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Islamic State "Laptop of Doom" Hints At Plots Including Bubonic Plague
Foreign Policy has an in-depth look at the contents of a laptop reportedly seized this year in Syria from a stronghold of the organization now known as the Islamic State, and described as belonging to a Tunisian national ("Muhammed S."). The "hidden documents" folder of the machine, says the report, contained a vast number of documents, including ones describing and justifying biological weapons:
The laptop's contents turn out to be a treasure trove of documents that provide ideological justifications for jihadi organizations -- and practical training on how to carry out the Islamic State's deadly campaigns. They include videos of Osama bin Laden, manuals on how to make bombs, instructions for stealing cars, and lessons on how to use disguises in order to avoid getting arrested while traveling from one jihadi hot spot to another. ... The information on the laptop makes clear that its owner is a Tunisian national named Muhammed S. who joined ISIS in Syria and who studied chemistry and physics at two universities in Tunisia's northeast. Even more disturbing is how he planned to use that education: The ISIS laptop contains a 19-page document in Arabic on how to develop biological weapons and how to weaponize the bubonic plague from infected animals. ... "The advantage of biological weapons is that they do not cost a lot of money, while the human casualties can be huge," the document states.
Is the "19-page document in Arabic on how to develop biological weapons" a viable plan, or wishfull thinking? Getting ahold if bubonic plague is not exactly easy. If it was ebola, that would be easier...
have you tried to magnetically erase a flash drive? good luck with that.
Buried in the "hidden files" section of the computer were 146 gigabytes of material, containing a total of 35,347 files in 2,367 folders.
WTF is the "hidden files" section of a computer? From their screenshot, it appears the guy just made a directory called "Videoooooo" and stuffed it full of New Folder, New Folder 2, Copy (3) of New Folder, etc. My cat can hide stuff better than that.
Most of the things they're describing are absolutely nothing to worry about. Instructions for stealing cars? How to use disguises? This is the kind of shit that was all over every BBS file door 20 years ago. You can download torrents chock full of gigs of this "extremist literature" or "terrorist training materials" now. ISIS are surely a bunch of cunts and I imagine they do pose some threat, but the value of this laptop and its contents is highly exaggerated.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
I miss madtv!
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VbPCmXc_91Q&list=PLkiaE7F5sV7sjU3k6xBcvlMQHTcaRTRJp
NB. I can't believe that I am responding to this submision, but here I go.
I can guarantee that whatever disease was launched would make its way back to the population that ISIS purports to represent. I predict that its consequences would eventually be more devastating in the generally-poorer populations.
It seems there is a reason that chemical/biological warfare didn't make it much farther than the first world war -- for the simple reason that the "wind" changes direction.
I think Shylock said it best: "cut me, and do I not bleed?" We're all humans, and we need to cut this crap out.
Some Tor .onions have gigabytes of documents and manuals like this one.
Just the (publicly available on P2P) terrorism / bombing / chemistry / etc folders of "Everything You Need To Know Ever" are scarrier than TFA.
Finding those on some potential terrorist's laptop doesn't mean that they can or will actually use it.
Im somewhere between 0 and 0.
really? hidden documents?
big whoop.
But I know a scared population is an easy to control one.
Like it or not the West has been known to simply destroy everything that threatens its way of life. Sadly pushed too far I fear global powers will simply level the Middle East.
I can't imagine USA engineers designing and creating weapons of mass destruction. How could these bastards! I mean, education is always for good things, right? right?
Oh yeah? How are they going to read the flash drive without a laptop, Mr Smarty Pants.
What about black anti-government groups?
There were black panthers openly calling for the death of officer Wilson in Ferguson just a couple weeks ago.
And black Muslims from Minnesota went to Syria to fight with Isis.
This will last about a generation, and a lot of damage is to be expected. There will be soft targets hit. It will last approximately until the Gen2 kids of the Jihadists realize " Dad was an ASSHOLE ". Nazis, Japanese, USA vs. Mexico/Indians... it usually self corrects if Dad gets paddled. Gen2 (or G3) Kids can grow up to be different kinds of assholes (USA no doubt has several generations, I admit) but it's usually an altogether different kind of asshole than grandpa was. Anarchists of 100 years ago did proportionately about the same amount of "terror" as Al Qaeda /Jihad. But shooting world leaders and blowing up post offices didn't impress the kids who grew up with it and realized the anarchists were just assholes.
