blanket statement that surgery had no placebo-controlled trials is false
There are no blinded placebo-controlled trials of a surgical procedure where the surgery has beaten the sham. Mammary artery ligation for angina pectoris, fetal cell implants for Parkinsons, arthroscopic knee surgery, and most recently vertebroplasty, have been tested and found no better than placebo surgery.
It may be true that some surgeries haven't received a double-blind test in full.
To my knowledge, no surgery has received such a test and passed. I still await a link to a placebeo-controlled study of a surgical intervention found to be better than a sham operation -- I've brought this up several times here and no one has been able to provide one. I'd really like to find one.
I certainly wouldn't wish my name attached to a double-blind study involving kidney transplants for end-stage renal disease patients, on humanitarian grounds alone.
If the "gold standard" of evidence isn't there, it isn't there, regardless of the reason.
If the standard for accepting a procedure as valuable is "must pass a controlled double-blinded test", then surgery doesn't qualify, and (if the claim of the article is true) neither does the flu shot. If the standard is "appears to have benefit in clinical usage", then some surgeries qualify, the flu shot is still doubtful, and many CAM procedures make the cut.
Secondly, it is not true that the flu vaccine has not received double-blind testing. Just last year, Australia ran a study to determine the effectiveness of the flu vaccine for the strains common in 2008...
It is traditional to provide a link when making such a claim. Thanks.
I haven't read of any placebo-controlled studies for it, but it would certainly be unusual if that hadn't occurred.
I thought it was unusual too, which is why I mentioned it.
It's also interesting that (according to the story I linked above) there has not been a placebo-controlled trial of the flu vaccine. So, anyone out there who rails against any sort of complimentary/alternative medicine and says they would never receive a treatment that can't produce placebo-controlled trials, can't get flu shots. (Of course, you also can't get surgery...)
Widespread flu shots are a great subsidy to big pharma, but as a public health measure, they're a questionable use of resources.
Ironically, your sig contains "You cannot wash away blood with blood."
Yes, it does. I am opposed to revenge. I am not opposed to self-defense or to defense of the innocent, even if violence is required. There is nothing ironic here.
Anyone willing to bet that most of them haven't even read the freaking bill either?
Have you read the entire source code of the large projects you've worked on?
Or do you trust the summaries, explanations, and documentation of the parts that you're not specifically focused on?
Industrialized societies are complex, orders of magnitude more so than any software project. A great deal of that is because they evolved, rather than were engineered -- just as biological organisms contain complexities and hacks that an intelligent designer would never use. If we were to start over, we could have something simpler, but I don't think anyone wants to wipe the slate of civilization clean.
This complexity means that their laws and regulations are also complex. People deal with complexity by breaking it into pieces simple enough for individuals to work on.
And all the major cities on Amtrak routes have commuter flights between them which cost the same or less, are more frequent, and except for Boston - Providence, take much less time.
Commuter flights go between airports, which are located outside of cities. (Well, mostly -- I'm amazed at the downtown location of Vegas's airport.) To go from downtown Baltimore to downtown New York, you have to drive or catch a cab or light rail out to BWI, go through security, fly to LaGuardia, wait for your bags, and take a cab -- or a bus then the subway -- downtown.
Amtrak, on the other hand, takes you from Penn Station in Baltimore's Station North district to NYC's Penn Station right at Madison Square Frickin' Garden. Assuming that you actually want to be in the city, it's a straight shot, most definitely faster, and more comfortable.
Amtrak simply has found an alternate source of revenue that doesn't depend on actually satisfying customers.
Airlines have taken plenty of government money (especially when you include the subsidies that keep airports running), and are not exactly know for customer satisfaction.
This "nobility" has given us a military-industrial complex that has killed millions, a prison-industrial complex that has deprived millions of their freedom, a medical-industrial complex that leaves thousands to die because giving them the treatment they paid for isn't profitable enough, and an agriculture-industrial complex that produces poor quality food while destroying the land and the water.
I hope for a peaceful solution, but if a "reign of terror" is the only way to change that, I say, off with their heads already.
