... we're tired of all these invasions to our rights to privacy because of an existential threat.
"+5 Insightful"? That's about right for Slashdot on this topic. At present the Darwin Awards are for individual achievement, but I can see the possibility of a day coming when it will become a collective, national, or societal achievement.
...This horrifically extends to the corporations that controls which politicians get elected
Not that I would deny that corporations attempt to influence government policy and the laws that are made, but
Since different corporations have different interests and goals, how is that reconciled if they control everything? How does that work if a very powerful corporation in one state disagrees with a weaker national corporation? What if different industries disagree on things? Is there a "congress of corporations" where this is all hammered out before they command the politicians to do their will? And who is it that gives the commands? What if they can't come to an agreement? Do you have any evidence of this sort of collusion?
How do you think the corporations control government agencies? Is it Sears, Walmart, or IBM that controls the FBI? Does Ford control the Social Security Administration, or is it Du Pont? Who controls the State Department? Ikea? AT&T? Go Daddy? I think there are a few holes in your theory.
So now we're supposed to believe
that it's stopped.
Mm hmmm.
(google "disinformation")
There's no need to "google "disinformation"" since you've just demonstrated it. There is nothing claiming that NSA stopped the program. You just made that up, it's a straw man you use to spread FUD.
Sadly your comment is all too typical of the quality of comments in discussions of this subject matter. But hey! At least your lying FUD is popular, whereas the truth seldom is.
How do you think that will work out in the long run, basing positions and policy stands on lies and misinformation? I'm betting not well if practiced too widely.
Name one unique plane from WW2 that is still flying.
I hope you don't mind that there is more than one.
Make that MOND/TeVeS.
Fitting the data isn't simply a question of the fitness of the theory, but also of the effort involved in applying the theory to the data to see if it explains it. TeVeS predicts gravitational lensing, for example, but someone had to figure that out. How much more could it explain if it was pursued at more than the level of a minor hobby? Hard to say. Theories besides Dark Matter get little in terms of funding, and going against mainstream science is risky for a career even if mainstream science is wrong on the issue.
...but you are a very stupid person.
Coming from a brilliant person such as you I'll have to seriously consider that.
Who do you think were the biggest opponents against civil rights issues for non-whites during the mid 20th century?
National Socialists, Fascists, and assorted white supremicists. Whom were you thinking it was?
The same rhetoric about gay marriage was espoused back then, only it was targeting interracial marriage. Verses from the bible were even used to justify it as a "sin".
Acutally no, it wasn't "rhetoric about gay marriage." It was rhetoric about interratial marriage. You should also know (in case you don't) that many African Americans take offense at that comparrison.
So called "gay marriage" is its own topic.
Christians, on the whole, have probably come to accept the idea that non-whites should be treated equally under the law, but that wasn't the majority opinion back in the 40's or earlier.
Where do you think the abolitionist (anti-slavery) movement came from, and when? It was from the Christian church, and well before the 1940s.
You seem to be confusing the positions held by a minor portion of some American churches with that of Christianity world-wide. That isn't a good assumption.
In 50 years it's not inconceivable to imagine that the majority of Christians will accept that gay and bisexual people should be treated the same as straight people.
They are. God loves people that engage in homosexuality or bisexuality and offers them the same forgiveness of sins in Christ as anybody else.
Wow, you couldn't be any more ignorant.
And an bigot as well.
How ironic that you seem to roll that way yourself.
No, but the reality was before you went into Iraq in 2003, against any sensible facts, and despite evidence that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11
The reality is that you must not have paid any attention to the discussions about Iraq to post that nonsense. The US didn't claim that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11. What it did claim, and quite accurately, was that Iraq was involved in actively supporting terrorism. Your "sensible facts" are nonsense as well. Saddam's Iraq had a well documented history of aggression, use of WMDs, crimes against humanity, and all manner of other crimes.
It wasn't a driver of policy, and a minor point. I can see why it so consumes you.
