The Tony Blair House Journal (editor Alan Rusbridger) reports on Kanye West’s disgusting private performance for the Kazakh dictator and his family, and takes a sideswipe at David Cameron for visiting that country.
But peculiarly they fail to mention that Tony Blair receives US $4 million a year as a consultant to the worker murdering Kazakh dictator, and that Alistair Campbell and Jonathon Powell as well as Blair visit to give this support – which has included a behind the scenes campaign to help Nazarbaev win the Nobel Peace Prize, fortunately with no result to date.
Lots of wordy, geeky explanations why Hubble can’t get better images of ISON. I was going to inquire on the blog why it can get breath-taking shots of galaxies multiples of light-years distant, but only crappy instamatic photos of a comet in our backyard, but decided just to stfu.
http://hubblesite.org/hubble_discoveries/comet_ison/page/8
@Habbabkuk “@ NR:Thank you for that post (the part on Obama and the “war”). Surely you would agree though that nothing in my predictive posts could be described as “paroxsyms of hyperbole”?”
No, I didn’t mean you engaged in hyperbole, but that some of those expressing similar views did, to a humorous excess. Especially reports in the NYT and WaPo and their comments (the WaPo had an unusually high 5000 comments on one story) and most especially the progressive forum http://www.dailykos.com which was over-the-top delirious-happy at the Obama/Kerry triumph.
On the subject of blog or forum moderation, there is apparently no satisfactory solution yet devised. Unmoderated doesn’t work and heavily moderated always brings accusations of lack of freedom of speech. Those that attempt some form of community moderation — flagging or voting down unliked posts — falls prey to posters faking multiple identities, using proxies or VPNs if necessary, to outvote their “enemies”.
The above-mentioned DailyKos has the most elaborate scheme I’ve seen. The rules read like a complicated board-game or Dungeons and Dragons. “Two posters engaged in a troll or flame war may not appeal to the moderator. Only other participants may complaint about them to the moderator”. They have a special category for “snarky comments”. There is a system of awarding “Donuts” when a thread (they use the indented thread form) goes too far astray, and a sufficient number of donuts cause the thread to collapse. It still exists and is readable by clicking on a plus sign. NBC-TV does the same and tags it “This Thread Collapsed by the Community.”
All in all, for someone who has no ducks in the fight, I think Jon and Craig do a good job of moderating. I much prefer this format of long, in-line and unindented discussion, and scroll past most of the squabbles.
We have been badgered by Stephen Fry and many others for a campaign to boycott Socchi’s winter Olympics, for Russia’s latest law on Homosexual conduct.
We did boycott Russia’s Olympics for their conduct in Afghanistan
And we want to postpone or change the location of the Football world cup in Quatar, due to the heat…. or was it their laws on drinking?
Now what would be wrong if public health officials here/all over the world, start a campaign to swap the venue of Tokyo 2020 with a venue in South Korea, for reasons of nuclear incompetence.
TEPCO, being hopelessly unable to guarantee that they will have stopped the triple meltdown and dealt with their contaminated water issue, should support such a campaign.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/inspector-says-japan-needs-international-help-for-nuclear-plant-a-921302.html
Mary, I strongly suspect that Toyota’s standards haven’t declined but their competitors are using dirty tricks to publicize and exaggerate every recall. Recalls in the motor industry are very common yet only Toyota’s seem to get into the press. A good example was when the Toyota Aygo had a recall issued. No mention was made of the fact that it is identical, apart from a few cosmetic details to the Citroen C1 and Peugeot 107, yet they weren’t mentioned in press reports.
This article just went up on the Grauniad, looks like IT professors and encryption buffs will have a hard time doing their jobs.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/10/nsa-matthew-green-takedown-blog-post-johns-hopkins
“I find it hard to believe that someone who has taken the Hippocratic oath would use chemical weapons” John Goss, this morning.
I don’t want to re-kindle last night’s troubled discussion. Well, as Sofia has pointed out wrt Guantanamo, sadly, much as I too find it hard to fathom, that’s not always the case. Sometimes, it seems, in some very famous cases, it’s more like the ‘hypocritical’ oath.
Ayman al Zawahiri (Al Qaeda leader) was a paediatrician in Egypt, Hastings Banda (Malawi’s dictator) was an Edinburgh and Glasgow-qualified medical practitioner, Papa Doc Duvalier, Haiti’s bloody dictator was a medical doctor and finally, Josef Mengele was a medical doctor (as well as a PhD).
