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Thats the beauty of it. "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who believe they are free." Don't remember where its from. I have an ancient LG thats still active with verizon that doesn't have any of that crap, but even then they can still track you. And yes, a tyrannical government is infinitely more frightening than a (real) terrorist. Such savages don't scare me the slightest. Faceless government agents being able to kidnap me, never to be seen again, with no repurcussions against their actions and it being criminal to defend myself against that. Stop and think. With the way the media reports things, if someone was to shoot a cop/government agent/soldier for trying to "detain" them, the report would brand them criminal scum, a terrorist "enemy combatant" psychopath. Not someone using their 2nd ammendment right to defend themselves against tyranny. Alot of the "frivolous litigation" is hype as well. Judges should be smart enough to toss out such cases. And things like putting hard caps on compensation allows the biggest guys to get away easy. If you're making hundreds of millions for example producing cars and there's a defect, its a hell of a lot cheaper to just settle a bunch of lawsuits with a hard cap of say $250,000 than it is to do a full recall, and fix the defect. Whereas getting a $50 million suit against you makes doing that recall more cost effective. Its unfortunate, but by financial necessity, they are forced to do the right thing or risk going out of business from lawsuits. I can't remember which car it was (the pinto or maybe the explorer/firestone tires) but ford was doing exactly that, deciding it was cheaper to settle lawsuits than to fix a defect that was causing accidents and injury. The sad summary of all of it is that money has become more important than people now. If I was that british guy, I'd just go on taking pictures, but then again, I'm the most arrogant person around when people try to make me not do something I want to do. And of all things, I'm going into law

I just saw a video of a talk by an author, Naomi Wolf, who wrote a book "The End of America" where she researched the steps every despot takes closing down a free society and found every single one of them is underway here. It also turns out, when she traveled, she was always getting stopped for searches. She found out she got put on the terror watch list (mocking it with just how she, some jewish girl from new york be a threat) and how its essentially being used against activists and people who are speaking out against such things, and 2 days ago saw a report on that same list on CNN. One of their reporters wound up on it for doing a report critical of the TSA, and someone whos worked in the white house was placed on it. In a more optimistic tone, I heard a story about the FISA wiretapping. Some FBI agents found that american citizens were being spied on in the surveillance they were doing, they proceeded to destroy the tapes where Americans were wiretapped.

I was hoping I was going to see a kiev when the carrier got in closer, and a carrier landing meaning mig-29K being revealed, but still beautiful!

For a second, I thought I was actually agreeing with Roopod until the "blame democrats!" video link. Its not republicans, its not democrats, its the government has been taken over by people who think they know better about everything and want to control society. Should they ever implement something like that bracelet, I'm never flying again, period. I'd wind up spending entire flights having seizures. Because you know it won't just be "Oh s**t! a hijacking" ZAP!! it will be "he's having an arguement with a flight attendant" ZAP!!!!! and "He didn't turn off his mp3 player or put his seat upright for takeoff/landing (which I utterly refuse to do)" ZAP!! Never mind an aircraft hijacking will likely never succeed again with passengers rising up against would be hijackers. Or if someone with a brain could think of security measures that would make it impossible to hijack a plane without intruding on innocent people. How? Simple. Sealed cockpits, no direct communication from the passenger compartment to the cockpit. Once the cockpit is sealed, no would be hijacker could gain control of the plane. Without direct communication from the passenger compartment to the cockpit, there's nothing anyone in the back can do to get the pilot to open the cockpit( ex threatening to kill a hostage) Only ground control to cockpit communication, cockpit to passenger communication and passenger to ground communication. Very few pitfalls and no threats to liberty. Pitfalls I can see: bathroom use by pilots - can be solved by installing a cockpit only bathroom, or if the airlines want to be really cheap, use those bladder bags military pilots have to pee in. Non-security emergencies in back like a medical emergency - this is where passenger to ground communication comes in. Stewardess can speak to someone on the ground and explain issue, ground can relay simple flight plan directions to pilots (land at airport X instead of planned destination) and directions would be given exactly the same if there was a hijacking, so pilots wouldn't know otherwise until the plane was safely on the ground. Little kids being unable to see the pilots and cockpit - boo-hoo.

essentially only when I send someone a PM I poke around a little

Comfort and isolation from things like prop noise etc is one thing, but to be pissing money away on making the leather air force blue instead of the existing brown and more on making things aesthetically pleasing for top brass? Beyond making sure things aren't some mind numbing pattern or color scheme (every day private jet trim does just fine) its wasting time and money. Has our high command really become such sissies? someone needs to give these guys the spartan treatment.