The generation that grows up with heavily multitasking-oriented tools will make us seem rather sad.
Nope. Since multi-taskers do poorly on both tasks, those who grow up thinking heavy multitasking is the way to go will wonder why the old farts seem so smart.
Multitasking is great for creating the illusion that things are getting done, sure. But for real results, it seems one thing at a time is still the best way to go.
I can't imagine people not wanting to see ads that are focused on their interests.
To show me ads that are focused on my interests, advertisers would have to know what my interests are. I don't want sociopathic corporations to know what my interests are, thank you very much.
And it doesn't matter if they knew me only as "consumer 38234585" and somehow couldn't connect that with my real identity: the purpose of their targeting ads is to influence my behavior, to attempt to manipulate me.
Aaah, no really, there's no rationalisation for what you do and you are Satan's little helpers. Okay - kill yourself - seriously. You are the ruiner of all things good, seriously. No this is not a joke, you're going, "there's going to be a joke coming," there's no fucking joke coming. You are Satan's spawn filling the world with bile and garbage. You are fucked and you are fucking us. Kill yourself. It's the only way to save your fucking soul, kill yourself.
Planting seeds. I know all the marketing people are going, "he's doing a joke..." there's no joke here whatsoever. Suck a tail-pipe, fucking hang yourself, borrow a gun from a Yank friend - I don't care how you do it. Rid the world of your evil fucking makinations. Machi... Whatever, you know what I mean.
I know what all the marketing people are thinking right now too, "Oh, you know what Bill's doing, he's going for that anti-marketing dollar. That's a good market, he's very smart."
Oh man, I am not doing that. You fucking evil scumbags!
"Ooh, you know what Bill's doing now, he's going for the righteous indignation dollar. That's a big dollar. A lot of people are feeling that indignation. We've done research - huge market. He's doing a good thing."
Godammit, I'm not doing that, you scum-bags! Quit putting a godamm dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet!
Yes, I hated the Macintosh, found it an annoying toy with a screen that gave me a headache, a poor keyboard, and a mouse with only one button. But that was merely dislike. My loathing comes from their corporate practices.
Kong Gumi: liquidated in 2006. I doubt that Takamatsu, which purchased its assets, is bound by any of its obligations. I wonder how many others on this list have been through similar restructuring at one time or another. The fact that a brand survives, or that a hotel or restaurant has been operating for a long time, doesn't mean that it's the same legal business entity over all that time.
And of course this ignores the thousands, if not millions,of companies that have come and gone in that time. I suspect the odds of Alcor still being one of the few companies still around in, say, 500 years, are around the same as hitting a big slots machine jackpot.
Of course, it is your money to gamble. But you'd almost certainly get a better years-per-dollar expected return if you spent the money (and the time it represents) on better food, regular medical care, exercise, stress reduction, and home safety upgrades.
A two story, three bedroom home with a full basement and big yard, on a single income? Yeah. That seems about right.
Yes, it does, depending on where you live, and if you bought before the housing bubble. My mother's parents lived in Baltimore in a two story, three bedroom home with a full basement and a decent yard; her father worked for the local electric company as a lineman, and for most of their lives they were a single income family.
Grandma did actually do back to school after my mother grew up, and worked part-time as an LPN for a while. My grandfather had a ninth grade education (left school to support his family during the depression) and got his electrical training in the Navy during WWII.
I work part-time (downshifted a few years ago as I try to ramp up a second career that I won't age out of and can't be oursourced), and I live in a nice Baltimore suburb in a two story, three bedroom home with a decent yard (no basement, though). Of course I have no kids, and couldn't afford a house like this today; prices have more than doubled since I bought it in 1995.
Homer and Marge's house is a little large, but it's older and not in the best shape. Plausible.
Are you implying, ideas can have value like some kind of property (spit)? That anybody doing research should be paid on top of the altruistic joy they ought to be having from a discovery?
You are conflating three very different ideas:
Ideas have value. Agreed.
Ideas are like property, and the state should use force to prevent unauthorized access to them. Wrong.
