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we avoided 1 entirely because this hasnt been our style since 1910. We avoided 2 because we have a 25 year track record of failed wars and coups, not to mention king georges debacle in iraq. we also dont pick fights with countries that possess a nuclear fleet or long range bombers. Three works, and it works because we're beholden as members of NATO to protect our allies. because we rely on russia very little (as does russia us) we expect to get away with what basically amounts to a great deal of symbolism.

Wait what? You haven't heard? It was just another oil grab, you Americans really don't know the real reason US went to Ukraine?

Holy shit, you guys are dumb, the WHOLE WORLD knows.

The Farce Is Complete: Joe Biden's Son Joins Board Of Largest Ukraine Gas Producer
  BidenÃ(TM)s Son Gets Ukrainian Oil Company Gig
  Vice President Joe Biden's son joins Ukraine gas company
  Joe BidenÃ(TM)s Son Appointed to Board of UkraineÃ(TM)s Largest Gas Producer

Anytime you talk about inflation, you have to be cognoscente of the fact that every government on the planet lies about it.
Their deficit spending, fiat currency, crony capitalism for the elite depends on it.

Look at Venezuela for example

Or the US of A.

I'd be willing to bet that if you price cable services in terms of real assets like oil, gold, silver, food, energy or even a subway ticket in NYC it would be a different picture, averaged out over the long term.

If you're taking the government's figures on inflation I've got prime ocean front real estate to sell you in beautiful New Mexico.

How do you tell if the government is lying?

Their lips are moving (or they've typed something out).

Many choose to ignore anything that contradicts preconceived ideas, "accepted thinking, "settled science". TEPCO was certain a tsunami was no threat. They were told about it repeatedly. Arrogance and hubris from men that are accustomed to being the smartest man in the room. This is the fatal flaw. Not the technology. The people.

Transuranics were spread far and wide. How? A very serious question. I do not take it lightly, nor listen to fool's rant. Measures of Xenon gas isotopes would decisively prove/disprove this theory due to a half life measured in hours. That information has not been released. Why?

Arnie Gundersen is no ranting, stoned hippy. He was a gung-ho Nuke industry pro, a true believer. B.A. Nuclear Engineering Cum laud from the serious and respected Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (1971) . Master's degree in nuclear engineering thanks to a prestigious Atomic Energy Commission Fellowship (1972). 40 plus years nuclear power engineering experience, holds nuclear safety patent, licensed reactor operator, former nuclear industry senior vice president, managed and coordinated projects at 70-nuclear power plants in the US.

There is nothing of a lightweight in the man.

Arnie found radioactivity in an office safe.(IIRC) Well, how could that happen, he properly asked, and insisted on an answer. He was fired. Became a whistleblower, they tried to destroy him. He ended up broke, but not broken, and now "out of the priesthood". He dedicated his life to increased safety. His approach is cool, calm, fact based, science. After Fukushima he decided there are no safe Nukes. Because, People.40 good years, and one very bad day. The risks are not manageable over the long term. Odds are, something is going to break. The proof is in the results.

Here, many links about finding fuel bits http://www.zerohedge.com/contr...

google of prompt criticality Fukushima https://www.google.com/#q=prom....

The google search does not yield a scientific rebuttal of his argument. Nor have you attempted to rebut the argument. Nor evidently even bothered to watch the vid? Here is the link, again http://vimeo.com/22865967

Fukushima is permanently abandoned. You say the risks are over stated. Was the evacuation an error? Inside the buildings, levels are so high that machines cannot function. Men must enter this dangerous place, risk their lives for other's mistakes, for the next 40 years. Is this an acceptable risk?

The entire industry is threatened, Germany is shutting down. 5 closed last year in the US, another 8 plans canceled. Why? They have themselves to blame. The men in the industry did not listen, called it FUD, scaremongering. They did not act, repeatedly ignored warnings, repeatedly dodged safety issues. Now Japan has 50 reactors turned off. Very expensive rusting junk.

