It's time for the gloves to come off... These people don't care how many people die as a result of their rampages.
Soldiers kill thousands of innocent civilians and you say "oh, it doesn't matter, it's just collateral damage". An organisation leaks some heavily redacted information, putting maybe a handful of informants in possible danger (although no deaths have been attributed), and suddenly you care about responsibility towards human life?!?
Or him leaving the country after having been told to keep in contact with the Swedish authorities?
The prosecutor told Assange's lawyer that there was no warrant for Assange's arrest, and that he was free to leave the country without questioning. Assange did nothing wrong in this regard.
well in the world I've you really don't get to dictate the terms of your questioning with the police.
He is no longer located in Sweden. He left the country after being told he was free to go. Would you voluntarily travel to another country that had some interest in arresting you? Let's say you were accused by Chinese authorities of helping dissidents in Tibet. Would you travel to China and hand yourself over? Does agreeing to be interviewed in the headquarters of the largest police force in the UK not seem reasonable? London is not a renegade state, and Assange is not a fugitive from justice.
As an aside, I find it amusing that Interpol don't have a photo of Assange for the Wanted Notice. I can't turn on the news without seeing his face, but they list his image as "Not Available".
Good question. The whole situation is very unusual. Even if you assume that Assange did suddenly decide, during consensual sex, to carry out a non-consensual act, the issue of prosecution is on shaky ground. The vast majority of rape accusations never make it to court, and the vast majority of those are found "not guilty" (the figure is something like 95% of accused either do not get to court, or walk away free). For a successful prosecution there has to be more evidence than "she says she didn't consent, he says she did". The whole legal issue of being able to predicate consent and retroactively withdraw consent (e.g. consent based on unstated predicate of shared ethnicity) is fraught with difficulties for a successful prosecution. For a prosecutor to pursue a case, based only on the allegation, is unusual enough. For a prosecutor to issue a request for Interpol intervention, with a view to extraditing a foreigner from a 3rd party country, is highly unusual. For a prosecutor to do this, after the Chief Prosecutor has already stated that the alleged suspect is "no longer wanted" and "is not suspected of rape" and is free to leave the country, is very odd indeed.
Note also that the Interpol notice is apparently not an international arrest warrant - it is just a request for information: "The Interpol notice is not an international arrest warrant but the public is asked to contact police with any information about Mr Assange's whereabouts.". Putting out such a notice is bizarre, given that the Prosecutor is in contact with Assange's legal counsel in London, and that Assange has agreed to meet at either the Swedish Embassy or Scotland Yard. The prosecutor wants "more information" about him, but is already in contact, and can arrange a meeting in person or via video conference at the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police in London, but instead chooses the Interpol route? This is not normal for a sex crimes case with only alleged victim testimony and no other evidence. If you or I had unprotected sex with a girl, and she subsequently said her consent had been predicated on use of a condom, the case would never go to court. Certainly it would never become an international police issue. There is the issue of there maybe being two alleged victims, but apparently only one actually complained to the police? I guess we will find out what really happened - if the case ever makes it to court.
reciprocally to deliver up persons found in its territory
Assange isn't on Australian territory, and hasn't been for some time. That puts him outside of Australian law. Unless the Australian courts claim jurisdiction over alleged crimes in Iceland and the European Union...
For example, if he has information that both a US bank and a Swiss bank are up to no good, but he only release the information on the US bank, then he's targeting one instead of the other. That could very much invalidate his neutrality.
Wikileaks already leaked information about the Swiss bank Julius Baer, which was apparently involved in tax evasion and money laundering.
A government is not the same as a voting system. When a government tells it's people that it has to have secrets, and it has to lie to them, and that this is all for their own good, do you believe them? Would you believe it of the Chinese government? Or the Russians? Or Italian? Or any government, anywhere?
It would be trivial for Assange to filter information and only display leaks that would damage the country of his choice.
Such filtering would be ultimately pointless. Not only would lead to allegations of bias, it would also be trivial for the leaker to bypass - just leak the documents directly to the press.
If it ends up that the new leaks target all kinds of banks and companies, then no. If they are all conveniently US banks and companies, then I'd say that lends some credence to the anti-US idea.
