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I think that hardly anyone is surprised that China's Politburo (a group of 24 people who oversee the Communist Party of China) was behind the hacking of the Chinese Google office computers. You can see the seriousness of the issue after reading Google's response to the hacking and their threat to pull out of China all together and also after reading the Department of the State's involvement in this issue. The Department of the State, and someone as high up as Hillary Clinton, getting involved in this issue shows how important this single hacking event was, and not just because Google is everyone's the current favorite company.

US asks China to explain Google hacking claims

Bobbie Johnson in San Francisco
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 13 January 2010 08.19 GMT

Hillary Clinton calls on Beijing to answer 'serious concerns' over internet security
Google pulls out of China: what the bloggers are saying

The US government is investigating allegations of a Chinese hacking attack on Google amid what Washington called "serious concerns" over internet security.

The strike, which the company said was aimed at uncovering information linked to political dissidents in the country, led Google to announce last night that it would no longer censor its search engine in China.

The move could result in Google being forced to pull out of China four years after it controversially announced its intention to launch a censored version of google.cn, the local version of its search engine.

Faced with a conflict between one of America's most powerful companies and the Chinese government, the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, called on Beijing to discuss the situation.

The state department knew of the leak several months ago and had ample time to alert staff in sensitive locations. Its pre-emptive scaremongering over the weekend stupidly contrived to hint at material not in fact being published.

So the State department is actually deliberately making this worse than it needs to be.

Nor is the material classified top secret, being at a level that more than 3 million US government employees are cleared to see, and available on the defence department's internal Siprnet.

And this means that basically all of the foreign countries knew this stuff, so the only people being kept in the dark were the general population.

If I were a UN official or diplomat, I'd be quite careful in approaching US personnel of any kind after reading this brief:

Washington calls for intelligence on top UN officials
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/219058

Go and read the documents yourself, instead of parroting the party line of "to honest to publish" bullshit. Here, I'll even pick one out for you:

"Washington calls for intelligence on top UN officials"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/219058

A long a well prepared list of which countries and officials are interesting to US intelligence. Requesting phone numbers, credit card numbers, passwords, finger prints, iris scans.

This is not drunken gossip. These are calculated orders for espionage.

Solar could help (if workplace charging becomes commonplace), but the most viable proven solution right now is Nuclear.

Actually nuclear is the only solution. If you actually look at the basics physics of the situation (as has been done in the UK) then the size, in terms of land area, you will require will be massive and will destroy the environment in a different way. So while renewable sources are great they simply cannot provide all the energy we need and, if we want to avoid CO2, that only leaves nuclear power.

So the choices at the moment are: massively reduce our power consumption in a way which will severely impact our quality of life, live with the effects of global warming or go nuclear and accept the risks of possible nuclear contamination until we get fusion to work.

It's out

and related picture

"At the start of a series of daily extracts from the US embassy cables - many of which are designated "secret" – the Guardian can disclose that Arab leaders are privately urging an air strike on Iran"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/28/us-embassy-cable-leak-diplomacy-crisis*

Anyone who has communicated with the US government.

*By no means do I present anything a news organization as fact.

I have glanced at a few of the documents on The Guardian, and I can categorically say that these documents should not have been released. This should a huge level of irresponsibility on the part of WikiLeaks for releasing the entire database rather than incriminating files. The files are all SECRET rather than TOP SECRET, but there are very sensitive official files in here that have no business seeing the light of day within their classification timeframe, such as HUMINT documents.

Several years ago I supported WikiLeaks and what they stood for, even donating, but after this latest continuation of their anti-American campaign I cannot support them any longer. These documents are far too strategically damaging to the U.S. and its public/not-so-public allies to have been revealed in bulk.

Keep in mind that the only source of information regarding the alleged DDOS is the Wikileaks Twitter page. Wikileaks also went down the last times they released this information.

US embassy cables leak sparks global diplomacy crisis

"Correct me if I’m wrong, but are they [Radiohead] hoping that one of these guys from the G8 is on a quick 15-minute break at Gleneagles and sees Annie Lennox singing “Sweet Dreams” and thinks, ‘Fuck me, she might have a point there, you know?’"

-- Noel Gallagher on Radiohead's politics

That coming from a guy who was in that same interview quoted as "once said [he'd] never read a book", but he admits a book "called Angels and Demons by a guy called Dan Brown" to be "quite interesting"...

Well... Let me put it this way.
Would you turn to a street performer like say... a juggler, for advice on international economy and politics?
Cause THAT is what most (with few exceptions) of these ENTERTAINERS are.
Glorified court jesters with zero qualification outside their limited scope of work.

