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His point is that there is no evidences that any of t is getting into the water table

If it can't possibly affect the water table, why do drilling companies end up shipping water to people such as Mr. Ira Haire, who live near their fracking sites?

Why are the horses and pets in Dimock, PA, losing their hair?

Why is the EPA detecting fracking chemicals in the aquifers of Pavillion, Wyoming?

How about this Oklahoma Geological Survey report (PDF) that suggests the recent uptick in earthquakes were caused by fracking?

What about waste treatment plants that fail to successfully reduce the levels of contaminants before discharging the water into a river?

How about the President of the Marcellus Shale Coalition admitting that fracking has contaminated the drinking water in PA?

And what happens to the chemicals *after* they're pulled out of the ground? Sometimes they just dump it, like the case of Josh Foster.

Fracking can be done right. But it's expensive and requires the cooperation of many disparate companies and enforcement of regulations (or any regulations at all; I'm looking at you, Halliburton Loophole). And expensive is not profitable.

The situation is a bit more complex than that. Saudi Arabia is run by the House of Saud, a monarchistic dictatorship, who have backed the dictators in the Arab Spring including the sending of troops and tanks to Bahrain to brutally suppress protests there. They are also accused of assassinating the leaders of their own protests. And some of the upper parts of the monarchy, and parts of Saudi Intelligence, are accused of backing terrorism, see The Kingdom and the Towers:

In support of his claim that Saudi Arabia supported terrorism, Khilewi spoke of an episode relevant to the first, 1993, attempt to bring down the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers. “A Saudi citizen carrying a Saudi diplomatic passport,” he said, “gave money to Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind behind the World Trade Center bombing,” when the al-Qaeda terrorist was in the Philippines. The Saudi relationship with Yousef, the defector claimed, “is secret and goes through Saudi intelligence.”

When Khalifa returned to Saudi Arabia, in 1995—following detention in the United States and subsequent acquittal on terrorism charges in Jordan—he was, according to C.I.A. bin Laden chief Michael Scheuer, met by a limousine and a welcome home from “a high-ranking official.” A Philippine newspaper would suggest that the official had been Prince Sultan, then a deputy prime minister and minister of defense and aviation, today the heir to the Saudi throne.

In sworn statements after 9/11, former Taliban intelligence chief Mohammed Khaksar said that in 1998 Prince Turki, chief of Saudi Arabia’s General Intelligence Department (G.I.D.), sealed a deal under which bin Laden agreed not to attack Saudi targets. In return, Saudi Arabia would provide funds and material assistance to the Taliban, not demand bin Laden’s extradition, and not bring pressure to close down al-Qaeda training camps. Saudi businesses, meanwhile, would ensure that money also flowed directly to bin Laden.

I'd like to point you to Dimock, PA.

http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2010/06/fracking-in-pennsylvania-201006

In Dimock, horses and other pets are losing their hair. This only started once the fracking began. Go tell the Sautners that Gasland is BS.

"Drilling operations near their property commenced in August 2008. Trees were cleared and the ground leveled to make room for a four-acre drilling site less than 1,000 feet away from their land. The Sautners could feel the earth beneath their home shake whenever the well was fracked.

Within a month, their water had turned brown. It was so corrosive that it scarred dishes in their dishwasher and stained their laundry. They complained to Cabot, which eventually installed a water-filtration system in the basement of their home. It seemed to solve the problem, but when the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection came to do further tests, it found that the Sautners’ water still contained high levels of methane. More ad hoc pumps and filtration systems were installed. While the Sautners did not drink the water at this point, they continued to use it for other purposes for a full year.

“It was so bad sometimes that my daughter would be in the shower in the morning, and she’d have to get out of the shower and lay on the floor” because of the dizzying effect the chemicals in the water had on her, recalls Craig Sautner, who has worked as a cable splicer for Frontier Communications his whole life. She didn’t speak up about it for a while, because she wondered whether she was imagining the problem. But she wasn’t the only one in the family suffering. “My son had sores up and down his legs from the water,” Craig says. Craig and Julie also experienced frequent headaches and dizziness."

