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Comment There is no such thing as 'objective media'. (Score 5, Insightful) 431

Even if they try their best to do this. Every article, blog post, every news program always reflects point of view of whoever created this content. Even if such person tries his/hers best to be as objective as possible, it is impossible to avoid bias.

The only truth is what you see yourself which is of course impossible for practical reasons. The second best approximation is to snort though raw footage and original materials. This is very time consuming task and it is also impractical for anyone who is not a professional investigative journalist.

This brings us to preprocessed and prepackaged information spewed by either mainstream or alternative media. What works for me is to assume that they all have a lot of spin in their content and that every spin doctor uses at least partially true arguments supporting his/her position at first, is quiet about arguments contrary to his/her position and resorts to lies and fabrications only if all other alternatives fail. So I'm trying to read arguments of all adversary sides (US media, european media, russian media, chinese media, iranian media) and then use my head to sort out things - pretty much 'Scherlock style' deduction. Unfortunately this requires some time and effort, which most of people do not want to expend.

Very unpleasant thing about this is that western media perform very poorly in this regard, especially since run-up to Iraq war. I attribute this to general situation and 'lack of good arguments' on western side - which directly correlates to our latest economic (2008 crash and afterwards) and social (rise of police state) troubles. We now see things going from bad to worse: UK blocking PressTV, UK government forcing Guardian to destroy its computers, now UK PM threatening all newspapers if they do not obey his demands. The same in the US: Obama prosecuting and jailing more than twice as many whistleblowers as all his predecessors combined, US blocking RT, huge assault on journalists, with some of them propably murdered by government thugs to silence and send a message (Michael Hastings). We are certainly not better in this regard than government controlled eastern media and I suspect we might even crossed point of no return in our way have only to strictly controlled, totalitarian media spewing nothing but lies and propaganda.

Comment Call it a "natural process" (Score 2) 321

Wireless wiretaps started around 10 years ago and now your lovely government starts using them as as Kafka style "evidence". Who needs this pesky "proper" evidence after all. Two years ago Obama, (in typical, cowardly way - on New Year Eve), signed NDAA that contains sections 1021 and 1022 that allow government thugs to jail citizens at whim and keep locked them indefinitely in military facilities without evidence and without access to court. Who needs this pesky judge after all. Guess when (NOT 'if') your ruling class will start using it in large scale against citizens they don't like. Countdown has started, folks.

Comment So called "justice" in so called "free country" (Score 1) 622

US of A is almost there. Wait for economic situation deteriorate a bit more, supply of 3-rd world countries still having something to steal dry out (a.k.a "bring democracy - US style"), US public image to deteriorate enough to not be worth defending and you'll see US government hand in hand with US corporations exterminating its own citizens just to steal their belongings. The only thing that keeps US thugs from doing this is publicity. Given current situation, rapidly deteriorating economic situation and rapidly deteriorating public image of USofA around the world, it is only matter of time. Until things won't change radically, which - given Obama administration busy codifying Bush' transgressions, killing its own citizens abroad and jailing its own domestic critics and journalists - won't happen soon.

Comment New "traditional" energy source (Score 2, Interesting) 140

There was something called "focus fusion" that utilized boron-hygrogen fusion but I'm not sure it did work out well. Regardless, I'm less and less confident if it makes sense. Solar cells and wind turbines are becoming cheaper every year and have passed nuclear energy cost (in $/kWh) some time ago (was it 2010? I don't remember...). Like computers, those devices are becoming cheap commodity and are on their way to take carbon in terms of dollars per kWh. In other worlds, renewables (along with smart grids and energy conservation techniques) are on their way to become new "traditional" energy sources. Bucky Fuller was right after all: nuclear energy (in all its forms) is only marginally better than fossil fuels, renewables take the play to whole new level. We've just missed it for some time because fossil was too cheap (to be frank - partly thanks to stealing fossil fuels from 3-rd world countries by western powers)

Having said that, it does not mean we shouldn't do any research in this area. Basic research is THE basis of achievements of our civilization but please call spades the spades. Don't think it will magically solve our energy problems but there is a chance it will become breakthrough in many ways we don't expect.

Comment Modern corruption. (Score 4, Insightful) 298

It is not about stupidity. It is about control. Obama is a sockpuppet for his corporate sponsors. He does not have his views, he just reads all this crap from his teleprompter and signs whatever his corporate sponsors want him to sign. That's all. After ending his silly presidency, he'll have his well paid, warm chair in Goldman Sachs, Apple or some other corrupt corporation. He'll have his speeches paid $500'000 a pop. Just like Bill Clinton or Tony Blair.

You see, staying in office isn't an end in itself for modern politicians. It is merely an interim position in their quest of getting insanely rich. Their carreer begins AFTER they get out of office and stays until they collect few hundred milions dollars or so. Staying in office for entire life like those pesky congressmen do is so old school.

Comment Not all parts of your lovely govt are shut down (Score 2) 193

Despite shutdown US decided to extend military training program for syrian terrorists (err ... "rebels") stating that only "moderate rebels" are being trained that is propably yet another of its never ending stream of lies. FOMC is still peddling cheap money to stock markets, so all those Wall Street parasites calling themselves "investors" receive their checks. It's funny as they're just recipients of yet another government giveaway, albeit conceived a noth as instead of directly receiving government money, they're "earning" it from financial markets massively pumped by government via FOMC and similiar mechanisms. Call it socialism for rich people.