Research is productive labor that should be paid. Agreed.
it's just too much trust to ask for sensitive and classified documents to be moved through servers at a company we don't control.
Yet you're willing to move sensitive and classified documents through software you don't control, provided by a vendor that is not only notorious for poor quality but is actually a convicted criminal?
Running your data through Google's servers is no less secure that running it through Microsoft's software. Both, of course, should be avoided: use Free Software on servers you own (or lease).
But drastically reducing the number of guns in the country would drive prices way up on the black market.
Not by much. Simple guns, more than adequate for murder or robbery, can be turned out from scrap by any high school kid in a metal shop. Juvenile delinquents in the 1950s made zip guns out of car antennas. Guns like the Sten submachine gun can be made cheaply in clandestine machine shops -- thousands of them were made by the resistance in occupied Poland during WWII. (Plans for building a Sten here.)
Gun control keeps guns away from bad guys about as well as drug laws keep junkies away from heroin.
Yet not only are they still around, but they've managed to get their country re-established, in the same location, after not existing for hundreds of years.
You seem to be confusing the state of Israel with the Jewish ethnic group. The state of Israel came into official existence only after WWII. It was made possible because for decades before, the British Empire had been essentially stealing the land from the Arabs living in the Mandate of Palestine and giving it to refugees from European anti-semitism, settlers who would be more sympathetic to British interests in the region.
The popular myth of an oppressed people finally returning home makes a nice story, but has little to do with the actual history of the region.
There's good reason for returning to a gold standard. It's impossible to defraud the citizens if they have a money that has both exchange value and commodity value. The dollar today has no commodity value (it's paper) but allegedly holds exchange value. The exchange value is only as good as those willing to use it.
Which still holds true for gold. Exchange value is, by definition, only as good as those willing to use it. Walk into the back country in Africa where the richest tribesman is the one with the most cows, and all your gold bullion is so much shiny ballast.
Gold's actual commodity value is low. You can make shiny things, and it has a handful of industrial applications, but outside of that gold has no more inherent value than pictures of George Washington.
But, many people in our society -- people like yourself -- still have some belief that gold is some special store of value. And so long as many people believe that, it will be true.
Personally, if I were looking for a store a value to survive an economic collapse, I'd invest in quality tools, weapons, drugs, and arable land.
how truly fraudulent the economy has been since 1971 when we left the gold standard, allowing fractional reserve banking to run without any controls.
Reserve banking predates the abandonment of the gold standard.
Forget your fantasy world; there is no "fairness scheme" in international politics. There is your National Interest, whoever you are, period.
And my point is that so long as we ignore "fairness", it is in every nation's National Interest to be a nuclear power, because that is the only way to be safe from nuclear attack. As you note "Your National Interest includes being able to defend yourself [and] deter aggressors." Iran, for example, fears -- with legitimate reason -- an attack by the U.S. or Israel. What is the only thing it can do to deter such an attack? Get a nuke. Aggressive action against states that try to obtain nuclear weapons only provides stronger motivation for them and others to want nuclear weapons. It is an example of what Discordians call the Law of Eristic Escalation.
Again, where we can act to prevent proliferation, we should.
The point is that we cannot prevent it under the current scheme.
We cannot prevent proliferation so long as it remains in developing nation's interests to have nukes. So long as the great powers have nukes -- and act aggressively -- it will remain in those nations interests to get them too.
Only if we disarm (again, with possibly a handful of weapons being kept under international control as a final deterrent for lunatics), only if we set an example of reducing our ability to be aggressive, can we make it against the national interest
The non-proliferation strategy we have pursued for decades, of "we can have them but can't", has failed. When the NPT was first signed in 1968, there were five states with nuclear weapons. There are now nine, an 80% increase. Massive fail.
Do we allow anyone who wants to have nuclear weapons the option to acquire them because there's some natural "fairness" law?
Yes. Either every nation can have nuclear weapons, or no nation can. I'm not saying that "should be the case, I'm saying that over time, these are the only stable alternatives.
Only a cretin would say so.