I appreciate your honest approach to the issue. And you're probably right, done with proper regulations and safety precautions fracking can be safe...in theory. You only saw one piece of the puzzle, so here are some more pieces.

In practice, one thing you need to consider is what happens to the chemicals *after* they're pulled out of the ground. Sometimes they just dump it, like the case of Josh Foster.

If it can't possibly affect the water table, why do drilling companies end up shipping water to people such as Mr. Ira Haire, who live near their fracking sites?

Why are the horses and pets in Dimock, PA, losing their hair?

Why is the EPA detecting fracking chemicals in the aquifers Pavillion, Wyoming?

How about this Oklahoma Geological Survey report that suggests the recent uptick in earthquakes were caused by fracking?

What about waste treatment plants that fail to successfully reduce the levels of contaminants before discharging the water into a river?

How about the President of the Marcellus Shale Coalition admitting that fracking has contaminated the drinking water in PA?

Fracking can be done right. But it's expensive and requires the cooperation of many disparate companies and enforcement of regulations (or any regulations at all; I'm looking at you, Halliburton Loophole). And expensive is not profitable.

Just doing a casual bit of research into this topic, and Monsanto seems to be the dominant force in the farming seed market and has faced lots of scrutiny over anti-competitive practices, and is currently under investigation by the DOJ.

A large portion of a farmers annual budget goes towards seed purchasing. Traditionally, farmers would save a portion of their harvest as seed for their next crop (I have no citation for this, but have heard this number is traditionally around 25-30%). Monsanto forces its buyers to sign an agreement to not reuse any of their seed from harvesting, and must buy entirely new seed each year. Traditional farmers using their own seed are having trouble with neighboring farmers GE strains infecting their own through cross pollenization, resulting in their being forced by Monsanto to purchase entirely new seed or face lawsuit, etc.

Vanity fair has a good article about the history of the company, their current influence on the farming economy and some of their more questionable practices.

Maybe someone should go take an opinion poll of a wide section of the population in Tunisia. They might actually want things that way. It might not be the way the West likes it, but that's democracy for you.

IIRC there was at least one time where the palestinians democratically elected Hamas and the USA was very unhappy with that.

Some even alleged that the US then sponsored a civil war there:

Wookieepedia has a brief discussion on the Holiday Special's inception, and there's a very long Vanity Fair article with many more details.

What scares the industry most is that these days, any jackass in his home could make a movie of comparable quality to most of the non-SFX Hollywood films
And there are millions of people out there who can act, not just a few dozen in Hollyweird, so there's no shortage of available talent.
In effect, this means that commercial movies are too expensive by about a factor of a thousand.

The geek will rent a lamp and reflector and think that he has mastered theatrical lighting.

How to Train Your Dragon stands out from the animated pack because it makes an effort to be simple. The film was lit with motivated light sources --- the sun, a candle, even the glowing red flames of a dragon's fiery exhalation --- which meant that in low-light situations, darkness was a tool in its own right.

In all that he does --- whether it's live-action, animation, or 3-D ---- Richard Deakins has come to believe that less is more. He was reminded of this mantra not too long ago while giving a lighting seminar for animation cinematographers at Pixar:

"I had a bit of a laugh, actually. I was on a stage with all the things you'd think would be traditional to lighting. So, I lit the set in a very traditional way: with a hard light, lots of fill light, a back light, a front light, and a key light. I did this for about 20 minutes, and then I said, I can't keep this up anymore because I don't like lighting like this, at all."

He panned the camera around and saw an electrician standing by a work light. "Now that I really like," he said. "It's just the bare bulb in front of the angle of the face. To me, that's really good lighting. So I took everything down that I had been doing and I tried to do what I normally do."

How To Light Your Dragon

It is the same with any the hundreds of other arts and crafts that go into the production of a film.

The jackass does not understand story or script. He doesn't know how to recruit and motivate talent, amateur or professional. He won't know why he needs to build sets and props when green screen, CGI and motion capture give him a quick-and-dirty solution....

