EU Presidency Calls For Massive Internet Filtering, Leaked Document Shows (edri.org)

An anonymous reader shares a report: A Council of the European Union document leaked by Statewatch on 30 August reveals that during the summer months, that Estonia (current EU Presidency) has been pushing the other Member States to strengthen indiscriminate internet surveillance, and to follow in the footsteps of China regarding online censorship. Standing firmly behind its belief that filtering the uploads is the way to go, the Presidency has worked hard in order to make the proposal for the new copyright Directive even more harmful than the Commission's original proposal, and pushing it further into the realms of illegality. According to the leaked document, the text suggests two options for each of the two most controversial proposals: the so-called "link tax" or ancillary copyright and the upload filter.

Comments

Sooner it goes, the better

[Archtech]

The EU does an enormous amount of harm, and the sooner it is dissolved - like the USSR - the better for everyone except the bloated bureaucrats feasting on its incredible gravy train.

As for the technical (in)capacity of the Eurocrats, these cartoons are very relevant:

http://ars.userfriendly.org/ca...
http://ars.userfriendly.org/ca...

Re: Sooner it goes, the better

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, haven't stopped their Nazi ways I see.

Re:Sooner it goes, the better

[Avarist]

So what harm has the EU done exactly? Other than not be the subject of some obscure cartoon about politicians in the USA? And compaired to the USSR that murdered people or exiled others to Siberia or threatened word destruction to name just the top of the iceberg?

Re:Sooner it goes, the better

[coastwalker]

Do you think the Uk that is leaving the EU will do any different? You fucktards are nothing more than heralds of the new world order that will screw any kind of freedom that has been achieved by consensus politics. Do you think that the right will grant you any more freedom than the bureaucrats who run the EU? I hope you all die as a result of your "free market" stupidity. Especially you Architech, you deserve to be killed by your masters for your stupidity.

Re:Sooner it goes, the better

[Archangel Michael]

The EU is and isn't what anyone wants it to be (or not to be). It is a vague confederation of states.

So, it all depends on the question, whether or not it makes the EU look good/bad and whether or not you want it to look that way.

Petty dictators need to be exposed for what they are. This is such a case. So, it is or isn't a reflection on the EU, again depending on your support (or not) of the EU. So, you'll have to figure out if the EU is good or bad, and if you like this idea or not, before you can actually say if this is harm or not. ;-)

See how that works?

Re:Sooner it goes, the better

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yes, the EU is soooooo eeeeevil. It's not that a subgroup of idiots in this large diverse group have stupid censorship ideas, oh no, the whole thing must go!

Spoken like a true Briton (True Scotsmen are actually economically minded and didn't want to torpedo their economy like you.)

Re:Sooner it goes, the better

[Halo1]

As for the technical (in)capacity of the Eurocrats

The Council of Ministers are not Eurocrats. The Council of Ministers is literally a collection of ministers from the national governments of the countries in the EU. Depending on the topic at hand, different ministers meet under this umbrella name.

In fact, the Council of Ministers is the one branch of the EU that is supposed to prevent the EU from being too Euro-centric and to forget about national interests. In practice, of course, national governments use it to introduce positions that are unpopular at home, so they can then blame them on the evil EU. Fortunately, it is often (but definitely not always) the European Parliament that blocks, or at least weakens these things (although I know that part of this is a political game, where extremes are introduced so that later supposed "compromises" can be reached that are still horribly bad).

Re:Sooner it goes, the better

[Anonymous Coward]

So what harm has the EU done exactly?

The EU eroded border security and caused a mass influx of criminal migrants and terrorists. While simultaneously prohibiting member countries from policing their own borders.

Not to mention that the whole thing is designed to be an end run around democracy: power lies with the appointed commission, not the elected parliament. It's a lobbyist's and career politician's wet dream.

Re:Sooner it goes, the better

[Anonymous Coward]

> So what harm has the EU done exactly?

EU flooded most of EU countries with fake-refugees, who quickly turned out to be rapefugees and created no-go zones in Sweeden, and in few places in France and maybe even Germany.

In addition to shitting out literrally thousands of pages of leglislation per like a month, and burden everyone with it's communist economy and central control of everything.

Re:Sooner it goes, the better

[penandpaper]

As a vague confederation of states they are the most opaque. They must choose so that I can properly align my outrage meters to their actions!

Could you measure their good/bad as compared to Obama drinking Coke or Pepsi as a moral issue? I need help. :-(

Re: Sooner it goes, the better

[Anonymous Coward]

Progressivist Libtards of Bruxelles want to impose everybody a new EUrss ? Only in their Neo-Marxist dreams!
Really a BIG No Thx. But unlinke classical USSR, they don't have military power to stop _Exit!

Re:Sooner it goes, the better

[Anonymous Coward]

Estonia is far and away the most "digitally transformed" state, or at least that's what they want to be seen as. Yet in secret they're in collusion with the entertainment mafia and working to reduce freedoms. This is troubling.

Bitching about the Brits here is a little silly, since they actually lead the pack regarding censorship laws. They currently have not one, but at least three different censorship systems in deployment.

As someone living inside Euro-land, native of this here country, somewhat like but not quite the same as England, I've come to the conclusion that while working together is a lofty goal, this isn't what the Eurocrats bring us. Their only option is failure and their only solution to failure is "more Europe". I didn't get to vote but my vote would have been "aye and yay" to Brexit. Because it really is the only way short of war to solve this problem.

The EU/EC/EP/E... is unfixable and unwilling to admit it could do with improvement. It must go in its entirety. So that if one silly country wants to fsck itself up, the rest of us needn't suffer. We should probably limit ourselves to joint defense, only without the Americans making us all dance this time. Instead we're getting nannyed to death and we have no defense left. No wonder we're already buckling under the strain from the assault of... penniless refugees^Wfortune seekers. Thanks, Eurocrats.

Re: Sooner it goes, the better

[Anonymous Coward]

The EU allowed German car companies to cheat test.
The EU allowed Merkel to invite every third world inhabitant and did nothing to protect its external borders or to stop anarchist sympathizing NGO's who collaborate with human traffickers and slave traders.
The EU forced poorer east European countries to open their borders for Muslim immigrants.
The EU forced austerity on all member states even when the population of the individual states voted something else.
The EU forced socialization of pension funds even when the individual states had an elected government that opposed this socialization.
The EU encourages low wage workers to compete local workers out of the market, increasing unemployment among workers who are in high demand, but who are considered too expensive according to their nationality.
The EU doesn't do anything against millions of illegal immigrants, and funds NGO's who attract even more illegal immigrants with their charity.
The EU forces more and more freedom limiting and privacy invading laws upon the member states in an attempt to stop the rise of Eurosceptic politicians. They even make propaganda movies now, using people who died during the devastating world wars as martyrs for the EU. Those people died fighting for their freedom against an enemy who wanted to 'unite' the states and didn't even know anything about a political European Union.
The list goes on and on. The EU started to go wrong when a couple of leaders decided that the entire EU should be Socialist welfare state in the early 2000's.

Re:Sooner it goes, the better

[cayenne8]

Brexit isn't sounding so bad now, is it....?

Re: Sooner it goes, the better

[Anonymous Coward]

Fourth Reich is GO! Heil Merkel!

Re:Sooner it goes, the better

[DontBeAMoran]

And compaired to the USSR that murdered people or exiled others to Siberia or threatened word destruction to name just the top of the iceberg?

Wait, are you saying the USSR is also responsible for sinking the RMS Titanic?

Re:Sooner it goes, the better

[Anonymous Coward]

" is unfixable and unwilling to admit it could do with improvement. It must go in its entirety " = BOLLOCKS, because you have no replacement to offer and you need the functionality the EU provides, if you don't like everything that's reasonable. Running away suddenly in the middle of the night and joining the circus-economy, that's not going to crush the EU, that's going to crush the UK.

Face facts, UK cannot survive as an island apart. You are headed for decline if you wish to relive the empire of the past.

Re:Sooner it goes, the better

[Anonymous Coward]

For the Brits, yea. Unfortunately Brexit and Trump's victory have politicians and media so spooked they circled the wagons and went into propaganda mode. They're making sure there won't be any repeats, and unfortunately it's working.

Re:Sooner it goes, the better

[Scarletdown]

o/~ Here comes a candle to light you to bed. Here comes a chopper to chop off your head. o/~

Re:Sooner it goes, the better

[Anonymous Coward]

The media seem to be deluded into thinking that getting rid of Trump would magically make the massive percentage of populists go away,
populists who are not on a decline but rather on a rise, ergo populism made its stamp. The media think they operage like some deity, with a swipe of their hands and people will cease to exist magically and divinely.
In the past 30 years, i have never seen the field of journalism decline to such a state that it is in itself a parody of Trump now, in opinion pieces, in trying to play bias police, in producing clickbait (even BBC these few years is allowing the most ridiculous idiotic news on its front page such as that firemen sausage shit).
At this point the only difference between big news brands and bloggers is a presence of tax subsidy for news companies and a more lavish brand of blogging.

Re:Sooner it goes, the better

[sexconker]

" is unfixable and unwilling to admit it could do with improvement. It must go in its entirety " = BOLLOCKS, because you have no replacement to offer and you need the functionality the EU provides, if you don't like everything that's reasonable. Running away suddenly in the middle of the night and joining the circus-economy, that's not going to crush the EU, that's going to crush the UK.

Face facts, UK cannot survive as an island apart. You are headed for decline if you wish to relive the empire of the past.

There's a reason the pound is still a thing and they never adopted the Euro. The EU is France, Germany, and the UK, plus a bunch of troublesome leeches. If the UK actually follows through and leaves, France and Germany are going to be playing chicken to see who stays in the longest. The instant one of them leaves, the EU is dead, and Europe will go back to doing what it does best - warring with itself. The scaremongering about the UK economy isn't about the UK, it's FUD meant to keep France and Germany on the hook as long as possible.

Re:Sooner it goes, the better

[rastos1]

The EU eroded border security

Nope. EU expected that everyone attempting to cross the border will try to do so at a border crossing - you know, like in a civilized world. And the numbers attempting to cross the border somewhere else would be in range of hundreds or thousands per year, not millions. There is an option how to stop people crossing the border in the fields or in the woods. Look up Iron Curtain to see what it would look like. Fences, barbed wires, minefields, dogs, patrols with automatic guns shooting without warning ... it isn't pretty. I know that, because live on the other side. EU though that we, as civilization, have moved pass that. They were wrong, but I can't really blame them.

and caused a mass influx of criminal migrants and terrorists.

EU did not cause that. You could claim that soldiers, from some member states, took part in some activity that caused that. But EU? No. The influx happens because some parts of the world were turned into a shithole while at the same time EU represents much nicer place to live just a few thousands kilometers away. We can talk about why those places were turned into a shithole, but EU never said it has "strategic interest" in Middle East. EU never sent troops there in the name of "national security". That was some other country.

Re:Sooner it goes, the better

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a fucking moron cayenne. Go suck Putin's cock on your way to a ruined UK economy.

Re:Sooner it goes, the better

[thegarbz]

Brexit isn't sounding so bad now, is it....?

