There is a fourth question - whether the US government is helping to create police states in other countries.

If you live in a 'unstable' country friendly to the US, then your every communication may be monitored, not by your local dictator, but by the NSA on their behalf. Personally, that's not necessarily a bad thing, but there is absolutely no legal responsibility for it - it's effectively an "outsourced police state".

We do build automated helicopters - I think the news reported that a US helicopter drone was shot down over Libya during the uprising... and that small drone used by the US army (I think) seems to have similar flight properties to a helicopter.

The boring, but obvious reason seems more likely to be:
"Hi, My name is Hutz, I represent a group of people suing company X for producing drug Y which caused horrific side-effects. If you want to join this action...."

A review points out the positives and negatives of a product. If a review is entirely positive, then people will immediately assume it's not real. In this case, accompanied with a lead-in that is clearly the product of a marketing department, it is entirely correct to call this astroturf.

The basic problem is this:
- I know about OOXML, simply because people took notice on this occasion. The methods used to pass this standard are, what most people would call, corrupt.
- I don't know much about the other standards that ISO pass each year, and I doubt many people take much of an interest.
- given that ISO apparently have no problem with the way OOXML was published, we can assume that the horrendously/obviously screwed up process is 'fine/standard'?

In short, ISO's leadership has 'standardized' a method of simply bypassing the relevant processes, buying/pressuring the right people and getting something published without any real chance to stop it.

Maybe propose a new standard for ISO - 'Method for getting an ISO stamp on a donkey'. I guess since it would be based on ooxml, it's already got one foot in the door?