has become an armed state full of many militaristic people who think "never again" is about being the toughest person on the block (fighting fire with fire) and not about preventing bullying and oppression where ever you find it (fighting fire with water and fire prevention). Where does it end? What has such a place become? And how safe is such a place really in the end? And I say that as someone who had relatives die in the camps in WWII. We, as a global society, need to learn other ways of dealing with conflict than violence. One resource:
"The handbook of conflict resolution: theory and practice" by Morton Deutsch, Peter T. Coleman, Eric Colton Marcus"
http://books.google.com/books?id=rw61VDID7U4C
"The Handbook of Conflict Resolution, Second Edition, is written for both the seasoned professional and the student who wants to deepen their understanding of the processes involved in conflicts and their knowledge of how to manage them constructively. It provides the theoretical underpinnings that throw light on the fundamental social psychological processes involved in understanding and managing conflicts at all levels--interpersonal, intergroup, organizational, and international. The Handbook covers a broad range of topics including information on cooperation and competition, justice, trust development and repair, resolving intractable conflict, and working with culture and conflict. Comprehensive in scope, this new edition includes chapters that deal with language, emotion, gender, and personal implicit theories as they relate to conflict. ..."

Consider the profit-making aspects that drive so much war:
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
"WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."

Or the pyramid scheme aspects and political election winning aspects:
"How Germans Fell for the 'Feel-Good' Fuehrer"
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,347726,00.html
"Financing such home front "happiness" was not simple and Hitler essentially achieved it by robbing and murdering others, Aly claims. Jews. Slave laborers. Conquered lands. All offered tremendous opportunities for plunder, and the Nazis exploited it fully, he says. Once the robberies had begun, a sort of "snowball effect" ensued and in order to stay afloat, he says Germany had to conquer and pilfer from more territory and victims. "That's why Hitler couldn't stop and glory comfortably in his role as victor after France's 1940 surrender." Peace would have meant the end of his predatory practices and would have spelled "certain bankruptcy for the Reich." "

Also, when looking back at history, sure one can pick the most pr

Just to disappoint you...

Germany has just shut down 8 of its 17 nuclear reactors. It still does not need to import energy (in the last years Germany exported a massive amount of energy to other countries). Before the shutdown, Germany produced about 20% of its energy from nuclear and abount 17% from renewable energy sources (see wikipedia)

After the shutdown, Germany probably produces more power from renewable as from nuclear energy...

Not exactly.

Germany has shut down its 7 oldest and smallest nuclear plants. And 8th plant is down for maintenance.

Before te shutdown Germany was a net exporter of electricity. Since the shutdown it has become a net importer. http://www.thelocal.de/money/20110404-34161.html

To reduce the dependancy on imported (French and Czech) nuclear generated electricty Germany is bringing new coal and brown coal fired plants online.

Long term (by 2030) the plan is to be producing ~35% of electricity from fossil fuels, mostly coal and brown coal and 65% from renewables, mostly wind.

http://wissen.spiegel.de/wissen/image/show.html?did=77855753&aref=image048/2011/04/02/CO-SP-2011-014-0067-01-GR.JPG&thumb=false

Copying and pasting the first paragraphn is 1) misleading 2) an extremely poor way to do a SUMMARY. This is what is missing "GVU states that Kino.to was working closely with the sites that hosted the copyrighted films, and that they profited from commercial partnerships with these companies."

So it was not a SIMPLE linking as the first paragraph make seem to believe.

Good point. Also stated in these articles here: (sorry could not find anything in english) http://heise.de/-1257486/ and http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/0,1518,767375,00.html/

Basically what was stated is that not only was kino.to taken down but also the filehosting and portal sites behind it. The people running these sites (kino.to and others) are not explicitly being charged for linking copyrighted material(ASFAIK this is still somewhat of a grayzone in Germany) But rather for building an organized criminal organization. If prosecuted in a German criminal court this could lead to a 5 year jail sentence.

India:
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf53.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_policy_of_India

China:
http://world-nuclear.org/info/inf63.html
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2011-05/26/content_12580470.htm

China is starting to suffer brownouts due to policy to limit coal. China is using 50% of world coal production.

http://www.worldcoal.org/resources/coal-statistics/
http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/ieo/world.html

I will disagree with EIA about coal in China. There is currently a new policy that says no more new coal power plants unless they replace old coal plants. New coal plants have to be more efficient too (eg. combined cycle, or coal gassification). China will also run out of its coal reserves within 30 years at current extraction rates.

