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Why the Mediterranean Is the Net's Achilles' Heel
An anonymous reader writes "A spate of broken cables has brought disruption for many of the world's Web users in 2008 — and the Med has been at the center of the problems. For political reasons, the Mediterranean Sea is an Internet bottleneck through which the majority of traffic between Europe and Asia is squeezed. That traffic must run the gauntlet of earthquakes and heavy maritime traffic to reach its destination. Better and stronger cables are urgently needed to avoid a re-occurrence of the 2008 outages."
"Conspiracy theories" can be entirely rational. People working together secretly towards nefarious ends is not only possible, it happens in practice. It is almost certainly the case that at least a few of the claims that get dismissed as "tinfoil hat delusions" are true.
"Space jews did WTC, wake up sheeple" is significantly lamer as an anti-conspiracy troll then it would be as an honest claim. In the later case, it's simply foolish. In the former case, it's political chaff that disrupts legitimate discussion on at least two relatively serious political issues: US government secrecy and our relationship with Israel.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Why should we be trying to get a federal system for socialized healthcare? I mean I just think it's a step in the wrong direction. If you think about it, do you really expect a system run by the US Federal system won't be horribly inefficient and prone to massive amounts of corruption? Also where is this money going to come from. No doubt it will come as yet another increase in taxes that will basically subsidize the poor and just shift the bill from insurance companies to a middle class payroll tax.
Government regulation and meddling in the Healthcare industry is what got the United States in this HMO nightmare and you're saying that more Government intervention is going to solve it? Perhaps we need less Government interference and let the companies do their job. Healthcare probably wouldn't be as horrible if it wasn't for the mandates on the insurance company providing everything and the emphasis on having healthcare tied to an employer we would all have affordable healthcare.
Please keep in mind that this Universal Healthcare will be truly free only to the unemployeed and extremely poor. Your hard earned tax dollars will go into a mandatory pool of money to pay for this possibly inefficient system. I would rather the States take it upon themselves, with some Federal assistance, to provide healthcare for their citizens. It's a hell of a lot easier to jump State than to apply for a Visa to another country and stick it out there. If Massechusetts wasn't government paid for healthcare for everyone while Utah doesn't then so be it. Let the local Governments, a truer representation of the local populations, decide it out rather than the ivory tower that is Washington D.C. Haven't we spent enough money already?
I really think people (especially hardline Democrats) should stop relying on their Government for every single thing. It's still going to be your money paying for the thing, might be better to reform the system and actually be able to have a real choice.
I know, I know, we all tend to blow things out of proportion. You're right of course
this is just a friendly neighborly knock on the door to check if everybody is okay,
just like the Nazi humanitarian mission in Poland was.
"Why do people scream "war crimes", "genocide" and "holocaust" all the time since the war in the Balkans?"
Hmmm... maybe because of all the death and destruction? And ethnic cleansing that's going on?
Who knows? I mean that's just my personal half-baked theory.
Any time you have a smaller group within a larger group, and they're acting together in secret to further their own interests at the expense of the larger group, you have a conspiracy.
Which means that every private enterprise is a conspiracy, every corporation is a conspiracy, every government group that secures funds whose purpose and/or usage is kept secret is a conspiracy, every nation state is a conspiracy.
Conspiracy is the natural order of our global civilization. Which makes those who laugh at "conspiracy theorists" all the more ridiculous looking.
Once you realize that, you see that it doesn't matter if you catch the conspirators or not. You can still understand the systemic mechanisms by which they are facilitated in their action, and act against those systemic mechanisms. This lets you actively disenfranchise enemies that you cannot see or even confirm the existence of.
Honestly though, in this case, if you don't recognize that the cables were repeatedly and intentionally cut in the Mediterranean as part of the ongoing military actions of the Allies of Evil, you're a simpleton who ought to be fed with a slingshot.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth