Throughout the entire Obama presidency, the administration has been absolutely paranoid about leaks and has cracked down on whistleblowers like no other administration in history.
Over the past few months, all this "Russian hacking" stuff has been dominating the mainstream media. In story after story, especially from sites like WaPo, reporters are always quoting "anonymous sources in government" or unnamed "intelligence officials" as their sources. These "sources" have obviously leaked numerous details of classified intelligence reports to the media, yet the Obama administration exhibits absolutely no concern whatsoever about these particular leaks.
If Snowden is a criminal for leaking classified information to the media, why isn't there a full scale government investigation to identify the people who are leaking this classified "Russian hacking" stuff to the media? Do we have any laws left which are enforced in a fair & uniform manner? A government which makes it a practice of enforcing laws arbitrarily is an illegitimate government.
The supply chain and the resources are far more critical than production. Your food still gets trucked in from rural areas. Your big cities, especially the ones in the West, also have vulnerable electrical grids because the power is delivered by a few main lines. i.e. it wouldn't take much sabotage to put many of you in the dark. Then, there are the places where water must be pumped in over great distances. A week-long supply chain and utility interruption and you city scum will be cannibalizing each other or fleeing into the countryside. And we have enough weapons and ammo to kill all of you 10x over.
Don't get into a pissing contest with rural America.
P.S. Many of the big cities are near the oceans. If you believe all the dire "global warming" prognostications, what are you going to do when your cities are under water?
"Death Panel" is an inflammatory term, but it has a basis in fact. Any government-run medical system must limit the amount of goods and services provided. Otherwise, costs would quickly spiral out of control. People in such systems are put on wait lists and people on wait lists sometimes die before getting the services they need. Despite its many faults, the USA healthcare system can typically(except for transplants & such) administer goods and services "on demand". Anyone who believes that a government healthcare system in the USA means "Everything stays the same except for prices" is utterly naive.
Government healthcare means that those in charge must make decisions to ration services and those decisions WILL result in the deaths of some people in the system. Is that a "death panel"? IMO, that term conjures up the wrong image, but I can see why people use it.
There are "fixed costs" and "marginal costs". You're considering only the latter and only the materials portion thereof. What about the wages and salaries, utilities, maintenance, packaging, shipping and other ongoing expenses?
Yes, after a company has done all the R&D, completed all the testing/trials, waded through the ocean of government red tape and built a manufacturing facility, the marginal cost of one additional unit might be small. However, the fixed cost of all the up-front investment has to be amortized over each unit produced.
And dare I suggest that a company needs to earn a profit in order to stay in business?
A high ranking intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, cited details of a classified government report which confirms without a doubt that hackers working on behalf of the Russian government, and personally supervised by Vladimir Putin, are conspiring to hack pacemakers in elderly Democrat-leaning USA voters to interfere with the 2018 elections.
The terms are actually more favorable than what you're proposing because the settlement isn't directly linked to the purchase of a different vehicle. The customers are entitled to a direct payment in the amount of the former NADA value of the cars, plus several thousand dollars in bonus cash. No strings attached.
My neighbor had one of these and he was really happy with the terms of the settlement. The annoying thing for him was that it took so long for it to be finalized.
Agreed that it's up to the person making the assertions to provide the evidence. I'm not going through the entire list, but the massaging of the data is real.
"Keep in mind that these data are subject to large adjustments"
Instruments have been upgraded from mercury thermometers to digital sensors. The "scientists" claim that this introduces a cooling bias and adjust temperature upward. The time of day in which observations are made has changed. The "scientists" claim that this change also introduces a cooling bias, so another upward revision is made. "Urbanization" (basically heat from pavement) creates a warming bias, etc. etc. There are also certain "quality control" adjustments.
"If you plot the quality controlled data prior to the adjustments, the temperature record is mostly flat."
See figure #5 at the above URL
The adjustments in and of themselves are not proof of some grand conspiracy, but questioning the methodology used to massage the data is fair game for the skeptics.
I think the best way to answer the question would be to select some areas where you'd like to live and then spend some time searching for jobs in those areas.
I was searching for employment ~18 months ago, mostly in the Northeast USA. It definitely seemed like I was seeing a lot of jobs for embedded software developers. So many that I was toying with the idea of going back to school and acquiring some of the requisite skills.