"Correct me if I’m wrong, but are they [Radiohead] hoping that one of these guys from the G8 is on a quick 15-minute break at Gleneagles and sees Annie Lennox singing “Sweet Dreams” and thinks, ‘Fuck me, she might have a point there, you know?’"
-- Noel Gallagher on Radiohead's politics

Air war weapon stockpile runs critically low

as you recall both the shoe bomber and captain underpants were young Arab men, as were all the 9/11 terrorists. Easily detected under a simple profiling rule - check all young Arab men.

And then the terrorists will switch to arab women.
Or non-arab men.
Or non-arab women

The other problem with racial profiling is that massive number of false positives.
A post-facto analysis like saying that all airplane attackers were arab men ignores the fact well less than 1 in a million arab men are terrorists.
So you improve your true positive ratio from say 1 in 40 million to 1 in 1 million, that's still only a 0.00001% accuracy rate which for all intents and purposes is zero.

So, racial profiling equals no effective improvement in security resource utilization but it does come with a heavy price. The best deterrent against radicalization is integration into society, but when society singles people out as "different" it becomes a barrier to integration. That;s not political correctness, that's empirical fact.

It's hard to have sympathy for a site ("fitwatch") that promotes violent protest. The Guardian's perspective on violent protest is a bit hypocritical too:

• The Guardian is strongly critical of violent protest when done by the English Defence League. (And they should be, the EDL is basically just a modern remake of the National Front, and is attracting the same mix of football hooligans, fascist skinheads, and other assorted nutters).
• The Guardian does not appear to criticise the violent protests by students (which, in reality, are probably not students - real students don't tend to wave anarchist flags), including the attempted murder where a fire extinguisher was thrown down onto at a police officer from the top of a building.
• The Guardian appears to support the author of "fitwatch" (the article you linked), which publishes counter-intelligence on the Police Forward Intelligence Teams (the same guys who are also responsible for policing violent protests by the fascists, football hooligans, anarchists, etc.)

Violent protest is usually counterproductive. If these people really wanted to win, then martyrdom is where it's at. Imagine 100 students on hunger strike outside the Houses of Parliament. That would win the argument. But of course, they won't do that, because it would mean actually putting your supposed ideals before your own well being.

When it comes to policing protests, do you want police that actually do the job regardless of the source of public disorder, or do you want police who do the job when you disagree with the protesters (EDL) but do nothing when you agree (students/anarchists)? The second is an immature point of view, but appears to be the one espoused by the Guardian.

They've already done it without legal backing. The US-hosted, UK-centric police monitoring site FitWatch was closed by the British police, by simply asking the US host to remove it. The police officially objected to a single article, so requested that the whole site be closed for 12 months. The host complied.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/16/student-anti-police-website-closed

You're not too lazy to post, but you are too lazy to follow that link? Apparently! Anyway, here is one link to get you started, and here's another.

"The study was conducted last summer and its findings released in February. Lead researcher Daniel Lack of Noaa's Earth System Research Laboratory at the University of Colorado determined that the 51,000-odd commercial vessels now plying the world's oceans spew almost as much air pollution as half the total number of automobiles on the planet.

"'It was definitely a surprise for me when we pulled those numbers out,' Lack said in an interview. 'These ships are emitting as much [pollution] as 300m cars. It's a hidden giant.'"

So the average is one shiip = 6000 cars. Obviously, some ships will be much worse. But for the article that started this to be right, all of the maritime pollution is down to 6 ships. Seems really unlikely.

Because most ATMs run Windows XP ... and I am not kidding.
At the local 7-11 I can look inside the ATM at the back, where it has a small monitor, and it clearly is Windows XP.
Windows XP is also running your ATM...

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.

“

Shipping is slowing climate change by spewing out sunlight-dimming pollution but a clean-up needed to safeguard human health will stoke global warming, experts said Friday. "So far shipping has caused a cooling effect that has slowed down global warming," Jan Fuglestvedt, of the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research Oslo (CICERO), told Reuters....Toxic sulphur dioxide emitted by burning bunker fuel accounted for the deaths of an estimated 60,000 people worldwide in 2001 through cancer and heart and lung disease, according to a previous study. A clean-up would save thousands of lives. But sulphur pollution from the fast-growing shipping industry also helps create clouds by providing tiny seeds around which droplets form. Clouds have a cooling effect since sunlight bounces off their white tops.

So... if I understand correctly, what's actually happening here is that a Utah company claims that NASA cannot meet the legal requirements by using the competition's designs, and the various Utah congressmen are joining in the chorus to support that Utah company.

Company discredits competitors, congressmen support their state's industry. Surprising? Hardly.

That's only half of it - the astronauts have to wear magic underwear inside their space-suits to meet the clothing law

Two major reasons: firstly, IP addresses don't map directly to people and (depending on the gathering method used by the companies) can be trivial to spoof, secondly (and more importantly) defending a civil suit can easily bankrupt even an innocent person - offering a pre-set 'settlement' in this situation is very close to blackmail.

As I mentioned further down, though, I'm withholding judgement here until I see a bit more information. I still feel it to be a poor choice, mainly for the reasons above, but I can see why they're doing it and I don't feel any real sympathy for a person getting something akin to a parking ticket if they have in fact been illegally downloading games.

This sympathy for the copyright holder is normally somewhat tempered by the fact that I would like to see the bunch of mindless jerks in charge of the companies under the *AA umbrella first against the wall when the revolution comes[1] as penance for the harm they've done us all in infinitely extending copyright, attacking net neutrality, pushing fines and penalties far beyond the reasonable, attacking fair use, attempting to mandate pervasive network surveillance, and kicking puppies[2].

In this case, though, the copyright holder seems to be more or less reasonable, so I'll be interested to see how it plays out.

[1]This is exaggeration for humorous effect, alluding to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Sometimes also known as a joke. Not to be construed as a threat under the Communications Act.

[2]See above disclaimer.

Careful, dangerously close...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/nov/11/twitter-joke-trial-appeal-verdict

The truth about why that happened is even sillier. The head of the Office team didn't believe in tablets... http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/feb/04/microsoft-exec-tablet-killed-brass-office

So Wikileaks published the data and.... nothing.

Not true. The Guardian did a weekend special with pages and pages covering the Wikileaks data, and they continued to publish articles based on the Wikileaks data for a week afterwards. They have an online tag for Wikileaks articles: guardian.co.uk/media/wikileaks shows 474 articles, many of them mentioning "war logs" in the title. They also published Afghanistan: the war logs and Iraq: the war logs, with numerous articles based directly on the leaked data. Likewise, the New York Times published the series The War Logs based on the leaked data, as did Der Spiegel.

I know what you are getting at though,and the Guardian also had an editorial talking about this point (Assange is 'force-feeding truth to a world that has no stomach for it'): that the released data has been ignored by much of the mainstream media, whereas in the past in would've been lapped up. Daniel Ellsberg's leak of the Pentagon Papers was widely examined and discussed in the media, and this hasn't happened so much with the Wikileaks data. They blame general resignation and apathy amongst the population, and a lack of people who are willing to stand up and actually protest against the things that are done in their name. However, I have another hypothesis: the opponents of Wikileaks have done a really great job at getting the media to shoot the messenger, rather than listen to the message.

The anti-Wikileaks organisations have become much, much better at handling the media than they were during the time of the Vietnam war. The Pentagon has a put together a team of 120 people to deal with the Wikileaks problem. They have been amazingly successful in waging a media campaign to discredit Assange, and in turning media attention away from the data that Wikileaks has leaked, and onto unproven allegations of:

• Rape
• Personality issues (abuse of power, sexism, attitute towards women etc.)
• Financial fraud
• Anti-U.S. government bias
• Endangering the lives of troops
• Endangering the lives of collaborators and their families

Assange obviously has issues with U.S. foreign policy, but so do many people, including many Americans. Apart from that, nothing in the list has been proven, and yet - based entirely on these "rumours" - the media has mostly been manipulated into discussing Assange and his personal life and supposed "recklessness", rather than the leaked data.

The assault on Assange has been slow but relentless. He has lost support in several jurisdictions (Iceland, Sweden), and he is about to become an international fugitive from justice - Sweden has requested that Interpol issue a warrant for his arrest. This is for a man who was informed, in writing, by the prosecutor that there was no warrant for his arrest, and that he was free to leave the country. The Australian government has signalled that it would cooperate with a U.S. prosecution of Assange. His British visa expires next year and is unlikely to be renewed. There are certainly clandestine operations against Wikileaks: Assange has had laptops stolen from his checked luggage on international flights, and Wikileaks operatives in other countries have been put under surveillance.

Dealing with Assange was not enough - he had to be discredited, so that people would no longer support him, his organisation, or the principles of leaking data to the world. The opponents of Wiki

So Wikileaks published the data and.... nothing.

Not true. The Guardian did a weekend special with pages and pages covering the Wikileaks data, and they continued to publish articles based on the Wikileaks data for a week afterwards. They have an online tag for Wikileaks articles: guardian.co.uk/media/wikileaks shows 474 articles, many of them mentioning "war logs" in the title. They also published Afghanistan: the war logs and Iraq: the war logs, with numerous articles based directly on the leaked data. Likewise, the New York Times published the series The War Logs based on the leaked data, as did Der Spiegel.

