Orwell mused about producing books by machinery as a way for a totalitarian state to have fiction without having any actual authors who might develop heretical political opinions.
It would probably not be beyond human ingenuity to write books by machinery. But a sort of mechanizing process can already be seen at work in the film and radio, in publicity and propaganda, and in the lower reaches of journalism. The Disney films, for instance, are produced by what is essentially a factory process, the work being done partly mechanically and partly by teams of artists who have to subordinate their individual style. Radio features are commonly written by tired hacks to whom the subject and the manner of treatment are dictated beforehand: even so, what they write is merely a kind of raw material to be chopped into shape by producers and censors. So also with the innumerable books and pamphlets commissioned by government departments. Even more machine-like is the production of short stories, serials, and poems for the very cheap magazines. Papers such as the Writer abound with advertisements of literary schools, all of them offering you ready-made plots at a few shillings a time. Some, together with the plot, supply the opening and closing sentences of each chapter. Others furnish you with a sort of algebraical formula by the use of which you can construct plots for yourself. Others have packs of cards marked with characters and situations, which have only to be shuffled and dealt in order to produce ingenious stories automatically. It is probably in some such way that the literature of a totalitarian society would be produced, if literature were still felt to be necessary. Imagination - even consciousness, so far as possible - would be eliminated from the process of writing. Books would be planned in their broad lines by bureaucrats, and would pass through so many hands that when finished they would be no more an individual product than a Ford car at the end of the assembly line. It goes without saying that anything so produced would be rubbish; but anything that was not rubbish would endanger the structure of the state. As for the surviving literature of the past, it would have to be suppressed or at least elaborately rewritten.
And in 1984 the Prolefeed is produced by machines - he was writing before computers were widely known so they use 'a special kind of kaleidoscope known as a versificator'.
And the Ministry had not only to supply the multifarious needs of the party, but also to repeat the whole operation at a lower level for the benefit of the proletariat. There was a whole chain of separate departments dealing with proletarian literature, music, drama, and entertainment generally. Here were produced rubbishy newspapers containing almost nothing except sport, crime and astrology, sensational five-cent novelettes, films oozing with sex, and sentimental songs which were composed entirely by mechanical means on a special kind of kaleidoscope known as a versificator. There was even a whole sub-section-Pornosec, it was called in Newspeak-engaged in producing the lowest kind of pornography, which was sent out in sealed packets and which no Party member, other than those who worked on it, was permitted to look at.
You should get the Blinkers browser extension. You tell it whether you're a Republican or Democrat and it filters out any sites that might cause you unpleasant cognitive dissonance and only shows you stuff you'll agree with.
Gawker's specialty was muckraking - investigating the powerful and revealing the stuff they didn't want you to know. On rare occasions, that was abusive, such as the infamous Hogan tape. In most cases, it was relatively neutral. In some key cases, they exposed important stories nobody else did because they weren't afraid to piss off the wrong people.
What important stories did Gawker expose? Everything they did seems to be spiteful gossip that didn't have any public interest defence - outing Peter Thiel as gay for example, or defying a judge to keep Hogan's sex tape up. Which is what sunk them eventually.
Even by the extremely degraded standards of US media, they were awful. And even in the US it turns out that they were actually awful enough to lose a lawsuit that bankrupted them.
"This Churchill guy is a hypocrite. He wants to fight the Germans, but gets so angry when you suggest we appease them instead. I mean, fighting the Germans means we don't get destroyed by them, and appeasement also means we don't get destroyed by them."
I'm sorry, Sir, but I'm going to have to issue you with a $50 Fixed Penalty Internet Ticket for Godwinning.
Maybe Hogan can go after the Kickstarter funds. Dunno about the US but in the UK shutting down one business and starting up another under the same name but decrying the debts would be seen as very sharp practice, the sort of thing you'd expect from Lord Oswald Jacbootéd-Thugge.
On July 29, 2016, in a meeting with the courts, Denton was chastised by the courts, who stated that Denton's valuation of the company had been inflated by him (Denton) to give the impression that the company was worth more than it actually was. In the court records, the judge stated that Denton had informed the court that the value of the stock he himself held was valued at eighty-one million dollars. This valuation was used to give the court and Hogan that the offer of turning over Denton's stock would cover the majority of the money owed by the company. However, the stocks were found to be valued at thirty million, and not the cited eighty-one million. In the wake of this revelation, the court ordered that Denton had not acted in good faith, and issued an order stating that Hogan could begin seizing assets from Gawker.
Cut the dude some slack. He was a terrible POTUS but to his credit he upped the use of drones and special forces against Islamists to keep the numbers down.
Not the sort of final solution to the ISIS problem that Trump and Mattis served up, but it was better than Bush's overly sparing use of drones.
I.e. Trump is better than Obama who was better than Bush when it comes to killing off Islamists. None of them are particularly visionary politicians but each could see a pragmatic way to improve the US's position and smite its opponents with minimal risk of US casualties.
ISIS have been wiped out in Iraq and is heading that way in Syria
Both the Syrian and Iraqi governments have declared ISIS dead in their respective countries and have credited Iranian intervention. They differ, however, on the U.S.â(TM)s role, with the former considering the U.S. presence illegal and only recognizing Iranian and Russian support, and the latter having been a U.S. partner since being installed in the wake of the 2003 U.S. invasion and overthrow of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
This is one of those things that everyone knew as the walked out of the cinema. And you can say it now, but not a single review said it. Well I remember one alluding to it - they said something like "reviews have mostly been positive but a few people have complained the plot has too many similarities to A New Hope".
