The average cost of a one-way subway journey in HK is somewhere around $.75.
You have to pass the card somewhere near the scanner. Your pocket is not close enough.
The amount of money we're talking about is chump change. Even for the poor. Not only that, but it tells you how much is left on your card every time you exit one of the stations. It's all relatively transparent. No, you can't rescind the transaction easily, but it's possible. You just have to see an attendant.
Having spent a lot of time in the Asian ISP business I can tell you that the way that the operators are structured price-wise is this: You pay for every bit that comes inbound internationally.
Presumably this is because of the cable operators themselves. Local Ozzie traffic is "free" in that there is not a per bit fee. International is not. Considering that (for most countries, Korea one of the exceptions) the bulk of traffic usually originates in the U.S. I would think that a large number of broadband users d/l'ing items from international sites could seriously affect the bottom line of various ISPs.
It's understandable they are taking this approach, although I would like more information about why. I'm assuming it's because of the above, but providers like Optus have partial ownership of some of the cables. This, I would think, means that Optus does not have this restriction, but perhaps they are taking this tack for other reasons?
Anyone with more recent information about the Australian cable operator and ISP scene?
I'm "self-taught." I self-taught myself technical skills and "soft skills."
After 10+ years in Silicon Valley starting at the age of 19 I have moved from Sysadmin to Network Engineer to Security Consultant to Vice President of a publicly listed company on the NASDAQ.
I agree with a lot of the points you make, but actually find that your blanket statements about self-learners are invalid in my personal experience.
Firstly, while technical skills can certainly be taught the more difficult skill (and important) to impart is troubleshooting/diagnostics/problem-solving.
Unfortunately, a lot of graduates I have come across have had some of the worst trouble-shooting skills I've seen. Frequently they come from educational environments that are predominantly based on regurgitation of memorized data and not on creative problem solving.
Now, granted, many of those who come from particular educational backgrounds have excellent skills in this regard, but a college education, in and of itself, is no guarantee.
Many of the self-taught professionals that I personally have encountered have been particularly skillful in this regard because of their flexible thinking. Also because they were frequently "competing" against those with CS/EE degrees. The incapable tend to be weeded out fairly quickly from the fast-paced IT environment.
Final thoughts? If success speaks for itself then it's clear that my level of success refutes most of your arguments and that you have, through fate, only encountered the bottom-of-the-barrel of "self-taught" professionals.
I love the whole idea of e-books. I even love to read some of them . . . For a while.
Maybe I am a strange computer user (only 15 years on the Internet), but I like book! I mean, I love it!
Books are your friend. I recently purchased over $400 in books to study for the CISSP. Yes, I could easily get this information from the web. It's a pain though to be able to crack open this kind of information while in a park.
There was a recent/. article which I can't find that talks about how Air Traffic Controllers use slips of paper to order their flights.
The fact of the matter is that human beings are tactile and visual. Replacing a book is practically impossible. There is amazing use in the Internet and being able to search for data, but, in a way, it's more like normal non-linear thought. Books/Articles/Magazines have very structured thought and also allow you to use your fingers, and other mechanisms, to organize the way you read/think. I will buy books until I die. Even if I had a direct cybernetic plugin I would not use it the majority of the time!
I would guess that nearly 100% of/. readers have an Anti-Virus scanner of some sort loaded on their desktop/laptop. These all have systems that are designed to automatically d/l updates, including core functionality/engines.
I have seen TrendMicro's PC-Cillin d/l executables before.
So, while Brilliant Digital is out of line and while Weaver makes good points, the reality is that this threat has been around for a very long time.
For that matter, have you considered what might happen if someone 0wns the Akamai system?
I don't think it's 100% clear what the answer is yet. I've seen some attempts at this using LDAP, but it can become quite messy. For example, if you want to tie routers into it you'll need to integrate LDAP with Radius/TACACS.
Suprisingly, it seems that almost everything out there has Kerberos support these days. I'm going to start an experiment soon to see how well this works with Windows, but some of the websites seem to indicate that there is a reasonable amount of cross-functionality.
Does anyone else have actual experience implementing Kerberos in a mixed Unix/Windows environment?
Re:You need a clue/There's a lot of that going aro
on
Globalism Post 9/11
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· Score: 1
It's a little more than mental masturbation. Ask the Poles. Ask the Czechs and Hungarians. To believe that the Cold War was about nothing, or about ideology that really didn't matter is to ignore the massive differential in the numbers of people who were killed going over the Berlin Wall from east-to-west and vice versa. Its to ignore the relative freedom of the Tiawanese and South Koreans compared to the North Koreans and the Chinese mainlanders.
I really don't understand why you use an argument like this. It's old and tired. Rah, rah, rah. We represent freedom and everything that's right with the world. Yada-yada-ya. Yes, I know that's the claim. The other guys are worse than us and all of that.