Yeah 100% of deaf people agree.

Re: Sooner it goes, the better

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is populism such a buzzword lately? It has always been a thing in democracies. Anybody who thinks Trump is populist and Obama wasn't obviously doesn't remember that nauseating Demi/Ashton "I pledge allegiance to Obama" video.

Re:Sooner it goes, the better

[thegarbz]

The EU eroded border security and caused a mass influx of criminal migrants and terrorists.

Personally I blame them for the rise of racist fuckwits on the internet.

Re: Sooner it goes, the better

[Anonymous Coward]

It started becoming a shithole after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and has been on a steady decline ever since. Secularism really started to take a nosedive during the 60's. If you look at photographs of universities and politicians prior to that, you don't see muslim attire (i.e. hijabs) very much, and you'd easily confuse many of them with westerners.

Re:Sooner it goes, the better

[Anonymous Coward]

You assume either Germany or France is DUMB ENOUGH to think they'd gain something from leaving a 40~ year trade settlement overnight with NOTHING TO REPLACE IT WITH? The EU is better without you, frankly. You want to rule instead of be part of a federation, old habits die hard I guess. We'll see it sooner than later, most Britons realize they made a huge mistake with Brexit even though the pain has scarcely been felt yet. There is due course ahead.

Now, continue bragging about isolationism as an economic boon, lol.

Re: Sooner it goes, the better

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no reason why France of Germany would want to give up the economic benefits of being in the largest free trade bloc in the world, and one that works very well for them, and gives them tremendous advantages in negotiating trade agreements with other nations in the world. Whilst the UK will be able to negotiate its own trade deals, it will be in a much weaker negotiating position with India, China, USA,Brazil, etc. as even as a large economy overall, it is a fraction of the size of the EU. Even if negotiating with the EU takes twice as long, the value is ten times as big.

Re: Sooner it goes, the better

[Anonymous Coward]

How can this be moderated -1???

Tell is what's not true about the above.

EU is not a real democracy.. Just look at how presidents of the institutions are elected.. Not much of it is done in the open, and probably less than 1% knows who, and what, have those positions or what their responsibilities are..
Feel free to educate yourself a bit more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I would not oppose EU that much if.
* Less overhead..... ~30000 people at the moment with all the politicians and public officials. It should just be an oversight over the other countries..
* More transparency... There are too many things happening in the shadows without a chance for input from ordinary people. (most of the time anyway..)
* The "EU President" (please read the link above!) was elected by the people thru a public election.
* EU laws should only be to prevent countries from limiting peoples freedoms, not imposing laws that does limit freedoms.
* EU should not have aid programs like they do for farming etc. Except for helping out in severe crisis situations.
* EU should not have aid programs to redistribute wealth to poorer countries. Possible it could have programs where they make it more beneficial for companies to invest in those countries to allow for a more natural growth in the country.
  This could be to make it more economical to do production in those countries by lowering taxation for goods produced in those countries.
* EU should not force countries to take in migrants. Refugees yes, migrants no.
* Stop limiting countries from implementing border-checks when it's been proven that the external checks don't work and that illegal migrants continues..
* Free movement - fine.. But it should not be allowed to move to a new country without a way to support yourself there. It should work like a automatic work-permit but with the previous requirements we had before the EU.

Re:Sooner it goes, the better

[Kiuas]

The EU is France, Germany, and the UK, plus a bunch of troublesome leeches

Eh, no. And no again

Germany, France and the UK (in that order) are the 3 largest economies in the Union by far, but combined their GDP currently makes up around 51,2 % of that of the whole union. The UK by itself represents around 14,4 % of the total economy, France is 16 % and Germany is 20 %.

The remaining 24 countries are miniscule in size compared to these 3, but in total are roughly as big as these three. After the UK leaves, the shares will change so that Germany will grow to be around 24 % of the whole economy, while France's share goes up to around 19. This means that the other remaining EU countries together actually dwarf Germany and France in size.

Secondly, there are currently 10 member states that pay into the union more than they take out of it. In addition to Germany, France and the UK these include the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Austria, Italy and Ireland (granted Ireland and Italy pretty much break even so their contribution is not major). Spain (5th largest economy in the union after Italy) also pretty much breaks even although they still currently receive slightly more than they pay in.

The instant one of them leaves, the EU is dead, and Europe will go back to doing what it does best - warring with itself.

What? The EU, for all its numerous flaws is still a succesful economic zone with a total GDP second only to the US once the UK leaves, so thinking that France or Germany would want to leave/shatter the union when it has benefited them the most as the biggest economies in the zone, or that 1 of them leaving would automatically trigger the collapse of the whole union and/or massive war is misguided. Especially now with the situation of Russia being what it is, there are very few leaders on a national level that would even want to leave, because reverting back to a bunch of solitary nation states is both economically damaging and is also essentially equal to surrending massive amounts of influence and control over to Russia, US and China, which from a purely game theory point of view of (geo)politics is a dumb as fuck move (for both the smaller states who will then be at the mercy of these larger players, as well as the big economies like France and Germany whose global influence/power would be greatly diminished if the Union stopped existing). This is something that both France and Germany understand well.

Think of it is this way: after the UK goes, the choice faced by Germany and France will be the following: they can either continue as the 2 major rulers of the 2nd largest economy in the world 7 times the size of Russia, or they can choose to return to a situation in which they control only their own economies that are roughly equal to that of Russia and are massive dwarfed by the US and China thereby essentially sidelining themselves from the big league of the world economies,

Re: Sooner it goes, the better

[mikael]

Because in the past, wars were fought over resources ands "lebensraum"; farmland, living space, resources. At the national level, these wars could be avoided if countries cooperated and agreed to share resources (fishery stocks, mineral resources, farmland, river waterflow). So the EU seemed a good idea for 50 years after World War II.

We're still having those fights but now but on a smaller scale; affordable housing, green spaces, rights of way along new property developments.

https://www.wired.com/2017/04/...

The EU managed to grind along, until one country decided unilaterally they they would invite millions of people in from the South Mediterranean, they discovered that they didn't have the resources to handle this, and would the rest of Europe please take their fair share. At the same time, it's getting increasingly obvious that the EU is one giant gravy train for ex-national politicians (MEP's) lobbyists and euro-corporations, especially through alternative media like forums and blogs.

When the population starts seeking their news from alternative sources where everyone can join in the discussion, the incumbents suddenly decide that this is "fake news" and start to campaign to have it blocked. Then nationalist parties are starting to question all the money being sent to the EU in return for economic policies being decided hundreds of miles away that have no benefit for the local population. That is then labelled "populism" and a return to the 1930's.

Re:Sooner it goes, the better

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a moron. Your "populist revolution" is a joke 30% of trolls and inbred nitwit racists upset they're being passed over by the world. Wah. The reason Clinton lost is because PEOPLE DO NOT LIKE HILLARY CLINTON. That's really it. She wasn't even responsible for all of that, maybe 1/2. Trump committed high crimes and was in violation of emoluments on day 1, he's done. Your tongue waggery changes nothing, the GOP has stared your insanity in the mouth and decided it's probably not worth going batshit crazy when they can just give themselves tax breaks and call it a day.

Re:Sooner it goes, the better

[sexconker]

You assume either Germany or France is DUMB ENOUGH to think they'd gain something from leaving a 40~ year trade settlement overnight with NOTHING TO REPLACE IT WITH? The EU is better without you, frankly. You want to rule instead of be part of a federation, old habits die hard I guess. We'll see it sooner than later, most Britons realize they made a huge mistake with Brexit even though the pain has scarcely been felt yet. There is due course ahead.

Now, continue bragging about isolationism as an economic boon, lol.

They'd gain sovereignty and security. Who says they wouldn't have anything to replace it with? They'd simply renegotiate trade at better (for them) terms. The rest of the EU is entirely dependent upon the big three, and they know it.

Re:Sooner it goes, the better

[Anonymous Coward]

" is unfixable and unwilling to admit it could do with improvement. It must go in its entirety " = BOLLOCKS, because you have no replacement to offer and you need the functionality the EU provides, if you don't like everything that's reasonable.

In a word, no. There are more ways to work together than the One True Blessed Way that the Eurocrats offer^Wforce everyone to accept OR ELSE.

So no, I don't agree we can't live without the EU. And that's as a citizen of one of the founding members. Again, I'm not in the UK, TYVM.

Running away suddenly in the middle of the night and joining the circus-economy, that's not going to crush the EU, that's going to crush the UK.

The UK will probably be better off by a large margin, actually. The Eurocrats really don't want to admit it, but just like the American patent system as it is today is as bad as or worse than having no patent system at all (see relevant science on the topic), the totality of the EU superstructure is actually costing more than it pays.

Face facts, UK cannot survive as an island apart. You are headed for decline if you wish to relive the empire of the past.

The world is rather bigger than the EU. For example: The EU still has no free trade treaty with India. The UK outside the EU could get one in a hartbeat, opening up a humongous and growing market for all sorts of goods and services. If they play their cards right, they'll be much, much better off.

There's a reason the pound is still a thing and they never adopted the Euro. The EU is France, Germany, and the UK, plus a bunch of troublesome leeches.

Go take a look at the net contributions (ie contributions minus subsidies) per capita.

If the UK actually follows through and leaves, France and Germany are going to be playing chicken to see who stays in the longest. The instant one of them leaves, the EU is dead,

It's a dead man walking as is. The question is how long before it'll collapse, not whether it will.

and Europe will go back to doing what it does best - warring with itself.

Eh, I think we can find more ways to make love instead of war even without the EU. The idea of working together is a fine one, but the Eurocratic execution leaves a lot to be desired, and the overpaid shmucks in Brussels won't learn.

The scaremongering about the UK economy isn't about the UK, it's FUD meant to keep France and Germany on the hook as long as possible.

Not just France and Germany, but yes, ideology before reality.

Re:Sooner it goes, the better

[Anonymous Coward]

"They'd simply renegotiate trade at better (for them) terms." You're completely out to lunch. Enjoy your idiotic notion of sovereignty in an interconnected world, lol.

Idiotic Union Jack waving British children of the 1900's preaching isolationism in 2017. I thought I'd seen it all. I guess you baby Hitlers need another 1944.

Enjoy your financial ruin meanwhile. Bootstraps are delicious you trolls, ask your American Republican colleagues how great their new coal mine jobs are, as promised.

Isolationist Britain was at its worst and nearly died of it. You need round two I guess. Morons.

Re:Sooner it goes, the better

[Anonymous Coward]

The EU eroded border security

Nope. EU expected that everyone attempting to cross the border will try to do so at a border crossing - you know, like in a civilized world.

This is not remotely a valid counter. Nor is the rest. It's an admision of utter incompetence.

EU though that we, as civilization, have moved pass that. They were wrong, but I can't really blame them.

I can, and do. You don't move past hurdles by pretending they aren't there.

and caused a mass influx of criminal migrants and terrorists.

EU did not cause that.

They did nothing to stop it and everything to cause the influx to increase, despite the lick of paint they attempted to give it.