Wikileaks already released information about foreign banks that was politically explosive: the Julius Baer tax evasion and money laundering docs, and the Northern Rock memo. The Julius Baer documents led to wikileaks.org being censored by the U.S. judicial system. Details of the Northern Rock memo were completely censored in the British press by the British judicial system.
So, if Wikieaks really is just an anti-U.S. operation, then why would they release documents on Swiss and British banks? And why do people who complain that Wikileaks is only releasing U.S. info ignore the cases where they released information from non-U.S. entities?
The comments from Assange make it clear that WikiLeaks is not just acting as a repository, but rather clearly targeting organizations (governmental, commercial, etc.)
This makes no sense. Assange is targeting "organizations"? Governments and commercial organizations? Of course he has leaked some information about organizations. So what?
Or are you alleging that Assange is running some kind of targeted intelligence gathering operation? That he is actually out there, hacking the banks personally, or has recruited others to do so on his behalf? It seems a bit far-fetched; it's more likely that he is just leaking stuff that people send him, in which case the "targeting" is out of his hands.
Or are or you alleging that Assange is just a front for some intelligence organization? Hmm: Pakistani General accuses Wikileaks of being part of CIA/Mossad psyops. Maybe. John Young of Cryptome also accused Wikileaks of being a CIA front. And some Chinese officials have apparently said the same. But if it is a CIA front, does that mean that opposing Wikileaks is unpatriotic?
Exposing intelligence sources is never acceptable. It's as bad as torture which we agree is not acceptable, or killing women and children.
Are you saying that the President of the United States would commute the prison sentence of someone who has committed a crime as bad as torture and murder? Because that's what happened.
No, you can thank the incompetence of the U.S. government, who apparently gave several million people full access to this information. Are you really naive enough to believe that, out of millions of people, none of them are agents or opportunists who would sell this data to the Russians, Chinese, or any other government that is friendly with Iran?
At its launch, WikiLeaks said it was "founded by Chinese dissidents, journalists, mathematicians and start-up company technologists, from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa", and that its "primary interest is in exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East". Instead, WikiLeaks publishes mostly classified information from democracies.
You say these things as if they are mutually exclusive. Do you think that there are no links between those oppressive regimes and Western intelligence and the military? That the foreign policy of Western governments in supporting undemocratic regimes should be immune from analysis and criticism, because the Western governments are themselves democratic institutions? Do you not think that the foreign policy of the United States, which unequivocally allies itself with rulers such as the House of Saud - a undemocratic monarchist dictatorship - might have something to do with the fact that 15 of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi?
I have no problem with information being released that shows how hypocritical western governments are when it comes to foreign policy, and how ambassadors and politicians lie to their own citizens to try and manipulate them into supporting wars. Who knew the puppet masters pulling the strings of the U.S. towards war with Iran? How many honorable American soldiers, who believed they were fighting to protect their homeland, will now understand that they are merely guns for hire being used by Kings in the Middle East to further their own goals of power?
He seems to be a revolutionary against the government of the USA (non-partisan). Although, I'm not in favor of some of the things the government of the USA does, we have a ballot box to fix most things and I don't think the revolution that Thomas Jefferson had in mind had much to do about the dribble coming out of wikileaks these days...
Being against the foreign policy of the USA does not mean that a person is against the government of the USA. Thomas Jefferson would be absolutely appalled at what U.S. foreign policy has become:
"We wish not to meddle with the internal affairs of any country, nor with the general affairs of Europe. Peace with all nations, and the right which that gives us with respect to all nations, are our object."
"I have ever deemed it fundamental for the United States never to take active part in the quarrels of Europe. Their political interests are entirely distinct from ours. Their mutual jealousies, their balance of power, their complicated alliances, their forms and principles of government, are all foreign to us. They are nations of eternal war. All their energies are expended in the destruction of the labor, property and lives of their people."
Replace "Europe" with "the Middle East" and the sentiment is the complete opposite of current U.S. foreign policy.
Which treaty, exactly, says that U.S. law applies worldwide?
And US law was violated by people in the United States, who were aided and abeted by Assage.
