The US would happily increase cooperation with Russia if only Russia would stop sabre rattling.
Actually, the USA has over 1,000 military bases abroad - many of them in Asia, as close as possible to the frontiers of Russia, China, and Iran. Not to mention its 11 (give or take) massive carrier battle groups which prowl the oceans to intimidate other nations.
Russia has, from memory, three or four small military bases outside its own borders. Apart from Syria, where it is fighting terrorism (because someone has to, and the USA isn't) they are all in friendly nations next door to Russia itself - Belarus, Armenia, etc.
When the USA sails its carrier battle groups or other naval units a few miles from Russia and China, in waters many thousands of miles away from the USA, that isn't sabre-rattling. When the USA organizes "NATO" military exercises that involve large numbers of soldiers and weapons parading around a few miles from Russia, that isn't sabre-rattling. When the USA places German tanks as close to St Petersburg as they were in autumn 1941, that isn't sabre-rattling. When the USA places missile stations that could, without anyone knowing, be equipped to fire offensive nuclear missiles, within a few miles of Russia that isn't sabre-rattling. (Although it is exactly equivalent to the Soviet actions to prevent which President Kennedy precipitated the Cuban Missile Crisis).
But when the Russians or Chinese calmly announce the measures they have taken to defend themselves, or when they conduct military exercises entirely within their own borders - THAT is apparently sabre-rattling.
See http://www.globalfirepower.com.... Clue: Russia is the 5th-ranked in military spending, slightly below the UK. Its spending is less than one twelfth of the USA's.
Yes, because no one in the entire world outside the USA cares about anything except American politics - and especially elections. Ironically enough, a very great deal of military history and an immense amount of death and suffering has been caused as a mere side-effect of US elections, and leaders who wanted to "look strong" before them.
"The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress", a science fiction novel by Robert A Heinlein published over 50 years ago. Heinlein was a qualified engineer and a retired US Navy officer (who once commanded a gun turret on the battleship USS Oklahoma, and docked USS Lexington when she was the largest warship in the world). He knew what he was talking about. In the novel, Lunar colonists rebel against an oppressive Terran "Authority", in a fairly obvious rehash of the American Revolution. Instead of bombs, they merely launch loads of rocks into ballistic trajectories calculated to hit targets on Earth (such as Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado). The effect is similar to a nuclear explosion.
"The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress", a science fiction novel by Robert A Heinlein published over 50 years ago. Heinlein was a qualified engineer and a retired US Navy officer (who once commanded a gun turret on the battleship USS Oklahoma, and docked USS Lexington when she was the largest warship in the world). He knew what he was talking about. In the novel, Lunar colonists rebel against an oppressive Terran "Authority", ina fairly obvious rehash of the American Revolution. Instead of bombs, they merely launch loads of rocks into ballistic trajectories calculated to hit targets on Earth (such as Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado). The effect is similar to a nuclear explosition.
... it's unwise to entrust anything of value to "the cloud". Put your work and your intellectual property on Google - and it may vanish, leaving you with nothing except the dusty prospect of sueing one of the world's biggest and most powerful corporations. Buy books from Amazon in Kindle format, and one day they may simply vanish too - as, with supreme irony, copies of "1984" and "Animal Farm" vanished in 2009. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
Keep what is important to you under your own eye and your own control, and of course back it up judiciously and perhaps store copies in a few other places. But blithely assuming that your intellectual property is safe on computers owned and controlled by people whom you do not know, and who have fundamentally no obligation to you, is risky.
If you enjoy thrillers and would appreciate a dramatic fictional presentation of these ideas, try Michael Connelly's novel "The Scarecrow". https://www.amazon.co.uk/Scare... You will probably never feel the same about "the cloud" again.
We have to tackle one problem at a time. The EU was the greater threat, and had to be dealt with first. If the British people cannot see to it that their government rejects TTIP, they don't deserve to retain their independence. But I have confidence that they will.
TTIP is seen in Europe as purely an economic issue.
Not by me it isn't - and not by many others who voted for UKIP and Brexit. Just like the EU, TTIP is mainly designed to take effective power away from national governments - which, however imperfectly, represent and are answerable to their citizens - and give it to faceless and utterly unanswerable individuals and corporations.
As far as I am concerned, TTIP is purely a political issue. And it's as important as Magna Carta, Habeas Corpus, trial by jury, or representative democracy - because it threatens to undermine or demolish all of them.
While your objections are obviously correct, I think you are flogging a dead horse. Andrea Leadsom's suggestion is so utterly brain-dead that, even in the world of British politics, it is a non-starter. As soon as Andrea got back to her Ministry (oh wait, I forgot she hasn't got one) Sir Humphrey would take her aside and explain the facts of life as gently as possible. Maybe a few G&Ts would help her to feel better.
