A water cannon would have done a better job than the microwave weapon anyway.
Especially in desert countries with primitive plumbing and sewer systems.
The people you linked to were not protesters, they were rioters and anything but peaceful.
So you wouldn't object to using it on them then?
It makes it way too easy to disperse peaceful protestors when their message is politically inconvenient.
They can already be dispersed with ultrasonics or chemicals which would leave no photos and limited trace. If the government is going to cross the line to coercion it is going to cross the line. The problem isn't the nature of the weapon so much as the nature of the government. Totalitarian countries are totalitarian due to the behavior of the government, not because of the weapons they have.
My parents have their own house and a rental house, and to pay the property and much larger school tax bill on the rental property alone, they need to collect slightly over 3 months rent a year before they see a penny of revenue. It is not unusual for the school to demand and be handed 10-12 increases in budget each year. Just sustainable over the long term...
Our teachers get paid more than they do, starting at around $40k and going up as much as $120, depending on tenure and degrees - the attainment of higher ones past bachelor's, which once hired, is also paid for. They get a pension after 20-25 years. They get the caddilac of health plans for their entire families. They get a host of sick and vacation days during the year, those days roll over into the next year and so on, and any left over at the end of their career are paid out in full. They have the summers off (mostly) and often attend a conference somewhere which is usually a 1-2 hour a day work excuse in order to go someplace nice paid for by the taxpayer. Oh, and unheard of job security. There's nothing quite so cushy in the private sector for low level employees.
War on drugs: Defensive Iraq war #1: Defensive War on terror: Defensive Iraq war #2: Defensive Afghanistan: Defensive
Offensive weapons can be used in a defensive war, just as defensive weapons can be used in a defensive war. The US destroyed its biological weapons nearly 40 years ago. If it isn't done yet, it is close to done destroying its chemical weapons.
The "War on Drugs" is not an actual war, it is law enforcement action, so that is nonsense. Iraq War #1 was a result of Iraq invading and conquering, and annexing the country of Kuwait. I'm not sure how you would have a problem with freeing Kuwait. The War on Terror was the result of a declaration of war against the United States by Al Qaeda followed by years of deadly attacks, culminating in 9/11, which killed nearly 3,000 people on American soil. NATO stood behind the United States. I'm not sure where you have a problem with that. Afghanistan - That was a natural consequence of Al Qaeda integrating itself into the government structure of Afghanistan, and the Taliban shielding both Al Qaeda and Bin Laden, and a natural part of the War on Terror. I'm not sure where you have a problem with that, either. Iraq War #2 - Iraq was in material breach before the UN of its responsibilities from Iraq War #1. They were engaged in numerous illegal activities, and fired on Coalition aircraft, including American, nearly every day - an act of war. I'm more understanding of protest against this one, but it was still justifiable.
I live too close to one of the largest biodefence research companies for the US Military. It is frightening when someone moves in next door and they tell you their job is in infectious disease propagation improvement.
Darned convenient for the subject under discussion that you live there, eh? I'm curious, what other information from what are no doubt classified programs do they share with you? Or is this all just fabricated?
Sure it is to find better ways to stop the spread and kill the next pandemic, but when you have a drawer full of hammers.....
A "drawer full of hammers" puts you an enormous amount of effort, engineering, experimentation, planning, and execution away from making "hammer" artillery shells and missile warheads available. Those need to be available in large numbers if they are going to be used for military purposes, and that would be very noticeable in the open American society. I doubt that much of anyone in the US military wants to get anywhere near those sorts of weapons either. Smart weapons take care of most things. For WMD needs, the US has nukes.
Just out of curiosity, do you live under a bridge by any chance?
Mark Conner, former president of the failed FirstCity Bank in Georgia, was sentenced to 12 years in prison and ordered to pay $19.5 million in restitution for his part in several schemes that sunk his and at least 10 other banks.
Conner served in several top positions at the bank between 2004 and 2009. While there, he lied to the bank's board and loan committee for approvals on multimillion-dollar commercial loans to borrowers who were only using the money to buy property Conner and his co-conspirators owned, according to court documents.
