If the US did play entirely by the rules, the USSR would win the Cold War. The USSR was a fascist country, although the red sort of fascism, and observed no rules in its quest for dominance over Eurasia. I am glad the West's only country capable of standing against the USSR had politicians like Dr Kissinger that were focused on winning.

Some reality check first. It is completely unthinkable to have a major country that has no state secrets and whose information is completely free and open for anyone interested. By "major country" I mean one that has geopolitical standing and ambitions. A country that is completely open, information-wise, if such exists, is an irrelevant entity -- a satellite in the orbit of one of the major players.

Sorry if you don't like the reality. Reality has the interesting property to exist regardless of whether we like it, or even whether we believe in it. The reality is that the political world is not, and cannot be, a single entity ruled by mutual trust and eternal love. The political world is divided into hostile blocks. Even if our block falls down (due to, among other reasons, too much assangeness), the blocks will not disappear, they will reshape. China has enough vitality as far as I can tell. Surely the chikoms would not mind all US secrets being published openly. Surely they can fill in the geopolitical void left by the US (hypothetically speaking).

Of course, there is a flip side to that. The government secret agencies tend to do nasty things behind the veil of secrecy and in that sense it is a good thing to have civil control over them. However, that does not alter one bit the fact that it is impossible to be a successful geopolitical player that reveals **all** her secrets.

J. Assange took an active part in a war. He may not realise that but he did. Now he whines that the party he damaged is trying to destroy him :) Welcome to the real world, idiot! Every major player will do the same. Try hurting Russia or China or Turkey or Israel and see what happens. The sissies from the Western shelter have become accustomed to the idea you can hurt the state with impunity. Well, that's only possible in a small part of the world. Only inside the shelter that protects from the brutal reality. And is possible only to a certain degree. If too much assangeness happens, either the state will find means of protecting itself from the cancer, or will be overrun by a hostile party that allows no assangeness :)

Poverty is an inevitability, not a social ill. What is social ill is the attempt to eradicate poverty at any cost -- since people's capabilities are vastly different, the stratification of a free society is inevitable, so 1) it takes a huge (and unnecessary) effort to bring the so called minimum standard of living to those that are incapable and/or lazy, and 2) the said effort decreases the overall freedom.

Try your tricks on a country that is not guilt-ridden. Try suing China. They are gonna show you a three-finger configuration as tall as the exhaust towers of their most recent thermal power plant.

China alone is going to commission more than 700 new coal power plants by 2020. Sure, in the meantime they are gonna decommission other plants but the overall tendency is obvious. And there is NOTHING you can do about it.

Most likely, the AGW is bullshit. I notice that recently the alarmist changed they mantras from "global warming" to "climate change" -- since there is always some climate change, it gives the alarmists a much safer option for permanent occupation. However, assuming AGW is not bullshit, still you can do NOTHING because a huge part of the world is 1) out of your reach 2) interested predominantly in its own growth. :)

Even *if* there is stable tendency towards global warming and *if* it is man made, you cannot change anything. China alone will start, IIRC, 700+ coal power plants by 2020 or 2025. The data is from the Nat Geo magazine. Sure, China will decomission some coal power plants in the meantime, but overall it will increase CO2 emissions in such a way that Western CO2 savings will make no real difference whatsoever. Even if the West halts its industry to zero, the overall tendency will be man made CO2 increase. And you cannot do ANYTHING. You cannot stop China and India. You cannot force them to submit to the green religion. You certainly can lose the competition ... and that's the most you can achieve by self imposing restrictions and guilt.

Human activities (except for nuclear ones) cannot cause serious earthquakes unless there is already sufficient tectonic tension (probably not the right term, I am not a geologist) in the region. I believe that fracking can cause an earthquake but only as a trigger. Just like a firecracker can trigger an avalanche, provided the right conditions for avalanche are already there. In that sense, those earthquakes are "benign" because those regions earthquake-prone anyways; the longer the period of building tension, the worse is the inevitable earthquake that releases it.

The populists can get considrable support. Only for a short while, of course -- a society of Assanges, or at least run by Assanges, cannot last very long time. There are certain objective laws of nature (that includes human nature as well) and the utopists that ignore them are doomed to extinction.

Animals do not have "rights", at least not in the sense humans do. A human has right to live. A pigeon does not have that right -- if one believes otherwise, one has to prevent pigeons from being killed by predators. The "animal rights" activists agree (I think; I have met a few of those) that it is OK animals to kill each other (which they do all the time anyway) and no "rights violation" happens when a hawk kills a pigeon. However, for some strange reason, animals rights are violated when people kill them -- at least, according to the "animal rights" activists. Go figure...

I am Bulgarian living in Bulgaria right now. I am as happy as any of you about the ditching of ACTA by our government. But! They change their minds twice a day. The position of the other European governments against ACTA, I think, is based (to a certain extent at least) on principles and integrity. Our government is silly, uninformed, clueless and it may easily jump back on the ACTA bandwagon if put under pressure. They were clearly ready to force the ratification of ACTA on the Parliament. What changed their minds was the protest wave -- the government are populist and easily bend before protests. However, they bend easily before anything. So, let's wait and see...

I imagine that animals that can see UV perceive the UV colour as distinct from the other colours. And I suppose that is a function of the brain. Those people that can see UV -- what colour do they perceive, actually?

Nonsense. The so called "revolution" was in fact the coming to power of the red monsters -- the most efficient mass murderers of the XX century. This mad cult had VERY LITTLE popular support at the moment and got the power for two reasons only: 1) they were ruthless fanatics, well disciplined and devoid of human doubts and compassion 2) they were well supported by Germany (try searching online for "Parvus" to find out who organized the transport of Lenin and the other madmen to St Petersburg; without the German assistance, those madmen would have achieved nothing).

The Western powers were quite right in the attempt to remove the madmen from power and restore civilization. Regrettably, they acted without firm determination and let the red monsters establish their empire of evil.

During the Cold War, every single failure of the USSR was due to some external enemy (or internal enemy, being an agent of some external enemy).

Regrettably, the russians have gone back to that silly Cold War mentality. Their own propaganda tells them constantly that they are unique, superior to the others, and surrounded by vile enemies that miss no chance to do harm to russia. Recall that when their submarine Kursk exploded and sank, the first instinctive reaction of the regime and its propaganda was to blame a US sub for colliding with, and thus sinking, Kursk.

The Cro Magnon man, aka the modern human, is considered to have appeared abotu 35 000 years ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cro-Magnon

Given the fact in the article, shouldn't we conclude the Australian aboriginals are, for instance, neanderthals by origin?

The last time I checked, the real cost of solar electricity was several times bigger than the cost of electricity as we pay it. If that is true, this whole industry survives only because it is subsidised, i.e. we all pay for it.