I know what you are getting at though,and the Guardian also had an editorial talking about this point (Assange is 'force-feeding truth to a world that has no stomach for it'): that the released data has been ignored by much of the mainstream media, whereas in the past in would've been lapped up. Daniel Ellsberg's leak of the Pentagon Papers was widely examined and discussed in the media, and this hasn't happened so much with the Wikileaks data. They blame general resignation and apathy amongst the population, and a lack of people who are willing to stand up and actually protest against the things that are done in their name. However, I have another hypothesis: the opponents of Wikileaks have done a really great job at getting the media to shoot the messenger, rather than listen to the message.

The anti-Wikileaks organisations have become much, much better at handling the media than they were during the time of the Vietnam war. The Pentagon has a put together a team of 120 people to deal with the Wikileaks problem. They have been amazingly successful in waging a media campaign to discredit Assange, and in turning media attention away from the data that Wikileaks has leaked, and onto unproven allegations of:

• Rape
• Personality issues (abuse of power, sexism, attitute towards women etc.)
• Financial fraud
• Anti-U.S. government bias
• Endangering the lives of troops
• Endangering the lives of collaborators and their families

Assange obviously has issues with U.S. foreign policy, but so do many people, including many Americans. Apart from that, nothing in the list has been proven, and yet - based entirely on these "rumours" - the media has mostly been manipulated into discussing Assange and his personal life and supposed "recklessness", rather than the leaked data.

The assault on Assange has been slow but relentless. He has lost support in several jurisdictions (Iceland, Sweden), and he is about to become an international fugitive from justice - Sweden has requested that Interpol issue a warrant for his arrest. This is for a man who was informed, in writing, by the prosecutor that there was no warrant for his arrest, and that he was free to leave the country. The Australian government has signalled that it would cooperate with a U.S. prosecution of Assange. His British visa expires next year and is unlikely to be renewed. There are certainly clandestine operations against Wikileaks: Assange has had laptops stolen from his checked luggage on international flights, and Wikileaks operatives in other countries have been put under surveillance.

Dealing with Assange was not enough - he had to be discredited, so that people would no longer support him, his organisation, or the principles of leaking data to the world. The opponents of Wiki

So Wikileaks published the data and.... nothing.

Not true. The Guardian did a weekend special with pages and pages covering the Wikileaks data, and they continued to publish articles based on the Wikileaks data for a week afterwards. They have an online tag for Wikileaks articles: guardian.co.uk/media/wikileaks shows 474 articles, many of them mentioning "war logs" in the title. They also published Afghanistan: the war logs and Iraq: the war logs, with numerous articles based directly on the leaked data. Likewise, the New York Times published the series The War Logs based on the leaked data, as did Der Spiegel.

I know what you are getting at though,and the Guardian also had an editorial talking about this point (Assange is 'force-feeding truth to a world that has no stomach for it'): that the released data has been ignored by much of the mainstream media, whereas in the past in would've been lapped up. Daniel Ellsberg's leak of the Pentagon Papers was widely examined and discussed in the media, and this hasn't happened so much with the Wikileaks data. They blame general resignation and apathy amongst the population, and a lack of people who are willing to stand up and actually protest against the things that are done in their name. However, I have another hypothesis: the opponents of Wikileaks have done a really great job at getting the media to shoot the messenger, rather than listen to the message.

The anti-Wikileaks organisations have become much, much better at handling the media than they were during the time of the Vietnam war. The Pentagon has a put together a team of 120 people to deal with the Wikileaks problem. They have been amazingly successful in waging a media campaign to discredit Assange, and in turning media attention away from the data that Wikileaks has leaked, and onto unproven allegations of:

• Rape
• Personality issues (abuse of power, sexism, attitute towards women etc.)
• Financial fraud
• Anti-U.S. government bias
• Endangering the lives of troops
• Endangering the lives of collaborators and their families

Assange obviously has issues with U.S. foreign policy, but so do many people, including many Americans. Apart from that, nothing in the list has been proven, and yet - based entirely on these "rumours" - the media has mostly been manipulated into discussing Assange and his personal life and supposed "recklessness", rather than the leaked data.

The assault on Assange has been slow but relentless. He has lost support in several jurisdictions (Iceland, Sweden), and he is about to become an international fugitive from justice - Sweden has requested that Interpol issue a warrant for his arrest. This is for a man who was informed, in writing, by the prosecutor that there was no warrant for his arrest, and that he was free to leave the country. The Australian government has signalled that it would cooperate with a U.S. prosecution of Assange. His British visa expires next year and is unlikely to be renewed. There are certainly clandestine operations against Wikileaks: Assange has had laptops stolen from his checked luggage on international flights, and Wikileaks operatives in other countries have been put under surveillance.

Dealing with Assange was not enough - he had to be discredited, so that people would no longer support him, his organisation, or the principles of leaking data to the world. The opponents of Wiki

So Wikileaks published the data and.... nothing.