Then again if you were Disney and you'd just spent a fortune on the rights to Star Wars and you knew people disliked the prequels, you'd play it safe too. I.e. a soft reboot of ANH with lots of practical effects and fan service and at the same time set up a new set of actors with roles analogous to Luke/Han/Leia/Darth Vader and option Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford for one or maybe two movies to do the handover.
From a business point of view, it made a lot of sense. It just wasn't a very memorable movie, and probably couldn't have been given the business constraints.
So, when the traffic is jammed from the chunnel to Machester waiting for customs, hows that going to work out for you.
The UK doesn't want tariffs. And if the EU imposes them and the UK retaliates they'd have exactly the same problems we have. Spoilers : They're bluffing and they won't actually go through with it.
Oh you're one of those "brexit means brexit" morons. Saying "we will do a deal" is basically saying "something will happen".
Calling people morons didn't work out too well for you before the referendum. What makes you think it will work now?
Ah I see you've changed your tune from "almost impossible deport criminals" to "there are a small number of people we can'r deport", without breaking stride.
Article 8 means you can't deport foreign criminals if they've lived with someone, or claimed to live with someone for two years or more even if they aren't married provided they claim to have had sex. That's absurd.
Where a person makes representations after the commencement of enforcement action, on the basis of a common law or same sex relationship, the normal course will be to proceed to enforcement action unless it is clear that the couple had lived together for 2 years or more before enforcement action commenced and that the parties are not involved in a consanguineous relationship with one another.
As even 'ukhumanrightsblog' points out "there are undoubtedly some difficult issues to be approached in relation to the European Court of Human Rights' somewhat expansive interpretation of Article 8".
t was heartening to hear the Home Secretary read out Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights in full during her speech. More politicians should go back to the source to explain what the law means. And there are undoubtedly some difficult issues to be approached in relation to the European Court of Human Rights' somewhat expansive interpretation of Article 8.
Inside the EU the EU will no doubt argue that ECHR membership is a condition of EU membership
http://researchbriefings.parli... "Opinions differ as to whether a Member State can withdraw from the European Convention and remain in the EU, given that the EU Treaties specifically refer to the human rights guarantees in the Council of Europe instrument."
In the PDF file the EU Commission claimed
"Respect for fundamental rights as guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights is an explicit obligation for the Union under Article 6(2) [now Article 6(3)] of the Treaty on European Union, and the Court of Justice has held that the Convention is of especial importance for determining the fundamental rights that must be respected by the Member States as general principles of law when they act within the scope of Union law. The rights secured by the Convention are among the rights guaranteed by the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. In the negotiations for the accession of new Union members, respect for the Convention and the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights is treated as part of the Union acquis. Any Member State deciding to withdraw from the Convention and therefore no longer bound to comply with it or to respect its enforcement procedures could, in certain circumstances, raise concern as regards the effective protection of fundamental rights by its authorities. Such a situation, which the Commission hopes will remain purely hypothetical, would need to be examined under Articles 6 and 7 of the Treaty on European Union."
Article 7 is about suspending countries from the EU
"Where a determination under paragraph 2 has been made, the Council, acting by a qualified majority, may decide to suspend certain of the rights deriving from the application of the Treaties to the Member State in question, including the voting rights of the representative of the government of that Member State in the Council."
I.e, the EU Commission is making a clear threat it might suspend UK voting rights, such as they are given we're the state most often in minority, if the UK leaves the ECHR but stays in the EU.
False, the EU is our largest single export market. Second that will likely involve having weaker regulations on product safety, e.g . cars.
US is the top country. The EU is not a country, even though it wants to be one. And, like I say I don't expect the EU to impose tariffs on UK exports. And even if they did we've got a trade deficit and using the tariffs we collect on imports to pay the tariffs of exporters is not against WTO rules.
I.e. we could get lower tariffs on exports to non EU countries with most likely no net tariffs on exports to EU ones.
If you have a referendum and millions of people vote, it's fair to assume that most of them are doing so based on arguments that I would personally consider very unconvincing. On both sides.
To me it came down to the 'What's the chance of the EU refusing us a trade agreement? What do we do then?". The answers being "Not very high" and "We use the tariffs we collect on imports to pay the tariffs of exporters".
Once you see that then obviously it's better to have sovereignty and the chance to set rules on immigration, trade and defence through normal democratic means rather the EU's Byzantine system where we nominate a Commissioner, all the Commissioners collude and get lobbied, the EU Parliament mostly rubber stamps it and the end result in a law which we have to implement even if it is incredibly unpopular. Which a lot of EU laws are in the UK.
Thanks. I'm not in the position to weaponize space personally, though I can see the arguments for the US doing so.
My overall feeling of what was happening in the EU was that it was (is) a bureaucratic nightmare where everything had to be brought down to the "weakest link" in the union. The problem with humans and any of their constructs are that people will always do as little as possible, or get away with as much as they can (to paraphrase Plato). So if the EU makes it possible for one of their members or the constituents of those member states to "coast along" then they will do it.
Another cancerous thing about the EU was that it wanted to have one set of rules across the whole region. The problem is the way countries apply the rules varies wildly. Essentially the EU benefits countries with a weak rule of law because they will simply ignore inconvenient rules. Same with ones which are politically powerful. So France and Germany ignored the Eurozone 3% deficit rules and no one dared challenge them. Then Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain did it in a much more openly fraudulent way - Greece for example hired Goldman Sachs to cook the books for them and hide the extent of their deficit - and when knowledge of that became public it almost brought down the Euro. Even now Greece might default and leave the Euro.
Meanwhile in countries like the UK - which whatever its faults has a fairly strong rule of law - the rules hit people hard because there's no institutional ability to ignore the inconvenient ones.
I.e. it gives the more corrupt an advantage over the less corrupt. In the long run this will cause corruption to spread.