China cannot grow coal because lack of the resource - they are become one of the largest importers of coal. This is expecting to cause brownouts this summer,

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2011/05/energy-shortages-spreading-rationing-in.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/30/us-china-power-price-idUSTRE74T1TG20110530

http://www.cnbc.com/id/43219200

I ask not to argue, but to have something to slap in the faces of all the treehuggers...

You can say I am a treehugger - a nuclear treehugger ;) I view fossil based energy sources as vastly more damaging than nuclear. I would prefer that fusion be available, but alas, you have to do with what you have. Renewables are OK but there is a problem when you have 8 billion people and each one wants to have their energy (transport, heat, air conditioning, food, etc).

Energy independence is paramount and if nuclear is the only option for base-load non-CO2 emitting energy source, then I have no choice but welcome nuclear.

Frankly, I don't know what the "green" crowd (anti-everything crowd these days - can't call them rational anymore) wants. In Germany now they are protesting that they don't want the power lines to move power from north to south because they look ugly.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13257804
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,757658,00.html

The current plan specifies how the "energy mix" will look like in a few years. A graphic from a german news magazine shows this:

graphic

In german, but should be self explanatory.

Importing energy is a big topic currently, and is actively being discussed in media and politics in germany. The consensus is that importing "dirty" energy is not an option.

The future will tell.

Lars

Which basically leaves them with no viable alternative. Solar, wind and water can not produce the same amount of energy as nuclear even under perfect theoretical conditions let alone all the extra land required to build these alternatives.

Considering that both their surplus electricity production capacity and their current renewable production (assuming a 1/3 actual production for 37,5 GW of wind and solar renewables plus 10,4 GW waterpower gives you 22,9 GW) is larger than their maximum nuclear electricity production (20,3 GW) I'd say solar, wind and water can not only produce the same amount, they already do.

Germany is not phasing out nuclear power. They will need to import power in the short- and medium-term from France and England, both of which are nuclear-heavy (particularly France). Germany will still use nuclear-generated electricity; they're just playing a "not in my back yard" game. And by "they", I mean politicians which are pandering to their electorate to try to keep in power.

Off course they will continue to im- and export electricity to neighbouring countries depending on the day. That's how the electricity market works. France's nuclear reactor for example tend to produce far to little electricity during the hottest part of the summer since they are mostly dependent on river water for cooling. Looking at the total energy consumption and production over the course of a year however Germany has a large electricity surplus. In 2009 this was 54.1 TWh (592.6 produced vs. 538.5 consumed)

As a matter of fact, the seven oldest nuclear plants can be shutdown without any problems immediately (which is what happened) since there is a significant production surplus. Even without the other nuclear power plants and all wind and solar power Germany still has enough production capacity to meet it's highest consumption moment so far. In practice that moment is always during the afternoon when you are guaranteed at least a quarter of installed solar power plus some of the wind power (since it's distributed across the fairly large country).

Long-term, they are putting themselves at the mercy of Russia. The NordStream natural gas pipeline will eventually be providing fuel, which can and will be used as a political lever (Russia has successfully done so several times in the past to strong-arm NATO over membership for the Ukraine and Georgia).

However, unlike the Ukraine and Georgia Germany has other sources of Gas (the Netherlands and Norway) and significant storage capacity.

Also, natural gas is a fossil fuel just like oil, and if the CO2 boogeyman is still the boogeyman, well... how does that not cause problems? On a per-megawatt basis, nuclear power remains much cheaper than natural gas, and a full decimal order of magnitude cheaper than solar (recall how far north Germany is. That's a problem for solar.) Switching from nuclear power to natural gas is not a step forward, economically, politically, ecologically

The difference is that gas can be put into service (or out) much faster than nuclear. Itâ(TM)s a much better partner for intermittent renewables (Which is what Germany is going for to replace the nuclear power plants). And while existing nuclear electricity is indeed very cheap (because the massive investment cost have already been depreciated and because the producers donâ(TM)t have to pay for decommissioning). New nuclear power is a lot more expensive, doubly so after Fukushima. Building one on spec (that is, without public financial guarantees and/or investment)to be finished in 2018 is already more expensive than some of the feed in tariffs paid in Germany for solar now. Most wind is already cheaper than any kind nuclear plant that still has to be built. And solar is expected to continue getting cheaper (the price of photovoltaic installations in Germany has halved in the last five years thanks to economy of scale and technological improvements)

This is just another example of politicians doing long-term harm for short-term political dominance.