And let’s not forget Che Guevara.
I’m not sure that the fact they were medically qualified had anything to do with their (shall we say) specific political and violent activities – the idea of control over human beings, perhaps, esp. with Mengele. More broadly, though, Pol Pot was a teacher/lecturer – in French Literature and History – at a private college, Stalin was a respected Georgian poet, Goebbels was a wannabee writer, Hitler, an wannabee artist, Hague is a an effective writer of historical books, Kissinger is a respected football (soccer) expert. And so on.
The Holocaust proved that enlightened, sometimes otherwise compassionate human beings can, and do, do terrible things, that human history is not always Whig in trajectory, that the Ascent of Man is illusory.
Now, actually, I do not think that Assad ordered the chemical attacks and as you know, I’m completely against the attack on Syria (meaning the Jihadist paramilitaries and the attempt to induce the USA/UK/France, already involved covertly, to join in more overtly) being driven by Saudi Arabia. But there’s no love lost. You know, Assad does head-up a violent secret police state. All Arab (and Persian) regimes – monarchies, nominal democracies, dictatorships, theocracies, combinations of all of these – are violent secret police states of one sort or another. It’s very complex, though, and it’s a real problem for the people there.
Agent Cameron and others have agreed to table a resolution in the UN Security Council regarding Syria’s chemical weapons at 9pm tonight.
The Syrian government has agreed to a hypothetical proposal strengthened by President Vladimir Putin that will place Syria’s chemical weapons under international control.
Agent Cameron DOES NOT endorse a resolution that contains legal wording that categorically repudiates the use of air-strikes or military force against Syrian targets.
Cameron in his crucially empty suit and myopic vision believes the United Nations Security Council vehicle will be used as a ‘debating society’ and a stalling tactic.
In the intervening hours before the vote I will turn my eyes towards Israel.
Israel is not a party to any of the major treaties governing WMD nonproliferation, including the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), and the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC).
It has signed, but not ratified, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) and the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).
Any ‘deal’ made at this evenings UNSC assembly must also embrace the Treaties and Conventions insisting ALL chemical and biological WMD declared, confessed and destroyed.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10288193/Syria-crisis-live.html
Mary;”I am away for three daya from tomorrow so will appreciate a change of scenery.”
O Mary, how heartless of you ! Just how on earth will the trolls survive without you, as you know you give meaning to their lives here !
So I’m being called a “Nitwit” by “Sweet” Dreoilin, is that because I point out her ample displays of sourness ? Despite her cut & paste, using the prefix of “wily” when directed at ethnic people has definite racist undertones, as people on the receiving end of this racism know this only too well.
Interesting that she presents her Pro-Palestinian & Anti-War credentials, because like Villager, she goes out of her way to support & defend the Habbu-Clown, who is the antithesis of both these, but the mysterious contradiction is quickly resolved when it’s realized that this only occurs when it’s part of an attack on Mary, who actually is unwavering solid on being Pro-Palestinian & Anti-War; rather like claiming to be a pacifist but joining in with a vicious attack on another pacifist that you don’t particularly like !
Habbu-Clown; “no-one is entitled to speculate on the motivation of posters, as this cannot be known”
The obvious exception of course being Trolls, especially one as transparent as him.
Jon;”Gosh, poor old mod seems to need a stronger fireproof jacket these days – as it happens, I am putting one on now”
Not needed if your moderating was seen, or even perceived to be impartial.
Jon; “In the interim, not responding in kind is still excellent advice, but still, it seems, rather difficult for a lot of posters. “Not responding” means not responding at all. Try it”
Easy to say, but seeing as insults, lies, smears, etc are allowed to stand, do you really think it’s realistic, nevermind fair, that people so targeted should not respond ?!
Liam Fox, David Owen, Radovan Karadzic…
Okay, enough!
Nevermind,
What Professor Green is most shocked by is that he now “understands” the NSA just either demands the server private keys or routinely steals them. That’s how he thinks they do most of the decryption. Yes some available encryption methods are weaker then others and he points out have been weakened at the planning stage. Still that would likely require some effort to crack if you didn’t have the key to start with – but with some combinations not impossible.
Sites implementing decent Perfect Forward Secrecy variants are probably still immune without additional hardware or software being installed on the servers he suggests. So likely nobody is cracking Google encrypted connections easily. Google may be required by law to store the encryption key generated for every session and make it available to the NSA so they can read that traffic but nobody else can. Google could increase their security even further by bumping up the default to an even harder to crack encryption variant. I suspect if they thought anyone was reliably and easily cracking their sessions they would have done that by now.
So the biggest current practical weakness still boils down to the “design mistake” for “efficiency” reasons (hahah) whereby the vast majority of https connections negotiate their own key for the session but that key can ALWAYS BE OBTAINED by anyone recording the traffic as long as they have the server private key. PFS variants may still have been weakened (RC4 is looking dodgier and dodgier no matter how the key was negotiated) but at least they aren’t totally transparent to anyone with the master key.
Oh forgot the “man in the middle attack” of course which would normally require the help of an ISP (or any other router between you an the intended destination).
There was a report back after the Iraq invasion I saw on CNN where someone said that they had heard that when a client in Iraq (under Saddam at the time) accessed the CNN website they were actually diverted transparently to a bugged mirror server. Never heard that mentioned again but it wouldn’t have surprised me.
For the curious, to check what your browser supports
https://cc.dcsec.uni-hannover.de/
I get “This connection uses TLSv1.2 with DHE-RSA-CAMELLIA256-SHA and a 256 Bit key for encryption.”
Which should be about as secure as you can get. Although currently just over 0% of servers will negotiate this by default so it is academic really!
Thanks for the link, I get that too. Think it affords any real protection from NSA sabotage?
And do you happen to know the purpose of the recent heimdal update from certain linux repositories?
Squeaky,
I’d be surprised if anyone could break an individual session currently with that encryption. But who knows for sure. For now not even Google uses anything above TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_RC4_128_SHA (128 bit keys). And if the servers (or admins) are compromised legally or otherwise then no form of encryption is worth anything at all.
You can check what level of encryption is supported by servers by at https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/index.html
Squeaky,
That’s a Kerberos implementation.
Last release was dated http://www.h5l.org/
Heimdal last release was done 2012-01-11 and had a security advisory attached
Maybe just your repositories catching up? Other than that I know nothing about it (well I know what kerberos is). Do you have any reason to be suspicious?
No, more the reverse. I was idly curious to know if the distro was supplanting kerberos with heimdal. Substituting the Swedish flavor might protect us from NSA moles at MIT.
@ Suhayl (18h51)
Much appreciated your post at 18h51, which expressed a lot of good sense and balance.
Just two comments, if I may :
1/. ““I find it hard to believe that someone who has taken the Hippocratic oath would use chemical weapons” John Goss, this morning.
I don’t want to re-kindle last night’s troubled discussion. Well, as Sofia has pointed out wrt Guantanamo, sadly, much as I too find it hard to fathom, that’s not always the case. Sometimes, it seems, in some very famous cases, it’s more like the ‘hypocritical’ oath.””
_________
To your list of medical examples I think we must – in fairness, and at the risk of displeasing John Goss, given his pro-Soviet and pro-Russian tendencies – add all the Soviet psychiatrists (doctors) who happily connived with the incarceration of numerous Russian dissidents in mental institutions. I trust you’d agree with this addition.
2/. “You know, Assad does head-up a violent secret police state. All Arab (and Persian) regimes – monarchies, nominal democracies, dictatorships, theocracies, combinations of all of these – are violent secret police states of one sort or another.”
_______________
In the words (almost) of the heroic George Galloway “I salute your courage, Sir” for making that point. Seriously. I believe that you are – while of course not being above launching the occasional low blow – a more ‘honest’ poster than most of the denizens of this blog? So let me – as an experiment in honesty, if you will – test your honesty a little further by putting the following question to you : would you also characterize, either relatively or absolutely, Israel as a “violent secret police state”? (I undertake not to quote from your answer, whatever it is, in any future posts of mine.).
Squeaky,
Do you have any links for distributions recently swapping as I’m curious now.
John Pilger – The silent military coup that took over Washington
On my wall is the Daily Express front page of September 5 1945 and the words: “I write this as a warning to the world.” So began Wilfred Burchett’s report from Hiroshima. It was the scoop of the century. For his lone, perilous journey that defied the US occupation authorities, Burchett was pilloried, not least by his embedded colleagues. He warned that an act of premeditated mass murder on an epic scale had launched a new era of terror.