Even assuming that this is true, then it says nothing about Assange's guilt under international law, or the law of any other nation. If it was illegal under international law for a non-U.S. resident to communicate with U.S. resident dissidents who then went on to break U.S. law, then, under a reciprocal treaty, it would also be illegal for the reverse to happen - for U.S. residents to communicate with dissidents in other nations such as China and Iran. Do you really think that there are international treaties in place to deport U.S. citizens, on U.S. soil, for breaking no laws in the U.S., but who do talk to dissidents in other nations who are breaking laws by protesting against the government of those foreign nations? If not, then why do you think any other nation would be crazy enough to enact such laws?
The shipping cost are negligible compared to the rent of a store on a prime location. This has given online retailers an advantage from the first day an online store opened it's doors, so to speak...
That is true, however, that is not the main point of this article. The author of the article is comparing the cost of an identical purchase via online sites - apple.com versus bestbuy.com versus amazon.com versus walmart.com. Even if Apple and Best Buy and Walmart etc. have physical stores at prime locations, their online operations should be more cost efficient, since they can ship direct from huge out-of-town warehouses instead of having to pay for prime location rent in the middle of a city. This should, in turn, lead to them having cheaper online prices when compared to the in-store price. Of course, not all companies do that, as for PR reasons they don't want to be seen to be providing cheaper prices to web users. But for companies that do have an online/offline price differential, then his comparison of the online price as an indicator of cost efficiency is reasonably valid.
It's hard to have sympathy for a site ("fitwatch") that promotes violent protest. The Guardian's perspective on violent protest is a bit hypocritical too:
The Guardian is strongly critical of violent protest when done by the English Defence League. (And they should be, the EDL is basically just a modern remake of the National Front, and is attracting the same mix of football hooligans, fascist skinheads, and other assorted nutters).
The Guardian does not appear to criticise the violent protests by students (which, in reality, are probably not students - real students don't tend to wave anarchist flags), including the attempted murder where a fire extinguisher was thrown down onto at a police officer from the top of a building.
The Guardian appears to support the author of "fitwatch" (the article you linked), which publishes counter-intelligence on the Police Forward Intelligence Teams (the same guys who are also responsible for policing violent protests by the fascists, football hooligans, anarchists, etc.)
Violent protest is usually counterproductive. If these people really wanted to win, then martyrdom is where it's at. Imagine 100 students on hunger strike outside the Houses of Parliament. That would win the argument. But of course, they won't do that, because it would mean actually putting your supposed ideals before your own well being.
When it comes to policing protests, do you want police that actually do the job regardless of the source of public disorder, or do you want police who do the job when you disagree with the protesters (EDL) but do nothing when you agree (students/anarchists)? The second is an immature point of view, but appears to be the one espoused by the Guardian.
I've yet to have someone show me the information that was not previously publicly known, that came to light because of this, that was so important for the public to know.
The Iraq War leaks provided details of 15,000 previously unknown civilian killings, along with the location and circumstances. That kind of information is invaluable to the Iraq Body Count Project.
That Wikipedia article contains many more "previously unknown or unconfirmed events that took place during the war". One that stands out is:
A number of the documents, as defined by Al Jazeera English, describe how US troops killed almost 700 civilians for coming too close to checkpoints, including pregnant women and the mentally ill. At least a half-dozen incidents involved Iraqi men transporting pregnant family members to hospitals.
I can't recall the U.S. military admitting to killing 700 civilians.
And what about this leaked report:
"On May 14, 2005, an American unit “OBSERVED A BLACKWATER PSD SHOOT UP A CIV VEHICLE,” killing a father and wounding his wife and daughter, a report said, referring to a Blackwater protective security detail.
The military never publicised that soldiers had observed Blackwater contractors shooting up civilian vehicles. Or the numerous other indiscriminate killings by Blackwater that the troops observed. What about this incident report, after contractors drove into a neighborhood in the northern city of Erbil and began shooting at random, setting off a firefight with an off-duty police officer and wounding three women:
"“It is assessed that this drunken group of individuals were out having a good time and firing their weapons,”"
Did the military ever voluntarily reveal that drunken contractors had gone out to have a good time shooting in a civilian neighbourhood, resulting in women being harmed?
There have been civilian casualties and the government knows. To this I can only say: DUH! It is war, it is nasty business.