Not true. The Guardian did a weekend special with pages and pages covering the Wikileaks data, and they continued to publish articles based on the Wikileaks data for a week afterwards. They have an online tag for Wikileaks articles: guardian.co.uk/media/wikileaks shows 474 articles, many of them mentioning "war logs" in the title. They also published Afghanistan: the war logs and Iraq: the war logs, with numerous articles based directly on the leaked data. Likewise, the New York Times published the series The War Logs based on the leaked data, as did Der Spiegel.

I know what you are getting at though,and the Guardian also had an editorial talking about this point (Assange is 'force-feeding truth to a world that has no stomach for it'): that the released data has been ignored by much of the mainstream media, whereas in the past in would've been lapped up. Daniel Ellsberg's leak of the Pentagon Papers was widely examined and discussed in the media, and this hasn't happened so much with the Wikileaks data. They blame general resignation and apathy amongst the population, and a lack of people who are willing to stand up and actually protest against the things that are done in their name. However, I have another hypothesis: the opponents of Wikileaks have done a really great job at getting the media to shoot the messenger, rather than listen to the message.

The anti-Wikileaks organisations have become much, much better at handling the media than they were during the time of the Vietnam war. The Pentagon has a put together a team of 120 people to deal with the Wikileaks problem. They have been amazingly successful in waging a media campaign to discredit Assange, and in turning media attention away from the data that Wikileaks has leaked, and onto unproven allegations of:

• Rape
• Personality issues (abuse of power, sexism, attitute towards women etc.)
• Financial fraud
• Anti-U.S. government bias
• Endangering the lives of troops
• Endangering the lives of collaborators and their families

Assange obviously has issues with U.S. foreign policy, but so do many people, including many Americans. Apart from that, nothing in the list has been proven, and yet - based entirely on these "rumours" - the media has mostly been manipulated into discussing Assange and his personal life and supposed "recklessness", rather than the leaked data.

The assault on Assange has been slow but relentless. He has lost support in several jurisdictions (Iceland, Sweden), and he is about to become an international fugitive from justice - Sweden has requested that Interpol issue a warrant for his arrest. This is for a man who was informed, in writing, by the prosecutor that there was no warrant for his arrest, and that he was free to leave the country. The Australian government has signalled that it would cooperate with a U.S. prosecution of Assange. His British visa expires next year and is unlikely to be renewed. There are certainly clandestine operations against Wikileaks: Assange has had laptops stolen from his checked luggage on international flights, and Wikileaks operatives in other countries have been put under surveillance.

Dealing with Assange was not enough - he had to be discredited, so that people would no longer support him, his organisation, or the principles of leaking data to the world. The opponents of Wiki

So Wikileaks published the data and.... nothing.

Not true. The Guardian did a weekend special with pages and pages covering the Wikileaks data, and they continued to publish articles based on the Wikileaks data for a week afterwards. They have an online tag for Wikileaks articles: guardian.co.uk/media/wikileaks shows 474 articles, many of them mentioning "war logs" in the title. They also published Afghanistan: the war logs and Iraq: the war logs, with numerous articles based directly on the leaked data. Likewise, the New York Times published the series The War Logs based on the leaked data, as did Der Spiegel.

I know what you are getting at though,and the Guardian also had an editorial talking about this point (Assange is 'force-feeding truth to a world that has no stomach for it'): that the released data has been ignored by much of the mainstream media, whereas in the past in would've been lapped up. Daniel Ellsberg's leak of the Pentagon Papers was widely examined and discussed in the media, and this hasn't happened so much with the Wikileaks data. They blame general resignation and apathy amongst the population, and a lack of people who are willing to stand up and actually protest against the things that are done in their name. However, I have another hypothesis: the opponents of Wikileaks have done a really great job at getting the media to shoot the messenger, rather than listen to the message.

The anti-Wikileaks organisations have become much, much better at handling the media than they were during the time of the Vietnam war. The Pentagon has a put together a team of 120 people to deal with the Wikileaks problem. They have been amazingly successful in waging a media campaign to discredit Assange, and in turning media attention away from the data that Wikileaks has leaked, and onto unproven allegations of:

• Rape
• Personality issues (abuse of power, sexism, attitute towards women etc.)
• Financial fraud
• Anti-U.S. government bias
• Endangering the lives of troops
• Endangering the lives of collaborators and their families

Assange obviously has issues with U.S. foreign policy, but so do many people, including many Americans. Apart from that, nothing in the list has been proven, and yet - based entirely on these "rumours" - the media has mostly been manipulated into discussing Assange and his personal life and supposed "recklessness", rather than the leaked data.