They ought to have simply sent everyone coming in back, dragged the boats right back to the other shore, and so on. You know, like Australia does. Instead the EU forced member countries to accept more fortune seeking shmucks, and some Eurocrats even went there and distributed propaganda about how wonderful living in the EU would be, as a "refugee".

So yeah, this is squarely on the head of the EU, no question.

[...] EU never said it has "strategic interest" in Middle East.

Rather they have a "strategic interest" in "rejuvenating the aging population". They just fumbled the details with the cultural differences, is all.

EU never sent troops there in the name of "national security". That was some other country.

The member states willingly assisted on "evidence" that was laughable on its face. They knew or at least ought to have known that going there would destabilise the region, creating opportunity for the violent radicals they said they were there to get rid of. It's the sort of thing you get when you let incomptetents run the show.

Re:Sooner it goes, the better

[Anonymous Coward]

Racists upset they're being passed over by the world?
The world? I don't think if you've noticed, but the only part of the world that gives a single toss about racism is a western white minority with negative birth rates. The rest of the world enjoys being openly racist against neighbors as well as Westerners (except being racist against white westerners is politically sanctioned as a correct and just move). The Arabs and generally all Semite people still refer to blacks with their words for the term "slave", China and East Asia have only ever-increasingly horrible things to say about blacks the more they involve themselves in Africa for economic reasons, Slavs i'm not even going to discuss since they hate leftism as much as they hate nazism out of historical reasons of both fucking them up, Indians and surrounding people (China and Pakis) are all at each others throats with Sikhs and Buddhists in the middle, Africa itself is also a giant jumble, while Japs, Koreans and Chinese hate each other and all think the South-East islanders are inferior monkeys. South America has more segregation than 60's USA while we hear of Mexicans and Latinos trying to ethnically cleanse blacks from US cities on a yearly basis. All the world is racist without giving a toss, while you are stuck in a minority anti-racist population my little friend.

Re: Sooner it goes, the better

[Anonymous Coward]

Right. Democracy can't exist without populism. One is integral to the other. Democracies need to take the concerns of average people seriously or the government is not behaving democratically. This has been happening more and more over the last 35 years. Now we are seeing people electing those they hate just to shout "We still exist!"

Unfortunately the response by many that are doing well to people ignored and desperate for a voice is: "You are deplorable, less than human [bigots | racists | Nazis etc.]. Kindly die in silence."

Not a particularly persuasive argument. And now Brexit and Trump. The road will only continue until those "deplorables" are no longer ignored and belittled.

Re:Sooner it goes, the better

[Hognoxious]

The EU still has no free trade treaty with India. The UK outside the EU could get one in a hartbeat, opening up a humongous and growing market for all sorts of goods and services.

ROFLMA. St Theresa went out there a few months ago and they told her to jolly well do the fucking off. There is so much protectionism in the Indian economy it's beyond a joke.

If anything happens at all it'll be tiny minor concessions for the Ruperts in the banks in return for something like H1B on steroids.

Re: Sooner it goes, the better

[Anonymous Coward]

Just wait. It will be the Firewall of Mecca, eventually.

Re: Sooner it goes, the better

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahahahaha being this delusional...

Russia didn't elect Trump. I did.

Getting rid of Trump won't get rid of me.

You Bernie Bros like to whine about revolution. It already happened. You were just on the wrong side.

Re: Sooner it goes, the better

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone I disagree with is a racist fuckwit too!

You are seriously a fucking moron.

Also "Racist" doesn't mean what you think it means, dipshit

Re:Sooner it goes, the better

[Anonymous Coward]

We (the UK) don't want to rule anyone but ourselves. We refuse to be ruled by anyone else however.

Re:Sooner it goes, the better

[Godwin O'Hitler]

48% of us aren't realising we made a huge mistake. We've known it all along.

Re:Sooner it goes, the better

[Godwin O'Hitler]

Speak for yourself. I'd rather be ruled by people who actually care about me and my rights. They could be Martians for all it matters.

Re: Sooner it goes, the better

[Entrope]

Please get your chronology right! The USSR was formed 10 years after the Titanic sank. The ship's sinking was actually a Bolshevik plot.

Re:Sooner it goes, the better

[pots]

You're confusing the word populist, as it's applied to politicians, and populist, as it's applied to an ideologue. They're really used in very different ways.

A populist ideologue is someone who believes in popular rule. This could be anything from a direct democracy advocate to an anarchist. These people are generally left of center.

When a politician is called a populist, it's an insult. It doesn't imply any political ideology, be it left or right or other, it just means that they're catering to the lowest common denominator. They make lots of promises in order to gain power, promises which are generally infeasible if not outright impossible. Their supporters are either too ignorant to know they're being lied to, or too desperate to care.

Re: Sooner it goes, the better

[DontBeAMoran]

But Avarist said the USSR was responsible for the tip of the iceberg!

Re: Sooner it goes, the better

[Anonymous Coward]

The emoluments lause is about bribery not businesses operating as they normally do. Do you think Jefferson's farm ever sold goods to a foreigner?

Re:Sooner it goes, the better

[david_thornley]

The Trump base is very significant, but hardly a majority, and it's getting smaller demographically. It's in something of a panic now that the world is changing in ways it doesn't like. I sympathize with some (not nearly all) of their concerns, but they're trying to turn the calendar back and that simply isn't going to work.

The media seems to be largely what it was in the 1960s and 1970s, except that there's less money in it and hence fewer big stories and exposes. It's not in a major decline. It always was like this. The difference is that there's lots of other sources of more or less news, and a large number of people have found the mainstream media saying things they don't like.

Re:Sooner it goes, the better

[david_thornley]

They'd simply renegotiate trade at better (for them) terms

The EU needs the UK less than the UK needs the EU, and there will be political pressure to make the new trade agreements less favorable.

In the meantime,the UK has been getting a lot of US business because it's an English-speaking country with a large economy that's in the EU. The EU is a far larger market than the UK, so it's more important for businesses to have offices somewhere in the EU than the UK.

Re: Sooner it goes, the better

[wickedwitchofwest]

It's lack of financial responsibility and stuff like this and the 27 states wonder why the UK is leaving. Well the answer is that we hate the lack of control of our own borders, the lack of democracy and the enormous bills.

Re: Sooner it goes, the better

[AnilJ]

Indians do like it. Payback time or karma as they would call it.

Re:Sooner it goes, the better

[KingBenny]

The harm it has done probably mostly lies in the fact that it has done nothing. ... more or less... supposing you're american, the EU is nothing like the united lobbies of the free world or mother russia-conglomerate ... it's a paper union, a dream, no one has ever in 2000 years of local history (definitely not before that) actually conquered and united europe whereas the other 'unions' were all forged and baptised in blood and fire (this might still be an option it seems b/c everyone is crying for strong men) . If i go out here and ask 100 people on the EU, i think about 90 will shrug it off due to severe apathy on politics and/or call it "just another layer of taxes". The forced help on member states from anything , greece, whatnot has not gone down very well in a period where cost of life goes up, wages dont and unemployemnt actually goes down. They have virtually handed the place on a silver platter to extremists and now try to combat it with censorship and even raids for speaking out in "hate speech" online and what not and what not
if it were to break it would be a financial disaster for all but the rich ones (mostly those who kept their own currency i suppose) xept luxembourg, no idea how they would be affected by going back to the franc. And theres the thing with refugees (which also was like giving it up to the rightwing on a gold platter) where they just keep taking more than they can afford and every member state just has to go with it. Again, in times where life is costly and income is hard to get, solidarity has its limits , and so on ... they seem to be lofty on human rights but not very shy to break rules for raison d'état. This censorship thing doesnt surprise me at all. I doubt it will pass but the lords of mordor are scared of the monster they created by being very pc-principal if that makes any sense at all , merkel is euhm, definitely not the new hitler but in her attempts to unify she missed a few rotting spots lol ... its a bad economic climate to go save the world and expect a few to carry a lot and its somewhat hard to just turn back ... brexit ... maybe frexit ... if the flemish nationalists had their way they'd not only split from the wallons and brussels, but also from europe (i dont know this works in their dreamworld economically b/c there's virtually no actual production and the bit of tourism certainly cant carry so its services, services services, and logistics ... i can see that here in hickville .. the industrial zone maybe has two or three actual production facilities, the rest is all office and distribution centers) meaning less jobs on the same amount of space people here arent really ashamed to call themselves racist a lot of the time and some arent really ashamed to call out loud how nice it would be if "uncle Dolf" came back and this is not really the hard core of europe so .... if they think censorship is going to fix it, it should show how well they're doing (but maybe i should be careful what i say hahah) most crying for a breakup don't really see the whole consequence of a broken euro and back to the original currency i once read an article on how if greece were to go back to drachme, effective capital of people would be halved, as in can buy half for the money they have now after conversion, im not an economist but i have no reason to disbelieve that either in soviet hellgium, you need a license to wipe your ass, CO-tax soon applied for breathing out ...

Re: Sooner it goes, the better

[Anonymous Coward]

Says a fuckwit asshole who's paid by the Chinese government to spread destabilization propaganda to his own people.

They're really going to need one now

[alvinrod]

They're really going to need a filter now or all kinds of people in the EU are going to be reading web comments about what a bunch of wankers these asshats are.

Re:They're really going to need one now

[Anonymous Coward]

The great thing about the EU is that there are so many disparate power brokers, and getting something like this past all of them is basically impossible.

Estonia can push this all it wants (presumably being strong armed into it in exchange for US or UK defence from Russia, as Copyright is not something Estonia has ever given a shit about before now).

So yes, they can propose all they want, but then it has to get through the European Commission, then it has to get through the European Parliament, then individual countries have to be willing to transcribe it into their own laws (even though they're legally obligated to do so, in the past some have chosen not to), and then it has to survive court challenges in national courts, and then it has to survive court challenges at the ECHR and/or the ECJ.

So shit like this doesn't bother - "Random douchebag somewhere in the EU proposes really fucking dumb law" basically never transcribes into such laws becoming an actual reality.

We're more at risk in the UK since Brexit however, because this is precisely the sort of reason why the pro Brexit politicians, mostly hard line far right Atlanticists like Rees-Mogg, Gove, Fox and so on always wanted Brexit - they didn't like the fact that the EU imposed so many checks and balances that blocked their ability to push through such stupid laws, so in the UK we'll definitely see more censorship, grossly disproportionate copyright laws and such post-Brexit now because it'll be trivial to pass such things unchallenged, it only has to pass two houses, and the judiciary is entirely neutered without an impartial external authority like the ECHR/ECJ to get an opinion from.

But the voters voted for it, they deemed the price of sovereignty in an undemocracy like the UK where as little as 30% of the population can rule with absolute power against the will of the other 70% of losing the ability to maintain checks and balances on power was a price worth paying. That is, a majority decided they'd rather given an undemocratic minority from inside our country absolute power over a broad range of often independent and objective power bases with countless checks and balances. Theresa May has already put forward proposals for greater censorship and monitoring - i.e. it's currently an official agenda item for the current government that all people who visit porn sites should be formally trackable through an identifiable item such as a debit, credit card, passport, or driving license, i.e. no anonymous browsing of porn sites will be allowed under current government. Other sites such as political sites under the guise of terrorism will undoubtedly be the next step once plan think of the children has been completed with porn sites.

