One of the questions is, what would the US response be? They could detain, or at least delay, the departure of the ambassadors and staff. Sure it'd be totally illegal and against the spirit of International cooperation. That doesn't mean it wouldn't happen.
It could get worse. Britain and France might collude to shoot down all of the airliners carrying the diplomats from the US to Europe. Sure it'd be totally illegal and against the spirit of International cooperation. That doesn't mean it wouldn't happen.
The probability of those two possibilities are not likely to be terribly different.
There was, at best, a muddle of half-truths and nonsense in the AC's post. If the so called military industrial complex were really that powerful, its share of spending would not have dropped as it has. The long term trend since 1945 has been downwards, not steady, or upwards. That said, there are plenty of opportunities for reform in Washington.
In theory, yes. In fact it's like the school bully going through your lunch box and you catching him doing it. What are you gonna do? Beat him up? C'mon...
The story is a bit more complex than your simple story since at least the Chinese were in the lunchbox too, and probably more, and various people that make use of the shared lunchbox have been observed taking bribes, selling votes, spying themselves, and other assorted acts of crime and corruption. You're peddling a single panel cartoon when the real version is more of a soap opera.
You seem to have left out the role of the French. Of course that might complicate the faulty narrative. I give you kudos for creativity, but not for accuracy.
The vast majority of those deaths were either terrorists killing Iraqis, or Iraqis killing each other. This internecine warfare was often a part of militias struggling for control or extracting what they considered vengeance for terrorist attacks. The Coalition forces killed relatively few of them. So no, once again it was not the US.
You may interested to learn that Iraq has requested aid from the US to combat al Qaida in Iraq.
You're fooling yourself if you think European nations are going to significantly increase their defense spending any time soon. Defense spending is being throttled by spending on social programs and the economic and monetary crisis. It will be made worse by the population trends.
It probably would be a good thing for the US to leave in the next 10 years though since Europe will probably be in a civil war in 30-50 years.
The US was not the US before becoming a country. It was a series of colonies of European nations that were governed by Europe. If you want to go there, you should name the European nations holding colonies, not the US.
The united states DOES do those things. Just not within their own boarders. They are doing it now in Iraq and Afghanistan, they did it all the time in South America by funding and arming terrorist groups there.
Could you point out where the mass grave are that the US filled by deliberately killing entire towns? Where are the mass graves from the political opposition? You're simply wrong.
No, the US does not do what the Soviets and Germans did. That includes Iraq and Afghanistan. The reverse is true. The US put and end to Saddams filling of mass graves, and exposed them to the world. Some in the world oppose and protest putting an end to Saddam's reign of terror.
"Iraq, today, 10 years on from the war, from the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, is not what the Iraqi people hoped for and expected. We hoped for an inclusive democracy, an Iraq that is at peace with itself and at peace with its neighbors," Salih said. "To be blunt, we are far from that."
"But," he added, "it's important to understand where we started from.... Literally hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were sent to mass graves. Ten years on from the demise of Saddam Hussein, we're still discovering mass graves across Iraq. And Iraqis are better off without Saddam Hussein -- the overwhelming majority of Iraqis are better off without Saddam Hussein."
Many more mass graves have been found since this next item:
Already some 300 mass graves have been excavated since the end of Saddam's reign of terror. Although exact figures on the number of victims vary depending on who is counting, the Iraqis estimate that at least 500,000 bodies lie in the mass graves. The evidence collected in the pits is not only important to give relatives peace of mind, but also to assemble evidence against Saddam Hussein when he stands trial.
You weren't feeding a troll, your post is a troll.
The decline of the native Americans had many causes. The role played by the US federal government was rather limited. European nations holding colonies in the New World are at least as much to blame, if not more so. The main cause, however, was likely disease.
The result of that is predictably that the Chinese and Russians will still ultimately be able to listen, to their advantage, and the US won't, to its disadvantage. Many on Slashdot would be content with that outcome.
There already is a war in Syria. I'm not sure how you think the US could start one.