And, further, how many places has America utterly failed to act when there was no oil?
You mean like Vietnam, Korea, Germany, Italy, Japan, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Afghanistan, Cuba? The US isn't responsible for doing whatever your whims are, and not every problem in the world is one the US can or should address. But it does make a useful if dishonest club for you as you damn the US when it does act and when it doesn't.
America ignores what's happening in Africa because there's no oil for the most part.
You mean like the billions of dollars in aid the US has given to fight the AIDs crisis in Africa? Or the assistance the US is giving to support resistance against various terrorist factions? Could you remind me, isn't Libya in Africa? How did apartheid come to an end?
And yet claims loudly they must intercede in the middle east out of principle and on humanitarian grounds.
Much to your distress. Is Saddam still gassing entire villages? No? Why not?
Has it occurred to you that the much vaunted "principles" America claims before going to war are entirely dependent on oil and/or your own economic benefit, and that your claims to do this out of a sense of right and wrong is bullshit?
We've already seen that your claim about oil is bullshit, and the "economic benefit" is as well. That would seem to leave you totally baffled why the US has gone to war.
Because it certainly has to the rest of the world.
You aren't the rest of the world.
Your post manages to get things almost entirely wrong.
The Iraqis got their chemical weapons from the US for use against Iran.
No, they didn't. The Iraqis manufactured their own chemical weapons although early on they cooperated with Egypt. Any country with a chemical industry, the ability to make dyes and insecticides, can manufacture chemical weapons.
The US still hasn't destroyed their own CBW program products (though they do occasionally retire old unstable chemical weapons, as they've done recently.)
The US has been in the process of destroying its chemical munitions for decades. There was a lot of them and its a slow process to render them safely destoryed. The ones that still exist require careful handling as they are often corroded or unstable.
And both the US and Russians still have their hoards of smallpox, pretending they need to keep them to develop vaccines in case the other side uses theirs to attack, even though cowpox ("vaccinia") is good enough for a vaccine and not good enough for a weapon.
Various pox related diseases still exists in nature, and various countries have illegal biological weapons programs thought to include small pox. A Soviet defector even indicated that the Soviet Union had been manufacturing small pox for use as a strategic attack weapon. What makes you think that cowpox is a good starting point to create vaccines effective against modern genetically engineered strains, unknown strains, or related diseases as have recently been seen in the country of Georgia?
Sorry, but if you are taking in Snowden you aren't "telling the US to keep out of another countries affairs." What you are actually doing is involving yourself with a US matter. Your strategy is backwards. What's worse is that it is also self-defeating on multiple levels.
So you would bite off your nose to spite your face?
Brilliant!
Are you telling us we need to start worrying about clones or pod people? How else are they going to use it in nefarious ways?
But it hardly seems like a smart idea to allow a country we value to be destabilized over one man.
Agreed. But for some reason for you that doesn't resolve to the Germans should not have been considering an offer of asylum. That is a serious misjudgment. Also, should we take it from your statement that the Germans don't value the US?
What affects the one, affects us all.
Agreed. And that is why it is puzzling that the Germans would be intrested in helping to create damage to the intelligence services that as you imply they rely on.
If Germany became destabilized due to our childish antics, it wouldn't end well.
You're confused about whose actions constitute "childish antics." That would have been the Germans had they gone through with it despite the serious damage occurring on many levels.
Your entire chain of reasoning on this is faulty.
Worst case, nuclear power plants would be pilfered.
And yet nobody worries about this when Snowden provides information accessible by terrorists that is needed to avoid surveillance. Curious, isn't it?
Do you have any words of caution for the Germans over their ill-considered idea of offering Snowden asylum?
i doubt it as they were bugging the german prime ministers phone calls.
Who wasn't bugging the German Prime Minister's phone calls? Or, as the register puts it:
Angela Merkel's phone was being listened in on by FIVE foreign powers
If your spooks aren't tapping Merkel, you should fire them really
On the eighth day, God created FORTRAN.