Well, the nuclear fase out plan in Germany has been on the books for years. Itâ(TM)s was only in the last y

What about this one?

http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/0,1518,765006-2,00.html

For mor info I suggest you search yourself. I have a "good" memory but lack google abilities.

The link above is not the one I talked about ... I searched it for *you*

Nuclear power is already relatively insignificant in Germany:
just 20 out of 160 thousand megawatts

Germany could easily phase out Nuclear power in the next
decade without much problems.

Unless you consider tens of megatons of increased carbon emissions per annum a problem.
Or coal-mining accidents. A single accident in 1962 in Saarland caused more deaths than the entire global history of Nuclear Power.

But Germany will solve these problems in similar head-in-the-sand fashion by closing its remaining underground coal mines:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,463172,00.html

It wasn't too long ago that we were warned how much the Internet electron-pushing was contributing to global warming.

Now, we hear that global warming is inhibiting our ability to download our Internet pr0n?

Sounds to me like a self-regulating system with a negative feedback loop.

I for one would find that very educational. In Germany they did just that.

Anonymous because I moderated you up. Posting a reply because I really want you to know that I disagree with your viewpoint and dislike the possible results of a society supporting your conclusion. Despite my disagreement with your analysis, however, I hope that people who read both of our comments will be encouraged to be respectful and thoughtful even when disagreeing.

My disagreement is based on the observation that economic stress of being disadvantaged is offset by the standard of living in a wealthy society.

In the US, those we consider impoverished still usually have access to emergency health care, sanitary drinking water, at least a minimal education and opportunities to find gainful employment. The vast majority of impoverished people have a better life in our country where greed (capitalism) is rewarded than the impoverished of socialist countries. Certainly there exceptions and no economic or social system is without room for improvement, but our choices are between imperfect options and we should strive for the most successful option. I believe that the current trend is a choice between encouraging competition for success or encouraging class equalization through government control.

I don't believe either option is optimal as practiced, but I fear the stifling effect of government control far more than I fear the growing income gap. I want my children and grandchildren to have the best possible options for a successful life and I believe that is most likely if they live in a world that has benefited from people striving to succeed rather than one where a government has attempted to equalize the classes.

There are examples of both success and failure for either viewpoint, but I believe the clearest examples come from studying aid to Native Americans and Africans. (Search for "For God's Sake, Please Stop the Aid!" and "Welfare; History, Results and Reform" with the warning: eye-searingly bad color choices.)

In short summary: Nothing harms a group of people more than being treated as victims incapable of improving their own situations. Nothing lessens poverty more than not having government "help." From what I can tell, the US government has been doing the greatest harm to minorities and calling it compassion.

Also anonymous and posting a reply to test whether the moderation points work as I expect them to.

Half your posts are "conclusions" you have pulled out of your arse, connecting things together that have no connection at all. This is because of that, rofl. Most of your causal connections are either "self invented" by your teachers, or by yourself.

Well, you're welcome to challenge my conclusions and those of historians with actual facts and arguments.

You always jump to the Weimarer Republic and start drawing conclusions from there

Oh, no, you misunderstand: my conclusions, namely that modern Germany is fairly xenophobic, racist, and intolerant compared to other Western democracies are based on current data.

I mention the Weimar Republic only to point out that these attitudes have a long history in Germany and that Germans have changed much less than you think they have.

It is not Chernobyl, but still a level 7 disaster with 1/8 the amount of radiation leaked (very very large). Chernobyl is so radioactive that it can't be inhabited for at least a few centuries.

And yet people live there. Sure, they're not supposed to, but they do. http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,412954,00.html

The Germans have a saying: Nichts wird so heiss gegessen, wie es gekocht wird. Nothing's ever eaten as hot as it's been cooked. After all the media gets its claws out of this, some people will go back, others won't. Life will go on.

Problems: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,347726,00.html
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/402

Solutions?
http://peswiki.com/index.php/OS:Economic_Transformation

No,

I was not certain if you agreed or not, but I was on the edge of assuming you agreed. However I wanted to make a follow up post about the latest news.

Unfortunately I did not read The Register but only the german news from http://www.spiegel.de/ which are also not the best ones but heavy biased.

Best Regards

Do not forget to account for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttgart_21 and the EnBW deal (cannot find an English source unfortunately). In my opinion CDU, i.e. Mappus, just pissed off everyone a notch too much...

