i'm sharing my blog ip address with a porn site dedicated to a fetish for women with moustaches, some guy's home security system in hong kong, a government bureaucrat's cell phone in helsinki, and an email server for a truck dispatching company waco texas
i think it's also a pretty good premise for a reality show or situation comedy
How secure is EV-DO? Over the years, wireless security has garnered an extremely bad rap--and rightfully so. As the technology developed, a good amount of vulnerabilities and security flaws surfaced.
802.11b, one of the first Wi-Fi standards to become popular almost six years ago, used the wired equivalent privacy (WEP) protocol. But war drivers and other intruders have been able to hack into wireless LANs--not only because of the flaws in WEP, but also because of the poor implementation of authentication and key management that are inherent in the 802.11 standard. (It doesn't help that vendors usually ship WLAN hardware with WEP disabled to make deployment easier.)
But EV-DO doesn't use WEP. Instead, encrypted CDMA transmissions use a 42-bit pseudo-noise (PN) sequence called a long code. The long code scrambles transmissions through the standardized Cellular Authentication and Voice Encryption (CAVE) algorithm to generate a 128-bit subkey called Shared Secret Data (SSD).
This key then feeds into an Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm to encrypt the transmissions. AES is a symmetric encryption algorithm used by governments to protect sensitive information. If governments use AES to encrypt their data, it should be good enough to protect your data as well.
have been giving away free content since inception. this is of course supported by advertising. the business model works just fine
business based on the distribution of books, dvds, cds, etc., meanwhile is based on the control of tangible media you need to manufacture, put on a truck, and ship to a store
what the internet did was force the radio/ tv economic model on the book/ dvd/ cd distributors
it's disruptive technology defined. and, unfortunately for entrenched business interests based on distribution of tangible media, completely irreversible and completely unstoppable
meanwhile, all of the moral arguments are complete bullshit. it's just a business earthquake, plain and simple. pointing to morality is merely crocodile tears on the part of some very powerful, but dying businesses
the concept of a nanny state that undermines personal accountability and parental responsibility is a concept that does apply to the purposeful, planned ego assassination of a suicidal girl by an adult woman who knew she was suicidal and specifically goaded her to commit suicide
the case has nothing to do with, and laws about it should have nothing to do with, censorship. it has everything to do with yelling fire in a crowded theatre: speech that has absolutely no implications whatsover on freedom of expression, and everything to do with malicious criminal intent
deceiving, harassing and goading a 13 year old girl she knows is emotionally fragile is genuinely evil. she purposely set up a suicidal child's ego, attacked it, and then suggested suicide
folks, this is not free speech. this yelling fire in a crowded theatre
men are often understood to be more violent than women. this is true, physically. two men will punch each other in the face. but then be friends 15 minutes later, all forgotten. but if you talk about social violence, women are orders of magnitude more violent than men. their social violence consists of month long campaigns, is complex, and deeply conceived. the social lives of women, and girls, are filled with so much outright deceit, prolonged volleys of malicious rumors, name calling, undermining of confidence and egos, ampping of and landmining of social support networks... its quite mind bobbling for a man to consider the world of female social violence. we really are simpler creatures compared to women. women's minds light up when blood flow is analyzed, men only have little pinpoints of activity. baby girls start talking earlier than baby boys. female humans, daily, have many more times the amount of social interaction than men do. the social world is the female's realm, social life is extremely important to females. and within the social realm, women and girls wage evil and war that us stupid simple men don't even perceive or understand or know why it is so important. we simply detach into nonsocial worlds of thought and laugh or puzzle at what the heck is going on and why it could ever be so important. women stay engaged socially constantly and craft skillsets and layers of meaning and nuance we never develop. and their weapons of war, and their vulnerable weak points, are their ego, and their confidence. it's all about social esteem and hierarchy. and it is deathly, deathly important. you laugh. i laugh. women don't laugh at this. and 13 year old girls most definitely do not laugh at this. the pursuit of social esteem to them is essential to their entire lives, an all consuming conflict, that most of us men aren't even aware of, blissfully i would say
so, i will go out on a limb and run myself contrary to slashdot consensus: i say, yes, you should limit and outlaw speech which is of the extreme utmost social violence this woman is guilty of