The assault on Assange has been slow but relentless. He has lost support in several jurisdictions (Iceland, Sweden), and he is about to become an international fugitive from justice - Sweden has requested that Interpol issue a warrant for his arrest. This is for a man who was informed, in writing, by the prosecutor that there was no warrant for his arrest, and that he was free to leave the country. The Australian government has signalled that it would cooperate with a U.S. prosecution of Assange. His British visa expires next year and is unlikely to be renewed. There are certainly clandestine operations against Wikileaks: Assange has had laptops stolen from his checked luggage on international flights, and Wikileaks operatives in other countries have been put under surveillance.

Dealing with Assange was not enough - he had to be discredited, so that people would no longer support him, his organisation, or the principles of leaking data to the world. The opponents of Wiki

Sir –

You have a very persuasive argument, except you neglect one minor detail: You assume people will take the moral high ground when money is involved. They usually don't. Lawyers aren't any different than Joe Q. Public on the street, excepting that they dress better, make somewhat more money, and (hopefully) are somewhat better trained for their professional field than most.

It is true, and the theme of your post is pursuasive. There are numerous arbitrary and high barriers to entry to effective legal persuasion, not least of which is the need for a lawyer to effectively engage the system.

That being said, in my experience, even after explanation the vast majority of the population lack the ability to understand issues and form concise, sensible arguments on one side or the other of the issues (concise is important because the general response to a failure to understand issues is to verbose verbiage).

To most lawyers, the messes created by the self-represented are often impermeable to the discourse that leads to efficient resolution. That doesn't take away from the access to justice argument you put forward - the law should be clearer and easier to access - but at the same time it's often cheaper and more effective for people to pay a lawyer than self-represent (and that's why most educated people do). I think legal aid is a reasonable solution in many cases - but it has its drawbacks as well (it discourages early settlement, for example).

Finally, it's a central point of economics that specialization creates wealth. Having lawyers allows for more efficient use of the available time and energy of the population; it'd be absurdly inefficient for police, doctors, engineers, janitors, miners, etc., to spend the extraordinary amount of effort necessary to understand every facet of every issue of every dispute that occurs in their lives. Furthermore, the cost to the taxpayer of having the uneducated aggrieved senselessly stand in front of judges for hours bantering about irrelevant points is an enormous cost to society; I find myself regularly reducing well intentioned but misdirected efforts of clients down to the salient points. It's better that a client pay me to do this than the taxpayer, otherwise we create a moral hazard.

Additionally, your argument loses a lot of its intellectual purity and moral superiority when you make the reductio ad absurdum argument in paragraph two. Your post would have gone better without that.

I'm not sure it was absurd. You can see from those links what happens in the absence of a rule-of-law dispute resolution procedure: Violence. It's not absurd, it's not even hyperbole, it's the natural consequence of the demand for justice (in some form, to someone) and the absence of the supply of "justice" (or the appearance of justice, or a justice-like substitute).

Lastly, there is no transparency in the legal system and you're being intellectually dishonest to state otherwise: The legal system is incredibly complex and largely unavailable to the poor. When you have a system that necessitates the use of lawyers and attorneys in every legal preceding, to the point that attempting to advance a case pro se is laughed at by every judge and legal professional -- what then can we honestly say about transparency in the system? If the system requires experts that are licensed through the state to interpret or apply its rules, then the system is not transparent. In fact, it is utterly impervious to external examination, and any protests against it are swiftly dismissed as "uneducated" or rogue. The system is self-contradictory: Pract

Arguably not for much longer:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/16/legal-aid-cuts-law-access

While Sodoku is usually played with a 9x9 board, any square number would work. 4x4, 16x16, I've even seen a 25x25 in a Sodoku book before. (Started it, but didn't want to spend that much free time finishing it.) Technically you could have a 1x1 board but there's not much fun in that!

It isn't necessary to have a square number size, it just means that you are forced out of having a puzzle comprising row-, column- and square-based "house"s when you do. Various polyomino forms have been done, from plain rectangular to the the "Squiggly" variety at dailysudoku.co.uk

Being reasonably competent at the various 9x9 forms (I seek puzzles online because the only puzzle I've found in the national press that I can't solve is the supposed-world's hardest [solution]), I can't see that there's any great complication possible in one of 4x4 size, although I'd imagine it was precisely the point to have *some* complexity but not *lots*.

While Sodoku is usually played with a 9x9 board, any square number would work. 4x4, 16x16, I've even seen a 25x25 in a Sodoku book before. (Started it, but didn't want to spend that much free time finishing it.) Technically you could have a 1x1 board but there's not much fun in that!