Now here in the US, a move to lower safety standards?

To the question? Fukushima is permanently abandoned. You say the risks are over stated. Was the evacuation an error?

Marcelo, I did not manage to find links to Mr Stansbury? If he has written about this, I am interested. Thanks. And Thanks for the good discussion. These are serious issues, of great consequence.

Certainly the electorate needs to get off their collective asses and change things, but at present there is no effective mechanism for them to do so. The election system has been gamed to the point that it's virtually impossible to wrest control from the two-faced party currently in control, short of a major grass-roots campaign to toss the bastards out, and such campaigns inevitably need leaders and organization to give them focus, which the NSA is quite likely doing their best to disrupt (we have documented evidence that the intelligence organizations have been infiltrating and undermining potentially powerful citizen groups since at least the McCarthy era, do you really think anything has changed?)

America is an Oligarchy interview with the paper's Author. Another analysis which I would recommend skimming over.

What is most incredible to me is that the data under scrutiny in the study was from 1981-2002. One can only imagine how much worse things have gotten since the 2008 financial crisis. The study found that even when 80% of the population favored a particular public policy change, it was only instituted 43% of the time . We saw this first hand with the bankster bailout in 2008, when Americans across the board were opposed to it, but Congress passed TARP anyway (although they had to vote twice).

Unless you get the "elites" involved you're doomed.

The study found that even when 80% of the population favored a particular public policy change, it was only instituted 43% of the time.

Nor did she leak information the government considered confidential. What's with all the pro-government retards bashing Snowden? Just because Snowden isn't suicidal or masochistic doesn't mean he did anything wrong. We now have all the information we need, and we need to act on it.

There is a quasi-acknowledged organized campaign afoot to manipulate the comment sections of web forums to give them a more pro-establishment bent and combat "wrong" information. See here. Ironically it was Snowden who confirmed this for us. It's always hard to tell when someone is voicing their true opinion, and when they are doing their master's bidding. But some of the rise in pro-establishment, anti-Snowden, anti-Wikileaks opinion is due to a concerted effort by government agents.

Well, it will buy you a pretty nice home in Texas, anyway. California? Not so much.

Especially with California's much higher tax rates, including a rate of 9.3% that kicks for all those millionaires making more than $49,774 a year.

Re "But, the US Russian space cooperation was first initiated as a sign of good will." The deal between the US and Russia about space was a pact that both sides really needed.
The US could keep expert Russian skills in Russia and away from Brazil, China, India and other very well educated emerging space nations.
Russia got to keep its best staff with generational skills that would be costly to have to re create decades later - stay with funding in Russia and could pass their skills on to next generations.
Working with complex metals and other materials took decades to get to a production stage.
As for "sanctions" try and understand the German view of its energy needs and exports:
"German Executives Denounce EU/US Leaders Over Russia Confrontation"
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/...
In countries with less debt, real exports, real jobs, real energy needs and real growth - they do not have the luxury to be been seen "in front ".

Except in China... it's not just BTC exchanges... banking not so safe; it's normal banks defaulting on their loans, too.

depositors in some of Yancheng City's largest farmers' co-operative mutual fund societies ("banks") have been unable to withdraw "hundreds of millions" in deposits in the last few weeks. "Everyone wants to borrow and no one wants to save," warned one 'salesperson', "and loan repayments are difficult to recover." There is "no money" and the doors are locked.

I still don't get twitter.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/...
Now get off my lawn.

The U.S was not about to deploy an aircraft carrier battle group to the narrow, mine-filled waters of the Straits of Hormuz

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/...

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/he...

See, they go through there... Even better.

http://www.uscarriers.net/cvn6...

