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Care to back that up with any references to recent statement about Israel not recognizing Palestine's right to exist? Here is evidence counter to that argument. As for Hamas, destroying an organization who's main stated goal is the destruction of one's country seems to be a prudent thing to do. If Hamas get what it wants Israel will not exist. If Israel gets what it wants Israel and Palestine will exist.

I suppose you think the Nazis didn't commit a genocide because they only managed to kill half the Jews. Don't take my word for it, take Naftali Bennett's. Israel is just following up on earlier promises. Of course, the plan goes back over 100 years!!

I've realised why people keep quoting this. FlightAware provides a low resolution track of the flights - about 100 points* for a flight between Amsterdam and KL. FlightRadar24 provide a track with a 1 minute resolution (~600 points, with large sections missing where there is no ADS-B or MLAT coverage).

* They now seem to have slightly improved resolution, but now highlight where the track is actually known. Check for yourself - the tracks where data is available is in green, then they draw a great circle where the track is unknown.
MH17 2014-07-15
MH17 2014-07-16
MH17 2014-07-17

This is the data I originally compiled from FlightRadar24 - All MH17 flights since 14th May - and as you can see, they have data points provided every minute, as opposed to guessing where the aircraft was.

Basically, you've a choice of using a website that provides low resolution lat/lon pairs (FlightAware), or a website that provides timestamped lat/lon data, along with speed, course, altitude and area (FlightRadar). If you're going to use rubbish data to support a hypothesis, you'll end up with a rubbish hypothesis. In fact, you're doing it wrong if you need to use rubbish data to "prove" your hypothesis.

As for the altitude, it's true that the pilots request FL350, but were refused - this could have been for any given reason - congestion (apparently there have already been reports of near misses over Russia due to congestion due to aircraft avoiding Ukraine airspace - I'm trying to find where I read that), weather (which has been suggested by a pilot's group). However seeing as an SA-11 has an altitude range of 60 - 25,000m, 600m isn't going to make a difference if you're attempting to shoot down a civilian airliner.

Armstrong: "I thought we had a 90% chance of getting back safely to Earth on that flight but only a 50-50 chance of making a landing on that first attempt. There are so many unknowns on that descent from lunar orbit down to the surface that had not been demonstrated yet by testing and there was a big chance that there was something in there we didn't understand properly and we had to abort and come back to Earth without landing."

Seems like a decent estimate. The landing computer had issues that almost was cause for an abort. I'm surprised NASA decided to ignore the alarm. Who wants to try to land with an active error code? Two even. In hind-site it was the correct decision, but the cause was unknown at the time.

http://www.theguardian.com/sci...

About 5% of workers are on minimum wage in the first place, out of those 5%, some will not be rehired

That doesn't make any sense, businesses don't hire people on a whim, they hire people because they have roles that need doing, minimum wage doesn't change that. Many European countries have a minimum wage, I've seen no evidence showing that is has a detrimental effect, including where I live where it was put in place over a decade ago.

Any business that doesn't hire the people it needs is cutting off it's nose to spite it's face, or shooting itself in the foot, take your pick.

Minimum wage comparison of countries chart Here

Australia's minimum wage is approx $17.50 USD, it doesn't seem to be wrecking their economy.

Very good news. Extremely low calorie diets also look promising, worth a try.

There seems to be an unusual amount anti alternative media sentiments here lately. Maybe the NSA is manipulating the moderation system. http://www.theguardian.com/uk-...

"Rumors"? Ukrainians were conducting military exercises in that area. From the Guardian: "Hours after the crash, US officials said that the tragedy had been caused by an S-200 missile fired mistakenly by Ukrainian forces during military exercises on the Crimean peninsula, which juts into the Black sea. " http://www.theguardian.com/wor...

Russian separatists give themselves a huge black eye. A major Western economy fails to accept energy poverty. Dems are using illegal immigration to guarantee a huge loss four months from now. The UN got caught hiding Hamas missiles in one of the Gaza 'schools' they operate.

Bad day eh? Maybe head back to Vice and stare at pictures of dead pallys for a while and feel better. Off you go.

Control over reading web sites and control over what can be reported.
News Corp and media union warn over crackdown on spy reporting (17 July 2014)
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
Journalists will face jail over spy leaks under new security laws (16 July 2014)
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
Welcome to a few years in jail for “any person” who disclosed information relating to “special intelligence operations”
ie no subsequent disclosure by the press.
ASIO (comparable to MI5) and ASIS (equivalent to CIA or MI6) also get new powers eg power to access a third party's computer.
Dont worry its only for very "very limited circumstances". You can still enjoy freedom of discussion and Australia will "believe very strongly in freedom of speech and freedom of the press". You just wont be able to find digital discussions, if you start the wrong discussion or comment your computer might be a security threat. No more Snowden links? No more links to digital discussions about Snowden that might link to Snowden materials?

Control over reading web sites and control over what can be reported.
News Corp and media union warn over crackdown on spy reporting (17 July 2014)
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
Journalists will face jail over spy leaks under new security laws (16 July 2014)
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
Welcome to a few years in jail for “any person” who disclosed information relating to “special intelligence operations”
ie no subsequent disclosure by the press.
ASIO (comparable to MI5) and ASIS (equivalent to CIA or MI6) also get new powers eg power to access a third party's computer.
Dont worry its only for very "very limited circumstances". You can still enjoy freedom of discussion and Australia will "believe very strongly in freedom of speech and freedom of the press". You just wont be able to find digital discussions, if you start the wrong discussion or comment your computer might be a security threat. No more Snowden links? No more links to digital discussions about Snowden that might link to Snowden materials?

First, let me say that I was talking about workplace harassment. I failed to specify that in my comment.

When I say that the organization is the first responder, I don't mean they're the first, last, and only. People can always call the police (or file a lawsuit), and obviously if your organization covers for harassers then that's the next step. But escalating to the courts is expensive, time-consuming, embarrassing, often bad for your career, and nowhere near certain. Even in severe cases, the police often don't take rape seriously. It seems like the best we can do is have a multi-tiered system of shared responsibility.

Things like regulatory capture happen because people don't pay enough attention to their government, not because it is too big.

No, it gets that way because we have no way to enact accountability in a plutocracy. Furthermore we have no legitimate government because the voting systems have been compromised.

There are many people who give a fuck. We just can't do shit about it, and aren't pissed off enough to be calling a vote of no-confidence in congress to scare them.

With votes off the table the only avenue left is activism, but we have entire government machines prepared to deal with activism. They carry on a long history of anti-activist agenda.

I'm sorry, but your comments sound ignorant to me. Have you been living on the same planet I have? It doesn't sound like it. Please educate yourself. The apathetic citizens can be problematic, but in this case the problem clearly lies elsewhere.

Re "I hope that this is the beginning of the end for that idea."
Canada seems to want the self signed bureaucratic option. Officials will go looking, get isp logs, users full details and then seek a real court for the later stages of an investigation.
ie customer information, no reasonable expectation of privacy, no warrant is required for warrantless "looking" at internet activity :)
How this new court event will slow down that vision of finding and ip, logging usage and review will be interesting.
Long term law changes could allow cleared local town, city officials and police in say Australia, Canada or the UK a form of automated interfaces into all their nations isp logs and web 2.0 sites.
Within new laws they could find a user via an ip, log usage, review the past many months and track all new activity of that users account.
Just "looking" at months of web history and your full account details.
Australia had news on issues like this "Greens unveil plan to require warrant to access phone and internet records"
http://www.theguardian.com/wor... (11 June 2013)
"2007 to the Telecommunications Interception Act clarified that so-called “metadata” – email addresses, information about where emails are sent and from whom they are received and who is called from a certain telephone number, from which location and for how long – can be accessed simply by filling in forms"

Does France have anything analogous to the Fair Comment defense found in Commonwealth countries? I see it apparently still occasionally works in Canada and the UK.

A/C repair doesn't pay very well, however with global warming, demand should skyrocket, so salaries may go up up and up!

Except that scientists are working on solid state magnetic refrigeration and A/C that is mostly maintenance free. These SSM A/C units will be available long before hard-AI eliminates the need for programmers.

Well let's see we have a story of discrimination and injustice:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...

underworked employees:
http://www.theguardian.com/art...