It isn't necessary to have a square number size, it just means that you are forced out of having a puzzle comprising row-, column- and square-based "house"s when you do. Various polyomino forms have been done, from plain rectangular to the the "Squiggly" variety at dailysudoku.co.uk

Being reasonably competent at the various 9x9 forms (I seek puzzles online because the only puzzle I've found in the national press that I can't solve is the supposed-world's hardest [solution]), I can't see that there's any great complication possible in one of 4x4 size, although I'd imagine it was precisely the point to have *some* complexity but not *lots*.

I'm willing to bet there are no terrorists whatsoever, this is all just mass hysteria, induced by opportunistic politics, grabbing of attention and votes, selling tons of security equipment, services, jobs, contracts, news, etc.

Regarding your bet, don't give up your day job.

Maybe you haven't heard, but an organization called Al Qaeda declared war on the United States, and essentially the rest of the world for not following their blighted form of Islam. You can read some of the goals of their leader, Osama Bin Laden, in Bin Laden's letter to America. As you can see, he has a fundamental hostility to democracy, non-Islamic religious belief, and many of our basic freedoms. He demands that we convert to Islam, give up democracy, drop the separation of church and state, and change many aspects of our culture or he and his minions will keep trying to kill us. He demands that we stop drinking alcohol, charging interest on bank loans, start separating the sexes, punishing homosexuality, oppress Jews, etc.

The sort term goal they have is to overthrow the governments in Arab & Muslim countries to install religious dictatorships to impose their narrow brand of Islam. They also hope to limit the spread of freedom and other "Western" ideas. Ultimately they plan to take over the world in a reborn Islamic super state. It sounds far fetched, but that is their goal. They understand that it might take 1,000 years, and that they are just moving the ball forward.

You can see a limited list of their handiwork below:

The most recent attempted bombing
The Underwear bomber
African Embassy Bombing
9/11 suicide attacks
Bali bombing
Madrid bombing
7/7 bombing in London
Another of the countless bombings in Iraq
Pakistan hotel bombing
Hotel bombing in Jordan
The "shoe bomber", and his current hijinks
Plan to attack Wembley stadium
Plan to bring down seven airliners
Attempted bombing in Germany

PS - In order to cut down on the confusion, a simple rule of them you can use is that "mass hysteria" doesn't tend to leave craters and stip the walls off buildings, collapse buildings, or rips bodies apart by shrapnel.

My personal opinion is that investing early in identifying suitable technology and replacements to mitigate rising oil prices would be a wise move. Shifting the industry of the entire world away from oil is an enormous task, and one that is being ignored or underestimated by our politicians.

It isn't being ignored...

I don't know for certain that it was her, but she's reported in the Guardian yesterday (link) as saying that she was going to report him to the police. It's a bit rich, since in her column in the Independent she actually states that she 'doesn't for a moment' think she's actually going to be stoned.

It's actually worth listening to the radio broadcast. There's a chinese lady on earlier in the show (just a member of the public) who puts across an incredibly well-spoken and moderate argument. The American human rights activist who argues with her is also extremely articulate and despite that they are disagreeing, they both make their points very well and convincingly. And then near the end, Yasmin comes on and makes a pretty bad idiot of herself in comparison. I'm actually sympathetic to some of what she was trying to say: that there's considerable hypocrisy on the parts of some British politicians in criticising Chinas Human Rights behaviour. But unfortunately she broadens her ire to encompass every politician, actually goes on to argue not merely that there is hypocrisy on the part of some politicians in criticising China, but that no British politician should play any role in trying to oppose human rights abuses around the world, including and explicitly they shouldn't speak out against stoning in Iran. You'd think it were hyperbole but she keeps arguing the point even when the otherwise impeccably polite and sincere human rights specialist is starting to incredulously tell her how wrong she is. By the time you get to her column in the Independent today, she's broaden her offensive to "masculinists" and other monsters. It really is a terrible performance by someone who I remember reading with a lot of interest and respect years ago.

As is increasingly the case with the Independent, a discussion in the comments section there got deleted when it started to go against her position. First, posts that were critical (not necessarily offensive) started to get deleted and then when I checked back later, the entire section had been removed. The couple of pages that I read of it before it went weren't filled with abuse. Certainly strong criticism, but not trolls and flamebait.

Disappointing.

Doing a google search for "what have we ever eaten into extinction?" turned this up as the first result:

"A monkey species was eaten into extinction last year - the gorilla could be next"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/feb/24/highereducation.biologicalscience

The monkey species is the "Miss Waldron's Red Colobus". Wikipedia corroborates that it may have been eaten to extinction recently.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Waldron's_Red_Colobus

For Yasmin Alibhai-Brown to report a comment like this as a genuine incitement to murder, is dishonest.