"Norway is set to become the first nation to start switching off its FM radio network..."
How??? I've read read several articles and none of them describe the mechanism by which they will accomplish this. If it was only broadcasts by the state-owned "Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation" I could understand, but it seems like they're talking about all FM radio. It's not like they can just flip a switch and "turn off" part of the EM spectrum. Does it mean that the Norwegian government is going to make it illegal for anyone to do FM broadcasting?
This is truly "open source" because you can download the actual VHDL source files and compile them into your own chip design.
The article seems to be confusing a "printed circuit board"(PCB) with a "microcontroller". The author keeps referring to the "HiFive1" as a "microcontroller". It's not. It's a circuit board. The FE310 is the "microcontroller".
From the company website:
HiFive1 Features & Specifications
Microcontroller: SiFive Freedom E310 (FE310)
It looks like the Altium files are "open source", but Altium is PCB design software. I don't see a place where you can download the VHDL, Verilog source code or even a netlist and layout(e.g. a GDS file) of the actual FE310 microcontroller. That appears to be proprietary IP. I don't see how this is any more of an "open source" microcontroller than the Atmel or PIC chips.
IMO, the marginal cost isn't worth the marginal benefit. A regular Blu-Ray disc or HDTV broadcast with a decent TV and stereo is plenty of fun to watch. I enjoyed seeing "Mad Max: Fury Road" in the theater with 3D, It was cool to have flaming debris, electric guitars and auto wreck victims flying out of the screen. Yet, when I went back and watched it again in regular HD, I didn't feel deprived. I recognized some of the scenes as being different, but I didn't think that the film was somehow diminished for lack of the 3D effects. Definitely not enough of an enhancement to justify spending significantly more for my home theater.
Bullshit. I guess it depends on what you mean by "fudged". If you're claiming that the data sets being used by climate scientists are raw, non-adjusted data, then you're in denial. The data is definitely "fudged", but there are compelling reasons for this "fudging".
They have more than 100 years of temperature measurements from various weather stations around the world. Over that time period, most of the stations have been relocated numerous times. The early data were collected with mercury thermometers while later measurements were done with electronics. Stations have also changed the time of day at which they recorded the temperature readings. Areas around many stations have been gradually "urbanized" etc. etc.
The data sets are very deliberately adjusted/fudged to attempt to account for these differences. That doesn't necessarily mean there is some conspiracy going on to perpetuate a hoax, but questioning the methods used to do the fudging is entirely reasonable.
"as productivity increases, why haven't we just started having a shorter work week?"
Good question.
Since 1913, The Federal Reserve Bank and the U.S. federal government have pursued a relentlessly inflationary monetary policy. The resulting price increases rob wage laborers of their share of productivity gains. In a free market economy with a fair monetary system, productivity increases would naturally translate to lower prices(price deflation) and the wage laborer would be able to work fewer hours while still purchasing the same amount of goods and services.
Unfortunately, we've been collectively brainwashed into believing that deflation is the bogeyman which must be avoided and that inflation is somehow the natural, healthy state of the economy. The Fed openly states that 2% inflation is their goal. There is nothing "natural" about this. It is a very deliberate and malicious policy which has redistributed trillions of dollars in wealth (in terms of purchasing power) from the poor and middle class to the ultra rich.
Sarah Harrison from Wikileaks helped get Snowden out of Hong Kong and then helped keep him alive when he was stuck in the Moscow airport. Beyond that, I'm not sure. Snowden has said on multiple occasions that he didn't want to give his NSA data to Wikileaks because they publish things indiscriminately. He worked with reporters and asked them to use their discretion in publishing only what was newsworthy.
How can I be wrong when I said it was my opinion that the term should be used more narrowly?
"...a war between factions in the same country..."
In the OP's hypothetical scenario, hostilities have erupted before any legal separation, so I suppose there's an argument for using the term, even though separation is the goal. When The South legally seceded from the union however, it was no longer the same country, thus, according to that definition, the 1861-1865 conflict was not a "civil war".
I must disagree with the Wikipedia definition that includes: "war... between two countries created from a formerly united state". Winners write the history books and apparently they author the Wikipedia articles too. If the Czech Republic and Slovakia went to war, would that be called a "civil war" as well? Think about Sudan. They fought two "civil wars" lasting 20+ years each, but then ended up splitting into two countries by a referendum in the South. If they started fighting again, would it be "civil war 3" or something else?
