It's one thing to be able to have frank private discussions. It's another to have frank private discussions about illegal activities that you are either participating in, encouraging, or deliberately ignoring. the ends do not justify the means.
Of course, ignorance is bliss. A lot of people either don't want to know or don't care what shadowy things our government may do. As long as it doesn't affect them or doesn't interrupt their Facebook text-fest about Dancing With The Stars they could care less.
That is why I figure the USA will default in 5 years, 10 tops.
This keeps getting repeated and it keeps being wrong. The US CAN'T default on it's debt. Our debt is denominated in US dollars, which means the US government can always make payments, either through raising taxes or inflating the currency.
The only thing really keeping us afloat is the Fed printing money as fast as the presses will run and using it to buy our debt, basically making the money worthless.
So then, there must be rampant inflation then correct? According to economic indicators our currency has been strengthening recently, and inflation has been low to non-existent. In fact it has been too low which has worried some that we would enter a deflationary period.
Then figure in the retiring boomers...
Yeah, who will be taking their SS money and dumping it back into the economy. Sure it will stress the SS program but that money isn't evaporating into thin air. It will be re-entering the system.
huge masses of working poor that are only kept afloat by social programs
Mainly because we don't have a real education system in place for people to gain new skill sets. There's a reason why we rank far below other developed nations in education.
and the cost of two endless wars?
No argument there. The money that was spent on those two conflicts alone could have done much more good here in the US.
Yeah I give it a decade tops. Enjoy it while you can folks, because from the looks of it another worldwide great depression will soon be upon us.
You're a little late to the party on that one. So far it has mainly been a recession. The US is in a recovery, albeit a slow one.
The only question is whether we will learn from our mistakes and put heavy regulations on the banks like we did during the last one, or if those that believe in the free market fairy will win out. Without control free markets quickly end up corrupted when too much ends up in the hands of too few, just as we have now.
People like to think a free market is like nature, where survival of the fittest would yield the best companies. However this is naive. Companies will influence the market much like humans influencing their environment. Humans alter their environment, wipe out all competitors for resources, and any possible predators. Companies in a pure free market would act in the same regard. Eventually you would end up with one or a handful of companies that would completely dominate the market.
You're thousands of times more likely to die falling down stairs, slipping in your tub, or falling off a ladder than by a terrorist attack, and yet I don't see a call for safety people to tickle my taint before attempting any of those activities.
Or for a better perspective, heart disease kills 1 million people in the US alone every year, yet funding for that is mere pocket change compared to the ludicrous amount being spent on this worthless security theater. Or for even more perspective, 7 of the top 10 things most likely to kill you are diseases which receive a mere fraction of the funding that defense and "security" does. The other three either take the form of an accident or a crime. Terrorism is almost dead last, ranking below plane crashes, being struck by lightning, and is just barely above the probability of being killed by a meteor.
You want to save lives? Start dumping billions/trillions into R&D for medical treatments and cures. Or perhaps, develop a real health care plan so that problems are diagnosed earlier for better treatment. But that makes too much sense. This is America. We're not known for common sense. We're known for having balls bigger than our brains.
Your argument just doesn't make sense. Muslim terrorists are going to work with what they have, and that's largely Muslim males.
You have a serious lack of imagination. Offer the right prize and you can get a lot of people to do your dirty work for you.
You don't need batshit crazy people to do batshit crazy things. You only need to find people who are desperate enough to take what you're offering, and stupid enough to actually believe you.
The problem isn't religions or governments. The problem is people. If you have sociopathic, egotistical, power whores in positions to make or influence policy then he/she could believe stuffing rocks in a rhinoceros's ass will bring eternal life for all it matters. People acting in their own self-interest at the expense of others and society as a whole are what the problem is. Religion just happens to be one of the more convenient tools to use on poor uneducated masses, mainly because they know nothing else. "Religious" leaders are still leaders, and if they talk a good game then those who don't know better will follow.
ANY religion the doles out punishment to non-believers and elevates one segment of society above another has the same traits. The difference, as is always the case, is how PEOPLE choose to interpret and follow their religion.
