Exactly. All quarter-million cables are evidence of wrongdoing? Bullshit. And I'd like to see Assange's defenders rationalize why he felt the need to release a cable to Hillary Clinton identifying sites seen as critical to U.S. national security.
According to the CSMonitor:
"In all, the list includes well over 200 energy pipelines, undersea cables, strategic metal mines, vaccine suppliers, dams, ports, and power generators along with the names of 35 companies spread across 59 nations. The cable sought to identify 'critical US foreign dependencies' that 'if destroyed, disrupted or exploited, would likely have an immediate and deleterious effect on the United States.'"
He's a real hero to release that cable, isn't he? Few of these sites are secret, but what is a secret is that these sites have been identified as the United States as weak points that would be particularly harmful if hit by a terrorist attack. The release of the cables has shown people just how dangerous and irresponsible Assange is.
Seriously, when was the last time that a government science fund produced something worth $24,000,000,000? Every major invention I can think of came from a private company doing research for a specific need, not a government program doing research in order to keep scientists eating from the taxpayers' pork trough.
I don't know... maybe this little thing called the "internet", which was developed by DARPA, a government research agency?
The Chinese increased the 2010 science budget by 8%, to $24 billion, according to Science magazine.
Meanwhile, Republicans are seriously(?) talking about cutting the entire National Science Foundation.
At least don't cut any more funding for education. How else are we all going to learn Mandarin?
Another thing that might be worthy of attention- one of the revelations to emerge from Wikileaks was the revelation that China was open to the possibility of a united Korea, under the control of Seoul. To suddenly discover that your ally (or the closest thing you have to one) is secretly wishing for your downfall is probably a real shock. Is it a coincidence that all this talk about nuking other countries is coming a couple of weeks after the release of that cable by Wikileaks?
I think that some of those cables should have been released, but Wikileaks was extraordinarily irresponsible in deciding to release all of them. Some of this stuff is secret for a good reason, and a cable stating that China would like to see North Korea taken over by the South is exactly the kind of thing that could potentially destabilize an already unstable situation.
Even the 40,000 or so warheads at the height of the Cold War aren't that effective. I suppose we could seed all those bombs with cobalt and fire them off with intent to kill as many people as possible. That might drive to extinction any unshielded lifeforms above a few kilograms or with a longish lifespan. But anyone who is deep underwater or hangs out in a moderately deep underground cave for a few years, is probably going to survive.
In other words, the only survivors will be Aquaman and Batman.
I picture a bunch of high ranking Air Force guys in their fancy uniforms sitting around on futons in someone's apartment. There's a blacklight on, Pink Floyd's _Dark Side of the Moon_ is playing, and they're passing this enormous bong around the room. After taking a really deep hit, one general turns to the other and says, "Whoa... dude, I just had the most amazing idea! For years we've worried about the secrets getting OUT. What if, instead, we worked to keep the secrets from getting IN?" And then the other generals turn and say "Whoa... deep, man, deep! Wow... does anyone have anything to eat?"
At any rate, that's how I imagine people might come up with this kind of policy.
Who's the terrorist? The one who did the *acts* reported in the documentation? Or the one who's letting others know they did it?
I know which it is, and it's not the one's letting the cat out of the bag.
That's right, the good ole US Gubernment is the terrorist now.
If you actually read Assange's writings, what comes across is that he views the world through the lens of conspiracies. In his view, conspiracies are networks of people who communicate privately to achieve some end. His insight is that an authoritarian conspiracy can't function without private communicaton. If conspirators are reluctant to communicate for fear of being exposed, then the network loses effectiveness. For an example of how this would work, consider how it would become harder for organized crime to conduct their operations if they knew that their communications were being intercepted by the police.
As far as I can tell, Assange is out to undermine authoritarian conspiracies and he views the United States as one of those. What follows is that in the release of these documents, Wikileaks isn't functioning as a whistleblower calling attention to individual misdeeds. Wikileaks is trying to undermine the effectiveness of the entire network, the entire conspiracy that is the U.S. government. That's why they plan to release all 250,000 cables, rather than just the cables that show evidence of wrongdoing. If you think Assange is out to point out a few bad apples, you're thinking too small. Assange wants to burn down the whole damn orchard. The damage done to American foreign policy isn't collateral damage, it's the entire point of the leaks.
I do recognize this as a free speech/civil rights issue and if people feel strongly enough to risk their freedom via civil disobedience movements like this, I can respect that. To dismiss it as "undemocratic" or "mob justice" is to ignore very important lessons from our not so distant history.