Well, it wasn't supposed to be a war. The war was supposed to have been won, and this was supposed to be a peacekeeping and nation building operation. The troops and contractors and other actors are not meant to be operating under war time rules of engagement. But the leaks show that, amongst many individuals, there is a disregard for life and the rule of law.
The gunship video. If you think that's a war crime, it only shows your ignorance of the rules of war. I see nothing in that video illegal.
I've already commented on the legal issue. It is not as clear cut as you seem to think. But here's the most important issue: it is not for you or I to determine whether these men are guilty or innocent. That is a job for judges in a military court. Where is the prosecutor in this case? In any reasonable judicial system, a prosecutor would decide whether or not to pursue a court case against these individuals, and he would have to justify this decision to the public. Consider if an identical situation happened in the United States - a group of individuals, some armed - but in a state where open-carry is legal - are shot up by a police/army helicopter. A group of passing "Good Samaritans" stop to help a few minutes later, and they also get shot up. And not only is there no prosecution, there is not even an attorney general giving a reason for not pursuing a prosecution. At the very least, that is what we would expect from a civilised society that follows the rules of law.
"Including non-DOD expenditures, defense spending was approximately 28–38% of budgeted expenditures and 42–57% of estimated tax revenues."
To say that around half of your tax is spent on the military is about right. And then there is the Department of Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security etc. which are don't appear in the military budget.
Of the defense budget, some of that is paying off debt from previous wars, and things like pensions.
"This does not include many military-related items that are outside of the Defense Department budget, such as nuclear weapons research, maintenance, cleanup, and production, which is in the Department of Energy budget, Veterans Affairs, the Treasury Department's payments in pensions to military retirees and widows and their families, interest on debt incurred in past wars, or State Department financing of foreign arms sales and militarily-related development assistance. Neither does it include defense spending that is not military in nature, such as the Department of Homeland Security, counter-terrorism spending by the FBI, and intelligence-gathering spending by NASA."
Who would have thought that a first-release Beta kernel module would not run as fast or be as reliable as the stable implementation for other operating systems, or the stables on Linux?
The full release is supposed to be coming out in the first week of January. Given the short time frame, it would seem like this is probably closer to the final release than the words " first beta" imply.
Surprises:
Native ZFS beat XFS on several of the benchmarks - XFS is usually a good performer in these kind of tests
Native ZFS does very well on the Threaded IO Test, where it ties for first place.
Btrfs is really bad on the SQLite test, taking 5 times longer than XFS on both 2.6.32 and 2.6.37 (bug?)
XFS IOzone write performance increased by 45% going from 2.6.32 to 2.6.37 (!) XFS increased on FS-Mark by 37%. I thought XFS would be pretty much at the point where there would be no such great improvements.
"Real" Solaris+ZFS gets absolutely slaughtered on the Threaded IO Test and the PostMark Test, with ext4 pushing almost 10x more transactions per second.
Tests were done on a SSD, apparently there was no difference in relative performance of the filesystems on SSD versus HD
Notes:
"Real" Solaris+ZFS results are not shown for most tests
Would be nice to know how many replicates they did of each test
This is an interesting set of results that will get people talking/arguing:-) Thanks to Phoronix for starting the discussion.
Case in point, even with "enhanced" security we still had shoe and underpants bomber "terrorists" get through.
To be fair, those guys didn't get body scanned or shoe-checked. Would the new regime have caught them at the airport?
Now random bombs in bags, ok, screen bags with dogs and sending them through scanners.
Bags already go through scanners. The only way to avoid the scanner is to have the bomb on your body, or inside an object that is too large to scan (child buggy?).
Of course the economists will say this is good for the entire economy. Really? Then why have real wages been stagnant for over a decade - for everyone?
Everyone? Even sports stars? Taking a salary survey, starting in the year 2000, is going to produce biased results, because this was the height of the dot com boom. You are looking at a number that was at its peak for a large number of people, particularly those of us in the technology sector.
The winners in globalisation are those countries who have the best educated people combined with an economy that can use those workers. That's why we saw Germany and other European countries being some of the first nations in the world to come out of the recent recession, even though many Americans will decry them for their "Socialist" policies, ensuring free high level graduate and post-graduate education for everyone results in a more educated workforce. But this isn't something that can be done instantly - it takes years for the benefits of education to appear, with an increased number of college graduates slowly leading to more competitive business overall. The United States has traditionally focussed on having a small percentage of very well educated citizens, and the majority were lower educated, but could be successfully trained for less creative posts in industry. This model is becoming less competitive due to globalisation, as the industrial jobs move to where they can be done cheapest, and other countries begin to ramp up high-level education programs that a greater number of their citizens have access to.
