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Comment Clemency?! (Score 0, Troll) 573



Comment ridiculous... (Score 3, Insightful) 495




Comment Nonsense (Score 2, Insightful) 440




Comment Kissinger (Score 2, Insightful) 199


Comment à la guerre comme à la guerre (Score 3, Insightful) 192

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 :)

Comment Poverty is not a social ill (Score 1, Insightful) 421

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.

Comment Try suing China (Score 1) 491

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. :)

Comment You cannot change anything (Score 1) 1181

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.

Comment earthquakes (Score 1) 145


It's not hard to admit errors that are [only] cosmetically wrong. -- J.K. Galbraith