Uh, the Soviet Union was defeated with a lot of help from by surface to air missiles (Stingers among others), antitank missiles and mines supplied by the U.S. to Pakistan which in turn provided them to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. The Soviet Union was bled white fighting a brutal, futal ten year war in Afghanistan and some of the returning veterans were a leading voice of disillusionment with their government.
They were pretty cheap weapons, but still you are exaggerating your point when you say "It wasn't through a SINGLE weapon used in war".
It is also something of an exaggeration to say military spending bankrupted them. It may have been a contributing factor but the collapse of the Soviet Union was a lot more complex than that. If Gorbachev hadn't been in power, and a hard liner had been, it might not have collapsed at all.
Anathem is another recent book that is pretty good though it is, like most of his book, too long.
Reamde is total crap. Its pretty much a bad ghost written Tom Clancy action flick. It has no redeeming technological insights or interesting dialogs which is what make Stephenson's good books worth reading.
Stephenson was trying to do an interactive, online, kind of book. Not sure what happened to it, but I assume it sucked up a lot of time and money, and presumably he phoned in Reamde to try and raise some cash or fulfill a contract with a publisher. Sad really.
Neal, I love ya man, I read all your books, but Reamde was total crap.
"you'll get some unstable maniac in charge. . . those willing to kill"
Yea we sure need to avoid letting anyone grab power who might:
A. Execute people, including U.S. citizens, women and children, without a trial, like with UAV's and Hellfire missiles B. Torture people C. Lock people up indefinitely without a trail D. Snatch people all over the world, put black bags over their heads, drug them, and render them to various dictatorships for indefinite detention and torture, and occasionally snatch the wrong people, oops E. Start long, expensive wars under false pretenses, that kills hundreds of thousands of people and bankrupt the U.S. F. Engage in massive electronic spying on citizens without a warrant or court oversight
Yep, we definitely don't want any wild eyed revolutionaries grabbing power and doing that shit .
The International Red Cross, after inspecting Gitmo reported "humiliating acts, solitary confinement, temperature extremes, use of forced positions"
"On June 15, Brigadier General Janis Karpinski at the centre of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse in Iraq said she was told from the top to treat detainees like dogs "as it is done in Guantanamo [Camp Delta]."
There a bunch of other accusations there of practices at Gitmo that were very similar to the things that were occurring at Abu Ghraib.
If Abu Ghraib abuses were entirely due to a bunch of rogue enlisted people in Iraq how do you explain many of the same techniques being used at Gitmo on the other side of the world. The one and only answer is that the abuses were DOD and CIA doctrine and fully authorized from the Pentagon and the White House. The only thing that happened at Abu Ghraib is A) the clueless enlisted people foolishly took large numbers of pictures and B) when you order clueless enlisted people to engage in torture its very easy for them to go off the deep end once they get rolling.
"You know, Arabs don't seem to be very good at this war business. Maybe they should think long & hard about whether war is the path they should follow"
You are such a tool. Israel very nearly lost the 1973 war. On October 8 the Israeli government and military were actively considering the use of nuclear weapons out of desperation and were using the threat of using them to blackmail the U.S. in to flooding Israel with emergency weapons shipments to replace Israel's steep loses of fighters in particular.
Israels record against Hezbollah is also not particularly impressive. Hezbollah manages to hold their own against Israel despite having vastly inferior weapons and numbers.
Israel's primary claim to military superiority is they are heavily supplied with advanced weapons from the U.S. and the U.S. floods Israel with money to support their military and internal weapons development. The Arabs by contrast have had to depend on inferior Soviet/Russian weapons on the two occasions they attacked Israel.
For the last 40 years Israel has mostly been attacking Gaza and Lebanon and they simply don't have the weaponry or money to match Israel's. Hezbollah does amazingly well considering they have no chance in a head to head fight. Just like Hamas they mostly lob inferior unguided missiles at Israel that do very little damage.
They mostly just piss off Israel and goad them in to doing stupid shit like killing large numbers of civilians in Gaza and Lebanon so they end up being even more hated by the Arab world.
Yes, but none of the Arabs in the occupied territories are and Israel actively blocks any more Arabs from becoming enfranchised in Israel, by marriage, immigration or any other means. At the same time they throw their borders wide open to Jews from anywhere and immediately give them the vote in an effort to stack the ballot box against Arabs.
By your own argument Israel has a legitimate claim to the occupied territories so why doesn't Israel just annex them? One obvious answer is they don't want to give any more Arabs the right to vote. They know they will lose the demographic war unless they engage in apartheid. South Africa used the term bantustans for their self governing homelands where they shoved all the blacks they wanted to keep from voting, Israel does exactly the same thing with the occupied territories which they've now occupied for nearly a half century. They are places to shove Arabs so they can disenfranchise them and to insure the Arabs in Israel who are enfranchised will be in a sufficiently small minority that they will have absolutely no political power.