If the intervention of foreign powers changes a "civil war" into a !"civil war", I think the terminology becomes hopelessly confused. I've certainly never heard the Korean War referred to as "The Korean Civil War", even though there were no foreign powers involved in the beginning. The USA is arming & training rebels in Syria and the Russians are providing air support for the government, but it's still regularly referred to as "The Syrian Civil War".
To me, a war in which one faction is fighting for political and territorial independence seems very different than a war in which both factions are fighting to control a central government. So different that a single label feels imprecise. I'm only going to use "civil war" for the latter type of conflict.
That's one of the best/. analogies ever. Well done. We've even got the allegations of a third-party facilitating the coup.
Assuming that the objective of Hispanic forces in those states is to exit the USA and join Mexico, I would not call it a "civil war". IMO, the term "civil war" should be reserved for situations where two or more factions within a nation are fighting to seize power over the whole nation. By the same token, I refuse to refer to the 1861-1865 war in the USA as a "civil war" because the South was not trying to take over Washington DC, but simply to break away. Your scenario is very similar except for the aid of Mexican military forces.
I'd hope that the states in the Southwest would at least attempt to exit the USA by referendum or a vote of their state legislatures before initiating hostilities though. Hell, with Trump in power, you'd get millions of white English-speakers on the Hispanic side.
If I have an idea for creating encryption that's invulnerable(or extremely resistant) to attack by quantum computers, I'm going to the patent office not NIST.
"these folks... want validation on their identity and the world as they see it." "I use these computer products to find out what I need, not what I want."
Even if you think you're searching for what you "need", Google is trying hard to serve up what you "want". Do a search on "Are women better than men?". You'll see "Feminist Google"(what generation, I don't know) which is the exact same product as "Alt-Right Google". What you're really getting is "Validate my personal beliefs Google".
Everyone has a natural tendency to focus on information which confirms their existing beliefs and disregard evidence to the contrary. The difference is that some people are aware of the fact that their own minds operate this way while others naively consider themselves objective and are only able to see the phenomenon in "those folks".
"The evidence that the Holocaust happened is overwhelming."
Then why do they throw people in jail merely for attempting to question it?
When I first found out about laws that prohibit questioning the "official" version of history, I made it a point to seek out & read some of these illegal ideas. Comments from anti-semites on obscure websites aside, I never found a single source that claimed The Holocaust never actually happened. What they do is challenge portions of that "overwhelming" evidence and raise questions about exactly what happened. This sort of thing is ubiquitous in historical writings. Read two or more accounts of the same historical events and you will find contradictions and disagreements. Still, all of the authors will present evidence supporting their ideas. It should be up to you, the reader, not a search engine, and certainly not a f***ing government, to weigh that evidence(even doubting its existence) and question the authors' conclusions and motives. IMHO, the fact that you can be imprisoned simply for questioning the "official" history on this subject should arouse a certain amount of curiosity and skepticism about the legally enshrined narrative.
Reading banned books can be enlightening even if they're bullshit.
Should the government use a proxy to do something that would violate the Constitutional Rights of U.S. citizens if done directly by government, legal precedent holds that it is still a violation. This has come up repeatedly in the context of evidence gathering. As far as using dirty tricks to violate the Rights to free speech and peaceable assembly(among others) I'm sure the government wouldn't hesitate.
"There is obviously a keyboard brigade that is trying to suppress this news"
LOL This "news" has been coming through the MSM megaphone so loudly and so repeatedly that it's practically inescapable. How the hell can it possibly be "suppressed"?
What the keyboard brigade and a few non-mainstream news sources are suggesting is that information allegedly obtained from "anonymous sources" in the intelligence agencies doesn't amount to "proof" that the Russian government and Vladimir Putin personally conspired to influence the U.S. election. WaPo, NYT and NBC reporters supposedly have these sources who leak the conclusions of secret intelligence efforts, but they never bother to ask their sources pertinent questions like "HOW did you reach these conclusions?"
It's also strange that the Obama administration, which has been absolutely paranoid about leaks and whistleblowers, is willing to comment on this information, but is exhibiting no concern whatsoever about a government source(or sources?) leaking information from a classified CIA investigation to journalists.