If Dad succeeds and gets rich, history shows, all bets are off. Successful assholes breed. Letting dictators rule for several years just gives latent asshole syndrome. So let the assholes get what's coming to them, because the more successful they are, the more we'll elect people to drop bombs on them.
Gently reply
I'm anything but a conspiracy nut. I think we landed on the moon, that Oswald shot Kennedy, and that Icke is a con man. But the timing on this is seriously convenient. We want to attack ISIS, and *poof*, evidence suddenly shows up that ISIS has weapons of mass destruction. It's enough to make me consider making tinfoil hats.
It is very hard to distinguish between good and bad muslims. In the process, any war on extremists muslims results into heavy amount collateral damage. Good muslims have to learn this and must try their best effort to root out extremists. Unfortunately, we don't see much action on the part of muslim nations at all. Have you seen UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Sultanate of Oman, Brunei etc which are relatively rich and stable country doing anything at all to get rid of extremists? Instead many of these are funding creation of low quality mosques and madrassas which are only churning out even more extremists. I wonder why we see no reformists at all in muslim countries with significant power and influence to make any difference. The last one was perhaps Kamal Ataturk.
The recent case of that plague were actually tests, isn't it.
Well the crusades...blah...blah..blah...
I'm usually a pretty live and let live kind of guy but IS/ISIL/ISIS need to be treated like they're treating the people who don't agree with them, with no mercy. That is come down on them like a ton of bricks.
Is the diff between
Black Death by way of Obama
and
Black Death by way of Osama
None, or Undefined
when dead?
I remain conflicted; as a moderately competent STEM educated person, I am aware of any number of ways of reducing Western cities to chaos without a lot of effort and no risk. Yet our jihadi brethren never succeed in pulling it off. 7/7 in London and the Boston bombing seem to have been independent efforts, not carried out by people in the jihadi chain of command. Which leads me to suspect a lot of the hype is FUD by our government, or at least its security agencies, to milk the situation for as much as possible. OTOH it is totally clear that IS and HAMAS are committed to doing very nasty things to anyone who gets in their way. Something weird is going on; I look forward to discovering the truth, but I have nasty suspicion we won't.
If history is any evidence, they will likely end up killing vastly more of themselves than their target.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uC2BjCFtPaw
This may come across as a troll, but I promise it's not. I'm looking for a genuine discussion on something.
From the small amount of reading I've done, it seems that the Koran is pretty clear: Islam requires non-Muslims to convert or pay tax or be killed:
http://infidelsarecool.com/200...
http://www.vexen.co.uk/religio...
So it seems to me like all fully observant Muslims are required to engage in, or at least approve of, this behavior.
If that's true, then:
(1) Why do so many Muslims renounce such violence? Is it that they can't stomach what appears to be this straight-forward interpretation of the Koran?
(2) If there is some alternative, justifiable interpretation of the Koran, why aren't governments fighting that propaganda war? Does the fact that they're not doing so indicate that no such justifiable interpretation exist?
I am trying to picture the hissy fit the US government would throw if someone released the NSA/CIA equivalent of this to the media.
You call cunts us! We find you and make interweb picture show of lopping head!
This stull is not particularly inspiring and about I could have written this stuff when I was at high school. The reality of the situation is that any biological vector created will impact the poor and the 3rd world more than the Western world. Look at natural outbreaks such as HIV. Western world OK (not great butOK), 3rd world broken, Islamic world really broken because the can't discuss the problem openly.
The 'cure' in this case might be to infect the region with something virulant and taboo, this may have already been done as apparently there's a couple of particularly virulent STD's making the rounds of ISIS.
As others have stated most of the information doesn't seem to be any more harmful than a copy of The Cookbook. With regards to biological weapons: one would hope that whomever thought of this would keep on thinking to realize that poorer nations always fare worse when it comes to communicable diseases. They have fewer resources, longer response times, denser populations, etc.. If the biological isn't communicable it still doesn't make too much sense without some industrial scale dispersal methods which are generally easy to detect.
Duct-tape your windows, bitches.
As someone said during the Bush era.
I believe the aforementioned subject(s) match you stated parameters.
I wouldn't read anything into people having those documents. The first step to knowing how to defeat something is to know how it works. Same reason you see locksmiths get into thievery or thieves go legit as locksmiths (or pen testers, or dozens of other illegal to legal profession changes.) Hell Wyatt Earp was a two bit thug before he became a famous sheriff.