1997
November 26, USS Nimitz pulled into Jebel Ali, United Arab Emirates, for an eight-day visit to Dubai after participating in exercise Neon Falcon off the coast of Bahrain, Nov. 15-25. From Dec. 6-10, the ship participated in exercise Nautical Artist with the Saudis; and Eager Mace with the Kuwaitis from Dec. 13-24.

Dear Leader has been peddling his version of diplomacy, but it doesn't help when you've been Carterized by Putin!

For all it's faults it's still more transparent then the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Peoples Bank of China or the Russian Goznak. "Because when the entire world is a credit-fueled ponzi scheme, these are the kind of numbers that matter". http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-12-11/matter-stunning-perspective-china-money-creation-blows-us-and-japan-out-water

it’s provided by payments the banks make to be FDIC insured.

This is true only so long as the Office of Thrift Supervision does its job effectively, and in recent history it’s been doing a piss poor job. OTS is supposed to seize a failing bank prior to the value of its assets dropping below the sum of FDIC insured deposits. The sale of the bank and its assets (loans it owns essentially), whole or in pieces to other banks should equal or exceed the amount of insured funds, and depositors are made whole without tax payers taking a bath. Usually the obligation of the deposits is assumed by the purchasing banks, so any eventual withdrawals come from the new bank’s assets.

The problem is when OTS waits too long, and a failing bank has slipped past the point where it has the assets to cover its deposits. In that case, any bank purchasing the assets and liabilities would insist on either a discount on the price (to offset the value of the deposits they would eventually have to pay back) or outright cash as part of the transaction to ensure they’re not taking a loss in the transaction. At that point, the money comes from the FDIC fund to make up the difference. FDIC is “insurance” in the sense that banks pay into it, but it’s backed by the full faith and credit of the United States of America. That means if the fund comes up short, every penny past that point comes directly out of the tax payers.

The FDIC insurance fund is maintained at a very low percentage of the overall deposits at risk. I think the requirement was raised to 1.35% in 2010, but that target isn’t required to be reached until 2020. The number of banks that failed as a result of various sub-prime related issues put a strain on the fund because OTS consistently waited until the banks were deeply in the red before acting. My cynical self says they were playing the “wait & hope” game, hoping the banks managed to ride it out without going under so they wouldn’t need to close them. Didn’t work out so well for a lot of banks.

At least as of 2010, the FDIC fund was in pretty bad shape as a result: http://www.zerohedge.com/artic...

So it’s true that FDIC insurance isn’t provided by the government, at least up to the point the insurance fund holds. Pat that point, any shortfalls are paid for by the government, IE You.

In fact, here's a nice anecdote of how these so called "student" loans are being spent:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/...

"Regulation. For a start, with banks and financial services in official currencies, you actually know who you are dealing with. They are registered with the government, and have real bricks and mortar addresses."

"It's symptomatic of the naivety of libertarians that you even have to ask the question."

As I already pointed out elsewhere, you are simply wrong about that. Bitcoin is, in fact, regulated. Not by the Fed, but by other government agencies.

It's symptomatic of someone who likes to knee-jerk attack Libertarians to get things so utterly wrong.

"Not true. Libertarians wax lyrical about bitcoin, whilst often repeating complains about fiat currency and the fall of the gold standard."

I see. So the fact that Democrats like education and support it makes child education a Democrat concept? That's interesting.

"Indeed the only supporters of bitcoin are libertarians, criminals, and those that are easily suckered into get-rich-quick investment schemes and pyramid scams."

I agree on the latter, but one out of three is not a very good score.

"Who are the regulators? That's right, there aren't any."

Yes, there are. At least in the United States. I know you're not in the U.S. but here, it most certainly is subject to regulations.

Having said that: is our government regulating it responsibly or effectively? Hell no. But then they haven't been regulating Wall Street responsibly or effectively either.

And to less of a point then most might think....

http://www.zerohedge.com/artic...

What if you found out that mathematically the FDIC was broke ?

http://www.garynorth.com/publi...

http://www.zerohedge.com/artic...