It's sort of a stretch to put a bunch of immature, anonymous online vandals in the same class as Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on the bus. Her actions had a dignity to them because she stood up for herself without harming anyone else, and because she was willing to be arrested for her actions. But these attacks are a deliberate attempt to cause harm, and the attackers aren't willing to stand up and be accountable for their actions. If people want to stand up for Wikileaks, fine, that's their right, but committing anonymous vandalism makes you like a teenager spraypainting an anarchy sign on the side of a building in the middle of the night, not the moral equivalent of a civil rights crusader.
Hence in a world where leaking is easy, secretive or unjust systems are nonlinearly hit relative to open, just systems.
The problem is that not all secretive systems are unjust. I mean, a healthy relationship with your girlfriend (I know this is Slashdot, but humor me) is a "secretive system" and obviously your relationship would suffer if all your conversations, arguments, and snarky comments about her relatives and bitchy friends were suddenly thrown out in the open. In Assange's terms, your relations would be "nonlinearly hit", in practical terms you wouldn't see any nookie for a while.
Similarly, peaceful diplomatic relationships are highly dependent upon trust and confidentiality, and they are "nonlinearly hit" by the release of the cables. That's Hillary Clinton's argument and here Assange's own writings back her up 100%. The release of the cables doesn't just expose wrongdoing, it attacks American diplomacy at its most fundamental level by attacking the trust between the people who make up the system. And I don't think that's collateral damage: it's the entire point. The fact that Wikileaks aims to release the entire quarter-million cables is clear evidence that they're not after the abuses of the system: they're trying to attack the system itself. Sure, there are some bad apples in there. But Assange isn't after the few bad apples, he's trying to burn down the whole damn orchard.
The United States has been knowingly lying to the American public about its participation in military strikes in Yemen.
Give me a break. The U.S. isn't lying about this to deceive the American public. Seriously, is anyone actually outraged by this? My response is more along the lines of, "America, FUCK YEAH!" I expect my government to be up to this kind of shit. I'd be pissed off if we *weren't* secretly taking out terrorists with Predator drone strikes. Same goes for covert U.S. military operations in Pakistan. And I'm speaking as a certified member of the NPR listening, New Yorker reading, free-range organic vegetable eating Liberal Elite.
The reason the U.S. is lying about this isn't to deceive the American public- it'd probably be fantastic for approval ratings. The reason is that the Yemeni people probably wouldn't be happy to hear that a foreign military power is killing people in their country, even if their government might find the arrangement acceptable. Similarly, the Pakistani public sentiment would be strongly against U.S. special forces working in Pakistan. I suppose you could argue that the people of Pakistan and Yemen are being decieved and that's a crime, and perhaps that in the long term this kind of behavior causes more damage than good... and maybe that's true. But it's kinda hard for me to buy that this is a serious crime against the American people.
"Exposed" as doing what, exactly? If you read the cable, what it says is this: Russia wants to enact a law that would force all credit card transactions to be processed in Russia. The American companies are forced to either (a) let the Russians process the transactions and collect all the profits, or (b) move all their operations to Russia, which requires them to invest a huge amount of money setting up shop in Russia. Either way, it becomes harder and more expensive for American companies to keep doing business in Russia. It sounds like Russia is trying to force them out of the market, and you get the distinct impression that someone in Russia stands to profit hugely from this law.
Now, I admit that it's pretty funny to see the credit card companies getting screwed for a change. But basically, the Russians tried to f*** over a couple of American businesses, and the U.S. government decided it was necessary to step in and pressure the Russians not to do this. Part of the government's job is to look out for the economic interests of the United States, which includes private corporations. U.S. diplomats are doing their job. Truly shocking indeed.
What's happened is that Assange lost the PR war. Assange isn't a hero and his actions are doing more harm than good, and people finally sat up and saw that. That's why, one by one, they're cutting him adrift.
In releasing the documents about the Afghan and Iraq wars, he can paint himself as some kind of noble crusader fighting against unjust wars, a David against the Goliath of American military imperialism. But in releasing the diplomatic cables, he's undermining attempts to avoid and settle conflicts through diplomacy. You can't claim you want a more peaceful world when you're sabotaging the mechanisms needed to achieve that.
And I think the New York Times article, showing him as a controlling narcissist, did a hell of a lot of damage to his cause. He's no longer seen as a pure and noble crusader, but as someone more akin to Bin Laden: he doesn't like the existing order, but rather than trying to change it, he wants to tear it apart. He wants to send a giant "F*** YOU" to America, he's just found out that he can do it with email instead of hijacked airliners.
