Pure nonsense? Really, you embarrass yourself.

There isn't the slightest chance that smoking something might increase your risk of cancer? Welcome to the 1950s. Would you like a job at Marlboro? I hear they're looking for doctors like you, to reassure the public about all this "smoking causes cancer" nonsense that so-called "scientists" have been spreading around.

But actually cancer is probably the least of your worries if you are regularly smoking weed. Here is some medical evidence that you do not want to see.

In that particular conflict, neither side was especially likable. Both revolutionary and radical, not particularly civilised, and both with their own "Anonymous" army.

The best approach would have been to avoid involvement if at all possible. And if that was not possible (for example, if I were Spanish and living in a conflict zone) then my "side" would have been chosen for me.

Anonymous are worse than the WBC.

On the one hand we have this fairly hateful little cult that goes around upsetting people, apparently for religious reasons. On the other hand, we have another hateful little cult which also goes around upsetting people, apparently for fun. Sorry, "lulz".

The difference? We know who WBC are. We know where they are and who their leader is. This makes them better than Anonymous, because they operate in the open. If the WBC commits a crime, then they can (and will) be arrested. And if you have a reason to sue the WBC, then you can.

Hell, even the Church of Scientology is better than Anonymous. Same reasons. CoS may be a creepy cult, but again, it's all out in the open. The key thing is that CoS and WBC can be forced to take responsibility for bad things they might do. It is the same for all normal, civilised people.

With Anonymous, there's nothing to applaud. They are not activists or protesters, any more than the KKK were. They are bullies, operating under the cover of anonymity which frees them from responsibility for their actions. They are an exclusively destructive force: there is no positive achievement of Anonymous.

Anyone siding with them here should carefully consider their position. Association with Anonymous, even defending them here, will turn out to be to their disadvantage in the future. The organisation will not only be thoroughly discredited, but also shown to be thoroughly evil in nature: capable only of destruction. The mass media will not need to invent anything to do this, just as it was not necessary to invent anything about Nazism to discredit the Nazis. Pure presentation of the facts will be enough. Everyone would be well advised to have nothing whatsoever to do with Anonymous, because such involvement will certainly be regretted in the future.

Then why wish for the liberals to exploit your fears?

Ah, I think I get it. You wish they were actually liberal - that their campaigning concerned things that actually mattered, rather than the sort of thing that's easy to change. Fair enough.

This is absolutely true. Actually, the Arabs don't care about Israel very much at all, and have certainly never celebrated attacks on Israel or the US, its sole Western supporter. The guys with sign boards saying things like "Death to Israel!" and "Drive them into the Sea" are in fact Jewish actors hired by Mossad to justify Israeli aggression against the Middle East. What you think is "the streets of Iran" is in fact a blue-screen television studio in the basement of a government building in Tel Aviv. Why, even the so-called "Hamas" is actually a false flag operation operated by Mossad, which fires rockets into Israel on a regular basis to stir up hate. The Israelis want us to believe that they're fighting for their own survival against aggressive enemies on all sides, but we all know the truth: that they started it and then made it look like their enemy did it.

Except (of course) all of the above is total bollocks. But it's amazing how mainstream those Zionist Conspiracies have become lately, isn't it? How people are willing to believe anything, no matter how retarded, if it justifies their hatred of Israel.

Right, and it's quite easy to be afraid that one group (the Republicans) will be worse than another (the Dems). There will be more wars, more people in prison, etc. So, your fears are being exploited, so that you'll vote one way rather than the other. You'll put up with bad behavior from the Democrats on the grounds that the other lot would be worse.

(Sorry, my previous attempt at making this point was two paragraphs longer than it needed to be.)

Are these really the things you are afraid of, though? Your sig would suggest otherwise. I get the impression that you are much more afraid of patriotism and religious faith.

Aren't you worried about the establishment of a Christian theocracy under President-for-Life Palin? Complete with outlawing of abortion, a total ban on even mentioning evolution, mandatory prayers in schools, death penalty for gay people and atheists, all Americans to be forced to drive SUVs, that sort of thing?