Slashdot Mirror
It's time for the gloves to come off... These people don't care how many people die as a result of their rampages.
Soldiers kill thousands of innocent civilians and you say "oh, it doesn't matter, it's just collateral damage". An organisation leaks some heavily redacted information, putting maybe a handful of informants in possible danger (although no deaths have been attributed), and suddenly you care about responsibility towards human life?!?
Or him leaving the country after having been told to keep in contact with the Swedish authorities?
The prosecutor told Assange's lawyer that there was no warrant for Assange's arrest, and that he was free to leave the country without questioning. Assange did nothing wrong in this regard.
well in the world I've you really don't get to dictate the terms of your questioning with the police.
He is no longer located in Sweden. He left the country after being told he was free to go. Would you voluntarily travel to another country that had some interest in arresting you? Let's say you were accused by Chinese authorities of helping dissidents in Tibet. Would you travel to China and hand yourself over? Does agreeing to be interviewed in the headquarters of the largest police force in the UK not seem reasonable? London is not a renegade state, and Assange is not a fugitive from justice.
As an aside, I find it amusing that Interpol don't have a photo of Assange for the Wanted Notice. I can't turn on the news without seeing his face, but they list his image as "Not Available".
Good question. The whole situation is very unusual. Even if you assume that Assange did suddenly decide, during consensual sex, to carry out a non-consensual act, the issue of prosecution is on shaky ground. The vast majority of rape accusations never make it to court, and the vast majority of those are found "not guilty" (the figure is something like 95% of accused either do not get to court, or walk away free). For a successful prosecution there has to be more evidence than "she says she didn't consent, he says she did". The whole legal issue of being able to predicate consent and retroactively withdraw consent (e.g. consent based on unstated predicate of shared ethnicity) is fraught with difficulties for a successful prosecution. For a prosecutor to pursue a case, based only on the allegation, is unusual enough. For a prosecutor to issue a request for Interpol intervention, with a view to extraditing a foreigner from a 3rd party country, is highly unusual. For a prosecutor to do this, after the Chief Prosecutor has already stated that the alleged suspect is "no longer wanted" and "is not suspected of rape" and is free to leave the country, is very odd indeed.
Note also that the Interpol notice is apparently not an international arrest warrant - it is just a request for information: "The Interpol notice is not an international arrest warrant but the public is asked to contact police with any information about Mr Assange's whereabouts.". Putting out such a notice is bizarre, given that the Prosecutor is in contact with Assange's legal counsel in London, and that Assange has agreed to meet at either the Swedish Embassy or Scotland Yard. The prosecutor wants "more information" about him, but is already in contact, and can arrange a meeting in person or via video conference at the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police in London, but instead chooses the Interpol route? This is not normal for a sex crimes case with only alleged victim testimony and no other evidence. If you or I had unprotected sex with a girl, and she subsequently said her consent had been predicated on use of a condom, the case would never go to court. Certainly it would never become an international police issue. There is the issue of there maybe being two alleged victims, but apparently only one actually complained to the police? I guess we will find out what really happened - if the case ever makes it to court.
reciprocally to deliver up persons found in its territory
Assange isn't on Australian territory, and hasn't been for some time. That puts him outside of Australian law. Unless the Australian courts claim jurisdiction over alleged crimes in Iceland and the European Union...
For example, if he has information that both a US bank and a Swiss bank are up to no good, but he only release the information on the US bank, then he's targeting one instead of the other. That could very much invalidate his neutrality.
Wikileaks already leaked information about the Swiss bank Julius Baer, which was apparently involved in tax evasion and money laundering.
For example, embarrassing Iran and damaging US-Iranian relations
Ah, it was Wikileaks that damaged that special US-Iran relationship? And here I was thinking that calling Iran part of an "axis of evil" and designating their troops as "terrorists", and enforcing years of sanctions was what did it.