He even duped at least 10 other federally insured banks to invest in the fraudulent loans. This way, Conner scammed at least $7 million for himself while shifting the risk to these other firms that eventually failed.
As the financial crisis struck, Conner then tried to unload FirstCity nonperforming loans and foreclosed homes to straw buyers, who were taking out loans from Conner to buy the assets. He then tried unsuccessfully to get a $6 million bailout from the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
WASHINGTON — Two former CEOs at mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on Friday became the highest-profile individuals to be charged in connection with the 2008 financial crisis.
In a lawsuit filed in New York, the Securities and Exchange Commission brought civil fraud charges against six former executives at the two firms, including former Fannie CEO Daniel Mudd and former Freddie CEO Richard Syron.. . . .
Unfortunately, the real cause of much of this is beyond the hand of the law:
I'm amused that you would try to disprove documented historical fact with a hand waving article from a self-labeled "activist" in a psychology magazine. Sorry, but the body count is simply too large for that to work.
I assume we can both agree that "misnomer" isn't the way to formally address an unmarried female of a race of mythical short people? Salud!
Quite the contrary, there is a fear that if mere possession of evidence that someone ELSE exploited a child is illegal, the child will get no help because anyone who could alert the authorities will be too busy destroying the evidence.
So you aren't worried about the natural outcome of making possession legal? Won't the police then be inundated by all those people secretly living in fear, "destroying" the images they receive now, who will now start reporting all the pictures of sexually abused children they are receiving, to the point the police can't do anything else? Yes, that will happen,. . . when pigs fly.
It often seems that mankind is not so much a rational animal, as a rationalizing animal. You get to see it every time this topic comes up on Slashdot. "Won't someone think of the pedophiles?"
WASHINGTON—Albert “Jack” Stanley, a former chairman and chief executive officer of Kellogg, Brown & Root Inc. (KBR), was sentenced today to 30 months in prison for conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) by participating in a decade-long scheme to bribe Nigerian government officials to obtain engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contracts and for conspiring to commit mail and wire fraud as part of a separate kickback scheme, the Justice Department’s Criminal Division today announced.
WASHINGTON—The former chief executive officer (CEO) of Taylor, Bean & Whitaker (TBW) was sentenced today to 40 months in prison for his role in a more than $2.9 billion fraud scheme that contributed to the failure of TBW. At one time, TBW was one of the largest privately held mortgage lending companies in the United States.
WASHINGTON—A Houston federal jury today convicted Robert Allen Stanford, the former board of directors chairman of Stanford International Bank (SIB), for orchestrating a 20-year investment fraud scheme in which he misappropriated $7 billion from SIB to finance his personal businesses.
On June 14, 2012, Robert Allen Stanford, the former Chairman of Stanford International Bank (SIB), was sentenced to 110 years in prison for orchestrating a 20 year investment fraud scheme in which he misappropriated $7 billion from SIB to finance his personal businesses and lifestyle. -- United States v. Robert Allen Stanford et al.
We have to do away with the concept of good and evil. There is no good and evil. There may be smart and stupid or competent and incompetent but there is no good and evil.
Witnesses tell the BBC's This World (BBC TWO, 1 February 2004, 9.00pm) that North Korea is killing political prisoners in gas chambers.
The programme has also uncovered documentary evidence that North Korea is now testing new chemical weapons on women and children, the families of dissidents and political prisoners held in secret jails.
Kwon Hyuk (his new name) was the former military attaché at the North Korean embassy in Beijing and chief of management at North Korea's prison camp 22 (or "Management Centre" as they call them).
He says he has chosen to speak because he wants the world to know what is happening there and for the first time has decided to reveal on public record what he witnessed in Camp 22.
"Scientists observe the entire process from above, through the glass."
"I witnessed a whole family being tested on suffocating gas and dying in the gas chamber. The parents, son and a daughter.
"The parents were vomiting and dying, but till the very last moment they tried to save kids by doing mouth to mouth breathing.
"At the time I felt that they thoroughly deserved such a death. Because all of us were led to believe that all the bad things that were happening to North Korea was their fault; that we were poor, divided and not making progress as a country."
