It's only one paper and I have no idea whether it was widely accepted, but if you asked me a few years ago what AGW meant for California rainfall my very limited understanding would have lead me to say less rainfall.
Why should a mom-and-pop internet business be exempt from taxes that the mom-and-pop brick-and-mortar store has to pay?
You think a mom-and-pop internet business should have to deal with tax law in over a hundred different jurisdictions over the world?
Let's have a level playing field. After all, that mom-and-pop internet business benefits from the services collected by the mom-and-pop brick-and-mortor
If I have a mom-and-pop internet business in Canada and I make a sale to someone in Japan just how much do you think I'm really benefiting from the government services in Japan?
And the same goes for large internet vendors vs. large brick-and-mortar vendors. Don't tell me that Amazon or Google can't figure out the tax rates for every jurisdiction they serve - they can just google for it.
I have a feeling your model of an Internet company is a building full of accountants. Personally that strikes me as an incredible waste of human potential, there probably should be some way for Internet companies to sent appropriate tax revenue to the jurisdictions they serve, and if they have major operations in that country it's obviously doable. But figuring out a pile of legal paperwork just to serve a handful of customers isn't a viable option.
Because an egregious violation of someone's privacy that's can be traumatizing as a sexual assault is a minor thing.
No, it cannot.
In a sexual assault you've had your naked body viewed and touched by one person without your consent.
In revenge porn an intimate moment with your naked body has been viewed by thousands or even millions of people without your consent, possibly including many people in your social circle.
Yes, it absolutely can be as traumatizing as a sexual assault.
I'd like to see you tell a sexual assault survivor that her ordeal was as bad as someone looking at her naked photos.
Note I said 'can', not 'is'.
Typically I expect that sexual assault survivors do have it worse.
But I suspect there are many women for whom the violation of the pictures can be as bad if not worse than some classes of sexual assault.
Put yourself in a project manager's shoes. What would you say if one of your programmers was working on a cool Easter Egg instead of being productive and working on the actual product? I wouldn't want to be the project manager who had to tell higher management that the product will be late but have some cool Easter Eggs.
I think it's more a case of quality.
The project manager has a plan and making stable easy to maintain code is hard. Now one of the programmers is going in, screwing around with the logic to support their Easter egg and if not introducing bugs at least introducing headaches for the next programmer who has to go in and make a change.
There's places where they're appropriate, particularly games where they add character and a bit of fun (which is the whole damn point afterall). But for more serious applications? It becomes hard to justify the potential cost.
10,000 instances of what can be be fairly compared to a sexual assault.
I otherwise agree with you, but saying his crimes can be compared to rape is ludicrous, without even going into the wacky world of rape's legal definition.
I'm not sure it is ludicrous. True a single act of rape is truly horrendous, but there's only a single violation and the perpetrator can be caught. With this there's a violation with each person who views the picture, it goes on constantly for years, and it never goes away. Moreover that violation can include a great many of the people whom the victim personally knows.
Some people might not mind being a revenge porn victim, and on average I suspect it's less damaging, but I wouldn't be shocked if there's a substantial portion of people for whom it's just as bad if not worse.
Because an egregious violation of someone's privacy that's can be traumatizing as a sexual assault is a minor thing.
No, it cannot.
In a sexual assault you've had your naked body viewed and touched by one person without your consent.
In revenge porn an intimate moment with your naked body has been viewed by thousands or even millions of people without your consent, possibly including many people in your social circle.
Yes, it absolutely can be as traumatizing as a sexual assault.
Sorry for being a lazy proofreader, the intent of my statement was still pretty clear.
The obvious correction is to drop the 's which came from a previous iteration of the sentence, and I'm not sure the insertion of 'as' before traumatizing actually adds anything besides extra letters.
Your alternate "correction" becomes gibberish when inserted into the original sentence, and even then it still doesn't clearly convey the meaning you attached to it.
I realize that it is difficult to achieve a balance in fairness in sentencing but here we have an example of a court getting whacked out. Try and find a single case in which a drunk driver or hit and run driver who has killed someone gets 18 years in jail. Now it is obvious that no one likes to get a couple of hundred bucks ripped out of their wallets such a crime does not come close to killing someone and fleeing the scene. And i know that some people will say it involved more than one victim.
You're right, it involved about 10,000 victims. 10,000 instances of what can be be fairly compared to a sexual assault.
I'd rather have dinner with a person who screwed up one time and became a hit & run drunk driver than be in the same room as that guy who did this for years.
But then again big tobacco and big coal kill a lot more than one person every single day and the law allows them to keep right on doing it. Worse yet as tobacco sales fell in the US our tobacco companies exported more and more tobacco to nations in which the population remains completely uneducated and allows children to smoke.
The long and short of it is that both our civil and criminal justice systems need a rework from the ground up.
Tobacco smoking is an interesting point though people who smoke do it largely by choice, these girls never chose to have their photos posted online.
Pair programming works by having a more experienced coder working along side a less experienced coder. The fruits of that asymmetry is what it's all about.
If you wanted pair programming in an academic setting, it would mean giving a dedicated tutor to every student in that class.
This, however, is just working in pairs. Not the same at all.
The studies I've seen show that novice-novice is still pretty damn effective as a productivity and learning strategy.
Despite the summary I've TA'd 1st year courses and we had a great experience from having people work in groups. 1st year students can spend a lot of time stuck on really simple problems that are due to some weird misconceptions or simply a lack of familiarity. Having them work in pairs means instead of just giving up they start trouble shooting together, when they finally did get to asking a question it was at a much higher level, this meant I could spent more time assisting the individuals or groups who really needed it.
Most importantly the people who go into CS tend to be introverted and terrible collaborators, I know I'm personally far too ready to sludge through problems alone and ask for help far too late. If I'd had some pair-programming experience when I was in undergrad I think I would have benefited immensely.
As with most of these "issues", it's not about equality. It's about raising a major stink about a minor thing in order to get "support" (attention, votes, money, etc.).
Because an egregious violation of someone's privacy that's can be traumatizing as a sexual assault is a minor thing.
The reason the FBI isn't doing more to combat revenge porn is thus: It's not illegal. I would expect Franken, or at least someone who works for him, to know this. Perhaps he just wants it declared illegal by executive fiat, as is the practice with this administration. But really, this ploy, and Slashdot's new social-justice-warrior driven coverage of it, is driven more by a desire to distract everyone from foreign events, Hillary's email server, and Obama's frequent and blatant power grabs. That's actually kind of funny, now that I think of it. There's been no story posted at all about Clinton's email shenanigans. Well, we know who Dice has thrown their lot in with.
I would expect someone who writes a comment accusing the subject of being misinformed would at least RTFA to ensure they aren't completely misinformed on that very fact:
In a letter to FBI Director James Comey, the Minnesota Democrat asked for more information about the agency's authority to police against revenge porn, or the act of posting explicit sexual content online without the subject's consent, often for purposes of humiliation and extortion.
[...]