you don't yell fire in a crowded theatre. additionally, i think it should be illegal for an adult to maliciously destroy the emotional well-being of a child. that is what this woman did: psychologically terrorize this girl. she knew she was destroying this girl's psyche, and she gleefully executed her socially. a grown woman directly suggesting a suicidal girl kill herself. and she did this after deceiving her and inflating her confidence by pretending to be an interested boy, then she gleefully popped the girl's ego like a balloon. she knew she was squeezing the life out of this girl, and she did it. folks: this is WAY WAY beyond the most stupid boorish racist politically partisan inflamed troll thread you have ever read on any forum in your entire online life
for men, which you will find mostly on slashdot, this sort of vicious ego assassination is a strange world. so when us men try to process the implications of the acts that led to this girl's suicide, we see nothing but an attempt at censorship of simple hate speech. because that is the only way we know how to classify this odd event of this suicidal girl and the adult female neighbor. because us socially stupid men are equipped with very simple tools of social behavior. we don't even understand the nuance to consider very well what actually went on here. so we dismiss laws about this evil as just attempts at censorship
no, this is not about censorship. it is nothing like that
it is a gleeful assassination, by an adult, of a child's ego and confidence, that this adult woman knew was suicidal, and directly setting the child up to commit suicide, through a deeply preconceived, executed, and longstanding campaign of soc
in the realm of casual slashdot comments, i think my words ring true and yours paranoid
but in the realm of a healthcare company's IT dept discussing what to do about the laptops of travelling executives containing member's medical information, my words would ring irresponsible and lazy, and yours ring prudent and exemplary
all security does is build a wall. someone can always climb over it, somehow. the question for you is merely do you want a white picket fence? or do you want a 10 foot chain link fence with barbed wire on top?
locks on doors merely keep honest people honest. anyone determined to break into your house will find a way
don't invest your energy in a failed concept: i can have absolute security. you can't, it's always an arms race, forever
whenever they seize some methamphetamine or cocaine, it's always "street value estimated as 20 billion dollars!"
now we have some yahoos in canada who controlled "1 million computers and made $45 million in profit!"
up next: "the police looked in the suspect's glove compartment and found a small bag of marijuana, with an estimated street value as high as the GNP of Australia! additionally, the suspect's cellphone was found to have cracked and controlled the computer networks of the NSA and Los Alamos! he used this vast network of hacked machines to make $20 brazilian dollars by cheating stay at home moms in a get-rich-quick scam! the suspect is also believed to be al qaeda's number 2 commander in iraq!"
your cynicism has distorted your perception of reality. reality is not as you describe it. you are full of more bs than what you describe. you need a vacation
the truth is of course that, even if lessig were voted in, lessig would be but a drop in an ocean of the entrenched financial stranglehold on washington dc. however, most of the american public would probably agree with his charge about undue influence of money in politics in washington dc
that being the case, one has to put a stopper on the defeatist and cynical comments about his chances. simply because his fight is the right fight and every good fight has to start somewhere, no matter how formidable the opponents and how dire the odds
your brain can say lessig is hopeless. but what does your heart say? so give voice to your heart, and shut your brain up for the moment. because heart is exactly what is needed with issues like financial influence in washington dc
everyone knows the fight will be long and hard. no shit sherlock. so your cynical observations about his long odds are in fact useless and obvious. so shut up about the obvious. give voice to your heart on this issue instead, and commit to the long hard battle
to believe lessig's fight is not our fight, or can't be won, simply means you support the evil status quo
it's petrodollar socialism. if you don't like it, stop american soccer moms from filling their gas guzzling suvs, then chavez will go away. and for every criticism you have of chavez, and i agree with many of them (although he seems like just a loud mouth gasbag to me), if he funnels petrodollars to raise living standards in venezuela, i give him a wide latitude on any number of crimes you accuse him of. the alternative to chavez would just line the pockets of his cronies, and not give any petrodollars to the poor
about the ironclad fact of cuba's longstanding oppression of free expression is a standard of proof no reasonable person requires
what exactly is your agenda here?