Just because your uncle Joe's cabin can does not mean that the electrical needs of a municipality can. Either furnish references of municipal level reliance on wind/solar for baseband

I did not claim we have right now municipals that rely on wind/solar for baseband. You must have misread something.
I said we can switch to wind/solar + water to be able to rely only on it in the near future. The news and scientific magazines in germany are full with this informations. The mid term goal could be to replace nuclear with wind/solar and a slight increase of coal till 2020. And the long term goal is to replace coal as well till 2050. The scenarios how to do that are published all over the place. It is only your *percetion* that it is not possible because you did not get tought about it in school and your government keeps you misinformed.
angel'o'sphere
P.S. a random german link ... http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/0,1518,751293-2,00.html

The latest planning games show that all nuclear plants can be replaced by renewables till 2020.

Of course we get the majourity of energy from coal burning. What did you think?

Regarding the phasing out and the greeness ... germany never as green.

Germany is an extremely "green" country. It has a large and influential green party that really influences events.

That is a misconception. Now we have for the first time that a green party member "won" an election. That happened yesterday!!

10 years ago the red party banned nuclear power. Perhaps your ideas about "green efforts" come from that. 8 years ago they lost the next election and the black party canceled the stop of nuclear power.

The numbers in this charts indicate we have about 25% renewables right now http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/0,1518,751293,00.html (3 parts article in german)

Keep in mind: not phasing out the nuclear plants ofc makes the new renewables uncompetitive at first glance.
angel'o'sphere

The cold, hard truth is: animal populations always live at the edge of starvation. Increase the food supply, and the population increases until they are at the edge again. This applies to humans as well: Provide more food for countries with chronic food shortages, and you get more people to feed. The food shortage continues, only now the population is utterly dependent on outside support.

People in Western countries feel oh-so-good that they have saved someone from starving - but the result is to make the long-term problem that much more intractable.

May I please remind everyone of this article concerning aid to Africa: For God's sake, please just stop!.

Well, to be honest, FDP is pretty much superfluous - it is a single-issue party, and this single issue is corporate welfare. No merits whatsoever. It is called "Moevenpick-Partei" for a reason.

But if it is all so simple, then why do countries with enough solar radiation build expensive and dangerous nuclear power plants, instead of investing in this simple technology? Are there not deserts in the US? Why are Americans not freeing themselves from their oil dependence through solar power? And why has no one really started to exploit the technology?

"After the solar thermal power plants were built in California and Nevada, people lost interest in solar thermal power because fossil fuels became unbeatably cheap," says Müller-Steinhagen. Solar power was neglected even though the US was in the advantageous position, compared to the MENA region, of being a single political entity rather than a conglomerate of countries with differing interests. The US could achieve energy self-sufficiency through solar thermal power plants in the sunny south-west. But it was only recently that scientists writing in the respected magazine Scientific American unveiled a "Solar Grand Plan" for the US.

However defending thermal solar energy is not as sexy as advanced nuclear reactor designs, basically all you need is a bunch of mirrors and a bathtub of salt, the technology has been available forever, you're not going to feel like the next Einstein with that kind of crap.

http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/bild-750254-190518.html from elsewhere says about 10 hours from now.

Estimated travel times of tsunami through Pacific (mirrored/relinked from the media, since NOAA and especially the West Coast Center sites are being hammered right now):

http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/bild-750254-190518.html

He doesn't have support of the army - most of it switched sides already, especially further away from the capital. As well, he deliberately kept the army weakened, but instead maintained paramilitary units grounded on personal loyalty to him as a leader.

But the thing about Libya is that, like Afghanistan, it's not really a proper state, but rather a conglomerate of tribes, each with their own allegiances. Gaddafi kept that in mind when recruiting thugs for his death squads - most of them are from his own tribe. Loyalty of Army units also seems to be largely dependent on tribal background.

Even despite that, things must be going really bad for him in terms of manpower if he has to resort to hiring mercenaries abroad. Given that he only really fully controls Tripoli at the moment, and two thirds of the country are already fully liberated, that comes as no surprise. The only reason why they didn't take over Tripoli yet is because there is no single united military command on opposition side - it seems to be mostly local Army units joining up with civilians and taking over their respective cities and surrounding territories.

You might want to read this article . I don't say it is completely correct, but IMHO it describes the dynamics of a copyright free publishing industry quite well.

Some other points on: "It's ridiculous to think we don't need self defense, in the same way that it's ridiculous to ban guns and weapons and tell people violence never solved anything (French taxation without representation. British taxation without representation. Slavery in America. Slavery in Haiti. Hitler. Stalin. Japan's expansionism. It goes on)."