The presence of WMDs in Syria has been verified by many countries, not that there was really much question. It has been known for a long time.
Saddam had the Iraqi government behave as if it still had WMDs to fool the Iran which it had fought a war against in the recent past. The only reason they didn't still have WMDs was that they secretly disposed of their last stockpiles after fooling the inspectors for years. After the invasion they were still found to have banned weapons, just not WMDs. The Coalition forces did find unfilled chemical warheads for missiles though. Prior to the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq both possessed and used chemical weapons in the war against Iran, used chemical weapons on the people of Iraq, and had a biological weapons. They repeatedly lied and hid their stockpiles from inspectors.
Iraq continues to make use of its expertise with WMDs by helping the Libyans dispose of their chemical weapons. Saddam wouldn't have had interest in that.
In living memory both the Soviet Union and Germany littered their countries with mass graves filled by millions of people that either wanted to vote for the "wrong" political party, were the "wrong" race, went to the "wrong" church, or were even just killed randomly. Those mass murders were performed as government policy by the secret police, police, and military. The people (monsters) that performed the mass murders were rewarded by the government for their actions. The US has done nothing like that, so no, the US doesn't engage in every kind of atrocity as you claim. You really are quite the opportunist when it comes to slandering the US. I hope I live long enough to see you condemn mass murder by the Soviets instead of the tap dance you regularly do around the subject. I'm curious, are you still living around the old inter-German border as you've noted in the past?
It's just that there is a combination of ignorance of the spying by other countries and disdain towards the US for not being quite European enough. Time will probably reduce that.
MOSCOW – The Russian state-controlled English-language TV channel Russia Today has avoided cuts in funding for 2013 and is to receive 11.2 billion rubles ($355.6 million) from the government next year.
Similarly, the state run TV company VGTRK, which runs several channels, including Rossiya, Rossiya 2, Kultura and Rossiya 24, is going to collect 19.98 billion rubles ($634.3 million).
Most of the incidents, officials said, were self-reported. Such admissions can arise, for example, when an employee takes a polygraph tests as part of a renewal of a security clearance.
Which is exactly what you'd expect if the probability of getting caught is close to zero and the true number of cases is much larger.
Are you kidding? If the probability of getting caught is essentially zero, there is no incentive for someone to report themselves unless they are ethical. So now you have to choose - is the probability of getting caught not close to zero, or are the employees that break the rules in this way taking responsibility after having broken the rules, or is it both? You really haven't presented any evidence to support the assertion that there are significantly more than the 1 employee per year out of 30,000 - 40,000 that breaks the rules this way and is subjected to discipline.
Since this is the same process that NSA would use to ferret out moles and other law breakers, it certainly is in their interest to find out. Do you think Snowden made them look bad? That is the way undetected criminal action tends to work out. Undetected problems of this sort seldom age well. They are way better off detecting it themselves, before it festers and blows up.
I have no idea where some of you people get your ideas. Too much bad TV?
According to TFA most incidents were "self reported", meaning someone failed a polygraph. Since polygraphs are bullshit we know a lot of times the criminal abusing this power got away with it.
So you think that the rate might be higher than 1 person per year out of 30,000 - 40,000 people that was identified and disciplined or fired? I'll correct you on this: you don't know anything. You're just making wild speculation.
You think that Congressional or court oversight is supposed to prevent that 1 person per year out of 30,000 - 40,000 people that breaks the rules due to the base human emotion of jealousy? You can mark yourself down for a comprehension fail.
They spent the next year using their network of reporters (many of whom did speak Arabic and Farsi) interviewing people around the world trying to figure out why they hated us..... One of the themes that kept coming up again was Israel.... The way to protect our country is to do real intelligence, find out what the rest of the world is thinking, and go after the basic causes.
