I've got a Mid 2012 Macbook Pro which has a decent keyboard and function keys. The new, disposable, Macbook Pros have a low travel keyboard though. And the Touchbar version lacks function keys. Plus there's the 'everything component soldered' problem.
The new Macbook Pros are basically glorified tablets.
If I could build iOS stuff in a VM reliably I'd stop buying any Apple hardware quite frankly. Problem is Apple know this and they are probably actively trying to make sure macOS in VM, or at least XCode inside macOS in a VM, isn't reliable. There are obviously many ways they could do that.
He's not doing Enterprise Software like we are. We are metaphorically flying around the Universe in the NCC-1701-D while he's metaphorically stuck on Turkana IV avoiding the rape gangs.
If you search you find a lot of people got told their machines couldn't be upgraded from 7 to 8. Having used 7 and 8, I'd say MS was doing them a favour, but it was still something of a departure for MS.
You could install XP, Vista and 7 on an absolutely ancient machine and it would still run, albeit slowly. Only with 8 did they start to kill off support for old hardware.
Up to that point Microsoft was a software company and it was in their interests to sell you a new OS to run on your old hardware and not break any applications.
Apple by contrast sell hardware and give away software. So it's in their interest to make new OS releases not work on old hardware. It's also in their interest to tie new releases of their applications to new OS versions.
So if you've got a 2012 Macbook Pro which they were still selling up to a year or so ago, it's getting close to the edge. The next oldest machine, the 2010 Macbook Pro, is the oldest Macbook Pro supported.
I.e. I reckon I'm good for maybe one more release past High Sierra before my machine drops out of support. And for XCode that's an issue because you need the latest release to install it. I.e. Apple know for people who buy a machine to run XCode they can force an upgrade by tying XCode to Mac, tying XCode to the OS version and tying the OS to the most recent hardware.
Of course I might just decide to run macOS in a VM...
One thing Apple have got going for them is that if I buy a Mac I can use XCode to build code for iOS devices. And I can build for Android devices. And I can run Visual Studio in Parallels Desktop to build code for Windows. Or I can run a Linux distribution in Parallels. And a lot of stuff that builds for Linux and BSD will build for macOS too - Homebrew probably already has a port.
If I have a Windows machines I can build for Windows and Android.
And if I have a Linux machine I can build for Linux and Android.
Windows still rules for embedded stuff though - most embedded vendors only support their tool chains on it. Only hipster stuff like Arduino supports Mac. Still if I have a Mac I can run Windows in Parallels.
So for a developer machine there's a case for buying a Mac over, say, an Asus Zenbook. In fact that's what I did.
Yeah, he's the poster boy for white privilege. Or at least celebrity privilege. If a normal person had been accused of rape their life would be fucked. As it would if they skipped bail.
Assange gets free board and lodging next to Harrods and the press on speed dial. Though it looks like the press are getting bored with him.
However, reports came out today about the terms under which JZ wants to step down - he wants NDZ as interim president until the general elections in 2019, and he wants certain ministers to retain their portfolios as well. He's also reported insisted on immunity from prosecution for both the fraud charges that he's already facing, as well as anything else that comes up from the upcoming inquiry into state capture. It's quite laughable because by requesting those terms, he's basically admitting that he's guilty of everything he's been accused of - why else would he insist on the minister of energy retaining his portfolio, if not to ensure a corrupt nuclear deal with Russia is completed successfully?
The worst case is that JZ or NDZ or some other crony of his stay on a president more or less indefinitely like Mugabe did in Zimbabwe.
Actually the same thing has happened in Russia - Putin ran into term limits, his crony Medvedev took over and then Putin got in again with an extended term. He'll be in power until 2024 and anyone likely to beat him will simply be kept of the ballot as happened to Alexei Navalny.
In fact the gloomy Mugabe/Putin comparison is something my Russian friends pointed out.
The picture certainly shows the remains of a MacBook: its casing - said separately by Rusbridger to be a MacBook Pro, but which might actually be an Air; it looks too thin to be a Pro - and its motherboard. But Guardian snapper Roger Tooth's photo also contains what is clearly a second MacBook mobo, along with an old graphics card - an AMD job, we'd say; you can see the three output connectors on the backplane - and another motherboard, possibly a small desktop computer or maybe another device, given the large areas empty of circuitry.
Destroying the graphics card shows they know nothing about computers. Or maybe they're being disingenuous.
A little over two months ago I was contacted by a very senior government official claiming to represent the views of the prime minister. There followed two meetings in which he demanded the return or destruction of all the material we were working on...
There followed further meetings with shadowy Whitehall figures. The demand was the same: hand the Snowden material back or destroy it....