Yeah the FBI is on it:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/...

>Which shows they're either absurdly incompetent or complicit. Validating the books is incredibly much easier with Bitcoin..

meaning that if that had honest accountants they would have had to fake it by summing the fraud + the real to keep them from talking.

with dishonest or no accountants you'd still need to do some make belief math to keep your wallets-ops people from knowing

with dishonest wallet-ops people or a theft baked into the system you could have gotten far but at risk

which is why they * used a proprietary home-brew wallet written by the inner circle.

* must have

if you follow this chain of thought it becomes so soo hard to attrib this happening to ignorance now - internal malice emerged as the likely truth here the moment 'ongoing' joined the word 'theft' in their releases. some time ago too.

soooo... my money's on 'complicit' as long as that covers intentional and by design as well.

actually, i'm not alone with this deduction. see here for more: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/...

you're low on the govt benefits: http://www.zerohedge.com/artic...

The whole area around New England and the state itself are virulently anti-energy. Vermont banned fracking even though they have no recoverable natural gas reserves; they did it just to make a headline. New England might have a deposit in the Hartford Basin, but we'll never know because just like its neighbors New England is also well on its way to banning recovery. New York has managed to inflict record gas prices on itself this month.

So shiver in the dark as far as I'm concerned. Shut off your extravagant kerosene turbines and rely on those offshore windmills you hate so much. Next summer maybe you can dam up a few dozen more Canadian rivers and preclude this little drama next winter.

What I'd like to know is which taxpayers agreed on spending their taxes on this? The only citizens I found supporting this are those who do not pay income taxes.

Technically the 65,915,796 residents who voted for Obama in the 2012 election?

You're both talking about the same group of people for the most part.

Obama's a class-warfare-promoting, divisive, INCOMPETENT failure.

Don't think Obama's incompetent? Yeah, right, it's BOOOOSH'S fault labor force participation has fallen 4% since Obumbles took office.

But boy does he take care of his big money buddies on Wall Street and propagandists in Hollywood.

No, it wasn't paid back. So it is relevant.

Captcha: launder

Here's a two sided argument on the subject:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-12-30/bitcoin-alternative-currency-libertarian-vs-pragmatist

Boeing lost a $4.5 billion fighter aircraft contract to Saab in Brazil because of the revelations about spying. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-12-19/nsa-spying-blowback-continues-boeing-loses-brazil-jet-order

Cisco has also seen major losses, and lots of other companies big and small are hurting as well.

The US Constitution may have been put in the shredder, the courts may be rubber stamps for the US version of the STASI, and the Congress may be brain dead along with the DOJ, but now it turns out that all this useless spying has hurt the bottom line of Big Corporate American. You screw these people over, and your government funding is going to be severely impacted.

The NSA and the other alphabet soup spying agencies have hurt the only group in the US with the clout to shut them down. The are going to be backing off big time.

On the individual level, government intelligence insiders are going to discover that they will have a much harder time finding those cushy high paying civilian jobs that they expect to be handed when they leave the government. That's what happens when you bite the hand that feeds you. This could have the biggest impact of all, because the revolving door is a major motivation for the entire system in the first place.

Stuff that matters? - Nope

Correction: What happened in Turkey should be an inspiration for all citizens of the United States of America.

The American government has grown so corrupted that even a broken website cost the American tax payers One fucking Billion Dollars ! ( http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-12-02/obamacare-website-costs-top-1-billion )

When will we have FBI raiding the White House ?