The Coens produced their remake of True Grit on a bare-bones budget of $38 million. But essential to the success of the film was the casting of Mattie Ross:

The standout performance has to be newcomer Hailee Steinfeld, who beat out 15,000 other girls for the part. Open casting calls often provide disappointing results, as nonprofessional actors tend to be just that --- not professional. 14-year-old Steinfeld proves she is a talent to watch, though --- she totally commands the screen with her strong-willed, stubborn character, and manages to hold her own against Bridges, Damon and Josh Brolin, who makes a brief but memorable appearance later in the film. It is a fantastic, powerful performance that is an absolute joy to watch.

True Grit (2010) (In User Reviews)

That's what I think everyone dreams of-- that their parent, or spouse, or, worse, their child, will defy the odds and come out somehow stronger, and better able to deal with death on his or her own terms.

Christopher Hitchens recently poured water over this sentiment.

However, in the essay, Charlie's survival odds were five percent, or fifteen percent with treatment, and he was able to understand that for him, several months to wrap up his life were better than a few years of futile struggle. Perhaps he understood that the "fifteen percent" rate was a cold equation, and it did not matter whether he was morally worthy, or lucky, or "fought hard." Unfortunately, this isn't "the fragile reality of Discworld, [where] the gods [] like to play games, [where] a million-to-one chance succeeds nine times out of ten."

Perhaps someone has already written a paper studying responses to cancer treatment among the innumerate and among those who understand statistics.

I enjoy "House," on television, and the conceit of the episodes is that every case is a puzzle, and it's a race against time to solve this puzzle, and if the doctor is brilliant enough, the patient will be saved and life will go on. That sound like a theme that appeals to a lot of people, and perhaps the illusion for the loved ones who have to deal with the impending death of a patient is that if even a faint glimmer of life is sustained, that gives the doctors time to figure it all out.

You are thinking of Paul Allen. Yes, Gates was tangentially involved, but even Gates himself credits Allen as the brains behind the work, and it was Allen who had the background and skills.

Your version of the story isn't supported by evidence. You might try reading Paul Allen's version:

"I'd occasionally catch Bill grabbing naps at his terminal during our late-nighters. He'd be in the middle of a line of code when he'd gradually tilt forward until his nose touched the keyboard. After dozing for an hour or two, he'd open his eyes, squint at the screen, blink twice, and resume precisely where he'd left off--a prodigious feat of concentration. [..] And it was a true collaboration. I'd estimate that 45 percent of the code was Bill's, 30 percent Monte's, and 25 percent mine, excluding my development tools."

For someone whose email was entered in a form by someone else, any message they receive may be seen as a false positive (including a double opt-in request).

And can be great fun - such as signing up your co-worker or boss to the list subscription pages of magazines aimed at pre-teen girls or just general trash magazines. Such as the Teen Vogue or Vanity Fair.

The magazine companies are especially lax at doing double opt-in, most of them do single opt-in and you can sign up anyone for anything.

So the interface is sooooooo Metro-sexsual, darling

A preview of MS' ad campaign:

My Tablet or yours, baby?

Reading http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/09/operation-shady-rat-201109
"After identifying the command-and-control server, located in a Western country" ....
Mb the average Western spook wanted to keep it flowing to see who collected or what was been collected in a part of the world where telcos where 'friendly'.
Nothing like a "Room 641A" in a "Western country" for ducting off a telcos bulk data in real time, no questions, legal teams, contacts, requests, meetings...
Also think of national self interest and the joy of having a huge flow of interesting international data ending in a local telco/isp- and getting the first look.

There was another good article in Vanity Fair

Go read the story of Gates and the first BASIC rom.

Yes, go read it. He was one of the key programmers to implement BASIC in 4k. They beat everybody to the punch with a good business idea and a solid technical achievement.

This whole idea that Gates was just a ruthless businessman is ridiculous. He was a ruthless businessman, but that's only half the story.

But all he did is restate what people already know about Facebook using scary words.

Why do people use Facebook? There are many reasons, but for most "so people I wouldn't keep in constant touch with can find me" would be on their list of reasons. Does that include the government? Yes. Are most people hiding from the government? No. Can the government see your whole list of friends? Yes - only most people would just say that ANYONE can see your whole list of friends.

I'm not sure what he's up to, but I'm not a big fan of people using fear for their own agenda.

