Posts by Zare

Assange psychiatrist misled judge over parentage of his kids, US tells High Court

What crime? What are you talking about? He is not convicted of any crime by US. He exposed war crimes. That is not a crime, committing war crimes is a crime.

It was Russia wot did it: SolarWinds hack was done by Kremlin's APT29 crew, say UK and US

Re: Hypothetical

Your supposedly gotcha question comes obviously from eating too much Russiagate burgers. What did that theory say? That Trump and his administration/stuff is a puppet of Russia. The most logical connection to his "handlers" would be US ambassador to Moscow. Well, Biden just kept Trump's man in Moscow. (https://edition.cnn.com/2021/04/12/politics/biden-john-sullivan-moscow/index.html ) But do not let the facts disturb you in thinking.

Re: Hypothetical

When Democrats do not want to talk about something they throw Russiagate.

Assange should be furloughed from Belmarsh prison, says human rights org. Here's a thought: He could stay with friends!

He needs to be made an example of for potential future whistle-blowers, and brits are just doing what they have been told. Nothing new to see here.

NASA fingers the cause of two bungled satellite launches, $700m in losses, years of science crashing and burning...

Obviously NASA failed because it is a government agency, if it were only a private corporation, like Sapa Profiles Inc, i mean Hydro Extrusion Portland, Inc, i mean....hhhmm...

Level 5 driverless cars by 2021 can be done, say Brit industry folk

Game changer or killer app for or me is, that I can go to a city center to take care of something (pick up package from post/shop/dentist...) and during that time car will drive around the block, as there is never parking place available where and when i need it. When I am done, I can summon the car to appear where I need it.

Short term parking place solution in other words.

Even more warship cuts floated for the Royal Navy

Re: However, they do appear to want to dominate those countries that they are close to....

"Not sure what the UK could do about it."

Correct, UK could not have done much. This was mostly messed up by Americans (on purpose). But UK could call them out for their not so honorable play. If Americans allow themselves to work on staffing of government of the closest country to Russia, at their doorstep:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957

Then they should not complain if Russians try to influence the situation in the country also.

Imagine the opposite situation. I would say that arguably the closest country to US politically, and at the same time at their doorstep, is Canada. Imagine if Russia would organize a situation where they would be deciding on members of government in Ottawa, less than 1000km from Washington. Can anyone imagine any other reaction from US than immediate invasion and occupation of Canadian parliament. (in case if they had hard evidence like recording of Lavrov from a location in the middle of Ottawa conducting an assembling of Canadian parliament, as opposed to evidence of bought ads from web browsers with Russian settings).

Re: Any war with Russia probably will be a Nuclear War

"Hence for nuclear weapons to be considered a credible deterrent for anything other than a direct attack on your own country, you generally need conventional forces as well."

This seems to be a reply to Nick Z post, but he never said that *conventional forces* are not needed. He said two times that *conventional war* makes no sense, which is perfectly reasonable conclusion: as he said, constant threats and attacks (Iraq, Siria, Libia...) demonstrate that a country that wants to feel little bit safer from US needs nuclear weapons. So far no nuclear armed country has been attacked.

https://theintercept.com/2017/07/29/dan-coats-north-korea-nukes-nuclear-libya-regime-change/

Facebook, Twitter slammed for deleting evidence of Russia's US election mischief

Re: AAAHHH MOTHERLAND!!!!!

The last Facebook statement about the issue I saw, after their investigation into ad campaigns, was that they identified $100k worth of ads made from browsers which had Russian as default language (or similar hints). Hardly the evidence of FSB/KGB/Putin involvement. And then, the biggest accusation FB could make was that those ads were trying to amplify current divisions in US. That is not a proof of election meddling.

I am not saying Russians would not like to influence the US election, but if this is the most Congress can find, then they should be proud that they have pretty solid election process.

On the other hand, I see the real meddling in their elections from legal lobbying, domestic and foreign. Which is insane that it is allowed, in my opinion, but politicians like money more than having impartial politics.

From landslide to buried alive: Why 2017 election forecasts weren't wrong

Re: So when will the politicians learn?