History is tricky, because one can always pull out a situation where people have let things get really bad because they would not consider other alternatives and then say, see, violence was the only answer.

Egypt had a revolution without a war just now. India had one decades ago. Why not France eventually?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohandas_Karamchand_Gandhi

Canada secede from Britain without a shot being fired, has a better health care system than the USA, and treated its native people better. What did the US revolution accomplish in that sense?

The British abolished slavery without an internal civil war.

The British said they would abolish slavery if they won the American revolutionary war, so was it good that the rich white Americans won? Something like a third of the people left the country (mostly to Canada). (I'm not saying there were not legitimate grievances.)

If the South had been allowed to secede from the Union, could things have ultimately been better for the Blacks than the grinding poverty and economic abuse they got after the Civil War, since the South would have toppled eventually over slavery.? See also the previous point. Also, slavery might not have been possible without all the people making fancy weapons to use to enslave people like Columbus did.

Haiti was in a sense destroyed by capitalist ideology and greed more than weapons:
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncol1.html

How are you going to ensure the weapons are not in the hands of greedy capitalists?

Nazi Germany was a pyramid scheme that would have fall apart pretty soon anyway:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,347726,00.html

It also was a reaction to reparations related to a previous war, and that war itself was related to compulsory schooling. Abolish compulsory schooling and maybe we would not need so much war machinery? From:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/7a.htm
"The particular utopia American believers chose to bring to the schoolhouse was Prussian. The seed that became American schooling, twentieth-century style, was planted in 1806 when Napoleon’s amateur soldiers bested the professional soldiers of Prussia at the battle of Jena. When your business is renting soldiers and employing diplomatic extortion under threat of your soldiery, losing a battle like that is pretty serious. Something had to be done."

The USSR crumbled in large part because of a people's revolution in the 1990s (even as the USA likes to take the credit). Still, had it not engaged in a foolish arms race with the USA (or had the USA not been so provocative) the country that put the first satellite in orbit, that put the first man and woman into space, that put up the first space station, that invented phage therapy, that country might have been a much happier place. But every time doves in the Kremlin said, maybe the USA people are not so crazy, the USA would push another round of weapons and the hawks would say, see I told you so, and the doves would get purged. Who was at fault there?

On Japan, well true they had a messed up culture in a lot of ways and did a lot of evil things in other countries -- but it was a militaristic culture of the kind you are celebrating (Samurai). The USA also attacked Japan economically (shutting of oil flows) before Japan attacked at Pearl

http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,710810,00.html

According to the German Spiegel, Alberto Torres (responsible board member for MeeGo) just left the board. So yeah, MeeGo is basically left for dead.

Nobody of the Jewish faith is allowed to pray on the temple mount.

To quote the fount of all knowledge: Although freedom of access was enshrined in the law, as a security measure, the Israeli government currently enforce a ban on non-Muslim prayer on the site.

So it's apparently not the Palestinians who have a problem with Jews praying there.

And while Palestinian settlers can pick any valley they want to to build houses in and they don't even have to pay taxes on them, it is illegal for Jewish settlers to do the same on barren, rocky hilltops.

Citation please? The way I keep hearing that story seems to be quite the opposite. Jewish settlers are offered financial incentives (source, source), while the majority of Palestinian building permits are turned down (source).

A friend of mine visited the West Bank last summer. She worked at a small Palestinian farm which was denied electricity and running water. She saw families who lived in caves because their houses had been torn down and they weren't allowed to build new ones. The village she worked in was ~10km away from the next. What would normally be a 10 minute drive had been turned into a 1 hour journey because the separation wall conveniently deviated from the 1949 border, along which it was supposed to be built, to include a Jewish settlement.

Yeah, I totally see the Israelis being oppressed here...

I think you underestimate what one can do with a car.

See for example the Queensday attack in the Netherlands almost 2 years ago:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,622342,00.html

5 people dead at an event with about the highest level of security that you could find in the Netherlands at the time.

http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/0,1518,636397,00.html http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Familienministerin-bedauert-Kinderporno-Fauxpas-mit-Indien-5885.html http://www.rga-online.de/lokales/bergische3Wirtschaft.php?userid=&publikation=2&template=phparttext&ausgabe=39610&redaktion=1&artikel=109544842

There seems to be some confusion because TFA doesn't cite its source correctly (emphasis mine).