I assert that the reality is that we aren't that terribly different and that while the U.S. government is rigorous in it's defense of the freedoms of your average American, it really couldn't care less about anyone outside it's borders regardless of what the propaganda machine claims.
Sadly, you point out that the U.S. formed it's policy against Saddam Hussein based, amongst other reasons, on their concern over the plight of the Kurds. This while they provide and continue to turn a blind eye to the large numbers of deaths of these exact same Kurdsin Turkey (~40,000 dead). Note that the above listed numbers are predominantly civilian casualties. When other countries do this it's called terrorism. But the U.S. government does not engagement in this. Nor do any of it's "client" states. Like Turkey, of whom, 75% of their arsenal is supplied by the U.S. government. The arsenal used to kill these same Kurds. The U.S. government's desire to help the Kurds is clearly overwhelming in it's earnestness.
You are using typical apologist tactics for people unwilling to take any time to do a careful analysis of the actual facts or to use sources beyond those provided by the mainstream media. "We had to do it." "We're not as bad as the real bad guys."
How many people died crossing the Berlin wall? Was it any where near the roughly 1 million civilians (from above) that the U.S. has directly or indirectly killed? This isn't even a significant sampling of the number of civilian casualties the U.S. has at least some responsibility for.
Sort of, but at least in Arab countries, there's still a very pervasive and very effective propaganda machine. The percentage of the population that believes that the attacks of Sept 11 were orchestrated by Mossad (Israeli intelligence service), not by Muslim terrorists is pretty large.
Prove it.
He's not the one who started trolling, dude. Something about pots calling kettles black.
No, I'm just vehement. I'm very frustrated with people who just parrot the party line. I will avoid any further "trolls".
because he was opposed to the brutally repressive Iranian regime which was at the time just as bad and openly hostile to America and openly supporting international terrorism.
Right. The one we were also funding and arming during the Iran-Iraq war. Playing both sides against eachother essentially. See any of the Iran-Contra investigation information available on the web. Arms sales to Iran were occuring at the same time as arms sales to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988).
Nicaragua is a good example. Democracy is taking hold there, after years of bloody Communist dictatorship.
The "bloody Communist dictatorship" doubled literacy, among other things. Also, they were in the process in 1985 of building a democratically elected government. Admittedly, very Sandinista biased at first, but it could have gone somewhere but for U.S. embargo, U.S. funding of the Contras (funded by arms shipments to Iran and drug money). Who knows? Do you? No.
Regardless, atrocities on both sides are well documented and there are not clear "winners" as far as any kind of moral conscience. You can't really prove that the Contras were any less "bloody" or that Democracy would never have been established.
As far as I know this was only the second use of weapons of mass destruction since the end of WWII (the other being Soviet gas attacks in Afghanistan). These were carried out against civilian targets and horribly effective. At this point the US began open opposition to Hussein's regime.
Well, I don't really understand why you use this argument. Dead is dead. I'm not really clear why it should matter what the mechanism is.
Are you aware that the total tonnage of bombs dropped on Vietnam is significantly larger than all of that dropped during WWII? That's not a Weapon of Mass Destruction?
The US tries to be a force for good. Sometimes we fail. Others not so much.
Regardless, you haven't really made any arguments that prove that the U.S. tries to be a force for good. Or, if we take your assumption that this is true and agree with you (for a moment), then we must also assume that the end justifies the means even when we kill more than we save by doing so.
I don't buy it. The use of force as a mechanism for solving problems (while effective in many ways) simply leads others (usually the ones on the receiving end) to the conclusion that opposing force is required in response.
A spiralling cycle of violence.
Ensuing power struggles.
In summary, I think it's pretty clear that U.S. government simply tries to maintain it's dominance and the reason it is not involved in conflicts like Myanmar (as you point out) is that there are no political (read: domination/power) reasons for it to do so. If it were so concerned about being a force for good it would be more concerned about Myanmar, East Timor, and the myriad of other examples where it essentially ignores suffering people because there is no perceived benefit.
From here:"With Arab help, the British took Palestine from the Ottomans at the end of World War I in 1917-18. The Arabs willingly helped the British because they had been promised independence after the war."
I assert that if you have several bullies doing their thing in the schoolyard that if you are going to make a difference it makes sense to start with the biggest and meanest.
Critical analysis of American government does not mean:
American people are bad.
Other governments are good.
Regarding Balfour Declaration (direct from Israel's own Jerusalem Post):
President Truman would later say that the US did not pressure any country to vote for partition. That statement, however, would seem to be based on an interpretation of pressure as gunboats or White House stationery. Two US Supreme Court justices, Frank Murphy and Felix Frankfurter, contacted the Philippine ambassador in Washington and sent telegrams to Philippine president Carlos Rojas warning that a negative vote would alienate millions of Americans. Ten senators also cabled Rojas.