These aren't all people who screw up and want a second chance, it's factual information about companies actual business practices in some cases.

> That decision has resulted in takedown requests from convicted sex offenders and huge banking companies,

Note that those are requests, not actual removals.
The law has a very broad public-interest exception, none of those requests will pass muster under the law.

In fact, the recent hoohaw about google delisting certain newspaper articles was ended when Google admitted that those delistings were not consistent with the law.

Pentagon Wants a Social Media Propaganda Machine ( 07.15.11 )
http://www.wired.com/2011/07/d...
eg what was the Social Media in Strategic Communication (SMISC) program, ie countermessaging is now legal with the loss of the Smith–Mundt Act.
The 'using data from the micro-blogging service as an intel source to aid" ends up in an interesting way.
US military studied how to influence Twitter users in Darpa-funded research (9 July 2014)
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...

Can't remember where I saw the article about the lawsuit going forward. They basically won. The best I can find now are: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... and http://www.theguardian.com/tec..., so yes, just the start of the case.

The governments of America's allies probably care about their citizens being killed in attacks as has happened before:

Madrid train attacks
Bali death toll set at 202
7 July London attacks

And attempts to repeat that sort of thing continue:

09 Jul 2014 - Islamist plot to blow up Eiffel Tower, Louvre and nuclear power plant foiled, say French police

Mass murder is one of the worst deprivations of rights.

> (because even a partially effective defense weakens their case for nuclear disarmament, their true goal)

No, a partially effective defense actually strengthens the argument for disarmament.

The reason that is the case is because a partial defense just means the ability to stop one or maybe two warheads. But they are no good against 5+ simultaneous launches. Just look at even the most recent ballistic missile defense test - it was just against one rocket. They have never even tested with more than rocket and most of the time they miss anyway.

So by demonstrating partial effectiveness they are actually making the inability of the system to counter any sort of realistic threat plainly obvious.

The system is designed to have an easier method for regime change than bloodshed

Correct. And that's why the voting system has been thoroughly compromised. So the only avenue left is protest. Ah, but we've got "protections" in place to keep you from doing that as well.

Self satisfied people like you are actually sucking their own cocks. I, on the other hand, am not satisfied with my own self delusions, and actually seek out the fucking information available before I attempt to make up my mind. Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining, especially not if you haven't even tried looking into the issue whatsoever. You haven't.

Proof, once again, that lower UIDs are not correlated to intelligence.

Incidentally, didn't Obama announce some changes he was going to make to fix the NSA?

This is the guy who disingenuously said "Nobody is listening to your telephone calls", knowing the monitoring is done by speech recognition and only a tiny fraction needs to be listened to by humans, and who appointed Clapper to establish an NSA review board, knowing he had already lied to Congress to protect the NSA.

Your point is well taken. Here is one suggested action. Try to wake up the sheep, enough to actually make a difference. Post the article to facebook. Here is how I posted it to my account.

I'm not much of a conspiracy guy, but our gov. is getting really out of control and scary. This is in my mind a pretty credible source. http://www.theguardian.com/com... -- that does not guarantee that is in fact true, but I believe that it is.

Clearly there are other ways. Write / call the appropriate politicians, etc. You know more possibilities, no need for me to rant here.

NSA has purchased enough storage for this apparently.

http://www.theguardian.com/wor...

Archive.org has estimated the amount of memory required to store all phonecalls.

http://blog.archive.org/2013/0...

It should be publish or die (...)

You might want to read this:
http://www.theguardian.com/sci...

sounds like a republican capitalist paradise. we should import a couple of the Dubai leaders to put the US poor to work. finally.

Right ... because it's Republicans who want to concentrate people in cities. Got it.

No...it must be because the poor in Dubai get paid well and have good lives compared to the poor Americans.
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/2480... /ironyoff

I don't know what makes you think that Republicans believe in pretty much any of the things you are asserting.

Go ahead and state your claim, and we'll see. So far you've earned 0 points for argument by farting upwind.

I'm up one citation on you, here's another: those officials resigned without charge, seems all them "tough on crime" Republican AGs just couldn't be assed do to jack shit. Bush's AG couldn't be bothered with it either. 3-0, suckah, show me where Republicans gave a damn about gay prison rape of boys or men.