During one of these meetings I asked directly whether the government would move to close down the Guardian's reporting through a legal route - by going to court to force the surrender of the material on which we were working. The official confirmed that, in the absence of handover or destruction, this was indeed the government's intention. Prior restraint, near impossible in the US, was now explicitly and imminently on the table in the UK....
And so one of the more bizarre moments in the Guardian's long history occurred - with two GCHQ security experts overseeing the destruction of hard drives in the Guardian's basement
So they destroyed an old Macbook and old graphics card and thus met the destruction part of the Snowden material rather than handing it back.
As the site points out
By taking the less dramatic of the options open to him, Rusbridger has preserved his paper's ability to publish without immediate constraint - and it may well end up being able to publish more than if he'd taken the other route. His decision seems to me fully justified.
I.e. the Guardian still had copies of the Snowden stuff in the US and so long as the published from there, the angle grinding old IT scrap performance meant they were legally in the clear and didn't need to handover what they had.
During one of these meetings I asked directly whether the government would move to close down the Guardian's reporting through a legal route - by going to court to force the surrender of the material on which we were working. The official confirmed that, in the absence of handover or destruction, this was indeed the government's intention. Prior restraint, near impossible in the US, was now explicitly and imminently on the table in the UK. But my experience over WikiLeaks - the thumb drive and the first amendment - had already prepared me for this moment. I explained to the man from Whitehall about the nature of international collaborations and the way in which, these days, media organisations could take advantage of the most permissive legal environments. Bluntly, we did not have to do our reporting from London. Already most of the NSA stories were being reported and edited out of New York. And had it occurred to him t
In both cases there was a lot of worry about the threat. An countermeasure was rushed out, and it seems like the countermeasure may have some side effects.
Just like Microsoft and Mozilla, Google Chrome 64 will disable SharedArrayBuffer by default and modify the behavior of performance.now() by reducing precision from 5us to 20us in order to block exploits attempting to take advantage of the security vulnerabilities.
Also you can block third party scripts using uBlock Origin.
I'm a Brit. And the Guardian is notorious for being far left. It's also notorious for misprints - note the spelling of embarrassing as 'embarassing' in the article I quoted. In the UK it's know as the Grauniad to mock both the fake news and lack of proofreading.
Another funny reference to the Guardian is the doctor's slang GROLIES - Guardian Reader, Of Low Intelligence, In Ethnic Skirt. Which sums up their readership. The Swedish term Batikhäxen refers to the same type of person - like GROLIES they work as 'social worker, preschool teacher, at the municipal social office or cultural worker'.
Batik witch , is a political term that, with a sarcastic undertones, describes a person with mostly politically correct statements and behaviors. Does not rarely work in the state or municipal sector. The person is fictitious and does not exist in actual sense, but rather is regarded as visualization of particular characteristics. Nobody can surely describe exactly what a batik witch is, but there are some attempts at definition:
" A" batik witch "can work as a . She sees all problems as socioeconomic, the individual never has any responsibility but if you get into society, it's always someone else's fault and cause. The batik witch is living at a nice address, but the hostess for the suburb. She wants to be generous, with someone else's money. The bikini witch is happy to use the "racist card" when not having the same views. "
1. Female. 2. At least 40 years old. 3. Strong in its appearance. 4. Extremely politically correct opinions in the subjects Feminism and Integration. 5. "Steamed" and generally grubby in political debates, insensitive to the view not on immigrants, low-income and women's side. Considered in discussions like "Elephant in Greenhouse". 6. Bad / no idea how system and reality work because she mentally lives in the 60's and 70's. Think often with the heart rather than the brain. 7. Has had a safe and trouble-free upbringing, but believes it has been very difficult. 8. The address should be in a well-prosperous neighborhood, but the heart should be in the suburb. 9. Weak for poems, syllables, theater and sculptures in organic clay depicting women's abdomen. 10. Unaware that she is a Batik witch.
The definition thus corresponds to certain points with a multi-cultural refugee that often uses the concept of socioeconomic reasons as a model of explanation for most problems in society. The term Batik witches are commonly found on blogs and forums with a usually critical attitude towards political correctness . Information about when the word coined is unreliable, but probably the word originated in the early 2000s. The word batik is a dyeing technique originating from the Indonesian island of Java. Fabrics and garments are bonded with strings in some places to prevent the color that the material should be stained with when all surfaces make a certain pattern. Batik-colored clothes are often associated with the hippie movement.
Since 2015, Jacob Zuma has been understood to favour his ex-wife, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, to succeed him both as President of the African National Congress and as President of South Africa, in order that he remains in control of the ANC and the state through her, and so he can avoid prosecution for still pending criminal charges.