Presidential aide David Niles, Truman's channel to the Jewish community, contacted influential American-Greek businessmen in an attempt to persuade Athens to vote for partition. Unlike with the Philippines and Liberia, this effort was not successful.
[SNIP]
The voting was conducted by the senior American on the UN Secretariat, Andrew Cordier. When it was done he handed the tally to Aranha who studied it for a moment before announcing that the resolution had been carried by a vote of 33 for, 13 against and 10 abstentions. "I close the meeting."
So, after U.S. pressure to accept the Balfour Declaration it was passed with 33 of 56 (member nations) votes, 59%.
Reaffirming also the inalienable right to self-determination and
independence of all peoples under colonial and racist regimes and other forms
of alien domination, and upholding the legitimacy of their struggle, in
particular the struggle of national liberation movements, in accordance with
the purposes and principles of the Charter and of the Declaration on
Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation
among States in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations,
This is apparently the reason that it was voted for by everyone except the USA and Israel.
Point of technicality: the American government changes every time the sitting president is not elected.
Maybe. I personally am toying with a theory that power structures such as corporations and governments operate as integral entities. As such, changes in personnel in the structure have little to do with how it actually operates, in the bigger picture. Some of the more obvious rules that these power structures use relate to maintaining the status quo, attaining more power, responding to attacks, and others.
I think that the structure in itself behaves this way (in some ways much like an animal), yet usually has no historical memory or future predictive ability. Frequently however, people like to claim, or believe, that these structures do have institutional memory or predictive capability. Hence arguments like "that's all in the past, why do you bring it up now?" Well, because it's going to happen again. Period. I don't even have to pretend I'm Nostradamus. I'll put any $$ amount down on a bet about this. The U.S. government will continue to largely meddle in everyone's affairs AND cause the vast majority of it's own problems. Unless we, the people, begin to clue, demand clue, and account for clue within these power structures . They are NOT self-regulating.
I don't mean to justify Osama in any way but I am sure that if the US gov could see the future they would not have trained him. It's too easy to point fingers of blame like that. Sure the US trained him, but they did not make him do anything. He chose to be a monster all by himself.
OK, so, you take this person, who may be a not so wonderful person, and you feed his anger. You train him how to make weapons. You train him in all aspects of guerilla/terrorist tactics. Then he does something bad. You have no responsibility?
People:
Sadam Hussein (U.S. backed)
Osama bin Laden (U.S. trained and backed)
General Augusto Pinochet (U.S. backed)
Governments:
South Africa (pre-mandela)
Chile (Pinochet era)
Nicaragua (under the contras)
Israel
That's a very very small list.
No responsibility?
I think that American's should be refused the right to complain about a thing that's "done to them" (usually for "no reason") until everyone of them is more actively involved with politics and operation of the government. Until then it's just an out-of-control 'machine' with highly questionable (read: nonexistant) morals.
No I just did not want to include every detail about the history of that conflict. One thing I did not mention is that the Jews were there as a direct result of the holocaust and were granted the land there by a majority of nations at the time. They have international sanction to be there. This , and the financial backing of America, is why they have military and economic dominance in the region.
Where did you get this "fact" from? Palestine was, pre-1900, under Ottoman rule. Then British rule until 1948. Most of this time it was predominantly Palestinian Muslims and Palestinian Jews. From 1900-1948 there is a large migration of European Jews and a buying up of land, particularly arable land, from the mostly Palestinian (Muslim and Jewish) landholders. Then in 1948 they form a state. And the local community (I guess they missed your "international sanction") of Arab countries decided to invade to protect the Palestinians.
So, let's see, there is no "land grant" as you say. The "international sanction" you mention is questionable as it doesn't appear to involve any of the local peoples or countries.
Oh, right. I forgot the special unspoken assumption where Western culture is always right and appropriate in it's projection of force and decisions regarding other, non-Western, cultures. Sorry. My bad.
This is not something you need to visit a country to find out. That's why they are called "third world". As for the "mighty mechanisms of the American mass media" go to a bar in China and ask them to turn the TV to CNN. If you make it out of prison, let me know what their answer is.
I watched lots of CNN in Hong Kong. Not exactly the same, but I don't think you'll see it clamped down on by Beijing any time soon. Besides, that's not the point. The point is that the propaganda machine generated by the intelligentsia and the mass media in the U.S. is pervasive, hard-to-see, and incredibly effective. In fact, it's almost never questioned. I remember learning about "Manifest Destiny" in grade school. You are told straight to your face that we basically annihilated a whole race of people, but it's OK.
