Er, "Americans turning inward..."? According to The Washington Post two weeks ago, “While Americans savored the last moments of summer this Labor Day weekend, the U.S. military was busy overseas as warplanes conducted strikes in six countries in a flurry of attacks". https://www.washingtonpost.com...
Many people around the world devoutly wish that Americans would "turn inward" and occupy themselves with their own business, instead of killing foreigners for their own good.
It's been said over and over, but apparently some people still don't understand.
Crimea has been an integral part of Russia since before the USA existed as a nation. On at least two occasions, Russians and Soviets sacrificed literally hundreds of thousands of lives to protect Crimea and to win it back after it was conquered by an enemy. More Russian blood has been spilled for Crimea than American blood in the Civil War - and by that, I mean more than 700,000 dead plus many more injured.
Crimea was generously "given" to the Ukrainian SSR by Khrushchev - who, oddly enough, was himself from Ukraine - in an impulsive act which was probably illegal under Soviet law. Then, when the USSR dissolved itself, Ukraine proclaimed itself an independent nation in 1991. Please understand clearly that this was the very first time in the whole of history that a Ukrainian nation had existed. The name "Ukraine", itself, means "borderland" - that is, the borderland of Russia. For many centuries, long before the USA existed, Russians spoke about "Great Russia" (which became modern Russia, based on Moscow), "White Russia" (which is still known as Belarus today), and "Little Russia" (the Eastern part of Ukraine). When Khrushchev transferred Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR he cannot have had the slightest inkling that one day this would involve Russia losing Crimea, which after all was mainly populated by ethnic Russians and Russian speakers.
After the violent, illegal coup d'etat which overthrew the legally elected Ukrainian government in 2014 - of which George Friedman, founder and CEO of Stratfor (https://www.stratfor.com/), said: “It really was the most blatant coup in history" - the Kiev regime instigated extreme violence against Russian-speaking Ukrainians. The population of Crimea voted overwhelmingly to become part of Russia again, and the Russian government agreed.
Putin did NOT "annexe" Crimea. He allowed the people of Crimea to become part of Russia again, after a relatively brief period in which they were subjected to a freshly-created foreign power by a series of administrative freak events.
marmot7 displays a charming naivery and desire to help everyone who needs help. Excellent qualities! However, this is expressed rather the wrong way round: "Is it that there's no profit to be made in solving the most important problems?"
On the contrary, it is that there is so much profit to be made precisely by NOT solving the most important problems. Poverty, inequality, discrimination, war, pollution... all those evils are directly caused by the extraction of profit from the world and its people by certain elites who are already very rich and powerful indeed. It comes as a shock when one first understands that the rich, as a rule, grow steadily richer by taking money from the poor. After all, the poor are the most easily exploited. They are the ones who have to buy necessities in small batches rather than saving money by buying wholesale. (They can't afford fridges or freezers, and have very little storage space). They are the ones who have to use expensive coin-fed meters for power, rather than saving money by paying regularly by electronic means. They are the ones who are so desperately busy, trying to survive from each day to the next, that they have no leisure or disposable income left with which to find out ways of living more economically. They are the ones, overwhelmingly, who play lotteries - that "tax on stupidity" (or rather "tax on ignorance and desperation").
Just as a fridge makes its interior colder by pumping heat out into the external world, the rich contrive to become steadily richer by exporting poverty to those who are already poor. To solve the most important problems, as marmot7 suggests, is not a technical challenge: it would be a political challenge, and would require a revolution.
This proposal reminds me of the 1960 obscenity trial of Penguin Books for the publication of "Lady Chatterley's Lover" by D.H. Lawrence. The chief prosecutor, Mervyn Griffith-Jones, caused some merriment but also revealed his deep prejudices by asking if it were the kind of book "you would wish your wife or servants to read". (If they have time on their hands, readers are encouraged to compile a full list of the ways in which that remark was patronising and bigoted).
If this proposal is taken up by the UK government, it will means that - more than fifty years after the "Lady Chatterley" trial, in an era that prides itself on its freedom of expression - government officials will be asking themselves, in the privacy of their offices, "Is this the kind of Web site you would wish your wife or servants to read?" As it is so very much easier to be safe than sorry, no doubt the answer will very often be, "Actually, no, old man, it isn't" - and off will go another batch of "bad addresses" to the Black List, never ever again to be seen.
If they do this, I hope that they will allow an opt-out. Anything else would feel like an act of censorship, even if that may not be the intent.
Hahahahahahahaha! Of course that's the intent. And of course they won't allow an opt-out. Even if they did, to ask for it would be more or less to hang a big sign round your neck saying, "TERRORIST!"
"[W]hat better way of providing automated defences at scale than by the major private providers effectively blocking their customers from coming into contact with known malware and bad addresses?"
What better way of allowing the UK government to censor what British people can see and hear on the Internet, without the huge majority of them having any idea that their Internet access is being censored?
And for those who have suggested this is no big deal, just wait. This is a case of "First they came for the communists", with a vengeance. Quite apart from the fact that this is exactly what the Chinese government has been doing with its "Great Firewall of China" - and getting it in the neck for alleged tyranny, totalitarianism and censorship.