because you obviously have no intent of seeking the truth of the matter on cuba's attitude towards freedom of expression. you are merely posturing in a legalistic and desparate manner. why? i don't know. i quoted from human rights watch above. what are your thoughts on the substance in those quotes? would you care to comment on those quotes. i don't think so, you're functioning on pure stubbornness
if chavez uses 10% of his petrodollars helping the poor, he has my support. because its better than 0%, which is pretty much what you get with the alternative crony nepotistic corrupt government
if i were to say that an authoritarian police state acts like an authoritarian police state? why is this such an emotional point for you? it sems like something academic and obvious to me. and you come at me like i'm a neocon propagandizer. why is this the tone you take with me about what is pretty stone cold obvious truth?
if i assume you live in a democracy, you and i benefit from the ability to call gw bush a moron. i live in the usa watch: "gw bush is a moron". no one is going to arrest me. in fact, it is law in my country that i cannot be arrested for that. and if i was, a free press would raise an uproar about it
meanwhile, if you live in china, or cuba, or iran, your words on the internet are monitored, and if you say something the authorities dislike, they can and will arrest you. if i am a cuban living in cuba and i say "fidel castro is a moron" i am subject to arrest and imprisonment.
this is not scaremongering you twit. this is point of fact, it is in fact the law of cuba:
here, human rights watch on freedom of expression in cuba. i got it on the first page just googling cuba and internet and freedom. this is simple academic stuff dude. human rights watch and amnesty international: are those scaremongering neocon tools of imperialism enough for you?
does any of these words below from human rights watch sway you? these are laws, on the books in cuba, that have been enforced:
Crimes Against Public Authorities and Institutions
Justice Minister Roberto Díaz Sotolongo acknowledged to Human Rights Watch Cuba's interest in protecting its "king" from insults. Cuba's criminalization of insults of public officials, public monuments, mass organizations, and thecountry's dead heroes represents an extraordinary government effort to deny freedom of speech.
Contempt for the Authority of a Public Official
Cuba's provision regarding contempt for authority (desacato) penalizes anyone who "threatens, libels or slanders, defames, affronts (injuria) or in any other way insults (ultraje) or offends, with the spoken word or in writing, the dignity or decorum of an authority, public functionary, or his agents or auxiliaries." Such actions are punishable by three months to one year in prison, plus a fine. If the person demonstrates contempt for "the President of the Council of the State, the President of the National Assembly of Popular Power, the members of the Council of the State or the Council of Ministers, or the Deputies of the National Assembly of the Popular Power, the sanction is deprivation of liberty for one to three years."82 While the crime of contempt for authority (desacato) existed in Cuba prior to the 1959 revolution, the Castro government expanded the definition to cover a broader possible range of speech and to apply explicitly to the government's highest authorities. More troubling still, the Castro government also eliminated a pre-revolutionary provision that allowed those charged with contempt to invoke the truthfulness of their statements as a defense.83
Cuba has prosecuted scores of Cubans for contempt, including several prisoners who were tried on the basis of having criticized prison conditions and abuses.84 In January 1997, Cuban police arrested one of Cuba's prominent dissident leaders, Héctor Palacios Ruíz, the president of the Democratic Solidarity Party (Partido Solidaridad Democratica, PSD). In September 1997, a Havana court convicted him of contempt for the authority of Fidel Castro and sentenced him to eighteen months, which he served. Ironically, he had challenged the likelihood of President Castro complying with the Viña del Mar Declaration, a document endorsing human rights and democracy that Cuba's leader had signed at the Sixth Ibero-American Summit in Chile in November 1996.85
Defamation of Institutions, Mass Organizations, Heroes, and Martyrs The Criminal Code mandates a three-month to one-year sentence for anyone who "pub