Al Qaida has long been attacking the Saudi government with the goal of replacing it with a religious government that will rule according to their principles. The Saudi government is not a supporter of Israel. Al Qaida has important roots in Egypt where one of its pre-al Qaida components was attacking the government to try to replace it with a religious government that would rule according to their strict version of Islam, and al Qaida itself continues that work today. Egypt did sign a peace treaty with Israel, but I don't think you can call them a big supporter of Israel. Al Qaida is active in Yemen where it is trying to overthrow the government to replace it with a religious government that will rule according to their principles. Yemen is not a supporter of Israel. Al Qaida sent many people to Iraq, and recruited man locals to fight the government and try to establish a religious government that would rule according to their principles. Iraq is not a big supporter of Israel. By now you should be discerning a pattern.
Al Qaida's primary goal has little to do with Israel. Al Qaida actually came to the anti-Israel cause very late, and it is a peripheral goal to them. Their main objective is to replace the governments in Muslim countries with religious governments that rule according to their principles - strict Sharia law with their interpretation, restore the Islamic Caliphate government that was dissolved in 1924 with the fall of the Ottoman Empire, continue with the long interrupted Muslim conquest of the world until all countries are ruled by Islamic governments that they approve of, and the world's peoples turn to Islam.
When Bin Laden wrote his letter to America he made a series of demands. The first one: convert to Islam. He followed that with demands to replace the Constitution with Sharia law, and begin behaving according to Islamic law (no alcohol, no drugs, no pornography, no blasphemy, etc., etc., etc.). This is consistent with al Qaida's long range goal. Once again, Israel has nothing to do with that.
The correct information regarding al Qaida's goals has been available for more than 11 years, and it has been 17 years since Bin Laden issued his original fatwa, his declaration of war, at the start of the conflict. Despite this you advocate intensive research to figure out what is already known, and then derive the wrong answer, blaming it on Israel. The only way I can see that happening is that the correct answer does not agree with your stated liberal politics. That is a European problem as well.
I'm afraid you are going to have more disappointments in the future since various Muslim and Palestinian groups are ready for peace, just not with Israel, the Jewish state - ever. They fundamentally reject Israel's right to exist at all. They do not accept the state of Israel in any form, nor do they accept Israel's stewardship of Jerusalem, the only possible site for the Jewish temple, and the current site of the third holiest site in Islam. Conflict in some form is practically guaranteed to endure.
The fact that the Palestinians and Israel have unsettled differences is no excuse to accept aggression by al Qaida.
As Bruce Schneier says, you don't find a needle in a haystack by piling on more hay.
With all due respect, Bruce is not an oracle, he is serving in this case a
Both Moses and George Washington used spies, and Benjamin Franklin opened other people's mail for intelligence purposes. Do you think it is too much to ask that the US and its allies be allowed to use them in our age to prevent a surprise nuclear attack, and maybe the occasional 9/11 or bombing? Or is that just right out? Is the only "ethical" thing to do simply carting away large numbers of bodies after an attack and rebuild the airplane / stadium / city, assuming there aren't new overlords at that point who prevent it? What about the rights of the victims? Isn't the right to life the most basic right of all? What would you do for them, to prevent their being killed? Or does that not matter? Would you even approve of Thomas Jefferson's actions to prevent Americans from being taken into slavery, or as hostages?
Slashdot Mirror
At least now I know what cruel game you're playing.
Cheers
One of the questions is, what would the US response be? They could detain, or at least delay, the departure of the ambassadors and staff. Sure it'd be totally illegal and against the spirit of International cooperation. That doesn't mean it wouldn't happen.
It could get worse. Britain and France might collude to shoot down all of the airliners carrying the diplomats from the US to Europe. Sure it'd be totally illegal and against the spirit of International cooperation. That doesn't mean it wouldn't happen.
The probability of those two possibilities are not likely to be terribly different.
There was, at best, a muddle of half-truths and nonsense in the AC's post. If the so called military industrial complex were really that powerful, its share of spending would not have dropped as it has. The long term trend since 1945 has been downwards, not steady, or upwards. That said, there are plenty of opportunities for reform in Washington.
In theory, yes. In fact it's like the school bully going through your lunch box and you catching him doing it. What are you gonna do? Beat him up? C'mon...