Asked about the children Kwon Hyuk says: "It would be a total lie for me to say I felt sympathetic about the children dying such a painful death.
"Under the society and the regime I was in at the time I only felt that they were the enemies. So I felt no sympathy or pity for them at all."
He tells the BBC's Olenka Frenkiel: "Before escorting them to the lab, we receive transfer letters containing details of the prisoners. We pass on such letters to the agents from the National Security Agency for a signature."
This World features a document recently smuggled out of North Korea stamped "Top Secret" and headed "Transfer Letter" that clearly explains that political prisoners are used for the purpose of human biological experimentation and for production of biological weapons.
The role of suggestion, of subliminal triggers, the role of desperation and poverty, the role of lack of intelligence, a lot of different things can convince a person that a criminal act is right and in some cases it is ethical for themselves based on their ethics to commit a criminal act but unethical by the conventional ethics of society.
In anticipation of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, President Nixon terminated the United States offensive biological weapons program by executive order. The United States adopted a policy to never use biological weapons, including toxins, under any circumstances whatsoever. National Security Decisions 35 and 44, issued during November 1969 (microorganisms) and February 1970 (toxins), mandated the cessation of offensive biological research and production, and the destruction of the biological arsenal. Research efforts were directed exclusively to the development of defensive measures such as diagnostic tests, vaccines, and therapies for potential biological weapons threats. Stocks of pathogens and the entire biological arsenal were destroyed between May 1971 and February 1973 under the auspices of the US Department of Agriculture, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and the Departments of Natural Resources of Arkansas, Colorado, and Maryland. Small quantities of some pathogens were retained at Fort Detrick to test the efficacy of investigational preventive measures and therapies.
Factors influencing the decision to terminate the offensive biological program included pragmatic as well as moral and ethical considerations. Given the available conventional, chemical, and nuclear weapons, biological weapons were not considered essential for national security. The potential effects of biological weapons on military and civilian populations were still conjectural, and for obvious ethical and public health reasons, could not be empirically studied. Biological weapons were considered untried, unpredictable, and potentially hazardous for the users as well for those under attack. Field commanders and troops were unfamiliar with their use. In addition, the United States and allied countries had a strategic interest in outlawing biological weapons programs in order to prevent the proliferation of relatively low-cost weapons of mass destruction. By outlawing biological weapons, the arms race for weapons of mass destruction would be prohibitively expensive, given the expense of nuclear programs.
After the termination of the offensive biological program, the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) was established in order to continue the development of medical defenses for US military members against potential biological attack. USAMRIID conducts research to develop strategies, products, information, and training programs for medical defense against potential biological weapons. Endemic or epidemic infectious diseases due to highly virulent pathogens requiring high-level containment for laboratory safety are also studied. USAMRIID is an open research institution; no research is classified. The in-house programs are complemented by contract programs with universities and other research institutions.
Despite signing the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC), it is now certain that the former Soviet Union (FSU) continued a clandestine and illegal offensive biological weapons program until at least the early 1990s. Biopreparat (a huge military program with civilian cover) was organized to develop and weaponize biological agents for BW.3 It employed approximately half of the Soviet Union‘s 60,000 workers in more than 18 BW facilities, and in the 1980s had an annual budget equivalent to tens of millions of U.S. dollars.4 Unlike the American offensive BW program (1942-69) that worked primarily with organisms that were not contagious in humans (e.g., anth
This platform seems a bit weak. When will America finally have a party whose members work to outlaw abortion, reduce access to contraception, deny gay marriage, and shoe-horn religion in to the science classroom?
Why don't you get busy then and let us know how it turns out? That mix won't really work for the Republicans since there doesn't seem to be any real interest in having the US government block access to contraception, only not have the Federal government pay for it, which it hasn't done much of anyway. There is practically nothing to deny in terms of so called "gay marriage" since same sex couples haven't ever been able to marry in the vast majority of the United States, and that is mainly a state level issue. There is already a Federal law that prohibits the Federal government from recognizing same sex marriages performed in the small hand full of states that have been forced to permit it. Classroom curriculum is a state level matter, not Federal level, so that makes no sense. It is unlikely that abortion will ever really be outlawed due to Roe v. Wade. However, there are sensible regulations that could be enacted, such as requiring abortion providers to meet ordinary standards of medical sanitation, which seems to be a problem for some of them.