I think if you had a choice between voting for some Dems who will definitely keep the potheads in jail and probably won't do anything about over-reaching police powers, or voting for some Republicans who might possibly turn out to be a Christian version of the Taleban, you'd go for the Dems every time. And the reason for that is fear. You're more afraid of the Republicans than you are of the Democrats; and that's because your fears have been exploited.

(By the way, I don't support any of these people. I'm not even American. But if I were, I don't think I'd bother voting.)

He would make an awesome President and we all know it.

Suppose that Vader wishes to reform the healthcare industry. Does he allow obstructive senators, bureaucrats and insurance industry CEOs to stand in his way? No, and it doesn't take many crushed tracheas to get what he wants. "I find your lack of support disturbing."

And everything else: perhaps you would like to explain to Vader why oil is leaking into the Gulf and union regulations prevent a proper cleanup? Or maybe you'd like to tell Vader that his plans to close Guantanemo aren't possible. Or that the warrantless wiretap programme can't be abolished like he asked. Contrast this with the non-achievements of the Rebel Alliance, who are good at promising and very bad at doing. Quite how they managed to win the war against the Sith is still a mystery...

I'm not sure that Slashdot has ever been neutral about certain topics. But the inconsistency can be annoying. If the Bombay High Court had ruled that Climatology was "a time-tested science", I doubt we'd hear any sarcastic remarks at all. And there are certainly a few similarities between Astrology and Climatology, as in:

True; but that's actually a different case of the same rule: if the citizens form a mob that is sufficiently powerful that it can make the laws, then it becomes the government. It is tough for citizens to become more powerful than professional soldiers with real weapons - but the military might join the rebellion...

Their dialup capacity is probably 99% idle these days. Might as well offer it for something.

Speaking of paranoia, I wonder if the Egyptian telcos have any way to log callers to that number? I wonder if they might ever be persuaded to hand over the logs to the authorities.

Indeed, it's important not to confuse law and morals. But piracy advocates do this all the time. For instance, on OS News, Thom Holwerda cannot resist mentioning that "downloading is perfectly legal in The Netherlands and many other European countries", a matter he has mentioned before. He says this as the ultimate answer to any question about whether piracy is right or wrong. But heating on your wife is also legal in The Netherlands, and that doesn't make it right.

Also, the view that file sharing is moral, and attempts to stop it are immoral, are actually quite contentious. I refer you to Slashdot user "Cliffski", an independent game designer whose games have been widely pirated, because he has the opposite view. To him, sharing without permission is immoral, along with the attitude that excuses and permits it. I find it difficult not to see his point.

Not just some "one-world government". Any government.

Human rights declarations always have a term in them that says "the government can suspend this when it wants to". For example, the ECHR's article 2 prohibits the death penalty, but provides an exception for "action lawfully taken for the purpose of quelling a riot or insurrection."

But then, this is probably for the best, because as citizens, subjects or (more accurately) peasants, we have basically no power to oppose the government at all. The idea that some magical charter or declaration has granted us "rights" that save us from tyranny is laughable, a fool's hope for the gullible. The laws are always made by those who can enforce them, and we should always remember this. The ECHR does a great service by putting it in writing.

It seems we're in agreement on the most crucial point, specifically the need to discriminate between the "genuinely poor and those who are taking the piss". On this matter you are on exactly the same page as myself and the DM readers. That's not an insult, because the Mail is capable of occasionally being right, and sometimes it is one of the few places where you can read the inconvenient truths that no "respectable" newspaper will print.

The place where we differ is that I think there is a lot of piss taking. How could it be otherwise? An incompetent bureaucratic system of the sort that denies benefits to your friend due to an administrative mixup is equally unable to effectively detect piss taking. The security holes are widely known and widely exploited; the "chavs" are not stupid.

However, I don't know why you think I need to "learn to see past some of [my] prejudices" and I can't see where I called "our benefit system 'generous'". Maybe that was somebody else.

It does sound like another one of those wonderful job creation schemes for quangos and the civil service, so beloved by Labour. Just more evidence of how little has changed with the so-called "new" government.

I predict this scheme will have very little impact in the real world, but will still be very expensive and will provide employment for a large number of administrators and bureaucrats. That's if it gets off the ground at all, which it probably won't, being far too ambitious and expensive.