If rating Web sites is a good idea, then why not rate books too? This is a long overdue initiative, which would put the UK right up at the top of the Fahrenheit 451 Censorship League. Of course there are some practical drawbacks, such as the unlikelihood that any government flunkey or private contractor would be willing to read the whole of any book. But it would be very amusing (not to say revealing) to see a list of books that Andrea Leadsom would consider dangerous.
Given that the UK has been giving a net £8.5 billion to the EU every year (£18 billion gross; £13 billion including the rebate; less about £4.5 billion that the EU gives back), and that a 200 bed hospital can be built for about £100 million... I make that 85 hospital equivalents per year.
Now of course the UK government is not going to spend the whole £8.5 billion building new hospitals. (Although it would be hugely more cost-effective than the ghastly Private Finance Initiative whereby private companies are allowed to build the hospitals, schools, etc. and then rent them to the government for decades, raking in huge profits at the public expense). There are many other things to spend money on - for example, the £100 million a year that the EU has been giving to Cambridge University should probably be continued. They might even let the taxpayers keep some of the "dividend" in lower taxes. (Just kidding!)
The NHS as a whole costs well over £100 billion a year, but £8.5 billion is a worthwhile fraction of that. I would rather have it than not have it.
I think any club that charged a fee of £1,000 and gave back services to the value of £350 would be short of members. It might even get into trouble with the law.
The £13.7 billion figure comes from the disproven £350m/day figure (£350m * 365 = £12.8b) that Nigel Farage has described as "a mistake" because it's from *before* the rebate and subsidies; once you take into account the rebate and subsidies it's actually about half that.
Well, I was wrong - the total payment before the rebate is about £18 billion a year; after the rebate it is £13 billion. Taking account of the £4 billion plus the EU pays back, the net is actually about £8.5 billion.
I came here to say that as well. Most "country-altering" things in the USA (constitution changes, adopting new states, etc) are done with a 2/3 supermajority, usually at the state level.
That's reasonable, but the UK referndum was a slightly different situation. It was UK citizens' only chance to reverse a choice that they had previously been conned into making under false pretences.
That would make it very hard indeed for the UK to escape from the EU. In the previous referendum of 1975 (in which I voted "Yes" to continued membership of the EEC) the government and media almost unanimously recommended membership. Moreover, voters were assured that the EEC was only a free trade area, and membership would never involve any significant loss of sovereignty. (Although at the time all political and business players knew very well that the intention was to create a European superstate and eliminate all sovereign nations).
So this year's referendum was the first chance that UK citizens have ever had to escape from the EU, in the knowledge that it does intend to become a political union. Indeed, the only chance there would ever be. If someone is in bus that catches fire, they cannot be criticized for seizing any chance to jump out - even if that is risky.
Given the impact and importance of the vote I'm still amazed that the turnout was a "mere" 72% which, while well above a typical general election turnout, pales compared to the 84% turnout of the Scottish independence referendum.
Voting was affected by heavy rain, which caused severe flooding in some areas. There were long queues at some polling stations - very unusual in the UK. And it's understandable that there was less interest (and emotion) over Brexit than over Scottish independence, given that the Scots were fighting off English aggression 800 years ago and more. In comparison, the European Union is very hard to understand (not, perhaps, accidentally).
The result was very narrow. The turn-out was relatively low for such an important decision.
That turns out not to be the case. The turnout was 72.21%, and the number of votes cast for "Leave" was 17,410,742 - the highest number of votes ever cast for one candidate or option in any British election. While the margin of victory was a relatively narrow 3.8%, that represents over 1.25 million votes.
I guess, many of the signers were disappointed voters who believed the bullshit about giving the EU money to the NHS. Unfortunately for them Farage changed his mind after the vote.
It is true that the UK currently pays the EU a net £13.5 billion (about $20 billion, at least until yesterday)) a year in contributions. That's after deducting the payments that come back from Brussels - although it should be noted that the EU bureaucrats choose who gets "their" largesse. So the equation is roughly like this: the British government takes a lot of British taxpayers' money and gives it to Brussels. Brussels then gives chosen "good causes" in the UK about a third of that money, and keeps the rest.
What Nigel Farage (and many others) think is that it would be nice if the UK government kept that money and spent it on whatever useful priorities it thinks best. The NHS is certainly one of our biggest and most resource-hungry public utilities, and I don't see why it shouldn't get some of the £13.5 billion the UK could save by not being in the EU.
