China Strangles Tor Ahead of National Day

TechReviewAl writes "Technology Review reports that the Chinese government has for the first time targeted the Tor anonymity network. In the run-up to China's National Day celebrations, the government started targeting the sites used to distribute Tor addresses and the number of users inside China dropped from tens of thousands to near zero. The move is part of a broader trend that involves governments launching censorship crackdowns around key dates. The good news is that many Tor users quickly found a way around the attack, distributing 'bridge' addresses via IM and Twitter."

Comments

Surprising

[sopssa]

It's actually quite interesting what Chinese goverment is capable of on technical terms. Most of the goverments are quite clueless when it comes to computer and internet stuff, but Chinese seem to be on the track always.

Re:Surprising

[Philip K Dickhead]

Why not?

These days, at least half the equipment is manufactured in Chinese factories, to begin with.

Re:Surprising

[Foobar of Borg]

It's actually quite interesting what Chinese goverment is capable of on technical terms. Most of the goverments are quite clueless when it comes to computer and internet stuff, but Chinese seem to be on the track always.

Indeed. If the UK tried this, not only would it not work, it would somehow leak all the troop and ship locations to everyone in the world, along with Gordon Brown's gay lover's telephone number.

Re:Surprising

[SomeJoel]

It's actually quite interesting what Chinese goverment is capable of on technical terms. Most of the goverments are quite clueless when it comes to computer and internet stuff, but Chinese seem to be on the track always.

The Chinese government is capable because unlike most countries, it has to be. For countries like the U.S., Japan, and most European countries, the citizens are fairly free to go about their business without fear of government reprisal. So, these countries simply don't care (nor do they need to care) about the best ways to shut off their citizens' freedoms.

Other highly controlling countries, such as North Korea, have citizens who simply don't have access to these things to begin with, so there is no need to shut them off.

Re:Surprising

[interkin3tic]

along with Gordon Brown's gay lover's telephone number.

Oh.. ha ha... Unrelated note: I need to go change my phone number right now.

Re:Surprising

[Jurily]

So what? There's always only clerks in the inner workings of the government. Maybe censorship == clue.

Re:Surprising

[QCompson]

For countries like the U.S., Japan, and most European countries, the citizens are fairly free to go about their business without fear of government reprisal.

How do you square this with the U.S. having the highest incarceration rate in the world?

Re:Surprising

[Ethanol-fueled]

Arnold Murray?

You lil' homewrecker, you!

Re:Surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be easy to find almost all of the Tor exit nodes.

Re:Surprising

[thrillseeker]

The incarceration rate in Iran is very low - why just this week they executed a man for being gay rather than increase their incarceration rate to a level that might disturb you.

Re:Surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

You too?

Re:Surprising

[ground.zero.612]

I imagine the US is Fred, Velma, Daphne, Shaggy, and Scooby (aka Scooby and the gang). This makes China the classic Scooby-Doo villain. I can hear China in my head as I type this... "If it weren't for those meddling kids!"

Re:Surprising

[QCompson]

Way to avoid the question (and get modded up for it). Are you implying that the United States' high incarceration rate has no correlation with a lack of personal freedom or government control?

Re:Surprising

[steveb3210]

I imagine the US is Fred, Velma, Daphne, Shaggy, and Scooby (aka Scooby and the gang). This makes China the classic Scooby-Doo villain. I can hear China in my head as I type this... "If it weren't for those meddling kids!"

Everybody who went to school near Amherst, MA knows, Fred is Amherst College Velma is Smith College Shaggy is Hampshire College Daphne is Mt. Holyoke College And my alma mater, UMass, is Scooby Doooooo..

Re:Surprising

[X0563511]

Because our punishments are mild compared to those elsewhere.

If the penalty for stealing was dismemberment or painful death, a lot less would-be shoplifters would act.

Other countries have similar high-stakes. While it may not be as plain as my above example, they are just as strong in those cultures. For some, being ostracized would be a very severe punishment.

It all depends on the culture. When you look at ours... it's so empty that there is little to discourage (that we will stomach enough to utilize).

Re:Surprising

[LWATCDR]

You really think that most governments are clueless?
Almost all the industrialized nations have access to experts that could block tor just as well.
They don't do it because it is illegal to do it in those nations or they find it immoral to do.
I always thought it funny that people thought that TOR was unstoppable by the Chinese or any other government.
The elected officials may have limited knowlege of technology but they don't handle the details they give the orders.

Re:Surprising

[QCompson]

Because our punishments are mild compared to those elsewhere.

Right. Because the US is all the way down to number 4 in the number of executed prisoners per year by country.

For some, being ostracized would be a very severe punishment.

So like the sex offender registry?

You're also making some specious claims about the deterrent effect of harsh punishments. 20+ years of the war on drugs should be ample evidence that just ratcheting up punishments does not necessarily lead to fewer offenders. And US punishments across the board are almost all more severe than their european counterparts. Why doesn't France or Norway have a higher prison population?

Re:Surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

it would also cost £50 billion and take 3 years before it runs out of money and needs another £13 billion (the second lot of funding requirements always seems to be an "odd" number like 7, 13, 17). Then the results would, of course, get to the standard described in the parent post.

Re:Surprising

[TheRaven64]

No, if we tried to do it we'd contract it out to EDS. Some time around 2015-2020, they'd be around 50% over budget and nowhere near completion. The new government would cancel the project. A year later, they would then open bidding for a contract to do exactly the same thing. The contract would be awarded to EDS, on the basis of their experience with government contracts.

Re:Surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

...a lot less would-be shoplifters ...

fewer, dammit, fewer; not less, fewer.

Re:Surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool story, bro

Re:Surprising

[Chris Burke]

Gee, I could be mistaken, but I think he's saying all the non-violent offenders in our prisons should consider themselves lucky that we don't just execute them, since that's apparently the other option.

Or he could be saying that it's proper to compare the U.S. to oppressive theocratic regimes, rather than other Western democracies.

Or it's the "Hey, at least we're better than [insert the worst thing here]!" defense, which is a form of unintentionally damning with faint praise.

Re:Surprising

[identity0]

Yes. (Though I am not the person you are replying to)

Other countries that are "less free" have lower incarceration rates. The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world, but its laws are nowhere near the harshest.

For example, Japan has a far lower incarceration rate despite its laws usually being stricter than the USA's. Those nonviolent drug offenders in the USA would be jailed in Japan as well. But the population doesn't do drugs as much, and the police are probably not as good at catching them because the level of counter-drug training and experience isn't as high.

And that is for a generally free country like Japan, not a paranoid regimes like Singapore.

I'm just speculating now, but countries that are "less free" than the USA may be able to deter people from committing crimes in the first place. But the USA despite its incarceration rate is unable to deter people from crime, so they end up in jail.

Re:Surprising

[WheelDweller]

Yeah...over the last few decades we've quit educating people about it, but their ability to 'strangle' the countryside by outlawing food production and starving LITERALLY MILLIONS should always be on your mind as you think back to Mao Tse Tung. (He killed around 70,000,000 in PEACE time.)

His head-count actually makes Hitler and Stalin look like they weren't even trying. But Communist leaders are usually bloody leaders; that's why red is the associated color.

Re:Surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

There was as story a while back about where politicians come from in different countries. America was, unsurprisingly, dominated by lawyers. China, on the other hand, promotes engineers primarily to their top spots. It makes me wonder, aside from the totalitarian suppression of expression, if China is onto something?

Re:Surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Point out where Iran is better than us why don't you.

Re:Surprising

[renoX]

I'm not surprised, that they are capable of doing this: what I'm surprised is that they are doing it instead of passively monitoring who is sending packets to the Tor access gateways and then identifying those who are trying to subvert the firewall (easy, they have access to ISP logs and even mandate those who use internet cafe to show their ID).

The biggest problem of those who wants to bypass a filter is not the bypass itself but bypassing while staying anonymous even when the governement controls the network, Tor doesn't solve this..

Re:Surprising

[drinkypoo]

Other countries that are "less free" have lower incarceration rates. The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world, but its laws are nowhere near the harshest.

The laws aren't the whole picture. Also, you're talking about selective enforcement, whether you know or not; the conviction rate is dramatically higher for blacks than for whites, for example, and they tend to receive harsher sentences as well (more likely to receive ANY jail time, for example.)

I'm just speculating now, but countries that are "less free" than the USA may be able to deter people from committing crimes in the first place.

Well, in China in particular they kill you for just about everything. Cheating on your income tax is a capital crime, I am not making this up. They actually had to put together a fleet of 'death vans' to optimize their organlegging operation; they kill you in the van, then drive you to a facility where you are broken up for parts. Your relatives never see your body again from the time you enter the van. In Mexico, likewise, it is not unusual to get hauled out of a vehicle and shot by a 16 year old with a U.S. Military surplus M-16 if you are up to some nefarious shit. Both official and unofficial executions are used to keep down the incarceration rate in many nations. For that matter, the U.S. filled up mass graves with civilians in Panama, because it was easier and more convenient than displacing them. Some of the graves has been found; it is believed that at least one is on a U.S. military base. The remainder of the people left from the areas the US wanted to clear during the invasion are living in fenced government camps.

Re:Surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting how many times you say "free" when talking about a country with more people behind bars now than there were slaves during any year from 1654-1865. In fact, from the current statistics of 2.2 million in jail in the US and the estimated twelve million that were shipped over those years, there are 30% of the total number of slaves during that two hundred year period in prison now.

Re:Surprising

[multipartmixed]

> It's actually quite interesting what Chinese goverment is capable of on technical terms.

Not really. They have a near-monopoly on Asian Kids.

Re:Surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be silly. The American government is well aware of Tor. The NSA monitors the "border" between the US controlled internet and the rest of the world, just like China does.

The difference is that the NSA decides to censor traffic, it won't be called a "government shutdown".

(Un)Surprising

[dark_requiem]

It's not unusual for governments to devote their greatest abilities to the worst ends (see: Hiroshima, Japan).

Re:(Un)Surprising

[commodore64_love]

If Japan's citizens did not want to be nuked, then they should have stopped their government from killing millions of Chinese, Filipinos, and other Asian neighbors. They started the killing; then they reaped what they had sowed.

Do I feel sorry they Japanese had to die? Yes. Do I think there was any other choice? No. When someone points a gun at you, you don't hold up a target to help them aim better. You fire back.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[sopssa]

Japanese fighted with military against military. Only cowards kills civilians (and on hiroshima case, hundreds of thousands of civilians)

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure that the Chinese would agree with that statement.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Publikwerks]

English grammar obviously was a casualty as well

Re:(Un)Surprising

[supervillainsf]

see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre for evidence to invalidate your claim.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Shakrai]

It's not unusual for governments to devote their greatest abilities to the worst ends (see: Hiroshima, Japan).

Blame Einstein for that one. Committed pacifist that he was he was still sufficiently afraid of the idea of Hitler having the bomb as to use his influence to get the United States to build one first.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[dark_requiem]

So if you point a gun at me, I can hunt down and disintegrate your entire family tree? Is that the policy you're advocating here? Take that to it's logical extreme: if a citizen of a foreign country kills someone in America, we have the right to nuke that person's homeland, because they started the killing.

It's a matter of intent, participation, and scale. It's ludicrous to assume that everyone in Japan supported the alliance with the Germans or even the war in general, so one can safely assume that not only were many/most of those killed civilians who had not been involved in the war at all, but also that many of them may well have been opposed to the actions of their government, but powerless to stop them (sound like any country you can think of these days?). And don't forget we are talking about an action undertaken with full knowledge of the fact that it would kill hundreds of thousands of helpless civilians, at a time when Japan's war machine was already decimated, and the allied forces were merely trying to force an official surrender so they could occupy a country which posed no further military threat.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Chris Mattern]

Japanese fighted with military against military.

The dead of Nanking would like to courteously disagree with that assertion.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[kalirion]

If Japan's citizens did not want to be nuked, then they should have stopped their government from killing millions of Chinese, Filipinos, and other Asian neighbors. They started the killing; then they reaped what they had sowed.

While it may have ended up as some perverse National Karma, I sincerely doubt the U.S. nuked Japan in order to help the other Asian nations.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Who in the hell modded this idiot up??? Maybe Pearl Harbor was a military move, but the Japanese had a pretty merciless and aggressive strategy of not just killing civilians, but using them as freaking disposable toys. I'm posting AC, but sopssa you'll see me as the new addition to your Foe list.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

1937? Separate, historic issue.

Nuclear weapons came a lot later.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[corbettw]

Even if it's true that the Japanese only fought against other countries' militaries and avoided civilian deaths (it's not), it's irrelevant. When you go to war, you go to war completely. Which means you kill every man, woman, and child in your enemy's country.

Don't want to do that? Don't go to war.

Besides, we killed more Japanese civilians with conventional weapons in any one air raid than we did with Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. It wasn't the number of deaths that got the Emperor to take notice, it was the fact that we did it with just one bomb each time. The alternative was to invade the Japanese home islands, which, by conservative estimates, would've meant hundreds of thousands of dead Americans and millions of dead Japanese. Truman made the right call in dropping the bombs.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[WNight]

Idiot. Civilians are the financial branch of the armed forces. If you want to avoid dying in place of your soldiers perhaps you should control them...

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Chris Mattern]

Beginning of the war, end of the war. Same war. The Chinese were still fighting the Japanese as our allies as part of the same, ongoing war, right up until the bomb forced the Japanese surrender.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Shakrai]

So if you point a gun at me, I can hunt down and disintegrate your entire family tree?

That's what total war is. Every resource of the nation-state is poured into the war effort. Every resource of the nation-state becomes a valid target.

Take that to it's logical extreme: if a citizen of a foreign country kills someone in America, we have the right to nuke that person's homeland, because they started the killing.

That's not the "logical conclusion". That's a straw man that you set up.

It's a matter of intent, participation, and scale. It's ludicrous to assume that everyone in Japan supported the alliance with the Germans or even the war in general

Why is that relevant?

And don't forget we are talking about an action undertaken with full knowledge of the fact that it would kill hundreds of thousands of helpless civilians

You mean after we gave them months of warnings that they should evacuate their cities?

at a time when Japan's war machine was already decimated, and the allied forces were merely trying to force an official surrender so they could occupy a country which posed no further military threat.

No further military threat? Ask the 12,500 dead Allied soldiers on Okinawa if the Japanese still posed a military threat. Ask the hundreds of thousands that were expected to die during Operation Downfall if they still posed a military threat. Then consider the alternative to invasion (continuing the economic blockade) and ask yourself how many millions of Japanese civilians would have starved to death.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[WNight]

powerless to stop them (sound like any country you can think of these days?)

Nope. Not at all.

You mean, powerless to stop it without any risk to themselves, without taking time out of their day, without having to learn about the issues involved.

So yeah, if saying "I didn't want this" while paying your taxes is the best you can do, maybe you should suck nuke... If you want to avoid it, control your military - use a gun locally to avoid sending a soldier overseas needlessly.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[sopssa]

Even if so, it doesn't justify killing hundreds of thousands of civilians by the other party. And even more so because it was an unneeded move, Russians we're already owning Japanese with their land attacks. But Americans had to show off too (as Cold War was already kind of starting), so they launched those nukes.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

If American citizens did not want to be nuked, then they should have stopped their government from killing millions of people in islamic countries. They started the killing over oil; then they will reap what they have sowed.

Fixed for you.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[commodore64_love]

>>>So if you point a gun at me, I can hunt down and disintegrate your entire family tree?

If my family is building guns/bullets that I am using to kill-off your wife, your daughter, your parents, and so on...... then yes I think you have every right to stop them. If you can't find me, then you kill my suppliers so I don't have anything to fire.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Shakrai]

Russians we're already owning Japanese with their land attacks

Given Russian actions in Eastern Europe one could argue that it was better to absorb two nuclear bombs and wind up occupied by the United States than it would have been to be sliced in half with a large portion of your population at the mercy of Stalin and his army of rapists.

But Americans had to show off too (as Cold War was already kind of starting), so they launched those nukes.

It seems to me that you should produce some evidence to substantiate such an outlandish claim.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[sopssa]

Even if it's true that the Japanese only fought against other countries' militaries and avoided civilian deaths (it's not), it's irrelevant. When you go to war, you go to war completely. Which means you kill every man, woman, and child in your enemy's country.

And people with mindset like that disgust me. But don't get me wrong, killing other people does too. But you're *not* going to shoot armless, defenseless people and even more so woman and children. Even if they belong to a country of your political enemy.

Another completely retarted fight and killing of people is the fight of Jerusalem and Israel stuff. They're killing thousands of people just to fight over some goddamn land.

I bet lots of people don't care because it doesn't really concern them and it's just some random people somewhere. I do think like that too, but I still understand its fucking retarted.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

So... it's cool to hold Hiroshima (a 20th century massacre of civilians) against the US, but mention Nanking (a 20th century massacre against civilians) and suddenly we're in "no that was a loooooong time ago!!1!" territory, solely because it's Japan?

Re:(Un)Surprising

[supervillainsf]

Um, 8 years is not "a lot" later.

Furthermore, you should probably do a little research on:
a) Japans war with China
b) Japans request that we stop providing aid to China
c) why the U.S. placed an embargo on Japan
d) how that ties in to the bombing or Pearl Harbor.

Add a bit of general WWII history and then we can have an intelligent conversation about this topic

Re:(Un)Surprising

[digitig]

That might justify Hiroshima. Nagasaki is not so easy.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[MikeBabcock]

I'm quite certain you'll find most of the citizens of the country have very little to do with the firing of the weapons.

You'll also find very few people who think the nuking of a civilian population is a good thing from a historical perspective either.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[commodore64_love]

BTW:

The firebombs that Britain used in Germany were FAR more deadly than the 2 nukes the USA dropped. The nukes killed a few thousand, while the firebombs killed hundreds of thousands. Example: It is said the fires in Dresden raged so fiercely that the oxygen was sucked out of the air, and people suffocated to death. They just fell dead whereever they were - in bed, hiding in basements, running down the street.

To me it seems odd to single-out two bombs, while ignoring the millions of other bombs that had been dropped from 1939 through 45. Those non-nukes also killed people, including innocent girls and boys that didn't deserve to die but were caught in the middle of the fight. War is hell, no matter if you use nukes or TNT.

Almost 70 million people died during WW2. Only 0.2% of them died by nuclear fission bomb.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[nomadic]

Every resource of the nation-state becomes a valid target.