Of course, how this policy would work out in practice does depend very much on who decides what constitutes "known malware and bad addresses [sic]". Previous draconian laws passed by the British Parliament were, we were solemnly promised, to be used only in the most serious of terrorist cases. A couple of years later, the powers were in fact being used by town councils to spy on what people put into their rubbish, how they kept their gardens, and other such personal and utterly non-vital matters.
If a law is passed establishing a "Great Firewall of Britain", we can be quite sure that within a couple of years literally thousands of government employees - from the Prime Minister to town hall clerks - will be contributing "bad addresses" to the cumulative DNS blacklist. Just like the current Homeland Security watch lists in the USA, thousands of items will be added every month, and nothing will ever be removed.
Indeed, people living in Britain may well find that, one day in the not-too-distant future, they are no longer able to read or contribute to Slashdot. After all, just think of all the contentious issues and worrying statements that are to be found on its pages! Some government functionary - or, perhaps more likely, an instance of that classic responsibility-diffusing mechanism, a committee - will take the view that it would perhaps be for the best if this rather dubious Web site were no longer to be accessible from the UK.
When you see something like this your first reaction is bound to be, "Well, stupid ignorant politicians proposing foolish laws that wouldn't work - yet again". And yet... politicians aren't always stupid and ignorant. Many of them have a certain low rat-like cunning, especially when it comes to getting and keeping office, and currying favour with the rich and powerful who can help them. So, just as a hypothesis, what more might be behind a proposal like this?
The obvious starting point is that, rather than pay a tax to content owners in return for doing the service of indexing and making known what they have to offer, search engine companies would simply stop indexing all such material. That would be really bad, huh? Or would it... from a certain point of view. Suppose you own the New York Times or The Guardian or some other boring obnoxious conventional media outlet. Your view of the Web is probably pretty jaundiced. It's full of people who find your stories through search engines and then read them for free - unless you put up a paywall, in which case they just stop coming altogether. Moreover, increasingly they don't even want your lousy stories because they can find so much better and more up-to-date material on the Web, from a thousand independent and dynamic sources. In fact, in the long run your company is probably facing bankruptcy sooner or later because it can't compete with what's available (mostly free) online. Not good. Wouldn't it be marvellous if someone could put a stop to all this "Web" nonsense and take us all back to the good ol' days when you just had to pay for your newspaper and your cable TV and take whatever they gave you? Wouldn't it?
The search engines could just stop indexing such sites, but over time - at least, so the politicians might think - that would shrink the search engines' usefulness so much that they might go right out of business. Oh boo-hoo, the conventional media owners would grin, rubbing their hands happily. What a terrible shame.
And we, who rely so much on the Web, would find it that much less rich and useful. We really should be thinking about how to react to politicians, responding to their rich buddies, who want to shut down the free Web and replace it with a monitored, controlled pay-per-view thing much along the lines of what Bill Gates had in mind before the Web came along and spoiled his day.
Throughout the later 1990s I gave talks about software security and predicted exactly this. The vast majority of "hackers" (i.e. attackers) in those days were just doing it for fun, to prove themselves, to impress their friends, or whatever. I always ended my talks by warning the audience that this "Garden of Eden" period wouldn't last. Given the large numbers of serious, dedicated criminals out there - not to mention terrorists and national aggressors - it would only be a matter of time before the techniques that had already been demonstrated without the infliction of much harm would be adopted by REAL attackers. And then the suffering would commence, on an industrial scale. Like industrial civilization itself, the Internet is just one enormous fragile target.
"...the Obama administration is moving ahead with an alternative that would allow overseas entrepreneurs to live in the U.S. for up to five years to help build a company..."
After which time they can outsource it to the Far East like normal American entrepreneurs. Here today, gone tomorrow! Thanks to the miracle of globalization.
9, is downright funny, there is, by definition, less than 1 pound of water in 1 pound of beef, unless this guy thinks cattle magically transmute h2o into something else.
"It takes an astounding 1799 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of beef".
And as soon as that cow is slaughtered, all the water magically disappears for ever. Oh wait, it actually goes back into the environment all ready to produce more cows. Dimbulb, meet hydrological cycle.
There are plenty of immigrants who come to the US with nothing, and make it. If you don't want to work, just admit it, and stop whining that your problems are all because of the one-percenters.
The first quoted sentence makes a far-reaching claim with important implications if true. Yet you have seen fit to make that claim without any attempt at quantification. I do not doubt that there are "plenty" of immigrants who come to the USA with nothing (or very little), and "make it" - for some values of "plenty" and "make it". By the latter, do you mean a billion dollars? A hundred million? One million? Comfortable respectability? Or what?
More important by far, what percentage of those immigrants do you think "make it"? We always hear about the successful ones - even if they comprise only one in a million (as seems likely to me). Just as we hear that "anyone can become rich in America" (especially if they are born rich) and "anyone can become President" (especially if they are born very rich indeed, and into the right dynasty).