I think what people are overlooking is that Wikileaks has gone well beyond just acting as a whistleblower.
If their efforts focused solely on releasing evidence of crimes and abuses of power, then I think they would be tolerated. But the vast majority of the material that's been released shows no evidence of any government abuses, so its release serves only to hurt U.S. diplomatic relations without actually shedding light on any crime. That's the issue here.
Releasing that stuff doesn't fight against injustice, it just makes it hard for U.S. diplomats to do their jobs if they can't speak candidly in private. That does a hell of a lot more to hurt U.S. diplomatic efforts than Al Qaeda blowing up a couple of our embassies in Africa. And while we have a right to know what's going on in our government, at some point that right is overridden by the need to keep other people in the dark, including our frenemies like Russia and China, and outright enemies such as Iran, North Korea, and yes, the Taliban. I guarantee you that all of them are right now working overtime reading through these communications.
It's one thing to target criminals, it's quite another to start throwing hand grenades into a crowded room because there might be a criminal in there. Well, Wikileaks has taken the hand-grenade approach to fighting injustice, and the good done by the scandals exposed is going to be outweighed by all the damage. That's turned the moderates against Assange. I don't think that Amazon or PayPal ditched him because he was a costly inconvenience- I think that the people in charge genuinely felt that they are genuinely against what he was doing.
You can't do foreign policy without secret cables flying around. You can't fight wars without intelligence. You just can't. Eventually a critical mass realizes it and this problem is going to get fixed. And none of the 'fixes' are going to be things we (we meaning the typical/. reader) is going to like.
I do think there's a legitimate place for whistleblowing in our society and undoubtedly there are government abuses that need to be dragged into the light. That's why there are laws to protect people who reveal evidence of wrongdoing. But the fact that someone, somewhere, may be doing something wrong doesn't justify publicly releasing millions of legitimate, and legitimately confidential communications by government diplomats. That threatens attempts to control Iran's nuclear proliferation, attempts to deal with North Korea. There really are people in the U.S. government who are really trying to make the world a better, more peaceful place, and this undermines their work. You have to have a pretty juvenile sense of right and wrong not to see that.
So I agree he's a threat but I don't think think the U.S. should "fix" him (and I would hope that we wouldn't).
I do think that Assange and his team have gone too far should be held accountable in a court of law. Of course, he may meet with an unfortunate accident before that can happen. He's making a lot of enemies, and threatening a lot of interests, and not just the U.S.... maybe he was just paranoid before, but right now I think he'd be a fool not to fear for his life.
One of the revelations that emerged was that China is in favor of a unified Korea- under the control of Seoul. In other words, when push comes to shove they're hoping for the North Korean regime to fall. Given that the North Koreans have recently been torpedoing South Korean warships and shelling South Korean soil, this is an extremely provocative revelation. Maybe its the bitch-slap that North Korea needs to push them to the negotiating table... or maybe it's what finally sends their paranoid regime over the edge and provokes military action. It's damn risky, foolhardy, and irresponsible to release this kind of information.
Furthermore, the majority of the communications are the legitimate, legal business of the U.S. governments pursuit of peaceful relations. Releasing these documents threatens alliances and negotiations, in the same way that blabbing all your friends' secrets hurts your relationships. People won't talk with our diplomats if they can't do so confidentially. How, exactly, does undermining the legitimate, peaceful diplomacy of the U.S. and other western powers make the world a better place?
And consider that the release of these communications could ruin a lot of careers- not because of unethical activity, just because someone doing their job said something privately that shouldn't be said publicly.
If Wikileaks wants to expose corruption and abuse of power, great. Why release everything else? There's a role for confidentiality. Would you want Wikileaks releasing your personal and business emails, financial information, and medical records just because someone, somewhere, might find evidence that you've been up to no good?
From CNN.com:
"According to cables obtained by WikiLeaks, South Korea's then vice foreign minister, Chun Yung-woo, said earlier this year that senior Chinese officials (whose names are redacted in the cables) had told him they believed Korea should be reunified under Seoul's control, and that this view was gaining ground with the leadership in Beijing."
I'm all for openness and government accountability, and if WikiLeaks had focused on releasing evidence of criminal behavior and abuses of power, then I'd call them heroes. But releasing information that could provoke a paranoid military dictatorship is literally risking the lives of thousands if not millions of people. Anyone who can rationalize doing that in the name of openness and accountability... you're no better than the governments you're fighting.
Although I wouldn't consume algae as a food source, I could certainly use it as a fuel source.