Cannot upvote this point enough. I am trying to promote the same point.

Politician that triangulate peoples opinions and polls are not leaders, but, almost per definition, followers. They like to call themselves leaders but they are followers, and even worse, followers of the lowest common denominator out there.

Feeling old? Well, we're older than that: Newly found Homo sapiens jaw dates back 350k years

Interesting article

I enjoyed reading it

Retirement age must move as life expectancy grows, says WEF

Yes it is true that people live longer and therefore a bigger proportion of people will be living at one moment ith age above retirement age, therefore less workers will support more pensioners.

But I have feeling that they always forget to take into account the rise in productivity of people. There are huge gains in productivity, and therefore less people are needed to provide things for everybody.

Kotkin: Why Trump won

Re: It's not "why", it's "how"

I find this good comment, just one thing to add. In this elections Democrats cannot blame third party candidates for the loss in most states, including Michigan. The thing is that, just as Stein took votes from Hillary, Johnson took votes from Trump (and Johnson had 3 times as many votes as Stein). So in my opinion, had third party candidates been forbidden, Trump would have added more or less all 3.6% from Johnson, and Hillary could have counted on Stein voters - 1.1%, so the difference would have been even bigger for Trump - which I find amazing but that is how I see it. Hillary could consider herself practically lucky that Johnson and Stein were in the race, because Johnson took more votes from Trump than Stein from Hillary.

http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/michigan-president-clinton-trump

But I would say that discussion about third party candidates is missing the point. If Democrats cannot win against Trump who, in my opinion, at one time or another, insulted every group of people in America, then they have only themselves to blame and not Stein, Johnson or Facebook.

You wanted innovation? We gave you Clippy the Paperclip in your IM client

Re: I will pay good money...

You have my up vote.

I would add only 2 more wishes for a web site I would pay for:

1. Privacy (do not save my history or track me in any way)

2. Do not customize article list/landing page for me (it should follow from 1., without my history it should be impossible to customize web page for me. I want to see complete list of title and then chose myself what I want to read today - like classic newspapers).

Work begins on Russian rival to Android

Re: "Trusted"

The free press is nice theory, but practice is completely opposite.

The free press is not free if 90% of press is owned by few corporations that have their profit and access to centers of power, which they are supposed to keep in check, dependent on government:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_of_media_ownership

(Media integrity is especially in the case when there are clientelist relations between the owners of the media and political centres of power. Such a situation enables excessive instrumentalisation of the media for particular political interests, which is subverting democratic role of the media.)

http://www.freepress.net/ownership/chart

The "free press" checks with government before publishing:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/aug/29/correspondence-collusion-new-york-times-cia

(The relationship between the New York Times and the US government is, as usual, anything but adversarial. Indeed, these emails read like the interactions between a PR representative and his client as they plan in anticipation of a possible crisis.)

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jun/08/obama-administration-making-us-media-its-mouthpiece

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.de/2005/12/new-york-times-complicity-in-bushs.html

(But almost as staggering is the fact that The New York Times knew about these illegal acts on the part of the Administration for a full year and kept its mouth shut until yesterday because the Administration asked it to.)

Remind me which one of Main Stream Media in US warned that maybe officially given reasons for war in Iraq are maybe false?

War on whistleblowers:

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/16/whistleblowers-double-standard-obama-david-petraeus-chelsea-manning

(since Barack Obama entered the White House in 2009, his government has waged a war against whistleblowers and official leakers. On his watch, there have been eight prosecutions under the 1917 Espionage Act – more than double those under all previous presidents combined.)

Reminder that all communication is being serveilled certainly does not help journalists write openly:

https://theintercept.com/2016/04/28/new-study-shows-mass-surveillance-breeds-meekness-fear-and-self-censorship/

Journalists can be fired for reporting news:

http://www.nationofchange.org/2-fox-news-reporters-fired-covering-monsanto-s-cancer-causing-gmo-milk-1385184532

So even though the law theoretically guaranties freedom of press (in US, in UK there is not even guarantee of free press), in practice it is not free.

There are countless and countless other examples, but I doubt anyone here is surprised or found my post to be news.