The Tea Party? Arrests? Really? I read about them being spied on, but never heard of arrests. Why would your government want to piss off the billionaires behind the movement, the ones that basically rule the USA?

I got plenty of news about infiltrations and police brutality against OWS, however. Not in the mass media, of course. Here on the other side of the Atlantic, our media is as much as corrupt as yours. They pretended OWS never existed or, at most, was just a gang of anarchists doing vandalism.

You mean, like what happens every day with people at the wheel?

I couldn't care less if Assange or Snowden are nice guys. That's completely irrelevant for the matter if they're sweet little cherubs or like to fuck sheep on their spare time. Nobody does what they did by being that nice guy everybody wants to have a beer with.

The hateful crimes they exposed are the true stars, here. If you focus on the messenger, you miss the message. That's what the governments, corporations and their global propaganda machine (a.k.a. mass media) badly, badly, badly want you to do. Quite successfully.

Just wait until the character assassination begins for Schneier too. He's been taking very strong positions, I'm waiting for a photoshopped picture of him fucking a sheep to be released on the Internet for the whole world to see. Pretty soon, he'll be living in a South American country's embassy.

I'm from another European country. Our electricity used to be supplied by a State-owned company. A few decades ago, the neoliberals in the European Union told the neoliberals in my government that states shouldn't have a presence in the economy, because it goes against the Holy Dogmas of His Sanctity the Free Market. So the company was split in shares and privatised.

The pundits and politicians on TV always told us that the whole purpose was to create "competition". This would magically drop the costs to the consumer and bring better service, blah, blah, blah. 20 years gone by, and instead of buying electricity from a state company, we buy it from a bullyish private-owned monopolistic behemoth. The only "advantage" we got from the privatisation were skyrocketing prices. And a lot less money going into the State coffers to be reinvested in infrastructure, or education, or health care, whatever. Instead, it's being funnelled to private pockets, to be "reinvested" in yachts, whores and coke. Not only our state is not taking any money from the company, it pays it huge rents for all kinds of bullshit services, like "guaranteed power" and whatever.

It seems pretty obvious to any sane person what was going to happen. I mean, it's electricity. What competition can you get from that? I get home, I flick a switch, lights are on. I don't want to think about it, I don't even care who the fuck supplies my electricity. I don't even understand the business model. What happens if I change supplier? Does a guy come to my apartment with a huge reel of cable and sets up a direct connection to a power plant? My country is fucking tiny! What kind competition is possible?

Recently a Chinese company, detained 100% by the Chinese State, came and bought a big participation in the electricity company, getting to control it. And, voilà! According to the neoliberals, our State can't own our companies. But apparently, the Chinese State can! So, one of the most critical and strategic sectors in our economy is owned by a foreign country, and we're their bitches, now. I can't make up my mind if it's better or worse to be the bitch of private corporations but, at least, it would be less hypocritical.

Now they're seeking to privatise water. Go ahead. What can possibly go wrong?

You're mistaking "state" for "government". It's a pretty common fallacy in English speaking people, I wonder why...

Your vision is quite myopic. If work is so badly needed, when work is not useful any more, what will have to be invented for people to do? And who will employ people to do useless work?

That's why the current capitalist system is unsustainable.

If people are replaced by machines, can't find a job and don't have any income, they won't be able to pay the owner of the machines for the things the machines make.

Where do you take your food from? Agriculture today is already automated to a great degree. Where do you get your energy from? You employ Chinese guys to run in treadmills to light your house? Entertainment will continue to employ people, of course. I don't imagine robots as being very creative in any meaningful time frame.

You don't make any sense. Menial jobs will be replaced by machines, they won't be needed any more.

Now, seriously, what the fuck are you talking about?