Franken wrote in his letter. "As technologies rapidly advance, it is our responsibility to ensure that our nation's laws keep pace with those technologies. But it is also our responsibility to ensure that existing laws are strictly enforced."
[...]
In addition, Franken wants information on any limitations within current law that may have impeded the FBI from carrying out investigations or making arrests. Franken, who asked for a response by May 8, is exploring whether legislation may be necessary to combat revenge porn, his office said.
In summary Franken is saying that revenge porn is a serious problem and he wants to know if the FBI can do more with the laws already there or if they need additional laws to fix the problem. Isn't this exactly what you want a legislator to do?
Iran has been at war with Israel for a long time now through well-funded and very closely monitored proxies. I'm not sure how you can possibly deny this. Israel recently bombed a Hezbollah convoy and accidentally killed an Iranian general they didn't realize was present. Iran didn't make any attempt at all to deny it. Israel actually had to shrug their shoulders and insist it was an accident so as to avoid needlessly pissing off Iran.
War vs non-war isn't always a clear line. Iran is a local power who supports a lot of groups who furthers their interests. It's not a good thing but it isn't terribly different from any other moderately powerful country, and while they're supporting these organizations they're very likely not ordering individual attacks or telling them to declare war.
That said, any deal at all to slow down their nuke acquisition is of course much preferable to no deal (I have no idea what the pro-sanction people are babbling about, and I suspect they don't either.) And the younger generations of Iranians seem to be much more reasonable than those currently in power. And of course, Iran and the other Shias aren't as bad as ISIS (do I need to point out what a ridiculously low bar this is to clear?)
I agree on that count. The successors to both Rhouani and Khameni will be particularly interesting.
But you cannot gloss over the Israel thing. It is already a war. It doesn't matter what your feelings are on Israel and/or Palestine; Iran does not recognize the two-state solution and it is even conceivable they would attempt to deniably nuke an Israeli target through one of their proxies.
Or, if they are feeling especially clever, nuke a Sunni target and frame Israel for it. Given the depressingly widespread beliefs of absurd Israel/Jewish conspiracy theories in the Middle East, this would be very easy to pull off.
I don't know, that strikes me as quite a conspiracy theory in itself, particularly given how easy it would be to trace back the bomb (my understanding is they can trace back to the specific reactor).
It's important to recognize a lot of the Israel stuff for what it is, rhetoric. And to be honest Israel, a country full of relatively Western white people, has managed to turn a good portion of the Western white world against them in favour of a bunch of dark-skinned Muslims. How charitable do you expect a different bunch of dark skinned Muslims to feel towards Israel? If anything I think the Israel angle could be the best aspect of the deal. If Iran gets better relations with the US then Israel feels pressure to clean up their act Settlement-wise to maintain US support while Iran pressures Hamas and Hezbolla for the same reasons. At that point you've actually made some real progress towards a solution to the Israel-Palestine situation.
I don't want free drinks. Video games to play at work. A ping pong table. Any of that.
All of that, just EXTENDS the work day. You're not going to go in, play ping-pong for 4 hours, and then work 4 -- and get paid for 8. Instead, the expectation will be a longer work day.
In reality, all of these silly perks are just non-cash compensation for long work days.
You know what? Keep the free drinks, the catered lunch, the free this and that. Keep the ping-pong table, the toys.
JUST GIVE ME MONEY. Give me MORE money, and keep all of that!
Keep my hours SHORTER, so I can go out and PLAY WITH PEOPLE I WANT TO PLAY WITH. While people at work MAY be fun, when *I CHOOSE* who to play with, *I KNOW I WILL HAVE FUN*.
I really disagree with this. I'm going to spend about half my waking life at the office, I sure as hell want it to be an interesting place.
I don't know about other people but for me productivity is 90% motivation, if I whittled away half the day but worked with complete focus for the remaining half I would be a fantastically productive employee.
So for that I would say to keep things fun and focused, tasks should be small with well defined goals, even if you make some busy work it won't matter because the workers will be that much better. There's nothing worse than being given a giant task with no clear purpose or metric by which to try it. Include a couple paid coffee breaks. People can't work effectively for 4 hours straight, a couple glances at/. aren't the solution and developers sure as hell won't waste personal time recharging for a couple minutes at the office. Give them a pair of coffee breaks, encourage them get away from their desks, the increased productivity will more than make up for the lost time.
Make some sort of intermittent fun events at the office, food events or games of some kind, don't make it a corporate spirit thing, just a thing for people to have fun. It breaks up the monotony for the people who participate, if nothing else it makes the office a more engaging social environment and gives people an opportunity to interact.
It doesn't work for everyone, in general the older the employee the stronger their non-work commitments and the less they'll be interested if office socialization, but if you can make the office environment more engaging you'll improve productivity and quality of life for everyone involved.
A final thought might be to try pair programming. It hasn't really caught on because programmers tend to be fairly introverted and computers are very personal spaces. But the published studies suggest it can be very effective for both productivity and employee satisfaction, you improve knowledge sharing since its a lot easier to ask a question when you're already talking and you kill a lot of time wasting since it's a lot harder to zone out when interacting with someone.
What on earth does your mental model of Iranians look like?! A nation of genocidal suicide bombers??
I have a friend who comes from Iran. The people of Iran in general, are pretty friendly and like the U.S.
I know a lot of Iranians and have a similar experience, note that you're looking at an a-typical sample, if anyone is going to be particularly against the regime it's likely to be people leaving the country.
However they are not the ones building the nuclear weapons. They are not the ones deciding when to use the weapons; who to use them against. That is up to the leaders of Iran, who in fact are not far off from your description. They consider the people of Iran as pawns and shields...
The people of Iran in fact are the very reason I think Iran will use nuclear weapons; because how could we retaliate?
If Iran destroys NYC, I would not support nuking any Iranian cities for exactly that reason. Nor would the rest of the U.S. So Iran is safe to attack many targets with impunity, knowing that for a while at least no major western U.S. country is willing to respond with nuclear weapons.
Even assuming the laughable assertion that they're a bunch of sociopaths who would happily sacrifice their own population, and they didn't give a crap for even their own survival, what possible motive would they have for doing Nuking the US?
You're describing a cartoon supervillian.
Btw, the very fact they accepted this deal demonstrates you're wrong and that they do care about their people, because otherwise they would have simply kept stalling until they had a bomb, the civilians were the ones bearing the brunt of the sanctions.
You know how many wars Iran has launched since 1979? Zero.
When you consider just Iran's backing of Hamas that statement is laughably naive.
So supporting an organization to some degree means you're responsible for all of their actions?
I can't even imagine how many wars would be added to the US tally using that standard.
And even if you JUST think about Iran attacking countries directly there's this little thing called the Iran-Iraq war., lasting from 1980-1989... yes Iraq started it but after regaining lost land Iran was on the offensive for several years after.
So it's pretty obvious you are more than clueless when it comes to knowing anything about Iran.
Did you really read that article? You make it sounds as if it was almost entirely Iran running unopposed through Iraq. Yes they started reversing the Iraqi gains in 1982 but in reality Iraq had a lot of Western support leading to lot better equipped military. As well they used chemical weapons, were the first ones to attack cities directly, and right up until the end in 1989 their ceasefire proposals involved Iraq making territorial gains.
