"D...R...I...N...K..."

I assume I'm not alone in thinking if you order a communications device on-line, there is a slight non-zero chance of it being intercepted during shipment and tampered with by various TLAs.

Of course, I think the odds of this happening is still dependent on who you are. Say, for example, a Guardian journalist with a company-issued laptop.

I firmly believe this is why the GCHQ methodically destroyed certain specific areas within their laptops (not just the hard drives): they were obliterating the components they had tampered with during the initial shipment from the factory.

Funny thing about wealth: it accumulates as you age - usually well past the age you still have kids and possibly even grandkids in primary school. This assumes that any of them even _went_ to mere public schools in the first place. But the one-percenters and the upper-upper middle class are the first to complain endlessly about property taxes being too high: the very people who _won't_ be directly affected by shitty schools are the chief architects of their demise.

While it is very probably true, where is the proof that Wikileaks is right about it being Afghanistan? Show me ole' JA isn't just pulling this out of his ass to get a little limelight back from an honorable man that *has* vetted documentation.

Concorde's main problem was that the USA took against it out of spite, because they didn't like to be beaten in aerospace technology.

Not to mention the unfounded and cruel rumours the Yanks spread about so-called 'sonic booms'.

Exactly. Had they been around, McVeigh would have probably headed up the Tea-Bagger Terr^H^H^H^H Patriot Militia.

Keep communitizing the communities with community-based tools, Jono!

Guaranteed Friday night / Saturday morning cloud cover.

Actually there are a lot of things that could benefit just by being properly funded by taxes.

Principally, properly funding investigations and prosecutions of corporations and one-percenters hiding their filthy lucre offshore.

This is in response to the DOJ announcement of indictments against named Chinese military / governmental officials for IP theft and espionage. The Chinese temper-tantrum is just beginning.

"The odds of using a gun to defend yourself are statistically tiny. But the odds of getting liquored-up and shooting Mom over an argument about the pot roast are rather high."

I know of civilian workers at a state hospital (basically the only real employer in town) that are forced thru scanning machines at the beginning and end of their shifts, treated no differently than criminals. It wouldn't surprise me if these kind of machines are being used - and the images of the women surreptitiously recorded by the pigs that man them (not to mention the long-term health effects of the daily cooking sessions).

Few people are more hated in Red States than public employees just trying to eke out a living for their low-income families.

I expect to see them on Shark Tank.

I also love that they changed the name from the British Dragon's Den to Shark Tank, because - what - too satanic sounding for middle America?

Wow; that *is* cruel and unusual punishment.

Stop being imperialist, corporate dicks on the international stage (including propping up tin pots du jour just for stinking profits). This will never happen.

"Avoid foreign entanglements (including Israel)." -- George Washington