During the cold war we were up against a well resourced enemy with enough conventional weaponry to overrun us - let alone the nuclear arsenal that they had.
They were also very active on the ideological front too and in those days they had an ideology to push. They were trying to win the world for communism.
These days the Russians' agenda seems to be mostly a bit of national pride, nothing that really threatens us.
So why do we need to have all these extra security measures now, when the main threat seems to come from a few "nutcases" causing a militarily insignificant amount of damage by deliberately pushing the road accident toll up by 0.2% ?
However imperfect the traditional media has been at fact-checking, they're a far sight better at it than blogs, Facebook, Twitter and the rest.
That is actually a very misleading thing to say - because a false story is a false story regardless of how good the general fact checking of the organisation is.
Plus the MSM have been pretty outrageously bad on occasion, and that is made worse by the fact that they have a good reputation.
Actually the internet is in many ways a good thing - because people are beginning to realise that they should not rely on any single source for anything - and now the means to check up for yourself are available.
At this point I was going to quote the Buddha by saying
"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense."
w, I think the republican vs democrat, right vs left, conservative vs liberal plutocratic con job amounts to little more than tried and true propagandistic tools
And also heavily out of date. These days the issues just don't fall into the traditional left-right pigeon holes.
Generally I find the best strategy is to work out who is genuinely at the bottom of the heap (whilst ignoring those who make a political platform or a career out of pretending to be) and try to align with their interests.
Denial is someone who has seen solid evidence or proof and decide to ignore them
What I observed in Russia was very definitely denial. I am talking here about an old tourist guide who hadn't come to terms with the removal of Stalin's body from Lenin's tomb - which happened when he was 11. In his head Putin was still an anti-religious communist - in spite of hs many well publicised appearances in church.
As far as the west is concerned, what I actually said was "seems", in other words "might as well be".
Whether this comes from ignorance or from actual denial doesn't matter - the effect is the same.
In reality there is actually no reason for us to treat Russia any differently from the way we treat the other post soviet and post eastern bloc states - yet we persist in doing so. If we assess on the basis of human rights, rule of law or democracy Russia is, at worst, somewhere in the middle of the spectrum for these states (clearly better than Belarus, Ukraine or almost all the "Stans").
All News is written by people with an agenda. This applies even to honest journalists.
As everyone who has seen a news story written about something where they have some first hand experience knows, journalism is usually inaccurate, frequently spectacularly so.
This is because journalists are rarely specialists and tend to see things through the prism of their own limited prior knowledge. This usually reflects "conventional wisdom".
As we know on this blog from our analysis of copyright/patent issues, "conventional wisdom" rarely contains much wisdom.
What I find disappointing about this blog is that when it strays into areas outside its core expertise there is a tendency to revert to the same conventional wisdom that it (rightly) decries in IP related subjects.
Russia is quite a good example of this.
During the cold war the west cultivated any "anti-communist" group that it could find. Many of these groups were not in fact "anti-communist" at all - but in fact, actually "anti-russian", reflecting older conflicts that really we should not be taking sides in.
After the collapse of communism (yes it really did collapse you know) we carried on cultivating anti-russian groups in former soviet republics and former eastern bloc countries. This was a mistake as it has turned Russia into an enemy quite unnecessarily.
It has also created an environment of unconscious bias where western stories about Russia are rarely accurate.
My suspiscion is that the so called "troll army" is really no such thing - but rather the sum total of ordinary expat Russians who find the western media really annoyingly inaccurate and try to hit back. THe social dynamics of internet false story propagation and amplification explain the rest.
IN the UK the police manage without guns except for a few officers who are specially trained.
Very occasionally these officers do get it wrong just like US cops (Steven Waldorf, John Charles be Menenez etc) but because fewer policemen are armed these incidents remain rare here.
You want guns gone, therefore you do not equate their loss as a loss of liberty, which leads you to create a demographic that falsely portrays a gun free nation as being more free.
One thing that definitely makes you more free being alive.
I balance my disappointment at not being allowed to own a gun against the joy of continuing living.
