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To be fair, this ratio is also inline with the average for drone strikes, according to the very recent leak covered by The Intercept. The public just doesn't give a shit until it happens to someone with a shitload of credibility and a solid grasp of the english language.Originally Posted by Khrz
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Stubby Member
Probably some of them, almost certainly not all (or even most) of them.
I agree with that completely. I'll repeat one more time: I'm not saying anything that happened here is OK, or excusable. I'm just saying it's what happens when a country goes to war with a problematic war machine. It's simply not surprising. No matter how good or precise a nation gets at warring, at mass killing, horrible tragedies will happen, some intentional and some unintentional.
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This is so fucking weird, I think it deserves to be in General Headlines.
Active Member
So.... that $750/pill "AIDs Drug" now has a competitor in the US. $1/pill, and it has fixed some of the original side effects!
Somehow, that happened without the government doing anything
Drug with rage-inducing >5,000% price-hike now has $1/pill competitor (what a shit headline)
Throbbing Member
UK introduces law to ban civilian encryption, but government policies recommend its use.
Minister David Cameron began advocating for limiting or preventing ordinary citizens from using end-to-end encryption that the government could not break. Now, the government has introduced legislation that would ban companies like Apple from offering end-to-end encryption. What makes this particularly ironic is the discovery of other documents from earlier this year that show the UK encouraging enterprise and governments to adopt encryption.
I knew that the U.K. government was become more and more like 1984 overtime but this shit is just too much.
I can't comprehend how they would be able to justify their reasons for doing this.
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Vertiginous Member
I try to keep my political affiliation neutral, but it seems like every change or law the Conservatives have instigated since the end of the coalition is absolutely awful.
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Im not saying i agree with this at all, i absolutely hate this snooping, and the ramifications the War on Terror is having for the general public...but one could argue that the intelligence service have probably saved a lot of lives. You cant just pretend the threat is not there. About 20 Major Terror attacks have been foiled in Britain in the past 18 months.
if a bomb did go off people would bitch at the intelligence services for not doing enough.
They have new methods to prevent casualties..do they utilize them or not...what do you do??
Britain has now become virtually impossible for a terror cell to operate in, only Israel is harder. Both UK and Israel have a LONG history of terrorism. Ive never known the UK without a terror threat. There has always been a lot of spying.
Administrator
Remember the early release program the Obama administration announced earlier this year? Well, 2,000 of the 6,000 federal prisoners are being deported.
Active Member
This is pure fallacy. Just because terrorism exists does not justify all the mass surveillance bullshit.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/0...emain-credible
Plus, outlawing MATH is fucking dumb. Good. Fucking. Luck.
Throbbing Member
Surveillance is how all major plots have been disrupted in the past few years... i agree MASS surveillance on the entire population is fucked up. And the current system is flawed , im glad Snowden brought attention to the situation, ..its very 1984'ish. Again i hate it...but im just acknowledging its pros. on a number of occasions intense surveillance has worked in preventing deaths. Its just a fact. I just cant ignore it. The intelligence agencies in Paris, London and Moscow, Canada ( and the U.S to a lesser degree) are really overstretched at the moment. They are dealing with so many cases. I think the intelligence agencies are doing something right at the moment, specifically in Britain given the threat. . If they were not so intense im certain there would have been an atrocity by now. Im not saying i agree with it, im just saying its preventing deaths. Which is a good thing. They have foiled many attacks through intense surveillance, you cant deny that??
Active Member
But what you are describing has nothing to do with outlawing encryption for everyone. You wanna get a warrant and spy on every aspect of someone? Go for it! That's the old way that's been around forever, and it works well within the law (especially in the US under the 4th amendment). That requires some sort of proof or reasonable suspicion that the target is doing something illegal. When you outlaw encryption for citizens (or implement mass surveillance), you have completely skipped over the warrant step and are treating everyone as if they are guilty.
And this is just the ideological perspective. There is also the pure logistical perspective of whether you can actually stop citizens from hiding their communications. The defenders of public encryption are ideological fighters that rival even the most extreme gun-rights people in the USA. They are heavily for freedom of speech and have all kinds of organizations (ACLU, EFF, etc) behind them. Many would jump at the chance to martyr themselves for the cause in ways that surpass most NRA nuts. So, good luck trying to ban specific sequences of words, because that is all crypt is -- it's just short bits of source code.