Basically your evidence for the claim that Iran is an irrationally aggressive nation is the fact they didn't concede territory after being invaded. Come to think of it by your Hamas standard I could claim that the US is responsible for the Iran-Iraq war!
Attack with an Iranian weapon Iran will admit to responsibility for, in four years (they want time to stockpile more than a few nukes before going on a full offensive).
Read it and weep. A thousand centrifuges in an un-killable under-mountain facility. Once sanctions are lifted they would take a long time to restart, so even IF you catch Iran cheating you can do nothing now to stop the inevitable.
If I lived in a coastal community I would move out immediately.
I hope Iron Dome can be switched to "reflect".
Nothing like some irrational fearmongering to brighten your day.
What on earth does your mental model of Iranians look like?! A nation of genocidal suicide bombers??
You know how many wars Iran has launched since 1979? Zero.
You know who does the suicide bombings? Not Shias, the dominant religion in Iran.
Yes their human rights record sucks, yes the probably want a Nuke or at least some practical Nuclear expertise to deter attacks from Israel or the US. But they're not cartoonish supervillians and I have no idea what evidence you're basing your predictions on. Healthy relations between the US and Iran is a good thing for everybody.
Imagine coming to/. and finding that all the articles written in buzzfeed style, done completely seriously but instead of regular stories having listicles of open source security vulnerabilities and "How this maintainer responded to a kernel patch will make your day!"
Now that would be some serious April fools satire.
... with the originals. The prequels were shit which is why people had a hard time getting a job.
That statement makes almost no sense. Of the actors from the original series, how many went on to become well know actors? Basically you have Harrison Ford and James Earl Jones.
Given that the cast was relatively unknown to being with how many well known actors do you expect?
If anything it's an indication that if you throw a dozen reasonable actors into a major movie then one of them will turn out to be star.
Well, the opposition to the Korean war — as I outlined from the get-go — never rose to anywhere the same pitch. Not while the war was running, not later. Soldiers returning from Vietnam war were "baby-killers", but those who came back from Korea were not. The "peace-movement" being infested by stooges is a confirmed theory that explains all of the known facts. It may be difficult for you to accept, probably, because you and/or your parents participated — without knowing, who got the ball rolling, of course, being sincere useful idiots — but that's what it is.
Yeah, I'm Canadian and I'm quite certain neither of my parents really participated in the peace movement. I would point to this fact as evidence to the fact that you're over-extrapolating from limited data and reaching erroneous conclusions.
All I can say is I consider Marc Theissen to be a terrible analyst, though going into that would be a needless diversion.
and it did not become a disaster for any of the reasons known at the time.of those coordinated protests.
I'm confused, why did you link to quotes of people supporting the war as evidence that the opponents were wrong?
Well, you may not like Michael Savage, but he certainly is not "a fringe"... And the already mentioned Justin Raimondo has his loyal following.
I don't know, I think I'd still call Savage as being on the fringe. Sure he's got a following but he's so far out that he can't even enter the UK.
There you go! NATO was meant to check USSR's advancement further into Europe — without it more countries would've shared the fate of Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and others. Because while NATO membership was voluntary, membership of the Warsaw Pact was not. And the Pact invaded those, who tried to get out. What's "unclean" about NATO, I'll never know.
Remember the Cuban missile crisis? The US isn't particularly amendable to countries in its sphere of influence allying with Russia either.
And as you just said NATO was meant to counter the USSR (ie Russia), of course they're going to react with hostility when neighbouring countries start joining a military alliance literally designed to oppose them.
Huh? If they weren't NATO-members, Baltic states would've been taken over by the same "polite" troops long ago. Moldova and Georgia were invaded before Ukraine.
Though Georgia was invaded while trying to join NATO. And the initial situations with South Ossetia and Transitivia happened in the fairly messy aftermath of the collapse of the USSR. My understanding is that the NATO expansion was interpreted by Russians as an aggressive act, and that's been responsible for the subsequent rejection of Western liberalism and the return to an adversarial mindset.
But, it is interesting... So, in your peace-loving opinion, NATO should've rejected Eastern Europe's attempts to join it to please Russia... Just how do you justify this? What sort of ethical standards do you have? What books did momma read to you? Should the wisest of the Three Pigs have rejected his brothers' attempts to hide in his masonry house — so as not to aggravate the Wolf? Wow!
You're not overestimating the enemy's impact, you're accusing your ideological opponents of being stooges.
The links I've posted by now confirm beyond reasonable doubt, that they (or some of them, anyway) are, in fact, stooges. That's a settled question. Just how many — that's a problem of (under/over)estimation.
There will always be stooges in any movement, suggesting that delegitimizes the movement is a completely different standard,
a) People expect a lot more of the US than Russia
Khm, it does not seem like many people think, Russia is doing anything wrong.
I have no idea what people you're thinking of. Outside of Russian I've only encountered a very small handful who supported Russia, and they wrote and argued so badly I actually felt bad engaging since I thought they were dealing with legitimate mental illnesses.
b) by invading Iraq it helps legitimize things like Ukraine
Your Bush-blaming fails. Putin's number one justification (at least within Russia) was not Iraq, but Kosovo — for over a year now Russians online are arguing, that if it was Ok for the US to run a referendum there, it is Ok for Russia to run one in Crimea. (That, unlike Americans in Kosovo, Russian occupiers of Crimea had an obvious conflict-of-interest seems to have escaped their attention.)
Kosovo is the big justification (because of their traditional alliance with the Serbs) but Iraq is certainly part of the narrative. And I only brought up Iraq because you explicitly mentioned it as an example of a protest movement that didn't have proper justification. As it turns out it was actually a very well informed protest movement as the invasion of Iraq was by any metric a disaster.
Greece in particular might have a legitimate problem
Greece is an EU-member and can break the union's consensus-driven foreign policy.
One of the things that makes it a real problem
in the English speaking West Russian propaganda is a joke.
It is good, you've kept a level head, but I've already given you a number of links to English-speaking opinion-makers, who were affected by KremlinTV.
Fringe opinion-makers whom I'd never heard of. I don't think they're really affecting anything.
Another aspect you are ignoring is the Russian-diaspora living in the West. They still watch nostalgic movies on Russian channels and the propaganda "analysis" in between. Then, when asked about current events by their non-Russian peers, they help spread Putin's point of view.
I don't know many so I can't really speak to it but I doubt many are actually backing the invasion. It's also probably that their opinions have nothing to do with the propaganda, they're still Russian, they'll have a strong urge to identify with and defend their home country.
It should be noted that the West's hands aren't completely clean in this. NATO was started as an anti-Russia alliance, expanding into former Warsaw pact countries after the end of the Cold War was absolutely moronic. Without that expansion there's a decent chance that everyone is still on relatively good terms.
I just came back from Germany — both in Munich and Frankfurt there are pro-Putin signs on the walls and fences. His support there is mostly among Socialists, but those assholes are a considerable power there — and Merkel has to defend herself from their sniping.