Times change. Civilization changes. Religions do not. Only the interpretation and execution of the religion changes. If these change to meet the needs of society, then they are, at worst, not a problem. If these do not change, then they a detrimental to progress and can even drag civilization backwards. As an example, see how the Catholic Church behaved during the Dark ages.
It's not the religion. The problems are caused, as always, by the people.
You are correct. War is hell. And it takes the stupidity and arrogance of this planet's sentient, intelligent, and "civilized" species to knowingly and willingly bring this hell upon themselves over and over again, sometimes for the most idiotic reasons.
We don't need imaginary evils like a Satan or a Hell when we do such a bang up job all by ourselves.
Oh yes, it's definitely terrorism when the other guy is doing it. By the way Mr. Pot, I'd like you to meet Mr. Kettle. Despite your differences, I think you have a lot in common.
Hello gamers. How are you doing? Fantastic. Do you program games? No. Can you program games? Yes. Do you want to? I don't know...
Do you want share a cubicle with someone that smells like stale cheetos and pork farts? Do you want your game to to have the same quality as that produced by 14 nights of sleep deprivation in a caffeine induced haze while having delusions of being the next John Carmack? Of course you do.
Swan dive...into the unemployment line when you show up for work and the doors are locked.
So do you want to program like an old game programmer? You tell me.
Oh they could have, but your forgetting something.
The guy didn't pay. Fine. However since he didn't pay there was no standing legal contract. Does that prevent them from putting out the fire? No. Does it open them to litigation? Hell yeah.
I'm pretty sure they didn't stand around because they wanted to. They were standing around because if they went ahead and put out the fire, then the owner could simply sue them for any number of reasons which would cost well in excess of the cost for putting out the fire. This would end up impacting everyone else who actually DOES pay for the service or even potentially bankrupting the fire department.
Even IF verbal agreement were accepted in the state of Tennessee, the guy could still sue them and say the decision was made under duress.
It may sound completely stupid and ridiculous but remember we live in a country where stupid and ridiculous can get you big court judgments.
You make it sound like no matter what, there *must* be jack-booted thugs
Because there always has been and there always will be. Believing otherwise shows a naivety of human nature. As long as greed and lust for power remain part of humanity, thuggery will eventually rear it's ugly head. Just because it isn't obvious doesn't mean it isn't happening.
Although you don't actually make that claim, I will state that I reject that concept.
One needs to look no further than many of the second and third world countries. Even in first world countries you hear about greed and corruption.
Remove all aspects of the government where companies and/or individuals cannot buy favors or influence then you have no government.
if there is no government department to do 'X' that favors a corporation, then naturally the corporation doesn't try, so resulting in less corruption
No, naturally the corporation will work to further it's end goal of power of profit, regardless of whether or not their is a government agency to help them do so. They will either go through the government or go through private channels. Regardless of the methods, the end results are the same.
Keep in mind also that corporations do not have the ability to use force. They don't have law enforcement divisions nor armies.
The only thing preventing them from doing so IS the strong government. Without government to enforce such regulations, you can be damned sure that they would. Look up the Pinkertons.
The government has a monopoly on the use of force. The government is capable of imprisoning or killing you. A corporation is not.
Must be nice living in free-market land. However, in reality, any entity with the money and will can effectively disappear you. It has happened, and it will continue to happen.
Also, corporations have been polluting and killing for decades, if not here than in other countries where laws are a bit more lax. Killing people doesn't always mean shooting them in the face with a gun.
It is possible to arrange & organize one's government so as to maximize individual protections as well as guard against abuses by corporations and other private interests while keeping the government "lean & mean".
Oh I'm sure there is. But not the way you describe.
You're right. Instead of an elected government creating the jack-booted thugs you have un-elected private corporations creating the jack-booted thugs. I can see how that is so much better.
What, you think companies never employed their own mafia-esque type practices? You think companies, who's only goal is to make money, would never rape the public for their own personal good? You're either really naive or you haven't read up on history.
When Mr. Thompson was asked why he did not change it, he said he wished he had, adding: 'Who in their worst nightmares would could have thought that anyone could stoop to do what he did?'"