"False. There are no restrictions on food & medicine, and only restrictions on supplies that the Gazans regularly use for violence."
That is bullshit and you know it. Israel still arbitrarily blocks large quantities of food and other supplies from entering Gaza. Its nearly impossible for the organizations who've tried to even figure out what Israel will and wont block on any given day.
The number of truckloads of supplies Israel allows in to Gaza fluctuates wildly and purely at the whim of Israel, and is a tiny fraction of the flow that occurred before Hamas took power and the blockade became draconian.
It often takes so long to get approval for medical supplies that they expire before they make it in to Gaza and are destroyed.
That "restriction on supplies" used for violence results in bizarre restrictions on things like food in tin cans because Hamas might melt down the tin to make weapons, and it blocks essentially all construction materials since Hamas might build bunkers with it instead.
You know as well as I do that blockade is designed to starve Gaza and Hamas in to submission. You also probably know it isn't going to work and it just makes Israel look bad and it makes the people in Gaza really hate Israel., All of Israel's concessions are shams for propaganda purposes so they can deny they are starving Gaza when in fact that is exactly what they are trying to do.
The only thing going in Gaza's favor is the collapse of Mubarak's regime and the likely election of an Islamic government which is going to allow substantial improvements in commerce and travel on the Egyptian border with Gaza at least until Israel decides to block it.
Not sure I have the time to rebutt all your other points which are all straight out of Israel's standard propaganda playbook.
Lebanon is not "Christian", its currently 60% Muslim, 40% Christian. The Muslim population is evenly split between Shia and Sunni. Syria and Iran are active supporters of Hezbollah, they provide them with most of their weapons and funds. Hezbollah's founders were inspired by Ayatollah Khomeini and Iran's Revolutionary Guard. Hezbollah has a very powerful influence among the Shia community in Lebanon, both militarily and through community activities and charities.
You totally don't know what you are talking about AC.
Did you not follow the last decade in Iraq, it was brutal Sunni.vs. Shia sectarian violence, including ethnic cleansing of neighborhoods using executions and torture.
The uprising in Bahrain was also oppressed Shia revolting against a minorty Sunni monarchy and the Shia were largely crushed.
Your interpretation of what happened at Abu Ghraib is flawed at best. It is true that the enlisted people probably did do some things on their own initiative and "for fun" but most of the torture practiced there was doctrine being pushed from the White House and Pentagon. It was happening in Gitmo and Afghanistan too which completely defeats your contention that it was just a few rogue enlisted people in Iraq.
The use of attack dogs and sexual humiliation were part of Pentagon and CIA directed interrogation techniques. It is fairly predictable that when you order low paid, untrained, poorly supervised, enlisted people, working in a hell hole, to torture and humiliate prisoners in certain ways that they would quickly lose their moral compass and start engaging in progressively more abusive forms of torture and humiliation until you reach the photos from Abu Ghraib. Only way for this abuse to not happen would be to either not allow any of it in the first place which should have been the case or failing that to only have highly trained, disciplined people under strict chain of command doing it who knew exactly where the lines were that they could approach but not cross.
There were officers who were directing many of the abusive practices at Abu Ghraib who got off scott free because they were doing what they were ordered to do. The Army had to nail someone once the photos hit the news and nailing expendable enlisted soldiers was incredibly easy.
Officers usually dont take these falls unless they've done something to go off the reservation and to invite the wrath of their superiors like shoot their mouth off to the press. As long as they keep quite and are doing what they were ordered to do they can almost literally get away with murder.
All three countries have holy sites they value over just about everything. Saudi Arabia has Mecca and Medina, Iran has Qom, Israel has Jeruslaem which is as sacred to Muslims as it is Jews.
If you give all three nukes, so all three know their holy cities are at risk you could achieve a form of 3 way MAD for religious fanatics. Not like you can ever count on religious fanatics to not be fanatics but if they know their holy cities are the hostages its more likely than just about anything to make them behave.
"Their cities are under a near-constant rocket barrage"
I'll agree it sucks that Hamas lobs rockets in to Israel, no argument. But they are largely crude and ineffective weapons and they get even more so as the expensive, American funded, antimissile systems are deployed.
You know what probably sucks even worse. Living in Gaza in a walled ghetto with disturbing similarities to the ghettos Jews were forced to live in in Europe before and during World War II. It really sucks to live in a heavily populated urban area where Israel chokes off the most basic supplies and nearly all economic activity so people survive largely on the trickle of supplies from the tunnels. Where Isreale is draining 1.5 million people of all hope of having a life that doesn't suck. It also sucks when Israels military uses tanks, F-16's and attack helicopters to target Gaza because they are vastly more effective at killing people than the crummy rockets Hamas lobs in to Israel.