A big issue with biofuels is the water used. It's sort of dead obvious once you think about it. It doesn't take a heck of a lot of water to pump a barrel of oil out of the ground, but producing a similar amount of ethanol from corn will require a lot of water for irrigation, and we're already straining our freshwater water resources.
According to a report commissioned by congress [http://www.circleofblue.org/waternews/2010/world/energy-department-blocks-disclosure-of-road-map-to-relieve-critical-u-s-energy-water-choke-points/ it takes 1.5 gallons to produce a barrel of oil, 4 for corn without irrigation, 1,000(!) for corn with irrigation. Coal and nuclear also require vast quantities of water for cooling.
It would be interesting to know how algae compares. Probably you'd use a lot less water than corn, since land plants have to pump water through their veins by evaporating it from the leaves, and you could use sealed tanks/ponds that wouldn't lose water. Also, if you can use wastewater or brackish water, water use would be less of an issue.
It seems to me that Portal could be read as a metaphor for existence:
When you start out, you're confused about everything. Where am I? Who am I? Why am I here? How do I get through this maze? As you go along, you start to piece things together, you start to figure out a few tricks and it doesn't actually seem that hard. But as you go further and further, things get harder, more challenging, it's more and more difficult to find your way through the maze. The stakes are higher, and you start to suspect that things may be conspiring against you. Supposedly if you apply yourself and try hard, you'll get rewarded, but you start to wonder. Maybe they aren't being honest with you, maybe the whole thing is just a big lie... you just run around through a huge labyrinth, toyed with by forces more powerful than you, but never get what you were promised. And then you die. Is that it?
Man, it sure would have been fun to take a whole class studying video games. I can just picture the titles of the essays: "The Hero's Journey: Odysseus and the Master Chief", "Idealization of Society Perfected: Plato's _Republic_, Thomas More's _Utopia_, and Sim City", and "Envisioning the Underworld: Dante's Inferno and 'Doom III' "
Doctors are also on the hook if they assess and fail to diagnose things like depression. If they aren't sure they're pretty likely to throw you some low dose SSRI's. The side effects are mild and not life threatening, and they tend to make everyone feel a little bit happier.
The pharmaceutical industry, of course, would love for us to believe this. The reality is that SSRIs and their cousins the SNRIs can have some pretty serious side effects. In particular, there's considerable evidence that antidepressants can actually make bipolar disorder worse, and the link between antidepressants and suicide is strong enough that they are now required to carry a warning label. These are medications that change the way the connections between your brain cells work, and actually promote the growth of brain cells, that's hardly a trivial thing to do to your brain. These drugs can dramatically alter a person's behavior and even personality; sometimes in good ways, sometimes not. Finally, going off antidepressants often results in something the drug companies euphemistically refer to as 'discontinuation syndrome'. While the effects range, it's 'discontinuation syndrome' in the same way that a heroin addict going cold turkey is undergoing 'discontinuation syndrome'. It's a drug withdrawal, plain and simple. Sometimes its mild and tolerable, in other cases, it's sufficiently hellish that people are unable to get off the drugs.
I'm not saying that antidepressants shouldn't be prescribed. For many people, the benefits are very real and outweigh the risks and side effects. But people need to be educated about the risks and benefits and make an informed choice, and you cannot automatically assume that the first doctor you talk to is either educated or impartial. Just like any profession, there are guys who know their shit, and guys who don't. I feel that antidepressants shouldn't be the first line of response to depression; it should be more of a last line of defense when other avenues have failed to work. Approaches like cognitive behavioral therapy, light therapy, exercise, and nutrition take more work for both doctor and patient, but in the long run the decreased side effects may be worth it, even if they're not as convenient as a little pill. Everything worth having in life takes work- including sanity.
Another problem, just as bad as overdiagnosis, is misdiagnosis. Most physicians really aren't qualified to diagnose a mental illness and even specialists screw up, a lot. There are some estimates that up to 1/3 of the people diagnosed as depressed actually suffer from some form of bipolar disorder; typically, sufferers often go for years before they're properly diagnosed. Classic bipolar- Bipolar I- is easy to recognize. You see full-blown manias where people are clearly out of control, even delusional or psychotic, and they often end up in a hospital. The problem is that Bipolar II -bipolar depression- has less acute ups and more downs, so a lot of doctors don't recognize it, and many sufferers don't know they have it- even a lot of the people who have been diagnosed as bipolar don't understand the difference between the two. In bipolar depression (bipolar II), the ups are pretty mild- people just feel a bit more active, creative, energetic, and outgoing than usual; they actually have increased functioning- and who's going to complain about feeling a bit better than normal?