I assume that you are not actually a one-percenter yourself - or, more to the point, a 0.01%er, as they are the people who have the power and the really big fortunes. So your remarks are of interest, if only as an example of that odd phenomenon: the "Stockholm Syndrome" that causes so many disadvantaged, exploited Americans to stand up for their exploiters. See, for example, Thomas Frank's book "What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America": 'The largely blue collar citizens of Kansas can be counted upon to be a "red" state in any election, voting solidly Republican and possessing a deep animosity toward the left. This, according to author Thomas Frank, is a pretty self-defeating phenomenon, given that the policies of the Republican Party benefit the wealthy and powerful at the great expense of the average worker. According to Frank, the conservative establishment has tricked Kansans, playing up the emotional touchstones of conservatism and perpetuating a sense of a vast liberal empire out to crush traditional values while barely ever discussing the Republicans' actual economic policies and what they mean to the working class. Thus the pro-life Kansas factory worker who listens to Rush Limbaugh will repeatedly vote for the party that is less likely to protect his safety, less likely to protect his job, and less likely to benefit him economically'. (Amazon blurb).
Yes, "radicalization" is a far more dangerous standard than "hate speech". To be a "radicalizer", you don't need to attack anyone or call for violence. All you really need to do is criticize government policy. Indeed, calling for an end to violence could get you arrested - if it's your government's violence.
If it's like James Bond, they'll be taken prisoner in the first foreign country they visit and tortured to death. Unless they have any clever devices given them by Q, of course.
You could make a really cool history-of-air-interceptors poster by showing everything that has intercepted a TU-95 "Bear" over it's long history of pulling this shit.
You could make an equally cool posters by showing all the countries that have had actual bombs dumped on them by B-52s, and how many deaths they caused. Starting with the more than 7 million tons dropped on Vietnam alone (more than four times the weight dropped on Nazi Germany in the whole of WW2). And not forgetting the really cool episode when they dropped four thermonuclear bombs on Spain. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...
Bears have hardly ever dropped bombs in anger. They just fly around to remind forgetful people that Russia does have thermonuclear weapons and the ability to deliver them. (N.B. Not Bears any longer).
"In 2014, Russian military planes violated Estonian airspace seven times, approached Latvian airspace more than 180 times and approached Lithuanian airspace more than 150 times, World Affairs reported".
The Estonian case is one I have already dealt with; at its narrowest, the Gulf of Finland is only 50 kilometres wide between Estonia and Finland, leaving a gap of about 5 kilometres (3 miles) for aircraft to fly through if they wish to avoid both national air spaces. When hundreds of flights are necessary, it is quite likely that one in a hundred might briefly stray into national air space on one side or the other; and that is clearly what has been happening.
As for the rest of the "indictment", it's absurd. "Approached" Latvian air space more than 180 times? "Approached" Lithuanian air space more than 150 times?? What the hell is that??? If you take the view that encroaching on national air space is wrong (which I do), you presumably also agree that not encroaching on it is OK. Approaching it would be an instance of not encroaching, so what's all the fuss about? It's glaringly, pathetically obvious that the authors of the piece were trying to make a mountain out of a molehill, and all they had to work with were the (alleged) seven encroachments into Estonian air space.
Rather than work through the rest of the articles, I shall deal with your more general points.
"The fact is that Russia is a hostile nation, it's invaded Ukraine, and it's invaded Georgia, it can't pretend it's an innocent bystander that's merely hard done by as you're implying it is".
This is terribly, frighteningly wrong. (Frightening because Russia, like the USA, has the capacity to destroy all life on Earth; and may well do so if it is attacked with thermonuclear weapons or other WMDs. So trying to provoke a war with it is literally suicidal). First, to say that Russia is "a hostile nation" is meaningless. Hostile to whom? No nation (with the possible exception of the USA) is hostile to everyone. Actually, Russia is an outstanding example of a nation that much prefers to mind its own business, and never fights unless it is attacked or seriously threatened first. (As the old French saying goes, "Cet animal est tres mechant; Quand on l'attaque, il se defend").
It is factually wrong to allege that Russia has invaded Ukraine. It hasn't. Never. (Well, not since 1943 when it counterattacked to drive the Nazis out of Ukraine - something that a few of the more fanatical Ukrainians of today have said they regret). As you know, the first Russian state was centred on Kiev over 1,000 years ago. In the 17th century there was a lot of fighting in the area ("Ukraine" literally means "borderland") between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, also between Russia and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Long before the USA was invented, Russia had conquered all of present-day Ukraine including Crimea. In 1853-56 Britain, France and Turkey invaded Russia to preempt any further expansion. What part of Russia did they choose to invade? Yes, Crimea! The Russians sacrificed hundreds of thousands of lives to defend Crimea - the war is generally said to have been a defeat for Russia, but it remained in possession of Crimea while the invaders withdrew. This was before the similarly bloody American Civil War. Russians would as soon give up Sevastopol as Americans would agree to give up Gettysburg or The Alamo.
There was never any Ukrainian state until 1991, when it was created by default within the borders of the Ukrainian SSR that had preceded it. Crimea, of course, was transferred from the Russian SSR to the Ukrainian SSR by Khrushchev (himself a Ukrainian) - without the slightest idea or intention that this would lead to it being lost to Russia due to future events. From 1991 Russia leased the naval base of Sevastopol from Ukraine, and had the right to quarter several thousand soldiers and sailors there. When the illegal and extremely violent US-sponsored coup d'etat overthrew Mr Yanukovych a
As I have pointed out in another reply, the Americans are also known to fly with their transponders off. I do not believe this breaks any law, unless done inside another nation's air space - in which case that nation's laws would apply. As for civilian aircraft not being able to see military aircraft, if the latter have their IFF turned off it is obviously entirely up to them to see and avoid any civilian aircraft - which they are obviously more than able to do. A radar that can detect 50 targets (including supposedly "stealthy" aircraft) simultaneously can probably manage to keep track of a few lumbering airliners and the like.