Almost every day now, he is vindicated. The intrinsic criminality of the atomic bombing is borne out in the US National Archives and by the subsequent decades of militarism camouflaged as democracy. The Syria psychodrama exemplifies this. Yet again we are held hostage by the prospect of a terrorism whose nature and history even the most liberal critics still deny. The great unmentionable is that humanity’s most dangerous enemy resides across the Atlantic.
John Kerry’s farce and Barack Obama’s pirouettes are temporary. Russia’s peace deal over chemical weapons will, in time, be treated with the contempt that all militarists reserve for diplomacy. With al-Qaida now among its allies, and US-armed coupmasters secure in Cairo, the US intends to crush the last independent states in the Middle East: Syria first, then Iran. “This operation [in Syria],” said the former French foreign minister Roland Dumas in June, “goes way back. It was prepared, pre-conceived and planned.”
When the public is “psychologically scarred”, as the Channel 4 reporter Jonathan Rugman described the British people’s overwhelming hostility to an attack on Syria, suppressing the truth is made urgent. Whether or not Bashar al-Assad or the “rebels” used gas in the suburbs of Damascus, it is the US, not Syria, that is the world’s most prolific user of these terrible weapons.
/..
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/10/silent-military-coup-took-over-washington
Well said as usual. He seems to be a regular on the Guardian now after a gap. I suppose that is since the Guardian created a digital Australian version.
http://www.theguardian.com/media/insideguardian/2013/may/26/welcome-to-guardian-australia
Operation Climbdown or Operation Wait and See and Keep All Options Open?
Obama blends threat of attack, hope of diplomacy
September 10, 2013 Updated 13 minutes ago
President Barack Obama smiles for a photographer as he leaves a meeting with congressional Republicans on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2013, where they discussed Syria. On Tuesday night, the president will address the nation on Syria.
JACQUELYN MARTIN — AP Photo
By DAVID ESPO and JULIE PACE — The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — In the run-up to a prime-time televised speech, President Barack Obama blended the threat of a military strike with the hope of a diplomatic solution Tuesday as he worked to rid Syria of an illicit stockpile of fearsome chemical weapons.
Secretary of State John Kerry set a hurry-up trip to Geneva for talks Thursday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and the United Nations Security Council first scheduled, and then scrapped, a private meeting on steps to defuse a looming crisis.
/..
http://www.kentucky.com/2013/09/10/2813740/talking-diplomacy-in-syria-obama.html#storylink=cpy
@ Mod / Jon :
“On a further question of good practice, Jon : in the past you have left the author of the post and the time, and deleted the text of the post. You now appear to be deleting everything. This has the effect of altering historical record. Soviet-style air-brushing?
[Mod: answered at least twice before, here it is again]”
________________
I think, Jon, that you’ve missed my point, which was one of technique: before, you would leave the poster’s handle and the time of posting, delete the text of the post and add an explanation for the deletion.
You are now, it seems, deleting ALL trace of the post. This, in my opinion, is airbrushing and falsifying ‘history’.
I’m curious to know why your technique appears to have changed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
More generally : I hope you won’t take this badly (because it’s not meant as such), but I believe you are being played for a sucker by the likes of Fedup and Macky. Their ploy – for want of any ability to fight their corner by argument or solid facts – is to accuse you of bias in favour of me and other ‘dissidents’, adducing as ‘evidence’ complaints about your deletions and non-deletions; the objective being to goad you into proving you’re not biased by coming down heavily on me and certain others. They do not, of course, for a minute really believe that you’re biased in our favour or unduly lenient towards us. Their complaints are merely the equivalent of ‘social nudges’, and you appear to have fallen for it (or, at least, give them the impression that you have).
End of analysis 🙂
Recently looked and found nothing on any such change. So I suppose it was just wishful thinking. большое спасибо, though, for prompting me to tweak some things and be a bit less standardized. Any little idiosyncrasy inconveniences Big Brother.
Mary asks – or perhaps quotes someone else as asking (as usual, it’s rather difficult to tell when she’s speaking or when she’s quoting):
“Operation Climbdown or Operation Wait and See and Keep All Options Open?”
_______________
The two terms of this statement (or quotation) merits comment, as it is illustrative of a certain curious approach to this – and, indeed, similar – problems.
1/. After Syria has been offered a certain option which appears to be acceptable to all the powers concerned, we must indeed now ‘wait and see’ whether the Syrian regime will comply. And, until that moment, it seems normal statecraft to ‘keep all options open’, does it not? If this is incorrect, I’d be interested to hear – from Mary herself, preferably – what other approach by the Americans she would advocate. Not ‘wait and see’, perhaps? And/or perhaps declare that all other options are off the table?