You think 1930s Germany and Italy working together was bad. This totally freaks me out.
Since they were already working together on long range missiles, and apparently on nuclear weapons technology, I wouldn't get too excited about them working together on software.
It is more correct to say that the nature of America's enemies determines the resources devoted to military procurement. That has changed considerably over time, and is presently around 5%.
. . . defense spending was 37.5% of GDP in 1945 (WWII), in 1953 (Korea) it was 14.2%, and at the peak of Vietnam (1968) it was 9.4%. -- Defense Spending Already Below Average
The "Military-Industrial Complex" doesn't seem very successful if it is supposed to be driving defense spending - the resources devoted to it have had a strong negative trend since WW2. Heahthcare takes up something like 3-4x the resources spent on defense at present, and total social welfare spending also dwarfs the defense budget.
Spending on hospital visits, medications and other health care rose an estimated 3.9 percent in 2011 and consumed about 17.9 percent of GDP, the same as the previous two years, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said yesterday. The increases in such expenditures will continue to outpace economic growth projections, jumping 7.4 percent in 2014, when much of the insurance expansion created by the health law begins.
Forgive me but the Republican Convention just proved the Reps haven't got the vaguest clue how to fix the mess we're in (except rape the middle class and give their organs to the wealth), and that they don't care anything for the middle class save caring that the middle class think they care about the middle class.
I'm not sure how you managed it, but it appears that you went here when you should have gone here for information on the Republican platform. See? No baby eating or organ selling.
The rape allegations stem from later that night at Miss W's home: the British court heard that Assange had sex with her without a condom while she was asleep.
The following morning, they had breakfast together, and "in an attempt to de-dramatise what happened", she made "sarcastic comments".
She then took him back to the train station and he promised to call her.
Defence lawyer Claes Borgström said the two women later discovered they had both had similar experiences with Assange and went to the police on August 20.
"They were not sure they wanted to (press charges), they wanted to get advice" and were also worried they could have contracted HIV, Borgström told reporters earlier this month.
"When they told the police officer, a woman, she realised that what (the women) were telling her about was a crime. She reported that to the public prosecutor who decided to arrest Assange," the lawyer said.
You should have that same look at the thought of mutilating little boys (as they scream in pain & blood spills on the hospital sheets).
You mean like when they are born, the cord is cut, and they get slapped? I'm surprised you didn't continue on with your line of reasoning to advocate leaving everyone in the womb, although I'm sure you can figure out there are problems with that too.
Of the programs that taught circumcision as part of its training program, 97% of them report teaching residents to ease circumcision pain with either a local or topical anesthetic.
Easy there, comrade, you are becoming overheated! Just wander over to the samovar and enjoy. If you want to be a defender of Moscow, that is fine. But, if you wish to fight a sacred war, make sure you do it for a good cause.
During Brezhnev's time a Soviet officer teaching cadets made the point that all of the organs of control and oppression under Stalin still existed, but that no one had the strength of will to grasp and use them as Stalin did. If enough people fight the wrong battles, they may find their new Stalin with the will to once more grasp the reigns. And that would be an enormous tragedy, given past experience. Enjoy your freedoms, while you have them, for it may not always be so. If you want to fight for the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat, you should understand that revolutions eat their own, and you will not be safe no matter which party faction you are in.
Do not confuse the label of propaganda as necessarily being the same as untrue.
It appears that the Russians are working to restore and update the Russian nee Soviet state's ability to conduct political warfare, which was quite powerful. Some of the lies they spread have yet to die down. Since the Russian state seems to heading back towards Soviet methods and attitudes, everyone should be concerned.
Slashdot Mirror
If it happens to be effective and less lethal than others, such as rubber bullets, why would you prefer the others?
A water cannon would have done a better job than the microwave weapon anyway.
Especially in desert countries with primitive plumbing and sewer systems.
The people you linked to were not protesters, they were rioters and anything but peaceful.
So you wouldn't object to using it on them then?