Nor is membership of the EEA without costs, she points out. Through it, Norway contributes €340 million a year to the EU - despite neither being a member, nor having any voting rights. Were the UK to leave the EU, its annual contribution through the EEA might fall to just €2 billion from the net contribution of €11.6 billion it makes at present.
EEA countries also make annual financial contributions to the EU in return for access to its single market. Over the period 2009 to 2014, Norway is providing almost €1.8 billion through the EEA and Norway grants to efforts to reduce social and economic disparities within the EEA (The UK's estimated net annual contribution to the EU budget was £8.1 billion in 2011 and £6.9 billion in 2012) The EEA and Norway grants were negotiated in parallel with the negotiations on improved market access for seafood, which is an area where the EEA Agreement does not provide for full market access.
I.e. Norway's contributions are substantially less than they would make as a full EU member.
In February the Commission started a furious row with Westminster after claiming that Cameron's plan to ban foreign migrants from receiving benefits unless they earn a minimum of £149 a week are illegal. The Commission threatened to take the British Government to court after claiming it was illegal to define a "worker" according to the amount he or she earns is not compatible with EU law. A source close to Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary hit back: "We're absolutely confident the changes are legal as well as right."
Inside the EU it's illegal to treat the citizens of other EU countries differently than you treat your own citizens.
Of course if the UK leaves the EU that ceases to be an issue. The Canada EU free trade deal doesn't force either party to accept citizens of the other coming to claim benefits.
Outside the EU with a Canada type deal the UK would have control over
1) Immigration. Inside the EU we have to accept free movement of EU citizens. Not just to come to work, which I have no problem with, but also to claim benefits which I have a large problem with. And, more subtly, being inside the EU means we have to sign up to the ECHR. Article 8 of that makes it almost impossible to deport criminal, non EU aliens. Also if the UK is in the EU, it cannot refuse EU migrants and immigration is unpopular it instead clamps down on non EU ones. I've got a lot of friends in non EU countries who have tried and failed to get UK work permits because of this, despite the fact that they'd get a job and pay taxes if they moved to the UK. Many EU migrants end up in low pay jobs and are not net taxpayers because they depend on Working Families Tax Credit, Housing Benefit and so on. I.e. the EU is a source of cheap labour but that labour is subsidised by the taxpayer.
2) Trade. Inside the EU we need to have tariffs on non EU imports. Outside the EU we don't - we could sign free trade agreements with the US for example, which is our largest export customer. There's the Commonwealth, Asia and so on. Trade with the EU is important, but it is declining in importance. Also even without a Canada type deal we have a trade deficit with the EU. I.e. we buy more than we sell. So if tariffs are imposed on trade both ways we can use the tariffs we collect to pay our exporters tariffs.
3) Internal regulations. If you trade with another country, your exporters need to comply with their regulations on goods they export. Unfortunately the EU goes much farther than that - the EU wants to be a state and to regulate even intra country trade. Outside the EU that wouldn't happen.
4) Democracy. Democracy works if you vote for a government, that government makes policy and then you vote again. In the EU that process is broken because there are things you can vote for - controls on immigration for example - which the EU will block. In the run up to BREXIT Cameron asked for a delay between new immigrants arriving from the EU and being able to claim benefits but was slapped down. Meanwhile Merkel unilaterally admitted 'Syrian refugees' who turned out to be mostly not Syrian and not refugees. Since Germany controls the EU, the EU didn't bat an eyelid. In fact the EU is still trying to impose a quota system on EU countries to accept their 'fair share' of the migrants Merkel invited into Germany.
5) Defence. The EU wants an army and to be a state. The UK has traditionally seen NATO as being the security organisation, and the EEC and then EU as being about trade. Leaving the EU with a Canada type agreement keeps tariffs off trade but removes us from getting sucked into the EU's aspirations at statehood. Even a WTO deal isn't too bad for the reasons mentioned in 2)
6) Money. The UK makes a net contribution of £10billion per year. Outside the EU we'll probably have to pay a divorce fee of around £40billion or so. However after that we'll only contribute to programs which are in the national interest. Norway is not an EU member but is a single market member and makes per capita contributions of around 1/7 what the UK does.
Of course the Remoaners want you to think it's all a Russian plot. Nope. There was a referendum and you guys lost.
Internationally, the United States also notified several countries, including Canada, the UK, Australia, and Russia, in advance of the strike. The U.S. military stated it communicated with the Russian military to minimize any chance of Russian casualties."
There were Russian advisers at that base. Would you prefer he'd not warned Russia and killed a few of them? It was entirely prudent to warn Russia. That way they could get their personnel out, but they didn't have time to remove all the materiel the strike was aimed at.
Hours after the U.S. missile strike, Syrian government's warplanes took off from the Shayrat base to attack rebel positions again, including the town of Khan Shaykhun.[11] Commentators attributed the ability of the Syrian government to continue to operate from the base to the fact that the US gave Russia, Syria's ally, an advanced warning regarding the strike, which enabled Syrians to shelter many of its aircraft from the attack
U.S. Central Command stated in a press release that Tomahawk missiles hit "aircraft, hardened aircraft shelters, petroleum and logistical storage, ammunition supply bunkers, defense systems, and radars". Initial U.S. reports claimed "approximately 20 planes" were destroyed, and that 58 out of the 59 cruise missiles launched "severely degraded or destroyed" their intended target. According to the satellite images the runways[31] and the taxiways have been reportedly undamaged and combat flights from the attacked airbase resumed on 7 April a few hours after the attack, although U.S. officials did not state that the runway was a target. In a later statement on 10 April 2017, the US Secretary of Defense James Mattis claimed that the strike destroyed about 20% of the Syrian government's operational aircraft and the base had lost the ability to refuel or rearm aircraft.