Putin's evil is, indeed, obvious to those paying attention, but there are too few of those in
What sort of echo chamber does this woman live in to think she's got a good record as a manager to run on? Romney at least made real money and ran a real state government. Fiorina started lots of pissing contests, got booted by the shareholders for loosing money and assets, and lost a senate (not even governor's) race. Wow.
Unless she's running for VP.
It wouldn't be that hard for her to make a little noise in the primaries given she could be the only female (certainly the only establishment female).
Then if Hillary wins the nomination the Republicans are going to want a female or minority to stick in the VP slot. Right now that means Marco Rubio or Ben Carson but there's lots of reasons a nominee might not want one or both. In that case Fiorina might be the only option who isn't a white male, it's still a long shot but a VP nomination is far from impossible.
These stories are tiring as there is no chance for "settled science fact" in climate change.
All of these estimates are based on elaborate math models and yet the Earth's long term climate ON ITS OWN, has swung widely over recorded history.
And from the geologic history, we know we will again go into another ice age based on the history of the change in the Earth-Sun orbit & precession changes on a regular 110,000 year cycle. And without human intervention, the ice age ends.
I know. Same thing with species. Earth's history is littered with mass extinctions, the switchover to oxygen in the Precambrian, the Permian-Triassic extinction event, the dinosaurs dying at the end of the Jurassic. Who's to say the current mass extinction has anything to do with humans, maybe the Passenger Pigeon's died on their own? And that cool forest where I grew up, forest's go away all the time, who's to say it had anything to do with the new suburb.
So just because the USSR tried to manipulate the peace movement therefore delegitimizes the entire peace movement?
No, not entire — there were sincere pacifists even during WW2 — and not automatically. We need to painfully examine, to what extent the peace movement was compromised by involvement of both USSR and domestic terrorists. You may suspect me of overestimating the enemy's impact, but you are certainly underestimating it.
You're not overestimating the enemy's impact, you're accusing your ideological opponents of being stooges. I'm certain you're not nearly as concerned by the propaganda put out by those who agree with you.
When the US was about to resume shooting in Iraq in 2003, the whole world erupted in the biggest coordinated protest in history — and not by Iraqis, but by outraged Westerners expressing their sympathy.. Where were these peace-loving legions, when Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014? What few protests there were, they were largely by Ukrainian expats with very few sympathetic locals in evidence. Why?
Because: a) People expect a lot more of the US than Russia b) The US sets international standards, and by invading Iraq it helps legitimize things like Ukraine c) The US is a Western country, it makes a lot of sense for Westerners to protest it because they have a chance of influencing the politicians. What the hell does Russia care if a bunch of Americans or Canadians come out in protest? And what should Canadians and Americans even protest for, we don't have a lot of leverage.
Because Putin's propaganda machine worked — on the entire spectrum of Western politics, not just the Left as the USSR used to. Rightist Jews in the US were accusing Ukraine's new "junta" of being "nazis", while actual American Nazis called the new government "Jews". Without arguing with each other, but both helped Putin. Most likely, they didn't realize it — but there is no doubt, a there is a group of analysts at FSB attached to each Western opinion-maker. US is a pathetic noob at this.
Wake up and smell "people's power" — and the power of propagandists to manipulate it.
It didn't do squat. Yes there's a few fringe folks who are influenced, but they're pretty insubstantial.
In the EU it might be different, Greece in particular might have a legitimate problem, but in the English speaking West Russian propaganda is a joke.
You're talking about the public perception of the war, UN approval forms part of that public perception.
UN's approval or lack thereof, by all appearances, was used to justify the opposition to war later, when the questions like mine here started popping up. I could find no references to UN's decision (or absence of it) as a factor. Could you?
I'm not mining quotes from 60 years ago but it certainly would have affected the perception. Korean was very much a multinational mission, Vietnam was not.
It's possible, but a far more likely factor is the fact they were very different wars at very different times.
Well, I explained, how they were similar — only a few years apart and both in far lands without evident immediate threat to the US.
The Korean war was over in 3 years. In Vietnam the US stepped into a long running conflict which ran a lot longer.
I fail to see, how the length of a conflict affects the justification of it.
Wars become more unpopular the longer they go, that's fairly basic. The public wasn't particularly anti-War at the start of the war, it became that way later on (similar to Iraq).
You've also got media actually showing the home front what the battlefield actually looks like, that's a pretty profound change from previously where media pieces were basically clips from war movies.
Yes. And the fact that media at home chose to concentrate on the negative, instead of praising the troops in general and heralding acts of valor in particular is, in my opinion, explained by (at least, in part) by the enemy's propaganda efforts.
That would be a pretty small part. The moment the media came to the conclusion they could be actual reporters instead of propagandists the friendly propaganda effort was done.
Finally you had a completely different culture in the 60's that was largely based on a rejection of authority
And where, one wonders, did that come from?
From stuff that didn't have much to do with the USSR (though many were undoubtedly interested in leftist ideas).
And where is it now, when questioning authority is not only not patriotic, but racist?
It's only racist when the complainers start blowing dog whistles. As it happens referring to Obama as a community organizer, a job he held for 3 years in his mid-twenties before going onto far more impressive things. That could be just partisan bias, but there's a definite dog whistle quality to it.
You don't need Soviet propaganda to explain the Vietnam peace movement
Well, we know for a fact (an inconvenient one), that USSR and other Communists were behind at least some of the "peace" organizations, such as the venerable World Peace Council.
The practice is still ongoing — an establishment calling itself "anti-war", for example, is calling for international approval of Russia's invasion into and annexation of Crimea — do you think, they would've approved of Kosovo or Kurdistan voting to become a United States' 51st state? Is it really over-the-board to wonder, if, perhaps, this Justin Raimondo is manipulated by Kremlin — whether he even knows it or not?
So just because the USSR tried to manipulate the peace movement therefore delegitimizes the entire peace movement? And an 'anti-war' organization that virtually no one on the left listens to or agrees with is evidence of that fact?
Israel is certainly trying to sway US public opinion, does that make you a puppet of some Jewish lobby? (for the record I say no)
Compare our invasion of Korea with that of Vietnam only a few years later. Before you say "Korea was UN-approved" — no, that's a lame excuse. Stalin boycotted UN at the time action on Korea was decided, but by the time of Vietnam USSR has changed its approach. That's all.
So what? You're talking about the public perception of the war, UN approval forms part of that public perception.
In both cases American military was sent to fight in remote lands against people, who didn't threaten America directly in any way — for fear of the domino effect of Communism. In both cases the fighting was heavy and numerous war-crimes have taken place.
And yet, there was no domestic opposition to the Korean war — virtually none. No protests against the draft, no accusations of returning soldiers being "baby-killers". John Kerry, for example, has gained more political capital for opposing the war (and returning his medals), than for fighting in it (for an entire 4 months).
Vietnam was widely considered a national shame long before the war was lost. Meanwhile the only source of any negativity about the Korean war in mass culture was the M*A*S*H series.
