No, you don't quite have that right. To the best of my knowledge they are POWs, but their status is "unlawful combatant." They do not fight and act in accordance with the Law of War, hence their status. As a result they forfeit protections and privileges they would otherwise have.
I really don't think you quite get how that day would work. "Senator, PRISM has discovered an email of you admitting to having a gay lover in college...
You apparently have no familiarity with American culture. Homosexuality was once, "The love that dare not speak its name." Now it's, "The love that won't shut up." There have been a number of legislators that have been "out." It doesn't seem to have hurt their careers. They would probably take it as free publicity.
It would almost certainly lead to a real smack down of the NSA were such a thing to happen.
Hong Kong and the US have an extradition treaty. There is no requirement to hold a trial for POWs. The US waterboarded a grand total of 3 terrorists in the same way that it has waterboarded thousands upon thousands of its own pilots and special forces. The most recent use of waterboarding on a terrorist was more than 10 years ago. As far as being a beacon of freedom, the US has never had to build a fence to keep people in, as many other countries have had to do. And it can't quite manage to get a fence built to keep people out. And people keep coming.
That is a very interesting idea. And it would make for a very clever bit of political warfare, leveraging the scandal in the US to attack the British. Not only would it create political problems for GCHQ in the UK, but it could be expected to cause friction between Britain and its allies, as well as cause friction between the US NSA and UK GCHQ. It would also cause further problems against NSA in the US. Friction and suspicion in the Western alliances all around while China continues to expand its fleet, grab new territories, continues hacking, and espionage. Brilliant! One must assume that Sun Tzu is required reading for Chinese strategists, and that it still bears fruit.
“Supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.” - Sun Tzu “All warfare is based on deception.” - Sun Tzu
GCHQ is a British organization. How would Snowden get copies of their plans, if there are in fact legitimate? He seems to be making some mighty big claims for having been employed as an employee of an NSA contractor for three months.
Oh, sorry, the Slippery Slope Mafia will be along in a minute to tell me that's a logical fallacy and, yes, it really is all just about stopping kids seeing naked people.
I don't think it is purely so much a question of just seeing naked people so much as what those naked people are doing, especially when it involves objects, animals, mass participation, unexpected body parts, unpleasant or cruel activities, and yes, children.
This new one appears to be untouched by looters, so it may well be in tact and preserved. It also may have some unique content since it appears to have been built during a transition period. It should be interesting to see what comes from it.
I will also be curious to see what is found using the same technique in other parts of the world, such as South America, Africa, and the Middle East.
Now now, don't confuse Senator Obama with President Obama. They're entirely different people...
(I'm not sure to what extent I'm joking...)
In a sense they are. It's easy to make big sweeping claims when you're uninformed about the threats out there, on unfamiliar legal ground, and not the one responsible for national security. One election takes care of the question of who is responsible. A couple of daily presidential intelligence briefings will start to take care of the uninformed part. Some briefings by the Justice and Defense departments on the Law of War and national security law will firm up the legal ground. The world is going to start looking different at this point.
When you're President of the United States, you own whatever happens on your watch. President Obama already owns at least two successful terrorist attacks, and two attempted attacks, ignoring the ones that were intercepted. He probably doesn't want to own any more. It's bad for the party at the polls, bad for his record as president, and bad for America, let alone the victims. Also note that he hasn't asked Congress to rescind the Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed after 9/11, and legally the same as a declaration of war.
If you're responsible and assumed that there were no terrorist threats before becoming informed, you might have a change of view as well. And if he hadn't, or wavers in the future, and that results in more successful terrorist attacks, the Congress would likely become a Republican congress within an election or two, and at that point they would help the President along.
2013 Boston Marathon bombing 3 dead, 254 wounded. Fifteen victims suffered amputations, two of which had double amputations.
U.S. citizen Antonio Martinez, aka Muhammad Hussain, pled guilty to attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction against federal property in connection with a scheme to attack an armed forces recruiting station in Catonsville, Maryland.
Yonathan Melaku, of Alexandria, Virginia, pled guilty to damaging property and to firearms violations involving five separate shootings at military installations in northern Virginia between October and November 2010, and to attempting to damage veterans’ memorials at Arlington National Cemetery.
Jamshid Muhtorov was arrested by members of the FBI’s Denver and Chicago Joint Terrorism Task Forces on a charge of providing and attempting to provide material support to the Islamic Jihad Union, a Pakistan-based designated foreign terrorist organization.
