Ayn Rand.

Sure they had such. Well, Iraq certainly did.

We invaded. The "alliance" was a creature we created for our own purpose.

You can't impose a democracy on an invaded people; they get cranky about the invasion and will call anyone who cooperates with the invader a quisling, and justifiably so. They aren't angry because they are illiterate. They are angry because they are living in an occupied country. They have an excellent grasp of current events.

If the US had been invaded by the Taliban because Canada, Mexico and Grenada said it was fine by them, Americans would not cooperate either. People in foreign cultures are no less proud and no more willing to be conquered than we are. The US went insane because 40-odd people scattered around the world (not Afghanistan - they were almost all Saudi) set up 4 plane attacks (they couldn't get manpower to crash the planned 12) and killed 3000 Americans on our home soil. Can you imagine what the US response would be if the Taliban bombed us, conquered us, and tried to install a Muslim government and sneered at our ignorance when we refused?

The Taliban rose to power because the mountain tribal thugs we elevated to power after we used them to fight off the Soviet invaders (who were worried themselves of fundamentalist revolutionaries on their border) were such murderous raping hillbillies that the Taliban was welcomed as a less oppressive solution.

The Taliban never attacked us - they weren't suicidal. Some of the people in the loose thing called the Taliban apparently had granted Al Qaida a place to train fighters - but that wasn't ALL the Taliban, just as the Michigan Militia ain't the United States of America. We bombed the country because they wouldn't give up the AQ boys without proof of guilt - somewhat reasonable, granted their culture and common sense. Bush said no proof - give over or die. They chose pride and we blew them up. AQ - all forty of them - mostly got away for awhile, because we were chasing oil in Iraq, but the people of Afghanistan - and Iraq - were annihilated by our blind rage and need to lash out at ANYthing. Thing is, we blew any goals we had - the bad guy got away, and turned the damned planet against us.

I don't see how it was justified. AQ wasn't the Taliban. We conflated, and still conflate, all Muslims who defy us as AQ. We blew up a country - two countries - that had nothing to do with the attack against the US. This is the cognitive dissonance that Americans won't confront, because then we wouldn't be good guys. We needed their cooperation, and instead turned them into enemies. and once again, the bad guy got clean away.

Russia doesn't recognize the new government in Ukraine. Same reasoning. Their invasion is being encouraged by the "real" president.

Why do you assume anyone is making new KP for the web? Who tells us this? I'm serious. Who in hell would put it up anywhere? We assume the cops know what they are talking about. But we can't check their claims, because illegal. Is this the commie/witch hunt again, in the sense that no one questions the premise?

Yes. I know he isn't a cop. He's the Uber-Cop.

Everyone knows the stuff is everywhere.
How do we know this?
They tell us it is.
If no one is looking for the stuff, because laws, how do we know the stuff is everywhere? No one can research it. I certainly don't.
Is it possible it is now so rare that it exists at all because cops and task forces are posting it?
Is it possible this "war" is as real as the one on The Terror? The war is the war because war?
Are we being lied to on a drug-war scale?
Are people being set up?

First, sort of reverse projection - I suspect some of the people who are REALLY obsessed with the subject have a not-so deeply buried yen for the forbidden fruit, and sally forth to find and punish the bad people who are likewise obsessed. Denial and reverse projection.

Who the hell else has opportunity to collect but the people who search for people with such images? Where else you gonna get it? Bust a collector, you get the collection.

Since such stuff is hard to find, and harder still to put up on the web, the usual suspects putting the stuff out there... are the cops. Honey pots and the like. And you will find cops who have images and *are immune from suspicion* because of their position. A number of them have to be such. Non-zero number.

If you want to find a witch, look among the witch hunters. That's where the smart witches hide.

Final thought: how damned easy it must be to set someone up. A script to download from a honey pot, or just secret sneak-and-peek to place files on a hard drive. Who would ever believe that the accused pedophile was framed?

And yes, the US did take control of cell networks to track phones and calls in Afghanistan and Iraq to find and eliminate those who fought the US invasions of those countries. But no one in the US cares very much, so it's hard to raise the issue. But we done did it first, sure. The US doesn't have much moral authority left after Afghanistan and Iraq. We're intellectually bankrupt, as Secretary of State Kerry so ably - and without irony - showed the other day when he told the world that invasion under false pretext is wrong.

But, we fight the fight in front of us, and can't restart the lost battles. Phone surveillance bad. Invading countries under false pretext to cover up not-so secret national interest is bad. Russia - RUSSIA BAD. They don't get a pass 'cause Americans can be the same flavor of assholes. Onward.

Mobile phones will never be used as tracking devices - mandatory GPS tracking is for emergency locations services, as we all know, and users can shut it off with a menu option.

Governments listening in on our communications? Only bad people have to worry about that - what have you got to hide? Paranoid conspiracy theorizing partisans, who think they are so important that governments and cops would care about them. And they don't understand that we are at war against Terror, so governments listen in because Terror.

And parties other than government would never, ever have access to the same tech to track down and harrass, imprison or kill people who piss them off.

Everything is Awesome! And bad things will never happen to us in Technotopia Legoland.

I am, of course, indulging in the darkest of sarcasm. I've been slapping people in the face with the fish of the surveillance capabilities built into our phones by government and corporate fiat for over thirteen years. Let's see what happens now, when a new agent comes in who hijacks the entire scenario for their own ends - wiping out political opposition to their invasion.

I expect never to have to argue the point ever again. Cell phone tracking/recording - BAD BAD BAD. Are we agreed? Okay? Am I finally done?

So, it doesn't work - thousands of very bad men are trying and succeeding to break the ownership chain. No matter how hard you try to plan, you can't plan for malicious agents. And if you could, precise implementation is done by human beings, who forget where they last saw their toothbrush. . Voting machines? Trivial and done, hacked to hell and back and looks like elections were hacked ten years ago. Autonomous cars: oh, lordy lord lord, what a colossal fuck-up that will be; hubris on a scale undreamed of heretofore. Absolute perfection required of billions of kilos of metal racing around at high speed - and the designers assume bad people won't try to break it - will break it - for revenge or to make a point or just 'cause they are psychopaths.

Keep systems as simple as possible to perform their function. Don't lard layers of clever on top of things that already work. Complexity insures failure. The Bitcoin protocol can't do what must do in the real world.

Individuals vs gov or corps are not engaged in an equal contest and don't have the ability to refuse NDA terms as a practical matter - or such terms would NEVER be accepted. You have no pity for the weak vs the strong, yet you rage against the few who try to help the weak

She was the focus of the case. Not a block of wood.

You've no facts to use. You are speculating with prejudice. Courts are not rational actors.