This is another really funny comment. I see this argument thrown out all the time. It's pretty standard from people who refuse to do an critical examination of the situation.
Here's what's funny: This argument has probably been used since the founding of the country. It's particularly funny that the U.S. government's piss poor actions all happened in the past. Riiiiiiight. The U.S. government no longer makes bad decisions on a regular basis. I've got a bridge to sell you . . .
Here's what else is not clueful about it:
It pre-supposes that others bad actions are justifications for our bad actions. NOT.
What kind of reasons do you need to hate someone? Maybe they are supplying the weapons that are being used to eliminate your friends and neighbors? (U.S. is the biggest arms dealer in the world). What else? Maybe there is a brutal dictator that was put in place of a more reasonable leader by the U.S. government? I mean, you can't even argue this isn't true. It's happened so many times I am not even going to try and justify my assertion. These aren't good enough reasons to hate the American Government ?? The problem here is that American's get all uptight because they think they personally are at fault, instead of taking responsibility for supporting a government that performs these actions. And the next time the U.S. gov is doing something questionable you probably won't get up and exercise your right to free speech either. Pathetic.
Let's take good old Osama as a final example. Trained and funded by the CIA to fight the U.S.S.R. in Afghanistan. We created him and then we act like it's a big surprise when a created and particularly brutal monster turns on us. It's like keeping a wild animal and then being surprised that regardless of the training it still acts like a wild animal.
Maybe you should get real. It looks to me like you took this persons declaration of age to be something to attack his ideas with. That's ridiculous.
As someone who is twice his age I agree with most of what he said. AND, more importantly, I think his arguments hold large amounts of truth. To respond to you directly:
Blaming everything that has happened between 1943 and 1989 on the Cold War is a bit silly. The Cold War is a symptom of something else. It's the result of power struggles. Power struggles and the control for dominance is just that. And, IMHO, it's hardly ever justified. It's basically a form of mental masturbation and usually performed by insecure little boys who haven't figured out how to deal with their own personal problems. The reasons, however, are usually couched in some kind of rah-rah about protecting the world or some other such trite crap.
Surprisingly, I agree with you about the Jewish constituency; however, you ignored some things. I'm not Jewish and I am, frankly, quite sick of American Jew's support (those that do) of Israeli behavior. Israel is the South Africa of this decade. There is no excuse for the ongoing institutionalized indentured servitude (really slavery if you don't want to mince words) and mistreatment of the Palestinian peoples. It's very much akin to the justification of South African slavery. Did you know that Nelson Mandella and the ANC were classified as "terrorists" by both the South African and American governments in the early 80s?
Your last argument is the most ridiculous and clearly shows that while the rest of your article is appears logical that you are operating on the basis of emotions for your deductive reasoning. In a huge number of cases the "dictator" in question that you refer to was backed by the U.S. Liberty, human rights, etc. are for American people, not people in other countries. Aren't you paying attention to the what the U.S. government does as foreign policy as opposed to what they say?
I doubt you have even been overseas. Having spent a fair bit of my time overseas I can say that A) your claim of how the propaganda machines function is exaggerated and B) people in other countries are frequently understanding of the difference between American people and the American governmen, and C) you have totally ignored that where there is a propaganda machine in place it's probably a small flame next to the might mechanisms of the American mass media which affect the globe.
Anyway, mod this down as a troll, but you clearly needed a clue. Here it is. Take it or leave it.
I lived there for a year. I talked to many people. Money does not, currently, move between Hong Kong and the mainland.
Your argument about this being a stick used by the British is probably not strictly true.
Also, the odds that China would do anything to mess with HK are extremely low and always have been. They needed HK to prove that Taiwan could safely come into the fold.
What most people don't realize is that the final prize is regional dominance, not HK. This means bringing all of the past conquests into the fold. Chinese people, and the PRC government especially, are very proud. Their goal is ideological, not economic. Although it follows that economics will help them in their quest.
In summary, I think that even if the British took all the money out of HK that A) the Chinese would have taken it back anyway, B) there would have been a rather large impact on global financial markets, and C) Asian would have gone into a massive recession (thereby impacting the rest of the world).
I really hate it when people make this assertion or when they say that Linux is taking over UNIX.
I mean, using your logic, BSD is not UNIX. The commonly held belief is that it is UNIX.
Technically speaking, BSD is NOT UNIX. UNIX is (was?) an AT&T trademark and invention. BSD is a ground up re-write of the entire OS including the kernel. In the same way that Linux is a ground up re-write of the kernel. And, Linux has the GNU utilities on top of it. Utilities that pre-date Linux by a significant number of years. Utilities that ran under both BSD and AT&T UNIX years before the Linux kernel was born.
I think it's clear that UNIX can no longer be considered in terms of a trademark or invention by AT&T (or Berkeley).
