I thought it was fairly clear what I meant, but as there is some confusion, to clarify: the above AC got it.

The UN had in-fact been around in the form of the league of nations, and they proved ineffective early on. The new setup of the UN was supposed to improve on this model but it hasn't really done so.

Karzai was elected fairly the first time, and the second time he would have been elected even without the fraud (the fact that he organised fraud shows how stupid he is) - given that he has dealings with the taliban, various warlords and pakistan, if he is our puppet then we are incredibly stupid for not picking someone who will actually listen to what we want. Secondly we dont murder civilians openly nor wantonly. If this was the case you would see corpses hanging outside of towns as warnings to others. The fact that the US army/airforce desperately tries to hide any civilian deaths tells you everything you need to know about what they think of openly murdering civilians. The fact that troops bitterly hate the rules of engagement which they say puts their lives in danger all to prevent civilian causalities shows its not done wantonly. Thirdly the US is not actually hated around the world. Why people believe this I dont know. And for that matter, for all the hatred of the US in the middle east, you only need to check the lines outside of the US consulates to see what people really think.

Well the issue was the Germany had issued orders for unrestricted submarine warfare, which at the time, was unheard of an considered an illegal act. Basically its the equivalent of the US going to a busy highway in Iraq and shooting up anyone who comes their way because it is also used for smuggling weapons to the insurgency. While they might advertise and all, they will still be blamed for any civilian casualties that occur and rightly so.

It merely removes them...

The irony here is that in this analogy working is the "windows" at 90% and the dole is the "alternative" rest.

Well the key is weather those failures = death or just failure. As far as I can see the soyuz ones have not resulted in the death of the crew (although one did result in 1 ground staff death +injuries)

Also, now they are a 1000 times their normal size.

While I agree with you about the requirement part for democracy - I think the Chinese government genuinely (for a value of genuine) believes that democracy is not the way to go for china. So don't expect them to actually help to process along, if the go down it will be kicking and screaming.

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64bit win7 user here - all games I have brought - even dos games (X-COM!) work fine from steam.

Why isn't this man in charge of everything!

I don't think real fish actually try to "recruit", they just want to hang our with other like fish and so a group forms. In a school of fish, no fish is actually leading, but each fish is paying attention to what the other fishes around are doing as well as to any external threats / obstacles. So what may be happening is that as the robot fish is trying to lead the other fish, the other fish are learning that the robo-fish is not actually turning due to anything important and are putting less weight (aka importance) onto its actions, hence it gradually decreases in its ability to lead. Since real fish neither recruit or lead its hard to compare results with real fishes.

Wouldn't be hard to distinguish it in an experiment. Whereas fish might move towards what they are curious about (and soon get bored of it as well), fish would move with the pack. I.e. when you see something interesting you stop and have a look at it etc - that is curiosity, when you cross the street in a crowd you are subconsciously adjusting your path to match those around you - that is pack behaviour. (crowd behaviour is one of the few cases where humans engage in pack-like behaviour, otherwise we dont do much herding).

I would hope he has the guts to follow the rule of law even when its not popular. If the courts decide that BP has to pay out then BP will be made to pay out, otherwise there is no point in having courts in the first place.

If the courts fail to achieve justice then its an argument to reform the way courts operate rather than not following the rule of law.