As the English High Court held (paragraphs 152 and 153):
Plainly this is a case which has moved from suspicion to accusation supported by proof. [...]
In England and Wales, a decision to charge is taken at a very early stage; there can be no doubt that if what Mr Assange had done had been done in England and Wales, he would have been charged and thus criminal proceedings would have been commenced.
Some commentators have made the point that the prosecutors should come to the UK to question Assange. However, this appears to misunderstand the procedural stage of the investigation. Assange is not required for mere questioning; he is required to surrender for interrogation before any charges can be made and prosecution brought.
Assange has already been questioned. The prosecutor has also told the English courts that the need to deal with the other witnesses and expert evidence means that the interrogation stage needs to take place in Sweden. That is a matter for a prosecutor to decide. The allegations are about incident in Sweden, and in respect of Swedish complainants on the basis of witness and expert evidence in Sweden.
And, of course, it is not for the accused in a serious crime investigation to determine how any investigation should proceed.
All my South African friends are now expats and gave swapped their SA citizenship for somewhere else. None of them really want to admit that SA is going the way Zimbabwe went post independence but it looks that way.
E.g. here's President Jacob Zuma singing 'Kill the Boer[white people]'. Bonus - the sign language interpreter obviously doesn't know sign language and is just bluffing
The 'fake' sign language interpreter, at the centre of the world's attention following his bizarre performance at Nelson Mandela's memorial event, has been found interpreting in another video.
This time he's interpreting for Jacob Zuma, the South African President, as he sings a song called 'Kill the Boer'. Despite his now infamous short-comings as an interpreter, there is no mistaking his sign for machine gun!
Mr Zuma has since said that he'll stop singing the song to avoid creating racial tension.
'Kill the Boer' is actually illegal under SA hate speech laws, though the ruling ANC will appeal. And regardless of how that appeal goes, they'll keep singing it
Finally, on Friday March 26th 2010, the question of the legality of the phrase was brought before a South African court. According to Acting Judge Leon Halgryn of the South Gauteng High Court, it is now unconstitutional to utter or sing the phrase "dubul'ibhunu" ("shoot the boer") in the country. Halrgyn ruled that the phrase amounts to hate speech, and is therefore not protected by section 16 of the constitution, which safeguards freedom of speech.
So you've got President inciting genocide against white people and the people around him are too dumb or corrupt to hire someone who can do sign language.
Yup, if I was a South African I'd be looking for a passport someplace else too.
Sweden can't afford to let the entire population of Afghanistan, Somalia and Eritrea in. Their population is only about 10 million. And most of the increase in the last 20 years is due to immigration.
If Sweden has a majority of people coming from countries where you get 'killed or end up with an AK in their hand', isn't Sweden going to be like that too? Not to mention that no is going to give the original Swedes asylum and a load of benefits to leave like Sweden did for the third worlders. They'll be stuck there.
Who are you to say the charges are trumped up? The Swedes and the Guardian certainly don't think they are. Multiple courts in both Sweden and the UK ruled Assange should go back to face trial. The only reason he avoided it was that he fled to the Ecuadorian embassy after he lost he UK Supreme Court case.
The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom has dismissed the application made by Ms Dinah Rose QC, counsel for Mr Julian Assange, seeking to re-open their appeal.
The seven Justices who heard the appeal on 1-2 February 2012 and gave judgment on 30 May 2012 have considered the appellant's written application, and the reasons for their decision are set out below. These reasons have been agreed unanimously by the seven Justices.
In addition, the Court has ordered that, with the agreement of the respondent and pursuant to section 36(3)(b) of the Extradition Act 2003, the required period for extradition shall not commence until the 14th day after today.
In November 2010, a request was made for Assangeâ(TM)s extradition to Sweden, where he had been questioned months earlier over allegations of sexual assault and rape.[6] Assange continued to deny the allegations, and expressed concern that he would be extradited from Sweden to the United States because of his perceived role in publishing secret American documents.[7][8] Assange surrendered himself to UK police on 7 December 2010, and was held for ten days before being released on bail. Having been unsuccessful in his challenge to the extradition proceedings, he breached his bail and absconded. He was granted asylum by Ecuador in August 2012 and has remained in the Embassy of Ecuador in London since then.
Breaching bail and absconding is definitely not a trivial thing in the UK - you'd probably get more for that than raping someone in Sweden.
Suppose you've got a species where the female to male ratio is determined by temperature like sea turtles. And suppose that a higher temperature means more females.
Since only females can lay eggs and female egg laying is the bottleneck in population growth it seems very likely that more females means more offspring.
So this mechanism essentially says 'if the water temperature increases, increase the number of turtles'.