Why was the domestic reaction to the two wars so drastically different? The theory of propagandists controlled and funded (with or without their own knowledge) by the USSR would explain the known facts.
It's possible, but a far more likely factor is the fact they were very different wars at very different times.
The Korean war was over in 3 years. In Vietnam the US stepped into a long running conflict which ran a lot longer.
The US was also coming straight out of WWII, so the idea that you should deal with belligerent countries pro-actively sounded like a really good idea and provided a great narrative, the communist threat would have also seemed less intractable since you didn't have to deal with Nuclear arms race.
You've also got media actually showing the home front what the battlefield actually looks like, that's a pretty profound change from previously where media pieces were basically clips from war movies.
Finally you had a completely different culture in the 60's that was largely based on a rejection of authority, do you think that was going to mix well with the military?
You don't need Soviet propaganda to explain the Vietnam peace movement, the known facts are explained by the known facts.
Slashdot Mirror
You assume AGW is the cause for the current drought.
Previous to the California "dry spell", climatologists were saying that AGW would make Calif WETTER, not dryer.
Your claim is based on erroneous assumption.
GIGO.
Do you have citations for that? I did a search for agw predictions california rainfall and the first hit I got (and the only relevant one I saw) was an article about a 2005 paper predicting a very similar drought.
It's only one paper and I have no idea whether it was widely accepted, but if you asked me a few years ago what AGW meant for California rainfall my very limited understanding would have lead me to say less rainfall.
Why should a mom-and-pop internet business be exempt from taxes that the mom-and-pop brick-and-mortar store has to pay?
You think a mom-and-pop internet business should have to deal with tax law in over a hundred different jurisdictions over the world?
Let's have a level playing field. After all, that mom-and-pop internet business benefits from the services collected by the mom-and-pop brick-and-mortor
If I have a mom-and-pop internet business in Canada and I make a sale to someone in Japan just how much do you think I'm really benefiting from the government services in Japan?
And the same goes for large internet vendors vs. large brick-and-mortar vendors. Don't tell me that Amazon or Google can't figure out the tax rates for every jurisdiction they serve - they can just google for it.
I have a feeling your model of an Internet company is a building full of accountants. Personally that strikes me as an incredible waste of human potential, there probably should be some way for Internet companies to sent appropriate tax revenue to the jurisdictions they serve, and if they have major operations in that country it's obviously doable. But figuring out a pile of legal paperwork just to serve a handful of customers isn't a viable option.
of re-posting articles that were posted on high-traffic websites 12+ hours ago.
Welcome to the concept of news aggregation.
Because an egregious violation of someone's privacy that's can be traumatizing as a sexual assault is a minor thing.
No, it cannot.
In a sexual assault you've had your naked body viewed and touched by one person without your consent.
In revenge porn an intimate moment with your naked body has been viewed by thousands or even millions of people without your consent, possibly including many people in your social circle.
Yes, it absolutely can be as traumatizing as a sexual assault.
I'd like to see you tell a sexual assault survivor that her ordeal was as bad as someone looking at her naked photos.
Note I said 'can', not 'is'.
Typically I expect that sexual assault survivors do have it worse.
But I suspect there are many women for whom the violation of the pictures can be as bad if not worse than some classes of sexual assault.
Put yourself in a project manager's shoes. What would you say if one of your programmers was working on a cool Easter Egg instead of being productive and working on the actual product? I wouldn't want to be the project manager who had to tell higher management that the product will be late but have some cool Easter Eggs.
I think it's more a case of quality.
The project manager has a plan and making stable easy to maintain code is hard. Now one of the programmers is going in, screwing around with the logic to support their Easter egg and if not introducing bugs at least introducing headaches for the next programmer who has to go in and make a change.
There's places where they're appropriate, particularly games where they add character and a bit of fun (which is the whole damn point afterall). But for more serious applications? It becomes hard to justify the potential cost.
10,000 instances of what can be be fairly compared to a sexual assault.
I otherwise agree with you, but saying his crimes can be compared to rape is ludicrous, without even going into the wacky world of rape's legal definition.
I'm not sure it is ludicrous. True a single act of rape is truly horrendous, but there's only a single violation and the perpetrator can be caught. With this there's a violation with each person who views the picture, it goes on constantly for years, and it never goes away. Moreover that violation can include a great many of the people whom the victim personally knows.
Some people might not mind being a revenge porn victim, and on average I suspect it's less damaging, but I wouldn't be shocked if there's a substantial portion of people for whom it's just as bad if not worse.
Because an egregious violation of someone's privacy that's can be traumatizing as a sexual assault is a minor thing.
No, it cannot.
In a sexual assault you've had your naked body viewed and touched by one person without your consent.
In revenge porn an intimate moment with your naked body has been viewed by thousands or even millions of people without your consent, possibly including many people in your social circle.
Yes, it absolutely can be as traumatizing as a sexual assault.
Sorry for being a lazy proofreader, the intent of my statement was still pretty clear.
The obvious correction is to drop the 's which came from a previous iteration of the sentence, and I'm not sure the insertion of 'as' before traumatizing actually adds anything besides extra letters.
Your alternate "correction" becomes gibberish when inserted into the original sentence, and even then it still doesn't clearly convey the meaning you attached to it.
I realize that it is difficult to achieve a balance in fairness in sentencing but here we have an example of a court getting whacked out. Try and find a single case in which a drunk driver or hit and run driver who has killed someone gets 18 years in jail. Now it is obvious that no one likes to get a couple of hundred bucks ripped out of their wallets such a crime does not come close to killing someone and fleeing the scene. And i know that some people will say it involved more than one victim.
You're right, it involved about 10,000 victims. 10,000 instances of what can be be fairly compared to a sexual assault.
I'd rather have dinner with a person who screwed up one time and became a hit & run drunk driver than be in the same room as that guy who did this for years.
But then again big tobacco and big coal kill a lot more than one person every single day and the law allows them to keep right on doing it. Worse yet as tobacco sales fell in the US our tobacco companies exported more and more tobacco to nations in which the population remains completely uneducated and allows children to smoke.
The long and short of it is that both our civil and criminal justice systems need a rework from the ground up.
Tobacco smoking is an interesting point though people who smoke do it largely by choice, these girls never chose to have their photos posted online.
Pair programming works by having a more experienced coder working along side a less experienced coder. The fruits of that asymmetry is what it's all about.
If you wanted pair programming in an academic setting, it would mean giving a dedicated tutor to every student in that class.
This, however, is just working in pairs. Not the same at all.
The studies I've seen show that novice-novice is still pretty damn effective as a productivity and learning strategy.
Despite the summary I've TA'd 1st year courses and we had a great experience from having people work in groups. 1st year students can spend a lot of time stuck on really simple problems that are due to some weird misconceptions or simply a lack of familiarity. Having them work in pairs means instead of just giving up they start trouble shooting together, when they finally did get to asking a question it was at a much higher level, this meant I could spent more time assisting the individuals or groups who really needed it.