Moreover, it is only common sense to assume that the military aircraft in such a case would also fly at a height where civilians do not fly.
"It's worth noting that the reach of "national air space" over the sea is defined as 12 nautical miles from the nation's coast line. That's about 22.25 kilometres. Amusingly, the shortest distance between the coasts of Finland and Estonia turns out to be about 50 kilometres, rendering it quite hard to fly along the Gulf of Finland without infringing either Finnish or Estonian air space".
One wonders what possible harm anyone imagines could have resulted from a "strategic airlifter" (a huge cargo aircraft) encroaching on Finnish air space by one kilometre, for less than one minute? Surely any kind of friendly neighbour would let it pass. It's rather like having your next-door neighbour back his car a couple of feet into your drive while turning around. You could make a federal case out of it, or you could just ignore it.
But there are some very powerful (and malignant) people who are determined to make a federal case out of everything, as far as Russia is concerned. Like a violent psychopath who takes exception to a stranger looking at him for a moment, and then tries to start a fight in which he believes he is justified in doing his best to kill or cripple the other.
Have you actually read the article you cite? I quote:
"...three Russian aircraft approaching the Baltic skies..."
How vague is it possible to get, in what purports to be a news item? I defy anyone to know, from those words, whether the Russian aircraft encroached on any other nation's air space or not. Circumstantial evidence, however, makes it obvious they did not: because, if they had, the article would have said so in ringing tones. Even the headline says only that "Typhoon jets intercept Russian planes that committed 'act of aggression'". The quotation marks around "act of aggression" show that even the Guardian's sub-editors did not consider there to have been a definite act of aggression.
The article explains that, as the Russian aircraft "approached the Baltic skies", they had their IFF switched off. That was the "act of aggression". Presumably the aggression lay in the possibility that, without IFF, they might not be detected. Yet they were detected, and fighters scrambled to "intercept" them (as if that were necessary). Try this article for size:
"Reuters Apr. 30, 2016, 12:22 PM 1,978 MOSCOW - The Russian Defence Ministry said on Saturday it had sent a fighter plane on Friday to intercept a U.S. aircraft approaching its border over the Baltic Sea because the American plane had turned off its transponder, which is needed for identification".
People said the same about Europe's Eurofighter Typhoon 5 years ago, and yet it's already having to intercept 4.5th Gen Russian fighters that are infringing European airspace in the Baltic.
Could you post some links to sources substantiating that claim? I haven't heard any reports of Russian military aircraft infringing other nations' air space in the Baltic, although I usually follow that kind of news quite carefully.
It's worth noting that the reach of "national air space" over the sea is defined as 12 nautical miles from the nation's coast line. That's about 22.25 kilometres. Amusingly, the shortest distance between the coasts of Finland and Estonia turns out to be about 50 kilometres, rendering it quite hard to fly along the Gulf of Finland without infringing either Finnish or Estonian air space. Especially when media tend to report "close approaches" to air space as being the same as actual encroachments. The shortest distance between England France is 33.1 kilometres, rendering it actually impossible to fly down the English Channel without entering either British or French air space.
Yet it seems only fair that Russian aircraft should be allowed to fly over the Gulf of Finland when travelling westward from St Petersburg and the surrounding area. One wonders, in fact, what harm it would do if Russian military aircraft did encroach marginally on the air space of, say, Estonia. Why would a Russian aircraft flying within, say, ten nautical miles of the coast seem especially threatening when Russia has missiles that could utterly obliterate Estonia within a few minutes?
There is ample evidence to suggest that steak and eggs for breakfast at high frequency isn't a good health move for you and I.
That turns out not to be the case. Certainly until you cite a sufficient number of studies that prove your point - of which, I submit, there are none. The salient fact is that those who claim "that steak and eggs for breakfast at high frequency isn't a good health move" can't point to any actual scientific evidence - just a huge amount of, "he said, she said".
It is certainly true that most people don't need to eat breakfast at all: a good pattern is to eat two meals, one at about noon and one at about 6 p.m. That gives your body time to get into the "fasting state" where it uses up a little of its own fat, rather than having it saturated with glucose 24 hours a day. But whenever you do eat, steak and eggs are hard to beat (if you can afford them), especially if accompanied by plenty of green leafy vegetables, some nuts and seeds, and a little fruit and dairy.
And incidentally, that should be "for you and me".
Please do your own research. And you do not get to decide what "counts" as a US base. (Although if you want to introduce that criterion, Russia does not have one single strategic base outside its own borders - they are all small and tactical).
Slashdot Mirror
Er, "Americans turning inward..."? According to The Washington Post two weeks ago, “While Americans savored the last moments of summer this Labor Day weekend, the U.S. military was busy overseas as warplanes conducted strikes in six countries in a flurry of attacks". https://www.washingtonpost.com...
Many people around the world devoutly wish that Americans would "turn inward" and occupy themselves with their own business, instead of killing foreigners for their own good.
It's been said over and over, but apparently some people still don't understand.
Crimea has been an integral part of Russia since before the USA existed as a nation. On at least two occasions, Russians and Soviets sacrificed literally hundreds of thousands of lives to protect Crimea and to win it back after it was conquered by an enemy. More Russian blood has been spilled for Crimea than American blood in the Civil War - and by that, I mean more than 700,000 dead plus many more injured.
Crimea was generously "given" to the Ukrainian SSR by Khrushchev - who, oddly enough, was himself from Ukraine - in an impulsive act which was probably illegal under Soviet law. Then, when the USSR dissolved itself, Ukraine proclaimed itself an independent nation in 1991. Please understand clearly that this was the very first time in the whole of history that a Ukrainian nation had existed. The name "Ukraine", itself, means "borderland" - that is, the borderland of Russia. For many centuries, long before the USA existed, Russians spoke about "Great Russia" (which became modern Russia, based on Moscow), "White Russia" (which is still known as Belarus today), and "Little Russia" (the Eastern part of Ukraine). When Khrushchev transferred Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR he cannot have had the slightest inkling that one day this would involve Russia losing Crimea, which after all was mainly populated by ethnic Russians and Russian speakers.
After the violent, illegal coup d'etat which overthrew the legally elected Ukrainian government in 2014 - of which George Friedman, founder and CEO of Stratfor (https://www.stratfor.com/), said: “It really was the most blatant coup in history" - the Kiev regime instigated extreme violence against Russian-speaking Ukrainians. The population of Crimea voted overwhelmingly to become part of Russia again, and the Russian government agreed.
Putin did NOT "annexe" Crimea. He allowed the people of Crimea to become part of Russia again, after a relatively brief period in which they were subjected to a freshly-created foreign power by a series of administrative freak events.
marmot7 displays a charming naivery and desire to help everyone who needs help. Excellent qualities! However, this is expressed rather the wrong way round: "Is it that there's no profit to be made in solving the most important problems?"
On the contrary, it is that there is so much profit to be made precisely by NOT solving the most important problems. Poverty, inequality, discrimination, war, pollution... all those evils are directly caused by the extraction of profit from the world and its people by certain elites who are already very rich and powerful indeed. It comes as a shock when one first understands that the rich, as a rule, grow steadily richer by taking money from the poor. After all, the poor are the most easily exploited. They are the ones who have to buy necessities in small batches rather than saving money by buying wholesale. (They can't afford fridges or freezers, and have very little storage space). They are the ones who have to use expensive coin-fed meters for power, rather than saving money by paying regularly by electronic means. They are the ones who are so desperately busy, trying to survive from each day to the next, that they have no leisure or disposable income left with which to find out ways of living more economically. They are the ones, overwhelmingly, who play lotteries - that "tax on stupidity" (or rather "tax on ignorance and desperation").
Just as a fridge makes its interior colder by pumping heat out into the external world, the rich contrive to become steadily richer by exporting poverty to those who are already poor. To solve the most important problems, as marmot7 suggests, is not a technical challenge: it would be a political challenge, and would require a revolution.
This proposal reminds me of the 1960 obscenity trial of Penguin Books for the publication of "Lady Chatterley's Lover" by D.H. Lawrence. The chief prosecutor, Mervyn Griffith-Jones, caused some merriment but also revealed his deep prejudices by asking if it were the kind of book "you would wish your wife or servants to read". (If they have time on their hands, readers are encouraged to compile a full list of the ways in which that remark was patronising and bigoted).
If this proposal is taken up by the UK government, it will means that - more than fifty years after the "Lady Chatterley" trial, in an era that prides itself on its freedom of expression - government officials will be asking themselves, in the privacy of their offices, "Is this the kind of Web site you would wish your wife or servants to read?" As it is so very much easier to be safe than sorry, no doubt the answer will very often be, "Actually, no, old man, it isn't" - and off will go another batch of "bad addresses" to the Black List, never ever again to be seen.
The harm from implementing a large-scale DNS firewall to the DNS system exceeds the benefit.
Once again, of course it does! That's the whole idea. (But it rather depends from whose point of view you are defining "harm" and "benefit").
If they do this, I hope that they will allow an opt-out. Anything else would feel like an act of censorship, even if that may not be the intent.
Hahahahahahahaha! Of course that's the intent. And of course they won't allow an opt-out. Even if they did, to ask for it would be more or less to hang a big sign round your neck saying, "TERRORIST!"
"[W]hat better way of providing automated defences at scale than by the major private providers effectively blocking their customers from coming into contact with known malware and bad addresses?"
What better way of allowing the UK government to censor what British people can see and hear on the Internet, without the huge majority of them having any idea that their Internet access is being censored?
And for those who have suggested this is no big deal, just wait. This is a case of "First they came for the communists", with a vengeance. Quite apart from the fact that this is exactly what the Chinese government has been doing with its "Great Firewall of China" - and getting it in the neck for alleged tyranny, totalitarianism and censorship.
Of course, how this policy would work out in practice does depend very much on who decides what constitutes "known malware and bad addresses [sic]". Previous draconian laws passed by the British Parliament were, we were solemnly promised, to be used only in the most serious of terrorist cases. A couple of years later, the powers were in fact being used by town councils to spy on what people put into their rubbish, how they kept their gardens, and other such personal and utterly non-vital matters.
