*president trump is seriously dangerous*

[seemslikeadream]

he's outraged about our outrage!

yes he's been here how many years?...I'd like to see some outrage posts ...they must be here somewhere


yea I'll take criticism from the likes of Jack, even Nordic and a number of others sometimes not so gracefully but that's because we've known each other for over 10 years ..there's a bit of license in knowing and dealing with someone back and forth for that long

[Karmamatterz]

Dang it, Iam. I had a nice reply and my browser just puked. I have to get rolling and take care of stuff. Will get back later. I appreciate you calling me out for my outrageous outrage over outrage.

[Elihu]

I'd like to see some outrage posts ...they must be here somewhere

is there any that have not spilled their outrage somewhere here along the way?

his Trumpness is a terrifying spectacle i candidly admit.

[Project Willow]

It's that Trump is obnoxious. Loud. Says stupid things and makes a mockery of what we want our president to be. We project our wishes on to that office. What we got is a product of the USA and suddenly we're surprised. Obama was smooooooth. Nice look, well educated and knew how to articulate his thoughts and ideas. Trump is like the school yard bully. So it's easy to see why people don't like him, aside from his political values.

I guess it just shows that it someone so smooth as silk and delivers the messages in the right way while they steal from you and murder people its ok. No wonder why so many people loved Slick Willy Billy even while he was having fun with cigars and Monica. It's not what they do, it's how they say it and come across. It's a big magic show. If the magician is slick and smooth people applaud. If he is garish and a buffoon they shriek.

All the good liberals were too afraid of appearing racist, so they didn't complain. Unconsciously, frustration built up over years and now it has found its perfect container in the visage of Trump, which will overfill daily with spasms of glorious and violent blind outrage.

[Morty]

He didn't even mention you, slad. He was at most criticising the content of an article you posted, and then all of a sudden you're offended and he doesn't post here enough to deserve to have an opinion and why can't he post his own threads instead of coming here and attacking YOU and it's a bit late to be criticising Obama NOW show me the posts where you criticised Obama back THEN...

[Morty]

All the good liberals were too afraid of appearing racist, so they didn't complain. Unconsciously, frustration built up over years and now it has found its perfect container in the visage of Trump, which will overfill daily with spasms of glorious and violent blind outrage.

And if Hillary were in right now, all the good liberals would be too afraid of appearing sexist. The US needs to be ridden hard to make it change its ways, and a black or female prez provides more than enough defence to make change impossible, if that black or female prez isn't a genuine advocate for change.

[seemslikeadream]

He didn't even mention you, slad. He was at most criticising the content of an article you posted, and then all of a sudden you're offended and he doesn't post here enough to deserve to have an opinion and why can't he post his own threads instead of coming here and attacking YOU and it's a bit late to be criticising Obama NOW show me the posts where you criticised Obama back THEN...

I was not offended...I was pissed

you should mind your own beeswax I know what he was talking about from previous conversations that YOU were not part of

he was criticizing RI not me ...that's what I was pissed at

next time figure out what is really going on before you go off

[seemslikeadream]

now coming back from stupid petty bullshit

the REAL news of the day is

Novaya Gazeta reported that that -- in addition to Mikhailov, Dokuchayev, and Stoyanov -- two other individuals have been arrested in connection with the investigation, one of them an FSB colleague of Mikhailov’s

Trump's friend Sergei Mikhailov

Does Trump Have Ties To The Mob?
Alex Shnaider, Trump's partner for Trump Tower Toronto, has ties to Sergei Mikhailov, leader of the SoInsteva Gang, a ruthless "Russian crime syndicate."
http://www.dailywire.com/news/3936/does ... on-bandler

project went belly-up this November and has now entered foreclosure

The Case of the Trump Toronto Tower and Hotel—Alex Shnaider
Published on: December 19, 2016
RUSSIA & THE WEST
..........

Our fourth case study of Trump’s business associates concerns the 48-year-old Russian-Canadian billionaire Alex Shnaider, who co-financed the seventy-story Trump Tower and Hotel, Canada’s tallest building. It opened in Toronto in 2012. Unfortunately, like so many of Trump’s other Russia/FSU-financed projects, this massive Toronto condo-hotel project went belly-up this November and has now entered foreclosure.
According to an online profile of Shnaider by a Ukrainian news agency, Alex Shnaider was born in Leningrad in 1968, the son of “Евсей Шнайдер,” or “Evsei Shnaider” in Russian.30 A recent Forbes article says that he and his family emigrated to Israel from Russia when he was four and then relocated to Toronto when he was 13-14. The Ukrainian news agency says that Alex’s familly soon established “one of the most successful stories in Toronto’s Russian quarter, “ and that young Alex, with “an entrepreneurial streak,” “helped his father Evsei Shnaider in the business, placing goods on the shelves and wiping floors.”
Eventually that proved to be a great decision—Shnaider prospered in the New World. Much of this was no doubt due to raw talent. But it also appears that for a time he got significant helping hand from his (now reportedly ex-) father-in-law, another colorful Russian-Canadian, Boris J. Birshtein.
Originally from Lithuania, Birshtein, now about 69, has been a Canadian citizen since at least 1982.31 He resided in Zurich for a time in the early 1990s, but then returned to Toronto and New York.32 One of his key companies was called Seabeco SA, a “trading” company that was registered in Zurich in December 1982.33 By the early 1990s Birshtein and his partners had started many other Seabeco-related companies in a wide variety of locations, inclding Antwerp,34 Toronto,35 Winnipeg,36 Moscow, Delaware,37 Panama,38 and Zurich.39 Several of these are still active.40 He often staffed them with directors and officers from a far-flung network of Russians, emissaries from other FSU countries like Kyrgyzstan and Moldova, and recent Russia/FSU emigres to Canada.41
According to the Financial Times and the FBI, in addition to running Seabeco, Birshtein was a close business associate of Sergei Mikhaylov, the reputed head of Solntsevskaya Bratva, the Russian mob’s largest branch, and the world’s highest-grossing organized crime group as of 2014, according to Fortune.42 A 1996 FBI intelligence report cited by the FT claims that Birshtein hosted a meeting in his Tel Aviv office for Mikhaylov, the Ukrainian-born Semion Mogilevich, and several other leaders of the Russo/FSU mafia, in order to discuss “sharing interests in Ukraine.”43 A subsequent 1998 FBI Intelligence report on the “Semion Mogilevich Organization” repeated the same charge,44 and described Mogilevich’s successful attempts at gaining control over Ukraine privatization assets. The FT article also described how Birshtein and his associates had acquired extraordinary influence with key Ukraine officials, including President Leonid Kuchma, with the help of up to $5 million of payoffs.45 Citing Swiss and Belgian investigators, the FT also claimed that Birshtein and Mikhaylov jointly controlled a Belgian company called MAB International in the early 1990s.46 During that period, those same investigators reportedly observed transfers worth millions of dollars between accounts held by Mikhaylov, Birshtein, and Alexander Volkov, Seabeco’s representative in Ukraine.
In 1993, the Yeltsin government reportedly accused Birshtein of illegally exporting seven million tons of Russian oil and laundering the proceeds.47 Dmytro Iakoubovski, a former associate of Birshtein’s who had also moved to Toronto, was said to be cooperating with the Russian investigation. One night a gunman fired three shots into Iakoubovski’s home, leaving a note warning him to cease his cooperation, according to a New York Times article published that year. As noted above, according to the Belgian newspaper Le Soir, two members of Bayrock’s Eurasian Trio were also involved in Seabeco during this period as well—Patokh Chodiev and Alexander Mashkevich. Chodiev reportedly first met Birshtein through the Soviet Foreign Ministry, and then went on to run Seabeco’s Moscow office before joining its Belgium office in 1991. Le Soir further claims that Mashkevich worked for Seabeco too, and that this was actually how he and Chodiev had first met.
All this is fascinating, but what about the connections between Birshtein and Trump’s Toronto business associate, Alex Shnaider? Again, the leads we have are tantalizing.The Toronto Globe and Mail reported that in 1991, while enrolled in law school, young Alex Shnaider started working for Birshtein at Seabeco’s Zurich headquarters, where he was reportedly introduced to steel trading. Evidently this was much more than just a job; the Zurich company registry lists “Alex Shnaider” as a director of “Seabeco Metals AG” from March 1993 to January 1994.48
In 1994, according to this account, he reportedly left Seabeco in January 1994 to start his own trading company in Antwerp, in partnership with a Belgian trader-partner. Curiously, Le Soir also says that Mikhaylov and Birshtein co-founded MAB International in Antwerp in January 1994. Is it far-fetched to suspect that Alex Shnaider and mob boss Mikhaylov might have crossed paths, since they were both in the same city and they were both close to Shnaider’s father-in-law?
According to Forbes, soon after Shnaider moved to Antwerp, he started visiting the factories of his steel trading partners in Ukraine.49 His favorite client was the Zaporizhstal steel mill, Ukraine’s fourth largest. At the Zaporizhstal mill he reportedly met Eduard Shifrin (aka Shyfrin), a metals trader with a doctorate in metallurgical engineering. Together they founded Midland Resource Holdings Ltd. in 1994.50
As the Forbes piece argues, with privatization sweeping Eastern Europe, private investors were jockeying to buy up the government’s shares in Zaprozhstal. But most traders lacked the financial backing and political connectons to accumulate large risky positions. Shnaider and Shifrin, in contrast, started buying up shares without limit, as if their pockets and connections were very deep. By 2001 they had purchased 93 percent of the plant for about $70 million, a stake that would be worth much more just five years later, when Shnaider reportedly turned down a $1.2 billion offer.
Today, Midland Resources Holdings Ltd. reportedly generates more than $4 billion a year of revenue and has numerous subsidiaries all across Eastern Europe.51 Shnaider also reportedly owns Talon International Development, the firm that oversaw construction of the Trump hotel-tower in Toronto. All this wealth apparently helped Iceland’s FL Group decide that it could afford to extend a €45.8 million loan to Alex Shnaider in 2008 to buy a yacht.52
As of December 2016, a search of the Panama Papers database found no fewer than 28 offshore companies that have been associated with “Midland Resources Holding Limited.”53 According to the database, “Midland Resources Holding Limited” was a shareholder in at least two of these companies, alongside an individual named “Oleg Sheykhametov.”54 The two companies, Olave Equities Limited and Colley International Marketing SA, were both registered and active in the British Virgin Islands from 2007–10.55 A Russian restaurateur by that same name reportedly runs a business owned by two other alleged Solntsevskaya mob associates, Lev Kvetnoy and Andrei Skoch, both of whom appear with Sergei Mikhaylov. Of course mere inclusion in such a group photo is not evidence of wrongdoing. (See the photo here.) According to Forbes, Kvetnoy is the 55th richest person in Russia and Skoch, now a deputy in the Russian Duma, is the 18th.56
Finally, it is also intriguing to note that Boris Birshtein is also listed as the President of “ME Moldova Enterprises AG,” a Zurich-based company” that was founded in November 1992, transferred to the canton of Schwyz in September 1994, and liquidated and cancelled in January 1999.57 Birshstein was a member of the company’s board of directors from November 1992 to January 1994, when he became its President. At that point he was succeeded as President in June 1994 by one “Evsei Shnaider, Canadian citizen, resident in Zurich,” who was also listed as director of the company in September 1994.58 “Evsei Schnaider” is also listed in the Panama registry as a Treasurer and Director of “The Seabeco Group Inc.,” formed on December 6, 1991,59 and as treasurer and director of Seabeco Security International Inc.,” formed on December 10, 1991. As of December 2016, both companies are still in existence.60 Boris Birshtein is listed as president and director of both companies.61

The Case of Paul Manafort’s Ukrainian Oligarchs

.........
http://www.the-american-interest.com/20 ... nnections/

Top Russian spy official arrested on treason charges
ANDREW E. KRAMER
The New York Times News Service
Published Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2017 6:23PM EST
Last updated Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2017 6:25PM EST

A senior official in the Russian cyberintelligence department that U.S. officials say oversaw last year’s election hacking has been arrested in Moscow on charges of treason, a Russian newspaper reported Wednesday.

The arrest of Sergei Mikhailov, a senior officer of the Federal Security Service (FSB), the main successor agency to the KGB, is a rare instance of turmoil in the country’s usually shadowy cybersecurity apparatus slipping into public view.

Mr. Mikhailov served in the FSB’s Centre for Information Security, the agency’s cyberintelligence branch, which has been implicated in the U.S. election hacking. But it is not clear whether the arrest was related to those intrusions.

He was detained along with one of Russia’s leading private-sector cybersecurity experts, Ruslan Stoyanov, the head of computer incident response investigations at the Kaspersky Lab, which makes anti-virus programs.

The company confirmed in a statement that Mr. Stoyanov had been arrested, but said his arrest “has nothing to do with Kaspersky Lab and its operations.”

Still, the arrests of the men, who had co-operated in Russia to prosecute cybercriminals, shed light on the sensitive intersection of cybercrime, private anti-virus companies and the Russian security services.

Western cybersecurity analysts have said there are indications that the security services recruited among criminal hackers to carry out politicized computer intrusions ahead of last summer’s hacking of the Democratic National Committee in the United States, giving the hackers impunity to commit financially motivated attacks in exchange for their expertise.

The arrest raised the possibility that Mr. Mikhailov and Mr. Stoyanov had interfered in this co-operation. The newspaper article, in Kommersant, which cited unnamed sources in Moscow’s technology industry and the FSB, said the treason charges related to work on criminal hacking investigations.

Alternatively, the detention of an official who would have been in a position to engage in the election hacking in America could indicate a goodwill gesture to the United States, which has sanctioned Russia for the electoral meddling.

U.S. intelligence agencies accused the FSB and another Russian agency, the military’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), of hacking the Democratic National Committee and other electoral targets.

The sanctions targeted the two Russian intelligence agencies. But private U.S. cybersecurity investigators say the FSB, where Mr. Mikhailov was the second-most senior figure in the Centre for Information Security, operated a group nicknamed Cozy Bear that stole data but never released it. The GRU, the U.S. cybersleuths say, operated a group called Fancy Bear that stole electronic data and released it in an effort to help Donald Trump win the presidential election.

If confirmed, the arrest would be one of the highest-profile detentions for treason within the FSB since the breakup of the Soviet Union.

In another indication of high-level turmoil over cyberintelligence issues within the security agency, Kommersant reported on Jan. 13 that the director of the Centre for Information Security, Andrei Gerasimov, would be fired. His termination was related to the investigation into the agency’s co-operation with Kaspersky on criminal hacking cases.

Gerasimov, who has led the Centre for Information Security since 2009, was described as building close ties with companies like the Kaspersky Lab as an element in Russia’s cybersecurity policy. He is also the deputy director for counterintelligence at the FSB.

The FSB did not respond to an email query about the arrests.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/wor ... e33766836/

Reports: Second FSB Agent Arrested; Possible Links To U.S. Election Hacking
January 26, 2017
Mike Eckel

Russian media have reported that another Federal Security Service (FSB) officer has been arrested on treason charges in a case that may be linked to cyberattacks targeting the U.S. presidential election campaign.

The reports by Rambler News Service on January 26 come a day after the Kommersant newspaper reported that a senior officer of the cyberintelligence department of the FSB -- Russia’s lead security agency -- had been arrested.

Kommersant said Sergei Mikhailov, deputy chief of the FSB's Center for Information Security, had been arrested in December on treason charges.

Another Russian newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, on January 26 confirmed the Kommersant report.

Novaya Gazeta cited unidentified sources as saying Mikhailov was arrested during a meeting with other FSB officers in Moscow, and was taken from the room with a sack over his head.

Also arrested in December was a manager of the renowned Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab.

Investigation Chief Arrested

Kaspersky Lab confirmed the arrest to RFE/RL, identifying the manager as Ruslan Stoyanov and saying he headed the company’s investigation unit.

A list on the website LinkedIn indicates that Stoyanov started working at Kaspersky Lab in 2012 and that his previous jobs included a position at the Russian Interior Ministry’s cybercrime unit in the early 2000s.

On January 26, Rambler News and REN-TV both said a second FSB officer had also been arrested last month, and identified him as Major Dmitry Dokuchayev.

Dokuchayev headed another unit within the Center for Information Security and reportedly served under Mikhailov.

News of the arrests comes as U.S. intelligence agencies continue investigating the degree to which Russian government-backed hackers penetrated computer servers and e-mail accounts belonging to the political party officials, first and foremost, the Democratic Party.

In one of his final orders as president, Barack Obama publicly endorsed the conclusions of the U.S. intelligence community that Moscow was behind the hacking and named nine top Russian officials and entities associated with the FSB and the Russian military intelligence agency, the GRU.

Earlier in January, the top U.S. intelligence official told a Senate committee that the cyberhacking campaign constituted unprecedented meddling into the U.S. electoral process.

No Official FSB Comment

Tsargrad TV, a Russian news site run by a Kremlin-loyal businessman, said Mikhailov had links to a Russian hacker group known as Shaltay-Boltay.

That hacker group has published troves of e-mails of prominent Russian officials and businesspeople that it claims to have obtained in cyberattacks.

The FSB has not officially commented on the investigation.

Novaya Gazeta reported that that -- in addition to Mikhailov, Dokuchayev, and Stoyanov -- two other individuals have been arrested in connection with the investigation, one of them an FSB colleague of Mikhailov’s.

The newspaper cited unidentified sources as saying that Mikhailov is suspected of providing U.S. intelligence with information about King Servers, a hosting service owned by Russian citizen Vladimir Fomenko.

King Servers was used as a platform by hackers who targeted state-election computer systems in Arizona and Illinois last year. Fomenko, who rents space on his servers, has denied any links to the perpetrators of the cyberattacks.

According to Novaya Gazeta, Fomenko rented computer-server space to another Russian entrepreneur named Pavel Vrublevsky, who ran an electronic payment company called Chronopay and in 2013 was convicted of cyberattacks on Russian companies.

Mikhailov reportedly testified in court that he knew Vrublevsky and his talents well.
http://www.rferl.org/a/russia-fsb-agent ... 61397.html

[MacCruiskeen]

Thanks, Karmatterz and Morty.

[seemslikeadream]

I know Russians/trumps's friends being arrested for TREASON is so silly

just have to distract from that


you three are so entertaining and predictable

what no comment on TREASON charges?

[seemslikeadream]

Russia arrests top cyber security expert amid allegations of treason

Roland Oliphant
25 JANUARY 2017 • 4:56PM
The manager responsible for investigating hacking attacks at Russia's biggest private cyber security firm has been arrested amid allegations of bribery and treason involving senior intelligence officers.

Kaspersky Lab, a world-leading cyber security firm based in Moscow, confirmed the arrest of Ruslan Stoyanov, the head of its computer incidents investigations team, on Wednesday.

“The case against this employee does not involve Kaspersky lab. This employee… is under investigation for a period predating his employment at Kasperky Lab,” the company said in a statement.
The company said it had no details of the investigation and the activities of its investigations team were unaffected.

The statement came after Russian media reported that Mr Stoyanov has been held in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison, the detention facility used by Russia’s Federal Security Service, since December.

Mr Stoyanov worked in Department K, the Russian Interior Ministry’s cyber crime unit, between 2000 and 2006. He joined Kaspersky Lab in July 2012.

Experts in the Russian information security world described him as a respected professional who maintained extensive contacts with his former colleagues in the FSB and the Interior Ministry. The department he ran at Kaspersky Lab has consulted for both agencies on investigating cyber crime cases.


He was arrested last month at the same time as a senior official in the Centre for Information Security, the FSB department responsible for combating hacking and cyber espionage, Kommersant, a Russian daily, reported.

Sergei Mikhailov was detained in connection with a probe into allegations that officers at the agency had received money from an unnamed foreign company via an intermediary who worked at a Russian information security firm, the paper reported citing sources close to the FSB.

Andrei Soldatov, an expert on the Russian security services and cyber espionage, said the case appeared to revolve around a “pretty simple” scheme to bribe the FSB official.

“What we don’t know is the identify of the foreign company offering the alleged bribe, and what exactly they wanted from the Centre for Information Security,” he said.

“The Centre is not a regulator officially, there are other centres in the FSB for that, but they are extremely influential,” he added.

The FSB has not commented on either case.

The arrests come amid heightened scrutiny of Russia’s cyber espionage program following allegations of hacking during the 2016 US elections.

US intelligence services have accused Vladimir Putin of authorizing Russian spy agencies to hack into the Democratic National Convention and leak documents embarrassing to Hillary Clinton in a bid to swing the election in Donald Trump’s favour.

The Kremlin has denied any involvement in the leaks.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01 ... s-treason/

Russia arrests spy accused of leaking info about hacks to the U.S., report says

Russia has reportedly arrested a senior intelligence officer over leaks to the U.S. Above, the Lubyanka that houses the FSB intelligence agency.

BY
CHRISTOPHER BRENNAN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Updated: Thursday, January 26, 2017, 3:43 PM
The Russian government has arrested a top cybersecurity officer and accused him of treason for leaking information about hacking to the U.S., according to a report.

Sergei Mikhailov, an official in the KGB successor FSB’s cyberintelligence section, was arrested in relation to leaks of information around a hack revealed last year, independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported Thursday.

The specific hack shed light on reported breaches into the voting systems of Arizona and Illinois, which were not attributed to Russian intelligence services in a declassified report earlier this month.

However, private security firm ThreatConnect said the intrusions originated from the Dutch servers of King Servers, owned by a Siberian 26-year-old named Vladimir Fomenko.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, Jordan king tout Syria talks
Though U.S. intelligence services have not publicly attributed the Arizona and Illinois hacks to Russia, an FBI warning to states about possible vulnerabilities came as officials responded to leaks from the Democratic National Committee believed to have been orchestrated in Moscow.

Russian officials including President Vladimir Putin have repeatedly denied directing hacks to influence the U.S. election.

King Servers says it looked into the technical specifics of the hacks and decided that Russian security services were not involved, according to a statement on the website of a Russian cyber entrepreneur who reportedly does business with the company.

Mikhailov has links to that entrepreneur, Pavel Vrublevsky, and testified that he knew him during a 2012 trial against him for cyberattacking a business rival, Novaya Gazeta reported.

News of Mikhailov’s arrest was first broken by Russian newspaper Kommersant, which said Wednesday that both he and Ruslan Stoyanov, a private cybersecurity expert, had been in custody since December.

Stoyanov’s LinkedIn page says he previously worked to combat cybercrime for Russia’s Interior Ministry, which runs the country’s police.

Novaya Gazeta reported that three other people, including another FSB employee, had been arrested.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.2956581

[MacCruiskeen]

He didn't even mention you, slad. He was at most criticising the content of an article you posted, and then all of a sudden you're offended and he doesn't post here enough to deserve to have an opinion and why can't he post his own threads instead of coming here and attacking YOU and it's a bit late to be criticising Obama NOW show me the posts where you criticised Obama back THEN...

I was not offended...I was pissed

you should mind your own beeswax I know what he was talking about from previous conversations that YOU were not part of

he was criticizing RI not me ...that's what I was pissed at

next time figure out what is really going on before you go off

No, don't deceive yourself, SLAD; you are not RI. Karmamatterz was criticising you too, politely and succinctly, and god knows not without justification. In any case, RI itself is not beyond criticism, least of all nowadays. 1) You and the other Dream persistently misuse General Discussion as your own private Data Dumps, 2) Both of you persistently either abuse anyone who disagrees even slightly with the often-abysmal material you copy-and-paste here so indiscriminately, or else you simply "put them on ignore"; and 3) Both of you are persistently allowed to get away with this board-wrecking carry-on, while other posters frequently get banned instantly for much less obnoxious behaviour.

So thanks again, Morty and Karmamatterz for at least making an effort to speak out against it. Many others are simply too scared to do so.

[Iamwhomiam]

Karma, I've just read your response and understand your frustration, but that's because I've been an activist my entire adult life. As long as folks have enough money to be well fed and comfortably housed with excess to bank and time to go bowling once a week, most are content. Their world is just fine, but the roads suck and taxes are too high. Oh, & Joe's kid got killed in Afghanistan and Bobby's kid got his legs blown off in Iraq, it's such a shame.

Education is dangerous. If you're willing to pay the costs, you too can play in the game, otherwise, you don't matter and are a burden upon the system.

Many want to do more, to actually achieve real progress; progress in growing Peace and in eliminating War, progress to a more natural, circular economic system to achieve a sustainable society where basic human needs are met, but are under the impression impressed upon them that they cannot win in a battle against City Hall when they can.

For example, in a worldwide discussion group composed of environmentalists, educators and waste service and recycling providers, all of whom have the common goal of reducing the flow of garbage to landfills, we all have local & statewide issues we deal with we remain engaged in day to day. Few are volunteers and most are paid by the corporations they work for. It is difficult to keep up with statewide legislation and all but impossible to remain abreast of the unending stream of environmental and industrial proposed rule changes, new regulations being enacted and proposed. That's just one field of study, but it encompasses many others: Public Health, Public Debt, interstate commerce, etc.

A few years ago, more than a decade now, while involved in a long battle opposing a Mega-Landfill from being built in my town as well as another fighting a polluting cement plant, I warned our group to pay attention to a proposed EPA rule change that would redefine certain hazardous materials that required specially licensed handling and disposal at a specially licensed landfill that only receives hazardous wastes. Environmentalists certainly didn't want these materials to be redefined or handled differently. "For goodness sake, they're hazardous! Let's deal with them as such."

But we were too engrossed in our own long battles, locally and federally, to pay attention and the rule was changed. Now tires can be burned as a "supplemental fuel," Highly toxic "Black Liquor" from paper mills can now be burned by paper mills to offset energy and waste disposal costs.(aside: "If you're trying to clean your house or something like that, stay away from material as much as you possibly can," Lanza said.

What I'm trying to say is that only a tiny percentage of our population ever "gets involved" and even those that do are not capable, though they may be expert in their field, of keeping abreast of all the proposed changes perceived as having or potentially having negative impacts.

In other words, you expect too much from common folk, most not even knowing how to challenge or protest their tax assessment, those, that is, who have been fortunate enough to have captured the minimal game-play piece. Let's not forget the average American's intelligence quotient is 100.

Sorry, everyone here is so much better with words than Iam.

[seemslikeadream]

So thanks again, Morty and Karmamatterz for at least making an effort to speak out against it. Many others are simply too scared to do so.

oh so that's the new and improved reason ...you are hysterical

MANY ARE TOO SCARED OF SLAD.....

EVERYBODY RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!!!!

[Wombaticus Rex]

he was criticizing RI not me ...that's what I was pissed at

next time figure out what is really going on before you go off

I don't see much in Morty's recap to argue with, myself.

I just want to emphasize two things: when you post as much external content as you do, those sources are going to have shit talked about them several times per week. There are no good guys in the media, pretty much any source is going to have note-worthy blemishes and questionable history. When people are subsequently quoting your posts in their critiques, I get how that stings.

But that leads directly to point two: being pissed off isn't a justification. You can get pissed off without typing angry responses.

At least 20% of the total volume of comments and posts here is quibbling about either the URL or the author of someone else's post. This cannot still be the catalyst for conflicts.

This is not behavior that is *remotely* unique to SLAD, either - that's just the batch I happen to be responding to tonight.

Edit: per the notion SLAD runs some Irish terror regime that intimidates everyone into silence, well, I am skeptical on that front