It makes it way too easy to disperse peaceful protestors when their message is politically inconvenient.
They can already be dispersed with ultrasonics or chemicals which would leave no photos and limited trace. If the government is going to cross the line to coercion it is going to cross the line. The problem isn't the nature of the weapon so much as the nature of the government. Totalitarian countries are totalitarian due to the behavior of the government, not because of the weapons they have.
More likely it is a tool to disperse protesters without those incriminating head cracking videos.
So, there is no value in dispersing protesters without having to crack heads?
My parents have their own house and a rental house, and to pay the property and much larger school tax bill on the rental property alone, they need to collect slightly over 3 months rent a year before they see a penny of revenue. It is not unusual for the school to demand and be handed 10-12 increases in budget each year. Just sustainable over the long term...
Our teachers get paid more than they do, starting at around $40k and going up as much as $120, depending on tenure and degrees - the attainment of higher ones past bachelor's, which once hired, is also paid for. They get a pension after 20-25 years. They get the caddilac of health plans for their entire families. They get a host of sick and vacation days during the year, those days roll over into the next year and so on, and any left over at the end of their career are paid out in full. They have the summers off (mostly) and often attend a conference somewhere which is usually a 1-2 hour a day work excuse in order to go someplace nice paid for by the taxpayer. Oh, and unheard of job security. There's nothing quite so cushy in the private sector for low level employees.
So, is that part of Palin's "real America" too?
Offensive weapons can be used in a defensive war, just as defensive weapons can be used in a defensive war. The US destroyed its biological weapons nearly 40 years ago. If it isn't done yet, it is close to done destroying its chemical weapons.
The "War on Drugs" is not an actual war, it is law enforcement action, so that is nonsense.
Iraq War #1 was a result of Iraq invading and conquering, and annexing the country of Kuwait. I'm not sure how you would have a problem with freeing Kuwait.
The War on Terror was the result of a declaration of war against the United States by Al Qaeda followed by years of deadly attacks, culminating in 9/11, which killed nearly 3,000 people on American soil. NATO stood behind the United States. I'm not sure where you have a problem with that.
Afghanistan - That was a natural consequence of Al Qaeda integrating itself into the government structure of Afghanistan, and the Taliban shielding both Al Qaeda and Bin Laden, and a natural part of the War on Terror. I'm not sure where you have a problem with that, either.
Iraq War #2 - Iraq was in material breach before the UN of its responsibilities from Iraq War #1. They were engaged in numerous illegal activities, and fired on Coalition aircraft, including American, nearly every day - an act of war. I'm more understanding of protest against this one, but it was still justifiable.
I live too close to one of the largest biodefence research companies for the US Military. It is frightening when someone moves in next door and they tell you their job is in infectious disease propagation improvement.
Darned convenient for the subject under discussion that you live there, eh? I'm curious, what other information from what are no doubt classified programs do they share with you? Or is this all just fabricated?
Sure it is to find better ways to stop the spread and kill the next pandemic, but when you have a drawer full of hammers.....
A "drawer full of hammers" puts you an enormous amount of effort, engineering, experimentation, planning, and execution away from making "hammer" artillery shells and missile warheads available. Those need to be available in large numbers if they are going to be used for military purposes, and that would be very noticeable in the open American society. I doubt that much of anyone in the US military wants to get anywhere near those sorts of weapons either. Smart weapons take care of most things. For WMD needs, the US has nukes.
Just out of curiosity, do you live under a bridge by any chance?
And yet not one of the CEOs responsible for the epic fraud that crashed the world economy in 2008 has even been arrested, let alone charged and tried.
Some will go to jail.
Georgia banker gets 12-year sentence for fraud
Some will be at least inconvenienced.
SEC charges ex-Fannie, Freddie CEOs with fraud
Unfortunately, the real cause of much of this is beyond the hand of the law:
How The Government Caused The Mortgage Crisis
A sad story:
While Freddie & Fannie Spanked, Dodd Leered
I'm amused that you would try to disprove documented historical fact with a hand waving article from a self-labeled "activist" in a psychology magazine. Sorry, but the body count is simply too large for that to work.