If a law is passed establishing a "Great Firewall of Britain", we can be quite sure that within a couple of years literally thousands of government employees - from the Prime Minister to town hall clerks - will be contributing "bad addresses" to the cumulative DNS blacklist. Just like the current Homeland Security watch lists in the USA, thousands of items will be added every month, and nothing will ever be removed.
Indeed, people living in Britain may well find that, one day in the not-too-distant future, they are no longer able to read or contribute to Slashdot. After all, just think of all the contentious issues and worrying statements that are to be found on its pages! Some government functionary - or, perhaps more likely, an instance of that classic responsibility-diffusing mechanism, a committee - will take the view that it would perhaps be for the best if this rather dubious Web site were no longer to be accessible from the UK.
For many years I have heard strong demands from the Japanese that the UK must remain part of the EU... or else.
I am waiting to hear Japan's plans for becoming a province of China, which would be the precise equivalent.
When you see something like this your first reaction is bound to be, "Well, stupid ignorant politicians proposing foolish laws that wouldn't work - yet again". And yet... politicians aren't always stupid and ignorant. Many of them have a certain low rat-like cunning, especially when it comes to getting and keeping office, and currying favour with the rich and powerful who can help them. So, just as a hypothesis, what more might be behind a proposal like this?
The obvious starting point is that, rather than pay a tax to content owners in return for doing the service of indexing and making known what they have to offer, search engine companies would simply stop indexing all such material. That would be really bad, huh? Or would it... from a certain point of view. Suppose you own the New York Times or The Guardian or some other boring obnoxious conventional media outlet. Your view of the Web is probably pretty jaundiced. It's full of people who find your stories through search engines and then read them for free - unless you put up a paywall, in which case they just stop coming altogether. Moreover, increasingly they don't even want your lousy stories because they can find so much better and more up-to-date material on the Web, from a thousand independent and dynamic sources. In fact, in the long run your company is probably facing bankruptcy sooner or later because it can't compete with what's available (mostly free) online. Not good. Wouldn't it be marvellous if someone could put a stop to all this "Web" nonsense and take us all back to the good ol' days when you just had to pay for your newspaper and your cable TV and take whatever they gave you? Wouldn't it?
The search engines could just stop indexing such sites, but over time - at least, so the politicians might think - that would shrink the search engines' usefulness so much that they might go right out of business. Oh boo-hoo, the conventional media owners would grin, rubbing their hands happily. What a terrible shame.
And we, who rely so much on the Web, would find it that much less rich and useful. We really should be thinking about how to react to politicians, responding to their rich buddies, who want to shut down the free Web and replace it with a monitored, controlled pay-per-view thing much along the lines of what Bill Gates had in mind before the Web came along and spoiled his day.
Throughout the later 1990s I gave talks about software security and predicted exactly this. The vast majority of "hackers" (i.e. attackers) in those days were just doing it for fun, to prove themselves, to impress their friends, or whatever. I always ended my talks by warning the audience that this "Garden of Eden" period wouldn't last. Given the large numbers of serious, dedicated criminals out there - not to mention terrorists and national aggressors - it would only be a matter of time before the techniques that had already been demonstrated without the infliction of much harm would be adopted by REAL attackers. And then the suffering would commence, on an industrial scale. Like industrial civilization itself, the Internet is just one enormous fragile target.
The amazing thing is that it's taken so long.
"...the Obama administration is moving ahead with an alternative that would allow overseas entrepreneurs to live in the U.S. for up to five years to help build a company..."
After which time they can outsource it to the Far East like normal American entrepreneurs. Here today, gone tomorrow! Thanks to the miracle of globalization.
We should privatize our security, and make the NSA as well as the military a publicly traded corporation.
I know! Let's outsource it all to Microsoft!!
9, is downright funny, there is, by definition, less than 1 pound of water in 1 pound of beef, unless this guy thinks cattle magically transmute h2o into something else.
"It takes an astounding 1799 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of beef".
And as soon as that cow is slaughtered, all the water magically disappears for ever. Oh wait, it actually goes back into the environment all ready to produce more cows. Dimbulb, meet hydrological cycle.
There are plenty of immigrants who come to the US with nothing, and make it. If you don't want to work, just admit it, and stop whining that your problems are all because of the one-percenters.
The first quoted sentence makes a far-reaching claim with important implications if true. Yet you have seen fit to make that claim without any attempt at quantification. I do not doubt that there are "plenty" of immigrants who come to the USA with nothing (or very little), and "make it" - for some values of "plenty" and "make it". By the latter, do you mean a billion dollars? A hundred million? One million? Comfortable respectability? Or what?
More important by far, what percentage of those immigrants do you think "make it"? We always hear about the successful ones - even if they comprise only one in a million (as seems likely to me). Just as we hear that "anyone can become rich in America" (especially if they are born rich) and "anyone can become President" (especially if they are born very rich indeed, and into the right dynasty).