your way of thinking about the situation is the same as making the police guilty for the kidnapper shooting the hostage. maybe the police tried a bungled rescue operation. but even if the police did something really stupid, who is ultimately responsible for the hostage's death? the kidnapper is ultimately guilty for shooting the hostage, no matter what the police do. to think about the situation any other way is to not understand accountability and reason
castro assumed dicatorial police state powers. this is not the doing of the usa, this is the doing of castro. how does your mind work where the efforts of the usa's enemies, that the usa opposes, are the fault of the usa? that's quite the creative line of reasoning there
for example, the usa's current attitude towards iran pays political dividends to iran's hardliners, and weakens iran's reformists. this is 100% solid absolute fact. however, whatever iran's hoardliner's do: crack down on personal freedoms, accelerate nuclear weapon development, etc., this is still the utlimate fault of iran's hardliners, not the usa. to lay blame in any other way is to have a really perverse way of thinking about the usa's proper role in the world
the usa's proper role in the world is to be just another country. but your way of thinking posits the usa as the center of all responsibility and accountability in the world. i don't think that, you do. in such a world, what do you ultimately get? you get the usa militarily invading other countries. i don't want that. your wya of thinking DOES want that
here: the usa is responsible for everything, right? that's your position. do you understand the implications of your position? the implications of YOUR way of thinking about the usa says the usa bears the burden to fix the entire world. of course the usa is not responsible for the entire world. but that's exactly what you think, by throwing accountability and responsibility for everything, even what the usa's enemies do, at the foot of the usa
and then the usa HAS to fix things that really are everyone's responsibilty, or domestic situations. according to your thinking. for example, a typical gem of your way of thinking blames the existence of iraq under saddam hussein on the usa. why? because hussein shook hands with dick cheney once? hussein had dealings with russia, france, china, etc. in as many deep ways, with the shadowy sides of those governments just as shadowy as all the cia operations in iraq you can elicit
and yet some people who think like you lay at the foot of the usa every bad thing saddam did. why not china? why not russia? why not france? incredible. but even more incredible is that someone who then blames the usa for everything, even for what an avowed enemy of the usa does... they would then oppose the usa's invasion of iraq. hey: didn't you just blame saddam hussein on the usa? hussein is the usa's mess? it is of course absurd to think hussein is the fault of the usa, but now that the usa is cleaning up a mess, people who think like you say is the usa's fault... what did you expect?
accountability and responsibility, do you understand how it works in the real world? your way of thinking about the usa's role in the world INVITES THE USA MILITARILY INTO EVERY COUNTRY ON THE PLANET. your way of thinking does that. yes. look at your comment above: you implicitly lay the blame for the rise of castro at the feet of the usa. that is exactly what you say in your comment above. is castro a despot of a police state? yes. so if the usa invaded cuba, ACCORDING TO YOUR WAY OF THINKING IT WOULD JUSTIFIABLE. it is of course NOT justifiable for the usa to invade cuba. but your way of thinking says it is. you blame castro on the usa. its insane
it's a really common and frankly, ethnocentric and sheltered and ignorant way to view the world as the provenance of the usa. and a lot of americans and europeans think this way. mainly because they are propagandized, and haven't given the issue any real thought, they just tow a braindead partisa
those countries could benefit from some socialism
on
Fidel Castro Resigns
·
· Score: 1
but hugo chavez's brand of socialism, not castro's brand that assumes police state control
but the diplomatic policy's failure is a minor addendum. it didn't effect the verdict on how and why communism failed
there is a good argument to be made
on
Fidel Castro Resigns
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
for a country, with a large poor population, going radically socialist, at the detriment to some freedoms, in order to force a large part of the population out of poverty. for example venezuela's hugo chavez is using petrodollar-funded socialism to aid venezuela's poor (those petrodollars, ironically, considering chavez's hot air about evil america, are coming from american soccer moms refilling their suvs)