All American gun advocates should read this article - and weep.
That's a load of bull and you know it. Blaming a cops power trip or fear of being shot by real criminals has absolutely NOTHING to do with those who legally carry.
WRONG!
The equation is simple - the more guns there are the more people will be killed.
Given the availability of arms in the US it is inevitable that the police are armed. Since the police are armed and guns are readily available it is inevitable that criminals will be armed.
Since criminals are armed the police are likely to expect to need to use their guns - which makes it more likely that the criminals will be trigger happy too.
Play out the same scenario in your head - with Scott having only a kitchen knife and the officer only having a truncheon and a tazer.
How many deadly shootings are there in the UK or Japan - where gun control is strict?
Even our terrorists are reduced to using cars and knives as weapons. How many more would be dead now if the Westminster attacker had had a gun?
Terrorist organizations are no different from governments,
I suggest you wath "Mars Attacks" and see how far that approach got the "President."
There is no negotiating with these people, and even if you did it and it seemed to go well you might consider the plight of the tribes who thought that they had negotiated a deal with Mohammed. As soon as he felt strong anough he turned round and wiped most of them out.
Thomas Jefferson's experience with the Barbary pirates are also salutary. When they made an agreement it was written in English and Arabic - unfortunately the two documents did not say the same thing.
The more you try to censor people, the more isolated those with more extreme views will feel, and the more likely that they will carry out lone wolf attacks. What is required is the much more difficult task of engaging with them
What - these people are nothing like IRA. If someone believes that killing p5 people in a suicide attack will cancel their sins and send them straight to heaven you can't "engage" with them - except to convince them that their beliefs are false. Unfortunately a concerted effort to make the argument that Islam is false is not on the agenda
1) The Iranians, the Saudis and every other totalitarian Islamic government in the world (who by the way are the reall promoters of this kind of terrorism) will just love the fact that the Christians, the Bahais, the Apostates andthe atheist bloggers will have nowhere to hide if there is no secure encryption.
2) As the article points out this kind of terrorist doesn't need a support network and secure communications - all he had was a driving licence and a kitchen knife.
3)Stopping the terroists from public propaganda is a bad idea - their public propaganda has the effect of telling the truth about Islam - which the likes of Theresa May are trying to keep quiet about. Better out in the open where everyone can see it for what it is - and then there will be fewer people to provide cover. All Amber Rudd seems to want is a set of peril sensitive sunglasses.
Re: One man's terrorist is anothers freedom fighter
_One man's terrorist is anothers freedom fighter
We can all agree seeing a prisoner getting beheaded in a propaganda view is terrorist content.
We can all agree that depicting a leader as Gollum might be seen as terrorism by some, but not by many.
The problem is there is no clear line, because it is a murky area. Terrorism is the first go-to used by repressive regimes, for actions that many would consider free speech (ignoring that isn't provided for in that countries laws)._
No - terrorism has a pretty clear definition.
Terrorism means vilent actions, taken not because they achieve a direct result but because of the psychological impact it will have on the opponent.
It is perfectly possible to be a terrorist AND a freedom fighter at the same time.
When the US bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki it was terrorism - because the military value of those targets was less than that of targets that had already been hit just as hard by conventional means. However those actions had not provoked a Japanese surrender. However the terror effect of nuclear weapons produced that result.
Since the US was engaged in a fight for freedom at the time the aircrew who dropped the bombs were simultaneously (objectively) freedom fighters AND terrorists.
In the present case of course ISIS will tell you that their prophet said "I have been made victorious with terror". They would probably have more of a problem with being described as "freedom" fighters - since their creed is definitely nothing to do with freedom.
Regardless, Google wound up issuing a mea culpa stating they'd try to do a better job at keeping ads for the McRib sandwich far away from hateful idiocy:
I am sure that McD isquite happy to sell (Halal)burgers to Jhadis - just like Lenin's capitalist who would source his own noose.
Of course they are presumably bothered about being labelled "Islamaphobic" for advertising McRib ( a pork product in case anyone hadn't noticed) to Muslims.