The first battle on crypto happened in the 90's in the USA. That was back when crypto was considered munitions and banned for import/export. That's when PGP crypto was born and distributed in ways that circumvented those laws. The banned code for PGP was printed in books, tshirts, songs, and more as an example of the legal circumvention methods. Some of it was illegally distributed using payphones, the free library/coffee wifi of the 90s. (fun fact, PGP is still one of ~3 known types of crypto that the NSA still can't break today).
Alt-Left Leaning Cunt
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...h-human-feces/
Following a string of racism fueled events on campus, a grad student embarks on a hunger strike until the president of the university - who has done nothing to curb these events either steps down or is removed.
And now, many black football players are refusing to participate in any football activities until the president is removed. The football coaches are supporting this decision. So great!
http://thinkprogress.org/sports/2015...layers-strike/
Edit - http://www.sbnation.com/college-foot...esident-racism THE ENTIRE TEAM has joined. This is incredible.
Last edited by Sarah K; 11-08-2015 at 04:04 PM.
Alt-Left Leaning Cunt
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/10/us...igns.html?_r=1
And the president has stepped down. It worked.
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Active Member
A Turkish F-16 has shot down a Russian jet fighter for violating Turkish airspace.
Then a Russian-made Mi-8 military helicopter that was at the crash site was downed by the FSA using a TOW missile (provided by the US). According to Russian general, a solider was killed
Conflicting reports on the faith of the pilots of the Su-24 that was shot down. Some say they are dead, other reports say this is POW situation.
Russia is now suspending all military contact with Turkey.
Obama: Turkey has the right to defend its airspace.
On a side note, a military bus exploded in Tunisia. 12 dead confirmed.
Last edited by Deepvoid; 11-24-2015 at 01:08 PM. Reason: most up to date info
Throbbing Member
Science better hurry up and get humans colonized on Mars, because more and more this world is looking fucked. If only it were a possible thing to do, I’d be sending all the people pulling the strings on all this shit one of these packages…
Active Member
One problem: the earth itself is only a relatively small part of the problem (I understand oil is a huge issue in war, but I'll get to that in a second). So we ship off to Mars and colonize that, and we'll just blow the shit out of each other on a new planet.
But let's say we get to Mars and there's no oil to have wars over. Guess what? There's going to be some other precious resource that will lead to wars. Why? Because we as a species are fucking stupid. Not all of us - but enough of us. Enough of the alarmingly clever ones who are able to weasel their way into positions of power and control. We'll face that problem anywhere in the universe. Sucks, doesn't it.
I don't use twitter and I don't know how something "trends," but apparently World War III is trending. I normally roll my eyes at fear mongering media, but I'm not gonna lie...it actually kind of creeps me the fuck out right now.
Active Member
Holy fuck. So that MSF facility that the US bombed? The US is claiming their surveillance camera was broken at the time.
http://www.defenseone.com/technology...kunduz/124178/
I'm not even sure I believe it... but if it IS true... THE FUCK!?!? "hrm, well, there is a hospital there... we want to bomb the area... hrmm our camera is broke though... we can't se shit... eh, bomb it anyway!"
tempus est umbra in mente
"Pharma Bro" Martin Shkreli has bought the single copy of the new Wu-Tang album for $2 million dollars. He hasn't listened to it yet, but he has hired someone to verify for him that it's real. He said he might give it a spin if he was hanging out with Taylor Swift and she wanted to hear it or something. He hasn't expressed much interest in Wu-Tang's music, though he does like the song C.R.E.A.M. because the lyrics about how cash rules everything around him and the "dolla dolla bill y'all" refrain is his motto. He was also considering buying Katy Perry's guitar if she would agree to go out on a date with him. When asked recently if he had any regrets, he gave a smug chuckle and said that he should have raised the price of the life-saving medication higher than his initial inflation of +5000%, knowing that it would have generated more profits, and clarified by saying "it's a business... we're supposed to make as much money as possible."
He recently hosted a youtube live stream where he suggested that he might play "something special." Instead of streaming the new Wu-Tang record, he played some emo rock, and then started speculating on what artists he would like to hire to make personal albums just for him... among them Paul McCartney, Neil Young, David Bowie, Foo Fighters, Prince, Miley Cyrus, and (of course) Katy Perry.
RZA has said that the album was sold to him before the news scandal about him price-gouging people on their death beds came to light. Shkreli has stated that the album is "in a vault" and that he probably won't listen to it for years. "If there's a curious gap in your favorite artist's discography, well, now you know why."
ummmmmmmmm...
EDIT: nm, I figured out how to make the video. This should take me a couple hours, and then the world will be a brighter place.