I assume that you are not actually a one-percenter yourself - or, more to the point, a 0.01%er, as they are the people who have the power and the really big fortunes. So your remarks are of interest, if only as an example of that odd phenomenon: the "Stockholm Syndrome" that causes so many disadvantaged, exploited Americans to stand up for their exploiters. See, for example, Thomas Frank's book "What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America": 'The largely blue collar citizens of Kansas can be counted upon to be a "red" state in any election, voting solidly Republican and possessing a deep animosity toward the left. This, according to author Thomas Frank, is a pretty self-defeating phenomenon, given that the policies of the Republican Party benefit the wealthy and powerful at the great expense of the average worker. According to Frank, the conservative establishment has tricked Kansans, playing up the emotional touchstones of conservatism and perpetuating a sense of a vast liberal empire out to crush traditional values while barely ever discussing the Republicans' actual economic policies and what they mean to the working class. Thus the pro-life Kansas factory worker who listens to Rush Limbaugh will repeatedly vote for the party that is less likely to protect his safety, less likely to protect his job, and less likely to benefit him economically'. (Amazon blurb).
Yes, "radicalization" is a far more dangerous standard than "hate speech". To be a "radicalizer", you don't need to attack anyone or call for violence. All you really need to do is criticize government policy. Indeed, calling for an end to violence could get you arrested - if it's your government's violence.
If it's like James Bond, they'll be taken prisoner in the first foreign country they visit and tortured to death. Unless they have any clever devices given them by Q, of course.
You could make a really cool history-of-air-interceptors poster by showing everything that has intercepted a TU-95 "Bear" over it's long history of pulling this shit.
You could make an equally cool posters by showing all the countries that have had actual bombs dumped on them by B-52s, and how many deaths they caused. Starting with the more than 7 million tons dropped on Vietnam alone (more than four times the weight dropped on Nazi Germany in the whole of WW2). And not forgetting the really cool episode when they dropped four thermonuclear bombs on Spain. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...
Bears have hardly ever dropped bombs in anger. They just fly around to remind forgetful people that Russia does have thermonuclear weapons and the ability to deliver them. (N.B. Not Bears any longer).
The first article you link to says this:
"In 2014, Russian military planes violated Estonian airspace seven times, approached Latvian airspace more than 180 times and approached Lithuanian airspace more than 150 times, World Affairs reported".
The Estonian case is one I have already dealt with; at its narrowest, the Gulf of Finland is only 50 kilometres wide between Estonia and Finland, leaving a gap of about 5 kilometres (3 miles) for aircraft to fly through if they wish to avoid both national air spaces. When hundreds of flights are necessary, it is quite likely that one in a hundred might briefly stray into national air space on one side or the other; and that is clearly what has been happening.
As for the rest of the "indictment", it's absurd. "Approached" Latvian air space more than 180 times? "Approached" Lithuanian air space more than 150 times?? What the hell is that??? If you take the view that encroaching on national air space is wrong (which I do), you presumably also agree that not encroaching on it is OK. Approaching it would be an instance of not encroaching, so what's all the fuss about? It's glaringly, pathetically obvious that the authors of the piece were trying to make a mountain out of a molehill, and all they had to work with were the (alleged) seven encroachments into Estonian air space.
Rather than work through the rest of the articles, I shall deal with your more general points.
"The fact is that Russia is a hostile nation, it's invaded Ukraine, and it's invaded Georgia, it can't pretend it's an innocent bystander that's merely hard done by as you're implying it is".
This is terribly, frighteningly wrong. (Frightening because Russia, like the USA, has the capacity to destroy all life on Earth; and may well do so if it is attacked with thermonuclear weapons or other WMDs. So trying to provoke a war with it is literally suicidal). First, to say that Russia is "a hostile nation" is meaningless. Hostile to whom? No nation (with the possible exception of the USA) is hostile to everyone. Actually, Russia is an outstanding example of a nation that much prefers to mind its own business, and never fights unless it is attacked or seriously threatened first. (As the old French saying goes, "Cet animal est tres mechant; Quand on l'attaque, il se defend").
It is factually wrong to allege that Russia has invaded Ukraine. It hasn't. Never. (Well, not since 1943 when it counterattacked to drive the Nazis out of Ukraine - something that a few of the more fanatical Ukrainians of today have said they regret). As you know, the first Russian state was centred on Kiev over 1,000 years ago. In the 17th century there was a lot of fighting in the area ("Ukraine" literally means "borderland") between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, also between Russia and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Long before the USA was invented, Russia had conquered all of present-day Ukraine including Crimea. In 1853-56 Britain, France and Turkey invaded Russia to preempt any further expansion. What part of Russia did they choose to invade? Yes, Crimea! The Russians sacrificed hundreds of thousands of lives to defend Crimea - the war is generally said to have been a defeat for Russia, but it remained in possession of Crimea while the invaders withdrew. This was before the similarly bloody American Civil War. Russians would as soon give up Sevastopol as Americans would agree to give up Gettysburg or The Alamo.