They only come in to the doctor when they're depressed, and then they get antidepressants. The problem is that giving antidepressants to bipolar people can actually make things worse, kinda like treating a cocaine addict with crack. Treating bipolar people with antidepressants is probably more dangerous than doing nothing at all. Yet many of the doctors prescribing antidepressants don't know this, and obviously the pharmaceutical companies have limited interest in accepting or promoting the knowledge that their products can be seriously harmful to many of the people taking them, even though this has been generally known for over a decade.
Generally speaking, bipolar people experience periods of normal or above-average functioning, with repeated (3 or more) but short (less than 3 months) episodes of depression; usually it shows up pretty early in life, in high school or college. Mood swings can be slow, over a period of months, to very rapid, cycling in and out of depression even within a single day. If that describes someone you know, they very likely have some variety of bipolar.
I'm writing this because I lost a friend to bipolar disorder. She was one of the most lively, intelligent, amazing people I ever met, who had done some amazing things despite coming from a broken, abusive family, and one day she decided to take her own life. This is a very serious issue, and unfortunately that people often don't know about, and don't talk about.
While I can't really comment on ADHD, it's my guess that depression really isn't being overdiagnosed. However, I do agree- strongly- that the psychiatrist's approach to mental illness is deeply, fundamentally flawed. Think about it for a second. If the psychiatric community really knows what they're doing, why is it that depression seems to be more common than it's ever been? That means that the medical community is failing to either prevent or effectively treat mental illness. And if you're on antidepressants or antipsychotics for years at a time, that means that you haven't really managed to cure the illness. At the most basic level, the psychiatric community has failed. And I agree that the reason why is this 'just take a pill' mentality. The medical community doesn't understand how to prevent mental illness, and they can't really cure it, either, all they can do is give you a pill to make the symptoms more bearable. But it's easy to just write your patients a prescription for Paxil, and of course the drug companies make billions promoting this approach.
I think the issue is that a large component of mental illness is environmental. The big culprits are diet and exercise: we eat shit and we don't do shit. I mean, the brain is just another organ, and just like your other organs, if we eat crap and sit on our asses all day, it's gonna get out of shape. It follows that mental health depends on eating well and being active. In particular, that means eating more B vitamins (cheap, readily available, and effective, either in pill form or green vegetable form) and more omega-3 fatty acids (eat more fish, or fish oil). It also means cutting 1 sitcom or 30 minutes of XBox and going outside for a walk, a run, or a bike ride. These things require a bit of discipline but they're cheap and remarkably effective. Exercise is at least as effective as antidepressants in treating depression, and unlike antidepressants, its free and its "side effects" include things like losing weight, having more energy, and having more chicks talk to you at the bar.
What's up with these guys? I mean, to lose one satellite is just bad luck, but to shoot down two satellites in a row, they've got to really be doing something wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
According to the CSMonitor:
"In all, the list includes well over 200 energy pipelines, undersea cables, strategic metal mines, vaccine suppliers, dams, ports, and power generators along with the names of 35 companies spread across 59 nations. The cable sought to identify 'critical US foreign dependencies' that 'if destroyed, disrupted or exploited, would likely have an immediate and deleterious effect on the United States.'"
He's a real hero to release that cable, isn't he? Few of these sites are secret, but what is a secret is that these sites have been identified as the United States as weak points that would be particularly harmful if hit by a terrorist attack. The release of the cables has shown people just how dangerous and irresponsible Assange is.
I don't know... maybe this little thing called the "internet", which was developed by DARPA, a government research agency?
At least don't cut any more funding for education. How else are we all going to learn Mandarin?
I think that some of those cables should have been released, but Wikileaks was extraordinarily irresponsible in deciding to release all of them. Some of this stuff is secret for a good reason, and a cable stating that China would like to see North Korea taken over by the South is exactly the kind of thing that could potentially destabilize an already unstable situation.
In other words, the only survivors will be Aquaman and Batman.
At any rate, that's how I imagine people might come up with this kind of policy.
There's also a certain irony in saying that you're fighting for freedom of speech by shutting down other people's communications.
If you actually read Assange's writings, what comes across is that he views the world through the lens of conspiracies. In his view, conspiracies are networks of people who communicate privately to achieve some end. His insight is that an authoritarian conspiracy can't function without private communicaton. If conspirators are reluctant to communicate for fear of being exposed, then the network loses effectiveness. For an example of how this would work, consider how it would become harder for organized crime to conduct their operations if they knew that their communications were being intercepted by the police.