I assume we can both agree that "misnomer" isn't the way to formally address an unmarried female of a race of mythical short people? Salud!
Quite the contrary, there is a fear that if mere possession of evidence that someone ELSE exploited a child is illegal, the child will get no help because anyone who could alert the authorities will be too busy destroying the evidence.
So you aren't worried about the natural outcome of making possession legal? Won't the police then be inundated by all those people secretly living in fear, "destroying" the images they receive now, who will now start reporting all the pictures of sexually abused children they are receiving, to the point the police can't do anything else? Yes, that will happen,. . . when pigs fly.
It often seems that mankind is not so much a rational animal, as a rationalizing animal. You get to see it every time this topic comes up on Slashdot. "Won't someone think of the pedophiles?"
It's rather silly to commit individual crime when corporate crime pays more and there's usually no time served.
White collar criminals do indeed go to jail.
Former Chairman and CEO of Kellogg, Brown & Root Inc. Sentenced to 30 Months in Prison for Foreign Bribery and Kickback Schemes
Former TBW CEO Sentenced to 40 Months in Prison for Fraud Scheme
Two Former Canopy Financial Co-Founders Sentenced to 15 and 13 Years in Prison for $75 Million Investment Fraud and Raiding $18 Million from Custodial Heath Care Expense Accounts of 1,600 Customers
Allen Stanford Convicted in Houston for Orchestrating $7 Billion Investment Fraud Scheme
Just a sample. Just search for "CEO" to see more. It's not hard to find other examples.
No good and evil? Really?
This World uncovers the "gas chambers" of North Korea
Witnesses tell the BBC's This World (BBC TWO, 1 February 2004, 9.00pm) that North Korea is killing political prisoners in gas chambers.
The programme has also uncovered documentary evidence that North Korea is now testing new chemical weapons on women and children, the families of dissidents and political prisoners held in secret jails.
Kwon Hyuk (his new name) was the former military attaché at the North Korean embassy in Beijing and chief of management at North Korea's prison camp 22 (or "Management Centre" as they call them).
He says he has chosen to speak because he wants the world to know what is happening there and for the first time has decided to reveal on public record what he witnessed in Camp 22.
"Scientists observe the entire process from above, through the glass."
"I witnessed a whole family being tested on suffocating gas and dying in the gas chamber. The parents, son and a daughter.
"The parents were vomiting and dying, but till the very last moment they tried to save kids by doing mouth to mouth breathing.
"At the time I felt that they thoroughly deserved such a death. Because all of us were led to believe that all the bad things that were happening to North Korea was their fault; that we were poor, divided and not making progress as a country."
Asked about the children Kwon Hyuk says: "It would be a total lie for me to say I felt sympathetic about the children dying such a painful death.
"Under the society and the regime I was in at the time I only felt that they were the enemies. So I felt no sympathy or pity for them at all."
He tells the BBC's Olenka Frenkiel: "Before escorting them to the lab, we receive transfer letters containing details of the prisoners. We pass on such letters to the agents from the National Security Agency for a signature."
This World features a document recently smuggled out of North Korea stamped "Top Secret" and headed "Transfer Letter" that clearly explains that political prisoners are used for the purpose of human biological experimentation and for production of biological weapons.
Did liberals get it wrong on crime?
Unfortunately, it is one of the contagions in our biological weapon program.
Just so everybody is clear. . .
Biological Weapons - (United States)
Next Generation Bioweapons:Genetic Engineering and BW - The Former Soviet Union’s Biological Warfare Program
It looks to me like you might be challenged by the word "militant". Maybe you shouldn't be throwing around "conflate" until you get that figured out.
Atheism is indeed the most daring of all dogmas . . . for it is the assertion of a universal negative. -- G. K. Chesterton
This platform seems a bit weak. When will America finally have a party whose members work to outlaw abortion, reduce access to contraception, deny gay marriage, and shoe-horn religion in to the science classroom?
