"Did the terrorists actually win this war on terror?"
Yes, but there were multiple winners.
AQ inflicted trivial numbers of casualties compared to conventional wars, did that with minimal assets and personnel, and triggered/excused the US elites doing what they'd been working at anyway. The team damaged the US + world.
The terrorists won by getting their adversary to make toxic structural changes, and the elites won by obtaining the excuse to make those changes! The American public and other Star Trek Red Shirts of the world lost. AQ and the Elites can both claim victory BUT also claim the battle is not over. Obvious to see where this will go...
"There's no public outrage because there's really nothing anyone can do."
Nothing convenient and safe. The inconvenience of being surveilled isn't sufficient for any of the public to give up their freedom in return for (hypothetical example) kneecapping politicians. Since politicians only respect what they fear, and the public won't sacrifice to put them in fear, the elites win.
After OK City, there were no more "Randy Weaver" or "Branch Davidian incidents". I'm not advocating such acts, but pointing out that they have some effectiveness. OTOH there is no hope for peaceful change. In order to make people do your will you must be willing to hurt or kill them. (The US exists because the Founders and their followers were willing to send shot and shell through Redcoat, Hessian, and Tory.) If you won't do this, those who will are your masters and so it has always been through history.
The social contract in the US is that the elites allow us food and shiny objects while being able to kill us if the bribes don't work. I'll take the bribes as we all do, but I'm aware I'm being paid off.
That was Old School terror designed to target proles who are the equivalent of Star Trek redshirts. It works, but the elites don't fear it and in the case of 9/11 even exploit it!
New School, like the brilliant whacking of Alfred Herrhausen by a precision explosive charge or US drone attacks, reaches out to specific high-value targets. For those specific targets the threat is real and coerces them to defend against it. Such attacks don't require an attacker be on the scene making them a logical way to go. Someone wanting to manipulate a pacemaker could put a remotely activated device in, for example, an ordinary looking large plastic electrical enclosure, attach it to a streetlamp or hide it any number of ways, then wait for the target to come in range. It could stay dormant for a long time, even years if power was tapped from a steady source.
The TPublicans are also heavily astroturfed, and largely religious fanatics. Real Libertarians are as rare as hens teeth.
No fair ignoring that along with the decent bits!
"War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength."
Didn't hear any of THAT from the people who later formed the Tea Party until there was a "nigger" in the White House operating the same police state the GOP built to go after a different variety of brown people. Amusingly, Obama (who the Teapublicans consider a "Muslim") is further Right than the Bushies in terms of killing AQ terrs.
Wake me when the TPs go after corporate welfare with the same gusto they go after programs that benefit the American workforce in general. Wake me when they favor slashing the War Department which provides economic/military subsidies to our Pacific competitors. Wake me when they aren't bootlicking Tel Aviv whose administrations they confuse with the Chosen People. Wake me when most of them aren't Dixiecrats by another name.
I wanted to like the TP, but all they are is the inevitable result of the GOP Southern Strategy.
Precisely. There is only "war" of different kinds and at varying levels.
"Terror" is pretty effective though. Nations which lose hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed to socially acceptable causes (smoking, obesity, auto crashes) can easily be terrified into implementing structurally toxic changes by the trivial loss of a few thousand killed in one small location. I wouldn't want to be under a massive bombardment either, but once upon a time nations knew they could take massive casualties yet not only survive but triumph.
Give the Mamayev Kurgan monument some thought. Stalingrad cost more Soviet dead than the US lost in all its wars, but they refused to lose. Commies or not, they had balls.
Puppy Linux BTW works very well for many old machines because it's so easy to configure and install. Boot a live CD or USB key, and you can install to hard disk or make more USB keys or live CDs, or remaster with included tools. Runs fine from USB and doesn't require a hard disk. It's available in Chrome and Firefox flavors, and Slacko is based on Slackware so what's not to like?