On the post: Moderate French Presidential Candidate Suggests He May Pressure US Tech Companies Into Creating Encryption Backdoors
Dear leaders
We know that the Russians are already reading your emails.
Now you seem to want them to be able to read everyone else's too.
WHY?
On the post: Moderate French Presidential Candidate Suggests He May Pressure US Tech Companies Into Creating Encryption Backdoors
What I don't understand
What I don't understand is this:
During the cold war we were up against a well resourced enemy with enough conventional weaponry to overrun us - let alone the nuclear arsenal that they had.
They were also very active on the ideological front too and in those days they had an ideology to push. They were trying to win the world for communism.
These days the Russians' agenda seems to be mostly a bit of national pride, nothing that really threatens us.
So why do we need to have all these extra security measures now, when the main threat seems to come from a few "nutcases" causing a militarily insignificant amount of damage by deliberately pushing the road accident toll up by 0.2% ?
On the post: Counter-Terrorism Expert Suggests 'Nutrition Labeling' For News Sources During Senate Testimony
Re: Re: Re: Re:
However imperfect the traditional media has been at fact-checking, they're a far sight better at it than blogs, Facebook, Twitter and the rest.
That is actually a very misleading thing to say - because a false story is a false story regardless of how good the general fact checking of the organisation is.
Plus the MSM have been pretty outrageously bad on occasion, and that is made worse by the fact that they have a good reputation.
Actually the internet is in many ways a good thing - because people are beginning to realise that they should not rely on any single source for anything - and now the means to check up for yourself are available.
At this point I was going to quote the Buddha by saying
"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense."
which I actually originally heard on that pillar of fact checking, - the BBC but then, when I googled it again I discovered that it is fake: http://fakebuddhaquotes.com/believe-nothing-no-matter-where-you-read-it/
(Or maybe the "fakebuuddhaquotes" site is itelf fake...)
On the post: Counter-Terrorism Expert Suggests 'Nutrition Labeling' For News Sources During Senate Testimony
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
w, I think the republican vs democrat, right vs left, conservative vs liberal plutocratic con job amounts to little more than tried and true propagandistic tools
And also heavily out of date. These days the issues just don't fall into the traditional left-right pigeon holes.
Generally I find the best strategy is to work out who is genuinely at the bottom of the heap (whilst ignoring those who make a political platform or a career out of pretending to be) and try to align with their interests.
On the post: Counter-Terrorism Expert Suggests 'Nutrition Labeling' For News Sources During Senate Testimony
Re: Re: What news isn't fake?
Привет, товарищ
Христос воскресе!
On the post: Counter-Terrorism Expert Suggests 'Nutrition Labeling' For News Sources During Senate Testimony
Re: Re: Re: Re: What news isn't fake?
Denial is someone who has seen solid evidence or proof and decide to ignore them
What I observed in Russia was very definitely denial. I am talking here about an old tourist guide who hadn't come to terms with the removal of Stalin's body from Lenin's tomb - which happened when he was 11. In his head Putin was still an anti-religious communist - in spite of hs many well publicised appearances in church.
As far as the west is concerned, what I actually said was "seems", in other words "might as well be".
Whether this comes from ignorance or from actual denial doesn't matter - the effect is the same.
In reality there is actually no reason for us to treat Russia any differently from the way we treat the other post soviet and post eastern bloc states - yet we persist in doing so. If we assess on the basis of human rights, rule of law or democracy Russia is, at worst, somewhere in the middle of the spectrum for these states (clearly better than Belarus, Ukraine or almost all the "Stans").
On the post: Counter-Terrorism Expert Suggests 'Nutrition Labeling' For News Sources During Senate Testimony
Re: Re: What news isn't fake?
(Note that currently most translations use a different word).
It seems however that even more people in the west are in denial of it.
On the post: Counter-Terrorism Expert Suggests 'Nutrition Labeling' For News Sources During Senate Testimony
What news isn't fake?
All News is written by people with an agenda. This applies even to honest journalists.