In short, two most important functions of US government today - that is funding wars and Wall Street bankers - are alive and kicking.

Comment Re:Where's the Samsung fanboys now? (Score 0) 201

I tried to a film on deaths in Samsung factories I've seen a while ago on YouTube. It was virtually impossible. Only after I've found this on al-Jazeera pages, I was able to type in exact title and it showed up. Call me a tin foil hater but I suspect this is a modern form of censorship. Those fucks from Google are censoring bad stories on Samsung.

As much as I hate Apple and Microsoft for their business practices, I'm more and more confident that all of them are almost the same. They're all scourge of modern times. Both Google and Samsung aren't much better than Apple or M$. Googlers will sell you out to NSA in a heartbeat (albeit M$ seems to be always the first to do this). Samsung will exploit you to death in their factories.

I'm more and more confident that favorizing ones above others does not make sense. Getting rid of all of them is propably the way to go. No one needs a newest shiny gadget every few months after all. There are so many interesting things to do instead looking into a smartphone all the time.

Submission + - Snowden Strikes Again: NSA Mapping Social Connections of US Citizens (nytimes.com)

McGruber writes: The New York Times is reporting (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/us/nsa-examines-social-networks-of-us-citizens.html) on yet another NSA revelation: for the last three years, the National Security Agency has been exploiting its huge collections of data to create sophisticated graphs of some Americans’ social connections that can identify their associates, their locations at certain times, their traveling companions and other personal information.

  The NSA can augment the communications data with material from public, commercial and other sources, including bank codes, insurance information, Facebook profiles, passenger manifests, voter registration rolls and GPS location information, as well as property records and unspecified tax data, according to the documents. They do not indicate any restrictions on the use of such “enrichment” data, and several former senior Obama administration officials said the agency drew on it for both Americans and foreigners.

In a memorandum, NSA analysts were told that they could trace the contacts of Americans as long as they cited a foreign intelligence justification. That could include anything from ties to terrorism, weapons proliferation or international drug smuggling to spying on conversations of foreign politicians, business figures or activists. Analysts were warned to follow existing “minimization rules,” which prohibit the NSA from sharing with other agencies names and other details of Americans whose communications are collected, unless they are necessary to understand foreign intelligence reports or there is evidence of a crime. The agency is required to obtain a warrant from the intelligence court to target a “U.S. person” — a citizen or legal resident — for actual eavesdropping.

Comment This gives you a peek into their mentality (Score 3, Informative) 372

So now we know Keith Alexander is a grandiose narcissist. This is who we are forced to give all our secrets to "for the greater good". We are spied by a bunch of psychopaths. Don't expect anything good coming ouf of it. Expect misery, blood, terror and tears - this is the only thing you can expect from psychopaths wielding so much power as Keith Alexander does.

Comment Monarchies are the worst forms (Score 0, Offtopic) 212

I don't know who created this bunk theory. Wanna see how monarchies work ? See Saudi Arabia. They sell almost as much oil as Russians do, or soviets did. Yet, soviets, with all their crappy, inefficient system, were able to finance huge social security, huge army and lots of other things with their oil money. Maybe not a good things to do, yet Saudis don't even do that. Their petrodolars are used to finance lavish lifestyles of their aristocracy (while rest of their society live in poverty), purchases of ultra-expensive military equipment, US bonds and so called "investments" - in other words, recycling earned petrodollars back into westen economies. Their feudalistic system is terribly inefficient, even compared to very inefficient soviet system, let alone to any other (relatively sane) economy in the world. You see, lack of progress in medieval Dark Ages are directly related to reign of absolute monarchies and feudalism. We've started getting out of medieval darkness mainly because in renesance, power of kings ceased to be absolute.

Comment It's called globalization. (Score 4, Insightful) 328

As globalization is (mostly) perceived in business and financial spheres (big corporations becoming supranational), lots of other aspects are moving along with this process, including bad ones: spying and security apparatus becoming global, tax enforcement becoming global, propaganda apparatus is becoming global (eg. news media in Poland producing basically the same crap and lies as US media about latest Syria debacle). Opression apparatus is also becoming global. Nation states are becoming obsolete, surpassed by moneyed interests. Politicians all around the world are propably blackmailed by NSA/GCHQ/8200 aparatchics who in turn are taking orders from big business bozos. This is why we see such fiascos as latest Obama &Kerry blunder. Not Obama nor Kerry are so stupid to make such suicidal mistakes - someone is firmly holding them by the balls. Exceptions to this rule (that is, not taking orders from NSA boys) are mercilessly pounded in our "objective" media (Putin being prime example) and their countries attacked from various angles and often outright invaded (see Libya, now Syria).

Dark times ahead, folks. With democratic processes basically defunct - at least as defined in traditional terms of national states, truly global backlash and exposing those fucks like Snowden or Greenwald are the our only hope of reversing our quick slide to (new) dark ages. This is serious, folks. It's not about principles (as our media whores try to convince us), it's about survival. It's about ordinary people NOT being crushed by multinationals and NOT becoming serfs in neo-feudal age. We need a thousand Greenwalds and two thousands Snowdens.

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