Craig Murray, the former ambassador, didn't claim that phishing e-mails or other "hacks" never happened. He said that the information which was delivered to, and subsequently published by Wikileaks was an actual "leak" by a Democrat operative with inside information:
"The source of these emails comes from within official circles in Washington DC."
"WikiLeaks has never published any material received from the Russian government."
Of course the MSM won't include this information in their "news" coverage.
All the wonderful things that "government" has done for us... with OUR wealth!
None of those "government" services would be possible without people actually producing and providing valuable goods and services and creating the wealth which the government then confiscates to do all of these wonderful things.
You're really "willing" to pay for all this government stuff? How much do you pay in taxes above and beyond the absolute minimum amount that the government demands from you? If you think about it, you don't "willingly" pay taxes to fund any of these things. You pay taxes because you know that the government will use force against you if you refuse to pay up. Don't pay and they'll try to throw you in a cage. Resist being thrown in a cage, and they will kill you.
Yet you dare to suggest that this system based on extortion, coercion and the ever-present threat of violence is "civilization" whereas a system based on voluntary associations(libertarianism/anarcho-capitalismc) is "brutality"?
"opportunity and economic security for the many, or... the few."
In the USA, we have a federal government with an annual budget of over $4 TRILLION! The various state and local governments spend roughly another $3 trillion. Where's all of this "opportunity" and "economic security" that you're talking about? My impression is that "the many" are struggling under crushing debt burdens, working longer hours for less pay and are seeing increasingly fewer economic opportunities.
"....sets the precedent of the Feds dictating what rights states have to make their own laws..."
Unfortunately, that "precedent" has already been solidly established and reaffirmed time and time again. Look up the SCOTUS case of "Wickard v. Filburn"(a farmer can't grow wheat on his own property for his own use without fed interference because it affects the market price of wheat). Or check out "Raich v. Gonzales" (Under the commerce clause, the feds can criminalize marijuana even if it is produced, sold and consumed entirely within the borders of the state of California.)
The feds have long since subverted the Tenth Amendment and eroded State powers.
Slashdot Mirror
Throughout the entire Obama presidency, the administration has been absolutely paranoid about leaks and has cracked down on whistleblowers like no other administration in history.
Over the past few months, all this "Russian hacking" stuff has been dominating the mainstream media. In story after story, especially from sites like WaPo, reporters are always quoting "anonymous sources in government" or unnamed "intelligence officials" as their sources. These "sources" have obviously leaked numerous details of classified intelligence reports to the media, yet the Obama administration exhibits absolutely no concern whatsoever about these particular leaks.
If Snowden is a criminal for leaking classified information to the media, why isn't there a full scale government investigation to identify the people who are leaking this classified "Russian hacking" stuff to the media? Do we have any laws left which are enforced in a fair & uniform manner? A government which makes it a practice of enforcing laws arbitrarily is an illegitimate government.
The supply chain and the resources are far more critical than production. Your food still gets trucked in from rural areas. Your big cities, especially the ones in the West, also have vulnerable electrical grids because the power is delivered by a few main lines. i.e. it wouldn't take much sabotage to put many of you in the dark. Then, there are the places where water must be pumped in over great distances. A week-long supply chain and utility interruption and you city scum will be cannibalizing each other or fleeing into the countryside. And we have enough weapons and ammo to kill all of you 10x over.
Don't get into a pissing contest with rural America.
P.S.
Many of the big cities are near the oceans. If you believe all the dire "global warming" prognostications, what are you going to do when your cities are under water?
"Death Panel" is an inflammatory term, but it has a basis in fact. Any government-run medical system must limit the amount of goods and services provided. Otherwise, costs would quickly spiral out of control. People in such systems are put on wait lists and people on wait lists sometimes die before getting the services they need. Despite its many faults, the USA healthcare system can typically(except for transplants & such) administer goods and services "on demand".
Anyone who believes that a government healthcare system in the USA means "Everything stays the same except for prices" is utterly naive.
Government healthcare means that those in charge must make decisions to ration services and those decisions WILL result in the deaths of some people in the system. Is that a "death panel"? IMO, that term conjures up the wrong image, but I can see why people use it.
There are "fixed costs" and "marginal costs". You're considering only the latter and only the materials portion thereof. What about the wages and salaries, utilities, maintenance, packaging, shipping and other ongoing expenses?