I think what Assange was saying was that governments have more access to Facebook information than most people do. Probably up to the level that Mark Zuckerberg has.

You might not be a big fan of Assange using fear, but I'm not a big fan of people not realising how much of their personal and private information they're putting up online. Yes, its their fault - but Assange is giving a good warning; far more so than the fear and lies put around by other media and governmental outlets.

We created it! http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/04/stuxnet-201104/

Amazing how Congress will avoid paying for laws that protect consumers and are more than willing to pay for ANY other law that protects the interests of the top 5%.

Actually, given the state of the US political system, I would be more surprised if it were the other way around.

Also interesting reading - economist Joe Stiglitz on Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% about exactly how untenable the situation really is.

this is a quote from a soon to be released book by Paul Allen, "Idea Man". looks to be very interesting reading. "In building our homegrown basic, we borrowed bits and pieces of our design from previous versions, a long-standing software tradition. Languages evolve; ideas blend together; in computer technology, we all stand on others’ shoulders." the full excerpt from the book can be found at http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2011/05/paul-allen-201105?currentPage=all I wonder what would have happened to Micro-Soft (it's first name) had the "borrowed bits and pieces" were covered by a patent. Maybe the patent holder would have sued them out of existence. I am against software patents. I think they are protecting only ideas (which I understand cannot be patented), when they should only protect the implementation. In software engineering, there are a myriad of ways to implement an idea, so patents would be a waste of time. I may be mistaken but I do remember when Fox Pro was first released they had developed a search technique which was very advanced for the day and it was protected as a trade secret not a patent. This is how software IP should be protected, by trade secret, not patent. Patents require that the solution be published, trade secret are not published. If someone comes up with an identically coded solution then it seems obvious to me that the idea was not a very original piece of work. I am against patent trolls as they are not bringing any value to any industry. they just sit on their patents until they see someone implement something that closely approximates their IP and it's off to court. Down with Software Patents.

When pharmaceutical companies receive a trillion-dollar giftâ"through legislation prohibiting the government, the largest buyer of drugs, from bargaining over price â" it should not come as cause for wonder. It should not make jaws drop that a tax bill cannot emerge from Congress unless big tax cuts are put in place for the wealthy. Given the power of the top 1 percent, this is the way you would expect the system to work.

you want to balance the budget, get rid of crap like this, and this http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/business/economy/25tax.html?_r=4

The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States. Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.

bold added for emphasis

I don't see anything in the article saying Allen 'understood' Gates decision to bilk Allen out of his share of Micro-Soft ..

"One evening in late December 1982, I heard Bill and Steve speaking heatedly in Bill’s office .. It was clear that they’d been thinking about this for some time. Unable to stand it any longer, I burst in on them and shouted, “This is unbelievable! It shows your true character, once and for all”

"In January, I met with Bill one final time as a Microsoft executive. As he sat down with me on the couch in his office, I knew that he’d try to make me feel guilty and obliged to stay. But once he saw he couldn’t change my mind, Bill tried to cut his losses"

“It’s not fair that you keep your stake in the company” he said. He made a lowball offer for my stock: five dollars a share link

maybe the next gov't will be worse

It will be hard to find anybody as surreal and deranged as Qaddafi.

On the one side, we have Assange acting like a pissed off idealistic teenager (not necessarily a bad thing) making comments about how it is his duty to end two wars in the world.

Citation needed. Maybe you are referring to the quote from Domscheit-Berg's book. Not exactly the most objective source. AFAIK, Assange never said this in public.

Yes, eventually, we will have a president who understands that we need as much oil as we can get, at any price we have to pay. Heck, if fracking for natural gas has been so good for our aquifers, why not jump in with both feet and grab that oil? No thank you. I prefer my water unflavored and non-flammable.

The point somehow is sadly missed that extraction of every last drop of oil may not be a goal for which we should be striving. Yes, we need a transition plan, and fossil fuels will be a part of that plan. In these decisions we make today, will we consider only our immediate easiest path, or what we're leaving for the next generations, e.g., polluted aquifers, dead rivers and seas, and disrupted climates around the world? Burning all the fossil fuels we can find for our immediate needs, and leaving future generations screwed is completely immoral.