Point being: The time at which you should worry isn't when they have literature that could provide knowledge of dangerous things, but rather when they take actions that combined with that knowledge could lead to deaths. A large load of fertilizer, for instance.
Islam requires non-Muslims to convert or pay tax
Non-Muslims have to pay tax (jizya). Muslims have to pay tax too; it just goes by a different name (zakat). Which non-failed state doesn't enforce laws against tax evasion?
Yes, people occasionally die of it, but for this or any jihadist to think Y. pestis is an effective way to wipe unbelievers from the earth is naive. The range of antibiotics that take care of it is pretty readily available, and the "plague" bacteria are not currently "medically resistant" to them. "When the microbe is injected in small mice, the symptoms of the disease should start to appear within 24 hours," is hardly rigorous clinical testing. You'd learn more about how to properly culture bacteria from any academic microbiology lab manual. "Use small grenades with the virus, and throw them in closed areas like metros, soccer stadiums, or entertainment centers ... Best to do it next to the air-conditioning. It also can be used during suicide operations." Means they're spitballing this stuff. This is no more instructive than watching a half season of "24".
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Why not actually gain some knowledge and find out why the Gaza strip is called the worlds largest prison. Israel has blockaded the strip for decades stopping entry of food and medicine, and is surely not innocent in escalating violence. Violence is never a good answer, but more often than not is a two way street. If you don't look both ways you may get hit by a car.
Interesting point, so gave a member point to you.. next time log in?
Isn't it interesting that we can shut down bank accounts in all other occasions, except for this ISIL thing. For some reason we can not freeze their assets or stop money transfers...
use your head a bit, it will make sense.
Regime change, again anyone? There've been enough indications it's sought after in some quarters.
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
The biggest barrier is not just access to the equipment and materials. The most complex parts of a Nuclear/Chemical/Biological weapons plan is in the A) Delivery mechanism and B) Safe storage and transport.
If they only developed the weapon, they would all be dead trying to handle it and store the materials. Delivery mechanisms are extremely expensive and incredibly complex. So they make a jug of Anthrax, do they carry it on to a plane? How do they infect people with it, drink and spit? If they can smuggle in a jug of bioweapon juice, then the TSA/DHS/ATF all failed miserably (not the first time) and we need to revamp these agencies. Like stop trying to fondle old people and children and actually look for dangerous stuff...
In other words he downloaded a bunch of shit from the Internet. Oh the horror....
The problem with biological weapons is that you are never sure it will not destroy your own population.
And even evil regimes need a population to support them, to get food to eat, for instance, or to produce oil sold for food.
Instead of reading people's opinions, read historical translations of the sources. It is amazing how much propaganda you find in all kinds of places by actually reading the sources themselves.
I have not read much on the Koran myself, just a few pieces many years ago which proved that Saudi Arabia adds text to Korans they print and ship around the world. Often this is an obvious addition which is in a block next to a paragraph, and sometimes editing the text to make it appear authentic. This used to be easily found by Google, but today not so easy. I'd suggest starting with "Saudi Arabia Quran Editing Extremism", and expand the search to find the additions people know Saudi Arabia has added.
If you're launching a rocket, exactly how do you "hide behind a civilian'? Seriously, how do you do that?
Not launch missiles from (or store them in) a school or hospital? No other countries military does that.
Or, not launch missiles right next to the hotel where journalists are staying? I don't recall reporters electing Hamas.
You are obviously a propaganda stooge for Hamas. How anyone could live with themselves otherwise backing a group that kills children to build tunnels and fires random rockets at peaceful populations is beyond me. What's an 11-year old going to do with all those virgins anyway?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You have no idea how deep the conditioning goes. In Palestine children's programming is (no joke) broadcasting cartoons showing that jews should be killed and you get a nice reward in heaven for killing yourself in the pursuit of killing said jews.
The kids are also building the tunnels used to eventually kill jews.
With enough brainwashing, how are they to rebel? And if one child does break free, they will simply be executed.
You are applying your own western way of thinking to the problem where children have any value at all. In the middle east for religious fanatics they are just tools of war and treated as such.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Has anyone else said it? Bubonic plague is not particularly contagious, unlike pneumonic plague, and tetracycline stops Y. pestis cold. Plague is endemic in the wild rodent population in the western US. People get it from time to time, but it's pretty big news if a case is fatal.
what year is this? 1500? I guess the terrorist found some fleas from Europe or China?