A government is not the same as a voting system. When a government tells it's people that it has to have secrets, and it has to lie to them, and that this is all for their own good, do you believe them? Would you believe it of the Chinese government? Or the Russians? Or Italian? Or any government, anywhere?
It would be trivial for Assange to filter information and only display leaks that would damage the country of his choice.
Such filtering would be ultimately pointless. Not only would lead to allegations of bias, it would also be trivial for the leaker to bypass - just leak the documents directly to the press.
If it ends up that the new leaks target all kinds of banks and companies, then no. If they are all conveniently US banks and companies, then I'd say that lends some credence to the anti-US idea.
Wikileaks already released information about foreign banks that was politically explosive: the Julius Baer tax evasion and money laundering docs, and the Northern Rock memo. The Julius Baer documents led to wikileaks.org being censored by the U.S. judicial system. Details of the Northern Rock memo were completely censored in the British press by the British judicial system.
So, if Wikieaks really is just an anti-U.S. operation, then why would they release documents on Swiss and British banks? And why do people who complain that Wikileaks is only releasing U.S. info ignore the cases where they released information from non-U.S. entities?
The comments from Assange make it clear that WikiLeaks is not just acting as a repository, but rather clearly targeting organizations (governmental, commercial, etc.)
This makes no sense. Assange is targeting "organizations"? Governments and commercial organizations? Of course he has leaked some information about organizations. So what?
Or are you alleging that Assange is running some kind of targeted intelligence gathering operation? That he is actually out there, hacking the banks personally, or has recruited others to do so on his behalf? It seems a bit far-fetched; it's more likely that he is just leaking stuff that people send him, in which case the "targeting" is out of his hands.
Or are or you alleging that Assange is just a front for some intelligence organization? Hmm: Pakistani General accuses Wikileaks of being part of CIA/Mossad psyops. Maybe. John Young of Cryptome also accused Wikileaks of being a CIA front. And some Chinese officials have apparently said the same. But if it is a CIA front, does that mean that opposing Wikileaks is unpatriotic?
See how deep the rabbit hole goes....
Of course, it generally only applies to women, since most men would be laughed out of the court room for saying they were raped by a woman.
That was in the past. Now, you may retroactively withdraw consent based on the ethnicity of the person that you had sex with. I'm looking forward to the first case where a man cries rape in a similar situation. White supremacist has sex with mixed-race woman, cries rape, woman is jailed? It could happen.
Exposing intelligence sources is never acceptable. It's as bad as torture which we agree is not acceptable, or killing women and children.
Are you saying that the President of the United States would commute the prison sentence of someone who has committed a crime as bad as torture and murder? Because that's what happened.
You can thank Julian Assange for this.
No, you can thank the incompetence of the U.S. government, who apparently gave several million people full access to this information. Are you really naive enough to believe that, out of millions of people, none of them are agents or opportunists who would sell this data to the Russians, Chinese, or any other government that is friendly with Iran?
At its launch, WikiLeaks said it was "founded by Chinese dissidents, journalists, mathematicians and start-up company technologists, from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa", and that its "primary interest is in exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East". Instead, WikiLeaks publishes mostly classified information from democracies.
You say these things as if they are mutually exclusive. Do you think that there are no links between those oppressive regimes and Western intelligence and the military? That the foreign policy of Western governments in supporting undemocratic regimes should be immune from analysis and criticism, because the Western governments are themselves democratic institutions? Do you not think that the foreign policy of the United States, which unequivocally allies itself with rulers such as the House of Saud - a undemocratic monarchist dictatorship - might have something to do with the fact that 15 of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi?
I have no problem with information being released that shows how hypocritical western governments are when it comes to foreign policy, and how ambassadors and politicians lie to their own citizens to try and manipulate them into supporting wars. Who knew the puppet masters pulling the strings of the U.S. towards war with Iran? How many honorable American soldiers, who believed they were fighting to protect their homeland, will now understand that they are merely guns for hire being used by Kings in the Middle East to further their own goals of power?
He seems to be a revolutionary against the government of the USA (non-partisan). Although, I'm not in favor of some of the things the government of the USA does, we have a ballot box to fix most things and I don't think the revolution that Thomas Jefferson had in mind had much to do about the dribble coming out of wikileaks these days...