Buckminster Fuller likened our foundational use of oil instead of renewable energy as equivalent letting our abundant (solar) paychecks fall on the ground while we live high on our savings. We should instead be using that savings to switch foundations and begin living on our abundant daily paychecks.

My prediction is that we will not figure it out in time because we'll be unwilling to get out of our comfort zones. We will instead follow a classic overshoot and collapse systems pattern that is enabled by delayed feedback loops, and reinforced by masking the true cost of using fossil fuels. We needed to get serious about renewables decades ago. When dropping supply curves and rising demand curves cross, prices won't be changing incrementally, a few cents at a time. It will mean sudden, dramatic, and far greater oil price increases than most people would every dare to imagine. The economic carnage of delaying will make the cost of doing it now seem like the missed opportunity of the millennium.

Does anyone believe that the fact he is in UK custody doesn't effectively place him in US custody, more than Swedish custody would?

Assange has said more than once, as if speaking to his supporters in America, that "they" are going to be the ones to stop "the government" from "getting him". So, he and his lawyers use things that will strike a chord, like claiming he'll be sent to Guantanamo Bay (as the current administration is so keen to do) or that he'll be killed, whether by the death penalty or otherwise (when it isn't clear that there is any legal basis on which to prosecute him).

This is just another part of his campaign to influence US public opinion, which is exactly what he does with Wikileaks. This is the real Julian Assange.

Somebody who really took the time to understand Timothy McVeigh was Gore Vidal. For instance, this article in Vanity Fair. McVeigh wrote back to Vidal, and they corresponded for a while. Vidal basically argued that McVeigh had reasons for doing what he did, and felt justified in doing it. McVeigh also pointed out that the United States Military did this same sort of thing all the time in foreign countries (this was before the US really started going after people in Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan and Yemen).

Alternative energy would probably be coming along a lot more quickly, if oil wasn't subsidized and oil companies were required to pay the full cost of the externalities that their product creates.

I caught this story on the radio a few days ago. Part of the issue is that natural gas is getting "cheap" -- the story (on capitalist cheerleader Marketplace, the show that best demonstrates that public radio's supposed "leftist bias" is no such thing) didn't mention that this is because of the hideously dirty practice of fracking, that when external costs are included there's absolutely nothing cheap about this gas.

The other problem is that Pickens is apparently an idiot, and was going to place his wind power turbines in areas where not only weren't there transmission lines, but where he didn't have approval to build transmission lines. When he didn't get that approval, he was fscked.

The name calling can end please, thank you.

No. You're a fucking idiot.

You have yet to cite what propaganda I'm regurgitating let alone acknowledge my correction on the party preferences of the tea party.

Again, you're a fucking idiot. Telling you facts is like showing a dog a card trick.

what part of the Constitution establishes a democracy?

It's not hard. Article 4, Section 4: The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.

The issue is that you're so unbelievably ignorant that you think Republic means Republic. Actually, it means that the state is ruled by the public. Which means they vote for representatives to control their government. Which is a representative democracy. Which does limit democratic power to abridge minority rights, but even those rules can be removed by democratic action through a 2/3 vote in the Congress and Senate, or in a Constitutional Convention.

The 3/5ths number was so that slave states would not have as much representation in congress, and ideally they wouldn't have counted at all, and that's a good thing.

Does this mean you're missing a Klan rally somewhere? In what universe is not counting people as people a good thing? Because it allowed the North to retain power while they allowed the south to own slaves? The rest of the civilized world considers that a mistake.

When was the last time a government agency ever stopped anything?

You're probably not aware of this, but about 30,000 children die every day in Africa from preventable diseases. In developed nations with strong social infrastructure, the rate is pretty close to 0.

You know, details details. If you really hate government that much, I'm sure they could use a few more bodies in the Congo. Hop to it. I'm begging you.

Tell that to Christopher Hitchens.