As far as I can tell, Assange is out to undermine authoritarian conspiracies and he views the United States as one of those. What follows is that in the release of these documents, Wikileaks isn't functioning as a whistleblower calling attention to individual misdeeds. Wikileaks is trying to undermine the effectiveness of the entire network, the entire conspiracy that is the U.S. government. That's why they plan to release all 250,000 cables, rather than just the cables that show evidence of wrongdoing. If you think Assange is out to point out a few bad apples, you're thinking too small. Assange wants to burn down the whole damn orchard. The damage done to American foreign policy isn't collateral damage, it's the entire point of the leaks.
I do recognize this as a free speech/civil rights issue and if people feel strongly enough to risk their freedom via civil disobedience movements like this, I can respect that. To dismiss it as "undemocratic" or "mob justice" is to ignore very important lessons from our not so distant history. It's sort of a stretch to put a bunch of immature, anonymous online vandals in the same class as Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on the bus. Her actions had a dignity to them because she stood up for herself without harming anyone else, and because she was willing to be arrested for her actions. But these attacks are a deliberate attempt to cause harm, and the attackers aren't willing to stand up and be accountable for their actions. If people want to stand up for Wikileaks, fine, that's their right, but committing anonymous vandalism makes you like a teenager spraypainting an anarchy sign on the side of a building in the middle of the night, not the moral equivalent of a civil rights crusader.
The problem is that not all secretive systems are unjust. I mean, a healthy relationship with your girlfriend (I know this is Slashdot, but humor me) is a "secretive system" and obviously your relationship would suffer if all your conversations, arguments, and snarky comments about her relatives and bitchy friends were suddenly thrown out in the open. In Assange's terms, your relations would be "nonlinearly hit", in practical terms you wouldn't see any nookie for a while.
Similarly, peaceful diplomatic relationships are highly dependent upon trust and confidentiality, and they are "nonlinearly hit" by the release of the cables. That's Hillary Clinton's argument and here Assange's own writings back her up 100%. The release of the cables doesn't just expose wrongdoing, it attacks American diplomacy at its most fundamental level by attacking the trust between the people who make up the system. And I don't think that's collateral damage: it's the entire point. The fact that Wikileaks aims to release the entire quarter-million cables is clear evidence that they're not after the abuses of the system: they're trying to attack the system itself. Sure, there are some bad apples in there. But Assange isn't after the few bad apples, he's trying to burn down the whole damn orchard.
Give me a break. The U.S. isn't lying about this to deceive the American public. Seriously, is anyone actually outraged by this? My response is more along the lines of, "America, FUCK YEAH!" I expect my government to be up to this kind of shit. I'd be pissed off if we *weren't* secretly taking out terrorists with Predator drone strikes. Same goes for covert U.S. military operations in Pakistan. And I'm speaking as a certified member of the NPR listening, New Yorker reading, free-range organic vegetable eating Liberal Elite.
The reason the U.S. is lying about this isn't to deceive the American public- it'd probably be fantastic for approval ratings. The reason is that the Yemeni people probably wouldn't be happy to hear that a foreign military power is killing people in their country, even if their government might find the arrangement acceptable. Similarly, the Pakistani public sentiment would be strongly against U.S. special forces working in Pakistan. I suppose you could argue that the people of Pakistan and Yemen are being decieved and that's a crime, and perhaps that in the long term this kind of behavior causes more damage than good... and maybe that's true. But it's kinda hard for me to buy that this is a serious crime against the American people.
Now, I admit that it's pretty funny to see the credit card companies getting screwed for a change. But basically, the Russians tried to f*** over a couple of American businesses, and the U.S. government decided it was necessary to step in and pressure the Russians not to do this. Part of the government's job is to look out for the economic interests of the United States, which includes private corporations. U.S. diplomats are doing their job. Truly shocking indeed.
In releasing the documents about the Afghan and Iraq wars, he can paint himself as some kind of noble crusader fighting against unjust wars, a David against the Goliath of American military imperialism. But in releasing the diplomatic cables, he's undermining attempts to avoid and settle conflicts through diplomacy. You can't claim you want a more peaceful world when you're sabotaging the mechanisms needed to achieve that.
And I think the New York Times article, showing him as a controlling narcissist, did a hell of a lot of damage to his cause. He's no longer seen as a pure and noble crusader, but as someone more akin to Bin Laden: he doesn't like the existing order, but rather than trying to change it, he wants to tear it apart. He wants to send a giant "F*** YOU" to America, he's just found out that he can do it with email instead of hijacked airliners.
