The New Reality

[dv8nation.livejournal.com]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11871641

So the upcoming generation of Chinese leaders don't really see much value in North Korea and are open to a united Korea under Seoul's banner. It seems the also expect the current ruling powers to collapse within a few years of "Dear Leader"s death and that NK in general is a pain in the rear.

Now all of this makes for some interesting ramifications. A united Korea would put Seoul in the nuclear club. Even with SK being a firm US ally this would still be a bit of a win for China as they'd have a nation much more open to negotiation to deal with rather than a cult of personality state built on sand.

Of course, if Chinese history is anything to go by the old guard will hold on to power with all their might. But the clock will keep on ticking anyway so a change in China's stance on NK is only a matter of time.

Thoughts?

Joe Scarborough highly critical of Sarah Palin and suggests GOP should do the same.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

In an Op-Ed piece for Politico, Joe Scarborough thinks the GOP should "man-up" and take Sarah Palin down a peg. "Republicans have a problem," Scarborough writes at Politico. "The most-talked-about figure in the GOP is a reality show star who cannot be elected." To make matters worse, Scarborough prods, Palin does all of this while demeaning the legacy of GOP standard-bearers that many hold dear, people such as former presidents Reagan, whom she casually downplayed as "an actor," as well as George H.W. and Barbara Bush, whom she deemed "blue bloods." In a particularly caustic passage, Scarborough seeks to draw a comparison between the legacies of H.W. Bush and Palin:

"I suppose Palin's harsh dismissal of this great man is more understandable after one reads her biography and realizes that, like Bush, she accomplished a great deal in her early 20s. Who wouldn't agree that finishing third in the Miss Alaska beauty contest is every bit as treacherous as risking your life in military combat? Maybe the beauty contestant who would one day be a reality star and former governor didn't win the Distinguished Flying Cross, but the half-termer was selected as Miss Congeniality by her fellow contestants." Source.

Ouch. Sarah Palin's seriousness was questioned as recently in October by none other than Karl Rove, who suggested that a presidential candidate who appeared in a reality television show wouldn't have much gravitas. Peggy Noonan, Ronald Reagan's speechwriter fired off a few choice words to Palin, calling her a "nincompoop." While many defend St. Palin, suggesting it's the mean ole poopy-pant liberal media that has it "out" for her, there are plenty within the Republican party that also think Sarah is a lot of hot air.

Joe Scarborough's editorial.

Airport security, profiling and saving money.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

The recent internet kerfluffle over body-scanners and molester-guards has raised once again the question of racial profiling. I say "internet kerfluffle" because that is exactly what it was. Internet junkies and activists worked up the froth and bubble and... and then nothing. This is because we tend to get confused between The Internets and Real Life, and Internet Peoples and Real Peoples. Some might say the absolute lack of reaction to the new security measures just shows how out of touch most internet-junkies really are. Or, some might just use the opportunity to brush up on their personal superiority about how they're outraged, and everyone else is just stupid and sheepish.

But I digress. The question about profiling is old and full of wank and race-baiting and racism and this and that and the other thing. But the question I have about profiling is this:

If it is effective and if we should use it, why then shouldn't we just use the way more effective and way more cheap policy of banning Muslims from flying? You're concerned about effectiveness and security, right? And you want to save time, money and hassle? Just don't let Muslims fly then.

Problem solved.

Personally speaking, I'm hesitant to get on the profiling band-wagon because airliners are simply juicy targets of opportunity, and the problem with preventing one type of crime 100 percent is that the other shoe drops: you can prevent one thing all the time, or most things most of the time, but not all things all the time. Of course, when a disgruntled employee or crazy drunken pilot fucks up, we tend to have less of an... well... immediate reaction. The idea that we should profile middle-aged, college-educated white males for alcoholism is... well that's downright offensive.

A few thoughts about future world

[taurus-1.livejournal.com]

Some thoughts about the world-to-come are published here:
"The Future of the Humankind: The Dictatorship of Conscience or the Tyranny of Bible Owners"

Abstract
1. Is the conscience free within the traditional confessions?
2. God is the best of planners…
3. Conjecture will not avail aught against the truth…
4. Why are hierarchs of churches against the Rightness-Truth?
5. The task is to prevent from unleashing the new world war on the basis of interconfessional enmity.

Based on the work of the Russian community of social systems analytics.
Any comments are welcome.

Follow the Money?

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

Ok, a lot has been said about the Wikileaks scandal, and i want to adress one particular dimension that has opened up that hits Britons harder than most at present.

A royal prince whos blames the press and the media for his mother's tragic death can perhaps be forgiven for mouthing off about journalists being nosey, interfering so and so's.
But the fact is that without a free press, the government would be up to all sorts of things that are not in the national interest of the nation being governed. I mean, should the guys who blew the whistle on Watergate be locked up or get a nations thanks? I rest my case.

Yet, what if the government has to 'play dirty' in order to accomplish the public good? ( Read more... )

I sometimes feel like I'm the last person in the world to know about things

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Creepy, isn't it?

I must have spent close to three hours last night diving into the rabbit hole that are number stations. Why? You can thank a recent episode of Fringe for it, although why the station on Lost didn't get me thinking about it first I have no idea.

Anyway - number stations. For those who have never heard about these, they're shortwave broadcasts that come from often-unknown transmitters that are just what you hear above - typically some sort of identifying sound, tone, or song, followed by a series of numbers. To add to the creep factor, sometimes the numbers are read off by a man, or a robotic voice, or, such as in the video I linked above, the voice of a small child. They're most likely used by spies and government intelligence bureaus (if convictions of spies who had the key is any indication) to transmit messages using one-use codes of some sort, and the genius of it is in the simplicity of it - these broadcasts can be heard by anyone, written down and preserved by anyone, but only the person or people who are supposed to understand the message can because of how they work. It's utterly fascinating.

I gotta say, too - I spent hours reading and listening, and felt like I was doing something wrong. It was really kind of creepy and crazy, and still is. I went to bed last night and dreamed that I was busting a Russian spy ring. Most exciting dream EVER.

So yeah, I'm pretty much obsessed at this point. I found that Archive.org has the entirety of a bunch of recordings, named The Conet Project, which are a blast to listen to (the guy who, er, curated it is profiled here). The liner notes for it are beautiful, too - equal parts informative and conspiracy-nutty. Really great.

So what's the deal here? The best parts are how, for example, the numbers stations amp up during a major crises such as the 1993 USSR coup attempt or when Israel gets into some trouble, or how the Cold War-era stations are still going, or how the Russian stations abruptly switched when the spy ring was busted this past summer.

I honestly don't know if there's a real discussion topic here, to be honest. I thought this was a really interesting piece of history to share, and part of it is still crazy to me.