I would. Especially with the knowledge that the person harbored some sort of grudge against me.
If nothing else, the lessons of history have taught us that there is no bottom to the ocean of depravity in the human soul.
First, you have the problem of power factor, which means that with fluorescent bulbs, you're often drawing a lot more power than you think, it just isn't getting metered that way.
Bullshit. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.
Do you honestly think for one second that a power company would honestly not charge you if you were actually consuming more power than you really are? Do you think for one second that power companies would offer INCENTIVES to switch to CFLs if they were really consuming more power and were less efficient than incandescent lights? Or is there some other inane reason why a company would purposefully put itself into a position to be forced into building out infrastructure to support the power demand of all these inefficient CFLs?
Second, you have the spectrum of light, which because it is balanced towards the blue end and because it isn't a continuous spectrum, isn't perceived as being of equal brightness. To get the same perceptual brightness, IIRC, you are drawing slightly more power with fluorescent bulbs than with modern incandescent (e.g. halogen) designs, and approaching that of plain jane incandescent bulbs.
Subjective nonsense, and also incorrect. I have 100W "warm" (2500-3000K) CFLs that are just as bright as any 100W incandescent I've ever used, and they use a fraction of of the energy. Since the human eye is most responsive to green light, then physically speaking CFLs should appear BRIGHTER as they have a strong emission line there. Your visual preferences may differ.
And that's before you add in things like the increase in depression [fullspectr...utions.com], suicides, and cancer [reason.com] linked with fluorescent lighting.
Correlation is not equal to causality. That should be pretty damn obvious in your second link. Your first link also is not a surprise, and has little to do with flourscent lighting. It's well know that lack of adequate lighting over a period of time can contribute to problems like depression if you already have them. Incandescents won't help. Sunlight will. Locking kids up inside for 8 hours a day with no sun exposure isn't going to improve with incandescent bulbs. Nor will the cost of the massively larger power bill and maintenance cost for replacing the damn things every 3 months.
Regardless, if there was a serious issue I'm pretty sure someone would have raised it by now. Or is there another conspiracy in there you're just itching to tell us about.
We're getting massively screwed.
Yes we are, but not by this.
BTW, the government isn't subsidizing energy significantly. Maybe a little, but certainly not a favor of two, much less five.
Humans work in the same way. Expansion leads to rich, open societies that, above most all else, encourage discovery and change. Conservation leads to what you might call a taliban society.
Wow. Just wow.
Expansion leads to consumption, destruction, and eventual exhaustion and collapse. Take a look at your beer the next time you want to see what happens to unchecked expansion. Or for a more human vantage, browse through some history and see what has happened to every major empire. You can only expand to the point your resources allow.
Conservation alone also won't get you far. You preserve the resources so they last longer, however there is still the problem of limited resources.
The option you seemed to miss is sustainability, which mixes conservation (preserving the resources we know) and expansion (new technology, finding new and better resources, etc.). Right now, the practices of the world are not sustainable. We're tearing through our natural resources like there's no tomorrow. We're polluting, we're chopping down rain forests, we're stretching fresh water supplies, we're changing our environment. Something has got to give, and I guarantee we will bend and break before nature long before nature bows before us.
Now, no matter what we will reach sustainability. The question is, are we going to do it the easy way or the hard way? The easy way would be to start about 20 years ago and start implementing sustainable policies. The hard way (which we humans have a very good track record of following) will involve lots of pain and suffering (wars, famine, resource scarcity, etc.).
Equating expansion and conservation to human societies is at best naive. After all, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were very much into expansion and I wouldn't exactly classify those as poster children for free and open societies.
Unfortunately a number of people get paid very well for being fear wielders. Of course, any time fear rears it's ugly head, especially when kids are involved, rationality gets cruelly dashed upon the rocks of ignorance and idiocy.
They can subpoena your phone records from your service provider. How is this any different?
If you're infringing or breaking the law and someone has adequate proof of such, then I don't see where the problem is. You may be opposed to the law, but that doesn't change the fact that they can sue your ass and subpoena information.
You're right to privacy goes out the door once you're breaking the law. After that, they can get warrants and subpoenas to invade your privacy in any number of ways.