As everyone who has seen a news story written about something where they have some first hand experience knows, journalism is usually inaccurate, frequently spectacularly so.
This is because journalists are rarely specialists and tend to see things through the prism of their own limited prior knowledge. This usually reflects "conventional wisdom". As we know on this blog from our analysis of copyright/patent issues, "conventional wisdom" rarely contains much wisdom.
What I find disappointing about this blog is that when it strays into areas outside its core expertise there is a tendency to revert to the same conventional wisdom that it (rightly) decries in IP related subjects.
Russia is quite a good example of this.
During the cold war the west cultivated any "anti-communist" group that it could find. Many of these groups were not in fact "anti-communist" at all - but in fact, actually "anti-russian", reflecting older conflicts that really we should not be taking sides in.
After the collapse of communism (yes it really did collapse you know) we carried on cultivating anti-russian groups in former soviet republics and former eastern bloc countries. This was a mistake as it has turned Russia into an enemy quite unnecessarily.
It has also created an environment of unconscious bias where western stories about Russia are rarely accurate.
My suspiscion is that the so called "troll army" is really no such thing - but rather the sum total of ordinary expat Russians who find the western media really annoyingly inaccurate and try to hit back. THe social dynamics of internet false story propagation and amplification explain the rest.
On the post: Counter-Terrorism Expert Suggests 'Nutrition Labeling' For News Sources During Senate Testimony
Re:
>The rating, over time, would reduce consumption of Russian disinformation
No - it might however force the Russians to be more subtle n their approach.
They are not stupid - the fact that they take a rather crude approach is merely an indication of their assessment of our level of intelligence.
On the post: Appeals Court Says Right To Bear Arms Isn't A Right If Cops Are Banging On Your Door In The Middle Of The Night
Re: Re: "attempting to find cover"
Rising sea levels ought to nicely take care of all problems down there.
Trump is smarter than we thought. He is ramping up coal burning to accelerate climate change so we can get rid of these fools!
On the post: Appeals Court Says Right To Bear Arms Isn't A Right If Cops Are Banging On Your Door In The Middle Of The Night
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
IN the UK the police manage without guns except for a few officers who are specially trained.
Very occasionally these officers do get it wrong just like US cops (Steven Waldorf, John Charles be Menenez etc) but because fewer policemen are armed these incidents remain rare here.
On the post: Appeals Court Says Right To Bear Arms Isn't A Right If Cops Are Banging On Your Door In The Middle Of The Night
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I like American culture (which includes guns, I like being alive....
On the post: Appeals Court Says Right To Bear Arms Isn't A Right If Cops Are Banging On Your Door In The Middle Of The Night
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
You want guns gone, therefore you do not equate their loss as a loss of liberty, which leads you to create a demographic that falsely portrays a gun free nation as being more free.
One thing that definitely makes you more free being alive.
I balance my disappointment at not being allowed to own a gun against the joy of continuing living.
All American gun advocates should read this article - and weep.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-38365729
On the post: Appeals Court Says Right To Bear Arms Isn't A Right If Cops Are Banging On Your Door In The Middle Of The Night
Re: Re: Re:
That's a load of bull and you know it. Blaming a cops power trip or fear of being shot by real criminals has absolutely NOTHING to do with those who legally carry.
WRONG!
The equation is simple - the more guns there are the more people will be killed.
Given the availability of arms in the US it is inevitable that the police are armed. Since the police are armed and guns are readily available it is inevitable that criminals will be armed.
Since criminals are armed the police are likely to expect to need to use their guns - which makes it more likely that the criminals will be trigger happy too.
Play out the same scenario in your head - with Scott having only a kitchen knife and the officer only having a truncheon and a tazer.
How many deadly shootings are there in the UK or Japan - where gun control is strict?
Even our terrorists are reduced to using cars and knives as weapons. How many more would be dead now if the Westminster attacker had had a gun?