An independent bomb damage assessment conducted by ImageSat International counted hits on 44 targets, with some targets being hit by more than one missile; these figures were determined using satellite images of the airbase 10 hours after the strike.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the strike damaged over a dozen hangars, a fuel depot, and an air defense base.
Al-Masdar News reported that 15 fighter jets were damaged or destroyed and that the destruction of fuel tankers caused several explosions and a large fire.
According to the claims of Russian defense ministry, the "combat effectiveness" of the attack was "extremely low"; only 23 missiles hit the base destroying six aircraft, and it did not know where the other 36 landed. Russian television news, citing a Syrian source at the airfield, said that nine planes were destroyed by the strikes (5 Su-22M3s, 1 Su-22M4, and 3 Mig-23ML) and that all planes were thought to have been out of action at the time.
So the US claims it was effective with 20 planes destroyed as do ImageSat, the Syrian Observatory for Human RIghts and Al-Masdar. The Russian defence ministry claimed the combat effectiveness was 'extremely low', but Russian TV claims 9 planes were destroyed.
So even though you Democrats normally claim anything from Russia is 'fake news', in this case you've decided to assume they're completely trustworthy and everyone else is lying.
Actually if all the Russians are claiming is that one aircraft landed and took off again, they might not be lying because the US didn't target the runways. But the implication the airbase is fine is deliberately misleading. If 58 Tomahawks hit an airbase it's very far from fine.
SEC. 1630B. PROHIBITION ON USE OF SOFTWARE PLATFORMS DEVELOPED BY KASPERSKY LAB.
(a) Prohibition.-No department, agency, organization, or other element of the Department of Defense may use, whether directly or through work with or on behalf of another organization or element of the Department or another department or agency of the United States Government, any software platform developed, in whole or in part, by Kaspersky Lab or any entity of which Kaspersky Lab has a majority ownership.
(b) Severance Of Network Connections.-The Secretary of Defense shall ensure that any network connection between a department, agency, organization, or other element of the Department of Defense and a department or agency of the United States Government that is using or hosting on its networks a software platform described in subsection (a) is immediately severed.
(c) Effective Date.-This section shall take effect on October 1, 2018.
That's more a RNC/McCain thing than a Trump one. It's not like Trump could veto the NDAA.
The controversial drone policy introduced by the Federal Aviation Administration in 2015, requiring recreational drone users to registers their UAVs, was constitutionally overturned in May of this year, but it may end up being enforced again next year by being included in the upcoming National Defense Authorization Act of 2018.
According to Bloomberg, both the House and Senate agree on slipping the unmanned aerial vehicle registry into the defense bill, as demand for regulation in the drone industry is at an all-time high. Most recently, the White House expanded drone-testing regulations to presumably push toward standardizing nationwide UAV delivery. The current administration may deem a nationwide hobby-drone registration as a necessary first step toward that.
In 2015, the FAA officially announced that all owners of drones heavier than 250 grams (which is about as light as a cup of water) must be registered as "drone operators" in a national database. This, of course, startled some, as it seemed this regulation could mark the beginning of the end for freedom of use regarding hobby drones. Others felt it was a fair deal in the right direction, as we reported on last year. However, in a twist of turns, the District of Columbia circuit court of appeals overturned this legislation on Friday, May 19th, as its compatibility with a previous FAA ruling from 2012 is far from symbiotic.
The 2012 "FAA Modernization and Reform Act" rules that the FAA has no right to "promulgate any rule or regulation regarding a model aircraft", and as Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh sees it, the 2015 ruling clearly interferes with this established law. He adds, "Statutory interpretation does not get much simpler. The Registration Rule is unlawful as applied to model aircraft." Essentially, recreational drone users have been exempted from the aforementioned registry, which according to Popular Science, over 800,000 people have joined since 2015. This is something we at The Drive keep a close eye on, and an issue we regularly report on.
So Congress put a paragraph into the 2018 NDAA to restore registration
The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington overturned the FAA drone registration system in May, finding that earlier legislation passed in 2012 didn't give the agency legal authority for it. A one-paragraph addition to the defense bill said that the registration system "shall be restored" as soon as the legislation becomes law.
(d) Restoration Of Rules For Registration And Marking Of Unmanned Aircraft.-The rules adopted by the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration in the matter of registration and marking requirements for small unmanned aircraft (FAA-2015-7396; published on December 16, 2015) that were vacated by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in Taylor v. Huerta (No. 15-1495; decided on May 19, 2017) shall be restored to effect on the date of enactment of this Act.
Slashdot Mirror
Orwell mused about producing books by machinery as a way for a totalitarian state to have fiction without having any actual authors who might develop heretical political opinions.
http://www.orwell.ru/library/e...
It would probably not be beyond human ingenuity to write books by machinery. But a sort of mechanizing process can already be seen at work in the film and radio, in publicity and propaganda, and in the lower reaches of journalism. The Disney films, for instance, are produced by what is essentially a factory process, the work being done partly mechanically and partly by teams of artists who have to subordinate their individual style. Radio features are commonly written by tired hacks to whom the subject and the manner of treatment are dictated beforehand: even so, what they write is merely a kind of raw material to be chopped into shape by producers and censors. So also with the innumerable books and pamphlets commissioned by government departments. Even more machine-like is the production of short stories, serials, and poems for the very cheap magazines. Papers such as the Writer abound with advertisements of literary schools, all of them offering you ready-made plots at a few shillings a time. Some, together with the plot, supply the opening and closing sentences of each chapter. Others furnish you with a sort of algebraical formula by the use of which you can construct plots for yourself. Others have packs of cards marked with characters and situations, which have only to be shuffled and dealt in order to produce ingenious stories automatically. It is probably in some such way that the literature of a totalitarian society would be produced, if literature were still felt to be necessary. Imagination - even consciousness, so far as possible - would be eliminated from the process of writing. Books would be planned in their broad lines by bureaucrats, and would pass through so many hands that when finished they would be no more an individual product than a Ford car at the end of the assembly line. It goes without saying that anything so produced would be rubbish; but anything that was not rubbish would endanger the structure of the state. As for the surviving literature of the past, it would have to be suppressed or at least elaborately rewritten.