I don't condone shooting rockets in to Israel but I do understand how the miserable, desperate people in Gaza would want to strike back in such a totally futile way at the people who've been manning the walls of their ghetto for the last half century, even though its largely ineffective and invites periodic retaliation on the people of Gaza that is usually several orders of magnitude more deadly.
"has not only not expanded it's borders through military might"
Only if you choose to pretend that the permenent occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Golan Heights isn't expanding Israel's borders. You might make that case were it not for the massive settlement activity in which Israel is seeking to make the West bank and East Jerusalem a part of Israel in contravention of international law which forbids an occupier from settling in occupied territories. Either Isreal needs to withdraw from the occupied territories or fully annex them in to Israel and give Arabs full citizenship. Permenent occupation, with illegal settlements is purely abusive on the part of Israel.
Israel is only a "democratically-elected government" because they are actively disenfranchising Arabs. If you count all the disenfranchised Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, Golan and East Jerusalem who are under permanent occupation Arabs are fairly close to become a majority. I think the Arab population is growing faster than Jewish so its a near inevitability that Israel will eventually be a true apartheid state with a Jewish minority electing a government that dominates a largely disenfranchised Arab majority.
Listen, I know there are a lot of level headed, forward thinking moderate Jews living in Israel, I follow some of their blogs and on Twitter. But the fact is people like Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman are extremists, they dominate the current government's rhetoric, thinking and agenda, and they seem to go out of their way to provoke confrontation after confrontation. They give Israel a bad name and they put Israel in the pretty similar class to Saudi Arabia and Iran as far as the fanaticism and oppression goes.
"The Shia and Sunnis are no more at each others throats than. .."
Actually they are. There is this place called Iraq where Sunnis and Shias spent much of the last decade ethnically cleansing their neighborhoods of each other, often by random killings and torture. Under Saddam a Sunni minority dominated and oppressed a Shia majority. After the first Gulf war the U.S. encouraged the Shia to rebel against Saddam, then the U.S. turned its back on them and Saddam slaughtered them. After the 2003 toppling of Saddam the Shia took power through the ballot box and have been exacting vengence on the Sunni and Bathist ever since. Iraq is now largely a Shia theocracy closely aligned with Iran which is pretty much the last thing the Saudis or the U.S. wanted. It dramatically enhanced Shia power in the Middle East. George W. Bush didn't think through the consequences of toppling Saddam at all, his dad did which is why he didn't topple Saddam in the first gulf war.
In Bahrain there is a Sunni minority which dominates and discriminates against a Shia majority, much like Saddams Iraq. The Shias launched their version of Arab Spring lobbying for more rights and more equality. It was an uprising that was brutally suppressed by the ruling Sunnis with the help of the Saudi Arabia which rolled tanks in to Bahrain to help. The Saudis were of the opinion it was an Iranian fomented uprising where Iranian provacateurs were encouraging the Shia in Bahrain to revolt.
In Syria the current civil war is largely Sunni's rebelling against an Alawite government aligned with Iran. Its another sectarian conflict which has lead to the deaths of thousands of people in the last year.
Sorry to say it. but you are the one that has no clue what you are talkling about.
NASA has had a mission for a long time to do earth observation. Its a primary mission for many of the satellites they've put in earth orbit, though they have some heavy overlap with NOAA.
NASA also routinely fly airplanes to study the atmosphere, beleive it or not aeronautics is intimately involved with . . . air. They model the atmosphere in great detail for flight simulation and to develop vehicles for reentering the atmosphere or to travel through the atmosphere at high speeds.
You may also recall that NASA and Goddard were pretty heavily involved in understanding, monitoring and finding the solution for the increasingly large holes in the ozone layer, which if they hadn't been fixed would have lead to catastrophic results due to increased exposure to ultraviolet radiation, skin cancers in particular.
I'm seldom one to defend NASA but their involvement in studying climate change is entirely within the charter of parts of NASA, especially Goddard. Its a lot more appropriate for the people at Goddard to be studying global warming than it is for a bunch of glory hounds from JSC to be bitching about it. It should be pointed out that JSC has done very little of actual value since Apollo. Launching and repairing Hubble is one of the few exceptions. ISS and most of the rest of the Space Shuttle program have been an enormous squandering of money to no particularly good end.
Russia has absolutely no reason to care if oil production in the Middle East is disrupted. They are one of the world's largest oil and gas producers. If the Middle East blows up Russia, or rather Putin and the oligarchs running Russia, will get obscenely rich, more so than they already are.