Only a cretin would expect an unfair scheme whereby only certain nations -- including historically aggressive nations such as the US, USSR, UK, and Israel -- are allowed to have nukes, to stand for long. The NPT requires us to work for disarmament; we have failed to do so.
The way it works is if you're a threat to us, or a region containing friends of ours, then we don't want you to have them (Iran, Syria).
And the fact that "we don't want you to have them" means beans. The world is not (and I know this is shocking news to many of my countrymen) run for the convenience and pleasure of the United States.
If we have nukes, we have no persuasive moral authority to tell other countries that they can't have them.
If we use force to prevent other nations from getting the bomb, everyone will notice that we attack only non-nuclear states, and will be more strongly motivated -- for their own protection -- to develop nuclear weapons in secret. Fission bombs are 1940s technology; if North Korea can make them, anybody with a decent industrial base can.
There are only two possible outcomes: everybody gets nukes who wants them (most nations will probably find it easier to ally with nuclear powers), or nobody (except maybe the U.N., with a dozen layers of safeguards) gets them.
The democrat party continues to act so incompetently that I find myself wondering why Republicans aren't in power.
"The democrat party"? Perhaps you mean "The Democratic Party", or "The Democrats"?
Yes, right-wing pundits and politicos have attempted to re-label them with the less-euphonious "Democrat Party". It is, simply, incorrect, and anyone engaging in that usage disqualifies themselves from being taken seriously by intelligent adults.
(For the record: I am not, and never have been, a member of either the Democratic or Republican parties.)
France is a different situation, however, because they don't really have any other way to talk to the government. In America, we can call our representative or write letters
Curious -- on what basis to you believe that the citizens of France can't write to their elected representatives in the National Assembly?
And on what basis do you think our Congresscritters give a flying fsck what we write to them, unless the envelope is stuffed with C-notes to the point of rivaling the corporations that bought and paid for them long ago?
all i am saying is that complaining about the two party system is simply a red herring, a dead end. if your desire is to effect positive change, fight the real, deeper reasons instead.
The point, which you seem to be deliberately deaf to, is that any real change is impossible in our two-party system. There's too much entrenched political-machine power.
When you only have two candidates to choose from, "corruption, collusion, hypocrisy, selling out your constituents, etc.," are more of a problem.
Only a system free from parties, where candidates run on their own merits, could address these issues.
If you have a point, it is more productive to coherently tell it to people (with evidence and reasoning), than it is to dress up in silly costumes, chant slogans, and cause property damage.
In an ideal world populated by rational people, evidence and reasoning would be the best way to bring about political progress.
Here on Earth, however, some degree of spectacle works much better. You've got to get their attention before people will listen.
Now, property destruction during protests is generally counter-productive, but even then there there are exceptions -- had anti-war protestors in the 1960s not destroyed draft records in high-profile protests, we might still have a military draft here in the U.S.
But I do agree that there's no message in these G-20 protests more coherent than "the current power structure sucks!" Which it does, indeed, but that's not a clear call to action.
Monitored while on duty is fine. Off-duty, no way. Officers aren't slaves and they can have a personal life.
As soon as cops put their badge, and state-issued gun, in the locker at the end of their shift, and lose their special powers of arrest and other special legal consideration when they are off-duty, then they can complain about being monitored when off-duty.
How could this be used to advantage by the defense?
If I were writing a courtroom drama, I might have the defense make an argument like this: "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, these officers showed gross negligence, unprofessionalism, and dereliction of duty. And yet we are expected to accept their testimony and the purported results of their search? I ask you, is it beyond a reasonable doubt that these Keystone Cops mixed up the evidence, that the cannabis they claim they found in my client's home actually resulted from another search? Credible evidence requires credible collectors of evidence, my friends, and the prosecution has failed to provide those. Without reliable evidence, you must -- must -- vote to acquit my client. Thank you."
Slashdot Mirror
There are no blinded placebo-controlled trials of a surgical procedure where the surgery has beaten the sham. Mammary artery ligation for angina pectoris, fetal cell implants for Parkinsons, arthroscopic knee surgery, and most recently vertebroplasty, have been tested and found no better than placebo surgery.