Yes, after a company has done all the R&D, completed all the testing/trials, waded through the ocean of government red tape and built a manufacturing facility, the marginal cost of one additional unit might be small. However, the fixed cost of all the up-front investment has to be amortized over each unit produced.
And dare I suggest that a company needs to earn a profit in order to stay in business?
A high ranking intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, cited details of a classified government report which confirms without a doubt that hackers working on behalf of the Russian government, and personally supervised by Vladimir Putin, are conspiring to hack pacemakers in elderly Democrat-leaning USA voters to interfere with the 2018 elections.
http://monopoly-game.net/Class...
"The Bank never goes broke. If the Bank runs out of money, the Banker may issue as much as needed by writing on any ordinary paper."
The terms are actually more favorable than what you're proposing because the settlement isn't directly linked to the purchase of a different vehicle. The customers are entitled to a direct payment in the amount of the former NADA value of the cars, plus several thousand dollars in bonus cash. No strings attached.
My neighbor had one of these and he was really happy with the terms of the settlement. The annoying thing for him was that it took so long for it to be finalized.
Agreed that it's up to the person making the assertions to provide the evidence. I'm not going through the entire list, but the massaging of the data is real.
"Keep in mind that these data are subject to large adjustments"
http://berkeleyearth.org/under...
Instruments have been upgraded from mercury thermometers to digital sensors. The "scientists" claim that this introduces a cooling bias and adjust temperature upward. The time of day in which observations are made has changed. The "scientists" claim that this change also introduces a cooling bias, so another upward revision is made.
"Urbanization" (basically heat from pavement) creates a warming bias, etc. etc.
There are also certain "quality control" adjustments.
"If you plot the quality controlled data prior to the adjustments, the temperature record is mostly flat."
See figure #5 at the above URL
The adjustments in and of themselves are not proof of some grand conspiracy, but questioning the methodology used to massage the data is fair game for the skeptics.
I think the best way to answer the question would be to select some areas where you'd like to live and then spend some time searching for jobs in those areas.
I was searching for employment ~18 months ago, mostly in the Northeast USA. It definitely seemed like I was seeing a lot of jobs for embedded software developers. So many that I was toying with the idea of going back to school and acquiring some of the requisite skills.
"Norway is set to become the first nation to start switching off its FM radio network..."
How???
I've read read several articles and none of them describe the mechanism by which they will accomplish this. If it was only broadcasts by the state-owned "Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation" I could understand, but it seems like they're talking about all FM radio. It's not like they can just flip a switch and "turn off" part of the EM spectrum. Does it mean that the Norwegian government is going to make it illegal for anyone to do FM broadcasting?
This open source microcontroller has been around for 10+ years:
http://opencores.org/project,c...
This is truly "open source" because you can download the actual VHDL source files and compile them into your own chip design.
The article seems to be confusing a "printed circuit board"(PCB) with a "microcontroller". The author keeps referring to the "HiFive1" as a "microcontroller". It's not. It's a circuit board. The FE310 is the "microcontroller".
From the company website:
HiFive1 Features & Specifications
Microcontroller: SiFive Freedom E310 (FE310)
It looks like the Altium files are "open source", but Altium is PCB design software. I don't see a place where you can download the VHDL, Verilog source code or even a netlist and layout(e.g. a GDS file) of the actual FE310 microcontroller. That appears to be proprietary IP. I don't see how this is any more of an "open source" microcontroller than the Atmel or PIC chips.
IMO, the marginal cost isn't worth the marginal benefit. A regular Blu-Ray disc or HDTV broadcast with a decent TV and stereo is plenty of fun to watch. I enjoyed seeing "Mad Max: Fury Road" in the theater with 3D, It was cool to have flaming debris, electric guitars and auto wreck victims flying out of the screen. Yet, when I went back and watched it again in regular HD, I didn't feel deprived. I recognized some of the scenes as being different, but I didn't think that the film was somehow diminished for lack of the 3D effects. Definitely not enough of an enhancement to justify spending significantly more for my home theater.
"The fact that it wasn't fudged ..."
Bullshit.
I guess it depends on what you mean by "fudged". If you're claiming that the data sets being used by climate scientists are raw, non-adjusted data, then you're in denial. The data is definitely "fudged", but there are compelling reasons for this "fudging".