"During the Spanish-American War, a U.S. soldier, Major Edwin Glenn, was suspended from command for one month and fined $50 for using "the water cure." In his review, the Army judge advocate said the charges constituted "resort to torture with a view to extort a confession." He recommended disapproval because "the United States cannot afford to sanction the addition of torture." Yet President Theodore Roosevelt defended the practice. "The enlisted men began to use the old Filipino method: the water cure," he wrote in a 1902 letter. "Nobody was seriously damaged." A Punishable Offense In the war crimes tribunals that followed Japan's defeat in World War II, the issue of waterboarding was sometimes raised. In 1947, the U.S. charged a Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, with war crimes for waterboarding a U.S. civilian. Asano was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor. "All of these trials elicited compelling descriptions of water torture from its victims, and resulted in severe punishment for its perpetrators," writes Evan Wallach in the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law. On Jan. 21, 1968, The Washington Post ran a front-page photo of a U.S. soldier supervising the waterboarding of a captured North Vietnamese soldier. The caption said the technique induced "a flooding sense of suffocation and drowning, meant to make him talk." The picture led to an Army investigation and, two months later, the court martial of the soldier. Cases of waterboarding have occurred on U.S. soil, as well. In 1983, Texas Sheriff James Parker was charged, along with three of his deputies, for handcuffing prisoners to chairs, placing towels over their faces, and pouring water on the cloth until they gave what the officers considered to be confessions. The sheriff and his deputies were all convicted and sentenced to four years in prison." From here.

As for it being torture or not, there are a couple of convenient tests(The first is Erich "Mancow" Mueller, talk radio host, attempting to refute critics of waterboarding, the second is Christopher Hitchens writing about his experience with trying it).

There are certainly even nastier ways of hurting people(which, in part, is why waterboarding is so popular, none of that pesky physical evidence) but it is apparently way less fun than it sounds, especially if it can be repeated over and over, in combination with sleep deprivation, isolation, and the like...

FYI, the Monarch butterfly report showing harm was discredited due to the concentrations of pollen placed on the milkweed. It was way more than would normally by found in the wild.

And thank your for for the support.

That said, here are some links you might find informative;

Monsanto
more Monsanto
Yet more Monsanto (busy aren't they)
intersting site
Canola
GM canola in the wild
Possible wipe out of terrestrial plant life
another one

Have fun reading.

_

Hopefully it turned out better for them than this.

Not worse than Greece.

T

Assuming that with "BBC" you mean the British Broadcasting Corporation, I don't think American laws matter a lot for them (except for material they sell there).

Because the US government never pursues what it perceived to be criminal violations of US law if they are committed by people outside the borders of the US at the time of the offense. Just ask Manuel Noriega.

At any rate, other media outlets covering the story also display the seal, including Vanity Fair and The New York Times, which presumably are more exposed to US criminal laws than the BBC.

widespread devastation? you may want to read the latest reports concerning on the oil leak... apparently (as with global warming) it may have been blown out of proportion cause they can't seem to find the oil...

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2007202,00.html

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2010/07/so-has-anyone-seen-the-oil-that-spilled-into-the-gulf.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews_excl/ynews_excl_sc3270

They also sue if your non-GM crop is contaminated by another's GM crop.
No, they don't. All of the companies and governments involved clearly say that a certain amount of crossbreeding is inevitable, and not a cause for legal action.

First, Monsanto did claim their GE crops will not cross breed years ago. It was only after it was proven crossbreeding does happened that they stopped making the claim. Secondly, many farmers have either been sued or themselves sued GE companies. Monsanto regularly sends out private investigators, Pinkertons, to collect specimens to test for GE genes. They even threatened someone who's neither a farmer nor a seed dealer. Despite having no evidence, and the State of North Dakota Seed Arbitration Board not having found any themselves, Monsanto still threatens a farming family in North Dakota.

You did not sign a contract but you're sued anyway.
Yes, because you've violated someone's patent. And this isn't a Monsanto or even a GM issue - plant breeders have had legal protection for new varieties since 1930.

In other words if your crop is contaminated, which does happen, you're screwed. The above links are a vary small sample of results Google returns for farmers monsanto. Adding sue still leaves more than a million results. Like this one, Agricultural Giant Battles Small Farmers:

"David Runyon and his wife Dawn put a lifetime of work into their 900-acre Indiana farm, and almost lost it all over a seed they say they never planted."