Being against the foreign policy of the USA does not mean that a person is against the government of the USA. Thomas Jefferson would be absolutely appalled at what U.S. foreign policy has become:
"We wish not to meddle with the internal affairs of any country, nor with the general affairs of Europe. Peace with all nations, and the right which that gives us with respect to all nations, are our object."
"I have ever deemed it fundamental for the United States never to take active part in the quarrels of Europe. Their political interests are entirely distinct from ours. Their mutual jealousies, their balance of power, their complicated alliances, their forms and principles of government, are all foreign to us. They are nations of eternal war. All their energies are expended in the destruction of the labor, property and lives of their people."
Replace "Europe" with "the Middle East" and the sentiment is the complete opposite of current U.S. foreign policy.
International treaties say otherwise.
Which treaty, exactly, says that U.S. law applies worldwide?
And US law was violated by people in the United States, who were aided and abeted by Assage.
Even assuming that this is true, then it says nothing about Assange's guilt under international law, or the law of any other nation. If it was illegal under international law for a non-U.S. resident to communicate with U.S. resident dissidents who then went on to break U.S. law, then, under a reciprocal treaty, it would also be illegal for the reverse to happen - for U.S. residents to communicate with dissidents in other nations such as China and Iran. Do you really think that there are international treaties in place to deport U.S. citizens, on U.S. soil, for breaking no laws in the U.S., but who do talk to dissidents in other nations who are breaking laws by protesting against the government of those foreign nations? If not, then why do you think any other nation would be crazy enough to enact such laws?
The shipping cost are negligible compared to the rent of a store on a prime location. This has given online retailers an advantage from the first day an online store opened it's doors, so to speak...
That is true, however, that is not the main point of this article. The author of the article is comparing the cost of an identical purchase via online sites - apple.com versus bestbuy.com versus amazon.com versus walmart.com. Even if Apple and Best Buy and Walmart etc. have physical stores at prime locations, their online operations should be more cost efficient, since they can ship direct from huge out-of-town warehouses instead of having to pay for prime location rent in the middle of a city. This should, in turn, lead to them having cheaper online prices when compared to the in-store price. Of course, not all companies do that, as for PR reasons they don't want to be seen to be providing cheaper prices to web users. But for companies that do have an online/offline price differential, then his comparison of the online price as an indicator of cost efficiency is reasonably valid.
It's hard to have sympathy for a site ("fitwatch") that promotes violent protest. The Guardian's perspective on violent protest is a bit hypocritical too:
Violent protest is usually counterproductive. If these people really wanted to win, then martyrdom is where it's at. Imagine 100 students on hunger strike outside the Houses of Parliament. That would win the argument. But of course, they won't do that, because it would mean actually putting your supposed ideals before your own well being.
When it comes to policing protests, do you want police that actually do the job regardless of the source of public disorder, or do you want police who do the job when you disagree with the protesters (EDL) but do nothing when you agree (students/anarchists)? The second is an immature point of view, but appears to be the one espoused by the Guardian.
I've yet to have someone show me the information that was not previously publicly known, that came to light because of this, that was so important for the public to know.
The Iraq War leaks provided details of 15,000 previously unknown civilian killings, along with the location and circumstances. That kind of information is invaluable to the Iraq Body Count Project.
That Wikipedia article contains many more "previously unknown or unconfirmed events that took place during the war". One that stands out is:
A number of the documents, as defined by Al Jazeera English, describe how US troops killed almost 700 civilians for coming too close to checkpoints, including pregnant women and the mentally ill. At least a half-dozen incidents involved Iraqi men transporting pregnant family members to hospitals.
I can't recall the U.S. military admitting to killing 700 civilians.
And what about this leaked report:
"On May 14, 2005, an American unit “OBSERVED A BLACKWATER PSD SHOOT UP A CIV VEHICLE,” killing a father and wounding his wife and daughter, a report said, referring to a Blackwater protective security detail.
The military never publicised that soldiers had observed Blackwater contractors shooting up civilian vehicles. Or the numerous other indiscriminate killings by Blackwater that the troops observed. What about this incident report, after contractors drove into a neighborhood in the northern city of Erbil and began shooting at random, setting off a firefight with an off-duty police officer and wounding three women:
"“It is assessed that this drunken group of individuals were out having a good time and firing their weapons,”"
Did the military ever voluntarily reveal that drunken contractors had gone out to have a good time shooting in a civilian neighbourhood, resulting in women being harmed?
There have been civilian casualties and the government knows. To this I can only say: DUH! It is war, it is nasty business.
Well, it wasn't supposed to be a war. The war was supposed to have been won, and this was supposed to be a peacekeeping and nation building operation. The troops and contractors and other actors are not meant to be operating under war time rules of engagement. But the leaks show that, amongst many individuals, there is a disregard for life and the rule of law.
The gunship video. If you think that's a war crime, it only shows your ignorance of the rules of war. I see nothing in that video illegal.
I've already commented on the legal issue. It is not as clear cut as you seem to think. But here's the most important issue: it is not for you or I to determine whether these men are guilty or innocent. That is a job for judges in a military court. Where is the prosecutor in this case? In any reasonable judicial system, a prosecutor would decide whether or not to pursue a court case against these individuals, and he would have to justify this decision to the public. Consider if an identical situation happened in the United States - a group of individuals, some armed - but in a state where open-carry is legal - are shot up by a police/army helicopter. A group of passing "Good Samaritans" stop to help a few minutes later, and they also get shot up. And not only is there no prosecution, there is not even an attorney general giving a reason for not pursuing a prosecution. At the very least, that is what we would expect from a civilised society that follows the rules of law.
For FY2009 Military is 23%
Military budget and total US federal spending:
"Including non-DOD expenditures, defense spending was approximately 28–38% of budgeted expenditures and 42–57% of estimated tax revenues."
To say that around half of your tax is spent on the military is about right. And then there is the Department of Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security etc. which are don't appear in the military budget.
Of the defense budget, some of that is paying off debt from previous wars, and things like pensions.
Not true; these are not part of the military budget. Military budget of the United States:
"This does not include many military-related items that are outside of the Defense Department budget, such as nuclear weapons research, maintenance, cleanup, and production, which is in the Department of Energy budget, Veterans Affairs, the Treasury Department's payments in pensions to military retirees and widows and their families, interest on debt incurred in past wars, or State Department financing of foreign arms sales and militarily-related development assistance. Neither does it include defense spending that is not military in nature, such as the Department of Homeland Security, counter-terrorism spending by the FBI, and intelligence-gathering spending by NASA."
Who would have thought that a first-release Beta kernel module would not run as fast or be as reliable as the stable implementation for other operating systems, or the stables on Linux?
The full release is supposed to be coming out in the first week of January. Given the short time frame, it would seem like this is probably closer to the final release than the words " first beta" imply.
Surprises:
Notes:
even trains, the one kind of vehicle that could drive itself completely safely today, are still manned by "drivers"
List of driverless trains
Case in point, even with "enhanced" security we still had shoe and underpants bomber "terrorists" get through.
To be fair, those guys didn't get body scanned or shoe-checked. Would the new regime have caught them at the airport?
Now random bombs in bags, ok, screen bags with dogs and sending them through scanners.
Bags already go through scanners. The only way to avoid the scanner is to have the bomb on your body, or inside an object that is too large to scan (child buggy?).
Of course the economists will say this is good for the entire economy. Really? Then why have real wages been stagnant for over a decade - for everyone?
Everyone? Even sports stars? Taking a salary survey, starting in the year 2000, is going to produce biased results, because this was the height of the dot com boom. You are looking at a number that was at its peak for a large number of people, particularly those of us in the technology sector.
The winners in globalisation are those countries who have the best educated people combined with an economy that can use those workers. That's why we saw Germany and other European countries being some of the first nations in the world to come out of the recent recession, even though many Americans will decry them for their "Socialist" policies, ensuring free high level graduate and post-graduate education for everyone results in a more educated workforce. But this isn't something that can be done instantly - it takes years for the benefits of education to appear, with an increased number of college graduates slowly leading to more competitive business overall. The United States has traditionally focussed on having a small percentage of very well educated citizens, and the majority were lower educated, but could be successfully trained for less creative posts in industry. This model is becoming less competitive due to globalisation, as the industrial jobs move to where they can be done cheapest, and other countries begin to ramp up high-level education programs that a greater number of their citizens have access to.