This can be done very easily. If an organization or country has any type of stable power, even if it is 2-3 diesel generators and a battery bank, they can get a bio lab working.
Delivery? Abu doesn't mind infecting himself, because he has his 72 virgins, each virgin having 72 assistants to look forward to. Where to go? In the US, enforcement on the southern border is spotty at best due to politics and pork barrels, so all it would take to get people across is one good coyote who doesn't mind moving some odd-looking characters with their "medical" equipment. From there, it is a drive (or even a general aviation plane trip) to large cities.
Combine this with the fact that most US cities have woefully inadequate funding for anything but their sports stadiums. Just a heavy flu outbreak would shut down hospitals and clinics in most cities. At best, the police will seal off the town until the germs run their course (which means no food coming in... and we all know that 72 hours after the last food truck, dense populations turn into mass re-enactments of the Donner Party.)
Of course, this type of attack doesn't have to kill many people. We are talking terror and demoralizing the enemy here, not racking up the mass numbers. Watching people in LA starve to death on the news would get the US completely out of the Middle East, similar to how Reagan pulled all troops out when the Marine barracks was attacked.
And yet the Obama "give a fuck-ometer" remains at zero. Good thing, America, he cares more about his legacy and ego and being famous for pulling out of Iraq than he does about security. We'll all remember that when half the world is dead.
Terrorists of any flavor really had better not be effective. If the terror nuts in the Arab states were much of a threat they could easily be totally destroyed. They are dealt with in milder ways only because they are not effective terrorists. If we thought more highly of their abilities we would have the option of exterminating their nations completely. Their ace in the hold is that we don't want to kill innocents. But if they ever became a serious threat we would not be concerned about non-hostiles being killed at all. They have no clue as to how easily we can crush their nations.
The thing is, religious texts say a lot of shit, particularly the major religions which often have a whole lot of text including not just their "official" book but all kinds of other documents that have some measure of authority in their belief system for various reasons. Also because the documents are old, and composed of various collected stories of various authorships, there are generally plenty of contradictions, things that have been shown to be untrue, and so on.
So what really happens is people choose to believe the parts they like, and ignore or reinterpret the rest. They follow the parts they wish and find justifications for not following the others. This happens all the time in all religions. Generally, religious ideology is an excuse, a justification, for a behaviour, not the case. People don't read a holy text and say "Oh, well I have to follow this to the letter!" Rather they have something they want to do and they find a way to make their belief system justify it.
You can see it with things like the "prosperity gospel" Christians and so on. Any even somewhat literal reading of Jesus's teachings shows the guy was the ultimate hippy. All about helping the poor, against material wealth, etc, etc. However, they find a way to justify their views in the bible.
Or the crazy things Orthodox Jews go through to supposedly obey arbitrary restrictions in the torah, while then skirting around them. Like they believe that the prohibition on making fire on the sabbath applies to electricity. However then there are things like ovens with timers greater than 24 hours, so you can have it come on automatically on the sabbath and that's ok. Oh Shabbos Goys, non-Jewish individuals you can hire to do things for you that you are not allowed to do on the sabbath.
Same shit with any of the variants of Islam. What the Koran says isn't really relevant. They'll find a way to make it justify what they want to believe. They can find a way to twist it to allow things that are specifically forbidden, or to ignore things that are required, or whatever.
Poke the bear and you get Hamburg, Dresden, the firebombing/nuking of Japan, and the impressively thorough bombing of North Korea during the Korean war.
The US played nice in Viet Nam. I'd have bombed the paddy dikes and let General Starvation break the Communists beyond resistance. The dead resist nothing.
Perhaps we've played nice for too long. These little wars with tiny numbers of casualties don't impress me, nor the Jihadists. If the Jihadists think that's what war looks like they may get their feelings hurt in a real one.
> Not launch missiles from (or store them in) a school or hospital? No other countries military does that.
Actually false.
Amnesty International investigated the last time such claimes were made, back in 2008, and found that not only is that a myth, but the Israel used palestinians as human shields. And that was after the Israeli supreme court ruled that the IDF had to stop using palestinians civilians as human shields in 2005.
> Or, not launch missiles right next to the hotel where journalists are staying
As the video says in an abandoned plot of land roughly the entire length of a football field away from the hotel. Not from a school, not from a hospital -- an empty lot 100+ meters away from the hotel.
It is Gaza after all, with 1.8 million people in just 137 square miles it isn't like there are many open fields.
>>Why do so many Muslims renounce such violence? Is it that they can't stomach what appears to be this straight-forward interpretation of the Koran?
They are practicing "Al-Taqiyya" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taqiyya).
Agreed. This group is different. Not just a bunch of local radical, jihadist thugs. They should be eliminated without prejudice.
Couple of links that all of you should study
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/03...
http://io9.com/5908290/during-...
Xsacx
OMFG! It contains ***INFORMATION***! Quickly! Destroy that!
Now seriously: I think those ISIL (or ISIS?) are as disgusting as can be, and that it's OK to muster some international force against that -- but the scare tactics this side of the line has long surpassed my nausea level.
Probably reads like CIA, NSA, DHS etc playbook. Not too long ago, your own government agencies where there, teaching those same guys.
I agree, what they do (more like dream) is wrong but what USA is actually doing over there, is seriously wrong too.
Those guys, over there, are faithing against invaders - USA and it's corporate sponsored army.
Why are you, fat american, so surprised that people fight back? Is it because you do not fight back and let yourself and your freedoms be ass raped by your own corporate government every single day? Really? Get off your ass and do something. Blabbering here about freedoms will not change anything.
Maybe you do not like their religion? Really? Or is it because your corporate government likes the oil and gas in those regions more?
The actual terrorist laptop has documents describing the real terrorism strategy, which consists of, "plant a laptop with vague, nasty-sounding terrorist plots that will induce panic in people who don't think too hard about plausibility".
Who the genuine terrorist is who owns that laptop is a separate matter.
Wipe out all Arabs and all Nord-Africans. Then let's see where we are, we might need to do more, but maybe that's enough.
FUD works because people don't think things through; we are very bad at proper risk assessment. The question remains whether we should trust our government to do better - or suspect it of abusing the opportunity this allegation makes. Recent history encourages the latter!
It's probably real. This is after all a group that engages in beheadings, mass murder of captives... even crucifixion. You're talking about a group with a medieval worldview, and you can't get much more medieval than the Black Plague.
my god what a bad plot... common usa. come up with something more... original if you want to make your war look legit this time... moar illusionary weapons of mass destruction, eh? fucking retards.
if you try to smuggle such a bs story past hollywood, you would be blacklisted for life for being lame.
http://www.cdc.gov/plague/faq/...
How many cases of plague occur in the United States? Globally?
Plague was first introduced into the United States in 1900. Between 1900 and 2010, 999 confirmed or probable human plague cases occurred in the United States. Over 80% of United States plague cases have been the bubonic form. In recent decades, an average of 7 human plague cases are reported each year (range: 1-17 cases per year). Plague has occurred in people of all ages (infants up to age 96), though 50% of cases occur in people ages 12â"45. Worldwide, between 1,000 and 2,000 cases each year are reported to the World Health OrganizationExternal Web Site Icon (WHO), though the true number is likely much higher.
Don't be so panicky.
It's a threat on the same level heebie-jeebies or scurvy are. Probably a lot less.
"You're talking about a group with a medieval worldview, and you can't get much more medieval than the Black Plague."
Indeed, using a bacteria that's propagated by fleas is not very modern in the Streptomycin age.
tactical nukes....nuke em all.
What better than to gin up TERROR! in a war weary US/UK population than planting a laptop with naughty bio-fetish dreams.
1) Nobody looked at the laptop for months. Really? Honest? Didn't even bother to check that for intel from your competion/enemy in Syria? Oh, Mr Journalist? Here maybe you like this, we are just using it for door stop.
2) Put laptop in hands of semi-credible news magazine looking for a big scoop to boost image.
3) Sit back and watch Fox News make it the number one story for the next 60 days while government(s) figure out how many troops are going to go where.
4) Announce troop deployment because of TERROR!
Now.. perhaps it is all legit. But to ignore the plant angle is to be led down the WMB path again with blindfold on. And nobody does this kind of stuff better than the UK, a country with a long and sordid history of using "journalists" to plant fake "information" to justify government actions and policies.
Mosul fell in early June. Ever since then, people in DC have been wondering what to do, including the expensive option, of killing ISIS themselves. Timing would have to be more precise than 2 1/2 months to be suspicious.