If their efforts focused solely on releasing evidence of crimes and abuses of power, then I think they would be tolerated. But the vast majority of the material that's been released shows no evidence of any government abuses, so its release serves only to hurt U.S. diplomatic relations without actually shedding light on any crime. That's the issue here.
Releasing that stuff doesn't fight against injustice, it just makes it hard for U.S. diplomats to do their jobs if they can't speak candidly in private. That does a hell of a lot more to hurt U.S. diplomatic efforts than Al Qaeda blowing up a couple of our embassies in Africa. And while we have a right to know what's going on in our government, at some point that right is overridden by the need to keep other people in the dark, including our frenemies like Russia and China, and outright enemies such as Iran, North Korea, and yes, the Taliban. I guarantee you that all of them are right now working overtime reading through these communications.
It's one thing to target criminals, it's quite another to start throwing hand grenades into a crowded room because there might be a criminal in there. Well, Wikileaks has taken the hand-grenade approach to fighting injustice, and the good done by the scandals exposed is going to be outweighed by all the damage. That's turned the moderates against Assange. I don't think that Amazon or PayPal ditched him because he was a costly inconvenience- I think that the people in charge genuinely felt that they are genuinely against what he was doing.
I do think there's a legitimate place for whistleblowing in our society and undoubtedly there are government abuses that need to be dragged into the light. That's why there are laws to protect people who reveal evidence of wrongdoing. But the fact that someone, somewhere, may be doing something wrong doesn't justify publicly releasing millions of legitimate, and legitimately confidential communications by government diplomats. That threatens attempts to control Iran's nuclear proliferation, attempts to deal with North Korea. There really are people in the U.S. government who are really trying to make the world a better, more peaceful place, and this undermines their work. You have to have a pretty juvenile sense of right and wrong not to see that.
So I agree he's a threat but I don't think think the U.S. should "fix" him (and I would hope that we wouldn't). I do think that Assange and his team have gone too far should be held accountable in a court of law. Of course, he may meet with an unfortunate accident before that can happen. He's making a lot of enemies, and threatening a lot of interests, and not just the U.S.... maybe he was just paranoid before, but right now I think he'd be a fool not to fear for his life.
Furthermore, the majority of the communications are the legitimate, legal business of the U.S. governments pursuit of peaceful relations. Releasing these documents threatens alliances and negotiations, in the same way that blabbing all your friends' secrets hurts your relationships. People won't talk with our diplomats if they can't do so confidentially. How, exactly, does undermining the legitimate, peaceful diplomacy of the U.S. and other western powers make the world a better place?
And consider that the release of these communications could ruin a lot of careers- not because of unethical activity, just because someone doing their job said something privately that shouldn't be said publicly.
If Wikileaks wants to expose corruption and abuse of power, great. Why release everything else? There's a role for confidentiality. Would you want Wikileaks releasing your personal and business emails, financial information, and medical records just because someone, somewhere, might find evidence that you've been up to no good?
I'm all for openness and government accountability, and if WikiLeaks had focused on releasing evidence of criminal behavior and abuses of power, then I'd call them heroes. But releasing information that could provoke a paranoid military dictatorship is literally risking the lives of thousands if not millions of people. Anyone who can rationalize doing that in the name of openness and accountability... you're no better than the governments you're fighting.
There are just so many viruses for PCs. That's why I use a Mac to enrich uranium for my nuclear weapons.
See, you even admit that they are making fun of Beck and Palin pretty much nonstop.
A big issue with biofuels is the water used. It's sort of dead obvious once you think about it. It doesn't take a heck of a lot of water to pump a barrel of oil out of the ground, but producing a similar amount of ethanol from corn will require a lot of water for irrigation, and we're already straining our freshwater water resources. According to a report commissioned by congress [http://www.circleofblue.org/waternews/2010/world/energy-department-blocks-disclosure-of-road-map-to-relieve-critical-u-s-energy-water-choke-points/ it takes 1.5 gallons to produce a barrel of oil, 4 for corn without irrigation, 1,000(!) for corn with irrigation. Coal and nuclear also require vast quantities of water for cooling.
It would be interesting to know how algae compares. Probably you'd use a lot less water than corn, since land plants have to pump water through their veins by evaporating it from the leaves, and you could use sealed tanks/ponds that wouldn't lose water. Also, if you can use wastewater or brackish water, water use would be less of an issue.