Most of the trolls and sock puppets seem to be reading from
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-10-31/document-reveals-official-nsa-talking-points-use-911-attacks-sound-bite
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-12-02/nsas-mission-great-value-nation-complete-authorized-nsa-thanksgiving-dinner-talking-
As more Snowden docs where released their usual straw man, topic changing, the crypto is still good, 'other countries', its all legal, "its only metadata" sock puppet talking points became more and more of a joke over the weeks.
The world now knows of the junk internet encryption, the useless telco encryption, the tame US firms, the tame US staff, the tame US legal teams, the tame staff in other countries ensuring all data flows back the UK/US and many other 'friends', the lack of any real political oversight, the lack of basic crypto skill around top political leaders.
Better software, hardware, air gaps and law reform will slowly correct many of the issues :)
The reality of https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/08/dea-and-nsa-team-intelligence-laundering is now for good lawyers to understand and consider.

Most of the trolls and sock puppets seem to be reading from
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-10-31/document-reveals-official-nsa-talking-points-use-911-attacks-sound-bite
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-12-02/nsas-mission-great-value-nation-complete-authorized-nsa-thanksgiving-dinner-talking-
As more Snowden docs where released their usual straw man, topic changing, the crypto is still good, 'other countries', its all legal, "its only metadata" sock puppet talking points became more and more of a joke over the weeks.
The world now knows of the junk internet encryption, the useless telco encryption, the tame US firms, the tame US staff, the tame US legal teams, the tame staff in other countries ensuring all data flows back the UK/US and many other 'friends', the lack of any real political oversight, the lack of basic crypto skill around top political leaders.
Better software, hardware, air gaps and law reform will slowly correct many of the issues :)
The reality of https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/08/dea-and-nsa-team-intelligence-laundering is now for good lawyers to understand and consider.

Europe? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_partners_of_China

I could be mistaken here, but i thought the bulk of the US debt was more to the shorter term (70% is 5 years or less)

Something like this: http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/draghi/UST%20Maturity%20by%20Bucket.jpg

SKYNET

Europe has only been practicing "Fake Austerity'"

Real austerity is cutting government spending until it matches receipts. This hasn't been tried outside of the Baltic states.

"We are told that austerity in Europe has failed. The elections in France and Greece, for instance, are supposedly evidence of people’s opposition to severe cuts in spending. However, the growing anti-austerity backlash against Europe ignores one fundamental point: If there is austerity in Europe, in most cases it hasn’t taken the form of massive spending cuts.

"Following years of large spending expansion, Spain, the United Kingdom, France, and Greece—countries widely cited for adopting austerity measures—haven’t significantly reduced spending since 'austerity' supposedly started in 2008."

Austerity hasn't failed in Europe, it's been declared difficult and left untried.

Summary appears to be ripped verbatim from zerohedge. Or did it originate somewhere else? It'd be nice if people would cite their sources.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-11-18/dark-web-exposes-75000-bitcoin-based-bounty-bernankes-assassination

Yes its all out in NSA speaking points http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-10-31/document-reveals-official-nsa-talking-points-use-911-attacks-sound-bite
From been pro USA, bringing up 911, lawful acts, a count of the number of issues 'detected', the media makes it all so hard, the US gov needs the telco/OS/crypto/academic community...

This is only true if you think the statement "The government should promote the general welfare" immediately makes you a socialist.

It might, depending on what you think, the meaning of that phrase is. If "promoting general welfare" means — to you — people need to be subsidized to be "well", then, yes, you are a Socialist, willing to rob the productive Peter to console the idle Paul.

What absolutely doesn't exist is a well-established and well-funded set of organizations with media outlets, think tanks, etc hiring bunches of people making well over $250,000 a year promoting socialism

Not true. The apparatus you are talking about exists and is scary. I'm talking about all the federal and state bureaucrats working on dispensing the taxpayers' monies to the "less fortunate". Their comfortable jobs — which give them the pay, the benefits, and the daily reassurance, they are better than others (their visitors) — would all be at risk, if the number of recipients went down. Obama Administration, for example, goes to great length to sign-up new recipients of Food Stamps, spending millions of dollars per month just on the advertisements for the program — something unthinkable, when it was originated. Why, if you need to be "encouraged to sign-up", then you don't really need the assistance — it is only for the truly desperate. Are you going to pretend, it is done out of sincere concern for the poor? No, it is because feeding those people — at someone else's expense — is a source of comfy jobs.