The story is a bit more complex than your simple story since at least the Chinese were in the lunchbox too, and probably more, and various people that make use of the shared lunchbox have been observed taking bribes, selling votes, spying themselves, and other assorted acts of crime and corruption. You're peddling a single panel cartoon when the real version is more of a soap opera.
You seem to have left out the role of the French. Of course that might complicate the faulty narrative. I give you kudos for creativity, but not for accuracy.
The vast majority of those deaths were either terrorists killing Iraqis, or Iraqis killing each other. This internecine warfare was often a part of militias struggling for control or extracting what they considered vengeance for terrorist attacks. The Coalition forces killed relatively few of them. So no, once again it was not the US.
You may interested to learn that Iraq has requested aid from the US to combat al Qaida in Iraq.
Iraq seeks help from US amid growing violence
You're fooling yourself if you think European nations are going to significantly increase their defense spending any time soon. Defense spending is being throttled by spending on social programs and the economic and monetary crisis. It will be made worse by the population trends.
It probably would be a good thing for the US to leave in the next 10 years though since Europe will probably be in a civil war in 30-50 years.
The US was not the US before becoming a country. It was a series of colonies of European nations that were governed by Europe. If you want to go there, you should name the European nations holding colonies, not the US.
The united states DOES do those things. Just not within their own boarders.
They are doing it now in Iraq and Afghanistan, they did it all the time in South America by funding and arming terrorist groups there.
Could you point out where the mass grave are that the US filled by deliberately killing entire towns? Where are the mass graves from the political opposition? You're simply wrong.
No, the US does not do what the Soviets and Germans did. That includes Iraq and Afghanistan. The reverse is true. The US put and end to Saddams filling of mass graves, and exposed them to the world. Some in the world oppose and protest putting an end to Saddam's reign of terror.
10 Years After the Fall of Saddam, How Do Iraqis Look Back on the War?
"Iraq, today, 10 years on from the war, from the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, is not what the Iraqi people hoped for and expected. We hoped for an inclusive democracy, an Iraq that is at peace with itself and at peace with its neighbors," Salih said. "To be blunt, we are far from that."
"But," he added, "it's important to understand where we started from. ... Literally hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were sent to mass graves. Ten years on from the demise of Saddam Hussein, we're still discovering mass graves across Iraq. And Iraqis are better off without Saddam Hussein -- the overwhelming majority of Iraqis are better off without Saddam Hussein."
Many more mass graves have been found since this next item:
Excavating Mass Graves in Iraq: The Bitter Search for Truth in the Desert Sand - 2005
Already some 300 mass graves have been excavated since the end of Saddam's reign of terror. Although exact figures on the number of victims vary depending on who is counting, the Iraqis estimate that at least 500,000 bodies lie in the mass graves. The evidence collected in the pits is not only important to give relatives peace of mind, but also to assemble evidence against Saddam Hussein when he stands trial.
You weren't feeding a troll, your post is a troll.
The native americans disagree.
The decline of the native Americans had many causes. The role played by the US federal government was rather limited. European nations holding colonies in the New World are at least as much to blame, if not more so. The main cause, however, was likely disease.
Were American Indians the Victims of Genocide?
Did the U.S. Army Distribute Smallpox Blankets to Indians? Fabrication and Falsification in Ward Churchill's Genocide Rhetoric and Discrediting the Politicization of History
The result of that is predictably that the Chinese and Russians will still ultimately be able to listen, to their advantage, and the US won't, to its disadvantage. Many on Slashdot would be content with that outcome.
Sounds like Star Wars chatter to me.
There already is a war in Syria. I'm not sure how you think the US could start one.
The presence of WMDs in Syria has been verified by many countries, not that there was really much question. It has been known for a long time.