Which is not actually bad decision - warmer waters have more sea life, i.e. they can feed more turtles.
What has become clear is that the Swedish approach to criminal proceedings is different from that of England or other common law jurisdictions. The interrogation requested takes place at a late stage, just before prosecution. Assange is thereby not required for mere questioning - indeed, he was questioned on 31 August 2010.
And he's accused of rape - UK courts have ruled that what he is accused of doing in Sweden would be rape if he did it in the UK. Which is a key part of extradition being granted.
4. Rape
On 17 August 2010, in the home of the injured party [SW] in Enkoping, Assange deliberately consummated sexual intercourse with her by improperly exploiting that she, due to sleep. was in a helpless state.
It is an aggravating circumstance that Assange. who was aware that it was the expressed wish of the injured party and a prerequisite of sexual intercourse that a condom be used. still consummated unprotected sexual intercourse with her. The sexual act was designed to violate the injured party's sexual integrity."
The High Court held that the test of "dual criminality" was met in respect of each of these offences: they were offences in both England and Sweden.
So you're saying because of his valuable political work he may have been falsely accused, and those false accusations may be used to extradite him to the US - despite the fact the US hasn't requested this - and when in the US he may be killed?
That's a lot of 'may's. Essentially it's an argument that he should be immune to accusations of sexual misconduct. Even the scummiest US or UK politician - the people Wikileaks was set up to expose - wouldn't claim they should be allowed to rape people and not be prosecuted.
So there's a certain amount of irony that Assange is. It's also an argument that clearly failed to convince either the New Statesman or the Guardian, two publications that were initially very sympathetic to Wikileaks.
Though not hardliners siding with US on matters of espionage.
The US alliance is absolutely vital to the UK - without it we'd need to build our own Trident missiles. And we'd need to build our own listening centres to replace the NSA ones which cooperate with GCHQ.
It's doable for sure - the UK did have programs like this when the US suspended nuclear cooperation after WWII. And the UK could work with Canada, Australia, Singapore and so on - and in fact UK cooperation with these countries was folded into the Five Eyes. However it would cost significantly more than the UK currently spends on intelligence and defence.
And in a sense people like Assange are just as much enemies of GCHQ as they are of the NSA. Even if the NSA/GCHQ cooperation ceased the UK would still be out to get him.
Or maybe I should say "the UK would clearly still want to cooperate with our European friends and allies on law enforcement. Particularly on odious sexual crimes like rape".
And before anyone quibbles about what he was accused of and whether he has been charged, read this. From the New Statesman, a far left magazine that was initially very sympathetic to Assange.
Mr Assange, who invited the UN panel to examine his case in 2014, knew the outcome in advance. That may account for his offer to give himself up to the British authorities if its opinion went against him. He will hope that its findings allow him to claim some kind of moral victory, and strengthen his call that the Swedish authorities drop their investigations. But he would still face arrest in the UK: he was granted bail while he fought extradition to Sweden and he broke his bail conditions, at great expense to those friends and supporters who had backed him financially, by fleeing to the Ecuadorian embassy. No doubt the conditions of his self-imprisonment are unpleasant; they are certainly severely limiting. But it is possible to sympathise with his circumstances, and to applaud his role in the WikiLeaks revelations that exposed embarassing and sometimes illegal US activity that were published in the Guardian (while deploring his later decision to dump many more, unmediated, on the web) without accepting his right to evade prosecutorsâ(TM) questions about the allegation that he committed a serious criminal offence.
Slashdot Mirror
I've got a Mid 2012 Macbook Pro which has a decent keyboard and function keys. The new, disposable, Macbook Pros have a low travel keyboard though. And the Touchbar version lacks function keys. Plus there's the 'everything component soldered' problem.
The new Macbook Pros are basically glorified tablets.
I'd be interested in this too.
Looking at this for example it seems like Apple are trying to stop people doing this
http://www.macbreaker.com/2015...
If I could build iOS stuff in a VM reliably I'd stop buying any Apple hardware quite frankly. Problem is Apple know this and they are probably actively trying to make sure macOS in VM, or at least XCode inside macOS in a VM, isn't reliable. There are obviously many ways they could do that.
He's not doing Enterprise Software like we are. We are metaphorically flying around the Universe in the NCC-1701-D while he's metaphorically stuck on Turkana IV avoiding the rape gangs.
Data! Engage!
America : you're free to speak. And the NSA is free to listen.
China : you're not free to speak and the Ministry of State Security is even freer than the NSA to listen to make sure you don't.
Dude, it's racist to say places are shitholes!
To be honest that is looking like a better and better option given the price difference between PC and Mac laptops is getting larger and larger.
What company doesn't kill off hardware between each major release? MS does it.