They have more than 100 years of temperature measurements from various weather stations around the world. Over that time period, most of the stations have been relocated numerous times. The early data were collected with mercury thermometers while later measurements were done with electronics. Stations have also changed the time of day at which they recorded the temperature readings. Areas around many stations have been gradually "urbanized" etc. etc.
The data sets are very deliberately adjusted/fudged to attempt to account for these differences. That doesn't necessarily mean there is some conspiracy going on to perpetuate a hoax, but questioning the methods used to do the fudging is entirely reasonable.
"as productivity increases, why haven't we just started having a shorter work week?"
Good question.
Since 1913, The Federal Reserve Bank and the U.S. federal government have pursued a relentlessly inflationary monetary policy. The resulting price increases rob wage laborers of their share of productivity gains. In a free market economy with a fair monetary system, productivity increases would naturally translate to lower prices(price deflation) and the wage laborer would be able to work fewer hours while still purchasing the same amount of goods and services.
Unfortunately, we've been collectively brainwashed into believing that deflation is the bogeyman which must be avoided and that inflation is somehow the natural, healthy state of the economy. The Fed openly states that 2% inflation is their goal. There is nothing "natural" about this. It is a very deliberate and malicious policy which has redistributed trillions of dollars in wealth (in terms of purchasing power) from the poor and middle class to the ultra rich.
Sarah Harrison from Wikileaks helped get Snowden out of Hong Kong and then helped keep him alive when he was stuck in the Moscow airport. Beyond that, I'm not sure. Snowden has said on multiple occasions that he didn't want to give his NSA data to Wikileaks because they publish things indiscriminately. He worked with reporters and asked them to use their discretion in publishing only what was newsworthy.
How can I be wrong when I said it was my opinion that the term should be used more narrowly?
"...a war between factions in the same country..."
In the OP's hypothetical scenario, hostilities have erupted before any legal separation, so I suppose there's an argument for using the term, even though separation is the goal. When The South legally seceded from the union however, it was no longer the same country, thus, according to that definition, the 1861-1865 conflict was not a "civil war".
I must disagree with the Wikipedia definition that includes: "war ... between two countries created from a formerly united state". Winners write the history books and apparently they author the Wikipedia articles too. If the Czech Republic and Slovakia went to war, would that be called a "civil war" as well? Think about Sudan. They fought two "civil wars" lasting 20+ years each, but then ended up splitting into two countries by a referendum in the South. If they started fighting again, would it be "civil war 3" or something else?
If the intervention of foreign powers changes a "civil war" into a !"civil war", I think the terminology becomes hopelessly confused. I've certainly never heard the Korean War referred to as "The Korean Civil War", even though there were no foreign powers involved in the beginning. The USA is arming & training rebels in Syria and the Russians are providing air support for the government, but it's still regularly referred to as "The Syrian Civil War".
To me, a war in which one faction is fighting for political and territorial independence seems very different than a war in which both factions are fighting to control a central government. So different that a single label feels imprecise. I'm only going to use "civil war" for the latter type of conflict.
That's one of the best /. analogies ever. Well done. We've even got the allegations of a third-party facilitating the coup.
Assuming that the objective of Hispanic forces in those states is to exit the USA and join Mexico, I would not call it a "civil war". IMO, the term "civil war" should be reserved for situations where two or more factions within a nation are fighting to seize power over the whole nation. By the same token, I refuse to refer to the 1861-1865 war in the USA as a "civil war" because the South was not trying to take over Washington DC, but simply to break away. Your scenario is very similar except for the aid of Mexican military forces.
I'd hope that the states in the Southwest would at least attempt to exit the USA by referendum or a vote of their state legislatures before initiating hostilities though. Hell, with Trump in power, you'd get millions of white English-speakers on the Hispanic side.
If I have an idea for creating encryption that's invulnerable(or extremely resistant) to attack by quantum computers, I'm going to the patent office not NIST.
"these folks ... want validation on their identity and the world as they see it."
"I use these computer products to find out what I need, not what I want."
Even if you think you're searching for what you "need", Google is trying hard to serve up what you "want". Do a search on "Are women better than men?". You'll see "Feminist Google"(what generation, I don't know) which is the exact same product as "Alt-Right Google". What you're really getting is "Validate my personal beliefs Google".