Was it her that reported it? It could have been anyone, this is the second dumb twitter trial news I've heard of in the last week; the other is here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/nov/11/twitter-joke-trial-appeal-verdict

Oh if only. And then those that abuse it further. There's a better bit of coverage here. For Yasmin Alibhai-Brown to report a comment like this as a genuine incitement to murder, is dishonest. He was also responding to her comments saying that politicians had no right to criticise anyone for human rights abuses, including her saying that they shouldn't criticise stonings in Iran. So it seems she feels that one shouldn't criticise actual stonings taking place, but that suggesting unseriously that someone should be stoned, is an arrestable offence. So in her mind, it's wrong to even speak out against actual brutal murders, but merely talking about them gets you arrested, loss of job, etc.

..have apparently forgotten that he APPROVED more off shore exploration right before the blowout. I'm not sure what happened with this particular report, but the notion that this administration is pushing a green agenda is hilarious.

If she said "Do you know who I am?", the correct answer would surely be:

"You're a Baroness that no-one has ever had the chance to vote for - or against - and you were allegedly vetoed by MI5 for the position of National Security Adviser due to your ill-advised links to dodgy Russian mafia-linked oligarchs, from whom you take sizeable donations to run your office.

Next question please."

You know this is another complaint people had with the old mainframe software. All "power" is in the hands of the cloud provider, and you get what they choose to give, and not a bit more. The power of lots of corporations tends to get concentrated into a single huge entity like this. The mainframe "providers" maintained such an extreme lock-in that most banks are still locked in to the system, TODAY.

Why in the name of all that is good and holy do we want to return to that ? This is why GNU brought us out of "cloud computing" (then called (networked) mainframe computing) 20 years ago (and why microsoft brought the rest of the world out of it 5 years later).

Well, those who don't remember history are doomed to repeat it.

Cloud computing must fail. Not because of lack of technical merit, but because we'll see "incidents" with google and amazon cloud computing, just like there were unisys incidents 20 years ago. And the sad fact is that Stallman, in his usual way-over-the-top manner, has a point : the cloud takes away freedom.

"Protests? In CHINA?!"

Yes, and to great effect:

Strikes in China signal end to era of low-cost labour and cheap exports
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/17/china-strikes-economy

Toyota China Supplier Strike Over; Honda Still in Negotiations
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-06-17/toyota-china-supplier-strike-over-honda-still-in-negotiations.html

China labor unrest spreads as workers seek more
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6590XX20100610

Foxconn to up wages again at suicide-hit China plant
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6551EX20100606

Chinese workers are demanding a raise
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-06-06/suicide-tops-2-8-million-years-work-william-pesek-update1-.html

Foxconn, Honda Increase Factory Wages in China
http://www.2point6billion.com/news/2010/06/07/foxconn-honda-increase-factory-wages-in-china-5920.html

Chinese workers are demanding a raise
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-06-06/suicide-tops-2-8-million-years-work-william-pesek-update1-.html

Secret propulsion system.

Rather like this picture?

And that's not the worst of it: David Willetts, the science and universities minister, said before Cameron's speech that he would investigate making it easier to obtain software patents. "In the US, it's easier to obtain software patents, and Google was able to patent some work - using a federal grant, I might add - that it might not have been able to patent in the UK. The US rule is that 'anything man has invented under the sun you should be able to patent'. That's something we do wish to investigate."

I don't believe for a minute that the music industry is much of a concern to Mr C, I would think his friends are the city types, not the music moguls.

There's a difference?

The ownership of EMI happens to be in the news at the moment - I suspect that most people would describe Terra Firma's management as "city types". I've no idea which way Guy Hands is politically inclined, however, and I suspect he's got bigger issues on his plate at the moment.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/nov/04/citigroup-wins-emi-case-nils-pratley

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/damianreece/8111628/EMI-is-the-real-loser-of-Guy-Hands-court-fight.html

And she looks formidable enough, to worry the average geek or eager tourist trying to get too close to the PM. Even so I think the combined forces along with the police would be too much for her. If not they could always send the boy scouts along too.

It's unlikely to end up a positive thing for the people.

Indeed. If you read down this a bit you'll notice that they also want US style software patents. Idiots.

From your first "Soviet Invasion" link, Polish dead 3,000-7,000. From another wikilink total Polish dead 5,620,000 to 5,820,000.
That's not even close to 0.75%

The USA is not clean of dealing with the Nazis, either.

"the red army decided the fate of german militarism." w. churchill.

And the overall price paid in military dead? USA: 416,800 Yugoslavia: 446,000 (first link, again)

The article was copied, not just the recipe(s). The article is copyrighted.

And lately:

Cooks Source website name won't resolve in DNS.

It's a twitter trending topic: http://twitter.com/#search?q=Cooks%20Source

it's on the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2010/nov/04/cooks-source-copyright-complaint