Most people need clean water on a regular basis and cannot accommodate waiting for a tree to grow to quench their thirst.

There already are low-cost, natural water filtration techniques being used across the world that produce clean water at a higher rate, like biosand filters. For water projects i have previously worked on, how quickly water is purified has been a significant practical concern for the folks who would benefit from the project. That was the reason that solar stills were dismissed, for example; they require more effort and materials to construct, but even then have a higher flow rate than the xylem filter. Also, how often the filter must be replaced is another big practicality issue.

You must be speaking with a fairly stringent geographical restriction on your comment. "Whether your geographic location experiences significant changes in weather or not, seasons do in fact occur" -- yes, it might be autumn in America, but in Mali there are two seasons: wet and dry. Seasons only exist where the climate allows for them; they do not exist (at least how you conceive of them) in many regions across the world. Insisting that seasons exist where there are none of the environmental changes that define seasonality is pointless and wrong.

1/5 children in America live in poverty. 2/5 lack adequate nutrition. But let's instead focus on improving the quality of life and longevity of the wealthy!

You're just repeating wartime propaganda and excuses grandpa uses to try to avoid his guilt. Japanese soldiers did not collect the bleached skulls of American soldiers as war trophies. Japanese troops often tried to surrender, only to be massacred.

At-will employment means at-will quitting. If boss wants two weeks notice, he ought to ditch the right to fire me on a whim.

The Gates' Foundation plan in full:

1. Open new clinics to operate on an unsustainable and inhumane for-profit basis without investigating medical history of personnel
2. Fail to pay to keep them open such that market forces and competition result in a net loss of clinics in target countries
3. Pay off a bunch of politicians to protect clinic policy, furthermore pay more politicians to expand privatization and austerity across the board
4. Get a vaccine from somewhere
5. Make lots of it for cheap
6. Sell it at transient new for-profit clinics and don't care if untrained business-owners botch its administration
7. Be hailed as the new jesus christ after PR 'news' articles fail to mention any shortcomings

Don't build your house on an Indian graveyard :\

or everyone on a soapbox would be assassinated.

Where I live, after three unpaid tickets (which are recorded in a city database that traffic police check before issuing parking tickets), your car either gets a boot or gets towed.

Manning set the bar even higher than you think -- a high moral bar that most US foreign policy can't hold a candle to. Manning did the right thing in becoming a whistleblower and showing the public what our 'representatives' are scheming. We have a right to know about US support for the coup in Honduras, etc.

What is hypocritical about this situation is that Manning is being tried for upholding his oath in a meaningful way, while the prosecutors and persecutors are using the letter of the law to contradict its spirit.