however, also consider the recent vote a few months back in venezuela. chavez, to his credit, asked the venezuelan people if they would let him alter the constitution to dramatically extend his powers. rather than just take those powers by force, like we hear about time and time again in the world. the venezuelan people rejected his power grab, even in the poor parts of venezuela that enthusiastically support chavez otherwise. and chavez, again to his credit, accepted their decision
however, in cuba, you have those authoritarian despotic powers that castro weild. does he have that right? no, he certainly does not. and i think if you asked the average cuban, who benefitted the most from the enforced socialist policies that castro enacted, why they couldn't also have more democratic freedoms, i think that cuban would probably have the same opinion of castro as those poor venezuelans do about chavez: yes to castro's policy, no to castro's absolute power
so socialism for the poor: yes. despotic autocracy: no. in such a way, you can criticize castro without rejecting the policies that benefitted the cuban poor
and btw, frankly, as an american, hugo chavez can talk about constant phantom cia threats on his life, how the evil imperialistic america is about to invade caracas at any moment, etc., blah blah blah. zzz. be as big a fearmongering demagogue gas bag as he wants, i don't care. as long as he uses petrodollars to aid venezuelan poor, and he doesn't abuse his powers and destroy venezuelan democracy, chavez has my support 100%
Slashdot Mirror
i'm sharing my blog ip address with a porn site dedicated to a fetish for women with moustaches, some guy's home security system in hong kong, a government bureaucrat's cell phone in helsinki, and an email server for a truck dispatching company waco texas
i think it's also a pretty good premise for a reality show or situation comedy
http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-1009-6004489.html
what's the security like?
like say on evdo
if i open an ftp clear text password, it is natively encrypted by the protocol? or did i just hand everyone my ftp password?
keep your kids in the basement until they are 18. perfectly reasonable interpretation of parental responsibility
you understand 0% of this subject matter
have been giving away free content since inception. this is of course supported by advertising. the business model works just fine
business based on the distribution of books, dvds, cds, etc., meanwhile is based on the control of tangible media you need to manufacture, put on a truck, and ship to a store
what the internet did was force the radio/ tv economic model on the book/ dvd/ cd distributors
it's disruptive technology defined. and, unfortunately for entrenched business interests based on distribution of tangible media, completely irreversible and completely unstoppable
meanwhile, all of the moral arguments are complete bullshit. it's just a business earthquake, plain and simple. pointing to morality is merely crocodile tears on the part of some very powerful, but dying businesses
the concept of a nanny state that undermines personal accountability and parental responsibility is a concept that does apply to the purposeful, planned ego assassination of a suicidal girl by an adult woman who knew she was suicidal and specifically goaded her to commit suicide
the case has nothing to do with, and laws about it should have nothing to do with, censorship. it has everything to do with yelling fire in a crowded theatre: speech that has absolutely no implications whatsover on freedom of expression, and everything to do with malicious criminal intent
deceiving, harassing and goading a 13 year old girl she knows is emotionally fragile is genuinely evil. she purposely set up a suicidal child's ego, attacked it, and then suggested suicide
folks, this is not free speech. this yelling fire in a crowded theatre