Sadly, their efforts — in what FDR once called "administering a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of human spirt" — are successful.

If you're thinking that the people receiving welfare are being rewarded for being a socialist

No, not at all — some recipients are decidedly against the existing setup. (So much so, they are being ridiculed for "hypocrisy", when, in fact, it is just the opposite — their willingness to abolish the program that benefits them shows their sincerity.)

They are arguably benefiting from the majority of voters believing that a bit of socialism in the name of preventing people from starving or freezing to death is a good idea

The majority of voters are being tricked into thinking, the programs do good to people in real need. Yet, the stories of people selling their food stamps (including on facebook, which, BTW, reveals their ability to afford a computer and Internet-access) constantly give a lie to the lamentations about "food insecurity".

Simply put, a politician, who is elected on the promise to "fight poverty" has a conflict of interest — what is he going to run on next time, if he succeeds in destroying poverty today? The Military-Industrial Complex, at least, produces something. The Welfare-Industrial Complex is completely parasitic.

Most of the speaking points over Snowden come form lists like http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-10-31/document-reveals-official-nsa-talking-points-use-911-attacks-sound-bite
Now they just for for most basic headline.

Yes taco cowboy expect to see a lot more posted by the usual 'names'.
The sock puppets have a very clear mission on web 2.0 http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-10-31/document-reveals-official-nsa-talking-points-use-911-attacks-sound-bite
A lot of good news stories, moral equivalence to help understand US domestic spying and international efforts with a more positive spin.
Thanks to the good work by Snowden the world now understand the US brands, US junk encryption, junk telco/crypto gov standards, keeping of generations of telco logs and creative re working of the US court systems.
As for Australia it always knew its role as a client state. In 1945 the first and final debate was had over the role of Australian spying post WW2. Would Australia work on its own efforts as to never be betrayed/reliant on/late/lost/fooled/disadvantaged by "friendly" countries needs again.
The other option was Australia alone would be full of Soviet agents and never have the scale to look deep into regions (Asia, South America).
The view was to sign up early with the US/UK and get everything 'new' and 'costly' as shared bases.
Short term Australia got everything it could have ever wanted in terms of pure data flow.
Now Australia faces the reality of the networks, software, encryption and hardware imported. Its all expensive back doored junk with the US, UK, contractors and staff having the all the telco keys by default.
The other aspect for Australia is its military networking is not totally hardened on secure lines - they share with the civilian domestic networks hoping unique domestic codes will be 'good'.
Now Australia has to patch up its own 'network' - junk by US/UK design and half its own cleared staff beholden to the other countries who sold the junk crypto as been safe.

The next step is the NSA news about politicians, finance and religious leaders.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-10-30/nsa-tapped-pope-spied-vatican-prevent-threats-financial-system
and e.g. MUSCULAR http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-10-30/how-nsa-spies-your-google-and-yahoo-accounts
"You can't get into the information circuits and play information warfare successfully unless you're into the communications of the higher commands in [the] various countries in our neighbourhood" is the real news, i.e. the US is 'in' the Australian telecommunications system - hardware and software vs the classic 'base' or just the international optical submarine "site".

The next step is the NSA news about politicians, finance and religious leaders.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-10-30/nsa-tapped-pope-spied-vatican-prevent-threats-financial-system
and e.g. MUSCULAR http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-10-30/how-nsa-spies-your-google-and-yahoo-accounts
"You can't get into the information circuits and play information warfare successfully unless you're into the communications of the higher commands in [the] various countries in our neighbourhood" is the real news, i.e. the US is 'in' the Australian telecommunications system - hardware and software vs the classic 'base' or just the international optical submarine "site".