I thought the thinking was that he had helped give this life? Why would he destroy his own creation? After all, he did nothing about Microsoft's monstrosities.
There's a particularly insidious branch of feminism (and I use that word because that's how they identify, not because I consider them feminists) which seems to think that you are only female if you were born that way, and that you're only male if you're born that way.
The problem is, it isn't just a particular branch of feminism that questions it. It is a medical question as well since it doesn't seem to be a reliable cure for the distress. You seem to be reducing it to just politics, and that isn't really accurate.
Supposedly this is more than made up for by the fact they can live the rest of their life how they feel they should be.
Maybe. There are people that do regret it. If you do, there's no magic reset available. On this earth you will never fully be again what you once were.
But what worries other psychiatrists is the mounting evidence that surgery may not actually improve the lives of those who feel they were born with the wrong body. A review of more than 100 international studies of post-operative transsexuals by the University of Birmingham found there was no scientific evidence that surgery was effective and, in many cases, patients were left feeling more distressed. Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University — which housed one of the pioneer gender clinics — no longer performs sex-change surgery due to such concerns.
A recent British review found suicide rates of up to 18 per cent among people who had undergone gender reassignment surgery. Doctors from London's Portman Clinic say they see many patients who feel trapped in "no-man's land" after surgery, finding themselves with a body which is no longer recognisable as male or female. Psychotherapy, the experts believe, may have saved them from such a fate but few gender clinics offer it. -- more
The best thing to do if you want to change people's minds is to find facts and present them reasonably, politely, logically, in a factual manner, and possibly with a reference link. Flames and insults seldom change peoples minds, and rarely snark, but facts sometimes do. Note that I wrote "sometimes." And it is often a long process. Being in the minority on Slashdot often means having to ignore insult, bad moderation, harassment, trolls, the occasional doppelganger trying to discredit you, silly arguments against you being highly moderated while you get mod bombed, the occasional death threat or wish for your injury, and all manner of other nonsense. And you have to live with the fact that vehement statements that are uninformed, silly, completely wrong, and often inflammatory, will be highly moderated as long as they are from the proper politically correct perspective. There are people from all around the world that post here with all manner of ideas, including: liberals, socialists, progressives, libertarians, conservatives, communists, Nazis, Islamists, Christians, atheists, the occasional Jedi, programmers, sys admins, engineers, doctors, lawyers, soldiers, students, mathematicians, physicists, and I'm going to stop because the full list is so long, seemingly unbounded. It can be frustrating, but try to be salt, if you care to.
Except they are not spying on terrorists they are spying on everyone.
There is an interesting question in that. At exactly what point do you move from not conducting surveillance to conducting surveillance? I think that everybody can agree that if they listen to your actual voice communications, that is surveillance. If that completely ignore you, that is not.
Is getting a list of phone numbers without identifying information surveillance? Is getting a list of phone numbers that connect to a particular phone number surveillance, even if there is no identifying information, and they don't listen? Is getting a list of phone numbers that connect to phone numbers that have connected to a particular phone number surveillance, even if there is no identifying information, and they don't listen? Now, what if the particular phone number of interest as the basis for the above is that of someone in direct contact with al Qaida? Does that change anything?
There are plenty of additional iterations of additional fact, screening, and analysis that could be done. I'm not sure that much of it really qualifies as being surveillance until they start listening or start focusing in on particular numbers.
I think one of the most shocking things for people that believe the United States is the great evil in the world is to get a serious look into Soviet history.
The peoples of Eastern Europe are great peoples, but they long labored under the most oppressive of governments.
Gladiator?! That standard hollywood cheesy piece of shit?
I take it then that most "cheesy piece of shit" movies result in winning 5 Academy Awards? There was award winning work done in 300 as well.
Apparently you overlooked my caveat, "..depending on your tastes and what you want to get out of it." Feel free to make your own list and leave it laying around Slashdot for the next AC that comes along. That would add far more to the discussion than the post you made.
He's lying, or he's the worst traitor in the history of the United States. It can't be both.
So you think that traitors can't be liars too? Or that liars can't be traitors?
You must be new here. Welcome to earth.