To my knowledge, no surgery has received such a test and passed. I still await a link to a placebeo-controlled study of a surgical intervention found to be better than a sham operation -- I've brought this up several times here and no one has been able to provide one. I'd really like to find one.
If the "gold standard" of evidence isn't there, it isn't there, regardless of the reason.
If the standard for accepting a procedure as valuable is "must pass a controlled double-blinded test", then surgery doesn't qualify, and (if the claim of the article is true) neither does the flu shot. If the standard is "appears to have benefit in clinical usage", then some surgeries qualify, the flu shot is still doubtful, and many CAM procedures make the cut.
It is traditional to provide a link when making such a claim. Thanks.
I thought it was unusual too, which is why I mentioned it.
Bullshit.
And as it turns out, there's evidence that flu shots benefit to the elderly has been grossly overetimated, that previous studies claiming a benefit did not control for differences in the populations that get flu vaccines versus those that don't.
It's also interesting that (according to the story I linked above) there has not been a placebo-controlled trial of the flu vaccine. So, anyone out there who rails against any sort of complimentary/alternative medicine and says they would never receive a treatment that can't produce placebo-controlled trials, can't get flu shots. (Of course, you also can't get surgery...)
Widespread flu shots are a great subsidy to big pharma, but as a public health measure, they're a questionable use of resources.
Yes, it does. I am opposed to revenge. I am not opposed to self-defense or to defense of the innocent, even if violence is required. There is nothing ironic here.
Have you read the entire source code of the large projects you've worked on?
Or do you trust the summaries, explanations, and documentation of the parts that you're not specifically focused on?
Industrialized societies are complex, orders of magnitude more so than any software project. A great deal of that is because they evolved, rather than were engineered -- just as biological organisms contain complexities and hacks that an intelligent designer would never use. If we were to start over, we could have something simpler, but I don't think anyone wants to wipe the slate of civilization clean.
This complexity means that their laws and regulations are also complex. People deal with complexity by breaking it into pieces simple enough for individuals to work on.
To summarize: people are a problem. Sorry.
Commuter flights go between airports, which are located outside of cities. (Well, mostly -- I'm amazed at the downtown location of Vegas's airport.) To go from downtown Baltimore to downtown New York, you have to drive or catch a cab or light rail out to BWI, go through security, fly to LaGuardia, wait for your bags, and take a cab -- or a bus then the subway -- downtown.
Amtrak, on the other hand, takes you from Penn Station in Baltimore's Station North district to NYC's Penn Station right at Madison Square Frickin' Garden. Assuming that you actually want to be in the city, it's a straight shot, most definitely faster, and more comfortable.
Airlines have taken plenty of government money (especially when you include the subsidies that keep airports running), and are not exactly know for customer satisfaction.
This "nobility" has given us a military-industrial complex that has killed millions, a prison-industrial complex that has deprived millions of their freedom, a medical-industrial complex that leaves thousands to die because giving them the treatment they paid for isn't profitable enough, and an agriculture-industrial complex that produces poor quality food while destroying the land and the water.
I hope for a peaceful solution, but if a "reign of terror" is the only way to change that, I say, off with their heads already.
Nope. Since multi-taskers do poorly on both tasks, those who grow up thinking heavy multitasking is the way to go will wonder why the old farts seem so smart.
Multitasking is great for creating the illusion that things are getting done, sure. But for real results, it seems one thing at a time is still the best way to go.
To show me ads that are focused on my interests, advertisers would have to know what my interests are. I don't want sociopathic corporations to know what my interests are, thank you very much.
And it doesn't matter if they knew me only as "consumer 38234585" and somehow couldn't connect that with my real identity: the purpose of their targeting ads is to influence my behavior, to attempt to manipulate me.
As the late great Bill Hicks put it, "By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself.
My loathing for Apple dates back to the infamous "look and feel" lawsuits. (Yes, I'm old enough that one of my office mates in grad school had one of those " Keep Your Lawyers Off My Computer" button stuck to the wall of his cubical.)