Most importantly the people who go into CS tend to be introverted and terrible collaborators, I know I'm personally far too ready to sludge through problems alone and ask for help far too late. If I'd had some pair-programming experience when I was in undergrad I think I would have benefited immensely.
As with most of these "issues", it's not about equality. It's about raising a major stink about a minor thing in order to get "support" (attention, votes, money, etc.).
Because an egregious violation of someone's privacy that's can be traumatizing as a sexual assault is a minor thing.
The reason the FBI isn't doing more to combat revenge porn is thus: It's not illegal.
I would expect Franken, or at least someone who works for him, to know this. Perhaps he just wants it declared illegal by executive fiat, as is the practice with this administration.
But really, this ploy, and Slashdot's new social-justice-warrior driven coverage of it, is driven more by a desire to distract everyone from foreign events, Hillary's email server, and Obama's frequent and blatant power grabs.
That's actually kind of funny, now that I think of it. There's been no story posted at all about Clinton's email shenanigans. Well, we know who Dice has thrown their lot in with.
I would expect someone who writes a comment accusing the subject of being misinformed would at least RTFA to ensure they aren't completely misinformed on that very fact:
In a letter to FBI Director James Comey, the Minnesota Democrat asked for more information about the agency's authority to police against revenge porn, or the act of posting explicit sexual content online without the subject's consent, often for purposes of humiliation and extortion.
[...]
Franken wrote in his letter. "As technologies rapidly advance, it is our responsibility to ensure that our nation's laws keep pace with those technologies. But it is also our responsibility to ensure that existing laws are strictly enforced."
[...]
In addition, Franken wants information on any limitations within current law that may have impeded the FBI from carrying out investigations or making arrests. Franken, who asked for a response by May 8, is exploring whether legislation may be necessary to combat revenge porn, his office said.
In summary Franken is saying that revenge porn is a serious problem and he wants to know if the FBI can do more with the laws already there or if they need additional laws to fix the problem. Isn't this exactly what you want a legislator to do?
Iran has been at war with Israel for a long time now through well-funded and very closely monitored proxies. I'm not sure how you can possibly deny this. Israel recently bombed a Hezbollah convoy and accidentally killed an Iranian general they didn't realize was present. Iran didn't make any attempt at all to deny it. Israel actually had to shrug their shoulders and insist it was an accident so as to avoid needlessly pissing off Iran.
War vs non-war isn't always a clear line. Iran is a local power who supports a lot of groups who furthers their interests. It's not a good thing but it isn't terribly different from any other moderately powerful country, and while they're supporting these organizations they're very likely not ordering individual attacks or telling them to declare war.
That said, any deal at all to slow down their nuke acquisition is of course much preferable to no deal (I have no idea what the pro-sanction people are babbling about, and I suspect they don't either.) And the younger generations of Iranians seem to be much more reasonable than those currently in power. And of course, Iran and the other Shias aren't as bad as ISIS (do I need to point out what a ridiculously low bar this is to clear?)
I agree on that count. The successors to both Rhouani and Khameni will be particularly interesting.
But you cannot gloss over the Israel thing. It is already a war. It doesn't matter what your feelings are on Israel and/or Palestine; Iran does not recognize the two-state solution and it is even conceivable they would attempt to deniably nuke an Israeli target through one of their proxies.
Or, if they are feeling especially clever, nuke a Sunni target and frame Israel for it. Given the depressingly widespread beliefs of absurd Israel/Jewish conspiracy theories in the Middle East, this would be very easy to pull off.
I don't know, that strikes me as quite a conspiracy theory in itself, particularly given how easy it would be to trace back the bomb (my understanding is they can trace back to the specific reactor).
It's important to recognize a lot of the Israel stuff for what it is, rhetoric. And to be honest Israel, a country full of relatively Western white people, has managed to turn a good portion of the Western white world against them in favour of a bunch of dark-skinned Muslims. How charitable do you expect a different bunch of dark skinned Muslims to feel towards Israel? If anything I think the Israel angle could be the best aspect of the deal. If Iran gets better relations with the US then Israel feels pressure to clean up their act Settlement-wise to maintain US support while Iran pressures Hamas and Hezbolla for the same reasons. At that point you've actually made some real progress towards a solution to the Israel-Palestine situation.
Bah.
I don't get people.
I don't want free drinks. Video games to play at work. A ping pong table. Any of that.
All of that, just EXTENDS the work day. You're not going to go in, play ping-pong for 4 hours, and then work 4 -- and get paid for 8. Instead, the expectation will be a longer work day.
In reality, all of these silly perks are just non-cash compensation for long work days.
You know what? Keep the free drinks, the catered lunch, the free this and that. Keep the ping-pong table, the toys.
JUST GIVE ME MONEY. Give me MORE money, and keep all of that!
Keep my hours SHORTER, so I can go out and PLAY WITH PEOPLE I WANT TO PLAY WITH. While people at work MAY be fun, when *I CHOOSE* who to play with, *I KNOW I WILL HAVE FUN*.
I really disagree with this. I'm going to spend about half my waking life at the office, I sure as hell want it to be an interesting place.
I don't know about other people but for me productivity is 90% motivation, if I whittled away half the day but worked with complete focus for the remaining half I would be a fantastically productive employee.
So for that I would say to keep things fun and focused, tasks should be small with well defined goals, even if you make some busy work it won't matter because the workers will be that much better. There's nothing worse than being given a giant task with no clear purpose or metric by which to try it. Include a couple paid coffee breaks. People can't work effectively for 4 hours straight, a couple glances at /. aren't the solution and developers sure as hell won't waste personal time recharging for a couple minutes at the office. Give them a pair of coffee breaks, encourage them get away from their desks, the increased productivity will more than make up for the lost time.
Make some sort of intermittent fun events at the office, food events or games of some kind, don't make it a corporate spirit thing, just a thing for people to have fun. It breaks up the monotony for the people who participate, if nothing else it makes the office a more engaging social environment and gives people an opportunity to interact.
It doesn't work for everyone, in general the older the employee the stronger their non-work commitments and the less they'll be interested if office socialization, but if you can make the office environment more engaging you'll improve productivity and quality of life for everyone involved.
A final thought might be to try pair programming. It hasn't really caught on because programmers tend to be fairly introverted and computers are very personal spaces. But the published studies suggest it can be very effective for both productivity and employee satisfaction, you improve knowledge sharing since its a lot easier to ask a question when you're already talking and you kill a lot of time wasting since it's a lot harder to zone out when interacting with someone.
What on earth does your mental model of Iranians look like?! A nation of genocidal suicide bombers??
I have a friend who comes from Iran. The people of Iran in general, are pretty friendly and like the U.S.
I know a lot of Iranians and have a similar experience, note that you're looking at an a-typical sample, if anyone is going to be particularly against the regime it's likely to be people leaving the country.
However they are not the ones building the nuclear weapons. They are not the ones deciding when to use the weapons; who to use them against. That is up to the leaders of Iran, who in fact are not far off from your description. They consider the people of Iran as pawns and shields...