Even if everything he has said has been a lie, and the document fabricated, he has caused enormous damage to the reputation of the United States and stirred up a political crisis that is an enormous distraction from addressing actual demonstrated political oppression in the United State - the IRS Scandal. It will take years for the controversy that Snowden kicked up to die down, if ever. If he hasn't lied, the damage is even worse because he disclosed actual secrets instead of going to Congress, who will have to address it in either case, or the Inspector General. It's hard to imagine how he could cause more extensive damage unless he was to go the route of the Walker spy ring.
Look at the lies told by the Soviet Union accusing the US of creating the AIDs virus. That is still believed around the world to varying degrees.
In October 1985, the influential Soviet weekly Literaturnaya Gazeta (Literary Gazette) published an article alleging that the U.S. government had engineered the AIDS virus during biological warfare research. The story further claimed that the virus was being spread throughout the world by U.S. servicemen who had been used as guinea pigs for the experiments.
None of that is true but it is the crux of a vicious disinformation campaign by the Soviet Union. It now has appeared in major newspapers of over 50 countries, promoting anti-Americanism. Most unfortunately, it has also distracted attention from the all-important task of educating people on the origin and prevention of acquired immune deficiency syndrome, AIDS.
Slashdot Mirror
No, you don't quite have that right. To the best of my knowledge they are POWs, but their status is "unlawful combatant." They do not fight and act in accordance with the Law of War, hence their status. As a result they forfeit protections and privileges they would otherwise have.
Didn't seem to do have much effect on Barney Frank.
I'm glad you showed up. I might be bingo. ;)
Oh no, you are quite right. Thank you.
Exclusive: Only Three Have Been Waterboarded by CIA
If Khaled el-Masri was raped, it would be a crime.
You should think about choosing another tag for yourself than, "dumbfuck." It is likely to cause people to hold your views as disreputable.
Feel free to find proof ...proof... that more occurred.
Exclusive: Only Three Have Been Waterboarded by CIA
I really don't think you quite get how that day would work. "Senator, PRISM has discovered an email of you admitting to having a gay lover in college...
You apparently have no familiarity with American culture. Homosexuality was once, "The love that dare not speak its name." Now it's, "The love that won't shut up." There have been a number of legislators that have been "out." It doesn't seem to have hurt their careers. They would probably take it as free publicity.
It would almost certainly lead to a real smack down of the NSA were such a thing to happen.
Technology and results of surveillance are two different questions. I wouldn't expect them to be kept in the same place.
You don't have much of that right.
Hong Kong and the US have an extradition treaty.
There is no requirement to hold a trial for POWs.
The US waterboarded a grand total of 3 terrorists in the same way that it has waterboarded thousands upon thousands of its own pilots and special forces. The most recent use of waterboarding on a terrorist was more than 10 years ago.
As far as being a beacon of freedom, the US has never had to build a fence to keep people in, as many other countries have had to do. And it can't quite manage to get a fence built to keep people out. And people keep coming.
That is a very interesting idea. And it would make for a very clever bit of political warfare, leveraging the scandal in the US to attack the British. Not only would it create political problems for GCHQ in the UK, but it could be expected to cause friction between Britain and its allies, as well as cause friction between the US NSA and UK GCHQ. It would also cause further problems against NSA in the US. Friction and suspicion in the Western alliances all around while China continues to expand its fleet, grab new territories, continues hacking, and espionage. Brilliant! One must assume that Sun Tzu is required reading for Chinese strategists, and that it still bears fruit.
“Supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.” - Sun Tzu
“All warfare is based on deception.” - Sun Tzu
My hat is off to you.
Its not that tough but stop trying to off shore parenting to your fucking government.
Is that the same government that provides and runs the schools, as well as providing all manner of health and safety guidance?
GCHQ is a British organization. How would Snowden get copies of their plans, if there are in fact legitimate? He seems to be making some mighty big claims for having been employed as an employee of an NSA contractor for three months.
Oh, sorry, the Slippery Slope Mafia will be along in a minute to tell me that's a logical fallacy and, yes, it really is all just about stopping kids seeing naked people.
I don't think it is purely so much a question of just seeing naked people so much as what those naked people are doing, especially when it involves objects, animals, mass participation, unexpected body parts, unpleasant or cruel activities, and yes, children.
This new one appears to be untouched by looters, so it may well be in tact and preserved. It also may have some unique content since it appears to have been built during a transition period. It should be interesting to see what comes from it.