The flip side is employees have no moral obligation to their employer. My employer owes me nothing not spelt out in law, and I'm very aware I don't owe them more than that either. That frees me to behave in any legal way useful to me, no matter how dishonest.
Fuck me? Less if I fuck you first.:-)
I'm highly motivated to do well for a loyal employer, but cheerfully ruthless towards the other sort.
Labor and management are inherently opponents unless they work (together) to come to some different arrangement.
Many folks are installing pfSense etc on thin clients (plentiful on Ebay and dirt cheap). Choose whatever distro you like then have at it. Rolling your own goes back to floppy-based Linux routers and is old news.
When someone wants to sell you something, denigrating whatever that something is intended to replace is part of the pitch.
My phone is convenient...until it breaks. Phones are more delicate than cards.
My card is convenient, until communication is interrupted between the business I'm patronizing and their credit processor. Not acceptable when I need fuel on the road.
Cash is pretty reliable. I'll ADD tools, but only when they serve me.
Nothing special there. You TRACE piping as you would any other schematic.
Fun fact: You can physically VERIFY what is inside a pipe before severing it! "Cold tap" and "hot tap" fittings allow connection even to PRESSURISED and FLAMMABLE pipes and pipelines. (An interesting example is hot-tapping burning railroad tank cars to remove the non-burning portion of the contents while the rest flares.) Hot and cold are common and commercially available and if you need a special fitting any competent machine/fab shop can make it for you.
Where useful, water or other liquids may be frozen at either side of a proposed joint or cut to plug leakage.
In the end, one must embed the capability for violent revolution by ensuring the people are armed and thus able to kill their oppressors. Nothing less protects freedom. Pacifism only works, sometimes, on weak oppressors. Not only must the people be armed, they must harbor to some degree the willingness to kill their masters should it ever come to that. The Founders weren't fools. While firearms owners in the US are often "conservatives", that's not a consequence of firearms ownership. Many "liberals" tend to so worship government they trust it, and that trust is obviously not sane as our current climate demonstrates. Want the masters to respect you? They need to know that, if you are motivated and perhaps willing to die doing it, can kill them. It's up to each nation to decide when enough is enough. That Syrians can fight a monstrous police state is a sign of hope and worthy of admiration. It does take will though. The famous vid of the insurgent walking down a row of captives and executing them shows what is required. The only way to be rid of serious enemies is for them to stop breathing.
The assertion that torture doesn't work is based on some torture as applied by some rules of engagement. While that assertion is deeply cherished, examples of effective torture include the breaking of captured US aircrew by the North Vietnamese. That it wasn't a very effective intel tool (as contrasted with an effective propaganda tool) in that situation is mostly due to cultural disconnects rather than resistance by those interrogated. It's worth noting that organized criminal enterprises routinely use torture and it apparently has the desired effect. Torture coupled with effective interrogation also worked in Algeria. There is such deeply held desire that torture "not work" because the fact it CAN work depending on how it is used is frightening. Torture is merely applied stress. How it is used (for example in conjunction with other methods and information) determines its effectiveness.
...a person persecuted such that they suicide doesn't choose retaliatory homicide instead. If you are checking out anyway that removes the consquences for taking out the enemy.
They are referred to as Insulating Concrete Forms. Plenty of info on the internet and the tech could be easily integrated with a reinforced non-ICF concrete central safe room for layered defense.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't wait for easy, lifelike CGI so we can post Wholesome Biblical Anecdotes to Facebook.
Let's see how parents try to censor these:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/donald_morgan/atrocity.html
"Did the terrorists actually win this war on terror?"
Yes, but there were multiple winners.
AQ inflicted trivial numbers of casualties compared to conventional wars, did that with minimal assets and personnel, and triggered/excused the US elites doing what they'd been working at anyway. The team damaged the US + world.