That's ridiculous; go read the Geneva Convention.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[mathfeel]

The idea of total war fare like that was not the norm in conflicts even 200 years ago. Perhaps some historian here can point out (I think it was the French revolution) when it became norm to mobilize all civilian in war making effect and therefore "justify" the opposite side to crush totally the infrastructure of the enemy.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

> Do I think there was any other choice? No

Nuking an area without a city, and listen if the japs surrender would have been feasible. But I suspect US needed guinea pigs to see how the bombs worked. And i don't mean to be anti-US by these assertions. Regardless their flag, nuclear powers have tested stuff on civilians, their own, even.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[rev_g33k_101]

not like we did not warn them

and the bomb was no worse then Japans actions

Re:(Un)Surprising

[sopssa]

That is a separate war. USA never went to fight with Japan because they fighted (arguably with abusive methods) with other asian countries.

They went to fight because Japan did Pearl Harbour.

Modded as troll? Please, it's all true.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[sexconker]

And people with a mindset like yours disgust me.

Don't get me wrong, killing people does too. But you're a moron if you think the death of a man is of any less significance than the death of a woman or a child.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[aynoknman]

So if you point a gun at me, I can hunt down and disintegrate your entire family tree? Is that the policy you're advocating here? Take that to it's logical extreme: if a citizen of a foreign country kills someone in America, we have the right to nuke that person's homeland, because they started the killing.

Your logic is not extreme enough. Nuke his home planet! He is the same carbon based life form that caused the problem in the first place.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[sopssa]

Those nukes we're intentionally made to kill civilians and destroy normal cities - not to attack against military targets.

Your "few thousands" killed is a 'little' bit off too;

The bombs killed as many as 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 80,000 in Nagasaki by the end of 1945,[4] with roughly half of those deaths occurring on the days of the bombings. Amongst these, 15–20% died from injuries or the combined effects of flash burns, trauma, and radiation burns, compounded by illness, malnutrition and radiation sickness.[5] Since then, more have died from leukemia (231 observed) and solid cancers (334 observed) attributed to exposure to radiation released by the bombs.[6] In both cities, most of the dead were civilians.[7][8][9]

Re:(Un)Surprising

[KillerBob]

You do realize that the bombs were dropped after the battles at Midway and the invasion and taking of Okinawa? Little Boy (Hiroshima) was dropped August 6, 1945, and Okinawa ended in June, 1945.

In other words, the war was effectively over. By the end of the battle of Okinawa, Allied victory in the Pacific was pretty much guaranteed. The Japanese lines had been broken, and the Allies had a strong foothold on Japanese soil. They most certainly did have a choice about whether or not to drop the nuclear bombs. That was more of a publicity stunt than anything... while it did shorten the war, its effect was more to start the cold war than it was to end the Pacific war.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

That's ridiculous; go read the Geneva Convention.

You do realize that the Geneva Conventions weren't signed by Japan until 1953, right? I'm just sayin'.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Unoriginal_Nickname]

Yup. Cowards kill civilians. Stupid, savage cowards.

They also ran Unit 731, conducted horrible experiments and vivisections on civilians and prisoners of war, butchered their own schoolchildren out of fears the invading enemy would be as brutal as they are, cannibalized Australians and live in a culture of institutionalized racism to this very day.

Man, historical revisionism is AWESOME! *beats off to 2chan instead of going outside*

Re:(Un)Surprising

[gnieboer]

When you go to war, you go to war completely. Which means you kill every man, woman, and child in your enemy's country

Um, no. That would be called genocide.

See Law of Armed Conflict (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Armed_Conflict) This is actually an aggregate term used to describe legal obligations of many countries who have signed onto a number of treaties.

Noncombatants cannot be 'indiscriminately' targeted. You can bomb a factory that produces ammunition, but can't just bomb the city to kill everyone in it.

It's not simple, as technology has changed the application of 'indiscrimate'. WW II bombing targeted industrial areas, and because technology was what it was, killed lots more people. It was as good as could be done (this can be debated, but that's not my point).
NOW, with GPS smart bombs, a bunch of B-52's carpet bombing Baghdad WWII style would be considered a LOAC violation because it can now be done much more discriminately.

In fact, factories etc are now often targeted at night so fewer civilian casualties occur.

From about.com's summary: "Noncombatants may not be made the object of direct attack. They may, however, suffer injury or death incident to a direct attack on a military objective without such an attack violating the LOAC, if such attack is on a lawful target by lawful means"

Re:(Un)Surprising

[commodore64_love]

>>>1937? Separate, historic issue. Nuclear weapons came a lot later.

According to the famous documentary "Why We Fight", the Japanese branch of World War 2 started in 1931. So the invasion of China, Rape of Nanking, and final surrender of Japan were all part of that overall fight.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Haxzaw]

Remember this all took place back when war wasn't so sanitary. We should be doing the same sort of thing in our current war. Obviously the current operations aren't working so well. I don't think we should have been in Iraq in the first place, but if you're going to start a war, you should be able to finish it with a win. Remember the old saying, "All's fair in love and war"? You do what it takes to win, whatever it takes, and you do it quickly.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[NeutronCowboy]

When you go to war, you go to war completely. Which means you kill every man, woman, and child in your enemy's country.

Ah, I see you subscribe to the theory that war is a state of affairs completely separated from regular politics. It isn't. It's merely the pursuit of political goals with other means.

Here's what killing "every man, woman, and child in your enemy's country" nets you: eternal war, with one person left standing. You want to know why? Because for one, it is impossible to kill every man, woman and child in your enemy's country. More capable people than you have tried and failed. Furthermore, a country is not an isolated entity. It is comprised of people who have connections to many other countries. Those connections will result in war being declared with other countries. Even if you have two completely polarized sides (which wasn't even the case in WW2), and one side manages to completely wipe out the other (which it won't), you're still left with the problem that today's allies can become tomorrow's enemies. Remember how chummy we used to be with Russia and Iraq? And suddenly, the circle starts from scratch.

War is the means by which people attempt to achieve political goals that they couldn't through the regular political process. As a result, war has to have a clear political goal, or it won't work. Furthermore, it has to have an end-state where the old enemy isn't an enemy anymore - and as I pointed out earlier, just killing all the bad guys won't work.

More people should first read Clausewitz, then Powell. First to understand what the point of a war is, and then how you're supposed to fight it.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[sexconker]

Welcome to WAR.
War is terrible, but absolute.

Kill or be killed.

Yes, it is ludicrous to assume that the entire populace of a nation you are at war with supports the war.

But it is folly to assume that because they are civilians they do not pose an active threat.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[orange47]

nope, armed forces exist for civilians, not the other way round

Re:(Un)Surprising

[X0563511]

Yes, but unfortunatly there was no historical perspective when it came down to the nukes.

Besides... it's not like we did it with no warning, and had backed them into a corner with no chance to supplicate.

If there's a big sign above a button that says "warning: pressing this button will result in your death" - is anyone to blame but you for pushing that button?

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Cytotoxic]

Actually, I think even a cursory look at history would tell a different story. Probably because nation-states are a more recent development you have a larger definition of "total war", but in the era before the nation-state war was generally winner take all. There is a reason we have a definition for the word "sack" that includes the plundering, looting and destruction of a city. Take a quick google of "Carthage" for a better understanding of what the norm in conflicts was prior to the current era. The Romans leveled the city to the ground, took 50,000 survivors into slavery and generally raped pillaged and plundered their way through the etire city/state. They even took the extraordinary step of sewing salt into the fields so nothing would grow there. This is over 2,000 years ago - so no, I don't think you can point to the French revolution as a sea change in the style of warfare. In fact, as you go back farther in time and get to smaller and smaller civil aggregations you would see a greater percentage of the populace involved in armed conflict, and a greater likelihood that they would be involved in armed conflict in their lifetimes. I think the distiction between military and civilian populations is a more recent development.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[commodore64_love]

>>>It wasn't the number of deaths that got the Emperor to take notice, it was the fact that we did it with just one bomb each time.

That's not the end of the story. After the Emperor recorded his formal surrender, to be broadcast over radio to the Japanese people, the Army tried to kill their own leader. If the Japanese are willing to kill their own God-emperor, what would they be willing to do to keep the Americans from landing? They would fight to the last man - it would make our current war in Afghanistan look easy.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[gnieboer]

"stop them" != "hunt down and disintegrate"

According to LOAC, you could target their bullet-building factory (home?) and if they are inside, then that's tough luck. But you can't directly target them under current international law.
If they tried building another factory/house, you (you are a country, right??) could occupy their territory, imposing martial law, and send to jail any non-combatants that aided the enemy. But you can't just shoot then w/o trial for making ammo them unless they become unlawful combatants (pick up a gun and shoot at you).

Re:(Un)Surprising

[MBGMorden]

In fact, factories etc are now often targeted at night so fewer civilian casualties occur.

I think you'll find it has a lot more to do with anti-aircraft/missile batteries being less effective at night (harder to see incoming aircraft or munitions) than there being less people around.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[commodore64_love]

According to the famous documentary "Why We Fight", the Japanese branch of World War 2 started in 1931. So the invasion of China, Rape of Nanking, and the Pacific war were all part of that overall fight.

And a lot of Chinese, Filipinos, and other occupied Asian nations cheered when Japan fell in 1945. They were just as much celebrating victory as we were.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Nadaka]

No. Its a case of historical ignorance on your part. America was going to war with Japan irregardless of Pearl Harbor. The only thing Pearl Harbor did was push up the timetable. It was already planned to take on Japan due to their invasion of our allies in the Philippines and other nations in south east Asia once we had finished with Germany.

The purpose of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was to show the emperial cultists that they would die horrific deaths with no honor, to deny them the glory of their bushido death in battle. It meant that tens of thousands of Japanese died instead instead of tens of millions that would have died when the invasion of the main islands began.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Foobar of Borg]

Unfortunately, the Japanese school system doesn't bother teaching children about all the horrible things the Japanese military did in the past. A lot of them simply don't know things like the Rape of Nanjing, the medical experiments on POWs, and so on even happened.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[commodore64_love]

In the alternate history "Fatherland" Hister builds the nuclear bomb first, and uses it, which ends World War 2. A cold war develops between Germany (occupying from Spain to the Ukraine) and the United States. Good book worth checking out.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[MozeeToby]

Are you aware of the term 'Total War' and how it applies to WWII? Yes, the US did horrible things during WWII, I'm not saying they didn't and I'm not saying that it was right. But to argue that Japan posed 'no further military threat' is shortsighted and, quite frankly, revisionist.

The people in power of Japan at that time had a history of war crimes and human rights abuses, including but not limited to: the murder of "6,000,000 Chinese, Indonesians, Koreans, Filipinos, and Indochinese" prisoners of war, sexual slavery, medical experimentation, biological warfare, chemical warfare, torture, cannibalism, and forced labor. I supose the allies should have stopped at the border of Germany too once their industrial capicity was destroyed? Because Hitler certainly wouldn't have rebuilt and attacked again a decade down the line.

The allies were faced with two choices. First, to leave those generals and leaders in power or two remove them from power. Due to the literally religioius devotion that the average Japanese citizen had towards their emporor and by extention the rest of the government, the only way that was going to happen was to force a complete surrender. The second choice, after the first had been made, was to use the atomic bomb or to invade. You could perhaps argue that a demonstration of the bomb's power may have swayed the people in power to surrender (it is, in fact, what I feel should have been done). An invasion, however, whould have cost hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides of the conflict. A number that was deemed realistic at the time due to the way Japanese soldiers had fought on other islands in the Pacific.

Finally, to single out the use of nuclear weapons as a particular horrible point of WWII isn't exactly honest. Firebombings used by both sides of the conflict killed as many, if not more, people in single attacks as the nuclear bombings did. Diverting food and other resources from civilians to the military led to millions of deaths. The death of 200,000 people in a single attack, while obviously horrible, is not out of line with the levels of violence common during WWII. Expecially considering that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were both key strategic locations for the Japanese military, which would have been key targets if an invasion had proven necissary.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[khallow]

It's not unusual for governments to devote their greatest abilities to the worst ends (see: Hiroshima, Japan).

Fortunately, the US stopped all that by nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki, forcing Japan to surrender and deterring the USSR from continuing its evil, expansionist plans.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

The Geneva Conventions is just another treaty between nation states. Nations sign treaties because they think it will better them. They will just as easy break them for the same reason. (Whether they assess the backlash of breaking a treaty correctly is a different thing)

Thinking that war can be regulated by treaties is insane. Then you do not understand the essence of war.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Toonol]

If it was a choice between the US and USSR, do you understand that the US's nuclear weapons probably saved millions of Japanese lives, and helped Japan avoid untold misery?

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Red Flayer]

That's poppycock. USA went to war with Japan over influence in the Asian mainland.

Pearl Harbor was the justification, but the US had been waging economic war for some time, prompted primarily by the Japanese actions toward, and invasion of, China.

Key aspect: Japan was dependent upon the US nearly 100% for its oil. Without oil, they could not hope to continue waging war on the mainland... so when the US enmbargoed the Japanese in 1941, it lead directly to Pearl Harbor.

The US knew it was headed to war with Japan unless Japan pulled out of Manchuria (which despite diplomatic negotiations, was known by both sides to be a no-go). Pearl Harbor was just more severe than had been anticipated for an opening sally.

It's even been speculated that Pearl Harbor was dangled in front of the Japanese to bait them into opening the hostilities. I'm not so sure about that theory, but worse things have happened to get a popular support for war.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[wtbname]

Every resource of the nation-state becomes a valid target.

That's ridiculous; go read the Geneva Convention.

You are ridiculous.

http://www.icrc.org/IHL.NSF/WebSign?ReadForm&id=375&ps=P

If you think that there are NO countries, signatories or not, that would violate the shit out of the Geneva Convention should it suit their purposes; you are more than ridiculous; you are criminally naive.

It's a freaking piece of paper, and more useless than most.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Toonol]

The distinction doesn't matter in a full shooting war.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[LWATCDR]

The US went to war when we where attacked that is true but the US was supporting China and England before Pearl Harbor.
The US sold China the best fighters that the US had in service at the time the P-40, they where embargoing Japan for the war in China, and members of the US military where fighting in China as "Volunteers" as the Flying Tigers just like they where in England in the Eagle Squadron. Also a US Gunboat in China was attacked before Perl Harbor as well.
As to the Filipinos the was a US territory at that time so yes the attack on the Philippians would have meant war just as the attack in Pearl Harbor did.
Japan attacked the US because of our support of China and because we stood in the way it was the same war.
But it is really funny
Way too many people in the US think WWII started when Japan attacked Perl Harbor.
Way too many people in Europe think WWII started when Germany invaded Poland.
Some people think WWII started when Italy invaded Ethiopia.
A lot of Chinese think it started when Japan invaded Mongolia I find this the second most valid.
I think WWII started the day WWI ended or to be more accurate when the US listened to England and France and agreed to an unjust and unwise peace with Germany.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[TheRaven64]

The Dresden bombing wasn't really a military target either. Most of the industrial infrastructure was outside of the city, but the firebombing was concentrated on the centre. Estimated dead there were 135,000 to 500,000; more than at Nagasaki, probably more than Hiroshima, and possibly more than both combined.

Not to justify the nuclear bombings, but they weren't the only atrocities committed by the 'good guys' in World War II. It's only in comparison to the Nazi extermination camps that the winners managed to look like they had the moral high ground.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[sopssa]

But you're a moron if you think the death of a man is of any less significance than the death of a woman or a child.

Not the death, but generally men have better capabilities to defense themself.

Of course we are on slashdot so thats besides the point, but still.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[LWATCDR]

"But you're *not* going to shoot armless, defenseless people and even more so woman and children. Even if they belong to a country of your political enemy."
Japan did in mass.
Really read about the rape of Nanjing or how they treated the Koreans.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[selven]

You mean the one that is enforced by nations so if a real world war starts it will get thrown out the window in two weeks?

Re:(Un)Surprising

[TheRaven64]

But they had two bombs! And they were different designs! You can't drop one without the other, or how do you know that they are both capable of killing loads of civilians? And how would you decide which to drop?

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Red Flayer]

But you're a moron if you think the death of a man is of any less significance than the death of a woman or a child.

Actually, no. The death of a man IS less significant than the death of a woman or (female) child.

From a long-term standpoint, the destruction of an enemy lies in destroying their ability to reproduce as fast as your tribe/civilization. This is less true now, due to technology, than it was for the past ten or twenty thousand years. But killing women and children is the only way to really commit genocide. Besides the fact that one man can impregnate hundreds of women, there is also the fact that surviving women on the loser's side will still get to pass on their genes.

And given that women are the primary store of cultural identity (in most cultures), a campaign of cultural genocide also requires killing of the women.

In short, there is the war over land and resources, and then there is the war of total annihilation. Killing women and children turns the war into something different, something more evil in my opinion.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Sl4shd0t0rg]

Your arguments are so extremely one sided it isn't even funny. Japan's leadership were not going to give up and Emperor Hirohito was indecisive concerning what to do about the Potsdam Declaration. Even after the first bomb, Hirohito chose not to surrender. The Emperor's hands were drenched in the blood of his own people. Even in the end, he still demanded that he remain the leader of Japan before he agreed to surrender. Hirohito deserves the blame, the US gave him every chance to end things quietly.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[nomadic]

Where has reading comprehension gone these days? I was responding to where the GP said, and I quote, "Every resource of the nation-state becomes a valid target." Whether countries will attack civilians is not the issue; the issue is what becomes a VALID target. It's a moral issue, and that morality is enshrined in the Convention. Whether countries break it or not isn't particularly relevant to this point.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Citizens were routinely massacred when cities were sacked. This has been happening since Roman and Greek times at least.

Ever hear of the word 'decimate'? Know what it originally meant?

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Alef]

When you go to war, you go to war completely. Which means you kill every man, woman, and child in your enemy's country. Don't want to do that? Don't go to war.

So you're saying that once you find yourself in a war, you should throw away your moral compass and just go for it, killing mercilessly as much as you can? If you have the choice not to kill an innocent child, you should still do it? Well, if the innocent child lives in a certain geographical territory that is -- otherwise it's a horrible murder.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Darkness404]

That's what total war is. Every resource of the nation-state is poured into the war effort. Every resource of the nation-state becomes a valid target.

