If you really believe there is any chance of that you're seriously delusional. Clapper openly admitted he lied to congress.

Strange you claim this in defending the government officials who admittedly broke the law but have already declared Snowden guilty of a crime he should never even have been charged with.

Huh. No. You're wrong. The founding fathers believed in fair trials and so do I. And that is why using the Espionage Act to prosecute an American revealing illegal government actions to the American people is unconstitutional. But the Constitution means nothing in the US anymore. Also Snowden has not admitted he's is guilty of espionage. But by charging him with that the government gets to suppress any defense based on the fact that he was revealing illegal unconstitutional actions by government agencies.

What I mean is that the government controls what the news reports. They don't do it directly but rather by quid pro quo between the media conglomerates and the government. If they actually reported things the government didn't want them to they would stop getting all those obscene laws passed (e.g. copyright) that allow them to maintain control of their industries. As one example, the interview that 60 minutes, one of the more respected investigative news shows when I was a young, did with Keith Alexander was ridiculous government scripted propaganda.

I am by no means disillusioned as to the racist proclivities of the Western powers in the mid 20th Century. My point was the Western power's level of racism were fairly mild when compared to those of pre-WWII Germany and Japan. And the Western powers had governments that allowed those attitudes to change in the right direction.

That's only because those were the only other races they had access to. And it wasn't communists it was Slavs in general. They refused help from a fairly strong Ukrainian separatist movement that would have gone a long way towards helping the war effort against the Soviet Union simple because they were sub-human Slavs.

If your contention is that Hitler would have treated Indians as a race any better then they did the Slavs I would say that's pretty far out towards the extremely unlikely end of the scale. The support for the anti-British elements in India was simple a means of hindering the British war effort. Had Germany won there is little doubt the people of India would have been treated as the sub-humans Hitler's racial theories declared them as. The anti-British movement in India wasn't increased much by the minor support provided by the Germans. There is little doubt India was on an unalterable road to independence with or without the German support during the war.

Wow. I was not aware of the forced sterilization programs in Britain and the US.

Hmmm...guessing in your part of the world the Japanese started WWII. And we all know the Japanese were a paragon of racial harmony especially back then. Even the European part that started much later was primarily an effort to fight against an obscenely racist power. By no means were the Western Powers perfect but they're better than most of the alternatives. Think the British were bad? Try to picture India ruled by Hitler's Germany and Hirohito's Japan.

If you're from India as I'm guessing, why is it the culture of rape legacy your country suffers from involves the high casts raping the lower casts? The Dalit existed long before the British arrived.

I'm guessing you follow the main stream media in the US. I'm further guessing you still believe it. Because most knowledgeable rational people who actually look for real news sources have come to the realization that the main stream media in the US is pretty much state-run. One only has to look at the reporting on Snowden to realize that. Everything the main stream media has published about it could have easily been government press releases. Al Jazeera is a far better new source than anything put out by the supposed free press in the US.

Hmmm...I'm guessing you mean the KGB won the foreign espionage battle. Apparently they didn't do so good on the domestic espionage front or they would likely still be here. What it seems you don't understand is none of these programs have anything to do with foreign espionage or counter terrorism for that matter. They're all about domestic espionage, that is spying on and controlling dissent within your own population.

You obviously don't understand the US patent system. The patent office basically rubber stamps patents (often helping the submitter reword things so they can pass it). The patent holder then uses it to shake down companies for money and/or destroy competition. Prior art or the validity of the patent is pretty much irrelevant when the system is stacked such that the cost to fight an invalid patent is outrageously expensive and completely unrecoverable. It has absolutely nothing to do with protecting inventors or, heaven forbid, promoting the progress of science and useful arts. It's all about destroying competition or making easy money for patent attorneys and their ilk.

Am I the only one who remembers the Lovelace unit of measure for suckage.

"Intellectual Property" is never mentioned or referred to in the US Constitution. Article one Section eight has a line about promoting progress in the useful arts by granting authors and inventors exclusive rights to their writings and discoveries for a limited time. Nothing in there refers to "Intellectual Property". It's about physical items. The current "Intellectual Property" laws are a perversion well beyond the scope of anything authorized by the Constitution created by existing power holders to prevent disruption and to make money without having to do work.

Is completely and utterly irrelevant to science and the scientific method.

It's also the most common argument presented by the faithful.

Pot, meet Kettle.

And learn the consensus has nothing to do with science.

I think you're missing the point entirely. He understands very well more educated people make better decisions. Keeping "the people" ignorant is a big part of the solution from his perspective. What you're missing is his objective: Keeping the current power structure status quo.

Lets face it. Either people like Keith are idiots or their objective isn't stopping terrorism (or child porn or whatever the excuse is). Most intelligent informed people are going to recognize that what they're doing isn't focused on that. The only way they hide that is by keeping people ignorant.

Except for one little thing. On your motorcycle you're moving at the same speed as traffic. A bicyclist Is slowing down the same same wave of traffic that managed to maneuver around it before the traffic light. Basically they're just slowing down even more traffic clogging up the same cars more than once.

I'd say it's not. At least that's not true of a good many of the practitioners.

Only stupid people would think that. To know "everything" in the technology field is at least on par with knowing "everything" in the medical field. Only an idiot would think anyone could even remotely come anywhere near knowing "everything" in either field.

Hmmm...been working in this field for 25 years now and rarely have I encountered that. The few occasions I did it was quickly evident the persons involved were idiots. Being willing to admit I didn't know something has almost always earned respect rather than contempt.

The difference is technology people are typically arrogant about technology, what should be their area of expertise, whereas most of the arrogant ass doctors I've encountered are arrogant about everything. The technology guy isn't going to walk into the doctor's office and start telling him about how to do doctoring stuff. A great many people will tell tell technology people all about how to do their job.

In any field I usually take arrogance as a sign of incompetence. Typically smart people think they know less then they really do and stupid people usually think they know more. The caveat being perception of arrogance is somewhat relative also. Arrogant people usually perceive anyone who knows more about something then they do as arrogant. That being said though, there are definitely a lot of incompetent technology people, almost certainly a lot more then there are incompetent doctors.