I was thinking more about the models (if you can call them that) from Economics 101 that show how the market automagically responds and adjusts to all changes. If there is a shortage of nurses, computer engineers, or drone operators, demand causes compensation to rise, which in turn stimulates more young people to study for those occupations. Between four and ten years later, when they are finally ready to seek jobs, everything is entirely different. Among other things, there is often a huge oversupply because of the lack of any coordinating mechanism to track and adjust the numbers training.
The same thing happens on a less dramatic (i.e. life-ruining) scale in the artificial "market" that the UK government has cleverly set up for consumers to pay for their power (gas and electricity). While exactly the same gas enters the house along the same pipe, and the same electricity through the same cable, there is a choice of literally scores of companies that "sell" the power. If you find you are paying, say £1,000 a year for power you can go to an online "comparison" site that lists all the "suppliers" with their current rates. In theory, you choose the lowest rate and elect to change suppliers. Everything hums along automatically, and in six weeks you find yourself with a new supplier - who now charges more than your old one.
Good point! One thing that seems to be missing from most economics is the concept of time lag. Considering how vitally important delays are in control theory, this is surprising - unless conceivably most economists don't know anything about control theory. Which might not matter to them since they are not trying to be right, just to get paid - and most of them work, directly or indirectly, for governments, banks and other financial organizations.
"Microsoft Says Edge Browser Is More Power-Efficient Than Chrome"
But then almost anything is more power-efficient than Windows. So Chrome on Linux probably beats Edge on Windows hands down. Propaganda is largely a matter of choosing what you want to emphasize and being carefully not to mention anything else.
People seem to have forgotten that the Internet was originally called ARPANET.
People seem to have forgotten that I mentioned that in my comment, to which you were replying. As for your dire predictions, they sound plausible. But remember John Kenneth Galbraith's warning about predictions:
"There are two kinds of forecasters. Those who don't know what's going to happen, and those who don't know they don't know what's going to happen".
For instance, the Internet and the Web may be doomed to proprietary lock-in in the USA, as you say. But that leaves 95% of the world's population, who live outside the USA, to make things happen in different ways. Starting, of course, with dissolving the EU and rejecting TTP and TTIP.
Slashdot Mirror
The US would happily increase cooperation with Russia if only Russia would stop sabre rattling.
Actually, the USA has over 1,000 military bases abroad - many of them in Asia, as close as possible to the frontiers of Russia, China, and Iran. Not to mention its 11 (give or take) massive carrier battle groups which prowl the oceans to intimidate other nations.
Russia has, from memory, three or four small military bases outside its own borders. Apart from Syria, where it is fighting terrorism (because someone has to, and the USA isn't) they are all in friendly nations next door to Russia itself - Belarus, Armenia, etc.
When the USA sails its carrier battle groups or other naval units a few miles from Russia and China, in waters many thousands of miles away from the USA, that isn't sabre-rattling.
When the USA organizes "NATO" military exercises that involve large numbers of soldiers and weapons parading around a few miles from Russia, that isn't sabre-rattling.
When the USA places German tanks as close to St Petersburg as they were in autumn 1941, that isn't sabre-rattling.
When the USA places missile stations that could, without anyone knowing, be equipped to fire offensive nuclear missiles, within a few miles of Russia that isn't sabre-rattling. (Although it is exactly equivalent to the Soviet actions to prevent which President Kennedy precipitated the Cuban Missile Crisis).
But when the Russians or Chinese calmly announce the measures they have taken to defend themselves, or when they conduct military exercises entirely within their own borders - THAT is apparently sabre-rattling.
See http://www.globalfirepower.com.... Clue: Russia is the 5th-ranked in military spending, slightly below the UK. Its spending is less than one twelfth of the USA's.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/p...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Yes, because no one in the entire world outside the USA cares about anything except American politics - and especially elections. Ironically enough, a very great deal of military history and an immense amount of death and suffering has been caused as a mere side-effect of US elections, and leaders who wanted to "look strong" before them.
Edited version of my last reply:
"The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress", a science fiction novel by Robert A Heinlein published over 50 years ago. Heinlein was a qualified engineer and a retired US Navy officer (who once commanded a gun turret on the battleship USS Oklahoma, and docked USS Lexington when she was the largest warship in the world). He knew what he was talking about. In the novel, Lunar colonists rebel against an oppressive Terran "Authority", in a fairly obvious rehash of the American Revolution. Instead of bombs, they merely launch loads of rocks into ballistic trajectories calculated to hit targets on Earth (such as Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado). The effect is similar to a nuclear explosion.