That is a stupid statement. By that logic we should nuke everyone because everyone is a "resource" that might be turned against us.

That's not the "logical conclusion". That's a straw man that you set up.

Lets see here, the Japanese bombed a -military- base at Pearl Harbor after thinking that they declared war on the US (yes, they got a communication error and it didn't get out in time...). And what you advocate is bombing of a civilian city, not with conventional explosives but with nuclear explosives which scientists knew full well would cause disease and death via radiation sickness. So yes, it is the logical conclusion of your argument.

Why is that relevant?

Because of the fact that it is stupid, and irresponsible to kill people who don't oppose you? If I go down a street shooting at any person who is a different race than you, chances are you would call me a racist and a murder, yet you advocate the exact same thing. Guess what? Most people don't choose their nationality. Many times, especially in the WWII era, it was impossible to change what nation you lived in due to visas, finances, immigration quotas, etc. People don't choose their race, gender, or handicaps they don't choose the nation they live in 99% of the time either.

You mean after we gave them months of warnings that they should evacuate their cities?

Oh yeah, by that logic the people in the twin towers should have known that a plane would crash into them Sept 11th because terrorist groups threatened the US. Look, if you have a family to provide for are you going to stay in the city where you can provide for them or move out to a rural area where poverty abounds?

No further military threat? Ask the 12,500 dead Allied soldiers on Okinawa if the Japanese still posed a military threat. Ask the hundreds of thousands that were expected to die during Operation Downfall if they still posed a military threat. Then consider the alternative to invasion (continuing the economic blockade) and ask yourself how many millions of Japanese civilians would have starved to death.

No further military threat to the US or other allied powers. If we had used reason and accepted a surrender that benefited both countries, rather than an unrealistic "unconditional" surrender of Japan, perhaps they would have surrendered earlier and the 12,500 dead allied soldiers would have still been living.

The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan." Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.

Even high ranking officials in WWII agreed that the atomic bombings didn't help the war any.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

I find what the US did ironic given the US government's ambitions to see that almost no one can have a bomb.

BUT, watch White Light, Black Rain, an HBO documentary about the bombs. It has horrifying imagery, as it should, but there's some very interesting stuff in there about how older japanese folks felt about the war. If it is to be believed, the majority of folks blamed their government for its outright aggression and also felt the government was lying about how well the war was going. It reminds me of how this latest Iraq war has gone for the US, to hear them speak about it.

The Nanking massacre is rarely discussed, yet it borders on horror with the genocide perpetrated by the german government. The Japanese government did that, read up on it. If it wasn't for those US missionaries no one might ever know exactly what went on and to what extent.

It is often claimed that estimates of a beach storm on Japan proper put the casualty rate in the 100,000s on the American side to say nothing of the Japanese deaths. If true, the bombs were brutal and horrible, but probably saved lives in the end. However, many innocents died to those bombs, horribly. To the US' credit, they did far more for the surviving victims than the Japanese government did. If you interview anyone in Nagasaki under the age of 50 today, they don't even know what happened in their very own city. It's all been hidden away. It truly is a strange event in human history.

You are correct on one point, the majority of the citizenry did not support the war in any way, they just had no choice given their government at the time. And to be fair, the Japanese did more than point a gun at the US. I usually don't support wars and I don't know if even half of what we learn about the World Wars is true, however, I tend to believe the US was leaning towards isolationism at the time and pretty much got dragged into it.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[rho]

Whenever one feels the urge to use the phrase "By that logic...", one should stop and think about what one is going to write. Because it's likely to be ridiculous.

People tend to confuse hyperbole with logical extension of a statement.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Chris Mattern]

when it became norm to mobilize all civilian in war making effect and therefore "justify" the opposite side to crush totally the infrastructure of the enemy.

Let's see here...over 2000 years ago, when the Romans not only demolished Carthage to the ground, killed or sold into slavery its entire population, but also salted the very ground on which it had stood for good measure? Actually, there's probably earlier examples; that's just the one that came immediately to my mind.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[BitZtream]

Lets see ... nuke you and your wife and children and avoid killing 100,000 of your countrymen and their wives and kids ....

OR ...

I can attack just you, kill millions of only your male countrymen, and risk killing myself.

Yea ... thats a tough one ...

Lets see which one of us evolves to survive that particular problem, would you care to take bets before I drop the bomb?

Of course your utterly ignorant argument assumes that no women and children will be killed in the cross fire of conventional warfare, which of course as anyone with even a quarter of a clue knows to be impossible.

In reality, what happens with your way is that not only do millions of men get killed, but hundreds of thousands of women and children do as well from cross fire, duds, debris, starvation, and all the other problems that long term war campaigns create.

Its nice of you, without any military training to act all high and mighty.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[BitZtream]

Yea, men are more capable of stopping a bullet or 2000 pound bomb than women and children are?

Really? Thats news to pretty much everyone on the planet I think.

I guess thats why they let women into the military now, because men and women are equally adapt at defending themselves against cruise missiles, laser guided bombs and depleted uranium bullets than all that stuff back in the early 40s.

You've never held a weapon have you?

Re:(Un)Surprising

[BitZtream]

Hahahah

Yea, thats like kids fighting on the school yard, the loser gets his ass kicked and then says 'you pulled my hair and threw sand in my eyes, you cheated, it doesn't count, it wasn't a fair fight' ... all the while you're being his bitch because he beat your ass.

The Geneva Conventions results apply only when the guys who are winning want them too. If it breaks down to it, any attacked country is likely going to throw them out the window rather than get their asses kicked, well, except maybe France, but they roll over and play dead when the wind blows a little hard.

What fantasy world do you live in? Treaties between nations tend to take a back seat when those nations are blowing the hell out of each other, regardless of whos signature is on some piece of paper in some other country.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Chris Mattern]

They also ran Unit 731, conducted horrible experiments and vivisections on civilians and prisoners of war, butchered their own schoolchildren out of fears the invading enemy would be as brutal as they are, cannibalized Australians and live in a culture of institutionalized racism to this very day.

You forgot the rape of "comfort women" in Korea. So many atrocities, so little time...

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Cjstone]

Not really; thanks to RADAR, modern anti-aircraft weapons are just as effective at night as they are during the day. The only aircraft that benefit from a night attack would be stealth craft, and only if they're flying low enough to be spotted visually.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[witherstaff]

Also the US wanted the war stopped fast. It wasn't only about our troops, we wanted to put the Soviets in their place. The soviets were pushing south and would have taken Korea for their launching point to go against Japan. The US didn't want that, as the Korean war later showed.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[wtbname]

OH NOES, the reading comprehension argument...I'll make a feeble attempt to rebut you...

The GP was referring to "Total War", not "War as defined by the Geneva Convention". He was even kind enough to define it for you:

"That's what total war is. Every resource of the nation-state is poured into the war effort. Every resource of the nation-state becomes a valid target." I guess that makes my reading comprehension fine, and yours a little off.

You also have a small problem with time lines. GP explicitly cited World War II and the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan circa 1945. The Geneva Convention was held in 1949 (I wonder what spurred that?). I guess "moral war" (HAHAHAHA) wasn't even defined yet for the referenced combatants or us thicky slashdot neaderthals.

It seems that the only thing irrelevant in this thread is the Geneva Convention.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Shakrai]

The conventions never applied to signatories who were fighting adversaries that refused to follow them. Given the Japanese treatment of prisoners and the fact that their soldiers would often use white flags as cover to get close enough to kill our troops, I'd say that they forfeited whatever protections the civilized world had previously agreed to.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[prozaker]

irregardless lol.
so much for proving a point, that might be correct.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Runaway1956]

I'll agree. Only cowards kill civilians, and POW's, and political prisoners, and - just anyone they don't admire. Now, just how many millions did the WW2 era Japanese kill, rape, mutilate, or otherwise treat inhumanely between 1935 and 1945? Those civilians killed at Nagasaki and Hiroshima were a drop in the bucket. History - try reading it.

As an American whose father left a large piece of his skull on some forgotten, nameless Pacific island, I can't quite say I'm proud of those two bombs - but I'll be damned if I dishonor the millions killed with an apology. Suck it up, and move on.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[MRe_nl]

re: Japanese fighted with military against military

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Clandestine_Blaze]

If there's a big sign above a button that says "warning: pressing this button will result in your death" - is anyone to blame but you for pushing that button?

I don't see how those civilians were the ones that pushed the button, in this case. Why was the nuke not used on a legitimate military target? Or was the military too blended in with the civilians?

Re:(Un)Surprising

[gnieboer]

Unfortunately neither of you are really correct.

Radar is easy to both jam and triangulate, which means radar-guided systems have been quickly taken out. Mobile radar SAMs more difficult, but still not that hard.

IR guided systems however are very difficult to detect and trace. But a shoulder-launched SAM still requires a visual acquisition to get the lock in the first place, something very hard to do at night. So there are still reasons for flying at night for survivability

BUT, in Serbia in particular, often the reason for targetting at a certain time had more to do with collatoral damage than survivability. All targets bombed by NATO had to be approved by their legal staff.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[NeutronCowboy]

And the treatment of Carthage was savage by the standards of the time. This was NOT expected. As for the distinction between military and civilian population, it started with the Romans, who had the first significant professional army (to be distinguished from mercenaries). It stands to reason that before that, the distinction was meaningless.

And if you want to point to an instance of total war (as opposed to that of a total defeat), only WW2 really works. At that point, no matter how large the nation, no matter how populous it was, everybody was at risk of dying from a direct effect of the war - the USA being one of the few notable exceptions.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[shadowbearer]

Indeed. Few people seem to understand this.

  Using nuclear weapons on two cities at that point *saved* millions of lives; the lives the invasion would have cost on both sides, those that would have been killed in years of hostile occupation afterward...

  There seem to be an awful lot of people nowadays who have not read the history of what Japan was doing before those bombs were dropped. The lives their invasions and conquests of surrounding countries cost literally will never be known in any certainty, but those numbers are certainly in the millions.

  Contrast it with Germany, where the Allies had to penetrate clear to the capital and nearly destroy it before there was anything resembling a cease fire.

  When your enemy brings that sort of war to you, you either have to kill them, or force them to surrender using terms they can understand, in this case, "We have the capability to kill your citizens en masse without endangering large numbers of our people. Surrender or face the consequences."

  I think that we - and by "we" I include the Japanese people - can all be fortunate that the emperor had the sense to accept surrender terms after Nagasaki. Otherwise the cost in lives would have been much, much higher.

SB

 

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Runaway1956]

Decimation was nothing to do with civilians. It was a form of discipline exacted against a legion. Mutiny was dealt with by decimation. Cowardice was dealt with by decimation. Yeah, I know, I'm talking shit, and there's no reason to believe me. Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimation_(Roman_army)

Re:(Un)Surprising

[shadowbearer]

  Yeah, war sucks.

  So the next time some tinpot dictator moron gets it in his head to go invade someone else, we'll send you over there to tell him how wrong he is. I'm sure he'll listen.

  Grow up, son. The world isn't as nice a place as we'd all like it to be.

  On a lighter note, good luck surviving marriage :)

  SB

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Shakrai]

That looks like an interesting read. Think I'll pick that up for the weekend. Thanks for the recommendation :)

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Clandestine_Blaze]

not like we did not warn them

and the bomb was no worse then Japans actions

Ah, the "our actions were no worse than their actions" argument. So what does that make us, and how does it justify it? I would say that it wasn't any better either. I don't see how one country's atrocity justifies another country's atrocity. Moral relativism, at its finest.

We all agree that the Japanese did probably some of the most horrific shit any country could during WWII, but your argument implies that it was perfectly fine to nuke their civilians as well, most of whom had nothing to do with the atrocities in Nanking.

By the way, if you read the wikipedia article you linked to, it says that the Japanese asked the Chinese to surrender before the massacre, which they refused to do. That sounds similar to your "not like we did not warn them" argument.

And it's wrong. It was wrong for the soldiers in Nanking to commit rape and murder on civilians (or anyone, for that matter), even though they warned them in advance. The prior warning shouldn't give a green light to do whatever you want to do.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Runaway1956]

100% pure bullshit.

For one thing - the purple hearts awarded throughout WW2 were ordered before each campaign or major action. The bean counters got really, really accurate when estimating how many to order. They seldom missed by more than a couple percent. Look it up, google is your friend.

The estimated number of purple hearts required for an invasion of the Japanese homeland was 1/4 million. The medals were ordered, and plans were progressing. The allies knew we were about to sacrifice those 1/4 million men.

Then, the bombs fell. Japan surrendered. Those 1/4 million purple hearts are STILL being used today. Casualties from every single conflict that we've been involved in are wearing medals that were intended for the invasion of Japan.

And, that 1/4 million is ONLY American casualties. Estimates for Japanese casualties? Look 'em up. You'll be amazed. Nope, I'm not going to spoil the surprise.

The rest of your post is just as ridiculous. Japan would never have been "contained" in 1945. Fanatical supporters of the Emperor were still coming out of the hills in the 1970's. Contain? Yeah, right.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[atheistmonk]

Wait... Are you seriously the citizens deserved to be nuked for not preventing their military from fighting? By that logic, all Americans, British and Australians deserve to be nuked whether or not they protested the invasion of Vietnam, Iraq or Afganistan.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[pegasustonans]

It wasn't the number of deaths that got the Emperor to take notice, it was the fact that we did it with just one bomb each time. The alternative was to invade the Japanese home islands, which, by conservative estimates, would've meant hundreds of thousands of dead Americans and millions of dead Japanese. Truman made the right call in dropping the bombs.

It's easy to transpose a specific ideology onto history if one does not actually look at said history with its full complexity and inherent ambiguities.

The estimate of hundreds of thousands of lives lost was created after the end of the war to justify dropping the bombs. No, seriously, go look it up.

The vast majority of urban infrastructure was already destroyed, many estimates placed Japanese capitulation just weeks later if the bombs had not been dropped. The civilian population was training to fight off the invaders with bamboo poles. The civilian population was primarily women, children and the elderly at this point. How long do you think they would have lasted against Americans armed with flamethrowers and machine guns? You could base your estimate after the situation in Okinawa, but the defense in depth doctrine played out to the extreme on that island. There were no in-depth military fortifications to nearly the same extent on the home islands and the military to civilian ratio was not nearly at the same level. In addition, official Japanese government racism towards the islanders of Okinawa led them to disregard a great deal of the loss of life there. This would not have held true for Japan.

You would like to think that the Emperor looked at the atomic bombs and said "Gee, I must capitulate so these things don't destroy the World." Well, they may have played a role. The Soviet Union entering the war against Japan and immediately taking over most of Manchuria on August 8 just might have had something to do with it as well. Japan hardly expected this at the time, since they had a neutrality pact with the USSR and were working intermittently through the Soviets at trying to find some kind of ceasefire agreement with the United States. Consequently, the Soviets were poised to take over Japan in one fell swoop and were already on their way by the time Japan did get around to indicating their intent to surrender a week later.

So, while you could look at it as the Emperor surrendering to the United States due to the atomic bombs. You could also look at it as the Emperor surrendering to the United States, so he would not be forced to surrender to the USSR under much worse circumstances. Of course, the Emperor and his cabinet would claim the atomic bomb as a primary reason to surrender, because this would be the best way to save face, an excellent trump card to pull from the deck to justify 'enduring the unendurable.' Admitting to surrendering primarily because the Soviets were knocking at the door would have been far more shameful. The United States, on the other hand, needed this particular justification of the end-war scenario so they could justify their exclusive post-war occupation of Japan. They could hardly share Japan with the USSR when rumblings of the Cold War were already brewing and things were quickly going downhill in a divided Germany. The U.S. wanted Japan to itself and the atomic bomb justification was a perfect way to diplomiticize the situation.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[rev_g33k_101]

here are answers to all your doubts. This video states it better then I could.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Dishevel]

I AM sure the Chinese would NOT agrees with that statement.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Runaway1956]

"Or was the military too blended in with the civilians?"

You answered your own question, there.

Minutes of the second meeting of the Target Committee
Los Alamos, May 10-11 1945

Source: U.S. National Archives, Record Group 77, Records of the Office of the Chief of Engineers, Manhattan Engineer District, TS Manhattan Project File '42-'46, folder 5D Selection of Targets, 2 Notes on Target Committee Meetings.

Copyright Notice: This document is believed to be in the public domain. Its transcription and formatting as an e-text, however, is copyright 1995 by Gene Dannen (danneng@peak.org). This e-text resides on the World-Wide Web at http://www.peak.org/~danneng/decision/targets.html
TOP SECRET

Auth: C.O., Site Y, N.M.
Initials:
Date: 12 May 1945
6. Status of Targets

A. Dr. Stearns described the work he had done on target selection. He has surveyed possible targets possessing the following qualification: (1) they be important targets in a large urban area of more than three miles in diameter, (2) they be capable of being damaged effectively by a blast, and (3) they are unlikely to be attacked by next August. Dr. Stearns had a list of five targets which the Air Force would be willing to reserve for our use unless unforeseen circumstances arise. These targets are:

(1) Kyoto - This target is an urban industrial area with a population of 1,000,000. It is the former capital of Japan and many people and industries are now being moved there as other areas are being destroyed. From the psychological point of view there is the advantage that Kyoto is an intellectual center for Japan and the people there are more apt to appreciate the significance of such a weapon as the gadget. (Classified as an AA Target)

(2) Hiroshima - This is an important army depot and port of embarkation in the middle of an urban industrial area. It is a good radar target and it is such a size that a large part of the city could be extensively damaged. There are adjacent hills which are likely to produce a focussing effect which would considerably increase the blast damage. Due to rivers it is not a good incendiary target. (Classified as an AA Target)

(3) Yokohama - This target is an important urban industrial area which has so far been untouched. Industrial activities include aircraft manufacture, machine tools, docks, electrical equipment and oil refineries. As the damage to Tokyo has increased additional industries have moved to Yokohama. It has the disadvantage of the most important target areas being separated by a large body of water and of being in the heaviest anti-aircraft concentration in Japan. For us it has the advantage as an alternate target for use in case of bad weather of being rather far removed from the other targets considered. (Classified as an A Target)

(4) Kokura Arsenal - This is one of the largest arsenals in Japan and is surrounded by urban industrial structures. The arsenal is important for light ordnance, anti-aircraft and beach head defense materials. The dimensions of the arsenal are 4100' x 2000'. The dimensions are such that if the bomb were properly placed full advantage could be taken of the higher pressures immediately underneath the bomb for destroying the more solid structures and at the same time considerable blast damage could be done to more feeble structures further away. (Classified as an A Target)

(5) Niigata - This is a port of embarkation on the N.W. coast of Honshu. Its importance is increasing as other ports are damaged. Machine tool industries are located there and it is a potential center for industrial despersion. It has oil refineries and storage. (Classified as a B Target)

(6) The possibility of bombing the Emperor's palace was discussed. It was agreed that we should not recommend it but that any action for this bombing should come from authorities on military policy. It was agreed that we should obtain information from which we could determine the effectivenes

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Those nukes we're intentionally made to kill civilians and destroy normal cities - not to attack against military targets.