And in 1984 the Prolefeed is produced by machines - he was writing before computers were widely known so they use 'a special kind of kaleidoscope known as a versificator'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
And the Ministry had not only to supply the multifarious needs of the party, but also to repeat the whole operation at a lower level for the benefit of the proletariat. There was a whole chain of separate departments dealing with proletarian literature, music, drama, and entertainment generally. Here were produced rubbishy newspapers containing almost nothing except sport, crime and astrology, sensational five-cent novelettes, films oozing with sex, and sentimental songs which were composed entirely by mechanical means on a special kind of kaleidoscope known as a versificator. There was even a whole sub-section-Pornosec, it was called in Newspeak-engaged in producing the lowest kind of pornography, which was sent out in sealed packets and which no Party member, other than those who worked on it, was permitted to look at.
You should get the Blinkers browser extension. You tell it whether you're a Republican or Democrat and it filters out any sites that might cause you unpleasant cognitive dissonance and only shows you stuff you'll agree with.
It turns out Apple's face recognition can't tell Chinese people apart
https://www.theinquirer.net/in...
Gawker's specialty was muckraking - investigating the powerful and revealing the stuff they didn't want you to know. On rare occasions, that was abusive, such as the infamous Hogan tape. In most cases, it was relatively neutral. In some key cases, they exposed important stories nobody else did because they weren't afraid to piss off the wrong people.
What important stories did Gawker expose? Everything they did seems to be spiteful gossip that didn't have any public interest defence - outing Peter Thiel as gay for example, or defying a judge to keep Hogan's sex tape up. Which is what sunk them eventually.
Even by the extremely degraded standards of US media, they were awful. And even in the US it turns out that they were actually awful enough to lose a lawsuit that bankrupted them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I often consider the pavoratzi (or whatever you call them) the scum of the earth.
I believe it's spelled Pope Ratzo. He is pretty annoying but calling him the scum of the earth is overstating things.
"This Churchill guy is a hypocrite. He wants to fight the Germans, but gets so angry when you suggest we appease them instead. I mean, fighting the Germans means we don't get destroyed by them, and appeasement also means we don't get destroyed by them."
I'm sorry, Sir, but I'm going to have to issue you with a $50 Fixed Penalty Internet Ticket for Godwinning.
Maybe Hogan can go after the Kickstarter funds. Dunno about the US but in the UK shutting down one business and starting up another under the same name but decrying the debts would be seen as very sharp practice, the sort of thing you'd expect from Lord Oswald Jacbootéd-Thugge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
On July 29, 2016, in a meeting with the courts, Denton was chastised by the courts, who stated that Denton's valuation of the company had been inflated by him (Denton) to give the impression that the company was worth more than it actually was. In the court records, the judge stated that Denton had informed the court that the value of the stock he himself held was valued at eighty-one million dollars. This valuation was used to give the court and Hogan that the offer of turning over Denton's stock would cover the majority of the money owed by the company. However, the stocks were found to be valued at thirty million, and not the cited eighty-one million. In the wake of this revelation, the court ordered that Denton had not acted in good faith, and issued an order stating that Hogan could begin seizing assets from Gawker.
Cut the dude some slack. He was a terrible POTUS but to his credit he upped the use of drones and special forces against Islamists to keep the numbers down.
Not the sort of final solution to the ISIS problem that Trump and Mattis served up, but it was better than Bush's overly sparing use of drones.
I.e. Trump is better than Obama who was better than Bush when it comes to killing off Islamists. None of them are particularly visionary politicians but each could see a pragmatic way to improve the US's position and smite its opponents with minimal risk of US casualties.
ISIS have been wiped out in Iraq and is heading that way in Syria
https://www.yahoo.com/news/whe...
Both the Syrian and Iraqi governments have declared ISIS dead in their respective countries and have credited Iranian intervention. They differ, however, on the U.S.â(TM)s role, with the former considering the U.S. presence illegal and only recognizing Iranian and Russian support, and the latter having been a U.S. partner since being installed in the wake of the 2003 U.S. invasion and overthrow of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
This is one of those things that everyone knew as the walked out of the cinema. And you can say it now, but not a single review said it. Well I remember one alluding to it - they said something like "reviews have mostly been positive but a few people have complained the plot has too many similarities to A New Hope".
Then again if you were Disney and you'd just spent a fortune on the rights to Star Wars and you knew people disliked the prequels, you'd play it safe too. I.e. a soft reboot of ANH with lots of practical effects and fan service and at the same time set up a new set of actors with roles analogous to Luke/Han/Leia/Darth Vader and option Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford for one or maybe two movies to do the handover.
From a business point of view, it made a lot of sense. It just wasn't a very memorable movie, and probably couldn't have been given the business constraints.
PIC32 binaries are pronounced with more of a guttural accent than MIPS ones.
Like The Force Awakens this film will open to rave reviews but most people will have forgotten the plot even before they leave the cinema.
Funny thing is people like him arguing like that probably swung the referendum vote for BREXIT.
So, when the traffic is jammed from the chunnel to Machester waiting for customs, hows that going to work out for you.