Actually for a long time they didn't
E.g. up to 8 Windows would run on pretty much any CPU. It was only with 8 that it started to require "NX bit, SSE2, PAE".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
If you search you find a lot of people got told their machines couldn't be upgraded from 7 to 8. Having used 7 and 8, I'd say MS was doing them a favour, but it was still something of a departure for MS.
You could install XP, Vista and 7 on an absolutely ancient machine and it would still run, albeit slowly. Only with 8 did they start to kill off support for old hardware.
Up to that point Microsoft was a software company and it was in their interests to sell you a new OS to run on your old hardware and not break any applications.
Apple by contrast sell hardware and give away software. So it's in their interest to make new OS releases not work on old hardware. It's also in their interest to tie new releases of their applications to new OS versions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
So if you've got a 2012 Macbook Pro which they were still selling up to a year or so ago, it's getting close to the edge. The next oldest machine, the 2010 Macbook Pro, is the oldest Macbook Pro supported.
I.e. I reckon I'm good for maybe one more release past High Sierra before my machine drops out of support. And for XCode that's an issue because you need the latest release to install it. I.e. Apple know for people who buy a machine to run XCode they can force an upgrade by tying XCode to Mac, tying XCode to the OS version and tying the OS to the most recent hardware.
Of course I might just decide to run macOS in a VM...
Which you can do on a PC. You can't do it on the new Macs. Also Apple kill off support for old hardware in new OS releases.
So like they build in obsolescence for iPhones, they do it for Macs too.
One thing Apple have got going for them is that if I buy a Mac I can use XCode to build code for iOS devices. And I can build for Android devices. And I can run Visual Studio in Parallels Desktop to build code for Windows. Or I can run a Linux distribution in Parallels. And a lot of stuff that builds for Linux and BSD will build for macOS too - Homebrew probably already has a port.
If I have a Windows machines I can build for Windows and Android.
And if I have a Linux machine I can build for Linux and Android.
Windows still rules for embedded stuff though - most embedded vendors only support their tool chains on it. Only hipster stuff like Arduino supports Mac. Still if I have a Mac I can run Windows in Parallels.
So for a developer machine there's a case for buying a Mac over, say, an Asus Zenbook. In fact that's what I did.
Yeah, he's the poster boy for white privilege. Or at least celebrity privilege. If a normal person had been accused of rape their life would be fucked. As it would if they skipped bail.
Assange gets free board and lodging next to Harrods and the press on speed dial. Though it looks like the press are getting bored with him.
However, reports came out today about the terms under which JZ wants to step down - he wants NDZ as interim president until the general elections in 2019, and he wants certain ministers to retain their portfolios as well. He's also reported insisted on immunity from prosecution for both the fraud charges that he's already facing, as well as anything else that comes up from the upcoming inquiry into state capture. It's quite laughable because by requesting those terms, he's basically admitting that he's guilty of everything he's been accused of - why else would he insist on the minister of energy retaining his portfolio, if not to ensure a corrupt nuclear deal with Russia is completed successfully?
The worst case is that JZ or NDZ or some other crony of his stay on a president more or less indefinitely like Mugabe did in Zimbabwe.
Actually the same thing has happened in Russia - Putin ran into term limits, his crony Medvedev took over and then Putin got in again with an extended term. He'll be in power until 2024 and anyone likely to beat him will simply be kept of the ballot as happened to Alexei Navalny.
In fact the gloomy Mugabe/Putin comparison is something my Russian friends pointed out.
You haven't understood what is going on. Making them destroy a bunch of stuff from the IT room junkbox was Cameron letting them off.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/...
The picture certainly shows the remains of a MacBook: its casing - said separately by Rusbridger to be a MacBook Pro, but which might actually be an Air; it looks too thin to be a Pro - and its motherboard. But Guardian snapper Roger Tooth's photo also contains what is clearly a second MacBook mobo, along with an old graphics card - an AMD job, we'd say; you can see the three output connectors on the backplane - and another motherboard, possibly a small desktop computer or maybe another device, given the large areas empty of circuitry.
Destroying the graphics card shows they know nothing about computers. Or maybe they're being disingenuous.
https://www.headoflegal.com/20...
A little over two months ago I was contacted by a very senior government official claiming to represent the views of the prime minister. There followed two meetings in which he demanded the return or destruction of all the material we were working on ...
There followed further meetings with shadowy Whitehall figures. The demand was the same: hand the Snowden material back or destroy it. ...
During one of these meetings I asked directly whether the government would move to close down the Guardian's reporting through a legal route - by going to court to force the surrender of the material on which we were working. The official confirmed that, in the absence of handover or destruction, this was indeed the government's intention. Prior restraint, near impossible in the US, was now explicitly and imminently on the table in the UK. ...