Saddam had the Iraqi government behave as if it still had WMDs to fool the Iran which it had fought a war against in the recent past. The only reason they didn't still have WMDs was that they secretly disposed of their last stockpiles after fooling the inspectors for years. After the invasion they were still found to have banned weapons, just not WMDs. The Coalition forces did find unfilled chemical warheads for missiles though. Prior to the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq both possessed and used chemical weapons in the war against Iran, used chemical weapons on the people of Iraq, and had a biological weapons. They repeatedly lied and hid their stockpiles from inspectors.
Iraq continues to make use of its expertise with WMDs by helping the Libyans dispose of their chemical weapons. Saddam wouldn't have had interest in that.
Iraq to help Libya destroy its chemical weapons
Iraq is better off without Saddam, and the price of the transition was fewer people killed than Saddam's long term average annual death toll.
Exactly. So it's OK the USA does it but not the Chinese?
Of course. We may do every kind of atrocity, for it is in the name of peace and democracy.
Who is that "we" you are referring to? China? Russia? Germany? You don't really make that clear.
A specific claim was being made, and refuted. So no, that wasn't the argument.
In living memory both the Soviet Union and Germany littered their countries with mass graves filled by millions of people that either wanted to vote for the "wrong" political party, were the "wrong" race, went to the "wrong" church, or were even just killed randomly. Those mass murders were performed as government policy by the secret police, police, and military. The people (monsters) that performed the mass murders were rewarded by the government for their actions. The US has done nothing like that, so no, the US doesn't engage in every kind of atrocity as you claim. You really are quite the opportunist when it comes to slandering the US. I hope I live long enough to see you condemn mass murder by the Soviets instead of the tap dance you regularly do around the subject. I'm curious, are you still living around the old inter-German border as you've noted in the past?
Why would any country trust a closed-sourced product produced by a US Technology firm?
Because the Chinese, French, Germans, British, Swedes, and Finns aren't much different?
Officials say Chinese spies have targeted every sector of the U.S. economy
Supo wants expanded net surveillance powers
The German Prism: Berlin Wants to Spy Too
Boeing Called A Target Of French Spy Effort
It's just that there is a combination of ignorance of the spying by other countries and disdain towards the US for not being quite European enough. Time will probably reduce that.
RT is infamous for being virulently anti-American; it's a Russian news organization with an agenda that is fairly obvious at times
Although the BBC may have its faults, RT, nee Russia Today, is both government funded and controlled.
VGTRK, Channel One and NTV will also collect new government cash.
MOSCOW – The Russian state-controlled English-language TV channel Russia Today has avoided cuts in funding for 2013 and is to receive 11.2 billion rubles ($355.6 million) from the government next year.
Similarly, the state run TV company VGTRK, which runs several channels, including Rossiya, Rossiya 2, Kultura and Rossiya 24, is going to collect 19.98 billion rubles ($634.3 million).
Most of the incidents, officials said, were self-reported. Such admissions can arise, for example, when an employee takes a polygraph tests as part of a renewal of a security clearance.
Which is exactly what you'd expect if the probability of getting caught is close to zero and the true number of cases is much larger.
Are you kidding? If the probability of getting caught is essentially zero, there is no incentive for someone to report themselves unless they are ethical. So now you have to choose - is the probability of getting caught not close to zero, or are the employees that break the rules in this way taking responsibility after having broken the rules, or is it both? You really haven't presented any evidence to support the assertion that there are significantly more than the 1 employee per year out of 30,000 - 40,000 that breaks the rules this way and is subjected to discipline.
Since this is the same process that NSA would use to ferret out moles and other law breakers, it certainly is in their interest to find out. Do you think Snowden made them look bad? That is the way undetected criminal action tends to work out. Undetected problems of this sort seldom age well. They are way better off detecting it themselves, before it festers and blows up.
I have no idea where some of you people get your ideas. Too much bad TV?
According to TFA most incidents were "self reported", meaning someone failed a polygraph. Since polygraphs are bullshit we know a lot of times the criminal abusing this power got away with it.
So you think that the rate might be higher than 1 person per year out of 30,000 - 40,000 people that was identified and disciplined or fired? I'll correct you on this: you don't know anything. You're just making wild speculation.