Trivial. They don't even have to be employed in the traditional sense. They could just be paid really well.
-- Most of the world media to be dupes of the CIA;
You don't need the majority, you only need the biggest and the loudest. In the US, for example, you only need one station to spout idiotic nonsense loud enough and long enough to convince a non-insignificant percentage that their own president is a Kenyan Muslim.
-- The entire criminal justice system of Sweden to be easily manipulated by the US;
Again, you don't need all of it. You just need the most powerful and influential. It's also quite impressive what a little green grease will do for the wheels of justice.
-- an Icelandic MP (and ardent supporter of Wikileaks) to suddenly be in the employ of the CIA;
Not really. Someone with designs or ambitions for themselves may be willing to cooperate with the CIA in order to further their own agenda. You're assuming all players in this saga are on the CIA doll. That is a possibility, but it would be more probable that people involved may just be making mutually beneficial arrangements.
AND, the kicker: -- That the bumbling organization that can't keep PFC Manning from stealing all its data is simultaneously capable of pulling off a black op of this scope just to discredit the guy, rather than simply making him have an accident, and eliminating the problem.
I would think it would take a "bumbling" organizations to have screwed up a public character assassination as bad as this one, wouldn't you agree? Assuming this is some sort of plot, it certainly being run by a bunch of ass-clowns.
You're also forgetting that Manning had access to the systems legitimately. It's hard to protect your systems from a user you "trust" and have granted access to.
At any rate, it's all just conspiracy hypotheses an blather at this point. While it is plausible that there are some shady dealings going on (and the coincidences and screw ups along the way certainly suggest that it could be), we don't have any solid evidence.
Perhaps someone will post something on Wikileaks about it.
Slashdot Mirror
It's one thing to be able to have frank private discussions. It's another to have frank private discussions about illegal activities that you are either participating in, encouraging, or deliberately ignoring. the ends do not justify the means.
Of course, ignorance is bliss. A lot of people either don't want to know or don't care what shadowy things our government may do. As long as it doesn't affect them or doesn't interrupt their Facebook text-fest about Dancing With The Stars they could care less.
That is why I figure the USA will default in 5 years, 10 tops.
This keeps getting repeated and it keeps being wrong. The US CAN'T default on it's debt. Our debt is denominated in US dollars, which means the US government can always make payments, either through raising taxes or inflating the currency.
The only thing really keeping us afloat is the Fed printing money as fast as the presses will run and using it to buy our debt, basically making the money worthless.
So then, there must be rampant inflation then correct? According to economic indicators our currency has been strengthening recently, and inflation has been low to non-existent. In fact it has been too low which has worried some that we would enter a deflationary period.
Then figure in the retiring boomers...
Yeah, who will be taking their SS money and dumping it back into the economy. Sure it will stress the SS program but that money isn't evaporating into thin air. It will be re-entering the system.
huge masses of working poor that are only kept afloat by social programs
Mainly because we don't have a real education system in place for people to gain new skill sets. There's a reason why we rank far below other developed nations in education.
and the cost of two endless wars?
No argument there. The money that was spent on those two conflicts alone could have done much more good here in the US.
Yeah I give it a decade tops. Enjoy it while you can folks, because from the looks of it another worldwide great depression will soon be upon us.
You're a little late to the party on that one. So far it has mainly been a recession. The US is in a recovery, albeit a slow one.
The only question is whether we will learn from our mistakes and put heavy regulations on the banks like we did during the last one, or if those that believe in the free market fairy will win out. Without control free markets quickly end up corrupted when too much ends up in the hands of too few, just as we have now.
People like to think a free market is like nature, where survival of the fittest would yield the best companies. However this is naive. Companies will influence the market much like humans influencing their environment. Humans alter their environment, wipe out all competitors for resources, and any possible predators. Companies in a pure free market would act in the same regard. Eventually you would end up with one or a handful of companies that would completely dominate the market.
You will always need to control greed.
You're thousands of times more likely to die falling down stairs, slipping in your tub, or falling off a ladder than by a terrorist attack, and yet I don't see a call for safety people to tickle my taint before attempting any of those activities.