#1 on the list for cutting wasteful spending. For the price of $68,000 the brass can deal with brown leather.

As soon as I feel the stuff I've been toying with for personal use is polished enough to upload, I'm all for it.

Hard to say, but what happened to F-35D?

Well the Shiite/Sunni differences are way more than petty and meaningless. Catholics and Protestants in Belfast get along better than those two. 3 countries is the only thing to do, Iraq only lasted as one country because the Baathists were brutal despots that held it together with sheer force......though they seem to get along pretty well when it comes to soccer (thats football to everyone else) And it doesn't help insurgents can sign up to be police, get access to weapons and terrorize the populace in uniform.

Iraq is better than it was last year, but we're settling for violence way above what it should be after 5 years. And the surge working is standard guerilla tactics, you flood an area with troops, insurgents melt away. Then they come back as soon as those troops leave. The thing with Vietnam (and now Iraq) is no matter how many military victories we have, it simply never ends until we leave either by choice or bankruptcy like the soviets in afghanistan. Us in afghanistan is different, we've got NATO and the rest of the world's blessing, but we're getting Reagans cards played against us the exact same way in Iraq. Has there ever been a guerilla war that was won by the more conventional force? Regardless of the chaos and bloodshed, we just can't afford it, it has turned more people against us and stretched our forces to the limit. Now we're bogged down and can't react properly to a new threat. We are(and other parts of the world) at greater risk because of it. If Kim Jong Il decided to go south, we wouldn't be able to wage a full scale war in Korea.

Militant is a broader category of violent armed people. Terrorist or insurgent are more like subcategories that are more specific.

Mugabe, Kim Jong Il, Myanmar/Burma, the Janjaweed in Darfur backed by the sudanese government are a few vile ones worthy of mention

~45 against 400? nearly 10 to 1 odds, that definitely falls under heroic battle in my book.

I don't think any sizable number of people are opposed to afghanistan.

So you were one of those kids

ok, maybe more clearly. How many good guys were in the fight in total?

Any reports say how many people we had against them?

Roger Waters.

It's space flight. Steve Buscemi said it in Armageddon. "You know we're sitting on four million pounds of fuel, one nuclear weapon and a thing that has 270,000 moving parts all built by the lowest bidder. Makes you feel good, doesn't it? " Ok, the challenger didn't have a nuclear weapon to blow up an asteroid, but the rest stands. We're extremely lucky we've only had 2 shuttle accidents, the apollo 13 semi-accident and one fire on one of the earlier apollo missions still on the launch pad. The russians haven't been nearly as lucky with their rockets. Besides, there's no back history with tons of convenient coincidences and damn near impossibilities. Like how did Lee Harvey Oswald, an ex marine(who are fiercely patriotic) renounce his citizenship, move russia, marry a russian general's daughter, then just move back to the US like if he had a vacation in britain? Forget magic bullets and grassy knolls, look at personal histories.

Intentionally blowing up a space shuttle? Ok, I can see a CYA thats almost a daily occurance for a careless decision that could have averted the disaster. New Theory: The Soviets actually shot down the challenger to gain an advantage for their shuttle program

Ok, so he's describing the breakup and the fireball, but what is the conspiracy/coverup?

thats the kicker, angle, time of day, year and weather all change river water color since its so shallow.

Actually just a few months ago. Much more of a grey with a lighter brown tinge to it than a thick brown.

Right, I'll believe the syrians claim that they shot down 3 F-15s in air to air combat. According to everyone else, its never been defeated by another aircraft. SAMs yes, migs no.