On the post: UK Home Secretary: I Need People Who Understand The Necessary Hashtags To Censor Bad People Online
Re: Re: Re:
Terrorist organizations are no different from governments,
I suggest you wath "Mars Attacks" and see how far that approach got the "President."
There is no negotiating with these people, and even if you did it and it seemed to go well you might consider the plight of the tribes who thought that they had negotiated a deal with Mohammed. As soon as he felt strong anough he turned round and wiped most of them out.
Thomas Jefferson's experience with the Barbary pirates are also salutary. When they made an agreement it was written in English and Arabic - unfortunately the two documents did not say the same thing.
On the post: UK Home Secretary: I Need People Who Understand The Necessary Hashtags To Censor Bad People Online
Re:
The more you try to censor people, the more isolated those with more extreme views will feel, and the more likely that they will carry out lone wolf attacks. What is required is the much more difficult task of engaging with them
What - these people are nothing like IRA. If someone believes that killing p5 people in a suicide attack will cancel their sins and send them straight to heaven you can't "engage" with them - except to convince them that their beliefs are false. Unfortunately a concerted effort to make the argument that Islam is false is not on the agenda
On the post: UK Home Secretary: I Need People Who Understand The Necessary Hashtags To Censor Bad People Online
Oh Dear
1) The Iranians, the Saudis and every other totalitarian Islamic government in the world (who by the way are the reall promoters of this kind of terrorism) will just love the fact that the Christians, the Bahais, the Apostates andthe atheist bloggers will have nowhere to hide if there is no secure encryption.
2) As the article points out this kind of terrorist doesn't need a support network and secure communications - all he had was a driving licence and a kitchen knife.
3)Stopping the terroists from public propaganda is a bad idea - their public propaganda has the effect of telling the truth about Islam - which the likes of Theresa May are trying to keep quiet about. Better out in the open where everyone can see it for what it is - and then there will be fewer people to provide cover. All Amber Rudd seems to want is a set of peril sensitive sunglasses.
On the post: Twitter Reports On Government Agencies Using 'Report Tweet' Function To Block Terrorism-Related Content
Re: One man's terrorist is anothers freedom fighter
_One man's terrorist is anothers freedom fighter We can all agree seeing a prisoner getting beheaded in a propaganda view is terrorist content.
We can all agree that depicting a leader as Gollum might be seen as terrorism by some, but not by many.
The problem is there is no clear line, because it is a murky area. Terrorism is the first go-to used by repressive regimes, for actions that many would consider free speech (ignoring that isn't provided for in that countries laws)._
No - terrorism has a pretty clear definition.
Terrorism means vilent actions, taken not because they achieve a direct result but because of the psychological impact it will have on the opponent.
It is perfectly possible to be a terrorist AND a freedom fighter at the same time.
When the US bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki it was terrorism - because the military value of those targets was less than that of targets that had already been hit just as hard by conventional means. However those actions had not provoked a Japanese surrender. However the terror effect of nuclear weapons produced that result.
Since the US was engaged in a fight for freedom at the time the aircrew who dropped the bombs were simultaneously (objectively) freedom fighters AND terrorists.
In the present case of course ISIS will tell you that their prophet said "I have been made victorious with terror". They would probably have more of a problem with being described as "freedom" fighters - since their creed is definitely nothing to do with freedom.
On the post: AT&T, Verizon Feign Ethical Outrage, Pile On Google's 'Extremist' Ad Woes
McRib
Regardless, Google wound up issuing a mea culpa stating they'd try to do a better job at keeping ads for the McRib sandwich far away from hateful idiocy:
I am sure that McD isquite happy to sell (Halal)burgers to Jhadis - just like Lenin's capitalist who would source his own noose.
Of course they are presumably bothered about being labelled "Islamaphobic" for advertising McRib ( a pork product in case anyone hadn't noticed) to Muslims.
On the post: Homeland Security Starts Banning Laptops & Tablets On Planes From The Middle East
Re:
I'm not getting why these devices are ok in checked baggage if they are too dangerous to be in the cabin...
Have they forgotten Lockerbie? In reponse to that they instituted the exact opposite rule.
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