Yes, I hated the Macintosh, found it an annoying toy with a screen that gave me a headache, a poor keyboard, and a mouse with only one button. But that was merely dislike. My loathing comes from their corporate practices.
Kong Gumi: liquidated in 2006. I doubt that Takamatsu, which purchased its assets, is bound by any of its obligations. I wonder how many others on this list have been through similar restructuring at one time or another. The fact that a brand survives, or that a hotel or restaurant has been operating for a long time, doesn't mean that it's the same legal business entity over all that time.
And of course this ignores the thousands, if not millions,of companies that have come and gone in that time. I suspect the odds of Alcor still being one of the few companies still around in, say, 500 years, are around the same as hitting a big slots machine jackpot.
Of course, it is your money to gamble. But you'd almost certainly get a better years-per-dollar expected return if you spent the money (and the time it represents) on better food, regular medical care, exercise, stress reduction, and home safety upgrades.
Yes, it does, depending on where you live, and if you bought before the housing bubble. My mother's parents lived in Baltimore in a two story, three bedroom home with a full basement and a decent yard; her father worked for the local electric company as a lineman, and for most of their lives they were a single income family.
Grandma did actually do back to school after my mother grew up, and worked part-time as an LPN for a while. My grandfather had a ninth grade education (left school to support his family during the depression) and got his electrical training in the Navy during WWII.
I work part-time (downshifted a few years ago as I try to ramp up a second career that I won't age out of and can't be oursourced), and I live in a nice Baltimore suburb in a two story, three bedroom home with a decent yard (no basement, though). Of course I have no kids, and couldn't afford a house like this today; prices have more than doubled since I bought it in 1995.
Homer and Marge's house is a little large, but it's older and not in the best shape. Plausible.
You are conflating three very different ideas:
Yet you're willing to move sensitive and classified documents through software you don't control, provided by a vendor that is not only notorious for poor quality but is actually a convicted criminal?
Running your data through Google's servers is no less secure that running it through Microsoft's software. Both, of course, should be avoided: use Free Software on servers you own (or lease).
Not by much. Simple guns, more than adequate for murder or robbery, can be turned out from scrap by any high school kid in a metal shop. Juvenile delinquents in the 1950s made zip guns out of car antennas. Guns like the Sten submachine gun can be made cheaply in clandestine machine shops -- thousands of them were made by the resistance in occupied Poland during WWII. (Plans for building a Sten here.)
Gun control keeps guns away from bad guys about as well as drug laws keep junkies away from heroin.
You seem to be confusing the state of Israel with the Jewish ethnic group. The state of Israel came into official existence only after WWII. It was made possible because for decades before, the British Empire had been essentially stealing the land from the Arabs living in the Mandate of Palestine and giving it to refugees from European anti-semitism, settlers who would be more sympathetic to British interests in the region.
The popular myth of an oppressed people finally returning home makes a nice story, but has little to do with the actual history of the region.
Which still holds true for gold. Exchange value is, by definition, only as good as those willing to use it. Walk into the back country in Africa where the richest tribesman is the one with the most cows, and all your gold bullion is so much shiny ballast.
Gold's actual commodity value is low. You can make shiny things, and it has a handful of industrial applications, but outside of that gold has no more inherent value than pictures of George Washington.
But, many people in our society -- people like yourself -- still have some belief that gold is some special store of value. And so long as many people believe that, it will be true.
Personally, if I were looking for a store a value to survive an economic collapse, I'd invest in quality tools, weapons, drugs, and arable land.
Reserve banking predates the abandonment of the gold standard.
And my point is that so long as we ignore "fairness", it is in every nation's National Interest to be a nuclear power, because that is the only way to be safe from nuclear attack. As you note "Your National Interest includes being able to defend yourself [and] deter aggressors." Iran, for example, fears -- with legitimate reason -- an attack by the U.S. or Israel. What is the only thing it can do to deter such an attack? Get a nuke. Aggressive action against states that try to obtain nuclear weapons only provides stronger motivation for them and others to want nuclear weapons. It is an example of what Discordians call the Law of Eristic Escalation.