"'I don't believe any company has the right to come into someone's home and threaten their livelihood,' Dawn said, 'to bring them into such physical turmoil as this company did to us.'"

The Runyons charge bio-tech giant Monsanto sent investigators to their home unannounced, demanded years of farming records, and later threatened to sue them for patent infringement. The Runyons say an anonymous tip led Monsanto to suspect that genetically modified soybeans were growing on their property.

"'I wasn't using their products, but yet they were pounding on my door demanding information, demanding records," Dave said. "It was just plain harassment is what they were doing.'"

Or this one: Monsanto sues and sues and sues and...

Falcon

Interesting how the farmers are not the ones against Monsanto.

Except there are many farmers who oppose Monsanto, or visa versa.

1. Monsanto versus Farmers.
2. Monsanto's Harvest of Fear
3. Haitian Farmers Fight Back Against Monsanto
4. Nelson Farm - A Fight Against A Giant -- Monsanto Sues North Dakota Farmer Over Biotech Crop Dispute
5. Goliath and David: Monsanto's Legal Battles against Farmers
6. Monsanto vs. US Farmers [pdf]
7. Oregon farmers caught up in Monsanto suit over engineered alfalfa
8. Agricultural Giant Battles Small Farmers
9. Could Monsanto Be Responsible for One Indian Farmer's Death Every Thirty Minutes?
10. Monsanto watch: Targeting American farmers with lawyers, fear and money
11. 1. Falcon

Too bad that extracting natural gas usually involves pumping massive quantities of toxic chemicals directly in to the ground.

Thanks to the incredibly corrupt Bush Administration, Fracking isn't even subject to the clean water act. The Halliburton Loophole, named after Dick Chaney's true employer, has allowed entire towns to be polluted beyond repair.

Thousands have been sickened by this polluted water. Pets are losing their hair. People are getting cancer. The water out of some homes' faucets is actually flammable!!

citation needed?

1) I am not dismissing morals and ethics

Yes, you are. You say, "Regardless of the morals and ethics, the bottom line is its good skilled and technical jobs for America." There is no way to parse that sentence that is not a dismissal of morals and ethics.

2) LOL slavery does not equal perfectly legal industry and rights-abiding jobs. Plus, young one, slavery was not a "job." ..Even though a tomato is a fruit, you don't put it in fruit salad.

Slavery created many jobs -- slave auctioneer, sailor on a slave ship, fugitive slave catcher, slave overseer, whip maker, chain forger. It was a perfectly legal industry at the time.

Creating weapons of terror is not a "rights-abiding job", as all people have the right to live free from the threat of violence.

Given the /. demographics, odds are very good that I should be calling you "young one" rather than the other way around, not that it matters. And while I like a good non sequitur as much as anyone, what do tomatoes in fruit salads have to do with creating weapons of mass destruction?

3) I realize a lot of you don't know this, but the Iraq war started before 2003. It started in 1991 when Iraq invaded Kuwait.

I was marching against that war when I was in college, thank you, so I remember it well. Iraq was not developing nukes when we attacked in 2001. Perhaps you didn't get the news that the evidence of that was faked?

There is no reason to have the countries that already have nukes to give them up as long as we have ours to serve as a deterrence.

The U.S., Russia, the U.K. France, and China have a treaty obligation under the NNPT to "pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control." We cannot reasonably ignore our obligation under the NNPT to work for disarmament which at the same time citing the NNPT as the legal basis for threatening Iran. Nor can we effectively engage in negotiations to convince non-nuclear nations to stay that way while our line is "do as I say, not as I do."

Autism Spectrum Disorders are a very diverse set of symptoms ranging all the way from profoundly Autistic, Low Functioning Autistics, LFA, and Rett Syndrome and being completely nonverbal and have almost nonexistent motor skills to PDD-NOS Pervasive Developmental Disorder - Not Otherwise Specified who would appear to be slightly clumsy, not real social, and dislikes being interrupted when concentrating on something.

If Einstein were alive today, he'd probably be diagnosed as Asperger's or PDD-NOS. Many aspects of or modern society actually favor an Autistic cognitive style, Michael Burry is a good example, Scion Capital made 300% while the S&P 500 made 10%. With the computer and Internet, Face-to-Face socialization isn't as necessary as it was twenty years ago.