Everyone has a natural tendency to focus on information which confirms their existing beliefs and disregard evidence to the contrary. The difference is that some people are aware of the fact that their own minds operate this way while others naively consider themselves objective and are only able to see the phenomenon in "those folks".
"The evidence that the Holocaust happened is overwhelming."
Then why do they throw people in jail merely for attempting to question it?
When I first found out about laws that prohibit questioning the "official" version of history, I made it a point to seek out & read some of these illegal ideas. Comments from anti-semites on obscure websites aside, I never found a single source that claimed The Holocaust never actually happened. What they do is challenge portions of that "overwhelming" evidence and raise questions about exactly what happened.
This sort of thing is ubiquitous in historical writings. Read two or more accounts of the same historical events and you will find contradictions and disagreements. Still, all of the authors will present evidence supporting their ideas. It should be up to you, the reader, not a search engine, and certainly not a f***ing government, to weigh that evidence(even doubting its existence) and question the authors' conclusions and motives. IMHO, the fact that you can be imprisoned simply for questioning the "official" history on this subject should arouse a certain amount of curiosity and skepticism about the legally enshrined narrative.
Reading banned books can be enlightening even if they're bullshit.
Should the government use a proxy to do something that would violate the Constitutional Rights of U.S. citizens if done directly by government, legal precedent holds that it is still a violation. This has come up repeatedly in the context of evidence gathering.
As far as using dirty tricks to violate the Rights to free speech and peaceable assembly(among others) I'm sure the government wouldn't hesitate.
"There is obviously a keyboard brigade that is trying to suppress this news"
LOL This "news" has been coming through the MSM megaphone so loudly and so repeatedly that it's practically inescapable. How the hell can it possibly be "suppressed"?
What the keyboard brigade and a few non-mainstream news sources are suggesting is that information allegedly obtained from "anonymous sources" in the intelligence agencies doesn't amount to "proof" that the Russian government and Vladimir Putin personally conspired to influence the U.S. election. WaPo, NYT and NBC reporters supposedly have these sources who leak the conclusions of secret intelligence efforts, but they never bother to ask their sources pertinent questions like "HOW did you reach these conclusions?"
It's also strange that the Obama administration, which has been absolutely paranoid about leaks and whistleblowers, is willing to comment on this information, but is exhibiting no concern whatsoever about a government source(or sources?) leaking information from a classified CIA investigation to journalists.
Craig Murray, the former ambassador, didn't claim that phishing e-mails or other "hacks" never happened. He said that the information which was delivered to, and subsequently published by Wikileaks was an actual "leak" by a Democrat operative with inside information:
"The source of these emails comes from within official circles in Washington DC."
"WikiLeaks has never published any material received from the Russian government."
Of course the MSM won't include this information in their "news" coverage.
All the wonderful things that "government" has done for us ... with OUR wealth!
None of those "government" services would be possible without people actually producing and providing valuable goods and services and creating the wealth which the government then confiscates to do all of these wonderful things.
You're really "willing" to pay for all this government stuff? How much do you pay in taxes above and beyond the absolute minimum amount that the government demands from you? If you think about it, you don't "willingly" pay taxes to fund any of these things. You pay taxes because you know that the government will use force against you if you refuse to pay up. Don't pay and they'll try to throw you in a cage. Resist being thrown in a cage, and they will kill you.
Yet you dare to suggest that this system based on extortion, coercion and the ever-present threat of violence is "civilization" whereas a system based on voluntary associations(libertarianism/anarcho-capitalismc) is "brutality"?
"opportunity and economic security for the many, or ... the few."
In the USA, we have a federal government with an annual budget of over $4 TRILLION! The various state and local governments spend roughly another $3 trillion. Where's all of this "opportunity" and "economic security" that you're talking about? My impression is that "the many" are struggling under crushing debt burdens, working longer hours for less pay and are seeing increasingly fewer economic opportunities.
"....sets the precedent of the Feds dictating what rights states have to make their own laws..."
Unfortunately, that "precedent" has already been solidly established and reaffirmed time and time again. Look up the SCOTUS case of "Wickard v. Filburn"(a farmer can't grow wheat on his own property for his own use without fed interference because it affects the market price of wheat). Or check out "Raich v. Gonzales" (Under the commerce clause, the feds can criminalize marijuana even if it is produced, sold and consumed entirely within the borders of the state of California.)
The feds have long since subverted the Tenth Amendment and eroded State powers.