Trillions on war in Iraq? Afghanistan? Ring any bells? Do I have to provide links to both the budgeted and non-budgeted costs of these wars? Fine then, Iraq alone totaled $823 billion up to 2011. All in all we're going to pay 4 trillion for Bush's little expedition. Damn Obummer for cutting them short!

War on drugs? Wow, where do I start? After decades of "winning" the "war on drugs" the GOP just reversed course last convention. So yeah, any day now, we'll be getting magic brownies at the local starbucks. It'll remain to be seen if they'll stay on this course, or if they'll turn their hypocrisy drive to maximum thrust and change direction again once they are in charge and are no longer using it as a states rights plank to beat Obama for refusing to stop enforcing federal law over states' legalization efforts. (I'm sure Boehner's got federal decriminalization on the agenda... somewhere.. right? Right? ... Bueller?)

While I'm on a roll, tell me, "as a Republican", which of these sentences you believe are true:

1) Unions force companies to sign contracts they can't afford.
2) Bankers force homeowners to sign contracts they can't afford.

Question 2:

Who deported more illegal immigrants? GWB or Obama? Go ahead, take your time. While you stick some plugs in to stop the smoke leaking out your ears, peruse the various tea party talking head blogs whining about how the Republicans are lenient on immigration, that might help you guess.

Lightning Round!

Who was the Republican bitch that thinks we're doing enough to deal with wrongly imprisoned innocent people, and that we should be happy to be paying our tax dollars to feed and shelter these people and paying even more tax dollars when the Republican prosecutors fighting to keep them in jail finally run out of appeals and the innocent get a huge check cut from the government? Did you answer Republican Joan Huffman? Quote: "Texas has done a really good job to do what we can to compensate exonerees". Ka-Ching! Of course, how can handing out OUR tax money give someone back those lost years of freedom and gay rape? At least the prosecutor feels terrible. Surely between feeling sad and an appointment by Republican Rick Perry he has been punished enough for obstruction of justice in a case where holding the wrong man prisoner for years allowed the criminal to kill again?

Is this, as a Democrat, actually an issue for you?

What's that? Speak up sonny, all that "with us or against us!!!1!" shouting's got my ears ringing. You saying something about how Bush should be allowed to use executive orders to stick electrodes wherever the fuck he wants and damn Congress's Constitutional mandate to regulate the armed forces?

Why does this guy have so many dedicated fans?

You're the guys who have this whole fictionalized "al gore obsession" where you pretend there's a cult of personality. You don't actually need to have one over Watt. He's just one shithead. Let it go.

Here's your Liar cite promised that a new examination was neutral and he'd base his views on that.

Immediately rejected it when it showed the scientific consensus. He's a liar. Established.

Shilling established

Now will you PLEASE stop defending this scum?

AEI, for one. $10k for any paper that attacks the IPCC reports. There's other public offers out there, too. And I'm sure they're outnumbered 100 times over by not-so-public ones.

Sellafield in the UK lost nearly 30 kg of plutonium in 2005. But that was on paper only.....except the plutonium washed out to sea. Of course it can't enter the human food chain can it?

Sellafield in the UK lost nearly 30 kg of plutonium in 2005. But that was on paper only.....except the plutonium washed out to sea. Of course it can't enter the human food chain can it?

This source seems to think differently. In either event, explosives aren't something you really want passengers to have, and multiple passengers could have multiple shoes. Are you seriously suggesting that they not screen shoes now?

The linked source agrees with me, 50g would not be enough to do serious damage, you need to have 100g to do serious damage to a car, which (for explosives as opposed to impact) is not much stronger than an airplane fuselage. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/854...

Being required to check your own bag is OK. Although some of the searches bags are subject to is questionable, but that's a slightly different topic.

Shoe screening has never been acceptable, especially because it's ineffective.

From what I can tell all of the bombing plots in the 2000s were avoided by either misfires or security measures in place since the mid 90s.

