I did not cast the US in any light: US officials themselves have gone on public record for recommending the violent option and chastising France and Germany for not towing the line. The rest of your post I do not disagree with, you are right to be concerned - it does not change the facts presented however.

France (and Germany) is negotiating with Moscow to broker a peace deal in Ukraine and the US does not want that: This threat is just pressure to make France reconsider.. All power politics here, nothing to do with science and research or budget cuts. Expect more in the next few weeks (plus Sarkozy scandal is related but that is another story)

Worse: The study has military sponsorship, part of ongoing experiments how to manipulate/prevent/encourage spread of ideas (like voting for an unapproved political parties or mute general discontent):

The end game explain in this very long but very insightful analysis: America’s Real Foreign Policy – A Corporate Protection Racket.

You might be onto something there: "the WikiLeaks Twitter account criticized the media for spreading a rumor about Julian Assange starring in a fashion show (12,600 results on Google News Search) despite Assange never hearing of it and the fashion show director Ben Westwood stating, "I haven't spoken to Julian at all actually":" https://twitter.com/wikileaks/...

Superficially your right - but missing the point. Why the FUCK am I forced to adopt DRM by having it attach itself to open protocol specifications that I use, then? Now my browser will just automagically switch to using it at any old websites request. I preferred the old way, where people who were happy to voluntarily submit to DRM decided to download all the invasive DRM plugins they liked and it all worked perfectly for them - THERE WAS NO NEED to literally force the vast majority of people who do not use DRM to suddenly have built in support for it, so it can be just used by any old website now without all the plugins.

The question is rhetorical by the way - we all know why it was backdoored into our open protocols. To FORCE DRM DOWN OUR THROATS WHETHER WE LIKE IT OR NOT. They were losing too many customers who had to jump through extra hoops to use their evil shit.

So superficially you would be right - but in reality DRM is being forced on us and Firefox and other browsers can try to lube it up as much as they like with their open source wrappers, like that makes any difference. The floodgates are about to open and in a few years the whole web is going to be one giant clusterfuck of DRM content. Tim Berners-Lee, how could you get it so wrong.

Yeah the real news here is that the internet is undermining the top down power the traditional oligarchs had over the masses voting behavior via the old-world mass media broadcast companies. If Robert Epstein does not recognize this point, he is just another pawn trying to convince people to go against their own self interest (as is typically the case with most of the two party "first" world Republocrat systems.

Sure Google gets a big chunk of attention via its news service - but so does lots of "horizontal" news we get via social media. I'll take that over TV and newspaper oligarchies any-day thank you. Just finished reading about a big one in fact - 10 to 100 billion siphoned out of Ukraine and other eastern block countries by "offshore structures created and maintained by the west" - you (probably) will only hear about it on social media:

While New Zealand’s Company Law Reform Stalls, GT Group Helps a Thieving Ukrainian Despot
Fraud & Corrupt Practices in Prague & London

Here is why it will not happen anytime soon, just replace the context with Global Warming/Climate Change/Climate Disruption:

They are waiting for a high enough body count. Considering the magnitude of the changes required to address Climate Change in any meaningful way and the resulting short term costs to industry, I'd guesstimate that the body count will have to be shockingly significant, but by then it will all probably be too late to do anything anyway...

Found, and crucified:
Occupy Wall Street on Trial: Cecily McMillan Convicted of Assaulting Cop, Faces Up to Seven Years
Why Did FBI Monitor Occupy Houston, and Then Hide Sniper Plot Against Protest Leaders?

Like this dick authoritarian move by Russia, China et al. actions speak louder than words: The United States is not alone in being afraid of democracy... real democracy. Which starts with the more outspoken amongst us rallying together, writing blogs about the social problems we face, proposing solutions, attending OWS type events to agitate peacefully for positive change. Just too bad all those things that make common peoples lives better also happen to conflict with the goal of accumulating even more wealth for the richer parts of society. See graph: 12-country 1975-2007 chart of share of income growth going to The 1%.

...and what would you propose to do about the power of the corporations, whose lobbyists stand behind and direct the current goverment powers against the interests of the people? Reducing goverment power will not remove the ability of corporate power to adversely affect society in the name of profit. Indeed, in many cases reducing gov power would enable corporate power - which really is a case of jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.

A circus that we the people have no say in whatsoever. Akin to serfdom of old, only with some modern conveniences.

Excellent post. Not much to add but perhaps check out this promising store and forward project: Massive Array of Internet Disks, Secure Access For Everyone..

Of course it is intentional, and yet no naming and shaming appears to be going on... why is that? Only a small handful of people are responsible for bringing this to our linux distros, and a few more responsible for keeping it there. Those people have lost the trust of the community and should never have any of their code submissions or bug priority lists accepted ever again, otherwise there is just no consequence for nefariously subverting the security of us all.

FBI illegally abuses its power in the worst way to entrap 5 very stupid people and you can suddenly cook up a story to disqualify a movement of hundreds and thousands (or any movement that is politically inconvenient, that is). Intellectually dishonest, much - entrapment is^H^H was illegal for some very good reasons - but hey, that is how you t/roll.

How FBI Entrapment Is Inventing 'Terrorists' - and Letting Bad Guys Off the Hook:

You forgot some labels: "Who else are we supposed to be afraid of? Certainly animal-rights and environmental radicals."

Ahh Cold. nice to see you have abandoned all pretext of truth and/or rationality (...I always suspected you were faking it), Bountry Hunters and Child Predatorsz, Inside The FBI Entrapment Strategy.

Relevant news: On Democracy and Orchestrated Overthrows in Venezuela and Ukraine

The National Endowment for Democracy has been seen working behind the scenes in Ukraine, Venezuela, Turkey...

Also check out operation Gladio: secret networks of far-right groups orchestrating false-flag and other attacks against communist or any other left-wing movements in Europe, since WWII. 1992 BBC documentary (bad quality though) "killed hundreds of innocent Europeans and attempted to blame the deaths on Baader Meinhof"

This shit comes back to bite you, erodes US credibility.