"The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress", a science fiction novel by Robert A Heinlein published over 50 years ago. Heinlein was a qualified engineer and a retired US Navy officer (who once commanded a gun turret on the battleship USS Oklahoma, and docked USS Lexington when she was the largest warship in the world). He knew what he was talking about. In the novel, Lunar colonists rebel against an oppressive Terran "Authority", ina fairly obvious rehash of the American Revolution. Instead of bombs, they merely launch loads of rocks into ballistic trajectories calculated to hit targets on Earth (such as Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado). The effect is similar to a nuclear explosition.
... it's unwise to entrust anything of value to "the cloud". Put your work and your intellectual property on Google - and it may vanish, leaving you with nothing except the dusty prospect of sueing one of the world's biggest and most powerful corporations. Buy books from Amazon in Kindle format, and one day they may simply vanish too - as, with supreme irony, copies of "1984" and "Animal Farm" vanished in 2009. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
Keep what is important to you under your own eye and your own control, and of course back it up judiciously and perhaps store copies in a few other places. But blithely assuming that your intellectual property is safe on computers owned and controlled by people whom you do not know, and who have fundamentally no obligation to you, is risky.
If you enjoy thrillers and would appreciate a dramatic fictional presentation of these ideas, try Michael Connelly's novel "The Scarecrow". https://www.amazon.co.uk/Scare... You will probably never feel the same about "the cloud" again.
We have to tackle one problem at a time. The EU was the greater threat, and had to be dealt with first. If the British people cannot see to it that their government rejects TTIP, they don't deserve to retain their independence. But I have confidence that they will.
TTIP is seen in Europe as purely an economic issue.
Not by me it isn't - and not by many others who voted for UKIP and Brexit. Just like the EU, TTIP is mainly designed to take effective power away from national governments - which, however imperfectly, represent and are answerable to their citizens - and give it to faceless and utterly unanswerable individuals and corporations.
As far as I am concerned, TTIP is purely a political issue. And it's as important as Magna Carta, Habeas Corpus, trial by jury, or representative democracy - because it threatens to undermine or demolish all of them.
While your objections are obviously correct, I think you are flogging a dead horse. Andrea Leadsom's suggestion is so utterly brain-dead that, even in the world of British politics, it is a non-starter. As soon as Andrea got back to her Ministry (oh wait, I forgot she hasn't got one) Sir Humphrey would take her aside and explain the facts of life as gently as possible. Maybe a few G&Ts would help her to feel better.
If rating Web sites is a good idea, then why not rate books too? This is a long overdue initiative, which would put the UK right up at the top of the Fahrenheit 451 Censorship League. Of course there are some practical drawbacks, such as the unlikelihood that any government flunkey or private contractor would be willing to read the whole of any book. But it would be very amusing (not to say revealing) to see a list of books that Andrea Leadsom would consider dangerous.
Given that the UK has been giving a net £8.5 billion to the EU every year (£18 billion gross; £13 billion including the rebate; less about £4.5 billion that the EU gives back), and that a 200 bed hospital can be built for about £100 million... I make that 85 hospital equivalents per year.
Now of course the UK government is not going to spend the whole £8.5 billion building new hospitals. (Although it would be hugely more cost-effective than the ghastly Private Finance Initiative whereby private companies are allowed to build the hospitals, schools, etc. and then rent them to the government for decades, raking in huge profits at the public expense). There are many other things to spend money on - for example, the £100 million a year that the EU has been giving to Cambridge University should probably be continued. They might even let the taxpayers keep some of the "dividend" in lower taxes. (Just kidding!)
The NHS as a whole costs well over £100 billion a year, but £8.5 billion is a worthwhile fraction of that. I would rather have it than not have it.
I think any club that charged a fee of £1,000 and gave back services to the value of £350 would be short of members. It might even get into trouble with the law.
The £13.7 billion figure comes from the disproven £350m/day figure (£350m * 365 = £12.8b) that Nigel Farage has described as "a mistake" because it's from *before* the rebate and subsidies; once you take into account the rebate and subsidies it's actually about half that.
Well, I was wrong - the total payment before the rebate is about £18 billion a year; after the rebate it is £13 billion. Taking account of the £4 billion plus the EU pays back, the net is actually about £8.5 billion.
https://fullfact.org/europe/ou...
About 22 million of people voted for "stay".
16,141,241
I came here to say that as well. Most "country-altering" things in the USA (constitution changes, adopting new states, etc) are done with a 2/3 supermajority, usually at the state level.
That's reasonable, but the UK referndum was a slightly different situation. It was UK citizens' only chance to reverse a choice that they had previously been conned into making under false pretences.
