What a beautiful yarn that is.

And it illustrates very well how the needs of one is more important than the needs of the many.

Republican'ts, fuck yeah!

By "specific and immediate threats", I suppose he means the NSA itself?

Oh yes, I did see the irony.

Fight fire with fire, or in the case of arguing on the internet; “Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker's game because they almost always turn out to be—or to be indistinguishable from—self-righteous sixteen-year-olds possessing infinite amounts of free time.” --Neal Stephenson

It a losing game every time. Scratching it seems to stop the itch temporarily, but does make it worse in the long run.

It eludes me how a simple obnoxious twat of an AC can be able to pass the turing test so easily.

Maybe we should change the CAPTHCA system to include human and emphatic words like "Thanks", "Sorry", "Please" and so forth?
Surely that would trip up those subhumans.

You are one nasty Coward

From the "Same same, but (very) different" Dept. there is this little Kickstarter project:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/david-toledo/the-practical-meter-know-your-power

Actually, it is twofold, there's the "Practical meter", which shows how much power is drawn, and then there's the three tipped charging cable with built in circuits enabling a device to draw more power from sources that supports it.

Funny you should mention 1984.. As of late we're heading towards an Orwellian 1984 if you haven't noticed.

An other argument could be made that it is more likely to hurt and kill civilians than military. Civilians have less protective gear and less training using what little there is.

The UN could have been an organization to handle such matters.

Atleast until some mayor countries repeatedly have undermined their authority by acting on their own, blocking resolutions or acting against them. Thereby the UN has lost much of its legitimacy, unfortunately.

And here I thought McCarthy was dead, and McCarthyism with him. Seems people like to be paranoid.

These days it ain't the "extreme left" you should worry about son.

It must be horribly painful for you these days then, surfing the intarwebs, reading them bad grammars'stuff.

Atleast they don't lie about surveillance. They monitor you, and say so. Atleast in most cases.

I could tell you a couple of stories a journalist friend of mine working in Russia for many years has experienced, but then they'd have to kill me.

Thank you for actually pointing out there is a distinction between "the rebels" and "Al Queada", as a lot of people these days bunch them together. There might be several islamist organizations involved, but not all involved are islamists. The whole revolution started out with people in general being fed up with Assad as a dictator. Since then shit has deteriorated to a smoking heap of rubble. And in the case of the rebels and the islamists vs. Assad, I believe it's more of a case of "The enemy of my enemy is my friend"

Dang touch keyboard. So many errors.. Sorry!

"ex-cops" it should read in there somewhere.

Thing is, in international conflicts, lives are on the line every day. It's just whose lives are endangered that one side takes issue with.

Lives are also daily at stake in the more or less secret drone wars the US are waging around the world today. Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Jemen are some examples. Civilians get killed by US drone pilots fromthe other side of the planet.

I for one am happy the world is starting to get a look into US dealings in foreign affairs. Like hiw Norwegian wx-coos have been recruited by the US embassy in Oslo to spy on Norwegian citizens for the US.

No, the world clearly needs more Mannings' and Snowden's.

A little postscript: This time around it was the US that got busted, I'm hoping for similar leaks in the whole world. We need more transparancy.