The UK doesn't want tariffs. And if the EU imposes them and the UK retaliates they'd have exactly the same problems we have. Spoilers : They're bluffing and they won't actually go through with it.
Oh you're one of those "brexit means brexit" morons. Saying "we will do a deal" is basically saying "something will happen".
Calling people morons didn't work out too well for you before the referendum. What makes you think it will work now?
Ah I see you've changed your tune from "almost impossible deport criminals" to "there are a small number of people we can'r deport", without breaking stride.
Article 8 means you can't deport foreign criminals if they've lived with someone, or claimed to live with someone for two years or more even if they aren't married provided they claim to have had sex. That's absurd.
https://ukhumanrightsblog.com/...
Where a person makes representations after the commencement of enforcement action, on the basis of a common law or same sex relationship, the normal course will be to proceed to enforcement action unless it is clear that the couple had lived together for 2 years or more before enforcement action commenced and that the parties are not involved in a consanguineous relationship with one another.
As even 'ukhumanrightsblog' points out "there are undoubtedly some difficult issues to be approached in relation to the European Court of Human Rights' somewhat expansive interpretation of Article 8".
t was heartening to hear the Home Secretary read out Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights in full during her speech. More politicians should go back to the source to explain what the law means. And there are undoubtedly some difficult issues to be approached in relation to the European Court of Human Rights' somewhat expansive interpretation of Article 8.
Out of interest, what did you think would happen with the Irish border?
Pretty much what is happening - the UK and the EU will do a deal.
Brexit has little ot do with that. ECHR is a separte thing and exiting the EU won't take us out of the ECHR. Also, Article 8, the right to a privacy?
Right to family life, inter alia.
102 foreign criminals and illegal immigrants we can't deport - More than 100 foreign criminals and illegal immigrants have beaten deportation under controversial "right to family life" laws in the past year.
Inside the EU the EU will no doubt argue that ECHR membership is a condition of EU membership
http://researchbriefings.parli...
"Opinions differ as to whether a Member State can withdraw from the European Convention and remain in the EU, given that the EU Treaties specifically refer to the human rights guarantees in the Council of Europe instrument."
In the PDF file the EU Commission claimed
"Respect for fundamental rights as guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights is an explicit obligation for the Union under Article 6(2) [now Article 6(3)] of the Treaty on European Union, and the Court of Justice has held that the Convention is of especial importance for determining the fundamental rights that must be respected by the Member States as general principles of law when they act within the scope of Union law. The rights secured by the Convention are among the rights guaranteed by the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. In the negotiations for the accession of new Union members, respect for the Convention and the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights is treated as part of the Union acquis. Any Member State deciding to withdraw from the Convention and therefore no longer bound to comply with it or to respect its enforcement procedures could, in certain circumstances, raise concern as regards the effective protection of fundamental rights by its authorities. Such a situation, which the Commission hopes will remain purely hypothetical, would need to be examined under Articles 6 and 7 of the Treaty on European Union."
Article 7 is about suspending countries from the EU
http://www.lisbon-treaty.org/w...
"Where a determination under paragraph 2 has been made, the Council, acting by a qualified majority, may decide to suspend certain of the rights deriving from the application of the Treaties to the Member State in question, including the voting rights of the representative of the government of that Member State in the Council."
I.e, the EU Commission is making a clear threat it might suspend UK voting rights, such as they are given we're the state most often in minority, if the UK leaves the ECHR but stays in the EU.
False, the EU is our largest single export market. Second that will likely involve having weaker regulations on product safety, e.g . cars.
http://www.worldstopexports.co...
US is the top country. The EU is not a country, even though it wants to be one. And, like I say I don't expect the EU to impose tariffs on UK exports. And even if they did we've got a trade deficit and using the tariffs we collect on imports to pay the tariffs of exporters is not against WTO rules.
I.e. we could get lower tariffs on exports to non EU countries with most likely no net tariffs on exports to EU ones.
If we have the power to sign our o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
And there was me worrying about PCIe risers in things like the Node 202
https://www.techpowerup.com/re...
If you have a referendum and millions of people vote, it's fair to assume that most of them are doing so based on arguments that I would personally consider very unconvincing. On both sides.
To me it came down to the 'What's the chance of the EU refusing us a trade agreement? What do we do then?". The answers being "Not very high" and "We use the tariffs we collect on imports to pay the tariffs of exporters".
Once you see that then obviously it's better to have sovereignty and the chance to set rules on immigration, trade and defence through normal democratic means rather the EU's Byzantine system where we nominate a Commissioner, all the Commissioners collude and get lobbied, the EU Parliament mostly rubber stamps it and the end result in a law which we have to implement even if it is incredibly unpopular. Which a lot of EU laws are in the UK.
I enjoy your posts.
As long as you don't weaponize space...
Thanks. I'm not in the position to weaponize space personally, though I can see the arguments for the US doing so.
My overall feeling of what was happening in the EU was that it was (is) a bureaucratic nightmare where everything had to be brought down to the "weakest link" in the union. The problem with humans and any of their constructs are that people will always do as little as possible, or get away with as much as they can (to paraphrase Plato). So if the EU makes it possible for one of their members or the constituents of those member states to "coast along" then they will do it.
Another cancerous thing about the EU was that it wanted to have one set of rules across the whole region. The problem is the way countries apply the rules varies wildly. Essentially the EU benefits countries with a weak rule of law because they will simply ignore inconvenient rules. Same with ones which are politically powerful. So France and Germany ignored the Eurozone 3% deficit rules and no one dared challenge them. Then Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain did it in a much more openly fraudulent way - Greece for example hired Goldman Sachs to cook the books for them and hide the extent of their deficit - and when knowledge of that became public it almost brought down the Euro. Even now Greece might default and leave the Euro.