There was never any Ukrainian state until 1991, when it was created by default within the borders of the Ukrainian SSR that had preceded it. Crimea, of course, was transferred from the Russian SSR to the Ukrainian SSR by Khrushchev (himself a Ukrainian) - without the slightest idea or intention that this would lead to it being lost to Russia due to future events. From 1991 Russia leased the naval base of Sevastopol from Ukraine, and had the right to quarter several thousand soldiers and sailors there. When the illegal and extremely violent US-sponsored coup d'etat overthrew Mr Yanukovych a
As I have pointed out in another reply, the Americans are also known to fly with their transponders off. I do not believe this breaks any law, unless done inside another nation's air space - in which case that nation's laws would apply. As for civilian aircraft not being able to see military aircraft, if the latter have their IFF turned off it is obviously entirely up to them to see and avoid any civilian aircraft - which they are obviously more than able to do. A radar that can detect 50 targets (including supposedly "stealthy" aircraft) simultaneously can probably manage to keep track of a few lumbering airliners and the like.
Moreover, it is only common sense to assume that the military aircraft in such a case would also fly at a height where civilians do not fly.
As I posted yesterday,
"It's worth noting that the reach of "national air space" over the sea is defined as 12 nautical miles from the nation's coast line. That's about 22.25 kilometres. Amusingly, the shortest distance between the coasts of Finland and Estonia turns out to be about 50 kilometres, rendering it quite hard to fly along the Gulf of Finland without infringing either Finnish or Estonian air space".
One wonders what possible harm anyone imagines could have resulted from a "strategic airlifter" (a huge cargo aircraft) encroaching on Finnish air space by one kilometre, for less than one minute? Surely any kind of friendly neighbour would let it pass. It's rather like having your next-door neighbour back his car a couple of feet into your drive while turning around. You could make a federal case out of it, or you could just ignore it.
But there are some very powerful (and malignant) people who are determined to make a federal case out of everything, as far as Russia is concerned. Like a violent psychopath who takes exception to a stranger looking at him for a moment, and then tries to start a fight in which he believes he is justified in doing his best to kill or cripple the other.
Have you actually read the article you cite? I quote:
"...three Russian aircraft approaching the Baltic skies..."
How vague is it possible to get, in what purports to be a news item? I defy anyone to know, from those words, whether the Russian aircraft encroached on any other nation's air space or not. Circumstantial evidence, however, makes it obvious they did not: because, if they had, the article would have said so in ringing tones. Even the headline says only that "Typhoon jets intercept Russian planes that committed 'act of aggression'". The quotation marks around "act of aggression" show that even the Guardian's sub-editors did not consider there to have been a definite act of aggression.
The article explains that, as the Russian aircraft "approached the Baltic skies", they had their IFF switched off. That was the "act of aggression". Presumably the aggression lay in the possibility that, without IFF, they might not be detected. Yet they were detected, and fighters scrambled to "intercept" them (as if that were necessary). Try this article for size:
http://uk.businessinsider.com/...
"Reuters Apr. 30, 2016, 12:22 PM 1,978 MOSCOW - The Russian Defence Ministry said on Saturday it had sent a fighter plane on Friday to intercept a U.S. aircraft approaching its border over the Baltic Sea because the American plane had turned off its transponder, which is needed for identification".
So?
People said the same about Europe's Eurofighter Typhoon 5 years ago, and yet it's already having to intercept 4.5th Gen Russian fighters that are infringing European airspace in the Baltic.
Could you post some links to sources substantiating that claim? I haven't heard any reports of Russian military aircraft infringing other nations' air space in the Baltic, although I usually follow that kind of news quite carefully.
It's worth noting that the reach of "national air space" over the sea is defined as 12 nautical miles from the nation's coast line. That's about 22.25 kilometres. Amusingly, the shortest distance between the coasts of Finland and Estonia turns out to be about 50 kilometres, rendering it quite hard to fly along the Gulf of Finland without infringing either Finnish or Estonian air space. Especially when media tend to report "close approaches" to air space as being the same as actual encroachments. The shortest distance between England France is 33.1 kilometres, rendering it actually impossible to fly down the English Channel without entering either British or French air space.
Yet it seems only fair that Russian aircraft should be allowed to fly over the Gulf of Finland when travelling westward from St Petersburg and the surrounding area. One wonders, in fact, what harm it would do if Russian military aircraft did encroach marginally on the air space of, say, Estonia. Why would a Russian aircraft flying within, say, ten nautical miles of the coast seem especially threatening when Russia has missiles that could utterly obliterate Estonia within a few minutes?
There is ample evidence to suggest that steak and eggs for breakfast at high frequency isn't a good health move for you and I.
That turns out not to be the case. Certainly until you cite a sufficient number of studies that prove your point - of which, I submit, there are none. The salient fact is that those who claim "that steak and eggs for breakfast at high frequency isn't a good health move" can't point to any actual scientific evidence - just a huge amount of, "he said, she said".
It is certainly true that most people don't need to eat breakfast at all: a good pattern is to eat two meals, one at about noon and one at about 6 p.m. That gives your body time to get into the "fasting state" where it uses up a little of its own fat, rather than having it saturated with glucose 24 hours a day. But whenever you do eat, steak and eggs are hard to beat (if you can afford them), especially if accompanied by plenty of green leafy vegetables, some nuts and seeds, and a little fruit and dairy.
And incidentally, that should be "for you and me".
Please do your own research. And you do not get to decide what "counts" as a US base. (Although if you want to introduce that criterion, Russia does not have one single strategic base outside its own borders - they are all small and tactical).
Like this, perhaps?
https://images-na.ssl-images-a...