Even if Iran does acquire nuclear weapons, and its very much open to debate if they are even trying, it doesn't follow at all that they would actually use them. Outside of the U.S. no one has ever used nukes, and its for a reason, they suck as actual weapons.
They suck because there are very few situations where you can use them where the consequences of using them wouldn't be worse than whatever problem you are facing. You use them and you become an instant pariah or you get incinerated yourself. If you are about to be overrun in a conventional war maybe you would use them as desperate last resort, but if you have nukes it unlikely anyone would have invaded you in the first place.
The only real value of nukes is as a deterrent, something that sits in a stockpile and is never used, but which discourages anyone from openly fucking with you, so they have to fuck with you through assymetric means instead. They are a pretty big win for countries like North Korea and Iran because they dramatically decrease the chances that a country like the U.S. which is increasingly fond of aggressive warfare and regime change won't fuck with you because it instantly becomes dangerous and messy invade a country with nukes.
If you have them and your adversary doesn't or you have massive nuclear superiority over your adversary they have a limited value in that you can try to bully your adversary using them as a threat but any adversary with any sense will call your bluff because they know you will never use them.
Saudi Arabia is probably as violently opposed to the Iranian's getting nukes as the Israelis. The Israelis have a large nuclear arsenal as a deterrent to Iran. The Saudi's don't have any deterrent of their own and would have to rely on the U.S. which could prove to be a fickle ally in a crisis, just ask Mubarak in Egypt.
The Iranians are Shia Muslims, the Saudis are Sunnis, the two hate each other with the passion you often find in long running sectarian conflicts.
There is a fair chance that if the Iranians get nukes the Saudi's will probably start developing their own to try to maintain the balance of power between Sunnis and Shia in the Middle East. The Saudi's getting nukes will probably not sit well with the Israelis.
The Middle East will become either more stable thanks to three way MAD or very, very dangerous, thanks to three fanatically religious countries, who really hate each other, are very close together and will have lots of apocalyptic weapons.
These are people who spend most of their time posting on Reddit. You think they actually have enough money to even cover the lawyer's bill to file the suit?
It should be noted they are mostly at JSC, which is in Houston, Texas, which is the home base of America's oil and gas industry. Based purely on geography they are located in the focal point of denial that fossil fuels are contributing to global warming.
I wouldn't be particularly suprised if its also a partisan effort to pander to the Republican party. Obama hasn't been particularly kind to JSC's funding or future prospects so I'm guessing they are hoping for a Romney win this fall, and for Republicans to retake the Senate. Its a gamble but if that happens, then they can tout their vocal support for the Republican party's position on climate change when they go to D.C. with their hat in hand for new funding. Presambly funding for some manned launcher that will put billions in their coffers, provide them with job security for a few years and which they will probably fail to actually build or launch.
He apparently resigned due to a "personal conduct" investigation, not related to work, so his bonus may depend on what kind of conduct he was involved in.
Not entirely. You dont have the problem of identity/number theft but, theft of bitcoin wallets is relatively easy if you hack someones machine who has a bitcoin wallet.
The exchanges are also a weak point. At least one and probably more have been hacked, on top of which at present you can't have much confidence in the people that are running them in the first place since they are just geeks with servers who set up exchanges and some are better than others.
If you put large amounts in bitcoints you do have to make significant effort to protect them,
Obama hasn't toppled a government over a fabricated claim they are making WMD's, yet. If he invades Iran then maybe you will have him. Though Iran seem to be actually developing nukes, and those are the countries we generall DON'T invade, reference North Korea and Pakistan.
Its not clear Obama has even toppled a government yet. Libya is the only one that is even close and that was more Italy, France and NATO leading that charge than the U.S. and that was for oil not WMD's. Libya completely abandoned WMD's during the Bush administration.
I referenced Bush/Cheney because they actually did topple the government in Iraq over a false WMD claim, not because I particularly like or Obama or think he would be any different if the opportunity arose.
Maybe someone is testing nuclear warheads. If Bush/Cheney were still in power that would insure a massive increase in funding for the space program so we could invade Mars and topple their government. Its probably the only way we will ever colonize mars is if we fell an urgent need to occupy it.
It should be noted New Zealand seized pretty much all of his personal assets when he was arressted which, even they, now admit was way over the line.
The guy is a complete skank, a con man, and probably deserves what he gets but he does also deserve a trail before being presumed guilty and having all his assets seized, and presumably transferred to the bank account of the New Zealand government
Slashdot Mirror
Uh, the Soviet Union was defeated with a lot of help from by surface to air missiles (Stingers among others), antitank missiles and mines supplied by the U.S. to Pakistan which in turn provided them to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. The Soviet Union was bled white fighting a brutal, futal ten year war in Afghanistan and some of the returning veterans were a leading voice of disillusionment with their government.