The point is that we cannot prevent it under the current scheme.
We cannot prevent proliferation so long as it remains in developing nation's interests to have nukes. So long as the great powers have nukes -- and act aggressively -- it will remain in those nations interests to get them too.
Only if we disarm (again, with possibly a handful of weapons being kept under international control as a final deterrent for lunatics), only if we set an example of reducing our ability to be aggressive, can we make it against the national interest
The non-proliferation strategy we have pursued for decades, of "we can have them but can't", has failed. When the NPT was first signed in 1968, there were five states with nuclear weapons. There are now nine, an 80% increase. Massive fail.
Yes. Either every nation can have nuclear weapons, or no nation can. I'm not saying that "should be the case, I'm saying that over time, these are the only stable alternatives.
Only a cretin would expect an unfair scheme whereby only certain nations -- including historically aggressive nations such as the US, USSR, UK, and Israel -- are allowed to have nukes, to stand for long. The NPT requires us to work for disarmament; we have failed to do so.
And the fact that "we don't want you to have them" means beans. The world is not (and I know this is shocking news to many of my countrymen) run for the convenience and pleasure of the United States.
If we have nukes, we have no persuasive moral authority to tell other countries that they can't have them.
If we use force to prevent other nations from getting the bomb, everyone will notice that we attack only non-nuclear states, and will be more strongly motivated -- for their own protection -- to develop nuclear weapons in secret. Fission bombs are 1940s technology; if North Korea can make them, anybody with a decent industrial base can.
There are only two possible outcomes: everybody gets nukes who wants them (most nations will probably find it easier to ally with nuclear powers), or nobody (except maybe the U.N., with a dozen layers of safeguards) gets them.
"The democrat party"? Perhaps you mean "The Democratic Party", or "The Democrats"?
Yes, right-wing pundits and politicos have attempted to re-label them with the less-euphonious "Democrat Party". It is, simply, incorrect, and anyone engaging in that usage disqualifies themselves from being taken seriously by intelligent adults.
(For the record: I am not, and never have been, a member of either the Democratic or Republican parties.)
Curious -- on what basis to you believe that the citizens of France can't write to their elected representatives in the National Assembly?
And on what basis do you think our Congresscritters give a flying fsck what we write to them, unless the envelope is stuffed with C-notes to the point of rivaling the corporations that bought and paid for them long ago?
The point, which you seem to be deliberately deaf to, is that any real change is impossible in our two-party system. There's too much entrenched political-machine power.
When you only have two candidates to choose from, "corruption, collusion, hypocrisy, selling out your constituents, etc.," are more of a problem.
Only a system free from parties, where candidates run on their own merits, could address these issues.
In an ideal world populated by rational people, evidence and reasoning would be the best way to bring about political progress.
Here on Earth, however, some degree of spectacle works much better. You've got to get their attention before people will listen.
Now, property destruction during protests is generally counter-productive, but even then there there are exceptions -- had anti-war protestors in the 1960s not destroyed draft records in high-profile protests, we might still have a military draft here in the U.S.
But I do agree that there's no message in these G-20 protests more coherent than "the current power structure sucks!" Which it does, indeed, but that's not a clear call to action.
As soon as cops put their badge, and state-issued gun, in the locker at the end of their shift, and lose their special powers of arrest and other special legal consideration when they are off-duty, then they can complain about being monitored when off-duty.
If I were writing a courtroom drama, I might have the defense make an argument like this: "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, these officers showed gross negligence, unprofessionalism, and dereliction of duty. And yet we are expected to accept their testimony and the purported results of their search? I ask you, is it beyond a reasonable doubt that these Keystone Cops mixed up the evidence, that the cannabis they claim they found in my client's home actually resulted from another search? Credible evidence requires credible collectors of evidence, my friends, and the prosecution has failed to provide those. Without reliable evidence, you must -- must -- vote to acquit my client. Thank you."