No chance. The cancer is so much out of control that killing it will kill the host.

Consider the magnitude of the task:

You have civilizational system which is leading humanity to a very bad place. If you try to tear the system down many [most?] will not survive. AT the same time within the system you have the following groups of people [in light of the discussion topic, not that there are generally 4 types of people you understand].
One - the greatest benefactors from the system - these people will spend any amount of energy and resource to keep the system going and convince everyone in the false dichotomy "our way or the highway". Those people control almost every leverage in society - media, politics, religion, business, armies, police, WMD, everything....
Two - the [common] people who swallowed the bait [how was the saying - hook, line and sinker?] of the system and will defend it with their lives. That is brilliant - pitching one group of slaves against the other. I have heard from such people that even reforming the banking system is "going back to the caves"?!?! They truly believe we [humanity] are doing it right and the only thing needed is....you know... to push a bit harder and it would work [definition of insanity - keep doing again and again that which obviously does not work].
Three - people who feel things are wrong but do not know the reasons or what exactly is wrong due to ignorance or lack of true data [or both]. It ain't easy to find your way in the endless propaganda and lies about the state of humanity and the true nature of our socioeconomic system. Not easy at all!!
Four - people who more or less have figured it out - a tiny minority, whose voices are drowned in the noise of the propaganda and the orthodoxy of the people from category 2.

We need to reform the system and change some of its most basic assumptions and goals, yet to achieve the good will for that we need people to understand that the system is damaging us. How will they understand [see above]. And again to repeat - catastrophic collapse is not an [sensible] option - too many will die.

I don't want someone to tell me the exact way to change the system. That will happen by itself if the people stop supporting and believing in the system. Just tell me how to show the truth to the majority of the people and increase the number of people in category 3 and 4.

Mission impossible?

http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_...

This was enlightening...

And how is this different than any other "developed" nation? Sure, the US has taken "everything is for sale" to an absurd level [politics and religion are also for sale there, let alone mere science] but the plague is spreading everywhere else too...

There is nothing to be done about it. All the advices to scientists to do this or that in order to improve the image and raise awareness are stupid, because we are not fighting people's ignorance here. No, we are fighting propaganda supported by immensely powerful entities. If we want to beat them we [the scientists] must become like them [an organization with concrete goals, agendas, propaganda tools ect.] and then....we will loose because the organization itself will become corrupt and turn against us. Scientists cannot/should not go down that road....

No, it's Apple. When it comes to marketing they are the king....and the first against the wall when the revolution comes :)

Then why are they [the humpbacks] not bouncing back? The PR departments of today [especially outside tech] are not exactly small!

virtually any other country? Read on...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...

During the Second World War, unlike some other allies of Nazi Germany and most German-occupied countries, apart from Denmark and Finland, Bulgaria managed to save its entire 48,000-strong Jewish population from deportation to concentration camps, with Dimitar Peshev, leaders of the Bulgarian Church, Tsar Boris, and ordinary citizens all playing a crucial role in preventing such deportations. The story of the Bulgarian Jews during the War has been told in "Beyond Hitler's Grasp: The Heroic Rescue of Bulgaria's Jews"[7] by Michael Bar-Zohar, an Israeli historian, politician and former Knesset member who was born in Bulgaria.

I always viewed it this way: IF there is a significant number of intelligent life forms out there, then more likely than not we are "common", i.e. likely to be "in the middle of the distribution". Therefore I am a [skeptical] carbon jingoist. Also, it seems that intelligence requires certain level of complexity of the physical carrier and not many chemical elements can give rise to vast numbers of complex compounds - the mighty carbon beats them all. Due to historical reasons in my language we call the carbon "vaeglerod" which means "giving birth to coal". I always thought it should be called "zivorod" , i.e. "giving birth to life"...

Wipe them out! All of them...

[OK, I know this is from the prequels that never got made, sorry!]

Is that you, mister Buttel/Tuttle?

Explain to me why spying on, say, Angela Merkel or the entire Copenhagen or G20 summits is related to US national security and maybe I'll see your point.

Because when your only aim is "winning", whatever the fuck that means, there are no friends; everyone is a potential enemy. When you have decided to maintain global dominance, everyone is an enemy, including you own citizens.

One of the most dangerous conditions known to medicine - prolonged lack of proper sleep increases the risks of developing depression and psychosis apart from the other detrimental effects [which are many].

Sleep deprivation is a method of torture that leads eventually to insanity.

But don't worry, fellow Americans - your insanity is spreading fast around the world. Our brave leaders, here in Europe, work around the clock [with apparent lack of sleep - see symptoms above] to implement every detrimental [to humans and society] system and method disguised as "increased efficiency" and "cutting costs".

And here too, the new generation is brainwashed to accept all this as normal. "Work harder and we will make it" - yhea, right. Work harder under artificial, manipulative and downright abusive financial system which can delete your life [together with your hard work] in a second? Work harder when the rules of the game are not what they are professed to be? Work harder so that 0.1% of the wealth you actually produced trickles down to your ever shrinking middle class budget? Work harder and we will increase your children tuition fees by 100%. Work harder and will keep on increasing the costs of living [energy, housing, food, water, education, health care] with a rate that outpaces the increase in your income by factor of 2 or more?

I don't mind working and I do like to do many things. I love to feel appreciated and I love the thought that I am contributing in my own way to my life and the whole of humanity. But I do not accept to be a hamster in wheel who has to run ever faster [shortening my life in the process] in order to stand still [or go backwards as it happens in the last decade].

People, we have to stop this insanity and the first step is to realize that we are manipulated into "camps" so that we keep on fighting each other. Reading the discussions about such topics I notice that at least half of the population has bought into the scam and will defend the system with their lives. I do not see any way how this can be changed. I have spent years trying to convince a handful of people to look a bit further than the next meal without substantial success. And I am bloody good when it comes to talking and convincing people.

Any ideas?

Why is your comment not at +5 Insightful is beyond understanding....

Signed: an ex-teacher with huge passion for the job and very similar experiences as yours

The whole discussion is very interesting; I still want to try to understand why the crime rates are going down [very admirable development to be sure].

It seems to me that [in the US] there is negligible effort to address the socioeconomic reasons for crime. What we are usually told by scientists about the relation between crime and society is in the lines of more equality, supremacy of the law, honest business relations, good education, health care and social nets etc. does often contradict the very fundamentals of US society. So, meaningful change in society is unlikely reason for the decreased crime no matter how complicated those relations could be. Add to that the lobbing by the prison industry [if half of what I read in respectable source is true, well, I am speechless] which apparently unable to cope with decreased demand makes it so that lesser and lesser crimes are given prison time and new crimes are invented all the time, and it seems to me that the climate as a whole encourages crime [the media's role is a whole huge load of Dingo's kidneys, that I am too revolted to talk about].

But crime decreases.

My personal last straw to grasp for is biochemistry. Could it be as fundamental as that? I have heard stated few times that decrease in pollution might be a contributor. Lead gets mentioned often. Certainly during the period of wild use of lead the US must have had the most vehicles per capita on the planet. The wealthiest and most-industrialized country at the time. Maybe someone has more knowledge to share. Anyway, that is where I'd look for an explanation. And if the socioeconomic reasons are too complex to understand or too difficult to measure looking at chemistry might be the only option. If nothing else, so we could rule it out [or not].

I say we EMP the whole site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure!