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Except intent is not determined by what you claim you wanted to do regardless of what you did and how you eventually did it.

With drones you have things like "signature strikes", where they have absolutely no idea who they are killing. Or what about those double tap tactics where they target the same place twice, the second time when rescuers arrive. And if someone is or was terrorist/militant is defined by the same people who are killing them, the same people who have Guantanamo full of terrorists and militants they aren't able to charge of anything let alone convince them even in these farcial kangaroo courts. The same people who, by the way, are know to lie about these matters.

So if you really believe all this can result into anything other than massacres of civilians, you are indeed delusional.

No, no no. It's true Iran is making highly enriched Uranium that it could turned into weapons grade stuff in a couple of months, and is testing space launch systems that could easily be used as ICBMs and now is building naval drones that could be used to attack US ships.

But everyone knows these projects are all civilian. The Uranium is for a research reactor which they need to generate power. Even though most countries with large amounts of nuclear power plants don't have research reactors or local enrichment.

The rockets are so Iran can go into the space launch business because obviously US and EU companies would have no legal problems shipping satellites to a company in Iran run by the Revolutionary Guards.

And the drone is to rescue swimmers who've got into trouble. Even though the IRGC is not known for its concern about swimmers in peril

And if you believe all that, I've got a bridge to sell you.

One is that the Korean people are racially superior to others; their naturally superior, child-like nature is why they've been repeatedly conquered in the past. Kim is their mother-protector who gently guides them while sheltering them from the evil, corrupt world outside. They are encouraged from a young age not to think about things, merely to embrace their instincts and emotional reactions; as the naturally most superior race, their instincts are pure and right and thinking too much can lead them astray.

Pretty much a paraphrase from the dust jacket blurb of The Cleanest Race , by B.R. Myers.

TLDR: Iran apparently built at least its second-generation centrifuges in the sense that Boeing and Airbus build airplanes, i.e. with a significant amount of subcontracting. That is moot anyway, because if, as you claim, " Iran can barely make a coffee maker", they will never be able to do anything with the U235 they may extract.

In more detail:

As far as I can tell, Iran neither acquired assembled centrifuges nor assembled them from kits. It did acquire many components and supplies from abroad:

Iran acquired a long list of items, including high-strength aluminum,
maraging steel, electron beam welders, balancing machines, vacuum
pumps, computer-numerically controlled machine tools, and flow-forming
machines for both aluminum and maraging steel.
- Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March/April 2004.

This list of supplies is a long way from being a pre-made centrifuge.

The original design apparently came from Pakistan, and it seems they needed help getting the first-generation centrifuges running, but now they seem to have designed and built the second generation themselves. ( http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2008/02/12/meet_irans_new_centrifuge )

The SCADA system targeted by the Stuxnet worm came from Siemens, and is general-purpose software that has to be configured for each specific use. One of the reasons the Stuxnet worm did not have widespread effects is that its release was very carefully targeted.

25 % of Americans consume fast food every day

20% of meals are eaten in the car

88 percent of young Americans couldn't find Afghanistan on a map, 75 percent couldn't locate Iran or Israel, and 63 percent couldn't identify Iraq

More Than 40 Percent of Americans Believe the Rapture Is Coming

That 71% think we have an extra trillion dollars or two to go to Mars for no useful or compelling purpose is no great surprise. Depressing? Disconcerting? Tragic? Sure, but not surprising.

Islamic democracy functions like this: One man, one vote . . . once.

Once they get in power, the first order of the day is to kill off any opposition. There is never a real election again.

While this is a simplification, Revolutionary Sudan by Burr and Collins tells what went down in Sudan when the Islamists took power there through a coup and Persopolis gives a ground-level view of Iran, while the Islamists in Turkey have allowed elections after jailing their political opposition and eliminating opposition media.

As in a "gun" (weapon) used in space, which is to me a MUCH more fascinating engineering and design problem. In space, inertia and recoil are a bitch.

Missles probably impractical because they rely on aerodynamic forces to steer (nozzle alone isnt enough to change course/ uses too much fuel), whch leaves us energy and projectile weapons. Turrets can't whip around. Anything kinetic needs to dissipate the recoil which will favor recoilless designs, but those have their own complexities (current designs still have -some- recoil, which while negligible on the surface would have a magnified effect in space). the classic problem of what to do with the heat buildup.

I honestly think space combat will favor a design that is the fusion of two "obsolete" technologies, that of battleship and bomber, though i'm thinking more medium/dive attac bomber. the battleship classic standard is that of dishing and taking damage; this translates to a large mass, and more mass has advantages for absorbing both recoil and heat. the bomber side from the concept of lobbing essentially dumb munitions (bombs or "depth" charges) on a calculated physics trajectory. Though the trouble there, is there no fluid medium to tranfer the energy, so the munition either absolutely must impact the target directly, or cast out a large amount of shrapnel (which would complicate the battlefield for the attacker too).

The list goes on. Fascinating.

I think this is what you want: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/09/28/aircraft_carriers_in_space

The most interesting aspect is most/many/all? script groups that come to the surface seem to be owned top down or at an admin level or mixed in with many informants/agents/agents provocateurs.
COINTELPRO showed the way, PATCON Patriot-conspiracy http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/04/18/patriot_games provided insight into the 1980-90's efforts within the USA - using domestic and EU staff to form, control and guide groups within the USA.
Now you have the "so much so that 1 in 4 hackers may now be an informant, according to some experts." quote.
http://www.npr.org/2011/06/11/137125799/hackers-and-clouds-how-secure-is-the-web
The idea of any long term group not been compromised or used as bait or tracked is getting more hard to believe.
As for Iran all the 'new' posters to slashdot seem to drop in to tell us past code efforts could only be used for a subset of unique, exotic nuclear hardware.
I guess some governments have a list of other unique hardware and now have the political cover to expand their efforts.

Re KGB visions:
COINTELPRO (Counterintelligence Program) is the well known one. e.g..
So you http://www.businessinsider.com/richard-masato-aokis-history-with-the-black-panthers-2012-8
In the 1990's you had Code-named PATCON, "Patriot-conspiracy," http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/04/18/patriot_games
A lot of created groups controlled top down.
From the UK you have long-term sexual relationships with political activists.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/nov/21/met-police-spies-women-undercover
Antiwar groups in the USA seem to face the same old party tricks of facial recognition, OCR of any plates of parked cars near a meeting, the young 20 something who wants direct action, the older louder person with 'experience' who wants direct action... or the young woman who knows someone who has great ideas about direct action...
As for cyber groups - recall http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2012/0306/Anonymous-unmasked-hacker-ringleader-turned-FBI-informant - seems to be the same old turn, top down control, wait, raid ideas.

Why conduct a review of Iran options now?

Partly because of the American experience in Iraq. The U.S. military action there was not, as many suggest, either a war of choice or a war of preemption. It was, rather, a war of last resort. After 12 years of diplomacy, 17 U.N. Security Council resolutions, increasingly targeted economic sanctions, multiple international inspection efforts, no-fly zones over both northern and southern Iraq, the selective use of U.S. military force in 1998, and Saddam Hussein's rejection of a final opportunity to leave Iraq and avoid war, the United States and the international community were out of options. The choice was either to capitulate to Saddam Hussein's defiance of the demands of the international community or to make good on the "serious consequences" promised by the United Nations for such defiance. The United States and its international partners on Iraq chose the latter course.

(Source)

Yeah, it was all just Cheney, and all about making some coin for Halliburton. The war there was in no way the final option resulting from years of failed sanctions, failed diplomacy, and ineffective UN inspections & oversight.

You really do sound like a fucking idiot when you reduce very complex issues to a bumper sticker slogan. You should probably try not to do that, unless you are setting out to deliberately make yourself sound like a fucking idiot.

But since this is Slashdot, and I know how much the mods hate factual observation that clashes with their naive pacifist world view, I'll be modded as a troll. As we all know, "BUSH LIED PEOPLE DIED" is totally insightful and informative, but an actual factual assessment of the reasons for the war in Iraq is clearly trolling.

Jesus, the retards on this fucking site make me weep with pity.

Pakistan is not a failed state.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/failed_states_index_2012_interactive

If that's all he'd done nobody would care. But:
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/09/15/whats_happening_to_those_named_wikileaks_sources

You will note that while Assange sits in a comfortable flat in London, complaining of 'witchhunts' because a government he dislikes might possibly consider charging him with crimes, that might eventually include one carrying the death penalty; those two generals in Zimbabwe are actually charged with crimes carrying the Death penalty.

You apparently didn't bother to actually read the linked document with the statement from the retired (2008) prosecutor. If you had you would have picked up the fact that the next step in the Swedish legal process is getting a detailed statement from Assange to decide if he should be charged and prosecuted - the very thing that Assange is resisting to the point of becoming a fugitive from justice, causing his supporters to lose the money they put up for bail, and causing an international incident and damaging the diplomatic relations of numerous countries*. The retired prosecutor says many mistakes were made, is highly critical of various actions, but ultimately the process emerges: Assange must be interviewed again before he can be charged. You did an inadvertent service - I thank you.

*How WikiLeaks Blew It

No no, the Zionist Lobbies secretly control all American politicians. They're too busy with that to bother with sabotage. For that, look to Mossad. Let's keep our conspiracy theories straight!

They obviously want to differentiate between these and the ones sold to Pakistan (which rusted away in hangars**, which were obviously not 'fighting').

**thanks (in a non-facetious sense) to the Pressler Amendment: http://afpak.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/02/03/the_f_16_fiasco

captcha: "rusting". heh.

capable of taking Chinese astronauts to the moon and points beyond.

No, he is right: look how the shadows on the picture on that link are all wrong-

>Iran has been in almost continuous hostile action with Israel since that country's founding.

That isn't the case at all. Israel's military has, since the 1979 revolution, actually never had a single publicly-known confrontation with Iran. Iran has never attacked Israel.

> They actively worked to sabotage American efforts in Iraq

That is a lot of bullshit. Iran is Iraq's next door neighbor, that would be like a Spanish person complaining about America sabotaging their efforts in Mexico. Of course we're going to want some involvement in Mexican society - they are right next door. It is even more justifiable for Iran - most Iraqis are actually Shiites who had been living under and being oppressed by the thumb of the secularist-Sunni Ba'ath regime. Iran is the Shiite capital of the world.

>They have been caught recently trying to play CIA in several different countries.

I think you are thinking of Mossad, which was recently accused by the CIA of pretending to be the CIA while making contact with anti-regime terrorist group MEK in Iran.

>The idea that Iran is somehow passive in this whole mess is not very hard to dismiss.

I guess that is true, as long as you're willing to go well outside of the facts.

The older people in most groups have be turned at some stage and are free but owned for life, are active undercover assets or can be turned before arrests.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/04/18/patriot_games hints at larger undercover operations in the 1990's surrounding groups in the USA. Infiltration, undercover agents and informants. Go back to the 1960's - no peace or rights group in the community was going to be active without a file.
The idea that the internet was not going to get the same careful monitoring seems to be based on the hardware needed.
They just need to bait people with a good story and well meaning site. Skills and names drift in. New informants created, a show trial and promotions enjoyed.

Get them young, give them a security level and set them to work.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/04/18/patriot_games
PATCON, for "Patriot-conspiracy" shows what can be done over years, the total mapping of many groups within the USA.
You need telco, database and local informants, long term sleepers- over many states and remote telco networks.
Enjoy the world wide wiretap, its their net and cpu power is cheaper every year :)

This article over at Foreign Policy is a good read to see how much of a threat Iran really is. And why every one if focused on the wrong threat.Story

Newt Gingrich and company have been scaremongering about EMP bombs for years now.

Of course, smugly, Obama is yet again just a ditto-head on this sanction issue (this despite his Tony Rezko's inspired Syrian "reset" policy)

http://www.examiner.com/article/clinton-calls-syrian-tyrant-a-reformer-despite-assad-s-bloody-record
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/world/middleeast/04syria.html
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/obama-levies-tech-sanctions-syria-120642375.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/obama-tightens-penalties-on-iran-and-syria-for-trying-to-evade-get-around-us-sanctions/2012/05/01/gIQAz2ZNuT_story.html

(and we'll see how this last one plays out)
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/02/24/exclusive_state_department_quietly_warning_region_on_syrian_wmds

Apparently the F-35 is turning out to be rather crappy as well. Ooops.

His ideas are more "calm" than those of his father. I have yet to hear any Rand position that I would object to.

The guy is a bigot and a hyopcrite when it comes to religious freedom - suggesting that even though the population of a religious minority has increased substantially in a neighborhood over the years, that they should not build themselves a church but should instead commute to a church somewhere else because people who don't even live there would have their feelings hurt otherwise.

He also supports TSA profiling - and not some mythical irsaeli-style behavior profiling either.

I dunno... try this: America is among the 20% of world nations that refuse to limit the use of mines and perhaps this: U.S. laid/dropped about a 1,000,000 mines during the first gulf war alone.

I'd call manufacturing mines that look like toys and dropping them enmasses on innocent children is tantamount to targeting children and their families. Moreover, the U.S., Soviet Union and China have typically been the worlds largest manufacturers of these particular weapons. Sure children die. Hell, we're born dying. It just seems a little trite to ignore the fact that we are supposedly interesting in human rights in our borders and wipe our collective behinds on the rest of the world. It make the holier than thou freedom and democracy conversation sound a bit more than a little hollow.

We have enemies. We need to defend ourselves. It just seems to me the measure of a civilization is the way in which it deals with its enemies. We are not the same folks who helped rebuild Japan and Germany. Who we are today is something sadder and far less ethical.

"assassination arm" sounds so subordinate. But yes, there is sufficient confirmation that MEK and Mossad are working together. The US provided the training. Articles about US and Mossad involment are at foreignpolicy, msnbc and the newyorker(in order of publication):

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/01/13/false_flag
http://rockcenter.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/08/10354553-israel-teams-with-terror-group-to-kill-irans-nuclear-scientists-us-officials-tell-nbc-news#star3
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/04/mek.html

For sure. It's like reasoning with Rick Santorum. I mean, here's Foreign Policy magazine's quiz to see if you can successfully identify the difference between Rick's quotes and those of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/02/29/grand_ayatollah_or_grand_old_party

I knew about Stratfor, but hadn't heard much about them recently until the leak. This article in the Atlantic describes the situation pretty well, you are paying for what used to be called newspaper coverage:

The Atlantic: Stratfor is a joke and so it Wikileaks for taking it seriously

Here's another:
ForeignPolicy.com: Wake me when Wikileaks publishes the Illuminati emails

Remember Wikileaks always over promotes everything they release....

"If Bitcoin was used at anything close to the number of dollar transactions that happen every day, the technical limitations of Bitcoin would kill it off within a week's time."

This is not clear at all. First of all, there are already designs to deal with this situation for when (not if) this occurs - they have already begun by taking the mining out of the default client (they are moving to a thinner and thinner client, which will and has to some extent culumnated in credit-card like applications for mobile devices). There are proposals for securely pruning the existing block chain and for dealing with the higher load all the way up to the size of the world economy.

2) "...The demand for Bitcoin will never exceed the demand for national currencies..."

The black market already holds its own to the deman for national currency and the black market is growing with time - it is very likely that within the next decade or two it may outpace the regulated one. With half the world's population already employed in the black market it is not much of a stretch to think that you don't need a government to back a currency, if the incentives are right for the market to protect it itself.

3) "credit is a necessary component of any economy; "

And you could say by the same metric that trade in physical goods, whether coins or paper bills have been a 'necessary' component ...until the digital banking started to take over in the 80's or so. Just because something has always been part of the economy does not mean that it is necessary. That is a correlation vs. causation error in thinking.

I agree completely that this isn't welcome, but don't underestimate the degree to which Kim Jong Un has been integrated into the power structure. Although from April 2009, there's an excellent article on Foreign Policy about the efforts to get him and his allies into key posts.

Having lived in Korea for almost six years (but since moved away) this news is disturbing and unsettling. While I don't predict anything drastic like a war, Kim Jong Un is going to have to prove himself to the people. If that means sinking another ship like the Cheonan, or shelling another island, or worse... then everyone on the peninsula should be prepared.

With the second-highest kidnapping rate of any country in the world, second only to Venezuela. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/07/05/kidnap_capital Learn from Chinese how we deal with the kidnappers. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg1Vea3gWyw

Good luck finding phosphor and fossil fuel to feed 10 billion, or to continue feeding 7 billion for that matter.

Italy is a shitty country

I know it's an AC, but I'm replying anyway because this is a widely held belief in certain circles.

When media asked Assange about the risks to human lives because of their first releases, Assange stated that he didn't care and that their deaths served his purposes well. Assange is a sociopath and repeatedly on recorded saying people deserve to die for his cause and that its a just death.

Complete bullshit. I know exactly what story you're talking about: http://wikileaks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/12/07/which_is_it_mr_assange The deaths occurred because the Kenyan people decided to riot and face death of their own accord, a decision they based on information leaked on Wikileaks. These people actively chose to fight a tyrant. They weren't executed based on information in the leak.

In short, just the fuck up. You don't have a clue.

Ooops! I meant to change that to "Jordan hasn't (recently) launched invasions of its neighbours" prior to submitting. Ah well. 40 years is an awful long time but probably just a depressing blink of an eye for those seeking an eye, tooth, hand, or foot.

Foreign Policy's take on Abdullah (and other hereditary rulers in the region) is that the populaces don't want regime change--reform, but not regime change à la Tunisia or Egypt. I suppose they have the luxury of being able to insulate themselves to some extent by having Prime Ministers and Cabinets to play 'bad cop' for them. If the economies continue to stagnate, and prices continue to rise the call may come to remove them, rather than just the bureaucrats and politicians (although I imagine that the oil-rich will probably be able to buy off, or continue to buy off their countrymen).
http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/06/17/the_kings_speech

You all keep on pissing and moaning about Iranian nukes, while part of the new Saudi arms deal is to protect future Saudi nuclear ambitions.. which, by the way, also involves Pakistan (had to use google cache to get the whole article)

And what did this clown ever do to deserve all those medals?

The food we eat is oil.

In addition to oil, our system of agriculture demands vast quantities of phosphorus, and that is running out.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/04/20/peak_phosphorus/

Some initial analyses from scientists with the Global Phosphorus Research Initiative estimate that there will not be sufficient phosphorus supplies from mining to meet agricultural demand within 30 to 40 years. Although more research is clearly needed, this is not a comforting time scale.

Manning acted out of a juvenile sense of drama, and indiscriminantly stole hundreds of thousands of documents in a fit of pique over "being in a bad place" emotionally. He betrayed his fellow service members and knew that his drama queen routine was going to put many people at great risk so that he could be seen stamping his feet...

Kissinger said much the same of Danel Ellsberg: It’s treasonable! There’s no question it’s actionable. I’m absolutely certain that this violates all sorts of security laws.

How is that the same as setting up communications channels for individuals living under an oppressive totalitarian regime like Cuba's? It's not.

He set up a communication channel with the world because he believed that the information belonged "in the public domain". His actions have been credited with helping fuel the revolutions in the middle east - helping individuals living under an oppressive totalitarian regime.

In a speech last night Gaddafi, an ally of the ousted president, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, said he was "pained" by the fall of the Tunisian government. He claimed protesters had been led astray by WikiLeaks disclosures detailing the corruption in Ben Ali's family and his repressive regime. The leaked cables were written by "ambassadors in order to create chaos", Deutsche Press-Agentur reported Gaddafi as saying.

The Iranian government have claimed that Wikileaks is a U.S. plot to destabilise anti-colonislist governments.

the release was an organized coordinated move, adding that such a huge volume of documents could not have been released without the cooperation of intelligence services of Western governments, in particular the US.

A former Pakistanti General has also claimed Wikileaks is a CIA/Mossad plot:

The US has a hand in this plot, and these reports (posted by the WikiLeaks website) are part of the US psychological warfare

Disclaimer: Tunisia: Don't Call It a WikiLeaks Revolution

http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/10/28/cable_exclusive_the_secret_obama_administration_memo_on_child_soldiers?hidecomments=yes Nice guy that president of yours

Meantime, make sure the UPS-es are good, save often and.. send the files to wikileaks by DVD (can't do anything else anyway, somebody took their submission system).

You forgot "Think of the Children."

Well, that's maybe where we differ. I think we need to be adults and think of everybody, especially if Al Qaeda is successful in getting nuclear weapons, which they already have permission to use.

But, if it will make you more comfortable, for the moment lets forget about the children, and see where we stand. We can recap, and maybe you could point out what is actually wrong instead of in essence saying "I don't like it".

I pointed out that the courts have ruled against your assertion that the government's national security wiretapping is illegal, and a human rights violation: Intelligence Court Releases Ruling in Favor of Warrantless Wiretapping

Even the page you linked to noted the EFF defeat on the legal question:

EFF Plans Appeal of Jewel v. NSA Warrantless Wiretapping Case
Court Rules That Mass Surveillance of Americans is Immune From Judicial Review
San Francisco - A federal judge has dismissed Jewel v. NSA, a case from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on behalf of AT&T customers challenging the National Security Agency's mass surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans' phone calls and emails.

I also pointed out just a handful of the many active terrorism investigations and court cases going on inside the US. This points to a genuine, current, dangerous threat of people being killed by militant Muslim extremists. I assume you don't debate that they are genuine.

Daniel Boyd pleads guilty to US terrorism charges -9 February 2011
Domestic Terrorist 'Jihad Jane' Pleads Guilty to Four Charges - Feb 2, 2011
Stockham requests new attorney - February 05, 2011
Note: This individual is apparently an American Sunni Muslim who tried to attack a Shia Muslim Mosque.
Iranian Book Celebrating Suicide Bombers Found in Arizona Desert - January 27, 2011
Baltimore man accused of plotting to blow up military recruiting station in Md. - Thursday, December 9, 2010
Oregon Bomb Suspect Mohamed Osman Mohamud Wanted "Spectacular Show," - November 29, 2010
Faisal Shahzad: 'War With Muslims Has Just Begun' - Oct. 5, 2010
2 MN women charged with aiding Somali terrorists - Aug 5, 2010
U.S. links 8 to Somali terrorist group - November 24, 2009
And here's one for the Canadians: Converts Who Kill

I then pointed out that this current turmoil started with Al Qaeda's 9/11 attacks, and that according to Bin Laden, he won't stop trying to a

Maybe I misunderstood, but you seemed to imply that rare earth elements are in scarce supply. Actually, they aren't so rare and they're more of a metal than "earth".

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/06/15/are_rare_earth_minerals_actually_rare

Free speech is causing harm!

Just like yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater, or releasing the names and addresses of informants against Mafia hit men, or the names and locations of informants against Al Qaeda & Taliban cut-throats & beheaders like Wikileaks is doing.

Dead informants mean fewer people to pass on information on scum like Shahzad, who tried to bomb Times Square with a bomb like this.

Calling himself a Muslim soldier, Shahzad pleaded guilty in June to 10 terrorism and weapons counts. He said the Pakistan Taliban provided him with more than $15,000 and five days of explosives training late last year and early this year, months after he became a U.S. citizen.

Would even a Wembley stadium type attack convince even most people many on Slashdot that terrorism is a serious problem? I wonder.

Bin Laden's demand to the United States (The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam.) is that we all convert to his brand Islam, change our governments to observe Sharia, or he and his minions will continue to try to kill us. Their ultimate goal is to conquer the world for Islam, not simply get the US out of anywhere, destroy Israel, or anything else. Al Qaeda believes it is justified in killing 4,000,000 Americans in pursuit of its goal. As it is, Al Qaeda's world wide body count must be easily in the tens of thousands by now.

Meanwhile, planning continues for the next Al Qaeda assault in Europe, following up on the successful mass attacks in London and Madrid, various assassinations, and the failed attacks in Germany, France, and other places. (Hopefully there is a well placed informant or two that will survive the Wikileaks releases.)

I wonder how many on Slashdot are members of the Internet Jihad, or are otherwise radicalized and trying to influence opinion?

“I imagine how the great jihad will take place, how the Muslims will win, God willing, and rule the whole world, and establish the greatest empire once again!!!” reads another Internet posting from Mr. Abdulmutallab.

This is not the secular, political language of resistance against foreign occupation. It is the language of apocalyptic salvation. It has nothing to do with Iraq, Afghanistan or the Palestinians, although countless young Muslims identify passionately with stories of perceived injustice. Radical Islam claims that martyrdom is the ultimate act of faith – the highest duty of a believer, next to the worship of Allah itself.

“

http://hillary.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/11/11/clinton_announces_150_million_to_help_build_a_palestinian_state

Hooray for our bold leaders propping up yet another horrible government. Meanwhile, we're drowning in debt and our black messiah just got told to fuck off at the G20 summit. Don't you just love being treated like a limitless charge card, my fellow Americans? It really does amaze me that our leaders continue to give away money like it was candy, in spite of the very clear message that we just sent them that we want to restore fiscal sanity. If I write a hot check I go to jail, but if Uncle Sam does it he just prints more money. Isn't that just wonderful?

Somehow these successes from America's last great trade war have been forgotten -- blotted out by patriotic sloganeering ("American industry pulled up its socks to meet the Japanese challenge)"

. The writer pretty much argues that the last trade war wasn't really won at all,

Most U.S. producers never recovered what they lost in the 1980s. In fact, the question of just who beat whom in the last great trade war has no easy answer. Consider this: Japanese GDP growth from 1990 to 2000 -- Japan's so-called lost decade -- was just 0.2 percent less than America's when you account for increases in the U.S. population. And Japan comes out ahead on a per capita basis. Even with the battering it took, Japan's productivity growth outpaced that of U.S. workers in the 1990s.

and even that limited success was more a factor of specific global issues and not because of American industry. Give it a read, it makes an interesting argument.

You're an idiot, the military doesn't stick any moron on a nuclear submarine, or in a command and control computer lab.

And yet...

Sub Trouble

My fellow officers were surprised by my failure, and wondered aloud why I hadn't used the "study guide." When my second exam arrived, so did the so-called study guide, which happened to be the answer key for the nuclear qualification exam I was taking. I was furious. Defiantly, I handed back the answer key to the proctor and proceeded to take the exam on my own. I failed again. My boss, the ship's engineer officer, started to document my failures with formal counseling so that he could fire me.

The most competent junior officer on our ship ran to my rescue, confiding that none of the other officers had passed the exam legitimately; the exam was just an administrative check-off. "Swallow your pride," he told me, and just get it done.

"including Haiti and Papua New Guinea, whose capital, Port Moresby, has one of the highest murder rates in the world"

I wonder what counts as "high". For comparison: (1999 BBC article, 2008 Foreign Policy article, and Guardian 2009).

Caracas 130 per 100,000
New Orleans est. 67 (pd) to 95 (fbi) per 100,000
Cape Town 62 per 100,000
Washington DC 69.3 per 100,000
Port Moresby 54 per 100,000
Detroit 40.6 per 100,000
Papua New Guinea 15.2 per 100,000
Moscow 9.6 per 100,000
Haiti 5.3 per 100,000.
London 1.8 per 100,000
 

While

http://neteffect.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/09/09/one_week_inside_the_haystack

article linked above says he didn't know where it came from, people working with Anonymous Iran knew Austin Heap from the get-go. He had set up some proxies right when the difficulties started and got maximum coverage and kudos for that. He then leveraged that notoriety to start Haystack. Austin Heap is not a programmer but has degrees in marketing and is really excellent at that. He had a full website up for Haystack and was selling it before it existed.

He attended meetings with congress people to ask for these grants all before it existed as well. Many times people posted contact info for people in the security software area and asked that he have his code confidentially peer reviewed since he had already stated it would not be open source. His responses were nothing short of hostile. Any early requests for technical details so people with NGOs could at least get a feel for it's effectiveness were either turned down or answered with non-answers that were confusing, and in some cases technically clueless. So this pissing match started long ago. But Austin has ever tweeted constantly asking for help in donations, grant writing, flash drives, servers, lawyers to set up non-profits, and even developers to write it. Out of the gate he was asking all over Twitter and Anon for $$$.

It wasn't until he continued to dig in on the no peer review that many got suspicious. It smelled like well-hyped vapor-ware, perhaps with good intentions, but so heavily milked for donations likely before even a single line of code existed I do consider it an opportunistic scam at worst or well-intentioned but clueless vaporware at best.

Now it seems he wrote something strong enough to be peer reviewed, and it has issues. Color me *yawning*. I suspect he finally caved on getting it reviewed since it may not sell well without endorsements, or at least one peer review. Though, if his skills in publicity and getting donations are finally harnessed to create something that works via peer reviews maybe everyone will be happy. He can have his shiny well publicized start-up and anti-censorship users can get something that is going to work.

---- posted in verbatim for /. proof ----

Theres been a lot of alarming but rather brief statements in the past few days about Haystack, the anti-censorship software connected with the Iranian Green Movement. Austin Heap, the co-creator of Haystack and co-founder of parent non-profit, the Censorship Research Center, stated that it had halted ongoing testing of Haystack in Iran; EFF made a short announcement urging people to stop using the client software; the Washington Post wrote about unnamed engineers who said that lax security in the Haystack program could hurt users in Iran.

A few smart people asked the obvious, unanswered question here: What exactly happened? With all that light and fury, there is little public info about why the worlds view of Haystack should switch from it being a step forward for activists working in repressive environments that provides completely uncensored access to the internet from Iran while simultaneously protecting the users identity to being something that no-one should consider using.

Obviously, some security flaw in Haystack had become apparent, but why was the flaw not more widely documented? And why now?

As someone who knows a bit of the back story, Ill give as much information as I can. Firstly, let me say I am frustrated that I cannot provide all the details. After all, I believe the problem with Haystack all along has been due to explanations denied, either because its creators avoided them, or because those who publicized it failed to demand one. I hope I can convey why we still have one more incomplete explanation to attach to Haystacks name.

(Those whod like to read the broader context for what follows should look to the discussions on the Liberation Technology mailing list. Its an open and public mailing list, but it with moderated subscriptions and with the archives locked for subscribers only. Im hoping to get permission to publish the core of the Haystack discussion more publicly.)

First, the question that I get asked most often: why make such a fuss, when the word on the street is that a year on from its original announcement, the Haystack service was almost completely nonexistant, restricted to only a few test users, all of whom were in continuous contact with its creators?

One of the things that the external investigators of Haystack, led by Jacob Appelbaum and Evgeny Morozov, learned in the past few days is that there were more users of Haystack software than Haystacks creators knew about. Despite the lack of a public executable for examination, versions of the Haystack binary were being passed around, just like unofficial copies of Windows (or videos of Iranian political violence) get passed around. Copying: its how the Internet works.

We were also told that Haystack had a centralized, server-based model for providing the final leg of the censorship circumvention. We were assured that Haystack had a high granularity of control over usage. Surely those servers could control rogue copies, and ensure that bootleg Haystacks were exc