Yes, we've all been very lucky that these knuckleheads did things like step in puddles - the TSA did not find them. But the fact is that every TSA regulation was born of some previous security lapse. It used to be that you could simply check a bomb onto a flight that you weren't even going to ride on. They tightened that up, so now you have to find a person willing to "martyr" themselves - which all by itself makes a huge difference. As they make the challenge of blowing up or hijacking an airplane harder and harder, they seriously shrink the pool of people willing and capable of carrying out the act.

Also 50g of PETN in a shoe bomb would have been ineffective even if it had detonated.

This source seems to think differently. In either event, explosives aren't something you really want passengers to have, and multiple passengers could have multiple shoes. Are you seriously suggesting that they not screen shoes now?

We are all on the collect it all list :)
The crux of the NSA story in one phrase: 'collect it all' (15 July 2013)
http://www.theguardian.com/com...

Me to.
I ware a:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

which is super dorky looking and leads people to ask me about it. So I link them to:
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...

Yes, you can go to prison, without trial, for over 10 years, for possessing a $4 watch. It's important people know that.

There's no Berlin Wall in America.

... Yet. They are working on it, thank you very much. See here. Or here.

I think you didn't get the memo on the whole Berlin Wall metaphor.

Your poor attempt at sarcasm betrays (a) an overly sensitivity to criticism of your country, and (b) a complete misunderstanding of the issue at hand. There is no Berlin Wall because there is no escaping the NSA. They are spying on the entire world. You can move to Mexico - that makes you a suspect. You can move to Canada - that makes you a suspect. If you even talk to someone who may know someone who may have been in contact with a suspect, you will be caught in the dragnet.

Everyone is fair game, everyone is a potential target. Everyone will be spied on, because terrorists! 9/11! Dirty bomb! Mushroom clouds! They hate our freedom!

I suspect YOU did not get THAT memo. Or maybe you are of the "I did not do anything wrong - so I have nothing to hide and nothing to fear from Big Brother" persuasion? Hmmm?

By the way, why are you reading Slashdot, citizen? Do you have your permit for that? And why talk to this terrorist suspect or that one?

The rest of your comment are more of the same drivel, so I will not even dignify it with a response.

I'm a Linux sysadmin, run Tor at home and vote Green Party. (In UK were considered domestic extremists - http://www.theguardian.com/pol....

I do wonder how that Ice cream van outside stays in business, its not even hot outside!

We're releasing far more CO2 into the atmosphere than can be recovered by merely planting more trees.

Other nations may try to keep 5+ other countries out of a networked product as delivered.
Re "What?"
Recall:
"Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages" (12 July 2013)
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
Outlook.com encryption unlocked even before official launch
"...collaborated closely with US intelligence services to allow users' communications to be intercepted, including helping the National Security Agency to circumvent the company's own encryption, according to top-secret documents obtained by the Guardian."
Would any government really want its new imported computer system be a "team sport" for a few other nations spies?

Re "Chances are they will try to wriggle out of it on some other grounds, rather than mount a defence."
Thats the classic way.
The UK gov will take any cleared staff or past cleared staff, press, academics to court, expose some aspect of their lives to a tame, friendly press then just drop the case.
The UK gov will have not confirmed any material in open court but ensured any further statements by cleared staff or past cleared staff, press, academics will be seen along side the new spin.
Sealed courts do not play well with the press and act as total conformation.
"Ten years ago, a young Mandarin specialist at GCHQ, the government's surveillance centre in Cheltenham, did something extraordinary. Katharine Gun, a shy and studious 28-year-old who spent her days listening in to obscure Chinese intercepts, decided to tell the world about a secret plan by the US government to spy on the United Nations." (3 March 2013) http://www.theguardian.com/wor...

Not to argue any of your other points, but there are atheists (and atheist societies) that would gladly kill Christians for there belief, and we have their actions and regulations to prove it.

But do we have a link to back that up? It's suspiciously missing from your post.

I do know that U.S. Christians, as a group, are among the most charitable and selfless people in the world.

Are you sure?

So no, the ECJ or ECHR are NOT an equivalent of the United States Supreme Court.

I never claimed that the ECJ was anything like the SCOTUS, only that it was a supreme court, as in "the highest judicial tribunal in a political unit" (Merriam-Webster), or specifically as in a court that makes final judicial decisions that bind lower courts and is not subject to any other court.

