And it's not just this black budget' either. Google "GOA DOD not auditable" and you'll find that the office of accounting has pretty much zero idea how the Pentagon budget (of some 800 billion at present) is spent.
See this huff post article for example. Further digging indicates that the DoD has effectively been unaccountable even since before 2001.
Currently they are promising to be auditable by 2017...
Putting your money on a "false flag" for something this cheesy is, quite frankly, a stupid bet.
I won't pretend to know if it is... But folks remember the last time the US presented "conclusive evidence" and it turned out to be fabrication. Why isn't this evidence presented? Why are others, such as SG Moon, reserving judgment for now?
Much of these rebels are affiliated to AQ, why are you so sure supporting them is a good idea?
Again I don't know either. I just think you're jumping to conclusions prematurely.
Well done Cold Fjord, well done, I look forward to your righteous trolling of this article in the name of unwavering and unquestioning patriotism
Well, he doesn't seem to have posted to his own submission thus far... But it's early still.
Also, I've seen him modded Troll a lot recently. I don't think he is a true specimen though; he seems to genuinely believe what he posts and might not actually be here only to annoy others.
Personnaly I think he's often wrong, misinformed, even willfully obtuse. But he's not really a troll, if you ask me. And he's certainly a hell of a lot more courteous and polite than some others in the rightwing/neocon camp.
So sorry for offtopic, but I'll take cold fjord over APK or racist trolls...
Unlike your earlier links (about Syria and Iran), this one actually is on topic... But the interesting bit of your link, in my opinion, is not what this unnamed official says (there is zero information in that because it is entirely predictable) I think the more telling quote is from a named source, viz Snowden:
"Anyone in the positions of access with the technical capabilities that I had could suck out secrets, pass them on the open market to Russia; they always have an open door as we do. I had access to the full rosters of everyone working at the NSA, the entire intelligence community, and undercover assets all over the world. The locations of every station, we have what their missions are and so forth," he said.
"If I had just wanted to harm the U.S. You could shut down the surveillance system in an afternoon. But that's not my intention," he said.
He could be lying about that, I suppose, but it does seem consistent with his actions as far as I can see (which, like all of us, admittedly isn't very far). Also, while I am obviously in no position to know either way... The one person who does, Snowden himself, has indicated that he is seeing stories that did not originate with him, suggesting that these are being planted specifically to be able to say, "look! Real damage due to this whistleblowerleaky traitor"
Enough with the "everyone is doing it" defense. Taking into account the scale of spending on military and intelligence, comparing the USA to any other nation is a bit like H-bomb to slingshot. And that's just the unclassified spending -- I think it was Rumsfeld who basically made the Pentagon officially unaccountable.
So even if the argument weren't inherently immoral, the comparison is meaningless.
No. I am arguing that one might give more weight to the results of polls among a large number of journalists around the planet, rather than the opinion of this single guy -- Guardian editor or not.
And even if he's right that NYTimes are better equipped for this kind of thing, that's still a far cry from saying that the US does therefore in its entirety have "the most journalistic freedom" in the world -- which was what you were arguing.
AQ as radical Muslims, hate anyone who is not a radical Muslim.
That might be true for the hard core, for the ideologues. But AQ would have a hell of a hard time recruiting their footsoldiers if they did not have the (valid, as in factually true) argument that the US (and other Western powers, but almost always at US direction) are propping up the dictators who repress them and their families.
Which has been true for decades. That it is not widely known, or accepted, inside the US might be because this doesn't really fit well with the narrative that the States are, as a matter of definition, the Good Guys and endeavour to spread democracy, and all that. So it gets ignored or glossed over by the mainstream media. Media that, compared to global standards, spend astonishingly little time on "foreign news", anyway.
I was (as many are apparently) mistaken in the paper industry - marihuana connection. Heard it somewhere, sounded credible enough at the time. Thank you, learned something new today. Though if this article is accurate, the paper connection would have been less ugly...
I guess I might have conflated heroin and morphine, for both being opiates doesn't mean they are classified the same way of course. The latter clearly has medicinal use. Medicinal use of marihuana might, as you suggest, not be entirely understood -- but has been clearly shown to work in many conditions (and often where nothing else does).
Yeah, I remember reading about how the paper industry was, among others, instrumental in getting maryjane prohibited in the US. Because the same plant is such an excellent alternative to dead wood, presumably.
In pharma, I think it is fair to say that cocaine might have medicinal uses -- but the industry would much prefer we use their expensive synthesized surrogates. For heroin/morphine though, I don't think anyone actually has an alternative which even comes close to being a serious substitute. So, are you sure that you haven't got your classifications the wrong way around? If schedule-1 is *not* supposed to have medicinal uses, then why did you put opiates there?