And so one of the more bizarre moments in the Guardian's long history occurred - with two GCHQ security experts overseeing the destruction of hard drives in the Guardian's basement
So they destroyed an old Macbook and old graphics card and thus met the destruction part of the Snowden material rather than handing it back.
As the site points out
By taking the less dramatic of the options open to him, Rusbridger has preserved his paper's ability to publish without immediate constraint - and it may well end up being able to publish more than if he'd taken the other route. His decision seems to me fully justified.
I.e. the Guardian still had copies of the Snowden stuff in the US and so long as the published from there, the angle grinding old IT scrap performance meant they were legally in the clear and didn't need to handover what they had.
https://www.theguardian.com/co...
During one of these meetings I asked directly whether the government would move to close down the Guardian's reporting through a legal route - by going to court to force the surrender of the material on which we were working. The official confirmed that, in the absence of handover or destruction, this was indeed the government's intention. Prior restraint, near impossible in the US, was now explicitly and imminently on the table in the UK. But my experience over WikiLeaks - the thumb drive and the first amendment - had already prepared me for this moment. I explained to the man from Whitehall about the nature of international collaborations and the way in which, these days, media organisations could take advantage of the most permissive legal environments. Bluntly, we did not have to do our reporting from London. Already most of the NSA stories were being reported and edited out of New York. And had it occurred to him t
Well there's a result. It'll be interesting to see if Ramaphosa is better as president. Or if he gets knobbled somehow before he gets there.
In both cases there was a lot of worry about the threat. An countermeasure was rushed out, and it seems like the countermeasure may have some side effects.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
You have to wonder in each case if there's an element of overreaction going on.
In the Meltdown/Spectre case it the browser vendors are going to fuzz the timing functions to make side channel timing attacks harder to pull off
E.g.
http://news.softpedia.com/news...
Just like Microsoft and Mozilla, Google Chrome 64 will disable SharedArrayBuffer by default and modify the behavior of performance.now() by reducing precision from 5us to 20us in order to block exploits attempting to take advantage of the security vulnerabilities.
Also you can block third party scripts using uBlock Origin.
https://github.com/gorhill/uBl...
I'm a Brit. And the Guardian is notorious for being far left. It's also notorious for misprints - note the spelling of embarrassing as 'embarassing' in the article I quoted. In the UK it's know as the Grauniad to mock both the fake news and lack of proofreading.
Another funny reference to the Guardian is the doctor's slang GROLIES - Guardian Reader, Of Low Intelligence, In Ethnic Skirt. Which sums up their readership. The Swedish term Batikhäxen refers to the same type of person - like GROLIES they work as 'social worker, preschool teacher, at the municipal social office or cultural worker'.
http://sv.metapedia.org/wiki/B...
Batik Witch
Batik witch , is a political term that, with a sarcastic undertones, describes a person with mostly politically correct statements and behaviors. Does not rarely work in the state or municipal sector. The person is fictitious and does not exist in actual sense, but rather is regarded as visualization of particular characteristics. Nobody can surely describe exactly what a batik witch is, but there are some attempts at definition:
" A" batik witch "can work as a . She sees all problems as socioeconomic, the individual never has any responsibility but if you get into society, it's always someone else's fault and cause. The batik witch is living at a nice address, but the hostess for the suburb. She wants to be generous, with someone else's money. The bikini witch is happy to use the "racist card" when not having the same views. "
1. Female.
2. At least 40 years old.
3. Strong in its appearance.
4. Extremely politically correct opinions in the subjects Feminism and Integration.
5. "Steamed" and generally grubby in political debates, insensitive to the view not on immigrants, low-income and women's side. Considered in discussions like "Elephant in Greenhouse".
6. Bad / no idea how system and reality work because she mentally lives in the 60's and 70's. Think often with the heart rather than the brain.
7. Has had a safe and trouble-free upbringing, but believes it has been very difficult.
8. The address should be in a well-prosperous neighborhood, but the heart should be in the suburb.
9. Weak for poems, syllables, theater and sculptures in organic clay depicting women's abdomen.
10. Unaware that she is a Batik witch.
The definition thus corresponds to certain points with a multi-cultural refugee that often uses the concept of socioeconomic reasons as a model of explanation for most problems in society. The term Batik witches are commonly found on blogs and forums with a usually critical attitude towards political correctness . Information about when the word coined is unreliable, but probably the word originated in the early 2000s. The word batik is a dyeing technique originating from the Indonesian island of Java. Fabrics and garments are bonded with strings in some places to prevent the color that the material should be stained with when all surfaces make a certain pattern. Batik-colored clothes are often associated with the hippie movement.