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2009/12/sexual-predators-200912

The short version is that the police and the media are contributing the hysteria of online child predators and blowing things WAY out of proportion. In the huge majority of the cases where minors are involved in sexual conversations online, they are engaged in them with other minors.

It seems that some highly regarded people agree with me. This is just an example, you can find many more with a simple Google search. Duh!

Another ridiculous, baseless assertion. You may as well be saying that unicorns have the prettiest toenails. Do you really expect a response?

What I find ridiculous and baseless is how you write two posts trying to bash others without presenting a single valid point.

Any business strategy that boils down to "kill off competitor X" is fundamentally unsound in this type of open market. Michael Wolff, in his recent Vanity Fair article on Rupert Murdoch's troubles succeeding on the internet, stated the issue well:

Murdoch is not a modern marketer. He runs his business not on the basis of giving the consumer what he wants but through more old-fashioned methods of structural market domination. His world, and training ground, is the world of the newspaper war—a zero-sum game, where you wrestle market share from the other guy.

To view any of Google's markets as zero-sum is fundamentally myopic, and plays to Google's advantage. Any competitor is better served identifying something that Google doesn't do well for the customer, and focusing on that instead of taking market share away from Google. Of course, this requires real work and innovation.

There is a rather long article on Murdoch's war on the Internet here. It should answer a lot of your questions on what the guy is thinking.

There was an incredibly detailed account of the Brazilian midair collision in September 2006 that identified pilots trying to figure out the flight control systems on their new Legacy 600 as one of the distractions that led to the collision. Some of the controls were on a glass panel display, and there was also a laptop that distracted them. Apparently, as they were clicking around on stuff, they shut off their transponder.

http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2009/01/air_crash200901

Even more concerning, was the author's argument that the accuracy of GPS guided autopilot systems also contributed. Historically, even if two planes ended up at the same flight level, headed towards each other, the inherent sloppiness in the autopilot systems would actually increase the chance of a miss. Now, with autopilots capable of keeping planes within very close tolerances of their ideal flightpath, the same two planes accidentally occupying the same flight level may have a much higher chance of colliding.

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/politics/2008/07/bush-as-joker.html

If by miracle my post is not drowned down into depths of oblivion, note that Dubya was depicted tens of times with very unflattering altered photos, and so was Cheney, while the W. administration was in power - and nobody complained.
See this or this, for example.

Also, while Mc Cain was campaigning, this rather shocking picture was publicized by The Atlantic - who later recanted and apologized - but the point is, nobody in the McCain camp complained, let alone did you have public and officers making a fuss about it.

But with Obama, the thought police is up in arms bigtime.

And they are right to be: Obama is sacred and he farts rainbows, and his words are words of wisdom, and he poops gold nuggets. And Obama won't speak up: it is the Will of the People that is against any criticism of the Beloved President.

I know if it had happened to Bush, the neocons would have had pitchforks in hand.

Hey, fuckface. Take Obama's cock out of your mouth for three seconds and try to remember, through your pot-addled brainwashed "mind", that Bush had this done to him REPEATEDLY. In fact, it made the front cover of Vanity Fair:

Here It Is, You Piece Of Shit Tinpot Tyrant

Let's also not forget the incessant comparisons between Bush and Hitler, who, if the government censors didn't already erase from your history textbooks, was a REAL person who massacred millions of innocent people. Comparisons to a fictional asshole who caused a little mischief in Gotham City don't look so offensive now, do they?

[Note: Bush was also a statist/fascist/socialist, whom I am not trying to defend. The claim under question here is the parent's ridiculous notion of neocons with pitchforks.]

Now go back to wallowing in your smug ignorance, and telling yourself that you have the right to gang up with your other little thug friends and dictate the terms on which free men like myself live our own lives.

I know if it had happened to Bush, the neocons would have had pitchforks in hand.

Just do a Google image search.
George Bush Joker

Vanity fair even published it on their website.

It was done in July of last year: http://www.vanityfair.com/online/politics/2008/07/bush-as-joker.html