This is slashdot. We discuss the technical merits of the weapons, and not the ideology behind the war.
As the video says in an abandoned plot of land roughly the entire length of a football field away from the hotel. Not from a school, not from a hospital -- an empty lot 100+ meters away from the hotel.
Conducting military operations 100m away from a civilian building is inappropriate. If a conflict broke out in just about any civilized nation that required basing soldiers within 100m of a hotel, the hotel would be evacuated. Heck, the whole city would probably be evacuated.
It is Gaza after all, with 1.8 million people in just 137 square miles it isn't like there are many open fields.
Well, then don't launch rockets from within Gaza then. Those rockets generally aren't targeted at military targets anyway, so there is nothing legitimate about firing them off in the first place.
When conducting war you have a responsibility to minimize the danger to non-combatants. That includes not basing your soldiers in close proximity to non-combatants (and 100m is close proximity).
The alternative is to return to tactics like WWII bombing, and that isn't in anybody's interests. Those fighting in Gaza (whatever they want to call themselves) are not acting as soldiers - they're basically acting as terrorists.
I am not afraid of a word document. This is nothing. Why must we always be afraid? Perhaps we wouldn't tolerate always being a war if we didn't have An Enemy to be afraid of.
I have books in my house with dangerous information. Having information is not a crime. Have a desire is not a crime. Writing down that you want to release bubonic plague on people is a FAR cry from having the actual means and will to do so.
A terrorist can take my life, but let's face it. Odds are, I'll die in a car accident. Terrorists with ACTUAL bombs don't scare me. Terrorists with word documents on a laptop certainly don't scare me.
The only people that hurt my freedom were Americans that keep voting stupid.
I'm going to download lots of dangerous information on my laptop. Perhaps a chemistry book or two. Perhaps my own country should invade my house.....
Serious criticism of the administration over its treatment of ISIS will be downmodded as flamebait.
Plus the "catch Ebola, wait til infectious, aerosolize yourself in a large theatre" scenario. No wonder we're in a hurry about that vaccine.
As I wrote here about the USA: http://www.pdfernhout.net/basi... "Right now, a profit driven health care system has sized emergency rooms for average needs, and those emergency rooms are often full. With a basic income and more money going on a systematic basis to the health care system, the health care system emergency rooms will no longer be overrun with people there for reasons they could see a doctor for. So, emergency care would be better for millionaires. Millionaires with heart attacks won't be as likely to end up being diverted to far away hospitals because the local hospital emergency room is full. Likewise, emergency rooms might, with more money going to medicine, become sized for national emergencies, not personal emergencies, so they might become vast empty places, with physicians and other health care staff keeping their skills sharp always running simulations, learning more medical information, and/or doing basic medical research, with these people always ready for a pandemic or natural disaster or industrial accident which they had the resources in reserve to deal with. So, millionaires who got sick or injured in a disaster could be sure there was the facilities and expertise nearby to help them, even if most of the rest of the population needed help too at the same time too. In that way, some of this basic income could be funded by money that might otherwise go to the Defense department, because what is better civil defense then investing in a health care system able to to handle national disasters? So, any millionaires who are doctors (many are) would benefit by this plan, because their lives as doctors will become happier and less stressful, both with less paperwork and with more resources."
We should also reduce the monopoly power of the AMA and related organizations that creates an artificial scarcity of physicians in the USA using quotas and high credentialing prices. See for example:
http://c4ss.org/wp-content/upl...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
We should also be systematically rethinking our technical infrastructure to be more resilient rather than depend on long supply lines that need to be "defended" by troops in foreign countries, and also rethinking our security strategy to be more mutual rather than unilateral. ... We the people need to redefine security in a sustainable and resilient way. Much current US military doctrine is based around unilateral security ("I'm safe because you are nervous") and extrinsic security ("I'm safe despite long supply lines because I have a bunch of soldiers to defend them"), which both lead to expensive arms races. We need as a society to move to other paradigms like Morton Deutsch's mutual security ("We're all looking out for each other's safety") and Amory Lovin's intrinsic security ("Our redundant decentralized local systems can take a lot of pounding whether from storm, earthquake, or bombs and would still would keep working"). ... This all suggests that our biggest danger as as society is in putting the *tools* (some being useful as weapons) of a post-scarcity civilization into the hands of scarcity-preoccupied minds. (Especially ones following outdated military dogmas like unilateral security instead of mutual security.) As Albert
http://www.pdfernhout.net/reco...