The people of Iran in fact are the very reason I think Iran will use nuclear weapons; because how could we retaliate?
If Iran destroys NYC, I would not support nuking any Iranian cities for exactly that reason. Nor would the rest of the U.S. So Iran is safe to attack many targets with impunity, knowing that for a while at least no major western U.S. country is willing to respond with nuclear weapons.
Even assuming the laughable assertion that they're a bunch of sociopaths who would happily sacrifice their own population, and they didn't give a crap for even their own survival, what possible motive would they have for doing Nuking the US?
You're describing a cartoon supervillian.
Btw, the very fact they accepted this deal demonstrates you're wrong and that they do care about their people, because otherwise they would have simply kept stalling until they had a bomb, the civilians were the ones bearing the brunt of the sanctions.
You know how many wars Iran has launched since 1979? Zero.
When you consider just Iran's backing of Hamas that statement is laughably naive.
So supporting an organization to some degree means you're responsible for all of their actions?
I can't even imagine how many wars would be added to the US tally using that standard.
And even if you JUST think about Iran attacking countries directly there's this little thing called the Iran-Iraq war., lasting from 1980-1989... yes Iraq started it but after regaining lost land Iran was on the offensive for several years after.
So it's pretty obvious you are more than clueless when it comes to knowing anything about Iran.
Did you really read that article? You make it sounds as if it was almost entirely Iran running unopposed through Iraq. Yes they started reversing the Iraqi gains in 1982 but in reality Iraq had a lot of Western support leading to lot better equipped military. As well they used chemical weapons, were the first ones to attack cities directly, and right up until the end in 1989 their ceasefire proposals involved Iraq making territorial gains.
Basically your evidence for the claim that Iran is an irrationally aggressive nation is the fact they didn't concede territory after being invaded. Come to think of it by your Hamas standard I could claim that the US is responsible for the Iran-Iraq war!
Attack with an Iranian weapon in 1.5 years.
Attack with an Iranian weapon Iran will admit to responsibility for, in four years (they want time to stockpile more than a few nukes before going on a full offensive).
Read it and weep. A thousand centrifuges in an un-killable under-mountain facility. Once sanctions are lifted they would take a long time to restart, so even IF you catch Iran cheating you can do nothing now to stop the inevitable.
If I lived in a coastal community I would move out immediately.
I hope Iron Dome can be switched to "reflect".
Nothing like some irrational fearmongering to brighten your day.
What on earth does your mental model of Iranians look like?! A nation of genocidal suicide bombers??
You know how many wars Iran has launched since 1979? Zero.
You know who does the suicide bombings? Not Shias, the dominant religion in Iran.
Yes their human rights record sucks, yes the probably want a Nuke or at least some practical Nuclear expertise to deter attacks from Israel or the US. But they're not cartoonish supervillians and I have no idea what evidence you're basing your predictions on. Healthy relations between the US and Iran is a good thing for everybody.
Even though its April 1st... This is not funny.
Actually this one had potential in the headline.
Imagine coming to /. and finding that all the articles written in buzzfeed style, done completely seriously but instead of regular stories having listicles of open source security vulnerabilities and "How this maintainer responded to a kernel patch will make your day!"
Now that would be some serious April fools satire.
... with the originals. The prequels were shit which is why people had a hard time getting a job.
That statement makes almost no sense. Of the actors from the original series, how many went on to become well know actors? Basically you have Harrison Ford and James Earl Jones.
Given that the cast was relatively unknown to being with how many well known actors do you expect?
If anything it's an indication that if you throw a dozen reasonable actors into a major movie then one of them will turn out to be star.
Well, the opposition to the Korean war — as I outlined from the get-go — never rose to anywhere the same pitch. Not while the war was running, not later. Soldiers returning from Vietnam war were "baby-killers", but those who came back from Korea were not. The "peace-movement" being infested by stooges is a confirmed theory that explains all of the known facts. It may be difficult for you to accept, probably, because you and/or your parents participated — without knowing, who got the ball rolling, of course, being sincere useful idiots — but that's what it is.
Yeah, I'm Canadian and I'm quite certain neither of my parents really participated in the peace movement. I would point to this fact as evidence to the fact that you're over-extrapolating from limited data and reaching erroneous conclusions.
All I can say is I consider Marc Theissen to be a terrible analyst, though going into that would be a needless diversion.
I'm confused, why did you link to quotes of people supporting the war as evidence that the opponents were wrong?
Well, you may not like Michael Savage, but he certainly is not "a fringe"... And the already mentioned Justin Raimondo has his loyal following.
I don't know, I think I'd still call Savage as being on the fringe. Sure he's got a following but he's so far out that he can't even enter the UK.
Remember the Cuban missile crisis? The US isn't particularly amendable to countries in its sphere of influence allying with Russia either.
And as you just said NATO was meant to counter the USSR (ie Russia), of course they're going to react with hostility when neighbouring countries start joining a military alliance literally designed to oppose them.
Though Georgia was invaded while trying to join NATO. And the initial situations with South Ossetia and Transitivia happened in the fairly messy aftermath of the collapse of the USSR. My understanding is that the NATO expansion was interpreted by Russians as an aggressive act, and that's been responsible for the subsequent rejection of Western liberalism and the return to an adversarial mindset.
But, it is interesting... So, in your peace-loving opinion, NATO should've rejected Eastern Europe's attempts to join it to please Russia... Just how do you justify this? What sort of ethical standards do you have? What books did momma read to you? Should the wisest of the Three Pigs have rejected his brothers' attempts to hide in his masonry house — so as not to aggravate the Wolf? Wow!
The links I've posted by now confirm beyond reasonable doubt, that they (or some of them, anyway) are, in fact, stooges. That's a settled question. Just how many — that's a problem of (under/over)estimation.
There will always be stooges in any movement, suggesting that delegitimizes the movement is a completely different standard,
Khm, it does not seem like many people think, Russia is doing anything wrong.
I have no idea what people you're thinking of. Outside of Russian I've only encountered a very small handful who supported Russia, and they wrote and argued so badly I actually felt bad engaging since I thought they were dealing with legitimate mental illnesses.
Your Bush-blaming fails. Putin's number one justification (at least within Russia) was not Iraq, but Kosovo — for over a year now Russians online are arguing, that if it was Ok for the US to run a referendum there, it is Ok for Russia to run one in Crimea. (That, unlike Americans in Kosovo, Russian occupiers of Crimea had an obvious conflict-of-interest seems to have escaped their attention.)
Kosovo is the big justification (because of their traditional alliance with the Serbs) but Iraq is certainly part of the narrative. And I only brought up Iraq because you explicitly mentioned it as an example of a protest movement that didn't have proper justification. As it turns out it was actually a very well informed protest movement as the invasion of Iraq was by any metric a disaster.
Greece is an EU-member and can break the union's consensus-driven foreign policy.
One of the things that makes it a real problem
It is good, you've kept a level head, but I've already given you a number of links to English-speaking opinion-makers, who were affected by KremlinTV.
Fringe opinion-makers whom I'd never heard of. I don't think they're really affecting anything.