They were pretty cheap weapons, but still you are exaggerating your point when you say "It wasn't through a SINGLE weapon used in war".
It is also something of an exaggeration to say military spending bankrupted them. It may have been a contributing factor but the collapse of the Soviet Union was a lot more complex than that. If Gorbachev hadn't been in power, and a hard liner had been, it might not have collapsed at all.
Anathem is another recent book that is pretty good though it is, like most of his book, too long.
Reamde is total crap. Its pretty much a bad ghost written Tom Clancy action flick. It has no redeeming technological insights or interesting dialogs which is what make Stephenson's good books worth reading.
Stephenson was trying to do an interactive, online, kind of book. Not sure what happened to it, but I assume it sucked up a lot of time and money, and presumably he phoned in Reamde to try and raise some cash or fulfill a contract with a publisher. Sad really.
Neal, I love ya man, I read all your books, but Reamde was total crap.
"you'll get some unstable maniac in charge. . . those willing to kill"
Yea we sure need to avoid letting anyone grab power who might:
A. Execute people, including U.S. citizens, women and children, without a trial, like with UAV's and Hellfire missiles
B. Torture people
C. Lock people up indefinitely without a trail
D. Snatch people all over the world, put black bags over their heads, drug them, and render them to various dictatorships for indefinite detention and torture, and occasionally snatch the wrong people, oops
E. Start long, expensive wars under false pretenses, that kills hundreds of thousands of people and bankrupt the U.S.
F. Engage in massive electronic spying on citizens without a warrant or court oversight
Yep, we definitely don't want any wild eyed revolutionaries grabbing power and doing that shit .
For starters read Torture accusations at Gitmo.
The International Red Cross, after inspecting Gitmo reported "humiliating acts, solitary confinement, temperature extremes, use of forced positions"
"On June 15, Brigadier General Janis Karpinski at the centre of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse in Iraq said she was told from the top to treat detainees like dogs "as it is done in Guantanamo [Camp Delta]."
There a bunch of other accusations there of practices at Gitmo that were very similar to the things that were occurring at Abu Ghraib.
If Abu Ghraib abuses were entirely due to a bunch of rogue enlisted people in Iraq how do you explain many of the same techniques being used at Gitmo on the other side of the world. The one and only answer is that the abuses were DOD and CIA doctrine and fully authorized from the Pentagon and the White House. The only thing that happened at Abu Ghraib is A) the clueless enlisted people foolishly took large numbers of pictures and B) when you order clueless enlisted people to engage in torture its very easy for them to go off the deep end once they get rolling.
"You know, Arabs don't seem to be very good at this war business. Maybe they should think long & hard about whether war is the path they should follow"
You are such a tool. Israel very nearly lost the 1973 war. On October 8 the Israeli government and military were actively considering the use of nuclear weapons out of desperation and were using the threat of using them to blackmail the U.S. in to flooding Israel with emergency weapons shipments to replace Israel's steep loses of fighters in particular.
Israels record against Hezbollah is also not particularly impressive. Hezbollah manages to hold their own against Israel despite having vastly inferior weapons and numbers.
Israel's primary claim to military superiority is they are heavily supplied with advanced weapons from the U.S. and the U.S. floods Israel with money to support their military and internal weapons development. The Arabs by contrast have had to depend on inferior Soviet/Russian weapons on the two occasions they attacked Israel.
For the last 40 years Israel has mostly been attacking Gaza and Lebanon and they simply don't have the weaponry or money to match Israel's. Hezbollah does amazingly well considering they have no chance in a head to head fight. Just like Hamas they mostly lob inferior unguided missiles at Israel that do very little damage.
They mostly just piss off Israel and goad them in to doing stupid shit like killing large numbers of civilians in Gaza and Lebanon so they end up being even more hated by the Arab world.
"Arabs are enfranchised in Israel."
Yes, but none of the Arabs in the occupied territories are and Israel actively blocks any more Arabs from becoming enfranchised in Israel, by marriage, immigration or any other means. At the same time they throw their borders wide open to Jews from anywhere and immediately give them the vote in an effort to stack the ballot box against Arabs.
By your own argument Israel has a legitimate claim to the occupied territories so why doesn't Israel just annex them? One obvious answer is they don't want to give any more Arabs the right to vote. They know they will lose the demographic war unless they engage in apartheid. South Africa used the term bantustans for their self governing homelands where they shoved all the blacks they wanted to keep from voting, Israel does exactly the same thing with the occupied territories which they've now occupied for nearly a half century. They are places to shove Arabs so they can disenfranchise them and to insure the Arabs in Israel who are enfranchised will be in a sufficiently small minority that they will have absolutely no political power.