men are often understood to be more violent than women. this is true, physically. two men will punch each other in the face. but then be friends 15 minutes later, all forgotten. but if you talk about social violence, women are orders of magnitude more violent than men. their social violence consists of month long campaigns, is complex, and deeply conceived. the social lives of women, and girls, are filled with so much outright deceit, prolonged volleys of malicious rumors, name calling, undermining of confidence and egos, ampping of and landmining of social support networks... its quite mind bobbling for a man to consider the world of female social violence. we really are simpler creatures compared to women. women's minds light up when blood flow is analyzed, men only have little pinpoints of activity. baby girls start talking earlier than baby boys. female humans, daily, have many more times the amount of social interaction than men do. the social world is the female's realm, social life is extremely important to females. and within the social realm, women and girls wage evil and war that us stupid simple men don't even perceive or understand or know why it is so important. we simply detach into nonsocial worlds of thought and laugh or puzzle at what the heck is going on and why it could ever be so important. women stay engaged socially constantly and craft skillsets and layers of meaning and nuance we never develop. and their weapons of war, and their vulnerable weak points, are their ego, and their confidence. it's all about social esteem and hierarchy. and it is deathly, deathly important. you laugh. i laugh. women don't laugh at this. and 13 year old girls most definitely do not laugh at this. the pursuit of social esteem to them is essential to their entire lives, an all consuming conflict, that most of us men aren't even aware of, blissfully i would say
so, i will go out on a limb and run myself contrary to slashdot consensus: i say, yes, you should limit and outlaw speech which is of the extreme utmost social violence this woman is guilty of
you don't yell fire in a crowded theatre. additionally, i think it should be illegal for an adult to maliciously destroy the emotional well-being of a child. that is what this woman did: psychologically terrorize this girl. she knew she was destroying this girl's psyche, and she gleefully executed her socially. a grown woman directly suggesting a suicidal girl kill herself. and she did this after deceiving her and inflating her confidence by pretending to be an interested boy, then she gleefully popped the girl's ego like a balloon. she knew she was squeezing the life out of this girl, and she did it. folks: this is WAY WAY beyond the most stupid boorish racist politically partisan inflamed troll thread you have ever read on any forum in your entire online life
for men, which you will find mostly on slashdot, this sort of vicious ego assassination is a strange world. so when us men try to process the implications of the acts that led to this girl's suicide, we see nothing but an attempt at censorship of simple hate speech. because that is the only way we know how to classify this odd event of this suicidal girl and the adult female neighbor. because us socially stupid men are equipped with very simple tools of social behavior. we don't even understand the nuance to consider very well what actually went on here. so we dismiss laws about this evil as just attempts at censorship
no, this is not about censorship. it is nothing like that
it is a gleeful assassination, by an adult, of a child's ego and confidence, that this adult woman knew was suicidal, and directly setting the child up to commit suicide, through a deeply preconceived, executed, and longstanding campaign of soc
context is key i guess
in the realm of casual slashdot comments, i think my words ring true and yours paranoid
but in the realm of a healthcare company's IT dept discussing what to do about the laptops of travelling executives containing member's medical information, my words would ring irresponsible and lazy, and yours ring prudent and exemplary
there's no such thing as absolute security
all security does is build a wall. someone can always climb over it, somehow. the question for you is merely do you want a white picket fence? or do you want a 10 foot chain link fence with barbed wire on top?
locks on doors merely keep honest people honest. anyone determined to break into your house will find a way
don't invest your energy in a failed concept: i can have absolute security. you can't, it's always an arms race, forever
whenever they seize some methamphetamine or cocaine, it's always "street value estimated as 20 billion dollars!"
now we have some yahoos in canada who controlled "1 million computers and made $45 million in profit!"
up next: "the police looked in the suspect's glove compartment and found a small bag of marijuana, with an estimated street value as high as the GNP of Australia! additionally, the suspect's cellphone was found to have cracked and controlled the computer networks of the NSA and Los Alamos! he used this vast network of hacked machines to make $20 brazilian dollars by cheating stay at home moms in a get-rich-quick scam! the suspect is also believed to be al qaeda's number 2 commander in iraq!"