Your "few thousands" killed is a 'little' bit off too;

You do realize that Hiroshima was a military city, right? And they sent a crapton of scientists on the missions to observe, they had no idea what an air detonation would look like, as it was, it was far more devastating than predicted.

And out of 70 million, I'd have to agree 200,000 is more like "a few thousand." It's disgusting, but there it is.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[khellendros1984]

I think the choice was between dropping the nuclear weapons or staging a land invasion of Japan. The nukes were brutal, and they killed a lot of innocents. A land invasion would've torn the entire country apart and caused widespread civilian casualties and destruction of civilian infrastructure as collateral damage. It's the difference between shooting someone in the kneecaps, or dousing them in gasoline and lighting a match. Neither option is pretty, and they're to be avoided if possible...but if the other guy is coming for you, you do the thing that will stop them in their tracks.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Runaway1956]

The weather had been reported satisfactory earlier in the day over Kokura Arsenal, but by the time the B-29 finally arrived there, the target was obscured by smoke and haze. Two more passes over the target still produced no sightings of the aiming point. As an aircraft crewman, Jacob Beser, later recalled, Japanese fighters and bursts of antiaircraft fire were by this time starting to make things "a little hairy." Kokura no longer appeared to be an option, and there was only enough fuel on board to return to the secondary airfield on Okinawa, making one hurried pass as they went over their secondary target, the city of Nagasaki. As Beser later put it, "there was no sense dragging the bomb home or dropping it in the ocean."

Fat Man at Tinian Island, August 1945 As it turned out, cloud cover obscured Nagasaki as well. Sweeney reluctantly approved a much less accurate radar approach on the target. At the last moment the bombardier, Captain Kermit K. Beahan, caught a brief glimpse of the city's stadium through the clouds and dropped the bomb. At 11:02 a.m., at an altitude of 1,650 feet, Fat Man (right) exploded over Nagasaki. The yield of the explosion was later estimated at 21 kilotons, 40 percent greater than that of the Hiroshima bomb.

Nagasaki was an industrial center and major port on the western coast of Kyushu. As had happened at Hiroshima, the "all-clear" from an early morning air raid alert had long been given by the time theMitsubishi-Urakami Torpedo Works, 1,400 feet north of ground zero, Nagasaki. Torpedoes used in the attack on Pearl Harbor were built here. B-29 had begun its bombing run. A small conventional raid on Nagasaki on August 1st had resulted in a partial evacuation of the city, especially of school children. There were still almost 200,000 people in the city below the bomb when it exploded. The hurriedly-targeted weapon ended up detonating almost exactly between two of the principal targets in the city, the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works to the south, and the Mitsubishi-Urakami Torpedo Works (right) to the north. Had the bomb exploded farther south the residential and commercial heart of the city would have suffered much greater damage.

http://www.cfo.doe.gov/me70/manhattan/nagasaki.htm

Re:(Un)Surprising

[sexconker]

The death of a human is equal to the death of a human.

The life of a human is equal to the life of a human.

You can make no assumptions about the character of a civilian or a soldier. Being a soldier does not mean a person has killed, will kill, or even supports the war in any way. Being a civilian does not mean a person has not killed, will not kill, and is against the war.

The same goes for a man, a woman, or a child.

And even if you were so asinine to judge them so generally based on their age, gender, or enlistment status, NO ONE is "armed and able" when a nuke is dropped on them.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[haruchai]

Don't be naive - Japan's defiance in the dying days of World War 2 was mostly posturing. They'd already been invaded by the Soviet Union
and many of their cities had been heavily bombed for months. They couldn't have held out much longer.

And you can hardly hold the US up as an example of righteousness - they invaded the Philippines at the turn of the 20th century, remember?
Quite a few casualties there. Oh, and as for the Koreans - it took over 50 years of lawsuits to get any restitution for the 20000+
who were killed in the bombing of Hiroshima

Japan was the perfect foil for the US to show their power - an island nation, well away from the mainland, full of nothing but full
of weird, yellow people who had the audacity to assault us and who thought us inferior. Dropping the atom bombs wasn't firing back, it was a hate crime.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Chris Burke]

That's not the end of the story. After the Emperor recorded his formal surrender, to be broadcast over radio to the Japanese people, the Army tried to kill their own leader. If the Japanese are willing to kill their own God-emperor, what would they be willing to do to keep the Americans from landing? They would fight to the last man - it would make our current war in Afghanistan look easy.

Um, that wasn't "The Japanese", that was the top Generals and some of their loyalists who were concerned about their own careers and their own necks and most certainly did not consider their Emperor to be a God.

The rest of the country, including most of what remained of the Army, put down their arms and surrendered when the Emperor told them to.

Besides, as I explain in another reply, there were a number of other options Truman was considering and invasion was never a serious contender.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[sexconker]

A surviving woman on the losing side can still pass on the genes of both the losers and the winners.

Just as a surviving man could.

The situation you describe where 1 man can reproduce with 100 women, if need be (thus making women more valuable) is retarded - a society could not support itself with that ratio, certainly not one under attack. Human society needs a 50/50 balance for genetic diversity and for day-to-day support and growth.

I'd like to see your war-torn village of pregnant women farming, hunting, building the walls, and rearing the children.

It takes 15 years to get a viable soldier - if a war is going on for 15 years where civilians are targeted in any way, the bottleneck becomes your infrastructure and your food output (which is seasonal, so raw years here DO matter), not your raw birthrate.

Either way your argument is completely invalid: You're (incorrectly) describing the value of a person from the viewpoint of the victor in relation to population support.

I'm discussing the inherent value of a person.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[sexconker]

Against a nuke?

And all men and all women die.
There is no defense against death.

The death of one human is equivalent to the death of another human.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Tubal-Cain]

Japanese fought military against military. Only cowards kills civilians (and on hiroshima case, hundreds of thousands of civilians)

Better hundreds of thousands of civilians (at 220,000, barely qualifying for that extra s) than many times more military casualties and still hundreds of thousands of civilians that a full invasion would have cost.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Chris Burke]

The estimated number of purple hearts required for an invasion of the Japanese homeland was 1/4 million. The medals were ordered, and plans were progressing. The allies knew we were about to sacrifice those 1/4 million men.

No, they weren't. Truman was never seriously considering invasion when deliberating on how to end the war. Him, his cabinet and advisers, and all his generals were convinced that Japan would surrender without invasion. In particular, they were sure that once Russia declared war on Japan, they would soon surrender before any invasion could actually take place. Part of the decision to use the bomb was to fend off the eventuality that Japan would surrender to Russia and the U.S., which would have created a North/South Japan situation similar to Germany.

Plans are not the same as intent. The military creates plans for every contingency. Hell, today the DoD has plans for an invasion of Canada. Being asked to make plans and estimate casualties isn't the same as actually intending to go though with them. Truman never did. It was not "drop the bomb or invade". It was "drop the bomb, wait for Russia to get involved, or accept the conditional surrender the Japanese had already offered".

Which isn't to say he made the wrong choice -- it's easy to be horrified by the bomb in hindsight, but compared to what had already gone on, it wasn't much. It is to say that the choice was not as simple as just doing some basic moral arithmetic with potential body counts.

The actual situation and decision to be made was much more complex and difficult than the retconned false dichotomy. It does a disservice to the men who made that difficult choice, and to ourselves today trying to learn from history, to simplify it and make it easy.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Chris Burke]

To me it seems odd to single-out two bombs, while ignoring the millions of other bombs that had been dropped from 1939 through 45. Those non-nukes also killed people, including innocent girls and boys that didn't deserve to die but were caught in the middle of the fight. War is hell, no matter if you use nukes or TNT.

It's not odd to single them out. After all, no weapon anything like them had ever been unleashed. Even previous weapons that had changed the face of warfare -- the longbow, cannons, machine guns, iron-clad ships, armored infantry Blitzkrieg, and so on -- had required substantial time, effort, and masses of forces to be effective. The firebombings killed more people, but they consisted of extensive and sustained bombing campaigns, often over the course of days or weeks, starting with flights of bombers dropping conventional explosives, followed by flights of bombers dropping incendiary explosives. Then more flights.

This was two cities destroyed by two planes dropping one bomb each. Unprecedented.

Also, among all the nasty ways to die in war, radiation poisoning was a new and quite nasty way to die. One that was underestimated by Truman et. al.

So it's not surprising why the atom bombs get singled out. Why those civilian deaths -- in what were by the standards of WWII standards military targets, cities with factories in them -- receive so much scrutiny, I don't know for sure, but yes it's odd.

Almost 70 million people died during WW2. Only 0.2% of them died by nuclear fission bomb.

Pretty impressive for two bombs!

But yeah, precious few spend the same effort bemoaning the morality of fire bombing, or carpet bombing for that matter, or any of the other massive slaughters that took place in WWII. It was a nasty, nasty war. Ending it with two decisive explosions is not the worst thing that could happen (though as I mention elsewhere, land invasion of Japan though the worst was about the least likely way for it to end).

Re:(Un)Surprising

[r7]

If Japan's citizens did not want to be nuked, then they should have stopped their government from killing millions of Chinese, Filipinos, and other Asian neighbors.

Hate to think of the implications of this for the US, who just 35 years earlier had killed more Filipinos than Japan ever would.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine%E2%80%93American_War#American_atrocities
Does being the world's number one arms seller factor into this too?

Ouch.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Draek]

The Geneva Conventions results apply only when the guys who are winning want them too.

Wrong. The Geneva Convention's results apply for as long as *neutral* countries want them too, if the US declared war against China and threw the Geneva Convention out of the window but China didn't, which side do you think Europe and the rest of America would take? hint: not that of the US. And if you think the US can withstand alone a war against Europe, China and the rest of America, I'd like to welcome you to this place we call "the real world".

Re:(Un)Surprising

[dunng808]

I think WWII started the day WWI ended or to be more accurate when the US listened to England and France and agreed to an unjust and unwise peace with Germany.

Absolutly true! Except I would say "... when the victors imposed unjust and unwise war reparations.

Re the comment about Japan and an oil embargo, as I recall steel was a factor. Japan was buying US scrap metal and using it to build its navy.

And now to piss off a lot of readers, let's not forget that Japan began this chapter in history with the admirable goal of freeing their Asian bothers from the tyranny of Western colonialism. "Asia for Asians" was their slogan. Too bad they had not yet learned how to manage ... that came later.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

whats funny is that they are fighting over a piece of shit hole desert

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Jeremy Erwin]

Calm down. Take a stress pill, and think before you post.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

While you're right about total war, there is debate as to whether killing 10s of thousands of civilians was necessary to demonstrate the power of the nuclear bomb. The Japanese were on the verge of surrender anyway. Detonating a nuke a dozen kilometers off Tokyo harbour would have been more than enough. And if that didn't work, they could have used them for real later anyway.

It's clear that the US wanted to demonstrate to the Soviet Union the power of the nuke and the fact that America was willing to use it. Not that that isn't a perfectly respectable move in the world of international politics, but to say it was a necessary move in the Pacific War is false.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

1/4 million. I know I'm nitpicking, but please explain how 1-4 million is within a couple percent.
Let me lay the math out for you because you seem a little mathematically deficient:
1 million is 25% of 4 million. 4 million is 400% of 1 million.
If they guessed 4 million and only needed 1 million, then they are off by 75%.
If they guessed 1 million and needed 4 million, then they are off by 400%.
Either way, you've invalidated your argument from the beginning.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Mitchell314]

By that logic, we can never make compound propositions.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[truedfx]

The conventions never applied to signatories who were fighting adversaries that refused to follow them.

[citation needed]

I don't know if you're right, but I'm not going to just take your word for it, and it's not something that's easy to look up myself.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[coaxial]

Even if it's true that the Japanese only fought against other countries' militaries and avoided civilian deaths (it's not), it's irrelevant. When you go to war, you go to war completely. Which means you kill every man, woman, and child in your enemy's country.

That's bullshit. Even in the ancient world, that was considered what today we call a war crime.

I believe I speak for all of civilized humanity when I say that I'm glad that the only wars you will ever fight and lead are in video games.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Ihmhi]

What school system in any country teaches their kids, "Hey, so... we really fucked up a lot back then."

My schools never did as far as I can remember (American here). I doubt that's changed in the 5 years since I've been outta high school.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Only two things:

- The 'unrealistic' unconditional surrender was not so unrealistic as it was exactly what the bombs got. That just proves that 'unrealistic' is a word to describe what is impossible because you don't want to spend resources on it. Once you spend resources, it becomes realistic.

- In a country at war, people who doesn't oppose the enemy are considered traitors. So, even if you don't bomb indiscriminately, they will kill internally the ones that don't oppose you. Just in case. To avoid them being of any help to you.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[hairyfeet]

The problem is they are NOT "helpless innocent" as I will point out from a tale my great uncle told me about WW2. He was one of those crossing into Germany when Goebbels had pumped everyone up with that "fight to the last" BS. He said he was talking with the guy next to him in the jeep when the whole back of the guy's head came off, splattering him with brains. He saw where the flash had come from and opened up with his BAR. When they got to where the sniper was they found it was an 8 month pregnant woman, still clutching the rifle in her hands.

I asked him "did it bother you to have killed a pregnant woman? and he said "Hell no. I had already lost more friends over there than I could count. It was obvious to anyone with eyes that the war was lost for Germany and those crazy bastards just kept fighting. And I had decided I was gonna go home on my feet and NOT in a body bag."

And let us not forget the Japanese had this little thing called Kamikaze and I'm sure would have had NO problems with getting men, women, AND kids to be used as human cannon fodder in an attack on the mainland. Just look at the amount of casualties we suffered on Okinawa and multiply that several times over for an invasion of the mainland. So while I am sorry civilians died from the bombs, the death count would have probably been even worse with a full scale invasion, and of course by that point it was pretty clear even to the most optimistic leaders in Japan that they had lost. They could have surrendered but THEY chose to continue the fight.

So I'm sorry, but the American military needed to worry about keeping American soldiers alive, not how many casualties the enemy that refused to surrender would take.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

When you go on a genocidal rampage, you go to war completely. Which means you kill every man, woman, and child in your enemy's country.

here FTFY

Re:(Un)Surprising

[hughk]

The 30 years war (1640 onwards) was pretty brutal if you lived in central Europe. It was fought on religious grounds with villages and towns being systematically destroyed (about 30% of German towns and villages) with a massive impact on the civilian population.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[CarpetShark]

If Japan's citizens did not want to be nuked, then they should have stopped their government from killing millions of Chinese, Filipinos, and other Asian neighbors. They started the killing; then they reaped what they had sowed.

WTF? Dude. The west developed advanced warfare techniques at least since roman times. They developed cannons for battle using gunpowder when the chinese used it for decorative fireworks displays. They developed ships of the line and all sorts of advanced naval fighting techniques that the Japanese barely had an interest in. They developed hostile, invasive religions that were often used politically to undermine other nations. They also developed an often underhanded crew, including drunks and other ne'erdowells who were literally kidnapped onto ships (look up the origin of the word Shanghaid), never wanting to be there, and who probably didn't behave with any kind of respect towards others by the time they got where they were going. Then, they took them all to Japan, a highly advanced (i.e., washed more than once a year) civilisation with an strong culture of obeisance to feudal lords and powerful shoguns, where the subtle and not so subtle expectations of respect permeated society at every level.

And you say that THEY reaped what they sowed? Wow.

There's a saying: "To understand another culture, you must first understand your own." You'd do well to consider it carefully before making statements like that in future.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[MrPloppy]

Justify it all you like but killing civilians Japanese or otherwise is WRONG.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Fred_A]

And now to piss off a lot of readers, let's not forget that Japan began this chapter in history with the admirable goal of freeing their Asian bothers from the tyranny of Western colonialism. "Asia for Asians" was their slogan.

This was the great co-prosperity sphere. Of course what that actually meant was "Asia for Nippon" since the other people of Asia while not as low as non Asians were still Untermenschen (or whatever their term for it was). Which led to the well documented abuse that still gives rise to the occasional diplomatic tension in the area today (in stark contrast to what happened in Western Europe).

So, admirable... that's debatable.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[fbjon]

Your arguments are equally one-sided. Fail.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Just check the numbers (no comments) :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Sino-Japanese_War#Casualties_assessment

Check too
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes#Mass_killings

Killing is bad. Killing to stop killing is bad too but... sometimes to limitate the massacres...

PS : chirugical war is a myth now and 70 years ago...

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Then just choose a linked issue in
mass killing

Re:(Un)Surprising

[L4t3r4lu5]

I'd say that they forfeited whatever protections the civilized world had previously agreed to.

I have to disagree with you there. The "civilised world" lost that status when it decimated civilian populations indiscriminately.

The Geneva Convention doesn't apply to both parties engaged in conflict if one party has not signed, so that's supposed to be an excuse to act in the most atrocious ways imaginable? Might as well tear the whole thing up, IMHO. Nothing "civilised" about that at all.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Shakrai]

Are you claiming that the Red Army didn't rape millions of German women? Would you feel better if I cited NPR, spiegel or Wikipedia?

Re:(Un)Surprising

[nomadic]

Hahahahaa....the "OH NOES", that NEVER gets old. Still funny EVERYTIME someone says it. You are a comedic GENIUS.

Everyone knows what the GP was saying; that in full-scale conflict any resource of the enemy--military or civilian--is a "valid" target. I didn't raise the Geneva Convention as some sort of universally binding law, but rather as an example that it is commonly accepted, by most enlightened societies, that there should be rules in war.
The Geneva Convention was held in 1949 (I wonder what spurred that?). I guess "moral war" (HAHAHAHA) wasn't even defined yet for the referenced combatants or us thicky slashdot neaderthals.

The second Geneva Convention was ratified in 1906 (including by the U.S.) and prohibits the mistreatment of wounded enemy soldiers (aka "enemy resources"). So I guess it was defined for the referenced combatants, but not you thicky slashdot neanderthals.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[corbettw]

Here's what killing "every man, woman, and child in your enemy's country" nets you: eternal war, with one person left standing.

Except that there are numerous examples from history of total war being waged, and peace and friendship following after (the American Civil War and WWII are two big ones). Of course, this requires that you follow the period of total war with total peace: you pay to rebuild the infrastructure of your former foe and support them economically, to the greatest extent possible, until they can stand on their own feet again. It also helps if you can replace their military with your own, even if only to a limited extent.

I absolutely agree with you on what was is, politics by other means. I also absolutely agree that without a clear political goal, and sticking to that goal, war is pointless and will drag on forever.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Captain Splendid]

Dude, did you really just make the argument "They started it!" How fucking old are you?

Re:(Un)Surprising

[LWATCDR]

"admirable goal of freeing their Asian bothers from the tyranny of Western colonialism."
Nope.
They wanted to free them from the tyranny of Western colonialism to put under Japanese slavery.
The Japanese at that time where every bit as evil as the Germans where.
I suggest that you look up how the Japanese treated the Koreans before you ever again use that term admirable in relation to Japanese goals at that time.
To be fair that Japan of today as well as the Germany of today are nothing like the Japan and Germany of WWII.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[LWATCDR]

Wow you really flunked history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre

China estimates 300,000 civillians killed. Japanese sources say only between 100,000 and 200,000 killed.
The city had SURRENDERED and the Japanese went on a rampage.
As I said these people had SURRENDERED.

You so need to read up a little before you post such a stupid comment.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Good to know you have no objection to actions normally deemed as terrorist attacks - the terrorists are often hunted to the point of extinction, and as such they are completely vindicated in striking back in any way possible against any viable target in the specified country according to your rationale. You point a gun at them (for whatever reason btw - you haven't put any constraints in your original post) and they nuke the crap outta your civvies.

Starting to see the flaw in that logic? Probably not, that would require you to use logic to have reached your point in the first place.

Your not morally right in your actions because it was a government that carried out the actions instead of individuals. Your not morally vindicated because your memory only goes back as far them pointing a gun at you.

Do you really think they wouldn't have surrendered if you'd dropped those bombs off the coast instead? That wouldn't have gotten the message across?

Re:(Un)Surprising

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

The rest of your post is just as ridiculous. Japan would never have been "contained" in 1945. Fanatical supporters of the Emperor were still coming out of the hills in the 1970's. Contain? Yeah, right.

Yet, compare Japan to Germany in 1945. Were the followers of the Emperor really so much more fanatical than the followers of the Furher? Was their fanaticism, tenacity or cruelty really so much greater than the likes of the Waffen SS? I doubt it. The notion of the nigh impregnable Japnese homeland, particularly in 1945, is probably a myth.

Compare the American wars against Japan and Germany. About 180,000 US soldiers were killed in the European theater. About 110,000 were killed in the Pacific theater. In Europe allied forces were not even facing the full brunt of Germany's forces. Moreover, while battles in the pacific were extremely bloody, the nature of the theater meant that small islands were effectively fortresses which the sides were forced to fight over. There were no fronts and the density of troops was quite high. Japan is an island, and mountainous, but it is not that small.

By 1945, the Japanese mainland defenders were low on ammunition and oil, and had taken to arming civilians with, essentially, pitchforks and were expecting them to put up an adequate resistance. Ludicrous plans like mass waves of Kamikazi boats and planes were being suggested, evidence of a military command increasingly divorced from reality. For all the talk of surrender being "unthinkable" to the Japanese mindset, it was the elephant in the room in every cabinet discussion. The similarities to Germany are actually quite striking.

I'm not suggesting that an invasion of Japan in 1945 would be without casualties. But I don't think it is justified to say that such an invasion would have been bloodier for allied forces than say, the Western front in Europe after D-Day. The Japanese army was on the point of collapse. The civilian population was hugely demoralized. The Soviets were also poised to invade from the North. The notion that somehow the invasion was going to turn into a bloody gauntlet for every mile to Tokyo seems to be a myth based far more on fiction than on fact.

As to the 1/4 million purple hearts, I would suspect that had a lot more to do suppliers contractors than it had to do with accurate assessment of future casualties. But what do I know?

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Sl4shd0t0rg]

Only for the purpose of exposing the othe side which sopssa chose to ignore in every single post on this subject.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Golddess]

The Geneva Conventions results apply only when the guys who are winning want them too.

Wrong. The Geneva Convention's results apply for as long as *neutral* countries want them too

I'd say you're both wrong. A neutral country can bitch and moan all it wants, but all sides in a war will continue to do as they please. It's not until the neutral country backs up its words with either its military or economic strength that anyone will pay attention to them, effectively making them no longer neutral. But even that isn't likely to change anything _during_ the war (well, backing up its words with its economic strength might, if said economy is essential to the war effort of a particular side). Do you really think that the losing side is going to think "well, now we're losing, guess maybe we should stop all that Geneva Convention breaking" as long as there's still some fight left in them?

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Runaway1956]

Uhhhmmm - I simply don't understand what you're asking. Are you European, maybe, and 1/4 means something different to you, than it does to me? To me, 1/4 million means a quarter of a million, or 250,000. The only way I can make sense of your post, is to read 1/4 as "Somewhere between 1 and 4" Please read it as a fraction, or a decimal. 1/4 = .25

Re:(Un)Surprising

[discogravy]

A war crime by any other name....

The Unit 731 stuff is particularly abhorrent.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[WNight]

What you said makes no sense.

You are responsible for your army. Who else would be?

If they're out of control should we petition you to change their behavior (something you'd have been doing if you cared) or just bomb you to remove their tax base?

Re:(Un)Surprising

[wtbname]

Do you mean this 1906 Geneva Convention?

http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/FULL/180?OpenDocument

It refers to enemy prisoners of war, left on the field of battle and in possession of their foe. It makes no provision about valid targets or methods of destroying one's enemies.

You suggested to the original poster "Go read the Geneva Convention." I return your advice, with this addendum, "s".

The point I am making is this:

Holy Shit, what enlightened societies are you talking about?

"Hey guys, it's not really ok to kill people, but you know, if you have to, just don't kill the one's who can't kill you back, ok guys?" Fucking rubbish. It. Doesn't. Work. Like. That.

If you want a real "Geneva Convention", I'll set it up for you right now: Don't be a douche bag, don't hurt people, and ...

DON"T FUCKING KILL PEOPLE YOU MORONS.

Sign Here.

According to your assertions, "enlightened societies" will agree, sign, and be on their merry way. But guess what the only problem with the Slashdot Conventions(Simplified 2009) will be?

THE SECOND SOMEONE IS GETTING DOUCHED, HURT, OR KILLED, THEY ARE GOING TO VIOLATE IT.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[wtbname]

Maybe I'm going about this the wrong way.

Sorry for being belligerent.

You called the original poster ridiculous, and cited the Geneva Convention.

The difference in what you and he said is the difference in what should be, and what is.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[identity0]

While I don't want to stir up any more on the topic of the atomic bombs in particular and potential casualties from an invasion of Japan, I do want to state that your post is incorrect.

If Truman ever seriously considered NOT invading if Japan had not surrendered, then he never told anyone about it. And his "all his generals" were certainly planning for the invasion of Japan. Except Le May and the Army Air Force, who thought firebombing and the atom bombs would do it. Certainly McArthur was planning on leading the invasion, with admiral Nimitz commanding the fleet carrying them there.

Really, I'd like to see sources given for any of the statements in your post.

As for me, I got most of my knowledge on Downfall, the plan to invade Japan, from a book by Richard Frank called "Downfall".

To Summarize: An entire Field Army (13 Divisions) would have landed in southern Japan, with about 5 million men including the naval fleet supporting it. The British, Canadians and Australians would also have sent divisions, and I don't think Truman ever told them there wouldn't be an invasion. All this would have been done with forces already in the Pacific, but the second landings near Tokyo were scheduled to use units rotated in from the European theater as well.

It's true that the army was demobilizing many people by then, but that was to give those who had been in war the longest a rest because of public pressure. About 500,000 had been demobilized, often the most experienced and best men in their units, and that is partly responsible for the high casualty estimates for the invasion. Many units had been seriously undermined by having their best men taken out, and the army feared that the quality of the units was low. But the plans for the invasion went forward, and all the logistics (ships, supplies, men, planes) were being prepared just as the Japanese surrendered.

While not as good, here is a wikipedia article on the planned invasion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall

Really, I'd like to know where you heard that Truman wasn't going to invade.

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Hurricane78]

Uum, how does the other side killing civilians make you killing civilians somehow OK?? That would make you in no way better than them. PLUS the knee-jerk reaction style.

It's so primitive to think that way, it boggles the mind!

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Hurricane78]

Well, same as in the USA. I doubt many learn about what really happened in Vietnam, and the many other place. Or will learn how cold war really was hot. Just not for the USA, because they gave others weapons and let them die for them. Like in Afghanistan. (I know, because I'm myself suffering as a result of that.)

Re:(Un)Surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of American schools don't bother mentioning that American soldiers raped up to three hundred women and girls a day after the occupation of Japan, either...

I love this

[koan]

It gives me hope to see how people can get around this sort of oppression, I am hoping that it stays that way, that we will always have the option of communicating with each other, that no corporation or government will strangle.
I truly hope it stays that way.

An open Internet is power to the people.

Re:I love this

[John Hasler]

> I truly hope it stays that way.

  At "tens of thousands" of Tor users out of a population of over a billion? I'm sure the Chinese government agrees with you.

Re:I love this

[Anonymous Coward]

Never underestimate the power of "tens of thousands" of people. By no means is even 10k a small number, and a high percentage of the population is not needed to spread information throughout the entire country.

And remember that most of China's population is still located in the rural areas, where the Internet and computers are uncommon.

Then IM and Twitter

[Anonymous Coward]

will be subsequently blocked.

Same result as the Twitter overthrow of Iran.

BFD !

Yours In Elektrogorsk,
Kilgore Trout

The U.S. and the EU have the same power.

[commodore64_love]

There was just recently a slashdot article about Congress passing a law to allow them to monitor what passes through anonymous networks. Many of the EU states have similar capabilities. We look at China as an example of government censorship, but maybe we ought to look at our own homes as well.

Re:The U.S. and the EU have the same power.

[sakdoctor]

This.

I think China is bad, moving in a positive direction. Aging dictators, a colossal age gap, then a young generation who came up with grass mud horse, and will eventually topple the censorship.
We're one dodgy ground at the moment, and moving in a negative direction. Internet freedom in the west is on the edge of the abyss.

Re:The U.S. and the EU have the same power.

[Shakrai]

There was just recently a slashdot article about Congress passing a law to allow them to monitor what passes through anonymous networks.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it's about 50% child pornography, 25% copyright infringement, 15% trolling on sites that banned someone and 10% legitimate speech that has a valid need for anonymity. I ran a tor exit node for three days before I got curious enough to fire up wireshark and see what kind of traffic was passing through it. I shut it down after I discovered that the vast majority of it was child pornography being downloaded from servers in Eastern Europe.

Re:The U.S. and the EU have the same power.

[Anonymous Coward]

So some freedom is okay, but only the freedom that you feel is okay? Information should be free. Get over the fact that not everyone has the same ideals you do. Get over the fact that not all things you hate are bad.

This is a true test whether something is anonymous, you obviously proved Tor is not very anonymous/free speech worthy.

Re:The U.S. and the EU have the same power.

[QCompson]

So you're willing to dismiss the 10% of legitimate speech?

Re:The U.S. and the EU have the same power.

[Shakrai]

No, I'm just not willing to use my resources to promote the exploitation of children.

Re:The U.S. and the EU have the same power.

[QCompson]

No, I'm just not willing to use my resources to promote the exploitation of children.

But do you think Tor should exist at all? Or should governments aggressively stamp out any programs which attempt to provide their users with anonymity?

Re:The U.S. and the EU have the same power.

[Shakrai]

I don't have a problem with tor existing. I've used it myself many times. I'm just not willing to support it with my network resources when child pornography makes up such a large portion of the traffic on the tor network.

Personally I would like to see someone design something like tor that would be limited to text based protocols like IRC, Usenet, etc. That would provide a channel of anonymous communication that could be deployed without sucking up as many resources as tor does and without supporting child pornography and copyright infringement. This would bring at least two benefits:

1. More people would be willing to run tor nodes because they wouldn't have to donate as much bandwidth
2. The network would be used for communication rather than bulk transfers of copyrighted works and/or child pornography.

Re:The U.S. and the EU have the same power.

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me help you out here so you can better follow the blame America first checklist.

When China does something bad, to avoid condemning the people responsible, always try:
1) Blame America for making them do it. Failing that:
2) Draw a moral equivalence to America, saying that America does it too. If that also fails,
3) Claim it's not such a bad idea after all and that it has its merits. And if all else fails,
4) Blame Bush, FoxNews, and right wing talk radio - that's sure to work.

Remember, every little bit of good press helps in trying to excuse the dictators and the things they do.
Ra-rah go team!

Re:The U.S. and the EU have the same power.

[dave562]

China is simply the testing ground where they are working out all of the bugs with the hardware and software. When all of the censorship was happening in Iran around the time of the disputed elections, it came out that Nortel was working with the Iranian government to filter the internet traffic coming in and out of the country. It wouldn't surprise me if multi-national corporations weren't playing similar rolls in China's networking infrastructure. If not Nortel, then Cisco, or Juniper, or one of the other major players in networking equipment.

It's a poorly kept secret within the United States government that the whole consumer oriented push of the internet has been in part a ploy to get people accustomed to interacting with computers. I've talked to operators associated with DHS who have told me that what they see coming in the next couple of decades is a full blown, total information awareness style population tracking program. The government wants to be able to fully account for all of the resources each individual is using, down to what they buy a the grocery store, how much they are spending on health care, and obviously, what sort of interactions they are having with law enforcement. The big concern that the government is trying to get out ahead of is global warming. They're really concerned with food shortages and want to have a program in place to implement rationing if/when the time comes. Just think of it as a really big ERP system.

Re:The U.S. and the EU have the same power.

[linuxpyro]

Personally I would like to see someone design something like tor that would be limited to text based protocols like IRC, Usenet, etc.

You could set an exit policy to do just that, check the tor documentation. It might not stop other people from allowing Web traffic, but it would ensure people wouldn't be using your exit node for child porn. (Binary Usenet transfers or transfers over IRC aside.)

Hell, you could even limit what Web sites people can get to through your node. So you could still allow access to, say, Google and Wikipedia but no other sites.

Re:The U.S. and the EU have the same power.

[meringuoid]

Personally I would like to see someone design something like tor that would be limited to text based protocols like IRC, Usenet, etc. That would provide a channel of anonymous communication that could be deployed without sucking up as many resources as tor does and without supporting child pornography and copyright infringement.

Well, you can restrict the ports available on your exit node, such that only connections to NNTP or IRC services are available. Because nobody downloads cp on IRC or Usenet. It's not hard to convert a binary file into a long string of perfectly valid ASCII and pipe it through a text-only protocol. I imagine that to the child pornographer anonymity is more important than speed, so he'll accept the hit on performance if that's what it takes. Enough people do this and you'll likely find that there's a whole LOT of ASCII gibberish going through your Usenet-via-TOR service, and guess what it decodes to?

Re:The U.S. and the EU have the same power.

[JesseMcDonald]

Are you really so naive as to think that IRC and Usenet can only be used to transfer plain text? Ever hear of uuencoding (encoding binary data as base-64 text)? Some (old) SMTP systems are limited to 7-bit ASCII; that doesn't stop anyone from using them to transfer binary attachments.

All you've done is made the network less efficient, without limiting how it can be used.

Re:The U.S. and the EU have the same power.

[Anonymous Coward]

WON'T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!?!?

Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.

obviously the filter doesn't know that we're trying to protect children here.

Re:The U.S. and the EU have the same power.

[Xiterion]

While I agree totally with the sentiment - I think it's basically unenforceable. Require only text, then just send binary files in a text format like intel hex or s-record. Unwieldly, but still effective. And besides, would it be worth losing the ability to simply transfer information other than text, such as maps. While that approach would certainly be better than nothing, I can't see a way around the fundamental problem that freedom can't be easily regulated to only include freedom to do things you approve of.

Re:The U.S. and the EU have the same power.

[X0563511]

I think you're doing it right. It is just as much your right to run the exit node as it is to decline to continue to do so, based on it's apparent use.

Re:The U.S. and the EU have the same power.

[commodore64_love]

Was it actual child pornography, or just children without clothes? There's a difference. The former is sick, but the latter is legal.

Re:The U.S. and the EU have the same power.

[lennier]

I had that problem with Freenet back in about 2001 or so.

I have no idea how much content on the network then actually was child pornography, but nearly all the main search/index pages had links claiming to be child porn.

And I was paying for bandwidth to host a node.

After a while I thought 'you know, I really do not need to be facilitating the distribution of this stuff. Whether it is or is not child porn I don't know and I'm not going to click to find out, but it's claiming to be, and that's way too squicky for me. I have free choice to support this or not. I'm freely choosing to out.' And never looked back.

If the search pages had been a little more discreet I'd never have known or cared, I guess. But they weren't, they were in my face every time I logged in, so.... it was an ethical decision on my part.

These days, I really don't care that much about anonymity. I think it was reading Starhawk's 'Webs of Power' who pointed out that even if you're protesting the government, you need to be mil-sec NSA level secure if you want to go the secure route, and if you do that you'll be playing right in the big boys' sandpit using the rules of their game, while the other option is to be completely open, democratic and transparent and use secrecy against them. Pick one or the other, and the open route is generally safer.

In protesting the whole point is to facilitate *democratic* change - so if you have to be blac-bloc secret to 'lead a movement', you have a big danger of doing what the Bolsheviks did and creating a glorious people's revolutionary vanguard which learns the habit of secrecy and control and never gives it up once it gains power. You don't actually change anything by doing that, you just change the labels on the prisons. As Lenin did.

Plus, the end-game of a movement is to change hearts and minds. There's no point in seizing power unless you can convince your peers to join your cause - and if you can do that, you won't *need* to hide anything. Yes, you'll probably get stepped on, but you'll get stepped on harder if you try to play security games.