"False. There are no restrictions on food & medicine, and only restrictions on supplies that the Gazans regularly use for violence."
That is bullshit and you know it. Israel still arbitrarily blocks large quantities of food and other supplies from entering Gaza. Its nearly impossible for the organizations who've tried to even figure out what Israel will and wont block on any given day.
The number of truckloads of supplies Israel allows in to Gaza fluctuates wildly and purely at the whim of Israel, and is a tiny fraction of the flow that occurred before Hamas took power and the blockade became draconian.
It often takes so long to get approval for medical supplies that they expire before they make it in to Gaza and are destroyed.
That "restriction on supplies" used for violence results in bizarre restrictions on things like food in tin cans because Hamas might melt down the tin to make weapons, and it blocks essentially all construction materials since Hamas might build bunkers with it instead.
You know as well as I do that blockade is designed to starve Gaza and Hamas in to submission. You also probably know it isn't going to work and it just makes Israel look bad and it makes the people in Gaza really hate Israel., All of Israel's concessions are shams for propaganda purposes so they can deny they are starving Gaza when in fact that is exactly what they are trying to do.
The only thing going in Gaza's favor is the collapse of Mubarak's regime and the likely election of an Islamic government which is going to allow substantial improvements in commerce and travel on the Egyptian border with Gaza at least until Israel decides to block it.
Not sure I have the time to rebutt all your other points which are all straight out of Israel's standard propaganda playbook.
Lebanon is not "Christian", its currently 60% Muslim, 40% Christian. The Muslim population is evenly split between Shia and Sunni. Syria and Iran are active supporters of Hezbollah, they provide them with most of their weapons and funds. Hezbollah's founders were inspired by Ayatollah Khomeini and Iran's Revolutionary Guard. Hezbollah has a very powerful influence among the Shia community in Lebanon, both militarily and through community activities and charities.
You totally don't know what you are talking about AC.
Did you not follow the last decade in Iraq, it was brutal Sunni .vs. Shia sectarian violence, including ethnic cleansing of neighborhoods using executions and torture.
The uprising in Bahrain was also oppressed Shia revolting against a minorty Sunni monarchy and the Shia were largely crushed.
Your interpretation of what happened at Abu Ghraib is flawed at best. It is true that the enlisted people probably did do some things on their own initiative and "for fun" but most of the torture practiced there was doctrine being pushed from the White House and Pentagon. It was happening in Gitmo and Afghanistan too which completely defeats your contention that it was just a few rogue enlisted people in Iraq.
The use of attack dogs and sexual humiliation were part of Pentagon and CIA directed interrogation techniques. It is fairly predictable that when you order low paid, untrained, poorly supervised, enlisted people, working in a hell hole, to torture and humiliate prisoners in certain ways that they would quickly lose their moral compass and start engaging in progressively more abusive forms of torture and humiliation until you reach the photos from Abu Ghraib. Only way for this abuse to not happen would be to either not allow any of it in the first place which should have been the case or failing that to only have highly trained, disciplined people under strict chain of command doing it who knew exactly where the lines were that they could approach but not cross.
There were officers who were directing many of the abusive practices at Abu Ghraib who got off scott free because they were doing what they were ordered to do. The Army had to nail someone once the photos hit the news and nailing expendable enlisted soldiers was incredibly easy.
Officers usually dont take these falls unless they've done something to go off the reservation and to invite the wrath of their superiors like shoot their mouth off to the press. As long as they keep quite and are doing what they were ordered to do they can almost literally get away with murder.
All three countries have holy sites they value over just about everything. Saudi Arabia has Mecca and Medina, Iran has Qom, Israel has Jeruslaem which is as sacred to Muslims as it is Jews.
If you give all three nukes, so all three know their holy cities are at risk you could achieve a form of 3 way MAD for religious fanatics. Not like you can ever count on religious fanatics to not be fanatics but if they know their holy cities are the hostages its more likely than just about anything to make them behave.
"Their cities are under a near-constant rocket barrage"
I'll agree it sucks that Hamas lobs rockets in to Israel, no argument. But they are largely crude and ineffective weapons and they get even more so as the expensive, American funded, antimissile systems are deployed.
You know what probably sucks even worse. Living in Gaza in a walled ghetto with disturbing similarities to the ghettos Jews were forced to live in in Europe before and during World War II. It really sucks to live in a heavily populated urban area where Israel chokes off the most basic supplies and nearly all economic activity so people survive largely on the trickle of supplies from the tunnels. Where Isreale is draining 1.5 million people of all hope of having a life that doesn't suck. It also sucks when Israels military uses tanks, F-16's and attack helicopters to target Gaza because they are vastly more effective at killing people than the crummy rockets Hamas lobs in to Israel.