Re GPS and cell jammers:
Guess the cops will have to buy into larger frequency hopping beacons that try a few different types of triangulation - gps, cell and other gov or private tracking networks.
With that comes a larger battery too i.e. the bullet might have to grow to be a bigger beacon?
In the end laws will be altered for a new car to have http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-10-28/big-brother-coming-your-car with an encrypted ignition override.
The cops will network into the car and stop it.
Try and remove the blackbox and the car of interest will be more tricky to start.
Guess its back to using a truck to "recover" the car.

Re side of dictatorships and other anti-freedom nations?
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-10-17/apologist-assassination-americans-be-named-new-homeland-security-chief
Guess your may find out that the terms "pro-democracy", "dissident" and "internet security" means legally speaking soon :)

The SEC is full of shit. Here's a cute summary why: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-06-18/sec-uses-hft-firm-designed-tool-find-hft-doesnt-cause-flash-crashes.

Worse news - the second and third guy don't really like working. And the guy above you all keeps 50% to himself.

Thankfully you're there to "share" with them. Best keep working.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-10-22/guest-post-three-and-half-class-society

Re: felony in the process.
Yes the ability to get admin rights or add code while the owner is away/sleeping would be tempting as part of a larger offensive military cyber capacity.
With tasks been outsourced to private security firms and "jokes" about individuals on "lists" this could get interesting:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/10/ex-nsa-chief-jokes-about-hunting-down-snowden-advocates-targeted-killings/
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-10-02/chief-dhs-privacy-officer-government-called-privacy-office-terrorists
Maybe that ideological or privacy news related home sever makes a list too?

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-09-29/nsa-central-us-assassination-program
You also had the http://www.theguardian.com/media/media-blog/2013/sep/27/seymour-hersh-obama-nsa-american-media

HFT provides liquidity, and liquidity is of the utmost importance to traders.

Liquidity? And efficiency?You actually believe that bullshit? It's not about liquidity, efficiency, market making etc. It's all about transferring money from other people to them.

And that's of utmost importance: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-05-08/jp-morgan-has-zero-trading-losses-first-quarter
When you can do it with zero trading losses day after day it's almost like a tax you impose on everyone else (guess where their money comes from).

If the market is becomes more efficient as you claim why'd would these parasites be raking in big bucks? They'd be raking in smaller and smaller bucks instead. Think about that.

And they get bailouts and transaction rollbacks, trading pauses whenever they screw up big time.

When Joe Sixpack trader screws up, nobody bails him out or rolls back his transactions. And if he outsmarts an algo he risks getting a prison sentence: http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/security/3244186/norwegian-traders-convicted-for-outsmarting-us-stock-broker-algorithm/

Reality is it's about the rich and powerful continuing to transfer wealth from the less rich and less powerful.

No need to concoct such a nefarious plan.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-09-24/tip-box-fed-made-it-possible-many-people-leak-it

Plenty of people knew and could leak the information early.

The information was widely available about 5 minutes in advance:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-09-24/tip-box-fed-made-it-possible-many-people-leak-it

Someone had the order all queued up, and was waiting for word. He got word of the interest rate move, and keyed in his order, which his computer would execute at 2:00:00:002, forgetting that such an order was impossible without giving away he was cheating by having gotten the announcement early.

First, save the "for the children" fallacy arguments that US politicians spew. Death of innocents is just that.

Second, there is a whole lot of information backing the claims you responded to. Did you see how John Kerry a few years ago was at a nice party with Assad? Back 3 years ago, Syria was known as the most progressive nation in the Middle East and a "good guy". Syria allowed women to drive and work, had no Sharia courts or Sharia laws. Syria minded their own business and did it very well.

Listen to what Wesley Clark says here.

Do some research on the subject if you dare. I have no confidence that you will, but don't denounce people with a different opinion with ad hominem. There are plenty of facts countering your position. No, I'm not going to condense a year worth of reading into a list of citations for you. One citation is enough to get you started.