Just like sometimes in a bad neighbourhood you're safer if you don't have a gun - then every side knows you're a non-combatant.

http://www.amazon.com/Webs-Power-Starhawk/dp/1897408137/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255641610&sr=8-4

Re:The U.S. and the EU have the same power.

[selven]

In a free country, that 10% justifies the other 90%. It's better to set 10 guilty men free than keep an innocent man in jail and all that.

Re:The U.S. and the EU have the same power.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, you're one of those 'I'm all for free speech, as long as I agree with it' folk.

The true test of free speech is if you tolerate things that you find objectionable.

Re:The U.S. and the EU have the same power.

[Anonymous Coward]

They have laws, the capabilities side is a little dodgier. Vulnerabilities in Tor are well known, but not easy to exploit. Basically you need to control a sufficiently large percentage of the exit nodes. Given the sheer number of exit nodes this is hard. Further, since *anyone* can create a new exit node at any time, this is easy to circumvent as long as the number of legitimate users are significantly greater than the number of people spying on them. For now, it is quite likely that this is the case no matter how many exit nodes the CIA runs (within reason - if Tor becomes important enough they will run enough of them).

Re:The U.S. and the EU have the same power.

[Anonymous Coward]

Text-only can still be used to distribute CP and CI content.
As long as it is small enough, it can still be used.
You can even compress images really high using B&W mode and pasting it in to a comment via a CSV using hex colors.

But yes, i would agree, a distributed IRC-like system would be much nicer.

Re:The U.S. and the EU have the same power.

[Anonymous Coward]

of course, it's your choice how you wish to use your resources, but that doesn't make this claim a justification to silence anonymous communication.

Re:The U.S. and the EU have the same power.

[rahvin112]

A picture is worth 1000 words. What would the press value be of text statements about the Iranian protests compared to the value of a picture showing 100,000 people in the streets? If you restrict the anonymous networks to text only you destroy the press value. Pictures are the basis of modern press. The picture or video of the police beating someone has value, a text statement by an anonymous eyewitness is easily refuted by the authoritarian regime but the video or picture can't be refuted easily.

The problem with believing in free speech is you have to tolerate all speech. You are unwilling to tolerate all speech so you throw out all the value of the really important, possibly world changing, speech. To me it's called throwing out the baby with the bathwater but to each his own, but you aren't on the moral high ground you think you are.

Re:The U.S. and the EU have the same power.

[izomiac]

I'd think that image transfer is rather important, since pictures can usually arouse a greater response than words. E.g. some random dude in Madeupistan says that the fanatical government is burning down schools. What are the chances he'll be believed? Now, how do his odds fair if he takes a picture and sends it?

As for the breakdown of traffic, I must say I'm not surprised. In relatively peaceful times I'd guess that Tor is used much like the internet, i.e. mostly for porn and somewhat for other entertainment. Due to the performance difference most people aren't going to use it for stuff that's legal. OTOH, during political turmoil people become motivated to not just passively consume entertainment and start using it for "legitimate" things.

Re:The U.S. and the EU have the same power.

[rho]

I have a hard time believing that any government is capable of that much forethought. Democracies are split by competing bureaucracies and dictatorships are hampered by short-sighted corruption to enact anything like a grand plan for pervasive TIA.

Re:The U.S. and the EU have the same power.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it's about [...] 10% legitimate speech that has a valid need for anonymity.

You're right, that IS going wildly out on a limb. I'd put that figure around 1% at an extreme maxima, really. I'm certain the spare 9% could easily go to the "trolling" part.

Re:The U.S. and the EU have the same power.

[Shakrai]

The true test of free speech is if you tolerate things that you find objectionable.

It's not free speech when it comes with the abuse (child exploitation) of other human beings. That's a crime and we throw those responsible for it in prison.

Re:The U.S. and the EU have the same power.

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I would like to see someone design something like tor that would be limited to text based protocols

As long as a it can be used to transfer data, it can be used to transfer _any_ data. All you need is a way to re-encode the data you want into the allowed format. As an example, look at SMTP; it can only transfer ASCII data, yet millions of people use it every day to send email messages with non-text attachments.

Re:The U.S. and the EU have the same power.

[harry666t]

I couldn't resist the temptation to quote Bill Hicks:

"I'll show you politics in America right here [...]: 'I believe the puppet on the right shares my beliefs.' 'Well, I believe the puppet on the left is more to my liking.' Hey, wait a minute, there's one guy holding up both puppets!"

Re:The U.S. and the EU have the same power.

[Chris Burke]

I don't have a problem with tor existing. I've used it myself many times. I'm just not willing to support it with my network resources when child pornography makes up such a large portion of the traffic on the tor network.

Yeah I'm with you on that.

Personally I would like to see someone design something like tor that would be limited to text based protocols like IRC, Usenet, etc.

LOL, yeah, cus there are no binary files of any kind on usenet. Text only. Sorry, but 'text' is still encoded in binary, it's just another level of encoding to encode anything in binary in text.

Re:The U.S. and the EU have the same power.

[dave562]

You know, you're right. It's not like there are any examples of governments working with large computer companies to monitor and track large populations of people. http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/

Re:The U.S. and the EU have the same power.

[Shakrai]

Was it actual child pornography, or just children without clothes? There's a difference. The former is sick, but the latter is legal.

A lot of the traffic that I observed was encrypted and could have been anything. The part that caught my attention was a bunch of FTP transfers to IP addresses in Eastern Europe. The file names that were being transferred were rather "suggestive" if you get my drift. That was when I shut the exit node down.

I loved the idea of having my computer assist people in China from bypassing the Great Firewall, dissents get their story out, etc. But I wasn't willing to have it be used to assist perverts in the exploitation of other human beings.

I did run it again for awhile during the mess in Iran with a carefully picked white list. I had Twitter, Google, the BBC, CNN and VOA allowed as exit points. I saw a fair amount of traffic for awhile so I'd like to think I helped somebody out. I did manage to piss someone off, because that computer got DDoS'ed a few weeks after I set it up. They wasted their time on me though, the traffic had largely died down by the time the DDoS happened.

Re:The U.S. and the EU have the same power.

[Shakrai]

I'm not talking about sending people to jail. I'm talking about what the bandwidth and iron that I paid for will be used to support. I choose not to have it used by perverts who exploit children. I live in a free country and have other means of communicating anonymously if the need arises. I don't need to support tor.

Re:The U.S. and the EU have the same power.

[trytoguess]

Does the existence of murder victims pictures/videos support murder? Do videos of bank robberies support theft? While I don't use thing like Tor or Freenet, I do agree with their logic on free speech. If you support it, you must support all of it, even the unsavory ones. Of course, if the content is illegal, you should go after the creators with extreme prejudice like one would track a murderer, but the data from such acts should not be illegal no matter how disgusting.

On the other hand, many who do use Freenet, and such do seem agree with you. Back when I tried out version 0.5, one of the most popular tools was a program that would filter out CP material from your cache. How that worked, I've no idea.

Re:The U.S. and the EU have the same power.

[Artemis3]

There is no way you can discriminate against a type of content vs another. This is an all or nothing game. If you are able to stop child porn, you are able to stop dissidence.
That said, TOR is not well suited for bulk transfers (it is very slow), and you can filter outgoing ports, so you could block web, but allow IRC. It is even better not to be an exit node, and not let your address published, and be a so called "bridge node", rather than completely stopping TOR.

Remember, if the tool allows you to infringe the law in your country, others will be able to infringe the law in theirs.

Governments want complete control of the Internet, and anonymous p2p tools will prevent this. Expect outlawing of "unauthorized" software and hardware by the state, and massive dissidence from the people turning to these "illegal" tools in response. Things will probably deteriorate to some kind of fast filtered net, and a slow underground one running on top of it, kind of what the Chinese have, but on a worldwide level, with each country justifying their deeds, "for the sake of the children", "for national security", blah blah.

TOR needs to evolve, people should stop using it to access the "normal" net and put more content inside the "hidden services" (Freenet style), also the "bridge node" system needs more refining and decentralization. Perhaps other anonymous p2p tools will do better, time will tell.

Last thing, you wouldn't be able to watch the riots if you made it impossible for bulk transfer to occur, and that means "the other" type of videos must flow as well. Its all or nothing, no exception.

Re:The U.S. and the EU have the same power.

[Anonymous Coward]

but the video or picture can't be refuted easily.

Photos and movies are hardER to refute than text, but they're still easy. The governments can simply claim that the content was staged. They can claim it was hacked together from archive footage that's not even theirs. They can say it was digitally altered ("Photoshopped," CGI, etc.). If they were particularly worried, they could pull an RIAA and distribute some fakes themselves.

I can understand Shakrai's objection to his Tor traffic from the perspective of personal safety--if the police for some reason find KP on (or flowing through) his computer, they're not going to care how it got there, and the local media sure as hell aren't going to care (or even report it correctly, probably).

On the other hand, it's kind of silly to suggest that children can't be exploited in text. Molesters can still share stories of their exploits, or planned exploits, or fake stories involving real children. They can still solicit minors in email, or in chat rooms. And, as already mentioned, it's possible to encode binaries in text. Clever people could defeat simple automated scanners by encoding their binaries using Markov Chains, I bet. (Thinking here of how spammers have used similar tricks to avoid detection.)

You pretty much can't have "free" and "molester-proof" in a network (or a society). Freedom, as they say, isn't free, and not just because people sometimes have to die to protect it.

Re:The U.S. and the EU have the same power.

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I would like to see someone design something like tor that would be limited to text based protocols like IRC, Usenet, etc. That would provide a channel of anonymous communication that could be deployed without sucking up as many resources as tor does and without supporting child pornography and copyright infringement. This would bring at least two benefits:

As soon as you start limiting to text based protocols, people start uuencoding or base64 encoding their binaries.
I'd be surprised if there wasn't already plenty of child porn on alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.
You could limit by bandwidth but considering how slow tor is already I doubt that would make an impact. Maybe some kind of language filter, but then you'll just get into censorship( "this text doesn't look like american english, ban it!"), not to mention how easy it becomes to just make an encoding scheme using a US dictionary as a key.

You would also eliminate the ability to communicate a lot of legit things, like the kind of stuff that is on wikileaks.

Also by lowering the overall transfer rate of an onion network, you do somewhat lower its security. You ideally want a constant stream of packets going everywhere, restricting it to just text lowers the amount of ciphertext needed to be broken by a lot.

At the end of the day, you can't have any free speech without having all free speech.

Re:The U.S. and the EU have the same power.

[evilviper]

Personally I would like to see someone design something like tor that would be limited to text based protocols like IRC, Usenet, etc.

Both Usenet and E-Mail are text-only mediums. You'll note there is NO binary data in e-mails or in Usenet posts. Therefore, it's impossible to transfer pornography through usenet or e-mail. Problem solved.

Note: Whatever you do, DON'T read about uuenc/base64/yEnc or other encoding. It doesn't exist I say!

It doesn't matter how strictly you control the data channel. If you restrict the channel to 7-bit contents, people will use 7-bit encoding for their binary data. If it can only transmit/receive 2 characters (let's say: Q and Y), I will STILL be able to transfer binary data over it, quite easily. You'll add some more overhead, but if the channel is otherwise fast enough, it's well worth it.

More people would be willing to run tor nodes because they wouldn't have to donate as much bandwidth

Donate as much or as little bandwidth as you want with TOR. Throttle it down to dial-up speeds, or do heavy traffic shaping so burty traffic gets a very high priority, and sustained transfers get slowed drastically. Of course, like above, once you impose those arbitrary limits, some software will come along to make the latter traffic perform more like the former...

Joseph Javorski. Respected scientist. Now a fiend.

[Tetsujin]

"TIME FOR GO TO BED!"

That Tor just cracks me up...

I'm getting old

[thered2001]

After reading the headline, I thought China was doing harm to my favorite book publisher. "How could they be a threat to China?" I wondered. "Sure some of their books are thought-provoking, but really!"

go ahead china

[circletimessquare]

joust at that hydra

control freaks have at their psychological root a toxic amount of insecurity. the grumpy old men in beijing have to make sure society is "harmonious" even if that's nothing more than media shorthand for placid lies. the truth is often ugly, dissent is always ugly. but when you expose yourself to dissent and ugliness, you do nothing but strengthen your mind and your convictions and your bullshit detector. all china is doing with the massive amount of societal control is producing a generation of chinese minds that have nothing but cotton candy between the ears: unable to handle anything except the most stultifying of platitudes about the world and its nature, wilting at the slightest sign of trouble

china is supposed to be emerging world power? when chinese raised in the hermetically sealed climate controlled media environment of modern china interact with their compatriots from india, brazil, japan, usa, germany... what are these dunderheads going to be like? when they encounter the slightest bit of provocation or contrasting opinion to the almighty sense of "harmony" what are their social skills for that resistance? censor? ignore? run away?

a "harmonious society" seems nothing more to me than a way to ensure chinese minds in the generations to come are weak brittle minds incapable of understanding or processing criticism of any kind, because it's not "harmonious". "harmony": what a fucking bullshit codeword for "i'm insecure at the top, don't think anything that might make me feel threatened". this isn't about cultural differences, this is is about a colossal social weakness of modern china completely of chinese making, a society-wide achilles heel: "we can't handle criticism, cover your ears"

enjoy your cottonheaded future china, so sorry for my dissent. you can just ignore, dismiss, and censor me. that's obviously the best way to handle these words. pffffffft

Re:go ahead china

[Whorhay]

What you say is true, in varying degrees for most every government I have ever read about. Not that I am anti government, anarchy isn't likely to get us anywhere fast. But people by and large the world over are afraid of unknowns, and will seek to shelter themselves and their progeny from the things that scare them. And of course there are plenty of power hungry asshats who will take advantage of any little power they are given to gain more by pandering to the masses in this regard.

Re:go ahead china

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude you need a zanax and a beer.

Re:go ahead china

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds alot like what's going on here in the good ol' U.S.A.

Re:go ahead china

[identity0]

On a purely technical note, I don't see why the Chinese gov't couldn't simply ban all encrypted traffic that does not go through a gov't proxy or middleman similar to the "key escrow" idea from the Clinton era. Tor and services like it rely on the idea that encrypted traffic is useful for other things like e-commerce, and that gov'ts won't simply ban them outright.

>china is supposed to be emerging world power? when chinese raised in the hermetically sealed climate controlled media environment of modern china interact with their compatriots from india, brazil, japan, usa, germany... what are these dunderheads going to be like? when they encounter the slightest bit of provocation or contrasting opinion to the almighty sense of "harmony" what are their social skills for that resistance? censor? ignore? run away?

While it may be comforting to think that, I suspect it will not be the case. The vast majority of Chinese will probably never need to interact with foreigners.

I'm in Japan at the moment, and it's interesting how closed off the society is from the outside world. Sure, there are lots of tourists here and Japanese travel overseas too, but the level of foreigners living and working in the country is so low that you can probably live your entire life without having any deep interactions(like political dialogue) with foreigners.

Obviously that's because of the strict immigration laws, but the point is that Japan can do this because they have a population large enough and developed enough that individuals don't need to interact with foreigners much. The domestic market is large enough to sustain companies' product development and research, and their economy is based on exporting those products and importing materials, not the immigration of people to/from Japan.

The population is also well educated so that there is no need to look for guidance from foreign people. There is enough talented people in important fields like engineering or medicine that native Japanese can fill those roles. Good ideas from overseas get imported, but the Japanese can choose not to import ideas they don't like. This happens without any centralization or government intervention, due simply to market factors - the media has no reason to try to convince the Japanese that there is something wrong with them, much like how American mainstream media tend to be patriotic and flag-waving.

If Japan can do this with a population of 140 million, I imagine China can do much the same with a population of ten times that, 1.4 billion. Not to mention a much more intrusive government.

The main difference I see is that China has a larger expatriate community that could clue in the mainlanders on what world opinion and ideas are like, and Taiwan as well. But it wouldn't surprise me if China ends up as 'walled-off' as Japan, if not more so.

Re:go ahead china

[dUN82]

Unbelievable, you are totally right ! Are you the one flicked on the evil GFW switch?

Re:go ahead china

[Anonymous Coward]

"china is supposed to be emerging world power? when chinese raised in the hermetically sealed climate controlled media environment of modern china interact with their compatriots from india, brazil, japan, usa, germany... what are these dunderheads going to be like? when they encounter the slightest bit of provocation or contrasting opinion to the almighty sense of "harmony" what are their social skills for that resistance? censor? ignore? run away?"

Try "attack" .. after all the other attempts...

Between the masses of patriotic script kiddies, the propaganda of the government and the willingness of their population to fall in line and do as they're told, I see no reason why they wouldn't fight both economically and militarily to achieve their targets if they honestly believed it would benefit them, and that they could "get away with it". Ignorance of the masses is a strength to any government, regardless of if that ignorance is derived from lack of information or a unwillingness to educate ones self.... not a weakness to it. Bodies can be trained, equipment can be developed (more like purchased from an arms supplier) and tactics can be generated by those who have been trained to think in that manner.

*Just a little bit from a person who spends an inordinate amount of time dealing with the Chinese on a variety of matters ranging from the financial to the political.
Let me assure you the intricacies of their culture permeate every aspect of interaction with them, and unfortunately at this time, to the detriment of the ones who must interact with them. I point the finger squarely at their government as opposed to the people, but good luck saying that in front of any of them, they are simply too patriotic. Even the "dissenters" are more patriotic than most natively born people of any country. It is simply amazing.

Re:go ahead china

[Anonymous Coward]

when chinese raised in the hermetically sealed climate controlled media environment of modern china interact with their compatriots from india, brazil, japan, usa, germany...

Speaking as a foreign student currently studying in Beijing, I feel that there is a problem with this statement. Almost all of the people that I have interacted with in the university setting have varying degrees of reservations towards the government, and these are the exact people that you focus on in your post. In fact a lot of them enjoy speaking on the subject, and I have had many fulfilling conversations to this extent. Hopefully these will be the people leading China in twenty years. It seems as though the lower class are the ones most affected by the propaganda. If you were speaking of the military, then we may be on to something. Hopefully their interaction with the outside world will continue to be minimal...

Chinese (government) owned Tor sites?

[Anonymous Coward]

Could China start its own network of Tor sites that had evil bits to actually track users?
Perhaps I know too little about tor.