I will also be curious to see what is found using the same technique in other parts of the world, such as South America, Africa, and the Middle East.
Now now, don't confuse Senator Obama with President Obama. They're entirely different people...
(I'm not sure to what extent I'm joking...)
In a sense they are. It's easy to make big sweeping claims when you're uninformed about the threats out there, on unfamiliar legal ground, and not the one responsible for national security. One election takes care of the question of who is responsible. A couple of daily presidential intelligence briefings will start to take care of the uninformed part. Some briefings by the Justice and Defense departments on the Law of War and national security law will firm up the legal ground. The world is going to start looking different at this point.
When you're President of the United States, you own whatever happens on your watch. President Obama already owns at least two successful terrorist attacks, and two attempted attacks, ignoring the ones that were intercepted. He probably doesn't want to own any more. It's bad for the party at the polls, bad for his record as president, and bad for America, let alone the victims. Also note that he hasn't asked Congress to rescind the Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed after 9/11, and legally the same as a declaration of war.
If you're responsible and assumed that there were no terrorist threats before becoming informed, you might have a change of view as well. And if he hadn't, or wavers in the future, and that results in more successful terrorist attacks, the Congress would likely become a Republican congress within an election or two, and at that point they would help the President along.
2013 Boston Marathon bombing 3 dead, 254 wounded. Fifteen victims suffered amputations, two of which had double amputations.
2010 Attempted bombing of Times Square in New York City by the Taliban - Attack failed, car bomb could have been mass casualty event.
2009 The "Underwear" bomber - Attack failed, potentially could have brought down aircraft with death of all aboard
2009 Fort Hood massacre - 13 dead, 30 wounded
Just a few weekly arrest reports from the FBI during President Obama's term:
FBI’s Top Ten News Stories for the Week Ending January 27, 2012
U.S. citizen Antonio Martinez, aka Muhammad Hussain, pled guilty to attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction against federal property in connection with a scheme to attack an armed forces recruiting station in Catonsville, Maryland.
Yonathan Melaku, of Alexandria, Virginia, pled guilty to damaging property and to firearms violations involving five separate shootings at military installations in northern Virginia between October and November 2010, and to attempting to damage veterans’ memorials at Arlington National Cemetery.
Jamshid Muhtorov was arrested by members of the FBI’s Denver and Chicago Joint Terrorism Task Forces on a charge of providing and attempting to provide material support to the Islamic Jihad Union, a Pakistan-based designated foreign terrorist organization.
FBI’s Top Ten News Stories for the Week Ending January 13, 2012
I thought the thinking was that he had helped give this life? Why would he destroy his own creation? After all, he did nothing about Microsoft's monstrosities.
There's a particularly insidious branch of feminism (and I use that word because that's how they identify, not because I consider them feminists) which seems to think that you are only female if you were born that way, and that you're only male if you're born that way.
The problem is, it isn't just a particular branch of feminism that questions it. It is a medical question as well since it doesn't seem to be a reliable cure for the distress. You seem to be reducing it to just politics, and that isn't really accurate.
Supposedly this is more than made up for by the fact they can live the rest of their life how they feel they should be.
Maybe. There are people that do regret it. If you do, there's no magic reset available. On this earth you will never fully be again what you once were.
Are sex change operations justified?
Sex changes are not effective, say researchers
'I will never be able to have sex again. Ever'
But what worries other psychiatrists is the mounting evidence that surgery may not actually improve the lives of those who feel they were born with the wrong body. A review of more than 100 international studies of post-operative transsexuals by the University of Birmingham found there was no scientific evidence that surgery was effective and, in many cases, patients were left feeling more distressed. Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University — which housed one of the pioneer gender clinics — no longer performs sex-change surgery due to such concerns.
A recent British review found suicide rates of up to 18 per cent among people who had undergone gender reassignment surgery. Doctors from London's Portman Clinic say they see many patients who feel trapped in "no-man's land" after surgery, finding themselves with a body which is no longer recognisable as male or female. Psychotherapy, the experts believe, may have saved them from such a fate but few gender clinics offer it. -- more
Long-term follow-up of transsexual persons undergoing sex reassignment surgery
It's a difficult issue for all concerned.