2/. ‘Climbdown’ : the use of this word is legitimate only if you believe that President Obama’s starting position was one of wanting and working towards military intervention. Now, although there are many – not least the Eminences on this blog – who do (or claim they do ) believe this, there speak without the slightest proof; furthermore, there are others – myself included (cf my previous posts) who do not believe this at all. In fact, they believe the opposite and I do think that the evolution of this particular dossier lends great weight to their non-belief.
For info in case anyone cares about what is being planned for our coastal waters in the SW. Already 230 of these massive turbines (higher than Salisbury Cathedral spire) are planned for the coast off Bournemouth, Poole and Studland Bay. Wide opposition.
‘We have ONE WEEK to save North Devon
CROYDE – WOOLACOMBE – PUTSBOROUGH – LUNDY – HARTLAND
– ILFRACOMBE – MORTEHOE – SAUNTON SANDS – WESTWARD HO!
Proposals to build one of the world’s largest wind farms just off the North Devon coast are about to be considered by the Planning Inspectorate.
We need the largest number of people EVER to register with the Planning Inspectorate as ‘interested parties’.
One-third of the population of the UK have taken holidays here. It’s one of the country’s most beautiful unspoiled coasts and seascapes.
Wherever you live, if you care about the North Devon coast not being blighted by up to 240 turbines, up to 722 feet high, over the next 11 years, HELP US NOW, THIS WEEK.
You can find everything you need to know at http://www.slaythearray.com
We have until 11.59pm next Monday 16 September to let them know how we feel.
PLEASE HELP. AND TELL YOUR FRIENDS.’
http://infrastructure.planningportal.gov.uk/projects/south-west/atlantic-array-wind-farm/
RWE Innogy, based in Essen, Germany are the proposers.
http://www.innogy-ventures.com/web/cms/en/477244/innogy-venture-capital-gmbh/about-us/management/
RWE A giant. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RWE
It hasn’t taken long for the waters to be stirred and muddied.
10 September 2013 Last updated at 20:59
Syria conflict: Disputes flare over UN Syria conflict
Growing frustration
Feasible proposal?
Mardell: Dramatic switch
Anxious wait
A Russian plan for Syria’s chemical weapons to be put under international control has sparked immediate disputes over resolutions at the United Nations.
The UK, US and France want a timetable and consequences of failure spelt out, and Washington has warned it will “not fall for stalling tactics”.
Russia said any draft putting the blame on Syria was unacceptable and urged a declaration backing its initiative.
Syria has said it accepts the Russian proposal on its chemical stockpile.
Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem said on Tuesday that Damascus was willing to become a party to the Chemical Weapons Convention, Russian Interfax news agency reported.
“We are ready to honour our commitments under this convention, including providing information about these weapons,” he said.
/..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-24040659
The mask pretty regularly slips and the reality has little to do with the actions and the company that is kept. I am glad you have noticed that too Macky.
Just note the company that is kept and make your own mind up.
=====
BofA, Barclays Sued by Houston For Libor Manipulation
Is the day of reckoning here?
=====
fuckwit having a hard on in the face of mass murder and suffering.
Amusing hearing on Sky News some former office in Britains doomsday battalion – the ones who will survive the nuclear, biolological and chemical weapons bombardment that WW3 promises – talking about the possibility of decommissioning such a vast stockpile as Syria’s, he cited that there was a precedent, when Iraq’s chemical weapons were decommission by the UN in 2003! He called it a success, but did not explain what was ‘successful’ about it from the Iraqi perspective seeing as they were bombed back to the stone-age so soon after, under the pretext of removing their WMD. This is the insane banter that gets passed of as ‘expert anaylsis’ for £1,500 a pop.
There you go, Dreoilin – you’re only a friend as long as you toe the party line. A bit of independent thinking, a bit of daring to speak your mind and the occasional rebuke delivered to the Resident Staliness and you’re cast into the bottomless pit, damned as a covert Zionist and follower of Habbabkuk.
You have now had a good insight into the mindset of the candidate members of the Egregiousness of Excellences.
On the other hand, as you have rightly pointed out (rather too politely for my taste, but there you are), Macky and consorts are nitwits.
Squeaky, Okay, thanks 🙂