The terrorists won by getting their adversary to make toxic structural changes, and the elites won by obtaining the excuse to make those changes! The American public and other Star Trek Red Shirts of the world lost. AQ and the Elites can both claim victory BUT also claim the battle is not over. Obvious to see where this will go...
"There's no public outrage because there's really nothing anyone can do."
Nothing convenient and safe. The inconvenience of being surveilled isn't sufficient for any of the public to give up their freedom in return for (hypothetical example) kneecapping politicians. Since politicians only respect what they fear, and the public won't sacrifice to put them in fear, the elites win.
After OK City, there were no more "Randy Weaver" or "Branch Davidian incidents". I'm not advocating such acts, but pointing out that they have some effectiveness. OTOH there is no hope for peaceful change. In order to make people do your will you must be willing to hurt or kill them. (The US exists because the Founders and their followers were willing to send shot and shell through Redcoat, Hessian, and Tory.) If you won't do this, those who will are your masters and so it has always been through history.
The social contract in the US is that the elites allow us food and shiny objects while being able to kill us if the bribes don't work. I'll take the bribes as we all do, but I'm aware I'm being paid off.
That was Old School terror designed to target proles who are the equivalent of Star Trek redshirts. It works, but the elites don't fear it and in the case of 9/11 even exploit it!
New School, like the brilliant whacking of Alfred Herrhausen by a precision explosive charge or US drone attacks, reaches out to specific high-value targets. For those specific targets the threat is real and coerces them to defend against it. Such attacks don't require an attacker be on the scene making them a logical way to go. Someone wanting to manipulate a pacemaker could put a remotely activated device in, for example, an ordinary looking large plastic electrical enclosure, attach it to a streetlamp or hide it any number of ways, then wait for the target to come in range. It could stay dormant for a long time, even years if power was tapped from a steady source.
The TPublicans are also heavily astroturfed, and largely religious fanatics. Real Libertarians are as rare as hens teeth.
No fair ignoring that along with the decent bits!
"War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength."
Didn't hear any of THAT from the people who later formed the Tea Party until there was a "nigger" in the White House operating the same police state the GOP built to go after a different variety of brown people. Amusingly, Obama (who the Teapublicans consider a "Muslim") is further Right than the Bushies in terms of killing AQ terrs.
Wake me when the TPs go after corporate welfare with the same gusto they go after programs that benefit the American workforce in general. Wake me when they favor slashing the War Department which provides economic/military subsidies to our Pacific competitors. Wake me when they aren't bootlicking Tel Aviv whose administrations they confuse with the Chosen People.
Wake me when most of them aren't Dixiecrats by another name.
I wanted to like the TP, but all they are is the inevitable result of the GOP Southern Strategy.
Precisely. There is only "war" of different kinds and at varying levels.
"Terror" is pretty effective though. Nations which lose hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed to socially acceptable causes (smoking, obesity, auto crashes) can easily be terrified into implementing structurally toxic changes by the trivial loss of a few thousand killed in one small location. I wouldn't want to be under a massive bombardment either, but once upon a time nations knew they could take massive casualties yet not only survive but triumph.
Give the Mamayev Kurgan monument some thought. Stalingrad cost more Soviet dead than the US lost in all its wars, but they refused to lose. Commies or not, they had balls.
"Use of open source software in a military context violates the ethics of open source software systems."
Citation needed.
Puppy Linux BTW works very well for many old machines because it's so easy to configure and install. Boot a live CD or USB key, and you can install to hard disk or make more USB keys or live CDs, or remaster with included tools. Runs fine from USB and doesn't require a hard disk. It's available in Chrome and Firefox flavors, and Slacko is based on Slackware so what's not to like?
The flip side is employees have no moral obligation to their employer. My employer owes me nothing not spelt out in law, and I'm very aware I don't owe them more than that either. That frees me to behave in any legal way useful to me, no matter how dishonest.
Fuck me? Less if I fuck you first. :-)
I'm highly motivated to do well for a loyal employer, but cheerfully ruthless towards the other sort.
Labor and management are inherently opponents unless they work (together) to come to some different arrangement.
...when space travel is common they will be the main "meeting" method.
Not to mention "downmodded for telling the truth"!
The solution is to distribute them under different business models, including not for profit.
Many folks are installing pfSense etc on thin clients (plentiful on Ebay and dirt cheap). Choose whatever distro you like then have at it. Rolling your own goes back to floppy-based Linux routers and is old news.
"Is this an article or a press release?"
This is the New Slashdot, where those are not different.
It's not Flamebait since it's the truth!
Clicky da linky before modding.
When someone wants to sell you something, denigrating whatever that something is intended to replace is part of the pitch.
My phone is convenient...until it breaks. Phones are more delicate than cards.
My card is convenient, until communication is interrupted between the business I'm patronizing and their credit processor. Not acceptable when I need fuel on the road.
Cash is pretty reliable. I'll ADD tools, but only when they serve me.
Nothing special there. You TRACE piping as you would any other schematic.
Fun fact:
You can physically VERIFY what is inside a pipe before severing it!
"Cold tap" and "hot tap" fittings allow connection even to PRESSURISED and FLAMMABLE pipes and pipelines. (An interesting example is hot-tapping burning railroad tank cars to remove the non-burning portion of the contents while the rest flares.) Hot and cold are common and commercially available and if you need a special fitting any competent machine/fab shop can make it for you.
Where useful, water or other liquids may be frozen at either side of a proposed joint or cut to plug leakage.
In the end, one must embed the capability for violent revolution by ensuring the people are armed and thus able to kill their oppressors. Nothing less protects freedom. Pacifism only works, sometimes, on weak oppressors. Not only must the people be armed, they must harbor to some degree the willingness to kill their masters should it ever come to that. The Founders weren't fools.
While firearms owners in the US are often "conservatives", that's not a consequence of firearms ownership. Many "liberals" tend to so worship government they trust it, and that trust is obviously not sane as our current climate demonstrates.
Want the masters to respect you? They need to know that, if you are motivated and perhaps willing to die doing it, can kill them.
It's up to each nation to decide when enough is enough. That Syrians can fight a monstrous police state is a sign of hope and worthy of admiration. It does take will though. The famous vid of the insurgent walking down a row of captives and executing them shows what is required. The only way to be rid of serious enemies is for them to stop breathing.
Aircraft are toys of the rich, and many of them are quite old. General aviation isn't a young mans game.
Automatic user-transparent failover to 4chan in the event Slashdot goes down.
Unfortunately you are in the minority since consumers don't consider reliability in terms of technical simplicity.
" Step by step, the US stumbles toward its own French Revolution, but ours will make the one of 1789 look like a walk in the park."
The French revolted over food. It is now trivially easy to feed and entertain the proles.
The assertion that torture doesn't work is based on some torture as applied by some rules of engagement. While that assertion is deeply cherished, examples of effective torture include the breaking of captured US aircrew by the North Vietnamese. That it wasn't a very effective intel tool (as contrasted with an effective propaganda tool) in that situation is mostly due to cultural disconnects rather than resistance by those interrogated. It's worth noting that organized criminal enterprises routinely use torture and it apparently has the desired effect. Torture coupled with effective interrogation also worked in Algeria.
There is such deeply held desire that torture "not work" because the fact it CAN work depending on how it is used is frightening. Torture is merely applied stress. How it is used (for example in conjunction with other methods and information) determines its effectiveness.
...a person persecuted such that they suicide doesn't choose retaliatory homicide instead. If you are checking out anyway that removes the consquences for taking out the enemy.
If you die, they win. If they die, you win.
They are referred to as Insulating Concrete Forms. Plenty of info on the internet and the tech could be easily integrated with a reinforced non-ICF concrete central safe room for layered defense.
It would be quite the deterrent!