Why don't you get busy then and let us know how it turns out? That mix won't really work for the Republicans since there doesn't seem to be any real interest in having the US government block access to contraception, only not have the Federal government pay for it, which it hasn't done much of anyway. There is practically nothing to deny in terms of so called "gay marriage" since same sex couples haven't ever been able to marry in the vast majority of the United States, and that is mainly a state level issue. There is already a Federal law that prohibits the Federal government from recognizing same sex marriages performed in the small hand full of states that have been forced to permit it. Classroom curriculum is a state level matter, not Federal level, so that makes no sense. It is unlikely that abortion will ever really be outlawed due to Roe v. Wade. However, there are sensible regulations that could be enacted, such as requiring abortion providers to meet ordinary standards of medical sanitation, which seems to be a problem for some of them.
You think 1930s Germany and Italy working together was bad. This totally freaks me out.
Since they were already working together on long range missiles, and apparently on nuclear weapons technology, I wouldn't get too excited about them working together on software.
The military-industrial complex needs enemies.
It is more correct to say that the nature of America's enemies determines the resources devoted to military procurement. That has changed considerably over time, and is presently around 5%.
. . . defense spending was 37.5% of GDP in 1945 (WWII), in 1953 (Korea) it was 14.2%, and at the peak of Vietnam (1968) it was 9.4%. -- Defense Spending Already Below Average
Defense Spending as Percentage of GDP Well Below Historical Average
The "Military-Industrial Complex" doesn't seem very successful if it is supposed to be driving defense spending - the resources devoted to it have had a strong negative trend since WW2. Heahthcare takes up something like 3-4x the resources spent on defense at present, and total social welfare spending also dwarfs the defense budget.
Health-Care Spending to Reach 20% of U.S. Economy by 2021
Forgive me but the Republican Convention just proved the Reps haven't got the vaguest clue how to fix the mess we're in (except rape the middle class and give their organs to the wealth), and that they don't care anything for the middle class save caring that the middle class think they care about the middle class.
I'm not sure how you managed it, but it appears that you went here when you should have gone here for information on the Republican platform. See? No baby eating or organ selling.
You're mixing up two different accusations.
Go read up on the Assange case and get back to me before you spend to much time barking up the wrong tree.
Could you shine the light up there? I think I see something.
New details emerge about Assange accusers
You should have that same look at the thought of mutilating little boys (as they scream in pain & blood spills on the hospital sheets).
You mean like when they are born, the cord is cut, and they get slapped? I'm surprised you didn't continue on with your line of reasoning to advocate leaving everyone in the womb, although I'm sure you can figure out there are problems with that too.
Doctors Now Ease Pain of Circumcision - Survey Shows Most Residency Programs Teach Doctors to Treat Baby's Pain
Of the programs that taught circumcision as part of its training program, 97% of them report teaching residents to ease circumcision pain with either a local or topical anesthetic.
You might find this to be your response.
Soviet Propaganda Machine
A Portrait of Stalin: Secret Police Start at 38:50.
Watch the whole thing when you have time.
You seem a little too comfortable and glib with the whole bloody business.
Easy there, comrade, you are becoming overheated! Just wander over to the samovar and enjoy. If you want to be a defender of Moscow, that is fine. But, if you wish to fight a sacred war, make sure you do it for a good cause.
During Brezhnev's time a Soviet officer teaching cadets made the point that all of the organs of control and oppression under Stalin still existed, but that no one had the strength of will to grasp and use them as Stalin did. If enough people fight the wrong battles, they may find their new Stalin with the will to once more grasp the reigns. And that would be an enormous tragedy, given past experience. Enjoy your freedoms, while you have them, for it may not always be so. If you want to fight for the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat, you should understand that revolutions eat their own, and you will not be safe no matter which party faction you are in.
Do not confuse the label of propaganda as necessarily being the same as untrue.
It appears that the Russians are working to restore and update the Russian nee Soviet state's ability to conduct political warfare, which was quite powerful. Some of the lies they spread have yet to die down. Since the Russian state seems to heading back towards Soviet methods and attitudes, everyone should be concerned.
Soviets Sponsor Spread of AIDS Disinformation
A Soviet political warfare manual comments on 'socialist education'
Soviet methods did not spare their allies.
A Portrait of Stalin: Secret Police
The truth must be suppressed.