< wipes tears >

Old lies die hard.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

Clearly, our leaders have learned nothing from the endless wars and crises of the last seventy years. We seem to keep installing the "clan" of warmongers tied at the hip to the military industrial complex and/or the profiteers bent on carving up Russia. Look at the implications. One of the most ruthless oligarchs in Ukraine has been issued a free pass to reignite the war in the Donbass.Anders Åslund, the man who alongside Jeffrey Sachs and David Lipton, paved the way for the massive profiteering in Russia during the Yeltsin years, he's now playing cheerleader for a war to retake the Donbass and Crimea.

In a worst-case, we're looking at Ukraine becoming an outright dictatorship and a world war with Russia. And in a best-case scenario the Ukraine people can look forward to decades of indentured servitude, poverty, crime, and fear. Make no mistake about this, in places where the U.S. hegemony encroaches, citizens of those countries end up far worse off than before their "democratization." Ukraine, once an emerging democracy with unlimited potential, has been transformed into a kill zone in between Russia and her enemies. This is war even if CNN does not report it, but very soon I expect the Donbass to me in the headlines. Watch out.

archived
A Brief Note to Congress: "Faced with clear evidence of peril..." 2007

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

Total War (International Baccalaureate exam response)

A Total War can be defined as a conflict that encompasses a total mobilization of resources such as human, industrial, agricultural, military with an aim to have such an output that the enemy won't be able to overcome. Perhaps the largest difference between a Total War and a normal war is that there is no difference between those who are fighting and the civilians; they are all seen as an enemy.

From this point of view, World War One could definitely be considered a Total War because it was a complete contrast to the limited wars of the 18th Century which were small, trying to avoid battles, not touching the society and continuing the trading systems....

Total War (anonymous www historiographer)

World War I was a total war, involving the governments, economies and populations of participating nations to an extent never seen before in history. This was distinct from the way `smaller' wars had been fought, like the Crimean War (1853-56) and late-19th century colonial wars. In 'total war' - a term not coined until the 1930s, by German general Paul von Ludendorff - the entire nation was called into service, rather than just its military. Governments played an active and interventionist role, passing laws that would be intolerable during peacetime....

Total War (wikipedia article)

Total war is warfare that includes any and all civilian-associated resources and infrastructure as legitimate military targets, mobilizes all of the resources of society to fight the war, and gives priority to warfare over non-combatant needs. The American-English Dictionary defines total war as "war that is unrestricted in terms of the weapons used, the territory or combatants involved, or the objectives pursued, especially one in which the laws of war are disregarded."...

this.empowerment(Katie Harbath)

"Facebook is investing heavily to prevent our service from being abused during elections. That includes more actively working with outside experts, governments and other companies because we know that we can't solve these challenges on our own. This partnership will help our security, policy and product teams get real-time insights and updates on emerging threats and disinformation campaigns from around the world. It will also increase the number of `eyes and ears' we have working to spot potential abuse on our service - enabling us to more effectively identify gaps in our systems, preempt obstacles, and ensure that Facebook plays a positive role during elections all around the world."

Several U.S. news outlets are shutting out European internet users in apparent effort to avoid having to comply with the European Union's strict new data laws, which went into effect Friday.

The New York Times reported that websites for news outlets owned by Tronc, including the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and the New York Daily News, are now inaccessible in the European Union.

archived
25 Feb 2018
"... I'll not be silent on matters of measuring and assigning significance to speech, while US gov litigation against IRA seeks to define "meddling and interference" and restrict the scope of "political activity" anywhere at anytime to telecommunications produced only by "real US persons." Because I can...."

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

The U.S. government has listed Syria as a state sponsor of terrorism since 1979, including the Islamic State group and its precursors, according to the lawsuit.

By 2013, Assad's government was supporting the Islamic State group by buying oil from wells seized from him by the group in eastern Syria. Assad continues to buy about $1 million worth of oil daily from the terror group, the lawsuit says.
[...]
The family is asking for $10 million each for each count in the lawsuit, which includes wrongful death, battery, assault, false imprisonment, kidnapping, infliction of emotional distress, conspiracy and aiding and abetting, plus $10 million each for survival damages and unspecified punitive damages.

archived "It's not me."
Iran Hit With Rare Material-Support Suit Over 9/11

Several survivors of the 9/11 attacks and representatives of those killed brought a federal complaint against Saudi Arabia and Iran, alleging that the latter knew about the attacks and helped plan and coordinate them.

Prior to passage of JASTA last year -- short for the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorist Act -- the kingdom could not be held liable over injuries stemming from an international act of terrorism because it has never officially been designated as a sponsor of terrorism. Now that JASTA allows civil claims against a foreign government, however, numerous Lloyd's syndicates are at the head of a 103-page complaint to hold Saudi Arabia liable.

In one of the first cases seeking to hold a social media company liable under the U.S. Anti-Terrorism Act, Tamara Fields sued Twitter in January 2016 for failing to block accounts belonging to users associated with ISIS.

members or survivors of members of the 7th Fleet who performed humanitarian response from March 11, 2011 until March 14, when the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier was moved away from Fukushima due to detection of nuclear radiation in the air and on helicopters returning to the ship.

"What this does, is it reinforces the fact that we are a solid cloud platform [brand: AZURE] that the federal government can put their trust in," Dana Barnes, the vice president of the company's national security group, said in an interview. "If the [INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY] can trust it, so can the DOD."