"Biological weapons like genetically-engineered plagues are ironic because they are about using advanced life-altering biotechnology to fight over which old-fashioned humans get to occupy the planet. Why not just use advanced biotech to let people pick their skin color, or to create living arkologies and agricultural abundance for everyone everywhere?
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Look, I have said all along that AQ has access to biologicals and that they can do FAR WORSE damage.
BUT, AQ had some warped and interesting principles. Basically, until a islamic priest would give permission to kill many innocents, they did not attack. In POF, they took responsibility for their actions. In a number of ways, they acted like a normal nation SHOULD
ISIS is NOT under the same constraints. Weaponized plague is easy enough to solve and cure.
I am far more concerned about their weaponizing avian flu, mers, ebola, or even rabies.
Thsee have the potential to spread much further through western society without easy ways to stop them.
Oddly, in some of my earlier posts about ISIS, we had a number of ppl defending these animals. I have to wonder if any of them were trolls with ISIS, or just sympathizers.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
We do make it worse if we invade. Horrible idea. BUT, there is no reason why we can not help those that oppose ISIS.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
uh, no.
Dumb fucks like you just come here and troll so that idiots will believe you.
Cowards like you can troll on another site.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
thanks for putting that all together for us:
black anti-government groups == ISIS
... Islamic State is a literal plague on humanity.
SSD? Same USB stick?
Stop lying.
Gaza has been blockaded since 2007 when the Israelis left the territory Hamas grabbed power and started bombing the Israelis. Not 'decades'.
Food and medicine are exactly what the Israelis have allowed in, It's building supplies and other materials are restricted.
Bubonic, Septicemic, Pneumonic, Pharyngeal, Meningeal and Cellulocutaneous plague are the SAME DISEASE.
Only distinction is the main area of infection and the vector which got it there.
It will shift from one form to the other as the disease progresses.
You're basically trying to be a smartass by saying something like "Ha! You fool! It's not a pastry. It's a croissant."
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
1. Conquer Mid-Eastern Oil Rich Muslim countries. ,Afghanistan, U.A.E., Saudi Arabia and the rest to China in full payment of our debt.
2. Give Israel Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
3. Trade Iraq, Iran
4. Let China police and control their asses for a change of pace and entertainment.
You can bet Mohammed didn't prophesy that one! Let them learn Mandarin, bwahahahaha.
Great, you DON'T get to run the country, because you are obviously smarter than 80% of the population.
Or better yet, you DON'T get to be the editor for every technical article ever.
That will be $29.95.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
You're accusing other people of being brainwashed, but you sound even more brainwashed. Evil Hamas uses children to dig Tunnels of Terror! Let's face it, it takes two to tango and Israel is just as guilty of violence as Hamas. As long as they keep pointing fingers and taking retribution for the last attack, there will never be peace between Palestine and Hamas. Frankly, I don't think Israel WANTS peace. I think they want the Palestinian land. There's also the fat stacks of defense cash flowing through Israel. It's hard to blame Palestinians for fighting back when they're blockaded and can't get medicine or even building materials to fix up their buildings. It's hard to look at the situation with Palestinians throwing rocks, Hamas firing shitty homemade rockets that immediately get shot down by Israel's Iron Dome system... and then look at the disproportionate Israeli response, the 10:1 Palestinian:Isreali death ratio, and the facts of life under blockade, and see anything but Israel being the aggressor.
The Palestinian demands are to end the blockade and recognize them as a state. How is that unreasonable?
Since I saw the Trade Center fall in person (not on screen) I am unable to go "La la la they can't strike us here" and believe myself. Nor do I believe that recent history predicts the future. The main players in Islamic State are far more radical than Osama ever was. Osama was one nasty piece of work who deserved killing, but he wasn't pure evil. His main goal was a "purer" Saudi Arabia without so much US influence. These fucks have as their goal an Earth purified of all who don't share their exact beliefs. Osama was dependent on funding primarily from his friends among the Saudi princes, who insisted on some degree of moderation especailly after 9/11 when they got back-channel messages that we'd come after them next if not; these fucks control their own oil fields, and depend on no other nation as long as they have markets for their oil.