Yeah, he's basically all kinds of awful. And the signs are he'll have his wife takeover from him so he can go on ruling by proxy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Since 2015, Jacob Zuma has been understood to favour his ex-wife, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, to succeed him both as President of the African National Congress and as President of South Africa, in order that he remains in control of the ANC and the state through her, and so he can avoid prosecution for still pending criminal charges.
RTFNSA - read the fine New Statesman article
As the English High Court held (paragraphs 152 and 153):
Plainly this is a case which has moved from suspicion to accusation supported by proof. [...]
In England and Wales, a decision to charge is taken at a very early stage; there can be no doubt that if what Mr Assange had done had been done in England and Wales, he would have been charged and thus criminal proceedings would have been commenced.
Some commentators have made the point that the prosecutors should come to the UK to question Assange. However, this appears to misunderstand the procedural stage of the investigation. Assange is not required for mere questioning; he is required to surrender for interrogation before any charges can be made and prosecution brought.
Assange has already been questioned. The prosecutor has also told the English courts that the need to deal with the other witnesses and expert evidence means that the interrogation stage needs to take place in Sweden. That is a matter for a prosecutor to decide. The allegations are about incident in Sweden, and in respect of Swedish complainants on the basis of witness and expert evidence in Sweden.
And, of course, it is not for the accused in a serious crime investigation to determine how any investigation should proceed.
All my South African friends are now expats and gave swapped their SA citizenship for somewhere else. None of them really want to admit that SA is going the way Zimbabwe went post independence but it looks that way.
E.g. here's President Jacob Zuma singing 'Kill the Boer[white people]'. Bonus - the sign language interpreter obviously doesn't know sign language and is just bluffing
http://limpingchicken.com/2013...
The 'fake' sign language interpreter, at the centre of the world's attention following his bizarre performance at Nelson Mandela's memorial event, has been found interpreting in another video.
This time he's interpreting for Jacob Zuma, the South African President, as he sings a song called 'Kill the Boer'. Despite his now infamous short-comings as an interpreter, there is no mistaking his sign for machine gun!
Mr Zuma has since said that he'll stop singing the song to avoid creating racial tension.
'Kill the Boer' is actually illegal under SA hate speech laws, though the ruling ANC will appeal. And regardless of how that appeal goes, they'll keep singing it
https://www.dailymaverick.co.z...
Finally, on Friday March 26th 2010, the question of the legality of the phrase was brought before a South African court. According to Acting Judge Leon Halgryn of the South Gauteng High Court, it is now unconstitutional to utter or sing the phrase "dubul'ibhunu" ("shoot the boer") in the country. Halrgyn ruled that the phrase amounts to hate speech, and is therefore not protected by section 16 of the constitution, which safeguards freedom of speech.
https://www.dailymaverick.co.z...
So you've got President inciting genocide against white people and the people around him are too dumb or corrupt to hire someone who can do sign language.
Yup, if I was a South African I'd be looking for a passport someplace else too.
What happened to the Medieval Warm period in that graph? Oh they say it only happened in Europe. Fake news!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
There's a whole bunch of temperature reconstructions here and all of them show both a Medieval Warm period and a Little Ice Age
https://wattsupwiththat.com/pa...
Sweden can't afford to let the entire population of Afghanistan, Somalia and Eritrea in. Their population is only about 10 million. And most of the increase in the last 20 years is due to immigration.
If Sweden has a majority of people coming from countries where you get 'killed or end up with an AK in their hand', isn't Sweden going to be like that too? Not to mention that no is going to give the original Swedes asylum and a load of benefits to leave like Sweden did for the third worlders. They'll be stuck there.
Who are you to say the charges are trumped up? The Swedes and the Guardian certainly don't think they are. Multiple courts in both Sweden and the UK ruled Assange should go back to face trial. The only reason he avoided it was that he fled to the Ecuadorian embassy after he lost he UK Supreme Court case.
https://www.supremecourt.uk/ne...
14 June 2012
The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom has dismissed the application made by Ms Dinah Rose QC, counsel for Mr Julian Assange, seeking to re-open their appeal.
The seven Justices who heard the appeal on 1-2 February 2012 and gave judgment on 30 May 2012 have considered the appellant's written application, and the reasons for their decision are set out below. These reasons have been agreed unanimously by the seven Justices.