Wasn't the oversight supposed to prevent this?
You think that Congressional or court oversight is supposed to prevent that 1 person per year out of 30,000 - 40,000 people that breaks the rules due to the base human emotion of jealousy? You can mark yourself down for a comprehension fail.
They spent the next year using their network of reporters (many of whom did speak Arabic and Farsi) interviewing people around the world trying to figure out why they hated us. .... One of the themes that kept coming up again was Israel. ... The way to protect our country is to do real intelligence, find out what the rest of the world is thinking, and go after the basic causes.
Al Qaida has long been attacking the Saudi government with the goal of replacing it with a religious government that will rule according to their principles. The Saudi government is not a supporter of Israel. Al Qaida has important roots in Egypt where one of its pre-al Qaida components was attacking the government to try to replace it with a religious government that would rule according to their strict version of Islam, and al Qaida itself continues that work today. Egypt did sign a peace treaty with Israel, but I don't think you can call them a big supporter of Israel. Al Qaida is active in Yemen where it is trying to overthrow the government to replace it with a religious government that will rule according to their principles. Yemen is not a supporter of Israel. Al Qaida sent many people to Iraq, and recruited man locals to fight the government and try to establish a religious government that would rule according to their principles. Iraq is not a big supporter of Israel. By now you should be discerning a pattern.
Al Qaida's primary goal has little to do with Israel. Al Qaida actually came to the anti-Israel cause very late, and it is a peripheral goal to them. Their main objective is to replace the governments in Muslim countries with religious governments that rule according to their principles - strict Sharia law with their interpretation, restore the Islamic Caliphate government that was dissolved in 1924 with the fall of the Ottoman Empire, continue with the long interrupted Muslim conquest of the world until all countries are ruled by Islamic governments that they approve of, and the world's peoples turn to Islam.
When Bin Laden wrote his letter to America he made a series of demands. The first one: convert to Islam. He followed that with demands to replace the Constitution with Sharia law, and begin behaving according to Islamic law (no alcohol, no drugs, no pornography, no blasphemy, etc., etc., etc.). This is consistent with al Qaida's long range goal. Once again, Israel has nothing to do with that.
The correct information regarding al Qaida's goals has been available for more than 11 years, and it has been 17 years since Bin Laden issued his original fatwa, his declaration of war, at the start of the conflict. Despite this you advocate intensive research to figure out what is already known, and then derive the wrong answer, blaming it on Israel. The only way I can see that happening is that the correct answer does not agree with your stated liberal politics. That is a European problem as well.
I'm afraid you are going to have more disappointments in the future since various Muslim and Palestinian groups are ready for peace, just not with Israel, the Jewish state - ever. They fundamentally reject Israel's right to exist at all. They do not accept the state of Israel in any form, nor do they accept Israel's stewardship of Jerusalem, the only possible site for the Jewish temple, and the current site of the third holiest site in Islam. Conflict in some form is practically guaranteed to endure.
The fact that the Palestinians and Israel have unsettled differences is no excuse to accept aggression by al Qaida.
As Bruce Schneier says, you don't find a needle in a haystack by piling on more hay.
With all due respect, Bruce is not an oracle, he is serving in this case a
That's funny, I don't see any argument or facts in your post other than where you quote me. Is that what you meant to write?
Both Moses and George Washington used spies, and Benjamin Franklin opened other people's mail for intelligence purposes. Do you think it is too much to ask that the US and its allies be allowed to use them in our age to prevent a surprise nuclear attack, and maybe the occasional 9/11 or bombing? Or is that just right out? Is the only "ethical" thing to do simply carting away large numbers of bodies after an attack and rebuild the airplane / stadium / city, assuming there aren't new overlords at that point who prevent it? What about the rights of the victims? Isn't the right to life the most basic right of all? What would you do for them, to prevent their being killed? Or does that not matter? Would you even approve of Thomas Jefferson's actions to prevent Americans from being taken into slavery, or as hostages?