And no, I was not thinking about the ECHR. Even if this case might tangentially touch upon European human right law, I am well aware that the ECHR is not an EU court.

Did you even read the page you're quoting? The ECJ is not a Supreme Court, as national cases cannot be appealed to the ECJ.

You (as a citizen) cannot appeal a case to the ECJ, but you can challenge the law or intepretation of that law (under which the original case was decided) in a national court; the court may then direct the case to the ECJ. In other words, if you can make a reasonable case that GCHQ violates EU law, but is found in a UK court not to violate UK law, the case can certainly end up before the ECJ.

This has happened numerous times.

The [U.S.] Supreme Court has a much broader horizon when it comes to legal issues, most notably they can declare a national law to be unconstitutional.

The EU might not have a constitution, but the ECJ can certainly overturn EU law found to violate basic rights of citizens.

We got Occupy Wall Street because some Canadians generously came down and showed us how it was done. It picked up for a while and then it died down. I hope it will have an influence on people.

They were designated a terrorist threat and the FBI shut them down. Nationwide.
This is not a conspiracy theory, it is backed up by FOIA documents.

The only thing they ever had going for them was the unique 'b' shaped plastic. They are like a Louis Vuitton bag - not particularly functional or even attractive, but they cost a lot of money and celebutards like them so owning them buys you a tiny slice of that lifestyle.

While I don't own or like their headphones, the one other thing they have going for them is their success at ambush marketing. You see, as much as I hate their headphones, I hate the draconian advertising regulations that surround events like the Olympics and World Cup even more:

http://www.thenational.ae/busi...
http://www.theguardian.com/med...

You do know that he tried Iran, right? And Venezuela? And Cuba? No, I suspect you don't.

You are misinformed. The list of countries that Snowden considered for asylum while stuck in Russian customs never included Iran. Iran actually approached Snowden with an offer to visit and "elaborate" on NSA spying - but didn't explicitly offer him asylum.

Snowden considered Venezuela, but he did not actually apply for asylum in that country.

While I doubt Cuba was at the top of his list, Snowden did apply for asylum there - but received no response.

Any whistle-blower who honestly believes the information being released will exonerate him/her should be willing to endure such, for the greater good...

That may have applied pre-Patriot Act (et al), but nowadays you can't get a fair trial to exonerate yourself in the US when you blow the whistle on three-letter agencies. It's simply naive to believe otherwise.

A couple of years ago, security researchers found that Apple kept a log of every place you went and uploaded the entire data to their servers. Apple dismissed it as a bug in the code they wrote but was it really a bug or did they just get caught?

Run this through your mind: would this really be continued if suddenly, for every iDevice sold, you (the Company) start getting a deluge of data that you didn't ask for and didn't want? Now you have to spend money on storing and dealing with that data... Imagine the manager/executive in charge of that program having to defend that to his boss/board ("so tell me, why are we spending X millins on dollars again on capturing this data?")... I can't imagine his performance bonus being that great if this were a bug. I think it is fair to operate under the assumption that this wasn't a bug, it was a feature and they got caught red handed. It's as much a bug as Google's snooping on/vacuuming of WiFi signals is a bug.

Here's a good saying for you "it's not because you're paranoid that they're not after you"

put it another way, has any evidence been uncovered of a backdoor of this type? Or is the absence of evidence just more confirmation of secret backdoors?

Depends on your definition of backdoor and malware.

A couple of years ago, security researchers found that Apple kept a log of every place you went and uploaded the entire data to their servers. Apple dismissed it as a bug in the code they wrote but was it really a bug or did they just get caught?

Also, there are companies that are selling iPhone cracking to the LEOs using "undisclosed vulnerabilities". And of course, Apple will do that by itself.

What needs to happen is a permanent recording of all interactions with people so they can't just get together and decide what their story will be.

Agreed. At the same time, legal teams and individual citizens can tie up the courts with counter-claims, so not only would constant monitoring of the police keep the system from abusing the people, but it would decrease the potential for the people to abuse the system. So these systems save a lot of headache (at the very least) for a lot of people and should be mandatory for all standard police forces.

http://www.theguardian.com/wor...