Last edited by Jinsai; 12-09-2015 at 05:05 PM.
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It does not benefit African-Americans to — to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less-advanced school, a less — a slower-track school where they do well.
http://www.occupydemocrats.com/scali...r-than-whites/
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Edit: NO, HE DIDN'T SAY THAT.
OH MY GOD, if he actually said that, that stupid senile fucker needs to be impeached.
Last edited by allegro; 12-12-2015 at 10:40 PM.
tempus est umbra in mente
Well, it's true that the article there is intentionally leaving out the beginning of his statement, which was "There are those who contend that it does not benefit African Americans..."
I'm not sure if that really makes it any better though, as it does just seem like a cover to present a stance that he clearly identifies with. It almost feels like the inclusion of it serves primarily to imply "I'm not the only one who thinks this..." as a reference to this "mismatch theory," which is an argument that has floated around to oppose affirmative action, with a spin that tries to pretend it is opposed to the idea out of concern for the well being of the minorities, bizarrely implying that affirmative action would actually ultimately harm minorities.
Last edited by Jinsai; 12-11-2015 at 02:23 PM.
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Whether it harms or helps them is different than implying that they're just too stupid to go to better schools and should stick to the shitty schools for their own good. Which is a crock. Sure, there are often CULTURAL problems when you take a gifted kid from the ghetto and send him/her to Brown with a full ride scholarship without the support system they had back at home, and the Brown kids are into lacrosse and golf and shit. But the system is recognizing that and adjusting.
Last edited by allegro; 12-11-2015 at 02:42 PM.
tempus est umbra in mente
Of course. I hope it's clear that I don't in any way endorse this concept. It's definitely rooted in racism (or a profoundly stubborn misunderstanding of the concept of white privilege). Just pointing out that the Occupy article report there was intentionally excluding the first few opening words of his statement, and I am not sure why they would do that... since it's the statement that matters, and omitting a lead-in to the sentence just gives credence to the claim that it's being taken out of context.
I heard the audio today on the ride home from work. Listening to it is seriously uncomfortable. He's even stammering and constantly saying "uh, uh.... uh" while he tries to figure out how to phrase this racist objection in a way that will seem less obviously racist.
Last edited by Jinsai; 12-12-2015 at 05:22 AM.
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Edit: Never mind, it's now obvious that this is a deliberate railroading of Justice Scalia. He may be 79, but he's not that stupid, yet. These journalists know nothing about the law. And they should be ashamed of themselves.
The SCOTUS already decided an affirmative action case a few years ago via a case re the University of Michigan.
Last edited by allegro; 12-12-2015 at 10:38 PM.
Active Member
soo.. how about trying to look at an opposing opinion on this...
"Research indicates that students who attend schools where their entering academic credentials put them towards the bottom of the class are less likely to succeed then similarly-credentialed students attending schools where their academic credentials more closely 'match' the typical student's," Heriot wrote.
Heriot was not in court to hear Scalia, but she read a transcript of arguments and she defends Scalia's comments. "He was trying to articulate the extensive literature that shows race-preferential admission policies end up hurting rather than helping their intended beneficiaries, especially in the area of science and engineering," she said afterwards.
"We do ourselves a great disservice when we jump all over people for failing to phrase a question in the best possible way," Heriot added.
Listen to the actual recording, not some chopped up quotes in an article.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/11/politi...dio/index.html
Last edited by DigitalChaos; 12-12-2015 at 02:29 PM.
Active Member
I've not spent much time on this one, but from listening to the audio it would seem that Scalia was not stating his opinion. He was asking a question from an amicus brief to see how the answer would be presented.
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Yeah, now, see, all these other articles and hacked-up audio segments HAVE FAILED TO MENTION that Scalia was discussing an AMICUS BRIEF.
WTF, THESE FUCKING ARTICLES, FUCK ALL THESE PEOPLE.
"Research indicates that students who attend schools where their entering academic credentials put them towards the bottom of the class are less likely to succeed then similarly-credentialed students attending schools where their academic credentials more closely 'match' the typical student's."
Herlot also wrote an Amicus brief, btw. BEN CARSON discussed her study in this article.
The mismatch theory is based on a controversial book and has been discussed for a while. See this.
My problem with it is that I was in college with lots of WHITE students where this seemed to apply, especially these AP math and science kids who were pushed ahead and ended up being greatly "mismatched" in a university setting.
SEE ALSO THIS.
Last edited by allegro; 12-13-2015 at 12:19 AM.
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