What amazes me about this isn't that they're lying. Of course they're lying, they're the government. That's what they do for a living, mostly. What leaves me almost speechless is the sheer obviousness of it. Apparently, one only has to pay attention to the gov's own news and do a little arithmetic. So the Government doesn't actually care if you know they're lying.

In any case, it's not just the number of civilian deaths we're being lied to about. For example, if U.S service members are injured in Iraq or Afghanistan and then evacuated to hospitals in Germany or the U.S., but die of their injuries or complications/infections or whatever a week or a month or more later, are they then listed as combat deaths--or as having died of whatever the complication or infection?

Big Brother isn't watching you, he's laughing at you from behind your back.

“You were sent to USA for long-term service trip. Your education, bank accounts, car, house etc. – all these serve one goal: fulfill your main mission, i.e. to search and develop ties in policymaking circles in US and send intels (intelligence reports) to C[enter].”

Oh, my god...they sound like...like....*reporters*! They might even be *journalists*!

Why, that's *worse* than spies!

And lets add to the Hutaree roundup the tale of Hosam Smadi, your basic screwed-up kid, whom the FBI not only goaded into trying to blow up a building in Dallas, but also provided with the "bomb."

Orwell got a lot more right than most people think, but on one major point he was wrong: Big Brother isn't watching you. He's ignoring you.

Hm....to me, the two types of cops are those who start off as thugs, and those who start off as wanna-be heroes and end up thugs anyway. I don't think the present system can be reformed at all. We have to face the fact that the very nature of police work creates a poisonous "us versus them" culture among policemen. It doesn't take very long for a policeman--one who joined to "serve and protect"-- to start seeing the world in terms of cops, civilians, and perps; and whether a person is a civilian or a perp depends entirely on subjective, in the moment thinking.

What we need are police that are professionals. Plumbers, for example, are professionals. I have never in my life heard of plumber forcing his way into someone's house and fixing their pipes for them against their will. Not once. Doctors, also, are mostly constrained from treating someone against their will. So should the police be constrained from acting unless a person with a legitimate complaint--someone has committed violence or fraud against them--has specifically asked them to intervene. A policeman could act to stop any violence or fraud he witnesses under the idea of an implied complaint, just as a doctor uses "implied consent" to treat an unconscious patient. If a victim later objected, the police would have to drop the case.

Of course, it would be difficult and complicated to implement; but it would also, for example, end the "drug war" and make the police the public servants they're supposed to be.

If I knew, I wouldn't have asked, would I? Apparently, no-one here seems to know either. So, while I would love to go beating the anti-Israeli-right-wing-crazy, no source that I can find seems to be other than an editorial.

This is an excellent article. The trouble, however, is that I keep getting into arguments in which I am confronted by my basic lack of access to facts. It's frustrating, because there doesn't really seem to be easily accessible facts about this, only opinion. As good as this article may be, it's an editorial. Mr. Giraldi says, "The flotilla, consisting of nationals from as many as twenty countries, was unarmed and carrying relief supplies that had been carefully inspected by the Turkish authorities..." And then a little later, "It is pretty much agreed that the ships were in international waters, were unarmed, and were carrying relief supplies..." How does he know? Does anyone here know what primary sources he's using?

Deuteronomy 20:16 "Only in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes."

Deuteronomy 7:2 "and when the LORD your God delivers them before you and you defeat them, then you shall utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them and show no favor to them."

Numbers 31:17 "Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man."