Join Us!

[Anonymous Coward]

The Great Firewall will be extended to include all!

Wait...

What will we keep out, if we already are eradicating the innovative ideas? Quickly! Suppress art!

New internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Those of us in the tech sector need to be seriously talking about building a new layer of internet on top of the old one.

Human expression and dignity is under assault by fascists cloaked in the sheepskin of virtue.

Google, Facebook, Cloudflare, are now marching lockstep with the oppressive regimes of China and the EU.

Re:New internet

[MikeDataLink]

Those of us in the tech sector need to be seriously talking about building a new layer of internet on top of the old one.

Agreed. I have been thinking about this for some time. There's got to be some kind of Virtual Internet (maybe based on VPNs) that we can build over the top of the current Internet. One where all traffic is encrypted and the sources are untraceable. Similar to TOR, but without all of the hops.

Re:New internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Good luck is all I can say. The only project to put serious effort in to something like that is Freenet and it's a piece of shit (being Java doesn't help).

Re:New internet

[Anonymous Coward]

They will outlaw VPNs and make it a chrime that gives you 50 years in jail

Re:New internet

[coastwalker]

They are not marching as fast as the right wing architects of fascism I can assure you. You are being fed a diet of propaganda designed to protect the 0.01% and their wealth at the expense of 99.01% of the people. The corporations which you mention make their money out of the 99.01% of the people so they basically couldn't give a fuck so long as they maintain their revenue stream. Why are you so stupid?

Re:New internet

[CrimsonAvenger]

You are being fed a diet of propaganda designed to protect the 0.01% and their wealth at the expense of 99.01% of the people.

SO, what about the other 0.98% who are neither the wealthy nor the people? That's what I want to know!

Re:New internet

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the remaining 0.98%? Do they not count or soemthing?

0.01% + 99.01% = 99.02%

Re:New internet

[Opportunist]

They can as well lock my body up when they already imprisoned me.

Re:New internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, for your family and friends, you can install Retroshare.

Re:New internet

[Anonymous Coward]

SO, what about the other 0.98% who are neither the wealthy nor the people? That's what I want to know!

We just lie on census forms, but the occasional conspiracy nutter recognizes us as non-human sentients with arguably legal citizenship (whether you apply the text of the laws or the assumptions of the writers).

Re:New internet

[Anonymous Coward]

They're a rounding error. No one cares about them.

Re:New internet

[lgw]

Any attempt at anonymity is useless "without all the hops". It's the only way to make traffic analysis non-trivial. IMO, Freenet was the right approach - turn everything into a big distributed hash table. No servers to take down, everything encrypted and p2p, assembling encrypted blobs of content into something coherent only happens at the client. Too bad it's so inherently slow it never took off, but "slow" may be the inevitable price if you want untraceable sources and no take-downs.

Freenet had its own security flaws, don't get me wrong, but the core idea is a good foundation for something modern.

Re:New internet

[nukenerd]

SO, what about the other 0.98% who are neither the wealthy nor the people? That's what I want to know!

I think that's me.

Re:New internet

[MikeDataLink]

Any attempt at anonymity is useless "without all the hops". It's the only way to make traffic analysis non-trivial.

I don't think so. With point-to-multipoint tunnels, the routers in the middle would never know where the traffic inside the tunnels was destined.

Re:New internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Found the greek guy!

Re:New internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, this is a call to arms. And we'll need the 3D printing thing to print our own hardware since all the prefabricated stuff is full of backdoors. We have a long arduous battle ahead of us, We are losing badly right now. I wish more people with the talent and money would feel the urge, but maybe they're just too comfortable to care.

Re:New internet

[sexconker]

Sources on the internet are always traceable. That's how packets get delivered to and from their ultimate destination. This is how Ethernet and IP works, Yes, you can encrypt shit, add layers of hosts acting as blind message passers, etc. But then you have to trust your nodes.

Re:New internet

[sexconker]

That doesn't scale. We tried that back in the early days where every host received every frame/packet and decided to open it or ignore it.
Nor is it secure, because no one cares about the destination, they care about the source. Every router that receives a packet will simply log where it came from. Follow the chain long enough and you get to a host that generated it. Logging will be required. Passing along encrypted data you didn't decrypt and inspect first will be verboten. Install our spyware and certs if you want to remain secure, citizen.

Re:New internet

[Man On Pink Corner]

Those of us in the tech sector need to be seriously talking about building a new layer of internet on top of the old one

Ah, yes, technical solutions to sociopolitical problems. Those always work really well.

Re:New internet

[Kjella]

IMO, Freenet was the right approach - turn everything into a big distributed hash table. (...) Too bad it's so inherently slow it never took off

I don't think it was inherent, it was just stupid. I looked into it... wow, it must be 10 years ago or something and it didn't scale because with many nodes and relatively small node sizes to total data it'd almost be an accident if you found what you looked for. Increasing your own node's connections helped massively, which it shouldn't. I was studying the effect of each node not only picking a place in the hash table, but also creating a highly directed network with more slots the closer your hashes. That way you'd be much more likely to get closer and closer instead of running into dead ends or circle loops as Freenet tended to do. That created a very strong "gravity" to the network that could be analyzed but I essentially divided the problem into two parts, in the beginning the request bounced randomly for anonymity then the "homing" kicked in and found the content for efficiency.

As part of that I also created the opportunity for "shortcuts", like if it had gone node 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13 to find the content node 3 could add a "and here's my contact info" and node 12 maybe pick up on it so the return path was 13-12-3-2-1, either temporarily for that one block or as a new link in the network. That created the opportunity for much faster downloads, in particular if you as a downloader didn't care you could shout "hey, here I am" to everyone for a torrent-like download. That of course wouldn't work for everyone but the risk is often asymmetrical or depends on your location/situation while Freenet has only one speed for everything in both directions.

The main problem though was that it didn't do onion routing which made it extremely vulnerable to statistical analysis and because of its terrible algorithm for locating anything routing through a random node was like finding a needle in a haystack. With my algorithm that started to seem plausible though, you could actually send a request to a particular node without knowing the path, that would retrieve the content and forward it to you encrypted. Or at least it could in a simulation of a million nodes with 50 connections/node. It also made onion inserts possible, which is probably even more important. Also data was padded to half-powers of 2, so if you were sending/receiving an image 166321 bytes long it would be 192kb like everything else from 128kb to 192k. Plus I experimented with various kind of mix-master buffers and fake traffic to make traffic analysis difficult to say where any stream actually begins, ends or is routed to.

With anonymous inserts you could also do tricks like double keys (XOR the content, hash again) that would render "denial-of-keyspace" attacks useless since one of the two keys would be good. If you trust the onion routing you could do automatic healing with PAR blocks meaning files are much more likely to download fast or not at all, with Freenet that was a pretty big security risk. Also I experimented with insert-specific keys for the same data so you could insert known files with lower risk. Also a more intelligent system for signed pointers so you could do RSS-like feeds. I dabbled in making a forum/email system but never found a true cure to spam, enough trash could bring anything down. I also managed to make peer circles, that was a pretty neat anti-analysis trick for low-volume content... basically the same block goes in a circle, only the client and the meeting point alters data, could do encrypted chat with reasonably low lag, not instant but like sub-second.

The one thing I never really got solved was the problem of poison nodes and "catch-and-release"... basically if your node keeps getting offers from one poison node to connect to more poison nodes eventually you'll end up talking only to poison nodes, even with onion routing those too will be compromised. I tried making something equivalent of guard nodes and that nodes you

Re:New internet

[TeknoHog]

Try I2P.

Re:New internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Faggot nazi trolls deserve no expression, they deserve death.

Re:New internet

[AHuxley]

Re "They will outlaw VPNs and make it a chrime that gives you 50 years in jail"
Enough EU experts have seen, worked with and know of the NSA/GCHQ efforts with systems like XKeyscore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/..., Turbulence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....
EU VPN users will be found and their attempts to use the internet for freedom discovered.
The full force of EU member state laws will then be used depending on the content and comments.
The new internet needs to take into consideration all methods any EU member gov/mil can find to counter internet freedom.

Re:New internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Some kind of broadcast tech would be needed me thinks... it's too easy to just block one or two connections.

Re:New internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed 100%. A new P2P DNS system - allowing single name domains, and .free top level domains. A Web Browser using newer than HTML rendering with raster graphics, and a more intuitive design approach to websites (more like illustrator for imagery and an invisible overlay for menus/clicking etc.) also a giant p2p file sharing.

Re:New internet

[Antique Geekmeister]

Until your endpoint is hacked with a zero day exploits. Also sadly, too many websites engage in profound tracking efforts involving tracking cookies, back end shared databases, and commonly sourced websites carrying personal information to be completely sure of privacy.

Re:New internet

[Anonymous Coward]

No, we need to vote politicians who repeal all this legislation.
Or to become politicians ourselves to repeal all this legislation.
The new Internet will be under some kind of law, as well.

Re:New internet

[Anonymous Coward]

While a technical solution may mitigate a social problem (and mitigation *does* save lives), this is a fundamentally social/political problem. So I'm all for technical mitigations (remember PGP?), but we *must not* forget the uglier, messier, more difficult root cause.

Otherwise the cut-off heads will be spawning ever uglier and ever more numerous hydras.

Re: New internet

[Anonymous Coward]

The Internet (technology) created the entire paradigm here. These little Nazis at Google are only able to burn their Jews because of inherent flaws in the technology. It can be fixed.

Re: New internet

[Entrope]

Please, tell us more about how Google, Facebook, Amazon, and the other big corporations are part of the right-wing fascist conspiracy.

Re: New internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Fascism: "... a system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism."

Tell us how they aren't fascists, you fucking imbecile.

Re: New internet

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't spread the ideals that defeat these fascists at Google when they control the channels of discourse. They are (demonstrably) suppressing and de-personing anyone who is a threat to their monopoly or xenocentric worldviews.

They are legitimately a threat to humanity.

Re:New internet

[evolutionary]

Absolutely right. We need to decentralize the Internet. that is the only way to truly preserve it. It got too centralized and Google, Facebook, and possibly cloudflare (dont' know about them, but you could be right), are certainly participating in web censorship/suppression for governments.

Re: New internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that sounds valid

Re:New internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Username checks out.

Re:New internet

[mrwireless]

If the technologists don't develop a better understanding of how humans and power work, the same problems will develop in the new version.

Case in point: the blockchain. Sounds fun at first, but if you look closer you realize it's fundamentally incompatible with what humans and society needs: it records everything, is not really anonymous, can't be changed, is designed to limit accountability, etc.

We put our values into code. Code restricts. Code becomes law.

In the grand scheme of things society's ills aren't fixed by technology. What we need is to stimulate compassion, education, a broader recognition of our desires, biases and ideological needs. Technology can support that, but in the end it's the hard work of being human, and recognizing the limits and dangers of technology.