Just asking, I do not know. I am in the Netherlands where we have another classification method for such things.
Not really. Other than its being a poor country, I mean. Little known fact, Bangladesh is one of the most populous countries on the planet, ranking at #8 at the moment. More inhabitants than (post-Soviet) Russia, for instance, which is currently 9th.
Ok.. Do you have something to back that up? The man is pretty old now, he said a lot of things about a lot of subjects.
All I am aware of re Cambodia is that he wrote about the US "actions" there during the Vietnam war, and later that he and another scholar did a comparative analysis on coverage of Cambodian genocide by the Khmer and the one in East Timor by the Indonesians. Their point, iirc, was not so much that Cambodia wasn't a huge crime -- obviously it was -- but that Timor got a whitewash in Western media.
Just a quick correction.. Disagree with Chomsky all you like, but he's definitely no holocaust denier. What happened was he wrote an essay on free speech, that wound up as preface in some nutjob's book. When this came out, he decide to let it be -- because his (Chomsky's) point had been all along that if one is truly committed to free speech then one should defend it most of all for views one disagrees with.
Yes, thanks for pointing out; completeness is how you would have to prove a useful bound for the problem's complexity. Late reply, but just in case you get notifications:
Now, I realize that it is a bit of a leap, if you will, to assume that quantum computing at non-trivial scales is presently in the NSA's arsenal. On the other hand, and this was kind of my point, if there 's any organization with sufficient motivation and resources, combined with an inclination not to follow the scientific tradition of sharing results...
Slashdot Mirror
Google "GOA DOD not auditable"
Damn that should have been GAO of course, not GOA.
And it's not just this black budget' either. Google "GOA DOD not auditable" and you'll find that the office of accounting has pretty much zero idea how the Pentagon budget (of some 800 billion at present) is spent.
See this huff post article for example. Further digging indicates that the DoD has effectively been unaccountable even since before 2001.
Currently they are promising to be auditable by 2017...
Putting your money on a "false flag" for something this cheesy is, quite frankly, a stupid bet.
I won't pretend to know if it is... But folks remember the last time the US presented "conclusive evidence" and it turned out to be fabrication. Why isn't this evidence presented? Why are others, such as SG Moon, reserving judgment for now?
Much of these rebels are affiliated to AQ, why are you so sure supporting them is a good idea?
Again I don't know either. I just think you're jumping to conclusions prematurely.
Well done Cold Fjord, well done, I look forward to your righteous trolling of this article in the name of unwavering and unquestioning patriotism
Well, he doesn't seem to have posted to his own submission thus far... But it's early still.
Also, I've seen him modded Troll a lot recently. I don't think he is a true specimen though; he seems to genuinely believe what he posts and might not actually be here only to annoy others.
Personnaly I think he's often wrong, misinformed, even willfully obtuse. But he's not really a troll, if you ask me. And he's certainly a hell of a lot more courteous and polite than some others in the rightwing/neocon camp.
So sorry for offtopic, but I'll take cold fjord over APK or racist trolls...
Unlike your earlier links (about Syria and Iran), this one actually is on topic... But the interesting bit of your link, in my opinion, is not what this unnamed official says (there is zero information in that because it is entirely predictable) I think the more telling quote is from a named source, viz Snowden:
"Anyone in the positions of access with the technical capabilities that I had could suck out secrets, pass them on the open market to Russia; they always have an open door as we do. I had access to the full rosters of everyone working at the NSA, the entire intelligence community, and undercover assets all over the world. The locations of every station, we have what their missions are and so forth," he said.
"If I had just wanted to harm the U.S. You could shut down the surveillance system in an afternoon. But that's not my intention," he said.
He could be lying about that, I suppose, but it does seem consistent with his actions as far as I can see (which, like all of us, admittedly isn't very far). Also, while I am obviously in no position to know either way... The one person who does, Snowden himself, has indicated that he is seeing stories that did not originate with him, suggesting that these are being planted specifically to be able to say, "look! Real damage due to this whistleblowerleaky traitor"
Not to fan the flames but [fans the flame].
Whoosh?
Enough with the "everyone is doing it" defense. Taking into account the scale of spending on military and intelligence, comparing the USA to any other nation is a bit like H-bomb to slingshot. And that's just the unclassified spending -- I think it was Rumsfeld who basically made the Pentagon officially unaccountable.
So even if the argument weren't inherently immoral, the comparison is meaningless.
No. I am arguing that one might give more weight to the results of polls among a large number of journalists around the planet, rather than the opinion of this single guy -- Guardian editor or not.