When you start out, you're confused about everything. Where am I? Who am I? Why am I here? How do I get through this maze? As you go along, you start to piece things together, you start to figure out a few tricks and it doesn't actually seem that hard. But as you go further and further, things get harder, more challenging, it's more and more difficult to find your way through the maze. The stakes are higher, and you start to suspect that things may be conspiring against you. Supposedly if you apply yourself and try hard, you'll get rewarded, but you start to wonder. Maybe they aren't being honest with you, maybe the whole thing is just a big lie... you just run around through a huge labyrinth, toyed with by forces more powerful than you, but never get what you were promised. And then you die. Is that it?
Man, it sure would have been fun to take a whole class studying video games. I can just picture the titles of the essays: "The Hero's Journey: Odysseus and the Master Chief", "Idealization of Society Perfected: Plato's _Republic_, Thomas More's _Utopia_, and Sim City", and "Envisioning the Underworld: Dante's Inferno and 'Doom III' "
The pharmaceutical industry, of course, would love for us to believe this. The reality is that SSRIs and their cousins the SNRIs can have some pretty serious side effects. In particular, there's considerable evidence that antidepressants can actually make bipolar disorder worse, and the link between antidepressants and suicide is strong enough that they are now required to carry a warning label. These are medications that change the way the connections between your brain cells work, and actually promote the growth of brain cells, that's hardly a trivial thing to do to your brain. These drugs can dramatically alter a person's behavior and even personality; sometimes in good ways, sometimes not. Finally, going off antidepressants often results in something the drug companies euphemistically refer to as 'discontinuation syndrome'. While the effects range, it's 'discontinuation syndrome' in the same way that a heroin addict going cold turkey is undergoing 'discontinuation syndrome'. It's a drug withdrawal, plain and simple. Sometimes its mild and tolerable, in other cases, it's sufficiently hellish that people are unable to get off the drugs.
I'm not saying that antidepressants shouldn't be prescribed. For many people, the benefits are very real and outweigh the risks and side effects. But people need to be educated about the risks and benefits and make an informed choice, and you cannot automatically assume that the first doctor you talk to is either educated or impartial. Just like any profession, there are guys who know their shit, and guys who don't. I feel that antidepressants shouldn't be the first line of response to depression; it should be more of a last line of defense when other avenues have failed to work. Approaches like cognitive behavioral therapy, light therapy, exercise, and nutrition take more work for both doctor and patient, but in the long run the decreased side effects may be worth it, even if they're not as convenient as a little pill. Everything worth having in life takes work- including sanity.
They only come in to the doctor when they're depressed, and then they get antidepressants. The problem is that giving antidepressants to bipolar people can actually make things worse, kinda like treating a cocaine addict with crack. Treating bipolar people with antidepressants is probably more dangerous than doing nothing at all. Yet many of the doctors prescribing antidepressants don't know this, and obviously the pharmaceutical companies have limited interest in accepting or promoting the knowledge that their products can be seriously harmful to many of the people taking them, even though this has been generally known for over a decade. Generally speaking, bipolar people experience periods of normal or above-average functioning, with repeated (3 or more) but short (less than 3 months) episodes of depression; usually it shows up pretty early in life, in high school or college. Mood swings can be slow, over a period of months, to very rapid, cycling in and out of depression even within a single day. If that describes someone you know, they very likely have some variety of bipolar.
I'm writing this because I lost a friend to bipolar disorder. She was one of the most lively, intelligent, amazing people I ever met, who had done some amazing things despite coming from a broken, abusive family, and one day she decided to take her own life. This is a very serious issue, and unfortunately that people often don't know about, and don't talk about.
I think the issue is that a large component of mental illness is environmental. The big culprits are diet and exercise: we eat shit and we don't do shit. I mean, the brain is just another organ, and just like your other organs, if we eat crap and sit on our asses all day, it's gonna get out of shape. It follows that mental health depends on eating well and being active. In particular, that means eating more B vitamins (cheap, readily available, and effective, either in pill form or green vegetable form) and more omega-3 fatty acids (eat more fish, or fish oil). It also means cutting 1 sitcom or 30 minutes of XBox and going outside for a walk, a run, or a bike ride. These things require a bit of discipline but they're cheap and remarkably effective. Exercise is at least as effective as antidepressants in treating depression, and unlike antidepressants, its free and its "side effects" include things like losing weight, having more energy, and having more chicks talk to you at the bar.
What's up with these guys? I mean, to lose one satellite is just bad luck, but to shoot down two satellites in a row, they've got to really be doing something wrong.