and you're misrepresenting yourself for fun, you rock dude
if you are actually who you say you are, you rock dude
your cynicism has distorted your perception of reality. reality is not as you describe it. you are full of more bs than what you describe. you need a vacation
the truth is of course that, even if lessig were voted in, lessig would be but a drop in an ocean of the entrenched financial stranglehold on washington dc. however, most of the american public would probably agree with his charge about undue influence of money in politics in washington dc
that being the case, one has to put a stopper on the defeatist and cynical comments about his chances. simply because his fight is the right fight and every good fight has to start somewhere, no matter how formidable the opponents and how dire the odds
your brain can say lessig is hopeless. but what does your heart say? so give voice to your heart, and shut your brain up for the moment. because heart is exactly what is needed with issues like financial influence in washington dc
everyone knows the fight will be long and hard. no shit sherlock. so your cynical observations about his long odds are in fact useless and obvious. so shut up about the obvious. give voice to your heart on this issue instead, and commit to the long hard battle
to believe lessig's fight is not our fight, or can't be won, simply means you support the evil status quo
it's petrodollar socialism. if you don't like it, stop american soccer moms from filling their gas guzzling suvs, then chavez will go away. and for every criticism you have of chavez, and i agree with many of them (although he seems like just a loud mouth gasbag to me), if he funnels petrodollars to raise living standards in venezuela, i give him a wide latitude on any number of crimes you accuse him of. the alternative to chavez would just line the pockets of his cronies, and not give any petrodollars to the poor
about the ironclad fact of cuba's longstanding oppression of free expression is a standard of proof no reasonable person requires
what exactly is your agenda here?
because you obviously have no intent of seeking the truth of the matter on cuba's attitude towards freedom of expression. you are merely posturing in a legalistic and desparate manner. why? i don't know. i quoted from human rights watch above. what are your thoughts on the substance in those quotes? would you care to comment on those quotes. i don't think so, you're functioning on pure stubbornness
declare bankruptcy fool
for you are truly stupid and insane
RIAA Creates DVD Jon Killer
but when i asked ebay to audit my account, they just laughed at me. why?
oh well, i guess there's just no market out there for thimble sized fine porcelain body thetans
*sigh*
teehee
if chavez uses 10% of his petrodollars helping the poor, he has my support. because its better than 0%, which is pretty much what you get with the alternative crony nepotistic corrupt government
if i assume you live in a democracy, you and i benefit from the ability to call gw bush a moron. i live in the usa watch: "gw bush is a moron". no one is going to arrest me. in fact, it is law in my country that i cannot be arrested for that. and if i was, a free press would raise an uproar about it
meanwhile, if you live in china, or cuba, or iran, your words on the internet are monitored, and if you say something the authorities dislike, they can and will arrest you. if i am a cuban living in cuba and i say "fidel castro is a moron" i am subject to arrest and imprisonment.
this is not scaremongering you twit. this is point of fact, it is in fact the law of cuba:
here, human rights watch on freedom of expression in cuba. i got it on the first page just googling cuba and internet and freedom. this is simple academic stuff dude. human rights watch and amnesty international: are those scaremongering neocon tools of imperialism enough for you?
does any of these words below from human rights watch sway you? these are laws, on the books in cuba, that have been enforced:
http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR25/008/2003
your way of thinking about the situation is the same as making the police guilty for the kidnapper shooting the hostage. maybe the police tried a bungled rescue operation. but even if the police did something really stupid, who is ultimately responsible for the hostage's death? the kidnapper is ultimately guilty for shooting the hostage, no matter what the police do. to think about the situation any other way is to not understand accountability and reason
castro assumed dicatorial police state powers. this is not the doing of the usa, this is the doing of castro. how does your mind work where the efforts of the usa's enemies, that the usa opposes, are the fault of the usa? that's quite the creative line of reasoning there
for example, the usa's current attitude towards iran pays political dividends to iran's hardliners, and weakens iran's reformists. this is 100% solid absolute fact. however, whatever iran's hoardliner's do: crack down on personal freedoms, accelerate nuclear weapon development, etc., this is still the utlimate fault of iran's hardliners, not the usa. to lay blame in any other way is to have a really perverse way of thinking about the usa's proper role in the world