A field test conducted outside the building located at 82 Boulevard Lascrosses demonstrates how the system will function. Here, sensors have been placed just below the surface of the road under half a dozen parking spaces. The high-tech probes, which are mounted 25 centimeters (9 inches) apart on a coaxial cable a hand's width under the bitumen

[...]

The information gathered is sent to a server, which can keep track of around 2,500 to 3,000 sensors.

So,

• there are only a few sensors buried at this time.
• The server they use can keep track of about 3,000 sensors.
• In the future they will be able to monitor all 15,000 parking spots.

It should be pretty obvious to anyone that you can't have a democracy when the media is controlled by the person in power. It's also quite well documented on how the media in the countries I've listed has been taken over by the government or their freedom otherwise suppressed.

This is from just a quick Google search. The concept of freedom of the press and democracy goes back to the founding of the United States where the press is often referred to as the 4th branch of government or the 4th pillar of democracy. One needs a free press in order to expose corruption and provide an informed electorate which is vital for a healthy democracy.

It's well known among journalists in Russia that reporting on certain things is a good way to end up dead. In Venezuela almost all (if not all by now) of the major TV stations have been taken over by the government and spew pro Chavez propaganda without providing an outlet for the opposition.

http://www.un.org/democracyfund/XNewsSGFreePress.htm
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/21452
http://www.america.gov/st/democracyhr-english/2008/June/20080630215145eaifas0.6333842.html
http://www.atlanticphilanthropies.org/news/press-freedom-pillar-democracy-mzilikazi-wa-afrika
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51587-2005Feb24.html http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7321168.stm
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20100430/158814432.html
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,443543,00.html
http://www.advancingafreesociety.org/2010/12/14/russian-style/
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2004_2009/documents/fd/droi20071001_russia_004/droi20071001_russia_004en.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_the_press_in_Russia

It is quite interesting to compare this press release with the article exposing this. Technically GEMA is correct in their press release, but they do a lot of spin, and do not tell the entire story.

GEMA wrote to kindergartens, demanding:

1. Payment for any sheet music copied. Price per sheet is similar to the price of a song on iTunes.
2. Payment for any copying of lyrics. Same price per sheet.
3. Reporting of any song performed in the kindergarten, complete with title, name of composer, name of publishing company currently publishing the song in Germany, and the time the song was performed. No payment was demanded for this in the letter.

In the press release GEMA is backtracking on the bad publicity this gave them when the press took up the story and adding their own spin by saying the reporting about payment for song performances was wrong (which it was) and not mentioning that they still require all kindergartens to report all song performances. Also they do not mention that a requirement of reporting performances to GEMA almost always is a precursor for a demand of payment.

VG Musikedition is not an entity completely separate from GEMA. In fact they are so tightly connected and what they do is so similar that it is hard to explain why they are not the same organization. Unless when you think of the extra administration having two entities cause. When the two organizations both funnel some of the money through the other organization, they can both take a piece of the cake before distributing the rest to the artists. And this is probably the real reason why VG Musikedition asked GEMA to collect the money for them instead of doing it themselves, as they were supposed to.

One possibility is that Wikileaks and Assange are losing public support.

They are.

WikiLeaks: A Document Dump Too Far

WikiLeaks Comes Under Fire from Rights Groups

Reports that Wikileaks released the names of Afghan informants hasn't helped

Sad, but true. Hopefully none are killed. We need as many informants against the Taliban as we can, both to protect the Afghans, and to protect the US from more terrorist attacks.

WikiLeaks Reportedly Outs 100s of Afghan Informants

profiles of Assange (such as the one in the New York Times) don't paint him in a very flattering light.

They aren't the only ones.

10 days in Sweden: the full allegations against Julian Assange

The wildly promiscuous lifestyle of WikiLeaks boss Julian Assange: Look away now Jemima as our report reveals the sordid truth

Exposed: The 'creepy, lovesick' emails WikiLeaks boss Julian Assange sent to 19-year-old girl student

No one gains from this 'rape-rape' defence of Julian Assange

My understanding from the Times article is that even within Wikileaks, there is a lot of controversy about how Assange has acted.

Is WikiLeaks Reneging on its Financial Promise to Bradley Manning?

Former WikiLeaks Activists to Launch New Whistleblowing Site

‘Chaos’ at WikiLeaks Follows Assange Arrest

Although not internal to Wikileaks, thought provoking.

Wikileaks Fails “Due Diligence” Review