UNIX is a philosophical standpoint, it's a BASE reference for building operating systems, it's a methodology, it's a paradigm. It's many things.
As in many countries in Asia, it's not only the largest ISP in-country, but also either majority owned or at least a significant chunk, by the incumbent telco, Chunghwa Telecom.
Should Chungwa decide that Movie88 has no need for ISP service it should be a relatively simple matter to drag their feet in bringing up a new circuit.
Regarding the overt use of bribery in Asia, yes it's quite rampant and with the exception of only a few countries in Asia, quite a normal modus operandi.
Slashdot Mirror
I get checked because I perform security services in the financial industry. I think that in that case it is not only appropriate, but necessary.
This book by Avolio and Vixie was the best one I ever read.
Before I switched to Postfix...
You have to pass the card somewhere near the scanner. Your pocket is not close enough.
The amount of money we're talking about is chump change. Even for the poor. Not only that, but it tells you how much is left on your card every time you exit one of the stations. It's all relatively transparent. No, you can't rescind the transaction easily, but it's possible. You just have to see an attendant.
Presumably this is because of the cable operators themselves. Local Ozzie traffic is "free" in that there is not a per bit fee. International is not. Considering that (for most countries, Korea one of the exceptions) the bulk of traffic usually originates in the U.S. I would think that a large number of broadband users d/l'ing items from international sites could seriously affect the bottom line of various ISPs.
It's understandable they are taking this approach, although I would like more information about why. I'm assuming it's because of the above, but providers like Optus have partial ownership of some of the cables. This, I would think, means that Optus does not have this restriction, but perhaps they are taking this tack for other reasons?
Anyone with more recent information about the Australian cable operator and ISP scene?
After 10+ years in Silicon Valley starting at the age of 19 I have moved from Sysadmin to Network Engineer to Security Consultant to Vice President of a publicly listed company on the NASDAQ.
I agree with a lot of the points you make, but actually find that your blanket statements about self-learners are invalid in my personal experience.
Firstly, while technical skills can certainly be taught the more difficult skill (and important) to impart is troubleshooting/diagnostics/problem-solving.
Unfortunately, a lot of graduates I have come across have had some of the worst trouble-shooting skills I've seen. Frequently they come from educational environments that are predominantly based on regurgitation of memorized data and not on creative problem solving.
Now, granted, many of those who come from particular educational backgrounds have excellent skills in this regard, but a college education, in and of itself, is no guarantee.
Many of the self-taught professionals that I personally have encountered have been particularly skillful in this regard because of their flexible thinking. Also because they were frequently "competing" against those with CS/EE degrees. The incapable tend to be weeded out fairly quickly from the fast-paced IT environment.
Final thoughts? If success speaks for itself then it's clear that my level of success refutes most of your arguments and that you have, through fate, only encountered the bottom-of-the-barrel of "self-taught" professionals.
Ah, you mean sort of like UNIX? It's beyond me why we even need Windows. MS should stick to writing applications.
Maybe I am a strange computer user (only 15 years on the Internet), but I like book! I mean, I love it!
Books are your friend. I recently purchased over $400 in books to study for the CISSP. Yes, I could easily get this information from the web. It's a pain though to be able to crack open this kind of information while in a park.
There was a recent /. article which I can't find that talks about how Air Traffic Controllers use slips of paper to order their flights.
The fact of the matter is that human beings are tactile and visual. Replacing a book is practically impossible. There is amazing use in the Internet and being able to search for data, but, in a way, it's more like normal non-linear thought. Books/Articles/Magazines have very structured thought and also allow you to use your fingers, and other mechanisms, to organize the way you read/think. I will buy books until I die. Even if I had a direct cybernetic plugin I would not use it the majority of the time!
The other funny thing was that the plot was basically indistinguishable from his other famous series, Tarzan.
I can see why Hollywood would want to remake them, though. . .
I have seen TrendMicro's PC-Cillin d/l executables before.
So, while Brilliant Digital is out of line and while Weaver makes good points, the reality is that this threat has been around for a very long time.
For that matter, have you considered what might happen if someone 0wns the Akamai system?
Suprisingly, it seems that almost everything out there has Kerberos support these days. I'm going to start an experiment soon to see how well this works with Windows, but some of the websites seem to indicate that there is a reasonable amount of cross-functionality.
Does anyone else have actual experience implementing Kerberos in a mixed Unix/Windows environment?
I really don't understand why you use an argument like this. It's old and tired. Rah, rah, rah. We represent freedom and everything that's right with the world. Yada-yada-ya. Yes, I know that's the claim. The other guys are worse than us and all of that.
I assert that the reality is that we aren't that terribly different and that while the U.S. government is rigorous in it's defense of the freedoms of your average American, it really couldn't care less about anyone outside it's borders regardless of what the propaganda machine claims.
For instance, there are the bombings of Dresden and Hamburg (~175-200,000 dead), use of Atomic weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki (~350,000 dead), and significant loss of life for Iraqi children (~200-500,000 over 5-10 years).
Sadly, you point out that the U.S. formed it's policy against Saddam Hussein based, amongst other reasons, on their concern over the plight of the Kurds. This while they provide and continue to turn a blind eye to the large numbers of deaths of these exact same Kurds in Turkey (~40,000 dead). Note that the above listed numbers are predominantly civilian casualties. When other countries do this it's called terrorism. But the U.S. government does not engagement in this. Nor do any of it's "client" states. Like Turkey, of whom, 75% of their arsenal is supplied by the U.S. government. The arsenal used to kill these same Kurds. The U.S. government's desire to help the Kurds is clearly overwhelming in it's earnestness.
You are using typical apologist tactics for people unwilling to take any time to do a careful analysis of the actual facts or to use sources beyond those provided by the mainstream media. "We had to do it." "We're not as bad as the real bad guys."
How many people died crossing the Berlin wall? Was it any where near the roughly 1 million civilians (from above) that the U.S. has directly or indirectly killed? This isn't even a significant sampling of the number of civilian casualties the U.S. has at least some responsibility for.
Sort of, but at least in Arab countries, there's still a very pervasive and very effective propaganda machine. The percentage of the population that believes that the attacks of Sept 11 were orchestrated by Mossad (Israeli intelligence service), not by Muslim terrorists is pretty large.
Prove it.
He's not the one who started trolling, dude. Something about pots calling kettles black.
No, I'm just vehement. I'm very frustrated with people who just parrot the party line. I will avoid any further "trolls".
because he was opposed to the brutally repressive Iranian regime which was at the time just as bad and openly hostile to America and openly supporting international terrorism.
Right. The one we were also funding and arming during the Iran-Iraq war. Playing both sides against eachother essentially. See any of the Iran-Contra investigation information available on the web. Arms sales to Iran were occuring at the same time as arms sales to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988).
Nicaragua is a good example. Democracy is taking hold there, after years of bloody Communist dictatorship.
The "bloody Communist dictatorship" doubled literacy, among other things. Also, they were in the process in 1985 of building a democratically elected government. Admittedly, very Sandinista biased at first, but it could have gone somewhere but for U.S. embargo, U.S. funding of the Contras (funded by arms shipments to Iran and drug money). Who knows? Do you? No.
Regardless, atrocities on both sides are well documented and there are not clear "winners" as far as any kind of moral conscience. You can't really prove that the Contras were any less "bloody" or that Democracy would never have been established.
As far as I know this was only the second use of weapons of mass destruction since the end of WWII (the other being Soviet gas attacks in Afghanistan). These were carried out against civilian targets and horribly effective. At this point the US began open opposition to Hussein's regime.
Well, I don't really understand why you use this argument. Dead is dead. I'm not really clear why it should matter what the mechanism is.
Are you aware that the total tonnage of bombs dropped on Vietnam is significantly larger than all of that dropped during WWII? That's not a Weapon of Mass Destruction?
The US tries to be a force for good. Sometimes we fail. Others not so much.
Regardless, you haven't really made any arguments that prove that the U.S. tries to be a force for good. Or, if we take your assumption that this is true and agree with you (for a moment), then we must also assume that the end justifies the means even when we kill more than we save by doing so.
I don't buy it. The use of force as a mechanism for solving problems (while effective in many ways) simply leads others (usually the ones on the receiving end) to the conclusion that opposing force is required in response.
A spiralling cycle of violence.
Ensuing power struggles.
In summary, I think it's pretty clear that U.S. government simply tries to maintain it's dominance and the reason it is not involved in conflicts like Myanmar (as you point out) is that there are no political (read: domination/power) reasons for it to do so. If it were so concerned about being a force for good it would be more concerned about Myanmar, East Timor, and the myriad of other examples where it essentially ignores suffering people because there is no perceived benefit.
No mention of anyone but the Arabs in the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement.
I challenge you to find a country where this is not the case.
I didn't make that claim. I refer you to my theory on the modus operandi of governments
I assert that if you have several bullies doing their thing in the schoolyard that if you are going to make a difference it makes sense to start with the biggest and meanest.
Critical analysis of American government does not mean:
American people are bad.
Other governments are good.
Another reason not to buy Intel chips.
Regarding Balfour Declaration (direct from Israel's own Jerusalem Post):
President Truman would later say that the US did not pressure any country to vote for partition. That statement, however, would seem to be based on an interpretation of pressure as gunboats or White House stationery. Two US Supreme Court justices, Frank Murphy and Felix Frankfurter, contacted the Philippine ambassador in Washington and sent telegrams to Philippine president Carlos Rojas warning that a negative vote would alienate millions of Americans. Ten senators also cabled Rojas. Presidential aide David Niles, Truman's channel to the Jewish community, contacted influential American-Greek businessmen in an attempt to persuade Athens to vote for partition. Unlike with the Philippines and Liberia, this effort was not successful.
[SNIP]
The voting was conducted by the senior American on the UN Secretariat, Andrew Cordier. When it was done he handed the tally to Aranha who studied it for a moment before announcing that the resolution had been carried by a vote of 33 for, 13 against and 10 abstentions. "I close the meeting."
So, after U.S. pressure to accept the Balfour Declaration it was passed with 33 of 56 (member nations) votes, 59%.
Let's see, U.N. resolution 42/159 states:
Reaffirming also the inalienable right to self-determination and independence of all peoples under colonial and racist regimes and other forms of alien domination, and upholding the legitimacy of their struggle, in particular the struggle of national liberation movements, in accordance with the purposes and principles of the Charter and of the Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations,
This is apparently the reason that it was voted for by everyone except the USA and Israel.
Maybe. I personally am toying with a theory that power structures such as corporations and governments operate as integral entities. As such, changes in personnel in the structure have little to do with how it actually operates, in the bigger picture. Some of the more obvious rules that these power structures use relate to maintaining the status quo, attaining more power, responding to attacks, and others.
I think that the structure in itself behaves this way (in some ways much like an animal), yet usually has no historical memory or future predictive ability. Frequently however, people like to claim, or believe, that these structures do have institutional memory or predictive capability. Hence arguments like "that's all in the past, why do you bring it up now?" Well, because it's going to happen again. Period. I don't even have to pretend I'm Nostradamus. I'll put any $$ amount down on a bet about this. The U.S. government will continue to largely meddle in everyone's affairs AND cause the vast majority of it's own problems. Unless we, the people, begin to clue, demand clue, and account for clue within these power structures . They are NOT self-regulating.
I don't mean to justify Osama in any way but I am sure that if the US gov could see the future they would not have trained him. It's too easy to point fingers of blame like that. Sure the US trained him, but they did not make him do anything. He chose to be a monster all by himself.
OK, so, you take this person, who may be a not so wonderful person, and you feed his anger. You train him how to make weapons. You train him in all aspects of guerilla/terrorist tactics. Then he does something bad. You have no responsibility?
People:
Sadam Hussein (U.S. backed)
Osama bin Laden (U.S. trained and backed)
General Augusto Pinochet (U.S. backed)
Governments:
South Africa (pre-mandela)
Chile (Pinochet era)
Nicaragua (under the contras)
Israel
That's a very very small list.
No responsibility?
I think that American's should be refused the right to complain about a thing that's "done to them" (usually for "no reason") until everyone of them is more actively involved with politics and operation of the government. Until then it's just an out-of-control 'machine' with highly questionable (read: nonexistant) morals.
Where did you get this "fact" from? Palestine was, pre-1900, under Ottoman rule. Then British rule until 1948. Most of this time it was predominantly Palestinian Muslims and Palestinian Jews. From 1900-1948 there is a large migration of European Jews and a buying up of land, particularly arable land, from the mostly Palestinian (Muslim and Jewish) landholders. Then in 1948 they form a state. And the local community (I guess they missed your "international sanction") of Arab countries decided to invade to protect the Palestinians.
So, let's see, there is no "land grant" as you say. The "international sanction" you mention is questionable as it doesn't appear to involve any of the local peoples or countries.
Oh, right. I forgot the special unspoken assumption where Western culture is always right and appropriate in it's projection of force and decisions regarding other, non-Western, cultures. Sorry. My bad.
This is not something you need to visit a country to find out. That's why they are called "third world". As for the "mighty mechanisms of the American mass media" go to a bar in China and ask them to turn the TV to CNN. If you make it out of prison, let me know what their answer is.
I watched lots of CNN in Hong Kong. Not exactly the same, but I don't think you'll see it clamped down on by Beijing any time soon. Besides, that's not the point. The point is that the propaganda machine generated by the intelligentsia and the mass media in the U.S. is pervasive, hard-to-see, and incredibly effective. In fact, it's almost never questioned. I remember learning about "Manifest Destiny" in grade school. You are told straight to your face that we basically annihilated a whole race of people, but it's OK.
Clue train is now leaving the station.
Here's what's funny: This argument has probably been used since the founding of the country. It's particularly funny that the U.S. government's piss poor actions all happened in the past. Riiiiiiight. The U.S. government no longer makes bad decisions on a regular basis. I've got a bridge to sell you . . .
Here's what else is not clueful about it:
It pre-supposes that others bad actions are justifications for our bad actions. NOT.
What kind of reasons do you need to hate someone? Maybe they are supplying the weapons that are being used to eliminate your friends and neighbors? (U.S. is the biggest arms dealer in the world). What else? Maybe there is a brutal dictator that was put in place of a more reasonable leader by the U.S. government? I mean, you can't even argue this isn't true. It's happened so many times I am not even going to try and justify my assertion. These aren't good enough reasons to hate the American Government ?? The problem here is that American's get all uptight because they think they personally are at fault, instead of taking responsibility for supporting a government that performs these actions. And the next time the U.S. gov is doing something questionable you probably won't get up and exercise your right to free speech either. Pathetic.
Let's take good old Osama as a final example. Trained and funded by the CIA to fight the U.S.S.R. in Afghanistan. We created him and then we act like it's a big surprise when a created and particularly brutal monster turns on us. It's like keeping a wild animal and then being surprised that regardless of the training it still acts like a wild animal.
CLUE
As someone who is twice his age I agree with most of what he said. AND, more importantly, I think his arguments hold large amounts of truth. To respond to you directly:
Blaming everything that has happened between 1943 and 1989 on the Cold War is a bit silly. The Cold War is a symptom of something else. It's the result of power struggles. Power struggles and the control for dominance is just that. And, IMHO, it's hardly ever justified. It's basically a form of mental masturbation and usually performed by insecure little boys who haven't figured out how to deal with their own personal problems. The reasons, however, are usually couched in some kind of rah-rah about protecting the world or some other such trite crap.
Surprisingly, I agree with you about the Jewish constituency; however, you ignored some things. I'm not Jewish and I am, frankly, quite sick of American Jew's support (those that do) of Israeli behavior. Israel is the South Africa of this decade. There is no excuse for the ongoing institutionalized indentured servitude (really slavery if you don't want to mince words) and mistreatment of the Palestinian peoples. It's very much akin to the justification of South African slavery. Did you know that Nelson Mandella and the ANC were classified as "terrorists" by both the South African and American governments in the early 80s?
Your last argument is the most ridiculous and clearly shows that while the rest of your article is appears logical that you are operating on the basis of emotions for your deductive reasoning. In a huge number of cases the "dictator" in question that you refer to was backed by the U.S. Liberty, human rights, etc. are for American people, not people in other countries. Aren't you paying attention to the what the U.S. government does as foreign policy as opposed to what they say?
I doubt you have even been overseas. Having spent a fair bit of my time overseas I can say that A) your claim of how the propaganda machines function is exaggerated and B) people in other countries are frequently understanding of the difference between American people and the American governmen, and C) you have totally ignored that where there is a propaganda machine in place it's probably a small flame next to the might mechanisms of the American mass media which affect the globe.
Anyway, mod this down as a troll, but you clearly needed a clue. Here it is. Take it or leave it.
Your argument about this being a stick used by the British is probably not strictly true.
Also, the odds that China would do anything to mess with HK are extremely low and always have been. They needed HK to prove that Taiwan could safely come into the fold.
What most people don't realize is that the final prize is regional dominance, not HK. This means bringing all of the past conquests into the fold. Chinese people, and the PRC government especially, are very proud. Their goal is ideological, not economic. Although it follows that economics will help them in their quest.
In summary, I think that even if the British took all the money out of HK that A) the Chinese would have taken it back anyway, B) there would have been a rather large impact on global financial markets, and C) Asian would have gone into a massive recession (thereby impacting the rest of the world).
I mean, using your logic, BSD is not UNIX. The commonly held belief is that it is UNIX.
Technically speaking, BSD is NOT UNIX. UNIX is (was?) an AT&T trademark and invention. BSD is a ground up re-write of the entire OS including the kernel. In the same way that Linux is a ground up re-write of the kernel. And, Linux has the GNU utilities on top of it. Utilities that pre-date Linux by a significant number of years. Utilities that ran under both BSD and AT&T UNIX years before the Linux kernel was born.
I think it's clear that UNIX can no longer be considered in terms of a trademark or invention by AT&T (or Berkeley).
UNIX is a philosophical standpoint, it's a BASE reference for building operating systems, it's a methodology, it's a paradigm. It's many things.
And finally, LINUX IS UNIX .
As in many countries in Asia, it's not only the largest ISP in-country, but also either majority owned or at least a significant chunk, by the incumbent telco, Chunghwa Telecom.
Should Chungwa decide that Movie88 has no need for ISP service it should be a relatively simple matter to drag their feet in bringing up a new circuit.
Regarding the overt use of bribery in Asia, yes it's quite rampant and with the exception of only a few countries in Asia, quite a normal modus operandi.