Or for a better perspective, heart disease kills 1 million people in the US alone every year, yet funding for that is mere pocket change compared to the ludicrous amount being spent on this worthless security theater. Or for even more perspective, 7 of the top 10 things most likely to kill you are diseases which receive a mere fraction of the funding that defense and "security" does. The other three either take the form of an accident or a crime. Terrorism is almost dead last, ranking below plane crashes, being struck by lightning, and is just barely above the probability of being killed by a meteor.
You want to save lives? Start dumping billions/trillions into R&D for medical treatments and cures. Or perhaps, develop a real health care plan so that problems are diagnosed earlier for better treatment. But that makes too much sense. This is America. We're not known for common sense. We're known for having balls bigger than our brains.
America! Fuck Yeah!
Your argument just doesn't make sense. Muslim terrorists are going to work with what they have, and that's largely Muslim males.
You have a serious lack of imagination. Offer the right prize and you can get a lot of people to do your dirty work for you.
You don't need batshit crazy people to do batshit crazy things. You only need to find people who are desperate enough to take what you're offering, and stupid enough to actually believe you.
The problem isn't religions or governments. The problem is people. If you have sociopathic, egotistical, power whores in positions to make or influence policy then he/she could believe stuffing rocks in a rhinoceros's ass will bring eternal life for all it matters. People acting in their own self-interest at the expense of others and society as a whole are what the problem is. Religion just happens to be one of the more convenient tools to use on poor uneducated masses, mainly because they know nothing else. "Religious" leaders are still leaders, and if they talk a good game then those who don't know better will follow.
How is this trash insightful?
ANY religion the doles out punishment to non-believers and elevates one segment of society above another has the same traits. The difference, as is always the case, is how PEOPLE choose to interpret and follow their religion.
Times change. Civilization changes. Religions do not. Only the interpretation and execution of the religion changes. If these change to meet the needs of society, then they are, at worst, not a problem. If these do not change, then they a detrimental to progress and can even drag civilization backwards. As an example, see how the Catholic Church behaved during the Dark ages.
It's not the religion. The problems are caused, as always, by the people.
New internet meme: "Tits or...I'm going to see them anyway!"
No, everyone knows Elmer Fudd is in control of the special secret government organization created for hunting and killing terrorists.
He'll get those wascally wabbis, you just wait.
You are correct. War is hell. And it takes the stupidity and arrogance of this planet's sentient, intelligent, and "civilized" species to knowingly and willingly bring this hell upon themselves over and over again, sometimes for the most idiotic reasons.
We don't need imaginary evils like a Satan or a Hell when we do such a bang up job all by ourselves.
Oh yes, it's definitely terrorism when the other guy is doing it. By the way Mr. Pot, I'd like you to meet Mr. Kettle. Despite your differences, I think you have a lot in common.
They won't have to. They'll just feed it to the atto-cows.
Soon: I think humans are #evil.
Then it's all downhill from there.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
OLD GAME PROGRAMMER
Hello gamers. How are you doing? Fantastic. Do you program games? No. Can you program games? Yes. Do you want to? I don't know...
Do you want share a cubicle with someone that smells like stale cheetos and pork farts? Do you want your game to to have the same quality as that produced by 14 nights of sleep deprivation in a caffeine induced haze while having delusions of being the next John Carmack? Of course you do.
Swan dive...into the unemployment line when you show up for work and the doors are locked.
So do you want to program like an old game programmer? You tell me.
Oh they could have, but your forgetting something.
The guy didn't pay. Fine. However since he didn't pay there was no standing legal contract. Does that prevent them from putting out the fire? No. Does it open them to litigation? Hell yeah.
I'm pretty sure they didn't stand around because they wanted to. They were standing around because if they went ahead and put out the fire, then the owner could simply sue them for any number of reasons which would cost well in excess of the cost for putting out the fire. This would end up impacting everyone else who actually DOES pay for the service or even potentially bankrupting the fire department.
Even IF verbal agreement were accepted in the state of Tennessee, the guy could still sue them and say the decision was made under duress.
