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UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

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Re: UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

#331

Post by monkey_monkey »

simonh wrote: post #306
_AdAstra_ wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are aware that the Israely government does similar things, right?

Most European governments look at the simultaneous invasion of Israel by three Arab states in 1948, and statements made about the aims of that invasion, and think "what would we be prepared to do to defend against such determined, implacable hostility?". They look at what Israel does to defend itself and think, yeah, pretty much we'd do that. They look at Israel and see a democratic, technologically advanced state wi…

I mean wow, they really don't.

Re: UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

#332

Post by yyyk »

Chris2048 wrote: post #330
yyyk wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why is dismissive labelling ok in one case, and not another? Because the only source given for the quote was Chomsky himself*. In that case, the question of Chomsky's credibility is directly relevant. * It's possible Chomsky had an actual source etc., but if so, it was not provided in the original comment.

The issue isn't if Chomsky's credibility is relevant, but on the credibility swipe itself: If Chomsky can be dismissed on all topics (zero credibility on anything ) for alleged genocide denial, why isn't that "rhetoric that ignores X" for whatever X Chomsky might discuss?

I was dismissing Chomsky's testimony on anything, not anything he might say. If he said '2+2=4' that would be true (if also trivial). I regret not being 100% clear in a forum comment.

Re: UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

#333

Post by mxmilkiib »

mschuster91 wrote: post #186
nivenkos wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israel was also behind many of the efforts to smear the former opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn - https://www.middleeasteye.net/fr/news/israeli-diplomat-sough... The current government is a huge ally of Israel.

Quoted post unavailable.

Afaiu, the solid truth was that higher-up admin people of the Parliamentary Labour Party HQ, which is separate from the office of the Leader Of The Opposition, failed to do the investigating, partly due to the fear and hate of Corbyn in the PLP, but then LOTO took the blame (partly cos Corbyn isn't the greatest of communicators). Novara did various detailed videos on the whole saga, including looking at the PLP WhatsApp leaks. https://youtu.be/G02ZZY_KE4E https://youtu.be/ZjNB7fGc1-A etc

Re: UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

#334

Post by i67vw3 »

f1refly wrote: post #166
i67vw3 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not think so (my opinion, I may be wrong here). Paper ballots (pen and paper) are susceptible to more rigging. Government officials can directly change the results by deliberately miscounting the results. It is seen in many countries where corruption is very high in the election commission. In these places, elected candidates, voters, 'pro-democracy' individuals advocate for electronic voting (Electronic Voting…

You pointed the problems out yourself, but the compromise india gives is severely misguided: It leaves the possibility of the paper ballots not being counted. If the paper ballots aren't counted, you open yourself up to the possibility of both a) and b). If the paper ballots are always counted, Tom Scott had the very nice quote "Congratulations, you just invented the world's most expensive pencil." There is no better…

True, it can be costly, I agree with it. But there is no other way to have fair elections where everyone beleives that the election which happened was fair itself.

In paper ballot voting, the election commision is gonna count the paper ballots one by one. It is gonna cost money. The same amount of money will be for EVM+VVPAT. (less actually, as paper counting will be less and reserved for candidates who want a recount).

Re: UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

#335

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

yyyk wrote: post #328
A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will admit that I don't follow him closely enough to know his stance on either Balkans or Cambodia. If you can share any sources, I would not mind learning a little more. That said, I accept your argument that credibility is relevant. Not to search very far, if we accept him as some sort of authority on geopolitical matters, is he wrong, say, about US-Iraq relationship? My point is that opinions should not be autom…

That's fair enough. We can discuss arguments to a large extent divorced from who made them. This is often useful. However, the quote in question goes a bit further, Chomsky says Eban started a specific strategy of using antisemitism to Eban's own ends, almost directly paraphrasing something Eban allegedly said. I think I'm entitled to ask what's Chomsky's source, and if there isn't any, than it rests on Chomsky's cre…

I followed a chain of links to see if I can pinpoint the origin of the quote, but that only resulted in, as you indicated, in Chomsky's own words[1]. As such, you are right, for that reason his credibility is more relevant since I was not able to verify Eban's words.