Captcha: accuses

Brexit is the right decision.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's becoming clearer and clearer that the UK is making the right decision by aiming to cut as many ties as possible with the EU. It just isn't worth being involved with them if it potentially exposes a nation to nonsense like this, or worse, to the hordes of illegal aliens from some of the worst places imaginable who have essentially invaded Europe without any real resistance these past few years. Whatever short-term pain there might be from Brexit is well worth it.

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[Captain Splendid]

Wait, the country that has one of the most aggressive pro-filtering stances outside of the Middle East is now a beacon of reason? ROFLMAO!

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[Avarist]

What about the UK invading almost every country on the planet and ruining it beyond repairs being the cause of all these immigrants in the first place? Never crossed your mind did it?

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[GLMDesigns]

No. Because what you said is foolishness.

Yes. England invaded lots of places. So did Spain and Russia (as it expanded east) and China (as it expanded west) and the Zulus (as they expanded south) and the Chaldeans and the Egyptians and the Greeks and the Persians and the ... (you get the point).

Ruining it and causing migration - here's where you're wrong. English colonialism is not the reason for Pakistani immigration.

You might as well blame Karl Marx for Zimbabwe's collapse. It would be more relevant than the 80 years of British rule.

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[liquid_schwartz]

What about the UK invading almost every country on the planet and ruining it beyond repairs being the cause of all these immigrants in the first place? Never crossed your mind did it?

Let me get this straight, the UK invaded the majority of the globe and is single highhandedly responsible for ruining the countries and by extension for all the migrants. Wow, either they have far more capability than I've ever credited them with or you really don't take responsibility for anything. I view immigration as a case of if your country sucks fix it. If you can't fix it then don't take your messed up ways with you and assimilate into wherever you go. Too bad immigration seems to be a case of "my country sucks so I'll take my messed up ways with me wherever I go and ruin those places too". As I've said many times, you can have nice things or mass immigration but you can't have both.

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[coastwalker]

Brexit benefits no one except the hedge fund managers who funded the propaganda for it.

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[Captain Splendid]

the UK invaded the majority of the globe

Close enough

and is single highhandedly responsible for ruining the countries and by extension for all the migrants.

It's not exactly a fringe argument to say that Britain's colonial and post-colonial policies exacerbated local problems as well as inventing entirely new ones, especially when it came to its holdings in Africa and the Middle East.

I view immigration as a case of if your country sucks fix it.

What if other actors (e.g Britain or the USA) have had (and continue to have) non-negligible involvement in your country's development? Is it still entirely their fault?

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[lgw]

Here's a revolutionary idea: perhaps moral blame is not heritable? Maybe, just maybe, the grandson is not to blame for the sins of the grandfather.

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's look at the world today.

We see people from the worst third-world hellholes (most of which were actually ruled by the French, Spanish and/or Dutch, rather than the British) trying to get into places like the UK, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Singapore and Hong Kong. These places with extraordinarily high standards of living wouldn't even exist in their present form if it weren't for the English, Scottish and Irish investing in them.

Then there are places like South Africa, Rhodesia (sometimes called "Zimbabwe" and "Zambia" today), and India which once had rather high standards of living, but that have clearly gotten worse off as they've rejected the influence of the UK.

The British Empire created what are today some of the best countries in the world. It's these countries that the worst third-worlders are now essentially invading, because these third-worlders are totally incapable of building anything equivalent in their home lands.

Although you don't want to admit it to yourself, and especially in public, I know that you know all of this. You know that the British Empire brought civility, democracy, stability, and prosperity to billions of people. The nations that the British and the Irish built are among the best that have ever existed.

The anger you're expressing here is just a cover for the extreme jealousy you feel. You just can't handle how successful the British Empire was, and how it's responsible for creating the best nations on Earth.

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[DontBeAMoran]

The British Empire also gave us James Bond, Dr. Who and Mr. Bean.

And for that, we are grateful.

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[Anonymous Coward]

You might as well blame Karl Marx for Zimbabwe's collapse. It would be more relevant than the 80 years of British rule.

Well, Karl Marx did spend a considerable amount of time in London promulgating his philosophy (and is buried there)... In fact I think England was one of the few places that was willing to accept him at that time...

Part of the contribution to Zimbabwe's current dire economic situation is due to their intervention in the Congo, and I for one blame the situation in the Congo on Belgium. Under the same construction, it's not a stretch to blame the British for Zimbabwe...

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[DNS-and-BIND]

Whites are responsible for slavery even though it was outlawed 150 years ago.

Don't punish illegal aliens for the sins of their parents.

Which one is right? They can't both be valid.

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[networkBoy]

It's the same as communism:
We are all equal, it's just that some are more equal than others.

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[Anonymous Coward]

"English colonialism is not the reason for Pakistani immigration. "

Maybe not the reason for it. But it certainly is payback!

We're breeding like mice and pretty soon yall will be migrating to Pakistan instead.

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[nukenerd]

What about the UK invading almost every country on the planet and ruining it beyond repairs being the cause of all these immigrants in the first place?

What BS.

Britain colonised some places and these ended up being some of the best places to live (eg North America, Australia, NZ). Other places they did not colonise (in the sense of settling large numbers of people there) but administered (eg India, African nations, parts of the Middle East); some of these latter are hell-holes today. But they were hell-holes before - that is why Britain stepped in and administrated them. Britain would start with trading posts, but when trade stopped because of warring between different tribes inland, the British would go in and bang heads together to stop it. This led to taking over high-level internal policing and administration. In these cases the local native rulers were usually allowed to retain their positions under British protection. This was a different approach from some other European colonial powers (notably France) which tried to stamp out the local cultures.

Eg gradually most (not all) of India became administrated in that way, including the building of infrastructure such as railways, ports, and government buildings often superior to those back home. While many British administrators and engineers and their families lived for long periods in India, they were not settlers like in North America and would always be talking of the day they would go back home. In fact settling was only done where the natives were clearly primitive (usually stone age in culture) and the climate was temperate.

It was Britain withdrawing from some of these countries that was a disaster for them. India was a blood-bath in the late 1940's (but recovered eventually), and some of the old African colonies still are. The reason the UK is sought by immigrants is that Britain had given these ex-colonies a taste of how life could be better than in a shit hole, and of course the English language which remained the official one in many of these ex-colonies.

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[Kjella]

I view immigration as a case of if your country sucks fix it. If you can't fix it then don't take your messed up ways with you and assimilate into wherever you go.

Sounds to me like you've got nobody but yourself to care about, they're the only ones who think it's just to pick up a gun and start shooting back. The vast majority of civilians are way too busy trying to protect their family and those closest to them. Particularly when it's so unclear who's the good guys and the bad guys and the front lines are so unclear, it's one thing to go to war and leave your family behind in relative safety. It's quite different when they're in the war zone or even occupied territory with you, against an enemy that obey no rules of war. Millions of people have fled for good reasons to the surrounding areas and I don't blame them one bit for doing that.

What doesn't add up is that almost all the migrants that come to Europe are young and male. Basically you're not sending women and children, you're sending the young, strong and "expendable" males of the family ideally 15-20yo so they can claim to be underage after burning all their papers. And they are supposed to be the economic or geographic anchor to get the rest of the family money or residency. If it looks like they're there to suck the government's teat as hard as they can, that's exactly the mission they were sent for. And they were probably the ones who least needed to leave, it's bullshit. You also don't need to be a genius to realize that many of these will become problem teens/young adults.

Basically, we're helping the wrong people. And we're rewarding smugglers with boatloads (pun intended) of money to do it. And I don't mean it just as a NIMBY defense, save children <10yo and families particularly mothers. They're not the ones causing trouble.

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[infolation]

Actually the only reason Estonia is the current EU President is because the UK relinquished its turn following Brexit.

And, funnily enough, before they received their slot, Estonia were lauding their seemingly progressive digital attitudes.

President Kersti Kaljulaid:
Estonia's six-month turn at the rotating presidency will focus on digital innovation, particularly electronic public services, which the Baltic nation has made a hallmark of its own government. Estonia likes to boast that the only things a citizen cannot do online are get married, get divorced, or sell their home.

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[sexconker]

2/3 ain't bad. Dr. Who is awful, awful crap.

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[thegarbz]

Much of the wealthy west's problem with immigration has nothing to do with why the immigrants are fleeing their home country. Most people aren't immigrating because of their mess or religion or they way their country acts. They are immigrating because they are sick of dodging bombs, being ruled by dictators who would have them beheaded for any of the proposed "fixing" you suggest they do.

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh no, people will have to do what Europe and East Asia have done for centuries and sacrifice their lives to create change. Woe be that someone puts their life on the line to create change for their future generations instead of migrating like cowards and pulling their cowardice and innate problems with the country the come from with them.

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[Anonymous Coward]

Current white people that do not now nor ever have owned slaves broke no laws.

Current illegal immigrants, even if they entered when they were children long ago, are breaking the law now by choosing to remain. Over 18 and they are criminals for not leaving or applying for citizenship and following the process, even if that process means leaving for a time.

Which one is right? They can't both be valid.

Q.E.D. That statement is wrong.

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you snaggle toothed pasty-assed Brits.

Read THIS if you really want to know how the UK not only treats the fucking darkies, but for that matter the 'lesser' classes of their own race.

Your day is coming. First Brexit, next, marginalization, and lastly, being overrun by third-worlders.

Fitting.

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[Anonymous Coward]

Whites are responsible for slavery even though it was outlawed 150 years ago.

Don't punish illegal aliens for the sins of their parents.

Which one is right? They can't both be valid.

Easy, the second statement is right.

The first is wrong on many levels. One would have to be deeply racist (read: American) to find any validity in it.

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[Anonymous Coward]

In response to a long propaganda argument about British rule elevated hellholes to better places, I have a complete and succinct rebuttal in but one word:

Ireland

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[Z80a]

The British population and the British government aren't the same thing exactly.
If anything, the only thing they agree on is the brexit.

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[Uberbah]

Yes. England invaded lots of places. So did Spain and Russia (as it expanded east) and China (as it expanded west) and the Zulus (as they expanded south) and the Chaldeans and the Egyptians and the Greeks and the Persians and the ... (you get the point).

The point seems to rest on a heap of false equivalencies, as only two of of the countries on your list aspired to globe-spanning empires.

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[Anonymous Coward]

No they all did, only two actually managed it though.

Don't hate the player, hate the game.

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the countries the British invaded were shitheaps before they got there. Slavery was long-practiced in much of the Arab and African world, but the British eventually clamped down on it.

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[Anonymous Coward]

Read this book : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_House
In there says clear how the Chinese Communist government sent refugees over the border, in Hong Kong,
to intimidate the politicians in Hong Kong.

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[dunkelfalke]

Seriously? There are people who stille believe in the white man's burden? In the twenty first century, no less? We Germans have a name for this kind of people - die Ewiggestrigen. That means people who are forever stuck in the past.

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[dunkelfalke]

He is to blame if he still profits from them.

Re: Brexit is the right decision.

[Entrope]

Now they will need to add "speak their mind" to that list.