I don't condone shooting rockets in to Israel but I do understand how the miserable, desperate people in Gaza would want to strike back in such a totally futile way at the people who've been manning the walls of their ghetto for the last half century, even though its largely ineffective and invites periodic retaliation on the people of Gaza that is usually several orders of magnitude more deadly.
"has not only not expanded it's borders through military might"
Only if you choose to pretend that the permenent occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Golan Heights isn't expanding Israel's borders. You might make that case were it not for the massive settlement activity in which Israel is seeking to make the West bank and East Jerusalem a part of Israel in contravention of international law which forbids an occupier from settling in occupied territories. Either Isreal needs to withdraw from the occupied territories or fully annex them in to Israel and give Arabs full citizenship. Permenent occupation, with illegal settlements is purely abusive on the part of Israel.
Israel is only a "democratically-elected government" because they are actively disenfranchising Arabs. If you count all the disenfranchised Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, Golan and East Jerusalem who are under permanent occupation Arabs are fairly close to become a majority. I think the Arab population is growing faster than Jewish so its a near inevitability that Israel will eventually be a true apartheid state with a Jewish minority electing a government that dominates a largely disenfranchised Arab majority.
Listen, I know there are a lot of level headed, forward thinking moderate Jews living in Israel, I follow some of their blogs and on Twitter. But the fact is people like Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman are extremists, they dominate the current government's rhetoric, thinking and agenda, and they seem to go out of their way to provoke confrontation after confrontation. They give Israel a bad name and they put Israel in the pretty similar class to Saudi Arabia and Iran as far as the fanaticism and oppression goes.
"The Shia and Sunnis are no more at each others throats than. . ."
Actually they are. There is this place called Iraq where Sunnis and Shias spent much of the last decade ethnically cleansing their neighborhoods of each other, often by random killings and torture. Under Saddam a Sunni minority dominated and oppressed a Shia majority. After the first Gulf war the U.S. encouraged the Shia to rebel against Saddam, then the U.S. turned its back on them and Saddam slaughtered them. After the 2003 toppling of Saddam the Shia took power through the ballot box and have been exacting vengence on the Sunni and Bathist ever since. Iraq is now largely a Shia theocracy closely aligned with Iran which is pretty much the last thing the Saudis or the U.S. wanted. It dramatically enhanced Shia power in the Middle East. George W. Bush didn't think through the consequences of toppling Saddam at all, his dad did which is why he didn't topple Saddam in the first gulf war.
In Bahrain there is a Sunni minority which dominates and discriminates against a Shia majority, much like Saddams Iraq. The Shias launched their version of Arab Spring lobbying for more rights and more equality. It was an uprising that was brutally suppressed by the ruling Sunnis with the help of the Saudi Arabia which rolled tanks in to Bahrain to help. The Saudis were of the opinion it was an Iranian fomented uprising where Iranian provacateurs were encouraging the Shia in Bahrain to revolt.
In Syria the current civil war is largely Sunni's rebelling against an Alawite government aligned with Iran. Its another sectarian conflict which has lead to the deaths of thousands of people in the last year.
Sorry to say it. but you are the one that has no clue what you are talkling about.
NASA has had a mission for a long time to do earth observation. Its a primary mission for many of the satellites they've put in earth orbit, though they have some heavy overlap with NOAA.
NASA also routinely fly airplanes to study the atmosphere, beleive it or not aeronautics is intimately involved with . . . air. They model the atmosphere in great detail for flight simulation and to develop vehicles for reentering the atmosphere or to travel through the atmosphere at high speeds.
You may also recall that NASA and Goddard were pretty heavily involved in understanding, monitoring and finding the solution for the increasingly large holes in the ozone layer, which if they hadn't been fixed would have lead to catastrophic results due to increased exposure to ultraviolet radiation, skin cancers in particular.
I'm seldom one to defend NASA but their involvement in studying climate change is entirely within the charter of parts of NASA, especially Goddard. Its a lot more appropriate for the people at Goddard to be studying global warming than it is for a bunch of glory hounds from JSC to be bitching about it. It should be pointed out that JSC has done very little of actual value since Apollo. Launching and repairing Hubble is one of the few exceptions. ISS and most of the rest of the Space Shuttle program have been an enormous squandering of money to no particularly good end.
Russia has absolutely no reason to care if oil production in the Middle East is disrupted. They are one of the world's largest oil and gas producers. If the Middle East blows up Russia, or rather Putin and the oligarchs running Russia, will get obscenely rich, more so than they already are.