The best thing to do if you want to change people's minds is to find facts and present them reasonably, politely, logically, in a factual manner, and possibly with a reference link. Flames and insults seldom change peoples minds, and rarely snark, but facts sometimes do. Note that I wrote "sometimes." And it is often a long process. Being in the minority on Slashdot often means having to ignore insult, bad moderation, harassment, trolls, the occasional doppelganger trying to discredit you, silly arguments against you being highly moderated while you get mod bombed, the occasional death threat or wish for your injury, and all manner of other nonsense. And you have to live with the fact that vehement statements that are uninformed, silly, completely wrong, and often inflammatory, will be highly moderated as long as they are from the proper politically correct perspective. There are people from all around the world that post here with all manner of ideas, including: liberals, socialists, progressives, libertarians, conservatives, communists, Nazis, Islamists, Christians, atheists, the occasional Jedi, programmers, sys admins, engineers, doctors, lawyers, soldiers, students, mathematicians, physicists, and I'm going to stop because the full list is so long, seemingly unbounded. It can be frustrating, but try to be salt, if you care to.
Except they are not spying on terrorists they are spying on everyone.
There is an interesting question in that. At exactly what point do you move from not conducting surveillance to conducting surveillance? I think that everybody can agree that if they listen to your actual voice communications, that is surveillance. If that completely ignore you, that is not.
Is getting a list of phone numbers without identifying information surveillance?
Is getting a list of phone numbers that connect to a particular phone number surveillance, even if there is no identifying information, and they don't listen?
Is getting a list of phone numbers that connect to phone numbers that have connected to a particular phone number surveillance, even if there is no identifying information, and they don't listen?
Now, what if the particular phone number of interest as the basis for the above is that of someone in direct contact with al Qaida? Does that change anything?
There are plenty of additional iterations of additional fact, screening, and analysis that could be done. I'm not sure that much of it really qualifies as being surveillance until they start listening or start focusing in on particular numbers.
Poison laboratory of the Soviet secret services
Now you've heard. Of course the Soviets didn't limit themselves to such bourgeois crimes.
Katyn massacre
No indeed.
Soviets Face Up to the Gulag
Gulag: Understanding the Magnitude of What Happened
A Portrait of Stalin: Secret Police
The Soviet Story (2008)
There is a lot that is hiding in Soviet history.
The Great Terror: A Reassessment
I think one of the most shocking things for people that believe the United States is the great evil in the world is to get a serious look into Soviet history.
The peoples of Eastern Europe are great peoples, but they long labored under the most oppressive of governments.
Gladiator?! That standard hollywood cheesy piece of shit?
I take it then that most "cheesy piece of shit" movies result in winning 5 Academy Awards? There was award winning work done in 300 as well.
Apparently you overlooked my caveat, "..depending on your tastes and what you want to get out of it." Feel free to make your own list and leave it laying around Slashdot for the next AC that comes along. That would add far more to the discussion than the post you made.
Feel free to identify the "straw men."
When you write, " I also see you enjoy being pedantic..." I take it that you mean I'm injecting some facts that are unfortunate for your argument?
He's lying, or he's the worst traitor in the history of the United States. It can't be both.
So you think that traitors can't be liars too? Or that liars can't be traitors?
You must be new here. Welcome to earth.
Even if everything he has said has been a lie, and the document fabricated, he has caused enormous damage to the reputation of the United States and stirred up a political crisis that is an enormous distraction from addressing actual demonstrated political oppression in the United State - the IRS Scandal. It will take years for the controversy that Snowden kicked up to die down, if ever. If he hasn't lied, the damage is even worse because he disclosed actual secrets instead of going to Congress, who will have to address it in either case, or the Inspector General. It's hard to imagine how he could cause more extensive damage unless he was to go the route of the Walker spy ring.
Look at the lies told by the Soviet Union accusing the US of creating the AIDs virus. That is still believed around the world to varying degrees.
Soviets Sponsor Spread of AIDS Disinformation
In October 1985, the influential Soviet weekly Literaturnaya Gazeta (Literary Gazette) published an article alleging that the U.S. government had engineered the AIDS virus during biological warfare research. The story further claimed that the virus was being spread throughout the world by U.S. servicemen who had been used as guinea pigs for the experiments.
None of that is true but it is the crux of a vicious disinformation campaign by the Soviet Union. It now has appeared in major newspapers of over 50 countries, promoting anti-Americanism. Most unfortunately, it has also distracted attention from the all-important task of educating people on the origin and prevention of acquired immune deficiency syndrome, AIDS.