Meanwhile in countries like the UK - which whatever its faults has a fairly strong rule of law - the rules hit people hard because there's no institutional ability to ignore the inconvenient ones.
I.e. it gives the more corrupt an advantage over the less corrupt. In the long run this will cause corruption to spread.
Norway pays about 2/3 the single-market contribution per capita than the UK (£140 in Norway, £220 in the UK).
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...
Nor is membership of the EEA without costs, she points out. Through it, Norway contributes €340 million a year to the EU - despite neither being a member, nor having any voting rights. Were the UK to leave the EU, its annual contribution through the EEA might fall to just €2 billion from the net contribution of €11.6 billion it makes at present.
http://researchbriefings.files...
EEA countries also make annual financial contributions to the EU in return for access to its single market. Over the period 2009 to 2014, Norway is providing almost €1.8 billion through the EEA and Norway grants to efforts to reduce social and economic disparities within the EEA (The UK's estimated net annual contribution to the EU budget was £8.1 billion in 2011 and £6.9 billion in 2012) The EEA and Norway grants were negotiated in parallel with the negotiations on improved market access for seafood, which is an area where the EEA Agreement does not provide for full market access.
I.e. Norway's contributions are substantially less than they would make as a full EU member.
Why can immigrants even claim benefits?
Can't you tie that to being a UK national?
Not inside the EU.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...
In February the Commission started a furious row with Westminster after claiming that Cameron's plan to ban foreign migrants from receiving benefits unless they earn a minimum of £149 a week are illegal.
The Commission threatened to take the British Government to court after claiming it was illegal to define a "worker" according to the amount he or she earns is not compatible with EU law.
A source close to Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary hit back: "We're absolutely confident the changes are legal as well as right."
Inside the EU it's illegal to treat the citizens of other EU countries differently than you treat your own citizens.
Of course if the UK leaves the EU that ceases to be an issue. The Canada EU free trade deal doesn't force either party to accept citizens of the other coming to claim benefits.
I voted for BREXIT. Here's why
Outside the EU with a Canada type deal the UK would have control over
1) Immigration. Inside the EU we have to accept free movement of EU citizens. Not just to come to work, which I have no problem with, but also to claim benefits which I have a large problem with. And, more subtly, being inside the EU means we have to sign up to the ECHR. Article 8 of that makes it almost impossible to deport criminal, non EU aliens. Also if the UK is in the EU, it cannot refuse EU migrants and immigration is unpopular it instead clamps down on non EU ones. I've got a lot of friends in non EU countries who have tried and failed to get UK work permits because of this, despite the fact that they'd get a job and pay taxes if they moved to the UK. Many EU migrants end up in low pay jobs and are not net taxpayers because they depend on Working Families Tax Credit, Housing Benefit and so on. I.e. the EU is a source of cheap labour but that labour is subsidised by the taxpayer.
2) Trade. Inside the EU we need to have tariffs on non EU imports. Outside the EU we don't - we could sign free trade agreements with the US for example, which is our largest export customer. There's the Commonwealth, Asia and so on. Trade with the EU is important, but it is declining in importance. Also even without a Canada type deal we have a trade deficit with the EU. I.e. we buy more than we sell. So if tariffs are imposed on trade both ways we can use the tariffs we collect to pay our exporters tariffs.
3) Internal regulations. If you trade with another country, your exporters need to comply with their regulations on goods they export. Unfortunately the EU goes much farther than that - the EU wants to be a state and to regulate even intra country trade. Outside the EU that wouldn't happen.
4) Democracy. Democracy works if you vote for a government, that government makes policy and then you vote again. In the EU that process is broken because there are things you can vote for - controls on immigration for example - which the EU will block. In the run up to BREXIT Cameron asked for a delay between new immigrants arriving from the EU and being able to claim benefits but was slapped down. Meanwhile Merkel unilaterally admitted 'Syrian refugees' who turned out to be mostly not Syrian and not refugees. Since Germany controls the EU, the EU didn't bat an eyelid. In fact the EU is still trying to impose a quota system on EU countries to accept their 'fair share' of the migrants Merkel invited into Germany.
5) Defence. The EU wants an army and to be a state. The UK has traditionally seen NATO as being the security organisation, and the EEC and then EU as being about trade. Leaving the EU with a Canada type agreement keeps tariffs off trade but removes us from getting sucked into the EU's aspirations at statehood. Even a WTO deal isn't too bad for the reasons mentioned in 2)
6) Money. The UK makes a net contribution of £10billion per year. Outside the EU we'll probably have to pay a divorce fee of around £40billion or so. However after that we'll only contribute to programs which are in the national interest. Norway is not an EU member but is a single market member and makes per capita contributions of around 1/7 what the UK does.
Of course the Remoaners want you to think it's all a Russian plot. Nope. There was a referendum and you guys lost.
Internationally, the United States also notified several countries, including Canada, the UK, Australia, and Russia, in advance of the strike. The U.S. military stated it communicated with the Russian military to minimize any chance of Russian casualties."
There were Russian advisers at that base. Would you prefer he'd not warned Russia and killed a few of them? It was entirely prudent to warn Russia. That way they could get their personnel out, but they didn't have time to remove all the materiel the strike was aimed at.