It may sound completely stupid and ridiculous but remember we live in a country where stupid and ridiculous can get you big court judgments.
I wonder if the same principle would apply to government. Let's start assigning random people to public office and see if that helps.
Fuxnet?
You make it sound like no matter what, there *must* be jack-booted thugs
Because there always has been and there always will be. Believing otherwise shows a naivety of human nature. As long as greed and lust for power remain part of humanity, thuggery will eventually rear it's ugly head. Just because it isn't obvious doesn't mean it isn't happening.
Although you don't actually make that claim, I will state that I reject that concept.
One needs to look no further than many of the second and third world countries. Even in first world countries you hear about greed and corruption.
Remove all aspects of the government where companies and/or individuals cannot buy favors or influence then you have no government.
if there is no government department to do 'X' that favors a corporation, then naturally the corporation doesn't try, so resulting in less corruption
No, naturally the corporation will work to further it's end goal of power of profit, regardless of whether or not their is a government agency to help them do so. They will either go through the government or go through private channels. Regardless of the methods, the end results are the same.
Keep in mind also that corporations do not have the ability to use force. They don't have law enforcement divisions nor armies.
The only thing preventing them from doing so IS the strong government. Without government to enforce such regulations, you can be damned sure that they would. Look up the Pinkertons.
The government has a monopoly on the use of force. The government is capable of imprisoning or killing you. A corporation is not.
Must be nice living in free-market land. However, in reality, any entity with the money and will can effectively disappear you. It has happened, and it will continue to happen.
Also, corporations have been polluting and killing for decades, if not here than in other countries where laws are a bit more lax. Killing people doesn't always mean shooting them in the face with a gun.
It is possible to arrange & organize one's government so as to maximize individual protections as well as guard against abuses by corporations and other private interests while keeping the government "lean & mean".
Oh I'm sure there is. But not the way you describe.
You're right. Instead of an elected government creating the jack-booted thugs you have un-elected private corporations creating the jack-booted thugs. I can see how that is so much better.
What, you think companies never employed their own mafia-esque type practices? You think companies, who's only goal is to make money, would never rape the public for their own personal good? You're either really naive or you haven't read up on history.
When Mr. Thompson was asked why he did not change it, he said he wished he had, adding: 'Who in their worst nightmares would could have thought that anyone could stoop to do what he did?'"
I would. Especially with the knowledge that the person harbored some sort of grudge against me.
If nothing else, the lessons of history have taught us that there is no bottom to the ocean of depravity in the human soul.
First, you have the problem of power factor, which means that with fluorescent bulbs, you're often drawing a lot more power than you think, it just isn't getting metered that way.
Bullshit. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.
Do you honestly think for one second that a power company would honestly not charge you if you were actually consuming more power than you really are? Do you think for one second that power companies would offer INCENTIVES to switch to CFLs if they were really consuming more power and were less efficient than incandescent lights? Or is there some other inane reason why a company would purposefully put itself into a position to be forced into building out infrastructure to support the power demand of all these inefficient CFLs?
Second, you have the spectrum of light, which because it is balanced towards the blue end and because it isn't a continuous spectrum, isn't perceived as being of equal brightness. To get the same perceptual brightness, IIRC, you are drawing slightly more power with fluorescent bulbs than with modern incandescent (e.g. halogen) designs, and approaching that of plain jane incandescent bulbs.
Subjective nonsense, and also incorrect. I have 100W "warm" (2500-3000K) CFLs that are just as bright as any 100W incandescent I've ever used, and they use a fraction of of the energy. Since the human eye is most responsive to green light, then physically speaking CFLs should appear BRIGHTER as they have a strong emission line there. Your visual preferences may differ.
And that's before you add in things like the increase in depression [fullspectr...utions.com], suicides, and cancer [reason.com] linked with fluorescent lighting.
Correlation is not equal to causality. That should be pretty damn obvious in your second link. Your first link also is not a surprise, and has little to do with flourscent lighting. It's well know that lack of adequate lighting over a period of time can contribute to problems like depression if you already have them. Incandescents won't help. Sunlight will. Locking kids up inside for 8 hours a day with no sun exposure isn't going to improve with incandescent bulbs. Nor will the cost of the massively larger power bill and maintenance cost for replacing the damn things every 3 months.