CANADA!

[Yvan256]

... sorry, nobody had mentioned us in the discussions so far.

there's a concept you should learn: "scale"

[circletimessquare]

to honestly sit here and put forth the idea that the level of censorship in the west is anything remotely near what china does, you've arrived at intellectual fail. the SCALE of the effort matters. if the west, for example, tries to find kiddie porn, it is entirely in your right to debate that effort and question its relevancy, effectiveness, and the direction of such laws

now, if you were to actually engage in such criticism in china, a nice young man or woman in one of the many banks of party loyalists who actually monitor signs of dissent on the web would make note of you, track you, and actually admonish you or outright punish you. simply for stating your political opinion

do you really think that's anywhere remotely the same thing as trying to control kiddie porn? again, i'm not saying you don't have a right to criticize to western internet controls, but you have no right, in the least, to compare it to the colossal amount of censorship and control in china. the SCALE of the effort over there is off the charts

as proof, if you were in china, you would never have written what you just wrote in terms of criticising the chinese government. you'd be too scared to. but here on western servers in a western political environment, you have no problem criticizing western politics. as you have every right to. but don't be an ludicrous about your criticism by trying to mention it in the same breath as the lockdown environment in china

for example: i can call obama a moron if i want to. i can rant until blue in the face about how he is the devil incarnate. no big deal in the west. most wouldn't even care. now if i attempted to do the same about wen jiabao in china, they would actually track me, perhaps even show up at my doorstep, perhaps even send me to some prison camp for "political reeducation". do you doubt this is a reality? then why do you think chinese internet controls is a parallel to anything in the west? be intellectually honest. consider the idea of "scale"

now, if i actually sat here and threatened obama's life, someone in the west might try to track me. a case could be made that that's a valid reason for internet monitoring. a case could also be made that that's not valid. but at least in the west, i can actually question my government and its policies, argue about it in an open environment, and not worry about goons showing up at my door. well, besides the paranoid schizophrenic amongst us

<knock, knock/>

sorry, be right back, someone's at the door for some reason

pfffft

Re:there's a concept you should learn: "scale"

[koxkoxkox]

No, it is not that prevalent. You can be arrested if you are a known blogger with an history of criticizing the government, it really happens and it is sad. However, you won't go in jail for a single comment about Wen Jiabao in an obscure website like Slashdot.

firewall vs. drywall

[nycguy]

Apparently China's firewall is a lot better than their drywall.

Re:firewall vs. drywall

[cyfer2000]

I wrote a report on the Chinese drywall issue and free trade on my MBA class. The whole story include a German company and its manufacturing plant in China, one shipping company, one importer, several builders and house owners. If you forget those sensational news and dig into legal documents, you will find that the importer of the drywall in question failed to get customs documents for the dry wall in question. So those drywall were sitting on boats for as long as 6 months along Florida coast. This elongated exposure to high temperature, high humidity and corrosive environment was identified as cause of the "stinky drywall". And my conclusion was in a world of true "free trade", where no customs documents are required, this unfortunate incident won't have happened.

reason

[Anonymous Coward]

Gordon Brown's gay lover's telephone number.

There is a reason his last name is 'Brown',

the japanese were massively propagandized

[circletimessquare]

read about saipan and banzai cliff:

http://xmb.stuffucanuse.com/xmb/viewthread.php?tid=1111

japanese propaganda was basically that the gaijin were horrible devils who would rape and pillage and torture just for the fun of it. as american victory dawned on them, women would take their babies in their arms and jump off banzai cliff to avoid that horrendous fate

you could not end the war with a blockade or a declining to invade the homeland. and if you invaded the homeland, the civilians would put up great resistance, or kill themselves. nuking hiroshima and nagasaki saved countless lives. of course nuking anything is a horrible evil, but you can't examine that horrible evil in a vacuum of context. all other choices were much worse horrible evils

Re:the japanese were massively propagandized

[Toonol]

of course nuking anything is a horrible evil, but you can't examine that horrible evil in a vacuum of context. all other choices were much worse horrible evils

Well, KILLING people is horrible but sometimes unavoidable. That fact that it was done with a nuke is morally neutral; it doesn't make it better or worse. Firebombing the cities with conventional weaponry wouldn't have been somehow better.

It is strange what they filter...

[mathfeel]

I was posting in a Hong Kong (note: not the mainland) Linux user group forum the other day and advising someone to use dyndns.org. The string "dyndns.org" got filtered into ">>>
I didn't know dyndns is a threat in HK.

Re:It is strange what they filter...

[dUN82]

Funny enough, I was reading an angry comment from a Python user from China this morning, who has no idea why python's offical website was black-listed by the GFW.

Re:It is strange what they filter...

[Anonymous Coward]

I was posting in a Hong Kong (note: not the mainland) Linux user group forum the other day and advising someone to use dyndns.org. The string "dyndns.org" got filtered into ">>>

I didn't know dyndns is a threat in HK.

I don't think there's any government imposed censorship in Hong Kong, at least none that I know of.

Maybe they thought you were spamming?

Re:It is strange what they filter...

[koxkoxkox]

No, it is not.

You mean www.python.org right ? I can access it without any problem from Beijing.

Re:It is strange what they filter...

[An anonymous Frank]

computers referred to by dyndns might be hosting a proxy or other service that would be more difficult to reach (from China?) if one could not depend on a dns host name if it is hosted on a node with a dynamic IP address.

Re:It is strange what they filter...

[Xifeng]

It was probably either an automated filtering of any websites or (very unlikely) self-censorship, as HK's web traffic is not censored by the Chinese government.

absolutely

[circletimessquare]

no modern society doesn't do this to some degree. but you can't be intellectually honest and claim that the level to which the chinese government manipulates the media is anywhere near what happens in the west, by orders of magnitude

as a matter of scale, what the chinese do in terms of media manipulation makes what western governments do in comparison a joke

Re:absolutely

[TheRaven64]

as a matter of scale, what the chinese do in terms of media manipulation makes what western governments do in comparison a joke

Western corporations, on the other hand...

Tor team prepared for this, still works in China

[xiando]

The Tor developers knew that it would be very easy for tyrannical regimes to download the directory list and block all the IPs in it, so they prepared for this by implementing bridge support about a year ago. The bridge model makes it very hard to block Tor. Technologyreview briefly mentions this. What really happened, and you can all go read more about this in the Tor blog at blog.torproject.org, is that what has happened the last few days is that the number of people using Tor-servers directly dropped to near zero while the number of people using bridges exploded. People simply switched to using bridges when they found that the Tor-network had been blocked.

GFW in China

[dUN82]

Well, it is clear that the CCP is implementing a more strict online blocking and censoring policy, OCT.1 is just one example of those that is exposed to the outside world. 2009 also marks the 20th anniversary of the Tienanmen Square 4JUN1989, CCP instructed all website in China, to disable comment functions through out the country, majority of the websites complied and rest of the simply shut down the their website claim as 'maintenance' as a protest, it was the official 'Chinese website maintenance day'. I would expect such policy to carried out repeatedly in the future. I am lucky enough to personally experience the internet, CCP style from Jun to Sep this year! Let me give you an example what it is like: 1st thing I get online I openned www.google.com and dare you search for anything, I really mean it, anything, you will be reset to death after click into page 2, 3 of the results if you are lucky not to be blocked immdieatly after click 'Google search' or 'I'm feeling not so lucky in China' button. Google image search is worse, you are assured by the CCP to not see anything that is in anyway related to harm a harmonious society. Youtube is certainly not working for like a year now, as long with victims such as blogger, worldpress,livejournal, facebook,twitter, basically anything that can help people find useful, uncensored information, or anything that can help 'words' getting around. Picasa was among the laest victim of the GFW, I have about 7G of photo stored on it, which I cannot show or share with 1/4 of the world population. I rarely use flickr, but words are it was ultra-unusually unblocked by the GFW afetr I fled China before OTC.1, my assumption is the journalist all over the world flocked the OCT.1 ceremony may get very very angry when they find they cannot upload to flickr. And when you just about to think can media freedom in China to be any worse? The answer is YES. Media censorship extents to movies, tvs, newspapers, almost anything you can think of! The Summer Olympic Games was as much as freedom the CCP can give to foreigners, which CCP immediately took back after the event, followed by the unrest in Tibet and Urumqi, and Taiwan. It is very likely the conflict between those parts I mentioned to get worse in the near future, and the GFW will further enforced by the CCP as a way to maintain their one-party-ruling.

Re:GFW in China

[GPLHost-Thomas]

You might then be the only person that have lived in China, and regularly used internet, without knowing how to go around the GFW. Also, the PRC doesn't need to do any censorship of TV, because all is government owned, if you didn't know. Yes, no private channels in China (unless you are using Satellite, which is forbidden, or if you have cable TV with a special authorization).

Re:GFW in China

[dUN82]

Well, unfortunately, I know how to avoid the GFW, it is just very frustrating to know almost all the services you regularly use was being blocked. Your comment suggests that you may not be a person who has tried to access media-rich content via Tor outside the US and decided to live on...

Re:GFW in China

[GPLHost-Thomas]

You are right, I never used Tor. However, consider that I do live in China (it's been more than 3 years now), and that my company offers hosting services in 10 locations in the world, then you will understand why I don't use Tor...

Re:GFW in China

[dUN82]

So you would let me borrow your offshore VPN account next time I go back there, right...

No slashdot admin knows history

[GPLHost-Thomas]

Who's the dumb /. admin that allowed this "news" to be published exactly 15 days after the national day? Hey, hello, Mao declared the new china on the 1st of October 1949 ... Also, the "news" that China is targeting Tor is quite old too...

Re:Chinese (government) owned Tor sites?

[X0563511]

Indeed. Tor functions on trust.

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Re:Joseph Javorski. Respected scientist. Now a fie

[Blakey Rat]

+1, Tor Johnson reference.

Re:Joseph Javorski. Respected scientist. Now a fie

[Tetsujin]

+1, Tor Johnson reference.

Do you think we could get that added to the moderation system?

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Re:Joseph Javorski. Respected scientist. Now a fie

[Blakey Rat]

Flag on the moon. How did it get there?

actually i'll disagree with you

[circletimessquare]

a nuclear bomb pretty much represents the most potent advance mankind has ever made in his long running technological effort to kill faster easier more

its not morally neutral. its not comparable to firebombing with conventional explosives. sure, the allies did worse to dresden than they did to nagasaki, but the tool they used represented a quantum leap (forgive the pun) in mankind's ability to destroy and kill. today, due to this technological advance, we now have the means to pretty much turn the planet into a wasteland, a nuclear winter, and pretty much end civilization as we know it. all that has to be done is a few guys in moscow and a few guys in washington dc press the right buttons, and voila: welcome to the mad max beyond the thunderdome. you can't do this with c4 and tnt, no matter how much you airdrop

as a correlating example, if i set off a few canisters of sarin gas on a city, or i simply open a vial of a strain of ebola that spreads via coughing in an airport, and i kill 10 million either way, pointing out that i can firebomb to death the same number of people with a really massive firebombing effort has no meaning

its not morally neutral. a pistol and a gatling gun can both kill 100 people. but you can kill 10 people a hell of a lot easier with a gatling gun

the actual potency of a killing technology has genuine moral weight. and the more potent, the more evil it is

yes i said evil. technologiy is NOT neutral. well, some technology is neutral: explosives can be used to create an national highway system as sure as it can be used to take out a daycare center. but something like a gun is designed for the specific use of ending a life. sure you can open locks, start a fire, go skeet shooting with a gun, but its PRIMARY purpose gives it moral purpose

a guillotine is just a knife. you can use it to split watermelons. but you are being intellectually honest if you ignore the purpose behind its creation and what it is primarily used for

i repeat: technology is not morally neutral. the intent of the user of a technology is not the sole determinant. what the technology was SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED TO DO has moral weight and value

Re:actually i'll disagree with you

[Runaway1956]

All that verbiage, just to make a single point.

Mankind has a lot of evil bastards in it's midst.

Now, repeat after me: guns don't kill - evil bastards use guns to kill. Knives don't kill - evil bastards use knives to kill. Rocks don't kill - evil bastards use rocks to kill. Nukes don't kill - evil bastards use nukes to kill.

Are we clear now?

Us v. Them! .. Us v. Them! .. Us v. Them!

[Onymous Coward]

This is what's referred to as the "b-b-but ... Clinton!" response. A perceived attack against a "groupist's" in-group generates a retaliatory attack against the groupist's main out-group.

(It can happen among so-called "liberals" as well, but tends to happen overwhelmingly more often among "conservatives", thus the "b-b-but ... Clinton!" label. (Actually a bit ironic... A better label is solicited.))

This kind of dog pack, "Us v. Them" mentality, when so deeply ingrained as to be reflexive, undermines discourse (and thought itself) to the point of making progress impractical. It is recommended that you completely disengage from such persons. And don't troll them, either, folks — that's just ornery and it doesn't help. Indulging your emotions by lashing out at idiots is really more of the same mental malfunction that made those idiots idiots in the first place. Topical righteousness is never justification for being an ass. (Not that this is what you, QC, were doing... I'm addressing the general audience.)

bullshit

[circletimessquare]

i see whistleblowing on corporations and where they do evil all the time in western media. the same would be completely covered up and whitewashed in china. do you understand the level of pollution chinese companies get away with in china? if chinese companies tried to pull in the west the kind of crap they get away with routinely in china, the media would start a firestorm. oh, in fact they did: melamine in food, ethylene glycol in medicine, lead in toys...

witness:

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/14/showcase-65/

look at those pictures. this is what companies get away with in china. if you showed such pictures in the west about a western company doing that somewhere to people in the west are you going to tell me they get away with anything near remotely as murderous in the west? i'm not asking for historical examples, i'm asking for the here and now. plenty of western companies pollute outside the west... and chinese companies just as much if not more now. here in the west, western companies are sued and erin brockovitched to death. while in china its carte blanche, standard operating procedure: poison poor chinese with impunity

and deny this:

one of the most influential and deeply historically entrenched american businesses has been systematically dismantled over the last 20 years in the usa. its media edifice hamstrung and turned against itself, all of its entrenched political players and lobbying and propaganda utterly defeated. i'm talking about the tobacco industry. where's this amazing western corporate control of our lives again?

i am very sick of this meme that companies control everything in the west

it is in fact the solid truth that in china, companies have much more influence and arrogant assumed right to pretty much murder, while in the west they are regulated and hounded by the media constantly. no such hounding in a government monopoly media in china, regulations only after they prove embarassing and hurt the bottom line in china

Re:Joseph Javorski.Respected scientist.Now a fiend

[Tetsujin]

Touch a button. Things happen. A scientist becomes a beast.

just in case you're not a troll,

[circletimessquare]

and actually believe something that moronic:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1406275&cid=29761913

False dichotomies are bad.

[Chris Burke]

Besides, we killed more Japanese civilians with conventional weapons in any one air raid than we did with Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. It wasn't the number of deaths that got the Emperor to take notice, it was the fact that we did it with just one bomb each time.

Indeed.

The alternative was to invade the Japanese home islands, which, by conservative estimates, would've meant hundreds of thousands of dead Americans and millions of dead Japanese. Truman made the right call in dropping the bombs.

While that is the simplified history, it doesn't really represent the real choice that was being made.

I once read a transcript of one of Truman's cabinet meetings shortly before the end of the war, when they were deliberating on what to do. It was actually a pretty fascinating read.

While they were obviously considering every option, and the Department of War had drawn up detailed plans for a possible invasion (which is where the estimate above comes from) it's clear that Truman and his advisers were not seriously considering it at that point. They knew Japan was on the ropes and surrender was inevitable without needing to set foot on the island. With the Japanese navy serving as fish condos, there was nothing they could do to fight back or even feed themselves.

The main options under discussion were:

1 - Drop the bomb on multiple Japanese cities, multiple being important so as to suggest that we could continue doing so ad-infinitum rather than it being a one-off, forcing an unconditional surrender.

2 - Drop the bombs in the ocean as a demonstration. The biggest concern here was that they would not be suitably impressed or think it was somehow a trick, and then we wouldn't have enough to implement option 1.

3 - Wait for the Russians to get involved. Truman and his advisers were convinced that once Russia declared war, Japan would quickly surrender. The big problem here was that we wanted them to surrender just to us, not to the Russians. Cold War politics had already started to enter the picture, and we were "Allies" in name only.

4 - Accept conditional surrender. The Japanese had already made an offer to surrender, but due to communication problems the actual terms of this surrender were unknown. Certainly anything that allowed the Japanese to wage war again was completely unacceptable. It turns out all they really wanted was to retain a ceremonial role for the Emperor to save face, something which General MacArthur wisely gave them anyway. But at the time of the discussion, they didn't know. In any case, it was decided that no matter what the terms, nothing less than complete unconditional surrender would do for the enemy who had initiated the war.

Which is basically why the actual invasion was off the table. It was unnecessary in any event, and by the time it could have been implemented, Russia would have been involved and we would have been dealing with a joint surrender in any case.

By the way, my point isn't to second guess Truman. It was a difficult decision with no good options as you say, and as another poster mentioned he wasn't really aware of the impact the bomb would have in terms of radiation sickness etc. I don't think anyone really understood. Neither is my point to say with the benefit of hindsight that it was the wrong decision. I can't speak for the Japanese, but I have to imagine they were better off surrendering to us than ending up with a North Japan/South Japan situation.

My point is that the situation was much more complicated than the simple moral calculus implied by "drop the bombs and kill 200,000, or invade and kill millions". The real decision was not that clear-cut, and I think it dose a disservice both to the people who made it, and to ourselves in our efforts to learn from history, to pretend that it was.

Re:False dichotomies are bad.

[robot_love]

Fantastic post.

I once wrote a paper that claimed America only pushed for 'unconditional' because they had the bomb.

My paper...uh...bombed.

Re:False dichotomies are bad.

[Chris Burke]

I once wrote a paper that claimed America only pushed for 'unconditional' because they had the bomb.

My paper...uh...bombed.

*winces* Did you make that pun? That might have been why. Heh.

The impression I got from reading was that Truman was heavily against conditional surrender, and felt it would be a betrayal of America and everyone else who had suffered from Japanese aggression to let them get away with surrendering on their own terms. It certainly didn't help that the didn't know what those terms were, and it's not like they could just email Hirohito and ask for clarification.