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[GLMDesigns]

What does aspirations have to do with it? Are you telling me Alexander's aspirations or Kublai Khan's aspirations were any less?

They didn't have matching technology - but if your objection is aspiration of world conquest, the original point falls apart.

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[Anonymous Coward]

Whites are responsible for slavery even though it was outlawed 150 years ago.

Blacks too. Mostly for the enslaving. Whites, mostly for the trading.

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[liquid_schwartz]

...And I don't mean it just as a NIMBY defense, save children <10yo and families particularly mothers. They're not the ones causing trouble.

Unless you consider the costs imposed by education, healthcare, and in the case of US anchor babies. Other than that no trouble at all.

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[Cederic]

Snaggle toothed? pasty-assed? fucking darkies?

You appear to be a racist cunt.

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[Cederic]

I believe you'll find the fucking Irish were the problem there. If they'd done the sensible thing and rejected the idiocy of Catholic beliefs they may have become civilised centuries sooner.

Shit, they're still batshit fucking lunatic due to their archaic superstitious stupidity.

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[david_thornley]

The problems in the Middle East are largely because of British, French, and US activities, starting after WWI and the breakup of the Ottoman Empire into arbitrary national mandates. The US didn't really start disruptive activity until the 1950s.

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[david_thornley]

There was the Church of England, and there were the Catholics. There were plenty of civilized Catholic countries. That wasn't the problem, unless you're saying they should have given up their culture to the invaders.

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[Cederic]

England went secular and built an empire. Ireland stayed true to its religious stupidity and continues to be a fucked up place.

Draw your own conclusions.

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[AnilJ]

Not people of the Indian subcontinent. Not in modern history.

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[AnilJ]

Also Opium Wars. British were brutish.

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[GLMDesigns]

The only place where you can say truly say that is the creation of Iraq and possibly the entire group of countries - Lebanon, Jordan (now Jordan, Israel and Palestine), Syria and Iraq. The other countries from Morocco to Egypt did not have border changes and the time that they were conquered was irrelevant. (Turkey was a foreign power in Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula as well). There were no hard and fast borders in the Sinai peninsula so the marks on the map meant little. There was also close to no boots on the ground there because it was seen as a waste land.

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[david_thornley]

I believe you'll find that England built an empire and then went secular, rather than the reverse. The mostly Catholic French built an impressive empire also.

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[david_thornley]

Yes, that group of countries is what I meant. North African countries did not get messed up in the same way. They also don't seem to cause nearly as much trouble.

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[GLMDesigns]

The Ottoman Empire Controlled everything from Iran to Saudi Arabia to Egypt.

Regardless of anything new borders would have been drawn up after WWI.

The Arabian Peninsular's borders are fine.
So are Lebanon's and Syria's.

The only thing truly messed up is Iraq and the Israeli / Palestinian problem.

Israel would have not been a problem if there weren't pogroms and other attempts to kill immigrant Jews during the 1920s and 1930s. If all was cool then Jews would simply be a minority population in the Kingdom of Jordan. Jordan would include what is now Israel and Palestine. So the Israeli - Palestinian problem is NOT due to the borders made after WWI.

And Syria's Eastern Border and Iraq would have been a mess anyway with it's rivalries.

Kurd v Arab v Persian & Shia (mostly Persian) v Sunni v (the mix of "heretical" Muslim religions often Kurd) would have been as intractable in the 1920s as it is today, 100 years later.

Re:Brexit is the right decision.

[Uberbah]

What does aspirations have to do with it?

Um...everything? Complete this sentence: "the sun never sets on the XYZ Empire." Did Russia have colonies across the world? How about China?

They didn't have matching technology

You're right - China was a century ahead of any European country in naval prowess, yet they didn't establish a global empire - as opposed to England and Spain.

but if your objection is aspiration of world conquest, the original point falls apart

Or you're just really eager to hold onto that false equivalency.

To fight Russia, we must become Russia !

[Anonymous Coward]

To fight Russia, we must become Russia ?
Sure lets put in more surveillance than Russia and China.
Any dissenting opinion can be blocked.

Re:To fight Russia, we must become Russia !

[coastwalker]

Amusingly since the end of the cold war most western governments have implemented the tactics of the soviet union because no one can point out that the enemy used to do that.

DACA

[Anonymous Coward]

DACA IS CACA

Re:DACA

[Anonymous Coward]

CACA meanning sh!t in latin based languages :D

Re:DACA

[Anonymous Coward]

Explained joke is explained.

Pre-Code Internet

[mapkinase]

That's what they will call a brief period of 15 years.

Re:Pre-Code Internet

[AHuxley]

That time of culture, freedom and fun.
When emerging search engines just searched the www and presented results based on the user's search terms.
The EU now wants political controls, laws and controls.
A new digital Berlin wall to keep a EU bureaucracy in control of users, comments and news.
Smart people will work hard to tunnel around all such EU censorship.
Freedom of speech and freedom after speech will be saved from the EU laws.

EU

[Tailhook]

The EU apologists are downplaying this by pointing out that the current EU president (Estonia) is merely agenda setting and not a powerful executive. People that understand the malice of big government recognize this for what it is; the camel's nose. It will survive the transition to the next unelected EU president, and the one after and so on, until its on the docket in Brussel's various commissions and parliament.

Re:EU

[AmiMoJo]

Since the presidency of the EU is not "big government", it's literally just a rotating position that gives countries an opportunity to propose an agenda. Estonia has pissed it's opportunity away by proposing something that seems to violate the human rights of EU citizens (the right to privacy in particular) and which has no hope of ever being adopted or even influencing the legislation.

Before you complain about the EU, note that it has some of the strongest privacy protections in the world. They have been used to stop government spying, they have been used to force massive multinational companies like Google to respect individual privacy. And those are actual, written and enforced law, not some random proposal that has zero chance of ever being enacted.

Re:EU

[admin7087]

There is nothing to downplay, this will never get passed. You wanna bet?

Re:EU

[barc0001]

And the wingnut alarmists think that the next president will bring it in. It still has to go through the Commission, the council and then parliament. Which it won't. Several groups already have this in their crosshairs and are making noise about it. Not to mention ECHR - who literally yesterday gave a ruling that your employer has to notify you of monitoring of your work email - would torpedo it in an instant.

Re:EU

[coastwalker]

The destruction of the EU is a CIA dream. The EU are the only global political force that actually have any alternative against the American system of Corporate fucking of the population. Enjoy your slavery to corporations who are free to fuck your environment you fool.

Re:EU

[ACE209]

Yeah - this proposal won't make it far.

Re:EU

[lgw]

Estonia has pissed it's opportunity away by proposing something

Not likely. I';m sure they were well paid for proposing this nonsense, which is all any politician wants.

They have been used to stop government spying,

If you're ever in the market for a bridge, I have a great one to sell you!

Re:EU

[Anonymous Coward]

Call us when they decide to give citizens freedom of speech and expression.

Re:EU

[fustakrakich]

They have been used to stop government spying

Shirley you're not serious!

they have been used to force massive multinational companies like Google to respect individual privacy. And those are actual, written and enforced law

*cough* Now that is funny! Wanna pull the other one?

Re:EU

[infolation]

If you're ever in the market for a bridge, I have a great one to sell you!

obfs2, obfs3, scramblesuit, or fte?

Re:EU

[Anonymous Coward]

obfs2, obfs3, scramblesuit, or fte?

It's been obfs4 for quite a while now, do keep up, will you?

Re:EU

[Anonymous Coward]

This is laughably stupid, since if you look carefully enough you'll see that the CIA actually had a hand in getting the EU started.

Re:EU

[Uberbah]

Call us when they decide to give citizens freedom of speech and expression.

You mean like the freedom to advocate for boycotting Apartheid Israel without being sent to jail for the bullshit charge of antisemitism - or just the "freedom" to be complete racist assholes to Muslims a la Charlie Hebdo?

Re: EU

[Evtim]

https://youtu.be/ptfmAY6M6aA

Nuff said

Re:EU

[Anonymous Coward]

Not all brown people are Muslim, you racist asshole. It's a religion, not a race.

Re:EU

[Anonymous Coward]

We don't even need to know what their ideology is. All we need to know is that consolidation of power is the first and most important prerequisite of oppression. You may be able to convince yourself that consolidation of power can be "managed properly", but I'll side with the thousands of years of history proving the opposite.

Re: EU

[Entrope]

Warning: Eurocrats are known to the state of California to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm.

Re:EU

[evolutionary]

While all these are valid points, the fact remains that the EU has a president who is seeking to implement these Chinese-like Internet policies. Regardless of whether the majority of the EU nations agree, regardless of whether there are privacy laws in place, the president of a large group of nations like this can do a LOT of damage, so this proposal of his needs to be nipped in the bud before it takes root and gains traction. Nothing like this every gets implement in a single stage. It's like cancer, if it isn't found stopped early, it increases the chance of a terminal case. (like China, it would take another revolution there to remove the hard nose tactics in place there now, which was always the point).

Re:EU

[Cederic]

You can't be racist to Muslims. You can however highlight the lack of logic, rationality, common sense or morality to their beliefs, you can tell them they're ignorant savage cunts and you can mock them.

In the UK you can't however incite hatred against them, so please, don't hate the deluded fuckwits, mock them and pity them instead.

Re:EU

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't try to muddy the waters by confusing freedom of speech with harassment, threatening, or stalking -- all three of which are already illegal. Like the silly meme of shouting "fire" in a crowded theater, the problem isn't freedom of speech, the problem is something entirely unrelated to freedom of speech (deliberately placing people in danger). Making that illegal isn't a restriction on speech, but a restriction on placing others in danger. Calling that a restriction on speech is absurd, except of course if your agenda is to set a precedent for further abuse of power.

Re:EU

[mjwx]

Since the presidency of the EU is not "big government", it's literally just a rotating position that gives countries an opportunity to propose an agenda. Estonia has pissed it's opportunity away by proposing something that seems to violate the human rights of EU citizens (the right to privacy in particular) and which has no hope of ever being adopted or even influencing the legislation.

Before you complain about the EU, note that it has some of the strongest privacy protections in the world. They have been used to stop government spying, they have been used to force massive multinational companies like Google to respect individual privacy. And those are actual, written and enforced law, not some random proposal that has zero chance of ever being enacted.

This.

In a free, democratic parliament you can propose any law you like, no matter how stupid. Proposing a law does not guarantee it'll pass.

Re:EU

[Uberbah]

You can't be racist to Muslims.

Of course you can. Ask any American Exceptionalist to describe the sort of Muslims he's talking about, and you're going to have a list that looks like this:

1) Arab
2) Arab
3) Someone from one of the 'stans (who looks pretty much just like an Arab)
4) Black African

You can however highlight the lack of logic, rationality, common sense or morality to their beliefs, you can tell them they're ignorant savage cunts and you can mock them.

Sure you can - because the right to be a completely ignorant racist towards Muslims is one of the more cherished uses of the freedom of speech amongst American Exceptionalists.

Re:EU

[Cederic]

You're conflating racism and stupidity with being racist against a religion.