And even if he's right that NYTimes are better equipped for this kind of thing, that's still a far cry from saying that the US does therefore in its entirety have "the most journalistic freedom" in the world -- which was what you were arguing.
Oh and as an afterthought.. Note that this index is compiled by an organization which, if anything, stands accused of pro-US bias. link
The US has **the most journalistic freedom in the world**
wrong, according the journos themselves at least; US doesn't even make it into the top 30.
Well said. For those who've never seen it, Dwight nailed it over 50 years ago:
classic address
So sad that what happened is pretty much exactly what he feared.
Look on the bright side. You now live in one of those cool, science fiction dystopias, that made things so interesting for your favorite protagonists.
It didn't end too well for Winston Smith and Joseph K. But yeah, interesting times!
AQ as radical Muslims, hate anyone who is not a radical Muslim.
That might be true for the hard core, for the ideologues. But AQ would have a hell of a hard time recruiting their footsoldiers if they did not have the (valid, as in factually true) argument that the US (and other Western powers, but almost always at US direction) are propping up the dictators who repress them and their families.
Which has been true for decades. That it is not widely known, or accepted, inside the US might be because this doesn't really fit well with the narrative that the States are, as a matter of definition, the Good Guys and endeavour to spread democracy, and all that. So it gets ignored or glossed over by the mainstream media. Media that, compared to global standards, spend astonishingly little time on "foreign news", anyway.
I was (as many are apparently) mistaken in the paper industry - marihuana connection. Heard it somewhere, sounded credible enough at the time. Thank you, learned something new today. Though if this article is accurate, the paper connection would have been less ugly...
I guess I might have conflated heroin and morphine, for both being opiates doesn't mean they are classified the same way of course. The latter clearly has medicinal use. Medicinal use of marihuana might, as you suggest, not be entirely understood -- but has been clearly shown to work in many conditions (and often where nothing else does).
Wow, that's even more f'ed up than I thought. Any system in which mj and mdma are deemed *more* dangerous than crystal meth has serious issues.
Yeah, I remember reading about how the paper industry was, among others, instrumental in getting maryjane prohibited in the US. Because the same plant is such an excellent alternative to dead wood, presumably.
In pharma, I think it is fair to say that cocaine might have medicinal uses -- but the industry would much prefer we use their expensive synthesized surrogates. For heroin/morphine though, I don't think anyone actually has an alternative which even comes close to being a serious substitute. So, are you sure that you haven't got your classifications the wrong way around? If schedule-1 is *not* supposed to have medicinal uses, then why did you put opiates there?
Just asking, I do not know. I am in the Netherlands where we have another classification method for such things.
See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_UN_peacekeepers
Bangladesh tops the list. Surprised?
Not really. Other than its being a poor country, I mean. Little known fact, Bangladesh is one of the most populous countries on the planet, ranking at #8 at the moment. More inhabitants than (post-Soviet) Russia, for instance, which is currently 9th.
List_of_countries_by_population
Alt-F4... Give me a little credit, will ya? I'm running Mint on my MBP, you insensitive clod!
Ha, I actually stopped reading at "Without further adieu". But that says more about me than the author, I suppose...
... and when the single, centralized mega-host of *every* government system gets compromised...?
Don't worry, it'll be compromised to begin with.
Dude, take your meds and stop mixing phobias.
Ok.. Do you have something to back that up? The man is pretty old now, he said a lot of things about a lot of subjects.
All I am aware of re Cambodia is that he wrote about the US "actions" there during the Vietnam war, and later that he and another scholar did a comparative analysis on coverage of Cambodian genocide by the Khmer and the one in East Timor by the Indonesians. Their point, iirc, was not so much that Cambodia wasn't a huge crime -- obviously it was -- but that Timor got a whitewash in Western media.
I could be wrong of course, enlighten me.
Just a quick correction.. Disagree with Chomsky all you like, but he's definitely no holocaust denier. What happened was he wrote an essay on free speech, that wound up as preface in some nutjob's book. When this came out, he decide to let it be -- because his (Chomsky's) point had been all along that if one is truly committed to free speech then one should defend it most of all for views one disagrees with.
Yes, thanks for pointing out; completeness is how you would have to prove a useful bound for the problem's complexity. Late reply, but just in case you get notifications:
Shor's algorithm
Now, I realize that it is a bit of a leap, if you will, to assume that quantum computing at non-trivial scales is presently in the NSA's arsenal. On the other hand, and this was kind of my point, if there 's any organization with sufficient motivation and resources, combined with an inclination not to follow the scientific tradition of sharing results...
Huh, I'm getting more paranoid by the minute.
That makes sense, I'll keep that in mind. Thanks!