the usa's proper role in the world is to be just another country. but your way of thinking posits the usa as the center of all responsibility and accountability in the world. i don't think that, you do. in such a world, what do you ultimately get? you get the usa militarily invading other countries. i don't want that. your wya of thinking DOES want that
here: the usa is responsible for everything, right? that's your position. do you understand the implications of your position? the implications of YOUR way of thinking about the usa says the usa bears the burden to fix the entire world. of course the usa is not responsible for the entire world. but that's exactly what you think, by throwing accountability and responsibility for everything, even what the usa's enemies do, at the foot of the usa
and then the usa HAS to fix things that really are everyone's responsibilty, or domestic situations. according to your thinking. for example, a typical gem of your way of thinking blames the existence of iraq under saddam hussein on the usa. why? because hussein shook hands with dick cheney once? hussein had dealings with russia, france, china, etc. in as many deep ways, with the shadowy sides of those governments just as shadowy as all the cia operations in iraq you can elicit
and yet some people who think like you lay at the foot of the usa every bad thing saddam did. why not china? why not russia? why not france? incredible. but even more incredible is that someone who then blames the usa for everything, even for what an avowed enemy of the usa does... they would then oppose the usa's invasion of iraq. hey: didn't you just blame saddam hussein on the usa? hussein is the usa's mess? it is of course absurd to think hussein is the fault of the usa, but now that the usa is cleaning up a mess, people who think like you say is the usa's fault... what did you expect?
accountability and responsibility, do you understand how it works in the real world? your way of thinking about the usa's role in the world INVITES THE USA MILITARILY INTO EVERY COUNTRY ON THE PLANET. your way of thinking does that. yes. look at your comment above: you implicitly lay the blame for the rise of castro at the feet of the usa. that is exactly what you say in your comment above. is castro a despot of a police state? yes. so if the usa invaded cuba, ACCORDING TO YOUR WAY OF THINKING IT WOULD JUSTIFIABLE. it is of course NOT justifiable for the usa to invade cuba. but your way of thinking says it is. you blame castro on the usa. its insane
it's a really common and frankly, ethnocentric and sheltered and ignorant way to view the world as the provenance of the usa. and a lot of americans and europeans think this way. mainly because they are propagandized, and haven't given the issue any real thought, they just tow a braindead partisa
but hugo chavez's brand of socialism, not castro's brand that assumes police state control
but the diplomatic policy's failure is a minor addendum. it didn't effect the verdict on how and why communism failed
for a country, with a large poor population, going radically socialist, at the detriment to some freedoms, in order to force a large part of the population out of poverty. for example venezuela's hugo chavez is using petrodollar-funded socialism to aid venezuela's poor (those petrodollars, ironically, considering chavez's hot air about evil america, are coming from american soccer moms refilling their suvs)
however, also consider the recent vote a few months back in venezuela. chavez, to his credit, asked the venezuelan people if they would let him alter the constitution to dramatically extend his powers. rather than just take those powers by force, like we hear about time and time again in the world. the venezuelan people rejected his power grab, even in the poor parts of venezuela that enthusiastically support chavez otherwise. and chavez, again to his credit, accepted their decision
however, in cuba, you have those authoritarian despotic powers that castro weild. does he have that right? no, he certainly does not. and i think if you asked the average cuban, who benefitted the most from the enforced socialist policies that castro enacted, why they couldn't also have more democratic freedoms, i think that cuban would probably have the same opinion of castro as those poor venezuelans do about chavez: yes to castro's policy, no to castro's absolute power
so socialism for the poor: yes. despotic autocracy: no. in such a way, you can criticize castro without rejecting the policies that benefitted the cuban poor
and btw, frankly, as an american, hugo chavez can talk about constant phantom cia threats on his life, how the evil imperialistic america is about to invade caracas at any moment, etc., blah blah blah. zzz. be as big a fearmongering demagogue gas bag as he wants, i don't care. as long as he uses petrodollars to aid venezuelan poor, and he doesn't abuse his powers and destroy venezuelan democracy, chavez has my support 100%