It's possible to be anti-islam without ever touching on race. The fact that people associate Islam with specific races is due to their own stupidity, and if they attack the religion as a means of attacking a race then that's also their stupidity and isn't actual racism, it's stupidity borne from racism.

Attacking the religion is not however racist. "The Koran advocates pedophilia" is an attack on Islam (that may or may not be accurate) but at no point infers or requires a Muslim to be a specific race.

I haven't encountered the term "American Exceptionalist" before so no comment on those.

Re:EU

[Uberbah]

You're conflating racism and stupidity with being racist against a religion.

Not in the slightest. The Venn diagram between select races/ethnic groups and the "radical Islamists" islamphobes like to whine about is a complete overlap. This is following the well known Lee Atwater trope:

You start out in 1954 by saying, "N*****, n*****, n*****." By 1968 you can't say "n*****" â" that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me â" because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "N*****, n*****."

Instead of "n*****", American Exceptionalists say "muslim". Or "illegal immigrant", in the case of latinos. It's all the same shit.

Attacking the religion is not however racist. "The Koran advocates pedophilia" is an attack on Islam (that may or may not be accurate) but at no point infers or requires a Muslim to be a specific race.

Which is complete idiocy. No different from pretending that Christians are supporters of child murder because the Bible says Abraham hauled up his son on top a mountain and was prepared to sacrifice him to please Jehovah. Or that Christians believe in incest because Eve fucked her son to continue the species.

Complete. Idiocy.

Re:EU

[Cederic]

I give you an example of a non-racist attack on religion and you respond with.. an example of a non-racist attack on religion.

Thank you for proving my fucking point.

Complete. Idiocy.

Ironic.

Re:EU

[Uberbah]

No bigot in the history of the human race has stood up and said "hey everybody, I'm a bigot who has irrational prejudices against people I've never met!" They all have reasons for feeling the way they do. Reasons based on anecdotes, confirmation bias and general bullshit.

Which is exactly what you're doing, with the "Muslims believe in xyz because their book says so" canard. But no one would be stupid enough to apply the same reasoning to Christians, and argue that they all believe in mother-son fucking "because their book says so".

Re:EU

[Cederic]

the "Muslims believe in xyz because their book says so" canard

I suggested that a specific statement regarding the Koran would be a non-racist attack on Islam. I didn't say that Muslims agree, or believe in it; you're misinterpreting.

But no one would be stupid enough to apply the same reasoning to Christians, and argue that they all believe in mother-son fucking "because their book says so"

I think that's false. Someone in this conversation has already inferred that 'book says X so people for whom that book is a religious guide believe X', thus demonstrating very adequately that people are stupid enough to argue that. You just fucking did argue that.

I still don't see any reference to race, thus proving my point yet further.

the Nazis had newspaper censorship and now EU

[Joe_Dragon]

the Nazis had newspaper censorship and now EU wants that for the net?? what is next???

Re:the Nazis had newspaper censorship and now EU

[coastwalker]

You assume that because the NSA reads everything you ever look at or post that you are any more free. You are a cretin.

Re:the Nazis had newspaper censorship and now EU

[Anonymous Coward]

Ladies and Gentlemen, Godwin is in the house!

Re:the Nazis had newspaper censorship and now EU

[Anonymous Coward]

If the brown shirt fits...

Re:the Nazis had newspaper censorship and now EU

[Cederic]

I'm in Europe, I'm pretty certain the NSA get at least as much information about my activities as they do for people in the US.

What the fuck does that have to do with the EU seeking to extend the mechanisms it uses to control its member countries' citizens?

My cat just fell asleep in my arms and started quivering in her dreams. She cares more about EU citizen freedom than the autocrats running the EU and she's never even spoken to me about it.

Fascism spreads

[evolutionary]

there is only one reason for using China's system for control data/opinions shows: To guarantee the status quo and minimize or eliminate any threat to your current power structure. Unless the world wants their governments run like China, those that don't like it need to speak up, openly, now....because once it's in, it will be a lot harder to remove. (as per design)

Re:Fascism spreads

[Anonymous Coward]

Sweden wants to censor alternative news media (what they call fake news and nazis)

Re:Fascism spreads

[coastwalker]

I give you a few months before Trump implements the same thing in the USA. You are stupid beyond belief.

Re:Fascism spreads

[Anonymous Coward]

The only people in the US that seem to be trying to censor the news and flow of information is liberal left. Sure the other side would love to do it too, but they don't have the complicit allies in the media to help make it happen.

Re: Fascism spreads

[Anonymous Coward]

"Trump and going to be impeached next week!" says increasingly nervous man for the 320th time this year.

Re:Fascism spreads

[evolutionary]

Fortunately Trump has not shown the intelligence, nor even technically alliances necessary to do so. (Most tech companies do not work with him). Putin has all of these which is part of what makes Putin so dangerous. (His intelligence and knowledge of the KBG doesn't hurt either).

Unfortunately, there is a monitoring net set up during the Obama administration (as demonstrated by Snowden) that makes it relative easy to implement in the US. Also, there are clear signs that Google (and Yahoo) is already participating in restricting searches as demonstrated by the EFF. Those with the know how can bypass some of this with VPNs to other countries and searching from Google, say in France, Germany, or South American which bypasses these business/government "boosts". I tend to use Qwant, a French search engine), sometimes Dogpile, or DuckDuckGo (controlled by Russia) as well as Yandex (another Russian Search engine) to get results I cannot find in Google USA. I'll probably look into Japanese Search engines as well. It's becoming clear the centralization of the web is too easy for governments to clamp down and VPN's are being banned in China and Russia. One observer correctly commented that the web needs to be decentralized

But none of this has anything to with Trump, who has shown signs of mental instability, vanity, and utter lack of knowledge of how government or international politics works, plus has the finesse of a bull in a china shop, breaking everything in it's path. And on top of that, appears to be a white supremacist sympathizer as well, with proven lack of respect of rule of law. (Releasing Sheriff who basically defied a court order). A President who doesn't respect rule of law, is a really dangerous things, and it undermines the confidence in general of rule of law. Not sure we really want that, but I digress. To main topic, if we do have a Chinese firewall, Trump will probably know less about it than most people who keep up with international news. (and certainly less than any techie I know)

Re:Fascism spreads

[Anonymous Coward]

I give you a few months before Trump implements the same thing in the USA. You are stupid beyond belief.

Trump grows more impotent every week. He's not gonna do shit. You're not, however, stupid beyond belief; you're exactly as stupid as we all believe you to be.

Ah, Estonia - the country of SS

[Cyberax]

Estonia is the only remaining country in Europe where SS (yes, _that_ SS) veterans march on main streets. I guess it's hard to let go of Nazi past.

Re:Ah, Estonia - the country of SS

[dunkelfalke]

Not the only, Latvia is the same.

Re:Ah, Estonia - the country of SS

[Anonymous Coward]

SS veterans. Really? No, really? Do you even understand who these people were?

Re:Ah, Estonia - the country of SS

[Anonymous Coward]

They would be in other European countries too if freedom of speech wasn't illegal.

Re:Ah, Estonia - the country of SS

[Tempest_2084]

Given the average SS veteran would have to be pushing 90, I'm guessing they're not doing much marching anymore.

Re:Ah, Estonia - the country of SS

[Anonymous Coward]

For a simple reason - for the Baltics, both the soviets and nazis did forced recruitment of baltic people into their armies. There are marches that honour the WW2 fallen soldiers from both the soviet side and nazi side. Most reasonable people don't have an issue with that because no matter which side won, the Estonians and Latvians lost, and the march is to honour the dead for the fact that they died prematurely, not because they believed in the cause of the army they were in.

Re:Ah, Estonia - the country of SS

[dunkelfalke]

Bullshit. These marches honour WaffenSS veterans explicitly. Also those who happily participated in the Holocaust.

Re:Ah, Estonia - the country of SS

[thegarbz]

Estonia is the only remaining country in Europe where SS (yes, _that_ SS) veterans march on main streets.

Sorry I must have missed the part where the winning country gets to decide the losing one imprisons all of their military without trial.

Re:Ah, Estonia - the country of SS

[Cyberax]

The thing is, veterans marched not just as veterans but wearing SS insignia. That's the difference.

Re:Ah, Estonia - the country of SS

[Cyberax]

Yes. They were willing Nazi collaborators, happily participating in Holocaust.

Re:Ah, Estonia - the country of SS

[thegarbz]

The thing is, veterans marched not just as veterans but wearing SS insignia. That's the difference.

And? Oh that's right strip them from their uniforms and punish them without trail too while you're at it.
Unless you have evidence that the people involved committed actual war crimes... No? Didn't think so. Frankly the USA lost the Vietnam war, all your veterans should stop wearing your uniforms in the street and give back your medals.

Re:Ah, Estonia - the country of SS

[Cyberax]

You should learn some history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... - SS was found to be a criminal organization in an international court, with the US approval.

So yes, simply marching as a part of the SS is enough ground for universal condemnation. There have been no "good Nazis", since the war ended.

Re:Ah, Estonia - the country of SS

[Hognoxious]

No conscripts in the SS, fatty.

Re:Ah, Estonia - the country of SS

[Anonymous Coward]

You should learn some history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] - SS was found to be a criminal organization in an international court, with the US approval.

So yes, simply marching as a part of the SS is enough ground for universal condemnation. There have been no "good Nazis", since the war ended.

You should learn some history. On 17 June 1936, all police forces throughout Germany were united into a single organization - part of the SS. Simply being a police officer was enough to become a member of the SS. The police were not the only folks conscripted, either. The SS was NOT a criminal organization - though many members committed horrible crimes, not all did.

So, yes, many SS members were evil, but the ruling that the SS was a "criminal organization" was nothing but propaganda (and not all that different from claiming that all Jews were evil, when one thinks about it) - and completely contrary to the Western notion that a fair trial is needed to determine guilt.

The lesson we should take away from the Nazi state is that there are sociopaths among us (including many people in positions of power or even just involved with the law) - and many ordinary people will do nothing in the face of even extreme wrongdoing (let alone the ordinary kind).

It's a lesson folks in the USA should especially take to heart - many of the judges, much of the legal profession, and a lot of US law enforcement either doesn't understand the Nuremberg Precedent - or even profits from ignoring it's implications for US law (and not just criminal law - ethics problems are a cancer in US law, and lead to a LOT of wrongdoing, even destroyed lives or deaths).

Re:Ah, Estonia - the country of SS

[Anonymous Coward]

the holocaust is fake

some people refuse to be ashamed of lies told about them, go figure

Re:Ah, Estonia - the country of SS

[thegarbz]

I know history quite well. You'll also note that the only people prosecuted are those who committed crimes. People belonging to an organisation are not automatically guilty by association. There's a reason the trials went for as long as they did.

with the US approval.

It's great being on the winning team. History is written by the winners.

There have been no "good Nazis", since the war ended.

That's an interesting and hurtful statement. My grandpa was a "Nazi". He wore a Nazi uniform. It was the only employment he got. Glorified desk clerk overseeing construction activities undertaken during the war. He never hurt a fly and I will be you is a much better man than you'll ever be.