Hours after the U.S. missile strike, Syrian government's warplanes took off from the Shayrat base to attack rebel positions again, including the town of Khan Shaykhun.[11] Commentators attributed the ability of the Syrian government to continue to operate from the base to the fact that the US gave Russia, Syria's ally, an advanced warning regarding the strike, which enabled Syrians to shelter many of its aircraft from the attack
LOL. You fucking halfwit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
U.S. Central Command stated in a press release that Tomahawk missiles hit "aircraft, hardened aircraft shelters, petroleum and logistical storage, ammunition supply bunkers, defense systems, and radars". Initial U.S. reports claimed "approximately 20 planes" were destroyed, and that 58 out of the 59 cruise missiles launched "severely degraded or destroyed" their intended target. According to the satellite images the runways[31] and the taxiways have been reportedly undamaged and combat flights from the attacked airbase resumed on 7 April a few hours after the attack, although U.S. officials did not state that the runway was a target. In a later statement on 10 April 2017, the US Secretary of Defense James Mattis claimed that the strike destroyed about 20% of the Syrian government's operational aircraft and the base had lost the ability to refuel or rearm aircraft.
An independent bomb damage assessment conducted by ImageSat International counted hits on 44 targets, with some targets being hit by more than one missile; these figures were determined using satellite images of the airbase 10 hours after the strike.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the strike damaged over a dozen hangars, a fuel depot, and an air defense base.
Al-Masdar News reported that 15 fighter jets were damaged or destroyed and that the destruction of fuel tankers caused several explosions and a large fire.
According to the claims of Russian defense ministry, the "combat effectiveness" of the attack was "extremely low"; only 23 missiles hit the base destroying six aircraft, and it did not know where the other 36 landed. Russian television news, citing a Syrian source at the airfield, said that nine planes were destroyed by the strikes (5 Su-22M3s, 1 Su-22M4, and 3 Mig-23ML) and that all planes were thought to have been out of action at the time.
So the US claims it was effective with 20 planes destroyed as do ImageSat, the Syrian Observatory for Human RIghts and Al-Masdar. The Russian defence ministry claimed the combat effectiveness was 'extremely low', but Russian TV claims 9 planes were destroyed.
So even though you Democrats normally claim anything from Russia is 'fake news', in this case you've decided to assume they're completely trustworthy and everyone else is lying.
Actually if all the Russians are claiming is that one aircraft landed and took off again, they might not be lying because the US didn't target the runways. But the implication the airbase is fine is deliberately misleading. If 58 Tomahawks hit an airbase it's very far from fine.
You can see the damage here
https://www.imagesatintl.com/u...
The US attacked all the aircraft shelters, workshops, fuel and ammo storage, some targets with more
That's another addition to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018 like the drone registration requirement.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/...
SEC. 1630B. PROHIBITION ON USE OF SOFTWARE PLATFORMS DEVELOPED BY KASPERSKY LAB.
(a) Prohibition.-No department, agency, organization, or other element of the Department of Defense may use, whether directly or through work with or on behalf of another organization or element of the Department or another department or agency of the United States Government, any software platform developed, in whole or in part, by Kaspersky Lab or any entity of which Kaspersky Lab has a majority ownership.
(b) Severance Of Network Connections.-The Secretary of Defense shall ensure that any network connection between a department, agency, organization, or other element of the Department of Defense and a department or agency of the United States Government that is using or hosting on its networks a software platform described in subsection (a) is immediately severed.
(c) Effective Date.-This section shall take effect on October 1, 2018.
That's more a RNC/McCain thing than a Trump one. It's not like Trump could veto the NDAA.
Sorry- but this is draconian and how you end up with people like Adolf Hitler in power murdering jews and others and another other police state.
Yeah, the Weimar Republic was notorious for its strict drone registration requirements.
http://www.thedrive.com/aerial...
The controversial drone policy introduced by the Federal Aviation Administration in 2015, requiring recreational drone users to registers their UAVs, was constitutionally overturned in May of this year, but it may end up being enforced again next year by being included in the upcoming National Defense Authorization Act of 2018.
According to Bloomberg, both the House and Senate agree on slipping the unmanned aerial vehicle registry into the defense bill, as demand for regulation in the drone industry is at an all-time high. Most recently, the White House expanded drone-testing regulations to presumably push toward standardizing nationwide UAV delivery. The current administration may deem a nationwide hobby-drone registration as a necessary first step toward that.
The previous policy was overturned
http://www.thedrive.com/aerial...
In 2015, the FAA officially announced that all owners of drones heavier than 250 grams (which is about as light as a cup of water) must be registered as "drone operators" in a national database. This, of course, startled some, as it seemed this regulation could mark the beginning of the end for freedom of use regarding hobby drones. Others felt it was a fair deal in the right direction, as we reported on last year. However, in a twist of turns, the District of Columbia circuit court of appeals overturned this legislation on Friday, May 19th, as its compatibility with a previous FAA ruling from 2012 is far from symbiotic.
The 2012 "FAA Modernization and Reform Act" rules that the FAA has no right to "promulgate any rule or regulation regarding a model aircraft", and as Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh sees it, the 2015 ruling clearly interferes with this established law. He adds, "Statutory interpretation does not get much simpler. The Registration Rule is unlawful as applied to model aircraft." Essentially, recreational drone users have been exempted from the aforementioned registry, which according to Popular Science, over 800,000 people have joined since 2015. This is something we at The Drive keep a close eye on, and an issue we regularly report on.
So Congress put a paragraph into the 2018 NDAA to restore registration
https://www.bloomberg.com/news...
The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington overturned the FAA drone registration system in May, finding that earlier legislation passed in 2012 didn't give the agency legal authority for it. A one-paragraph addition to the defense bill said that the registration system "shall be restored" as soon as the legislation becomes law.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/...
(d) Restoration Of Rules For Registration And Marking Of Unmanned Aircraft.-The rules adopted by the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration in the matter of registration and marking requirements for small unmanned aircraft (FAA-2015-7396; published on December 16, 2015) that were vacated by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in Taylor v. Huerta (No. 15-1495; decided on May 19, 2017) shall be restored to effect on the date of enactment of this Act.