Your argument boils down to this: if a corporation risked the bee population for a profit, ended up killing them and causing hundreds of billions of dollars of damage and starvation, the bankrupt corporate husk that they leave behind could be sued. Eventually. Or if a company knowingly sold products that killed consumers, pretended publicly they didn't know about the risk, while privately they were fully aware, and as a result millions of people developed an addiction that led to their untimely deaths, the corporation should be punished financially for what amounts to slow motion murder.

It's truly a bizarre sense of justice that you believe in.

China is building the largest sustainable energy projects in the world with the fossil fuel energy they have left.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/26/china-invests-solar-power-renewable-energy-environment

When Bush was president and all of his little helpers kept telling everyone that there was nothing wrong with the market, how did denying reality end up helping anyone? I mean, besides postponing the inevitable to hang the albatross on the next administration.

...our growth is almost entirely based on the use of oil for transportation, new materials, pesticides, fertilizers, construction equipment, etc, etc, etc. It's going to be messy when it starts to run dry.

Yes, what an amazing solution. After a large portion of your population dies from starvation, you can sue the bankrupt pesticide company and get a check ten years down the road.

Hooray libertarianism!

His version of the Iraq War? That the United States

1) Manufactured intelligence about WMDs
2) Ignored all international inspectors who said there were no WMDs
3) Kicked the inspectors out so they could have their war
4) Lied to the American people about the cost and length of war, with Rumsfeld publicly stating that it won't last "much longer" than 5 months or cost more than 50 to 60 billion dollars
5) Ended up torturing Iraqis in the same prisons where Saddam did his dirty work
6) Pretended that we hadn't supported Saddam right through his worst atrocities in the 80s, including supplying him with "dual use" technology to wage a war with Iran that killed a million people and
7) Removing Iraq from the State sponsors of Terror list in 1982 so US firms could also sell him biological weapons to kill Kurds with

If you were born in Germany in 1920, you would have died wearing a belt buckle that read "GOTT MIT UNS." Blind fealty to the flag is fucking pathetic.

It's because there are idiots out there known as "libertarians" who believe that emasculating the government will solve everything. They are just as fucking wrong as utopian communists.

A transparent market is an amazing thing, but unfortunately, a market desires to be opaque in order to increase profits. Unless you have a strong and largely uncorrupted government to continue providing transparency, you don't have a market. You have a conspiratorial oligopoly that will risk destroying entire ecosystems to push up quarterly profits.

Terrorism is also threatening to blow people up just because you can. It's also threatening economic sanctions or embargoes if certain ultimatums are not satisfied. By this measure, the United States government is the largest and best funded terrorist organization in the world.

There are a variety ways we express it: an private diplomatic threat, a publicly implied threat, an threat of economic sanctions through the UN (while we ignore UN resolutions against us), military "exercises", CIA coups, and of course, the outright invasions and public threats of invasion.

America is like the local mafia that you have to do business with, or else you could end up like that guy down the street.

They're not conservative or liberal. They're authoritarian, just like Stalin.

Sure, if you want to go back to before the Revolution communism meant something else, but I'm not trying to convince an academic in some paper. I'm trying to convince a citizen that they're seriously fucking up the whole concept of democracy and the importance of freedom of expression.

Step away from this "left versus right" thing. In reality, what difference is there between Communism and Fascism? Does it make a difference whether a small elite group rules the state which rules commerce, or whether a small elite group rules commerce which rules the state? What if that group is an enlightened oligarchy, or a backwards junta? I suppose you could make a very weak argument that intellectual genocide has more merit than ethnic genocide, but I wouldn't agree. They are both two sides of the same coin: murder to create order.

The measurements of government cannot be drawn on a line graph. Even Canada has been waging it's war on personal freedom through the suppression of drug use, which is the very definition of totalitarianism: prosecuting someone for exercising personal freedom.

From his Inaugural address, formatted for clarity. Notice how many times he uses the word "peace" and how he describes that we should have "honest friendship with all nations".

Paypal and Amazon both gave in to US government pressure to eliminate their services to WikiLeaks. Since WikiLeaks depends on internet presence and donations to exist, it's no different than cutting the power to a house. In this case, it signaled to any other internet provider that they would no longer be friends to the US government, which per the norm, acts like a local mafia boss in enforcing its will in the neighborhood.

The United States differs from other States only in that it does not overtly tell someone to shut up. It threatens charges. It stays quiet while members of it's government and celebrity punditry call for assassination. It sends a few spooks around to anyone connected with you. It's a base form of terrorism, and differs from the KGB only in that it has to look like an accident if they decide to eliminate you. They like plausible deniability because the miserable pro-authoritarian sycophants like you can pretend that those things don't happen, and you'll continue to support the government regardless of how badly they ignore the laws they are supposed to be following.

Take a look at the latest Nobel Peace Prize winner, Liu Xiaobo. What is the effective difference of the Chinese government throwing him in prison, and the US leaning on Sweden to bring back trumped up charges so Assange could be detained while they build a bullshit case to do the same thing? We just have better PR.

Honestly, you're fucking pathetic. You are everything that is wrong with democracy today, because you don't even know what freedom of speech is, or why it's important. I hope you end up in the society you dream of, protesting the latest corporate takeover of your publicly funded infrastructure from your "Free Speech Zone" like the coward you are in order to keep what little freedom they decide to let you keep for the time being.

It is I, Ellison of Larry.

I am communicating from my iPad device on my yacht, which is constructed out of the carcasses of a thousand dead corporations. As I recline on my chaise-lounge and ponder your meaninglessness as I wait for the completion of my moon base, I want to assure you that the rumors stating that the turnip is almost dry are simply untrue. I have rebranded it as Oracle Turnip and raised the price by 10,000% for all of our hapless clients who are locked into the platform. Everything will be just fine.

Signed,
The One who is more magnificent than your greatest conception of God

Either Assange is subject to US law or he isn't. If he is, he should be protected by the First Amendment. If he isn't, then they have no legal right to prosecute him.

All of the idiots who want to temporarily suspend the law to punish one person always forget that it could be their turn sooner than they think. And, frankly, I'd rather not continue to establish the precedent that the world's most powerful country gets to arrogantly ignore international law and kidnap people to kill or torture them. In fifty years, it could be someone else putting hoods over US citizens who dare to mention the truth in public.

Sorry bro. Mubarak, Musharraf, Karzai, all buddy buddy with the United States. If Ahmadinejad would follow orders, he'd be our buddy too.

It's an excellent cross reference to see what's really going on in any country on that list. If the US suddenly gives a shit about the Congo, check the news. The mine they rely on is now under threat. If next door there are millions of people being hacked to death with machetes, and we don't care, check the list. There is no useful resource we are exploiting. It's to illustrate that the United States does not operate on principle, but on self-interest, as every state does.

Unfortunately, Assange seems to be overplaying his hand. His only way out of prison time is to reveal something truly new and corrupt enough to get world outrage focused on the United States instead of himself. Then he will have the international support he needs to stay a free man.

He's either building up to this moment, or his arrogance has done him in.

Actually, another tactic may be that he's forcing them to breach the poison pill contract he has established. If he gets picked up and releases the encrypted file keys, it could unleash holy terror worldwide as all of the information they have redacted so far is suddenly unleashed. If there's enough in there to cause a slew of double agents to be exposed internationally, then he'll again have a better chance of staying alive if not free, and he will have collapsed the covert policies that have been running the world since the 20th Century.