But guilty by association, you sound like you're American so clearly you should be held directly responsible for dropping agent orange. You're a monster.

Re:Ah, Estonia - the country of SS

[Cederic]

the holocaust is fake

No, it is not. It is very well documented, evidenced and people still alive experienced it first hand.

You are either an idiot or a cunt, although I wouldn't rule out both.

Re:Ah, Estonia - the country of SS

[Cyberax]

Not the words: "since the war had ended". Many people (even SS officers) during WWII didn't know anything about Hitler's atrocities.

However, once the war ended the ONLY honorable way was to disavow Nazis. Marching in SS uniform is a clear opposite of that.

Re:Ah, Estonia - the country of SS

[Anonymous Coward]

The nazis actually conscripted people to the SS in Estonia and Latvia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffen-SS_foreign_volunteers_and_conscripts#Estonia

Haha each time...

[Anonymous Coward]

Communists gonna communist, each damn time :-)

Pay up for the massive spying and censorshi- I MEAN, uh, pay for the poor. Yea! For the poor refugees. Do not look at that CCTV tapes with 1000 refugees raping our woman, look here OH SHINY, look here and pay your damn taxes.

Wait!

[Anonymous Coward]

So should we be upset about copyright or internet surveillance or filtering or something else? All those are big topics to discuss, argue and have fun with.

Yappy little dog

[Rick Schumann]

With a population of 1.3 million, it is one of the least-populous member states of the European Union, Eurozone, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), OECD and Schengen Area.

Why should the rest of the EU even listen to them? 'President of the EU' or not? Also, good luck censoring the rest of the non-EU world.

Politicians, when will they learn?

Fucktardedness

[Anonymous Coward]

Between fucktarded politicians 'legislating' more and more restrictions, monitoring, and censoring, and greedy nosy corporations 'monetizing' the ever-loving fuck out of it, they'll kill the Internet by driving everyone away from it; that's what I see happening in a possible future, the Internet being such an absolute unusable sewer that nobody even bothers anymore.

Re:Fucktardedness

[Opportunist]

The internet will become what radio has become. The REALLY old farts here might remember the small, hobby-ish radio stations. Where they had witty DJs, playing local music, often even having local singers and bands who could perform live on the air, have a chat... remember? No? You'd have to be around 80 probably to do so.

Today, what's left of radio stations is a corporate nightmare. A handful of stations, all playing basically the same rubbish nobody really wants to hear, all day, every day, bloodless, lifeless, bland.

And that's what the internet is becoming. What made the internet awesome was that it was a bidirectional medium, the first medium where every participant was not only a receiver but could also become a sender. The not-quite-so-old ones might remember the 90s where people and even some (!) businesses created homepages ... with varying degrees of quality, ok, with very questionable quality. But you could see that someone made an effort, someone tried to leave a mark and a message, a message of individuality.

Today, what's left of that is Facebook pages. All of them about as unique as English suburb houses. All of them created in the same style with the same tools saying the same rubbish all day long. Individuality? Nope. Conformity. We're all individuals. And we're all doing the same. Because that's all we are allowed to do anymore.

And it is getting worse. Because with fewer and fewer people even wanting an individual, personal presence, fewer and fewer people would complain if such a thing becomes illegal. What will be left is corporate-owned, corporate-guided and corporate-designed pages where you may say what you're allowed to say.

Re:Fucktardedness

[Anonymous Coward]

The only things I use the Internet for now, are email, looking up information, and TiVo connects to it daily for Program Guide updates. That covers 99% of my usage. The remaining 1% is paying utility bills, and rarely shopping for things I either can't get locally or will pay 2 or 3 times as much for locally. I do not use "social media", or "streaming services", or anything like that and forsee no future interest in any of it. With the way the Internet has been going, I'd get rid of it completely right now if I thought I could work around not having it.

Re:Fucktardedness

[thinkwaitfast]

Tune in, turn on and drop out.

I rarely internet anymore, mostly killing time whenever I'm on break (20 year old slashdot habit). Very little is new or interesting anymore. On the bright side, toys for nerds are insanely inexpensive from China (I mean electronics and basic components, not premade widgets.It's more fun to build your own).

Re:Fucktardedness

[Anonymous Coward]

Electronics used to be fun. Computers used to be fun. I'm talking about back in the '80s, with Z80 processors, 8" floppy drives, CP/M, IEEE696 backplanes, building some of my own hardware, and writing code in C. Computers were still fun into the '90s, because I had Turbo C, then Borland C/C++, and while I didn't need to build hardware anymore, I still wrote code. These days? I work for a (*AHEM!*) major microprocessor manufacturer, and comparatively speaking it's gone from "hunting for game, fishing, cleaning and cooking your own kills" to "go to the store and get another package of processed lunchmeat". It's all too complex, it's all too locked-down, it's impossible for one person to understand the overall gestalt of the Machine (which is even more machines-in-machines-in-machines than it ever was), and writing your own code, even for fun, is a full-time job in itself (well, it always was, really). Working in it all day long, all week long, I go home and I don't even want to deal with it anymore. I curse creatively when one my own boxes decides to get neurotic on me, because I know I have to stop what else I'm doing to fix it -- and it's ironic to me that I can fix it, whereas the average jackoff these days, as well as the average engineer these days, can't, and I don't even have the degrees that they have. I'm a generalist in a world of specialists. All in all I go home and all I want to do is ride my bike and make my body strong and fast and not think about things made of element 14 anymore. One might say that I could get into microcontrollers and such, since they're more like the ostensible "good old days", but it's hard to gather the enthusiasm for the idea, even if I have a project in mind (of which I have several). And, of course, if I stop riding and training, I get fat, weak, and sickly again, like I used to be -- and I can't go back to that. In the end I guess you have to face the facts: You either keep moving forward and evolving, or you stand still and decay into nothing. You can't go backwards, either.

The Internet's true value is still fragile

[bjdevil66]

We could have 1TBs of fiber up to everyone's home and 10GB speeds on phones someday. None of that bandwidth will matter, however, if the only true value of the Internet - the uncensored, uninhibited flow of ALL 0s and 1s - is lost. "We need to be able to regulate what goes across our pipes because of X," in any form for any reason, is ultimately bad for the health of the internet.

Yeah, we can wrap it up in "national security", "copyright holders protections", "good business sense", etc., but it's all still the digital equivalent of wholesale, Internet-wide chemo for an Internet "cancer" that is harming specific interests.

The only cure for those Internet issues like what this Estonian douchebag wants to help "fix" is personal responsibility. Anything else will ultimately fail.

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do they not hear how the rest of the world makes fun of, and puts down China for their massive firewall? Are they racing to the bottom?

Re:Why?

[AHuxley]

Re 'Are they racing to the bottom?"
New funding, new powers. New computer systems. New networks to build. More contractors, gov and mil staff. Overtime and top gov wages.
The new staffing and equipment sales and support staff in every part of the EU.
Having to create an EU wide system to find and then enter into all EU VPN use.
To then find each VPN user in the EU and see what they are saying and doing while using a VPN.
To keep all EU ip and isp data for years. To fully register every ISP account and keep records of ip use updated.
Its a bureaucratic dream of big new cyber budgets and enforcing new EU laws.

Government doing MORE

[micahraleigh]

Those government helpers ... always helping us make correct choices about what we watch and who to believe and what to listen to and enjoy.

Makes me just wish they had more of their fingers in my pocket helping me make more decisions.

If only free market companies were so helpful!

Sure, keep telling yourselves that.

[Anonymous Coward]

Heard of 5 eyes? Go look at how many member-states it has now (>40).

Go look at how many of those are European in origin.

Then consider how much privacy you really have, if all those guys are sharing your internet traffic back and forth to get around jurisdicitonal legal limitations.

If the EU" was serious about privacy protections they would be censuring basically every member state for colluding with the US government to spy on their citizens. But since they haven't....

I have no opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

And neither should anybody else, It is my duty as a loyal citizen of the European Union to obey without question the orders of the European institutions. To discuss or debate those orders is tantamount to treason. I am ready to inform on any acquaintances or relatives of mine that might engage on treasonous activities. Europe, and only Europe, united from the Atlantic to the Urals, will decide the fate of the world! Pour l'Europe, toujours! A nous la victoire!

freenet

[Anonymous Coward]

freenet you dolt

This should turn Theresa May into more of a Remain

[Anonymous Coward]

Internet surveillance and censorship is exactly what gets Prime Minister May foaming at the gash. She'll hate missing out on this.......

This is how democracy dies

[Anonymous Coward]

By controlling speech critical of the state, cracking down on public assembly and the tool to organize an assembly. There is a reason why the US explicitly protects these freedoms.

Lots of chatter out here in the bleachers...

[fustakrakich]

But most of the population is in favor of more censorship. Liberalism is dead. It never really had a chance. All due to personal avarice. True change, for better or worse, will only happen on an evolutionary time scale. We desperately need a technological solution to create an indelible, universally accessible internet. The law of corrupt society can't be rendered impotent any other way.

Why the world is fucked up.

[Anonymous Coward]

The people you elect to represent you can not spell Potato nor tell the difference between Austria and Australia.
But you will do the same thing again and again and expect a different result this time.

Alt-Fact Fake News

[Anonymous Coward]

So people who are legitimate European copyright holders are going to get paid. That notion must suck for Facebook and other US companies. Shame on you Slashdot.

The missing common principle

[Anonymous Coward]

You're missing the obvious common principle that unites the beliefs: "I deserve free money."

Fuck Estonia

[Anonymous Coward]

Have they already forgotten about Stalin?
 
Also another reason to ditch the EU.

Re:Fuck Estonia

[Anonymous Coward]

Have they already forgotten about Stalin?

No, indeed they've not at all forgot about Stalin^H^H^H^H^H^HPutin.

Which is why they know it's heaps smarter to stick together.

Illegality

[manu0601]

the Presidency has worked hard in order to make the proposal for the new copyright Directive even more harmful than the Commission's original proposal, and pushing it further into the realms of illegality

"Illegality" is the wrong word, as these people are writing what will become the law. "Illegitimacy" seems a better word to describe laws decided on behalf of the People but against its will.

Re:Illegality

[Antique Geekmeister]

It seems like a direct violation of several articles in the EU charter. So I think that "illegality" is not too strong a word.

Re:Illegality

[manu0601]

Then illegality is everywhere in EU, sine EU charter does not encourage ignoring referendum results.

Fuck the presidency

[Anonymous Coward]

they have all been bought by murican ip corporate nazis anyways,

Onions

[Anonymous Coward]

We need more, many more, .onion domains hosted. It should be a matter of principle to have a regular WWW/TLD and the same content served as .onion.

Technical drawbacks, that in my opinion hold back wider adoption are:

1. Unreadibility/lack of memorability of the URL's, that are just hashes. DNS is friendlier for humans.

2. Direct tie of key to domain (hash). Can't periodically change the key, which is good hygiene, without changing the site name.

Still, it's probably the best way to focus on, all things considered.

Orwell..

[LesserWeevil]

..was an optimist. He failed to forsee the Internet and the power it gives to governments.