Regardless, if there was a serious issue I'm pretty sure someone would have raised it by now. Or is there another conspiracy in there you're just itching to tell us about.
We're getting massively screwed.
Yes we are, but not by this.
BTW, the government isn't subsidizing energy significantly. Maybe a little, but certainly not a favor of two, much less five.
ROFL.
Humans work in the same way. Expansion leads to rich, open societies that, above most all else, encourage discovery and change. Conservation leads to what you might call a taliban society.
Wow. Just wow.
Expansion leads to consumption, destruction, and eventual exhaustion and collapse. Take a look at your beer the next time you want to see what happens to unchecked expansion. Or for a more human vantage, browse through some history and see what has happened to every major empire. You can only expand to the point your resources allow.
Conservation alone also won't get you far. You preserve the resources so they last longer, however there is still the problem of limited resources.
The option you seemed to miss is sustainability, which mixes conservation (preserving the resources we know) and expansion (new technology, finding new and better resources, etc.). Right now, the practices of the world are not sustainable. We're tearing through our natural resources like there's no tomorrow. We're polluting, we're chopping down rain forests, we're stretching fresh water supplies, we're changing our environment. Something has got to give, and I guarantee we will bend and break before nature long before nature bows before us.
Now, no matter what we will reach sustainability. The question is, are we going to do it the easy way or the hard way? The easy way would be to start about 20 years ago and start implementing sustainable policies. The hard way (which we humans have a very good track record of following) will involve lots of pain and suffering (wars, famine, resource scarcity, etc.).
Equating expansion and conservation to human societies is at best naive. After all, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were very much into expansion and I wouldn't exactly classify those as poster children for free and open societies.
The key word is "rational".
Unfortunately a number of people get paid very well for being fear wielders. Of course, any time fear rears it's ugly head, especially when kids are involved, rationality gets cruelly dashed upon the rocks of ignorance and idiocy.
They can subpoena your phone records from your service provider. How is this any different?
If you're infringing or breaking the law and someone has adequate proof of such, then I don't see where the problem is. You may be opposed to the law, but that doesn't change the fact that they can sue your ass and subpoena information.
You're right to privacy goes out the door once you're breaking the law. After that, they can get warrants and subpoenas to invade your privacy in any number of ways.
-- the 2 girls to be in the service of the CIA;
Trivial. They don't even have to be employed in the traditional sense. They could just be paid really well.
-- Most of the world media to be dupes of the CIA;
You don't need the majority, you only need the biggest and the loudest. In the US, for example, you only need one station to spout idiotic nonsense loud enough and long enough to convince a non-insignificant percentage that their own president is a Kenyan Muslim.
-- The entire criminal justice system of Sweden to be easily manipulated by the US;
Again, you don't need all of it. You just need the most powerful and influential. It's also quite impressive what a little green grease will do for the wheels of justice.
-- an Icelandic MP (and ardent supporter of Wikileaks) to suddenly be in the employ of the CIA;
Not really. Someone with designs or ambitions for themselves may be willing to cooperate with the CIA in order to further their own agenda. You're assuming all players in this saga are on the CIA doll. That is a possibility, but it would be more probable that people involved may just be making mutually beneficial arrangements.
AND, the kicker:
-- That the bumbling organization that can't keep PFC Manning from stealing all its data is simultaneously capable of pulling off a black op of this scope just to discredit the guy, rather than simply making him have an accident, and eliminating the problem.
I would think it would take a "bumbling" organizations to have screwed up a public character assassination as bad as this one, wouldn't you agree? Assuming this is some sort of plot, it certainly being run by a bunch of ass-clowns.
You're also forgetting that Manning had access to the systems legitimately. It's hard to protect your systems from a user you "trust" and have granted access to.
At any rate, it's all just conspiracy hypotheses an blather at this point. While it is plausible that there are some shady dealings going on (and the coincidences and screw ups along the way certainly suggest that it could be), we don't have any solid evidence.
Perhaps someone will post something on Wikileaks about it.