Even if Iran does acquire nuclear weapons, and its very much open to debate if they are even trying, it doesn't follow at all that they would actually use them. Outside of the U.S. no one has ever used nukes, and its for a reason, they suck as actual weapons.
They suck because there are very few situations where you can use them where the consequences of using them wouldn't be worse than whatever problem you are facing. You use them and you become an instant pariah or you get incinerated yourself. If you are about to be overrun in a conventional war maybe you would use them as desperate last resort, but if you have nukes it unlikely anyone would have invaded you in the first place.
The only real value of nukes is as a deterrent, something that sits in a stockpile and is never used, but which discourages anyone from openly fucking with you, so they have to fuck with you through assymetric means instead. They are a pretty big win for countries like North Korea and Iran because they dramatically decrease the chances that a country like the U.S. which is increasingly fond of aggressive warfare and regime change won't fuck with you because it instantly becomes dangerous and messy invade a country with nukes.
If you have them and your adversary doesn't or you have massive nuclear superiority over your adversary they have a limited value in that you can try to bully your adversary using them as a threat but any adversary with any sense will call your bluff because they know you will never use them.
Saudi Arabia is probably as violently opposed to the Iranian's getting nukes as the Israelis. The Israelis have a large nuclear arsenal as a deterrent to Iran. The Saudi's don't have any deterrent of their own and would have to rely on the U.S. which could prove to be a fickle ally in a crisis, just ask Mubarak in Egypt.
The Iranians are Shia Muslims, the Saudis are Sunnis, the two hate each other with the passion you often find in long running sectarian conflicts.
There is a fair chance that if the Iranians get nukes the Saudi's will probably start developing their own to try to maintain the balance of power between Sunnis and Shia in the Middle East. The Saudi's getting nukes will probably not sit well with the Israelis.
The Middle East will become either more stable thanks to three way MAD or very, very dangerous, thanks to three fanatically religious countries, who really hate each other, are very close together and will have lots of apocalyptic weapons.
These are people who spend most of their time posting on Reddit. You think they actually have enough money to even cover the lawyer's bill to file the suit?
It should be noted they are mostly at JSC, which is in Houston, Texas, which is the home base of America's oil and gas industry. Based purely on geography they are located in the focal point of denial that fossil fuels are contributing to global warming.
I wouldn't be particularly suprised if its also a partisan effort to pander to the Republican party. Obama hasn't been particularly kind to JSC's funding or future prospects so I'm guessing they are hoping for a Romney win this fall, and for Republicans to retake the Senate. Its a gamble but if that happens, then they can tout their vocal support for the Republican party's position on climate change when they go to D.C. with their hat in hand for new funding. Presambly funding for some manned launcher that will put billions in their coffers, provide them with job security for a few years and which they will probably fail to actually build or launch.
He apparently resigned due to a "personal conduct" investigation, not related to work, so his bonus may depend on what kind of conduct he was involved in.
Not entirely. You dont have the problem of identity/number theft but, theft of bitcoin wallets is relatively easy if you hack someones machine who has a bitcoin wallet.
The exchanges are also a weak point. At least one and probably more have been hacked, on top of which at present you can't have much confidence in the people that are running them in the first place since they are just geeks with servers who set up exchanges and some are better than others.
If you put large amounts in bitcoints you do have to make significant effort to protect them,
Infrared isn't a very good choice for a marine environment. Infrared doesn't travel well through clouds, fog or any other form of water vapor.
Obama hasn't toppled a government over a fabricated claim they are making WMD's, yet. If he invades Iran then maybe you will have him. Though Iran seem to be actually developing nukes, and those are the countries we generall DON'T invade, reference North Korea and Pakistan.
Its not clear Obama has even toppled a government yet. Libya is the only one that is even close and that was more Italy, France and NATO leading that charge than the U.S. and that was for oil not WMD's. Libya completely abandoned WMD's during the Bush administration.
I referenced Bush/Cheney because they actually did topple the government in Iraq over a false WMD claim, not because I particularly like or Obama or think he would be any different if the opportunity arose.
Maybe someone is testing nuclear warheads. If Bush/Cheney were still in power that would insure a massive increase in funding for the space program so we could invade Mars and topple their government. Its probably the only way we will ever colonize mars is if we fell an urgent need to occupy it.
It should be noted New Zealand seized pretty much all of his personal assets when he was arressted which, even they, now admit was way over the line.
The guy is a complete skank, a con man, and probably deserves what he gets but he does also deserve a trail before being presumed guilty and having all his assets seized, and presumably transferred to the bank account of the New Zealand government
I should add if you whistleblow on something illegal you can actually receive legal protection and even compensation.
If you whistleblow on something classified but technically legal you are just a criminal and you will pay.