Another aspect you are ignoring is the Russian-diaspora living in the West. They still watch nostalgic movies on Russian channels and the propaganda "analysis" in between. Then, when asked about current events by their non-Russian peers, they help spread Putin's point of view.
I don't know many so I can't really speak to it but I doubt many are actually backing the invasion. It's also probably that their opinions have nothing to do with the propaganda, they're still Russian, they'll have a strong urge to identify with and defend their home country.
It should be noted that the West's hands aren't completely clean in this. NATO was started as an anti-Russia alliance, expanding into former Warsaw pact countries after the end of the Cold War was absolutely moronic. Without that expansion there's a decent chance that everyone is still on relatively good terms.
I just came back from Germany — both in Munich and Frankfurt there are pro-Putin signs on the walls and fences. His support there is mostly among Socialists, but those assholes are a considerable power there — and Merkel has to defend herself from their sniping.
Putin's evil is, indeed, obvious to those paying attention, but there are too few of those in
What sort of echo chamber does this woman live in to think she's got a good record as a manager to run on? Romney at least made real money and ran a real state government. Fiorina started lots of pissing contests, got booted by the shareholders for loosing money and assets, and lost a senate (not even governor's) race. Wow.
Unless she's running for VP.
It wouldn't be that hard for her to make a little noise in the primaries given she could be the only female (certainly the only establishment female).
Then if Hillary wins the nomination the Republicans are going to want a female or minority to stick in the VP slot. Right now that means Marco Rubio or Ben Carson but there's lots of reasons a nominee might not want one or both. In that case Fiorina might be the only option who isn't a white male, it's still a long shot but a VP nomination is far from impossible.
These stories are tiring as there is no chance for "settled science fact" in climate change.
All of these estimates are based on elaborate math models and yet the Earth's long term climate ON ITS OWN, has swung widely over recorded history.
And from the geologic history, we know we will again go into another ice age based on the history of the change in the Earth-Sun orbit & precession changes on a regular 110,000 year cycle. And without human intervention, the ice age ends.
I know. Same thing with species. Earth's history is littered with mass extinctions, the switchover to oxygen in the Precambrian, the Permian-Triassic extinction event, the dinosaurs dying at the end of the Jurassic. Who's to say the current mass extinction has anything to do with humans, maybe the Passenger Pigeon's died on their own? And that cool forest where I grew up, forest's go away all the time, who's to say it had anything to do with the new suburb.
No, not entire — there were sincere pacifists even during WW2 — and not automatically. We need to painfully examine, to what extent the peace movement was compromised by involvement of both USSR and domestic terrorists. You may suspect me of overestimating the enemy's impact, but you are certainly underestimating it.
You're not overestimating the enemy's impact, you're accusing your ideological opponents of being stooges. I'm certain you're not nearly as concerned by the propaganda put out by those who agree with you.
When the US was about to resume shooting in Iraq in 2003, the whole world erupted in the biggest coordinated protest in history — and not by Iraqis, but by outraged Westerners expressing their sympathy.. Where were these peace-loving legions, when Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014? What few protests there were, they were largely by Ukrainian expats with very few sympathetic locals in evidence. Why?
Because:
a) People expect a lot more of the US than Russia
b) The US sets international standards, and by invading Iraq it helps legitimize things like Ukraine
c) The US is a Western country, it makes a lot of sense for Westerners to protest it because they have a chance of influencing the politicians. What the hell does Russia care if a bunch of Americans or Canadians come out in protest? And what should Canadians and Americans even protest for, we don't have a lot of leverage.
Because Putin's propaganda machine worked — on the entire spectrum of Western politics, not just the Left as the USSR used to. Rightist Jews in the US were accusing Ukraine's new "junta" of being "nazis", while actual American Nazis called the new government "Jews". Without arguing with each other, but both helped Putin. Most likely, they didn't realize it — but there is no doubt, a there is a group of analysts at FSB attached to each Western opinion-maker. US is a pathetic noob at this.
Wake up and smell "people's power" — and the power of propagandists to manipulate it.
It didn't do squat. Yes there's a few fringe folks who are influenced, but they're pretty insubstantial.
In the EU it might be different, Greece in particular might have a legitimate problem, but in the English speaking West Russian propaganda is a joke.
I'm not mining quotes from 60 years ago but it certainly would have affected the perception. Korean was very much a multinational mission, Vietnam was not.
Wars become more unpopular the longer they go, that's fairly basic. The public wasn't particularly anti-War at the start of the war, it became that way later on (similar to Iraq).
That would be a pretty small part. The moment the media came to the conclusion they could be actual reporters instead of propagandists the friendly propaganda effort was done.
From stuff that didn't have much to do with the USSR (though many were undoubtedly interested in leftist ideas).
It's only racist when the complainers start blowing dog whistles. As it happens referring to Obama as a community organizer, a job he held for 3 years in his mid-twenties before going onto far more impressive things. That could be just partisan bias, but there's a definite dog whistle quality to it.
So just because the USSR tried to manipulate the peace movement therefore delegitimizes the entire peace movement? And an 'anti-war' organization that virtually no one on the left listens to or agrees with is evidence of that fact?
Israel is certainly trying to sway US public opinion, does that make you a puppet of some Jewish lobby? (for the record I say no)
Compare our invasion of Korea with that of Vietnam only a few years later. Before you say "Korea was UN-approved" — no, that's a lame excuse. Stalin boycotted UN at the time action on Korea was decided, but by the time of Vietnam USSR has changed its approach. That's all.
So what? You're talking about the public perception of the war, UN approval forms part of that public perception.
In both cases American military was sent to fight in remote lands against people, who didn't threaten America directly in any way — for fear of the domino effect of Communism. In both cases the fighting was heavy and numerous war-crimes have taken place.
And yet, there was no domestic opposition to the Korean war — virtually none. No protests against the draft, no accusations of returning soldiers being "baby-killers". John Kerry, for example, has gained more political capital for opposing the war (and returning his medals), than for fighting in it (for an entire 4 months).
Vietnam was widely considered a national shame long before the war was lost. Meanwhile the only source of any negativity about the Korean war in mass culture was the M*A*S*H series.
Why was the domestic reaction to the two wars so drastically different? The theory of propagandists controlled and funded (with or without their own knowledge) by the USSR would explain the known facts.
It's possible, but a far more likely factor is the fact they were very different wars at very different times.
The Korean war was over in 3 years. In Vietnam the US stepped into a long running conflict which ran a lot longer.
The US was also coming straight out of WWII, so the idea that you should deal with belligerent countries pro-actively sounded like a really good idea and provided a great narrative, the communist threat would have also seemed less intractable since you didn't have to deal with Nuclear arms race.
You've also got media actually showing the home front what the battlefield actually looks like, that's a pretty profound change from previously where media pieces were basically clips from war movies.
Finally you had a completely different culture in the 60's that was largely based on a rejection of authority, do you think that was going to mix well with the military?
You don't need Soviet propaganda to explain the Vietnam peace movement, the known facts are explained by the known facts.