We're can obliterate them now, while they're relatively local, or nuke 'em later, by which time they'll have cells trained and equipped throughout the First World. Our Iraq experience is not what we should be learning from. Iraq needed to be successfully occupied and turned around. We were terrible at that. Islamic State merely needs to be utterly destroyed. That's within our scope. Osama wasn't the threat we thought he was; these fucks are the threat we thought he was. We must abstain from restraint in their obliteration, unless we're ready to tolerate far worse in terms of terrorist attacks than 9/11 ever was.
I say this as a left-wing, pro-Palestinian admirer of Ghandi and MLK. The US might have done well to stay out of WW I, but if we'd stayed out of WW II the world would have been ruined. The US would have done well not to start Iraq War II, but if we hold back from a strategy for full victory over the Islamic State, civilization's odds are not good. If we leave them intact for long enough to attack us here - which they will - say goodbye to what's left of our civil liberties.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Your argument... As opposed to what? Israel just killing Palestinians (terrorists, adults, children, men, women, journalists, doctors, UN personel, whatever), period?
> Well, then don't launch rockets from within Gaza then.
Yes, this is the authoritarian response. Do not fight back, just roll over.
> When conducting war you have a responsibility to minimize the danger to non-combatants.
How fortunate we are to have people like you to tell the palestinians how they should resist occupation.
The day you go and fight side-by-side with them is the day you get to have a say in how they conduct the fight.
If you call giving you simple facts "brainwashing" you don't understand what the word means. I'm the one with real links to real reports - the UN schools holding missiles was also well documented.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Actually false.
Well Actually We're Talking About This Year You Moron.
Are you seriously so stupid as to try and debunk something so widely reported???
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Some cretins dreaming about bio-weapons does not give them any real capability. And no, they are neither easy to make nor cheap nor easy to use. This is just the usual exceedingly unethical fear mongering used to sell more copy and to keep the population docile.
It is also not a new tactics, but most people are still cretins that fall for it every time:
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. -- H.L. Mencken
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The Palestinian demands are to end the blockade and recognize them as a state.
No, the demands of Hamas (who runs Palestine now) are that every Jew be killed (it's in the written charter, that is not hyperbole). They include the right to keep all arms, including rockets, so they can continue to fire them at Israel.
Also in the demands are that Israel not be recognized as a star (they do not currently). If it's reasonable to recognize someone else as a state, then Hamas not doing so with Israel is obviously unreasonable - by your own definition.
It's just a shame that people like you do not actually look deeper to see what is going on. In now way is allowing Hamas to gather far more arms to attack Israel reasonable. That is the only thing that lifting the blockade would cause to occur. Food and medicine and other relief is already allowed to enter the country freely.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That age is about to end... If idiots are actively starting trouble they'll just speed up drug resistance mutation and that'll make a mess.
Do you really expect us to believe this crap? PROTHERO: "Do you believe this crap, Dascombe?
DASCOMBE: "It's not our job to believe it, Lewis. Our job is to tell the people" --
PROTHERO: '"Exactly what they tell us." I Know but do you think that people will believe it?'
DASCOMBE: They will if it's you that's telling it to them. Now let's try it again." ref
Well, if they want to launch their rockets from next to schools, then they shouldn't be surprised when their kids get blown up by artillery fire. That is probably their objective in any case - it makes for good PR.
Is firing artillery on schools wrong? Of course. Is firing rockets from nearby a school wrong? Of course. The one is still a consequence of the other.
I don't really see the Palestinians achieving their goals with the methods they're currently using. I get the impression that their plan is to keep blowing up the odd house until God comes down and wipes out the infidels for them. Or maybe they're just happy dying in the attempt.
A jihadist downloads the musilm verison of anarchists cookbook and now its the end of the world?
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
i hope they don't bomb me for having it on my laptop.
The Koran is not a simple document, and as with the Bible, you can take single sentence quotes out of context and justify almost anything.
Ah... the out of context argument... I love that one.
It's the easy answer for most of the blatant crazyness we can read in those kind of texts.
Each time I ear/read that, I'd like to ask:
=> Then please provide the context (in which it has been written that they either must be killed or pay taxes).
Then will see who hasn't read enough.
Here some other quotes from the Koran for you that take the opposite tack.
Yes... That's quite strange for a so-called perfect prose, isn't it?
It's always been a more open question than the failure to find them reflects; the fact that Assad's Syria proved to have chemical weapons after denying it raises the prospect they inherited them from Saddam. There are claims wandering round the internet that IS now has some - the proof of that will be when they use them of course. The jury is out - let's wait and see!