I'm not sure what would have happened had we not had the bomb. Would getting Japan's complete capitulation be more important than preventing the Russians from having another leg up in the post-war era? I have no idea. But the actual land invasion, while important to make seem like a real threat, was a very improbable outcome in any case.

Re:False dichotomies are bad.

[Anonymous Coward]

2 - Drop the bombs in the ocean as a demonstration. The biggest concern here was that they would not be suitably impressed or think it was somehow a trick, and then we wouldn't have enough to implement option 1.

Well, they could always have tried option 2 - then, if it didn't work, waited a few months to build some more bombs before implementing option 1. Potential benefit: save a few hundred thousand Japanese lives. Potential drawback: waste however much it costs to build a couple of nuclear bombs.

3 - Wait for the Russians to get involved. Truman and his advisers were convinced that once Russia declared war, Japan would quickly surrender. The big problem here was that we wanted them to surrender just to us, not to the Russians. Cold War politics had already started to enter the picture, and we were "Allies" in name only.

Ah. Potential benefit: save a few hundred thousand Japanese lives. Potential drawback: lose some strategic advantage in the Cold War. Much more understandable in this view, although not much different, ethically.

Re:False dichotomies are bad.

[BertieBaggio]

I don't normally do adulation, but this is the kind of post that keeps me coming back to Slashdot. Interesting and reasoned analysis, without flaming and the "no ur wrong" refrain. Sadly, it seem to be getting rarer... I was very surprised to see it turn up in YRO. If this had been the "politics"* section I'd have probably fainted.

The real decision was not that clear-cut, and I think it dose a disservice both to the people who made it, and to ourselves in our efforts to learn from history, to pretend that it was.

This. If more people got this, the world would be a better place; and those that use propaganda that tries to pull the wool over our eyes by making gross simplifications (rather than dealing with nuances) would have a much tougher time of it.

Thank you for broadening my mind.

* (NB I say "politics" as it seems to just be a vehicle for ideologues to shout at each other)

100% absolutely wrong

[circletimessquare]

a sewing needle is built and is intended to sew thread. it is designed to be maximally efficient in this regard. it can be used for many things, but what it is most used for, since it is designed for that use, is sewing

if you stopped making sewing needles, people would use alternate, less maximally efficient tools to get the job of sewing done. sewing ability and quality and quantity of output would go down. swords just don't have the range of a gun, less would be killed. if you got a bunch of award winning engineers and designers together and built a better sewing needle, one that increases the ability of human hands to manipulate thread, sewing output and quality and quantity would increase. gee, that automatic magazine sure comes in handy in getting multiple shots out rapidly

a technology, no technology, is neutral. it has a purpose and an intent for what it is designed for, and you can go all macgyver with the technology if you like (sewing needles can lance boils! guns can announce the start of track meets!) but what it was designed for is what it was designed for is what it was designed for. its simple existence and prevalence and how easy it is to get simply increases the ability to do whatever it is designed to do. it is NOT neutral in this regard

a handgun is intended to make a projectile go through flesh. you can shoot targets, bottles, and discarded washing machines at the dump if you want, but it was designed for someone to pick one up, point it at some, and dislodge a bullet into them. to quibble with this point is the very height of intellectual dishonesty, to attempt to deny the most glaringly obvious. shooting people: this is what a handgun is designed to do. this FACT has MEANING. that INTENT informs the design of the technology and informs its final composition. it is maximized in various qualities in order to most efficiently execute its intended function

the INTENT in the design of a technology most definitely informs us of its moral bearing. a technology is NOT morally neutral. an intellectual exercise for you to bring home the point:

please describe the intent of this treaty:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_Treaty

if the simple technology itself is neutral and without moral implication, what's the big deal with an attempt to restrict a technology? why can't i freely purchase and stick bouncing betties in my front yard for good home defense? the technology is as neutral in intent as a garden hose or a kitchen carving knife?

i hope you appreciate the absurdity of denying the simple common sense fact that killing technologies are restricted simply because they imply more needless unnecessary deaths. of course, all killing technology exists on a continuum of lethality, from nunchuks to rocket launchers. where you restrict and where you provide free access is of course a matter of interpretation, but it is my assertion there are currently a number of fools in this country out of willful blindness or outright propagandization who see no problem extending that continuum of free access to lethal technology out and beyond. that the technology is perfectly harmless, that only the user, and not the technology, is the only factor involved in a tool's use. the INTENT of the tool has MEANING and VALUE to outcomes involving the whole range of human conflicts. its simple existence results in outcomes that more tragic and unnecessary, since physical violence is always a recurring response to conflict, and any force which multiplies that physical violence therefore is fair game to consider appropriateness for free access

be intellectually honest, please

Re:100% absolutely wrong

[Runaway1956]

Well, maybe you're right. In part, at least. I've seldom handled anything more beautiful than a well designed rifle. Simple, yet efficient. Half a dozen moving parts (bolt, trigger, sear, spring(s) and firing pin) machined to exact dimensions, that do exactly the same thing, every time. Load the rifle, find a critter, aim carefully, and BANG! DINNER!!

As opposed to an automobile, let's say. Thousands of parts, designed to move people from point to point. Except, those auto frequently break down, or cause accidents - often fatal. Those much sought after automobiles are responsible for more deaths in a single year, than all of the casualties that the US suffered in the Vietnam conflict. Damned cars are unreliable on ice, or lightly flooded roadways. Cold and heat cause them to fail in all manner of ways. I have to agree with you - automobiles are pure evil. I simply cannot understand how man could ever have invented such an evil item.

Give me a bolt action rifle any day. It always does what I want it to do, no surprises, no expensive maintenance, it never cares how hot or cold it gets, and doesn't even care much about water, snow, or ice. Just a quick wipe with a oily rag, and that rifle is back in top condition. Even better, the rifle is pretty ecologically friendly! Nearly zero CO2 emissions, or any other emissions for that matter.

Re:100% absolutely wrong

[Mitchell314]

Two different devices that do two different jobs. Let's see you try to commute 40 miles on a skateboard by shooting a rifle as propulsion. It's harder than it looks. That, and imagine rush hour.

History

[Anonymous Coward]

The Japanese also used biological and chemical weapons (WMD classified in with nukes today) rather extensively on the populations in china, and also did a lot of pretty horrific experiments on live human prisoners, both civilian and military. And then you had your "normal" war crimes like mass executions, having sport and using prisoners for samurai sword practice, and other sorts of rather heinous conduct.

They were so far into the "wrong" and "predatory" side of things that I still wonder why the allies allowed that nation to even exist after the war. They talk about honor, there was no honor there, just mass genocidal and racist and criminal conduct. They were lucky that only two nukes got used on them and that the allies were gracious enough to offer surrender terms *at all*. They sought and initially fought total war, if they had gotten their wish, there wouldn't be a single japanese alive today anywhere on the planet.

Now, I personally don't hate the japanese people today, far from it, and I am neither a racist nor a xenophobe, but the above is still recent historical reality, recent enough that I still have living relatives, several, who fought in the Pacific theater, and they would have not shed a tear if back then 200 nukes had been used on japan, and they told me so when I was a young boy listening to them talk about their experiences and what they observed of "bushido" and what passed for japanese culture then, as seen on recovered japanese held but taken back islands. Sure, they fought hard, but for all the wrong reasons, then tried to cover up that flawed logic by claiming they were honorable.

There is no honor in being a psychopath, neither as an individual nor as a nation, just because you have skills in being a mass killer. The US traded openly with japan, even well after the fact of their genocidal marches against other nations, hoping they would reconsider. Eventually, they just screwed up and tweaked the eagle a little too hard, and that was that, ass whomping time for them. They lost. They were wrong. They were lucky to have even a semblance of their culture left intact.

And frankly, the ONLY reason they, and also Germany, WERE left intact, (because popular sentiment at the time was for continuation and expansion of total war and just eliminate those menaces from the planet for all time, never to happen again because they'd be mass gone), was to serve as an expendable throw away buffer in case of a rapid rise of world hot war 3 war between the west and the soviet union at the time.

Re:History

[Jeremy Erwin]

The Japanese also used biological and chemical weapons (WMD classified in with nukes today) rather extensively on the populations in china, and also did a lot of pretty horrific experiments on live human prisoners, both civilian and military.

The choice to classify biological, chemical and nuclear weapons under one umbrella is, in the end, a political choice.

a car is designed for transportation

[circletimessquare]

it does a good job of that most of the time. occasionally it kills and maims. when it does so, it is accidental, not by design. well, even if it is used to kill on purpose, its obviously off label use. they don't put spikes and flamethrowers on toyotas: the INTENT of a car is not to kill. but when a gun meanwhile puts a projectile into an creature's flesh, it is doing EXACTLY what it was designed for

it would be arrogant of me to ask you to stop using your rifle for 100% valid hunting purposes, correct? i also have no doubt that when you pick up a firearm you do it with 100% responsibility, and you would never harm another person, unless they had the clear intent to harm you. the problem comes in when you observe that not everyone is so well-intentioned and responsible as you, and there is no magic wand to tell you from those who don't deserve a firearm. so why must the clearly vast majority of firearm users be obliged to give up their guns for the sake of a minority of assholes?

because the damage the assholes do is out of proportion to the benefit the majority of firearm users receive from guns

in other words, it might be arrogant for me to tell you to put down your gun, but it is also arrogant for you to support a law that means when i walk through the streets of new york, i am under increased danger of being hit by bullet because of knuckleheads. i am under no illusions of hubris or arrogance or having dirty harry fantasies to think i have a good chance of stopping from being hurt by my own use of a firearm. if only we were omniscient. of course, people DO stop themselves from being victimized by using their handguns. if only this represented the majority of cases

outlawing guns won't stop the seriously intent people from getting guns. but such serious and intent people also have specific and quiet and intelligent reasons for getting one. they aren't going to use the gun with abandon, even if their intent is evil. they don't represent the vast majority of problems from gun use: the CASUAL unserious moron. outlawing guns will stop these casual hotheaded knuckleheads from getting a gun most certainly. not completely, but cutting down their access significantly cuts down on their possession significantly: remember, we're not talking about the seriously committed here. and these casual irresponsible assholes are the root problem with guns in society, they represent the whole problem with guns in the first place. and that observation is what shifts the entire verdict to outlawing them

and so i ask rural people to give up their pasttimes, so that us urban people can suffer less slaughter. currently, a minority of rural folk enjoy their firearms, with the side effect being the slaughter of hundreds of urban innocents every year for the sake of the legal structure that allows you a firearm

i'm asking you to sacrifice that for the clearly obvious superior benefit of significant less human death than the smaller benefit of the pasttimes you enjoy with your gun. go bow hunting for crying out loud if you enjoy the thrill of the hunt. its a more honest challenge, makes you feel even more validated and vigorous. i understand that thrill, it is extremely self-affirming in the most noble of senses. why not outlaw bow hunting too? a guy can kill and maim with a bow right? in fact, that just happened in new york city:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/03/19/2009-03-19_arrest_in_bronx_bowandarrow_attack.html

but again, the point is that the technology isn't nearly as potent as handgun: the continuum of acceptable lethality versus unacceptable lethality clearly rules bows as acceptable. one hotheaded asshole can kill maybe one person with a bow with the same time and effort as an equally hotheaded asshole with a handgun can kill ten people. same with knives in england: when that hothead decides to take the world out with himself, he'll slash 3 or 4, rather tha

Re:a car is designed for transportation

[Runaway1956]

Am I to take it that you would disapprove if I upgraded my shootin' iron?

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/hotstories/6668884.html

Whatever - I'm reminded of the difference between a freedman and a vassal. It amounts to little more than possession of a weapon. Whatever the law says, I will be armed, as will my sons. You city boys stay in the city, us country boys will stay in the country, and everyone can be happy. And, keep your cars in the city too, alright? I'm tired of country boys being killed by city cars.

Bridge nodes should relay bridgee node packets

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes people may have switched to using bridges, but bridges don't relay anonymous packets to the rest of the mesh through your node. The bridge configuration only sends your web page requests through tor and then returns the response back to your machine. The usual tor anonymity packet relaying your node usually does is no longer there. In other words, your packet relaying karma is low when using a bridge. You take from tor, but you're not giving back to the tor node when in bridge mode. NOT GOOD. I would like to submit change request asking that bridge nodes relay bridgee node packets in order to give back packet karma to the tor mesh.

The CN FW got hold of the list of ip addresses making the tor mesh and then the cn fw mess with it. What if tor packets were sculpted more to look like native cn e-commerce packets. They couldn't block them easily. CN must use SSL for e-commerce in the world. Make all the packets look like SSL.
The other thing is what are all the nodes doing with an entire list of ip addresses in the tor mesh? That's definitely a great way of creating blacklist easily. It would be best to limit the list of nodes each tor client knows about.

What if tor used ICMP/BGP packet control packets to hold data which relays to all the nodes. I.e. ping does send test data right? ping allows for changes in test data packet size right? What if we make all the tor packets look like ping test data packets?
Ditto for the different type of ICMP packets.
Ditto for the different types BGP packets.
Ditto for the different types SSL packets.
Ditto for QQ-like packets.
What if the packets would randomly choose one of the above types of packets and then send it as usual data to the intended destination?
If the packet looks weird for the destination node from the normal OS, then let tor handle it. From there the different packet data types could be handled from tor knowing full well they are one and the same: just tor packet relaying data as usual. I'm implying some kind of cloaked or steganography here.
It could confuse/stumble whatever cn fw packet history visualization aiding them to block the tor nodes. If they're not careful, they might even be blocking QQ or baidu or youku.

that's exactly what it is about: freedom

[circletimessquare]

freedom from the tyranny of fear, of an unnecessarily dangerous civil society. not all freedom impositions come from above. plenty come from below: poverty, drug abuse, illiteracy... dangerous hotheads with firearms

additionally, all freedoms exist in tension: my right to listen to loud music, your right to get a good nights sleep. my right to get to work on time, your right to not be run off the road. and your right to carry a firearm, and my right not to be shot by a knucklehead. you evaluate where the tensions lie, and maximum freedom is always a compromise which shifts over time. now it is clearly shifting away from firearm ownership

look, i grew up on a rural farm. milked goats, used it on my rice crispies, went out to the henhouse, tried to fry fertilized eggs by mistake... ponies, 10 dogs, 30 cats, a dilapidated barn, only matched by the dilapidated 1850s farm house built by drunk farmers. same house my mom grew up in. nearest neighbor a mile away through a swamp

granddad who i grew up in the same farm house taught me to shoot in said swamp on one of his many decades old family heirloom shotguns. look, my mom could be in the daughters of the american revolution if they weren't such racists awhile back which turned her off from it. my ancestors fought for and created this country with the use of firearms, and depended upon them for their security and livelihood, since the 1600s, when they came to this continent and life without a firearm was suicide. and that time has come and gone, and my ancestors would be proud of me to recognize that fundamental change, and recognize what is best for this country. the usa is not about firearm use, its about principles, that for a long time have come down unanimously on the side of firearm ownership, but now, applied to a changing world, these same principles come down against. its really not that big of a deal in the end

i grew up, and moved to the city, and converted to the anticar religion: i haven't driven since high school, when i was rural, and needed a car to get anywhere. dont need one now: subway or walk

i also converted to this horrible antigun religion

as will your children ;-)

change, the only constant

in the end, there are far more important things than guns. they are not the sole earthly manifestation of the highest most important principles of freedom and self-determination. plenty of situations, they are the exact oppposite: the tools of tyranny

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Tor without the cp - a simple semi-solution

[haxor.dk]

How about capping your bandwidth reserved to tor (or whatever you use) so low that only text material can feasibly be accessed through your node?

It's been a while since I had an exit node running, so I forot the lowest bandwith cap you can set. Is it 16 KB/sec or lower?

Re:Us v. Them! .. Us v. Them! .. Us v. Them!

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a definite difference between what you describe and total and utter hypocrisy though. Pointing at other countries and decrying their lack of freedom while sitting in a country that is currently doing its best to restrict freedom of movement and choice is blatantly hypocritical and completely undermines the original (often valid) point.

Flamebait?

[drinkypoo]

How did I get moderated flamebait? I'm trying to help explain the System of the World, here. It is trivial to find references and citations for everything I've said above, which is why I didn't bother citing anything. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to go forth and become informed.

The Absolutist

[westlake]

The problem with believing in free speech is you have to tolerate all speech.

No, you don't.

To begin:

You can refuse to host the neo-Nazi rally on your front lawn.

You can refuse to allow the militia men to use your house as a mail drop.

You are not obligated to pay for their postage - which is what being a node or super-node for Freenet implies.

You can refuse to publish - or broadcast - a libel.

You can refuse to become part of a distribution network for child pornography.

The sexual exploitation of a child is not free speech.

It is a criminal act.

If you know you are providing local storage for child pornography - if you know your systems, networks and software have become part of the distribution chain - you are at risk of prosecution.

The dissident can make the perfectly rational calculation that piracy and porn does nothing to enhance the credibility of his own message - while dramatically increasing his risk of exposure.

The dissident can refuse to be used as a token - to legitimize a system that has become profoundly corrupt.

That is the paradox.

The greatest threat to free speech isn't censorship.

Quite the opposite, really.

The most effective way to silence your opponent is to give him a septic tank as a platform and then bury him under a ton of shit.

 

Re:The Absolutist

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with believing in free speech is you have to tolerate all speech.

No, you don't.

To begin:

[snip list of restrictions to speech]

I'm having a hard time here seeing how you're not agreeing with what you're arguing against. Is your point that because some of our restrictions to speech are enshrined in an old document, they don't count? Is your point that we have freedom of speech simply because we say we do, despite our ever-growing list of restrictions to speech?

That is the paradox.

The greatest threat to free speech isn't censorship.

Quite the opposite, really.

The most effective way to silence your opponent is to give him a septic tank as a platform and then bury him under a ton of shit.

The greatest threat to free speech is not restricting it? I hope your post was intended as satire and that I just missed the joke.

Hicks quote

[Tetsujin]

I couldn't resist the temptation to quote Bill Hicks:

I always thought Hudson was a lot more memorable... "That's it, man! Game over, man, game over!"

One of the frustrating things about that movie was that they killed off all the likable characters right away and left us with all the caricatures...

Re:Joseph Javorski.Respected scientist.Now a fiend

[Tetsujin]

In retrospect I think something like "In Yucca Flats, Soviet Tor strangles YOU!" might have been better...