That would make it very hard indeed for the UK to escape from the EU. In the previous referendum of 1975 (in which I voted "Yes" to continued membership of the EEC) the government and media almost unanimously recommended membership. Moreover, voters were assured that the EEC was only a free trade area, and membership would never involve any significant loss of sovereignty. (Although at the time all political and business players knew very well that the intention was to create a European superstate and eliminate all sovereign nations).
So this year's referendum was the first chance that UK citizens have ever had to escape from the EU, in the knowledge that it does intend to become a political union. Indeed, the only chance there would ever be. If someone is in bus that catches fire, they cannot be criticized for seizing any chance to jump out - even if that is risky.
See, for some interesting background, http://www.express.co.uk/news/...
"I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have".
Less has changed since the 19th century than you may think.
"In our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either".
- Mark Twain
Given the impact and importance of the vote I'm still amazed that the turnout was a "mere" 72% which, while well above a typical general election turnout, pales compared to the 84% turnout of the Scottish independence referendum.
Voting was affected by heavy rain, which caused severe flooding in some areas. There were long queues at some polling stations - very unusual in the UK. And it's understandable that there was less interest (and emotion) over Brexit than over Scottish independence, given that the Scots were fighting off English aggression 800 years ago and more. In comparison, the European Union is very hard to understand (not, perhaps, accidentally).
The result was very narrow. The turn-out was relatively low for such an important decision.
That turns out not to be the case. The turnout was 72.21%, and the number of votes cast for "Leave" was 17,410,742 - the highest number of votes ever cast for one candidate or option in any British election. While the margin of victory was a relatively narrow 3.8%, that represents over 1.25 million votes.
I guess, many of the signers were disappointed voters who believed the bullshit about giving the EU money to the NHS. Unfortunately for them Farage changed his mind after the vote.
It is true that the UK currently pays the EU a net £13.5 billion (about $20 billion, at least until yesterday)) a year in contributions. That's after deducting the payments that come back from Brussels - although it should be noted that the EU bureaucrats choose who gets "their" largesse. So the equation is roughly like this: the British government takes a lot of British taxpayers' money and gives it to Brussels. Brussels then gives chosen "good causes" in the UK about a third of that money, and keeps the rest.
What Nigel Farage (and many others) think is that it would be nice if the UK government kept that money and spent it on whatever useful priorities it thinks best. The NHS is certainly one of our biggest and most resource-hungry public utilities, and I don't see why it shouldn't get some of the £13.5 billion the UK could save by not being in the EU.
Thanks!
I was thinking more about the models (if you can call them that) from Economics 101 that show how the market automagically responds and adjusts to all changes. If there is a shortage of nurses, computer engineers, or drone operators, demand causes compensation to rise, which in turn stimulates more young people to study for those occupations. Between four and ten years later, when they are finally ready to seek jobs, everything is entirely different. Among other things, there is often a huge oversupply because of the lack of any coordinating mechanism to track and adjust the numbers training.
The same thing happens on a less dramatic (i.e. life-ruining) scale in the artificial "market" that the UK government has cleverly set up for consumers to pay for their power (gas and electricity). While exactly the same gas enters the house along the same pipe, and the same electricity through the same cable, there is a choice of literally scores of companies that "sell" the power. If you find you are paying, say £1,000 a year for power you can go to an online "comparison" site that lists all the "suppliers" with their current rates. In theory, you choose the lowest rate and elect to change suppliers. Everything hums along automatically, and in six weeks you find yourself with a new supplier - who now charges more than your old one.
Good point! One thing that seems to be missing from most economics is the concept of time lag. Considering how vitally important delays are in control theory, this is surprising - unless conceivably most economists don't know anything about control theory. Which might not matter to them since they are not trying to be right, just to get paid - and most of them work, directly or indirectly, for governments, banks and other financial organizations.
Murder rates and ice-cream sales are highly correlated too.
Yes indeed; both go up the hotter it gets.
"Microsoft Says Edge Browser Is More Power-Efficient Than Chrome"
But then almost anything is more power-efficient than Windows. So Chrome on Linux probably beats Edge on Windows hands down. Propaganda is largely a matter of choosing what you want to emphasize and being carefully not to mention anything else.
People seem to have forgotten that the Internet was originally called ARPANET.
People seem to have forgotten that I mentioned that in my comment, to which you were replying. As for your dire predictions, they sound plausible. But remember John Kenneth Galbraith's warning about predictions:
"There are two kinds of forecasters. Those who don't know what's going to happen, and those who don't know they don't know what's going to happen".
For instance, the Internet and the Web may be doomed to proprietary lock-in in the USA, as you say. But that leaves 95% of the world's population, who live outside the USA, to make things happen in different ways. Starting, of course, with dissolving the EU and rejecting TTP and TTIP.