Separately, I did some basic googling of Eban quotes and his positions[2] do not seem at odds with the gist of Chomsky's quote though:

"One of the chief tasks of any dialogue with the Gentile world is to prove that the distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is not a distinction at all. Anti-Zionism is merely the new anti-Semitism….”

I only started reading the link you provided so it may take a while before I respond.

[1]https://www.democracynow.org/2014/11/27/noam_chomsky_at_unit... [2]https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/18/corb-n18.html

Re: UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

#336

Post by Ntrails »

coldtea wrote: post #223
mschuster91 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

> Face it, Corbyn and the Labour Party do have a massive issue with antisemitism Only if we define it as criticism of Israeli policy. Otherwise, that's a smear, substituting criticism with antisemitism. > A smear campaign can only be really effective if there is a solid truth behind it. Nope, it can be very effective without any truth. Try smearing someone as a pedophile - you think they'll be able to wash it off? Go…

> Only if we define it as criticism of Israeli policy.

Which appears to basically be the criteria these days - which is terrifying.

Re: UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

#337

Post by rapind »

rat9988 wrote: post #218
rapind wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in 2004, “Official federal voting system standards require audit logs to record all normal and abnormal events that occur on the system.” And yet at that time Diebold had a system that did NOT do that deployed all across the US. Someone was deleting votes, and it wasn’t being logged. Here’s lawmakers saying “should” do something, and an opaque reality where that didn’t happen. It was also running windows… This i…

> It was also running windows… Nothing wrong with this choice. The rest of your point still stands though.

It’s just that windows is quite a bit more complex and vulnerable compared to much simpler and security focused OSs like a BSD back then or maybe Alpine Linux these days.

Re: UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

#338

Post by filoeleven »

arlort wrote: post #160
beprogrammed wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I envision a system where after I vote I rip off the top of the card and am able to use that hash like token to later verify that my vote was counted correctly

That's only viable in countries/situations where secret ballots are not a strict requirement and vote buying is not perceived to be a problem With paper ballots if you want to be sure that your vote was counted correctly you generally can go and see the counting process, as a bonus like that you help ensure that every vote is counted correctly

It’s possible to keep it secret, it’s just more complicated. I proposed one such setup in an old comment. Quoted here with some fixes.

“What if you get the receipt with UUID and your voting choices, then at a separate kiosk only in the polling station, you can enter your UUID to view the full results as posted online (meaning electronically recorded and stored). Along with your UUID and results, a hash of the two is displayed and can be printed onto your receipt. Before leaving the station, you must detach and dispose of the plaintext voting choices portion, but you can hang onto the UUID + hash.

At any time in the future, you can enter your UUID into the site, which will compute and display only the hash, giving you verification of no tampering but not disclosing any results to nefarious third parties.”

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14921442

It’s not foolproof and still requires more trust in maths than just showing your voting choices would. But it does solve vote buying and voter intimidation.

Re: UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

#339

Post by pfortuny »

haltingproblem wrote: post #151
kortex wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“If you think for a minute, is it not the case that every dictator in the world has a bill of rights, every banana republic, every republic has a bill of rights?” - Antonin Scalia A constitution without the ecosystem and institutions to carry it out is meaningless paper. Institutions without a constitution, but with a long history of case law can be just. Governments are systems but people aren't computers and laws a…

This is a good train of thought even though you quoted Scalia who was a strict constructionist. Care to expand on it?

A constitution without separation of powers with the possibility of judging the representatives is worthless.

The fact that doing so is difficult (the most blatant case being Nixon) does not make it worthless, it only helps granting the executive some stability (because it has usually been elected by the people, so it needs some berth to operate).

In that sense, the US constitution is a very good early example.

The independence of the judiciary is essential.

I am not defending the US constitution per se, though.

Re: UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

#340

Post by Chris2048 »

yyyk wrote: post #332
Chris2048 wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue isn't if Chomsky's credibility is relevant, but on the credibility swipe itself: If Chomsky can be dismissed on all topics (zero credibility on anything ) for alleged genocide denial, why isn't that "rhetoric that ignores X" for whatever X Chomsky might discuss?

I was dismissing Chomsky's testimony on anything, not anything he might say. If he said '2+2=4' that would be true (if also trivial). I regret not being 100% clear in a forum comment.

It was testimony aka credibility that I'm talking about.
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