In addition, the Court has ordered that, with the agreement of the respondent and pursuant to section 36(3)(b) of the Extradition Act 2003, the required period for extradition shall not commence until the 14th day after today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
In November 2010, a request was made for Assangeâ(TM)s extradition to Sweden, where he had been questioned months earlier over allegations of sexual assault and rape.[6] Assange continued to deny the allegations, and expressed concern that he would be extradited from Sweden to the United States because of his perceived role in publishing secret American documents.[7][8] Assange surrendered himself to UK police on 7 December 2010, and was held for ten days before being released on bail. Having been unsuccessful in his challenge to the extradition proceedings, he breached his bail and absconded. He was granted asylum by Ecuador in August 2012 and has remained in the Embassy of Ecuador in London since then.
Breaching bail and absconding is definitely not a trivial thing in the UK - you'd probably get more for that than raping someone in Sweden.
Suppose you've got a species where the female to male ratio is determined by temperature like sea turtles. And suppose that a higher temperature means more females.
Since only females can lay eggs and female egg laying is the bottleneck in population growth it seems very likely that more females means more offspring.
So this mechanism essentially says 'if the water temperature increases, increase the number of turtles'.
Which is not actually bad decision - warmer waters have more sea life, i.e. they can feed more turtles.
He's not wanted for questioning. There's a warrant out for his arrest - the interrogation is the last stage before he is charged.
https://www.newstatesman.com/b...
What has become clear is that the Swedish approach to criminal proceedings is different from that of England or other common law jurisdictions. The interrogation requested takes place at a late stage, just before prosecution. Assange is thereby not required for mere questioning - indeed, he was questioned on 31 August 2010.
And he's accused of rape - UK courts have ruled that what he is accused of doing in Sweden would be rape if he did it in the UK. Which is a key part of extradition being granted.
4. Rape
On 17 August 2010, in the home of the injured party [SW] in Enkoping, Assange deliberately consummated sexual intercourse with her by improperly exploiting that she, due to sleep. was in a helpless state.
It is an aggravating circumstance that Assange. who was aware that it was the expressed wish of the injured party and a prerequisite of sexual intercourse that a condom be used. still consummated unprotected sexual intercourse with her. The sexual act was designed to violate the injured party's sexual integrity."
The High Court held that the test of "dual criminality" was met in respect of each of these offences: they were offences in both England and Sweden.
So you're saying because of his valuable political work he may have been falsely accused, and those false accusations may be used to extradite him to the US - despite the fact the US hasn't requested this - and when in the US he may be killed?
That's a lot of 'may's. Essentially it's an argument that he should be immune to accusations of sexual misconduct. Even the scummiest US or UK politician - the people Wikileaks was set up to expose - wouldn't claim they should be allowed to rape people and not be prosecuted.
So there's a certain amount of irony that Assange is. It's also an argument that clearly failed to convince either the New Statesman or the Guardian, two publications that were initially very sympathetic to Wikileaks.
Though not hardliners siding with US on matters of espionage.
The US alliance is absolutely vital to the UK - without it we'd need to build our own Trident missiles. And we'd need to build our own listening centres to replace the NSA ones which cooperate with GCHQ.
It's doable for sure - the UK did have programs like this when the US suspended nuclear cooperation after WWII. And the UK could work with Canada, Australia, Singapore and so on - and in fact UK cooperation with these countries was folded into the Five Eyes. However it would cost significantly more than the UK currently spends on intelligence and defence.
And in a sense people like Assange are just as much enemies of GCHQ as they are of the NSA. Even if the NSA/GCHQ cooperation ceased the UK would still be out to get him.
Or maybe I should say "the UK would clearly still want to cooperate with our European friends and allies on law enforcement. Particularly on odious sexual crimes like rape".
And before anyone quibbles about what he was accused of and whether he has been charged, read this. From the New Statesman, a far left magazine that was initially very sympathetic to Assange.
https://www.newstatesman.com/b...
The Guardian, another far left paper which published the Wikileaks stuff also thinks he should not be able to evade justice
https://www.theguardian.com/co...
Mr Assange, who invited the UN panel to examine his case in 2014, knew the outcome in advance. That may account for his offer to give himself up to the British authorities if its opinion went against him. He will hope that its findings allow him to claim some kind of moral victory, and strengthen his call that the Swedish authorities drop their investigations. But he would still face arrest in the UK: he was granted bail while he fought extradition to Sweden and he broke his bail conditions, at great expense to those friends and supporters who had backed him financially, by fleeing to the Ecuadorian embassy. No doubt the conditions of his self-imprisonment are unpleasant; they are certainly severely limiting. But it is possible to sympathise with his circumstances, and to applaud his role in the WikiLeaks revelations that exposed embarassing and sometimes illegal US activity that were published in the Guardian (while deploring his later decision to dump many more, unmediated, on the web) without accepting his right to evade prosecutorsâ(TM) questions about the allegation that he committed a serious criminal offence.