101–110 of 177 posts
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You can never morally justify war against civilians, sorry.
Civilians are responsible for their governments. Alas, this is a hard truth that many civilians do not wish to be reminded about.
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It would be illegal in many countries. E.G: france law consider that an employer can't watch private documents even when opened by an employee, during working hours, using the company equipment.
But this way, employee can't even open private documents! Which makes transgression impossible. Any document that can be opened is a company document, which can be watched.
The business would love to lock down their employees' devices (especially handheld and embedded) like this. They should just come with this system to open market, make a company that is worth billions from the start, because every BigCo would love to buy.
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It was no treat for anyone involved: Number of Americans killed in the Korean War: 36,000 Number of Americans wounded in the Korean War: 105,000 Number of South Koreans killed in the Korean War: 415,000 Number of South Koreans wounded in the Korean War: 429,000 Estimated number of Chinese and North Koreans killed in the Korean War: 1,500,00013 I would like to hear more from historians as to what would have happened h…
In a recent talk by Chomsky, he described US Air Force literature or rather documentation of the Korean conflict. Apparently the bombing was so thorough, they ran out of targets in North Korea. Not only military, but infrastructure and cities as well, as I recall. One of the impressive things about post '53 North Korea is that they did a complete rebuild.
However the JCS denied all such requests and remarkably there were only two or three violations during the entire war, such as the August 1950 strafing-attack on Antung airfield. The USA offered compensation afterwards despite that being the home of over 100 MiG-15s engaged in the war.
Reading this the engineer in me was impressed at their thoroughness. I believe it's easy to fall into a trap of thinking of the North Korean government as grossly incompetent, and this isn't necessarily true. If these assumptions extend to Western leaders, it could one day have a disastrous result.
I do wonder where they source the talent and expertise with these platforms necessary to pull something like this off. I understand that's kind of a naive question—any functional state has sufficient resources to solve such problems for itself—but one does wonder. I can only assume there was extensive Chinese help. They definitely have the critical mass of engineering ecosystem for that sort of endeavour.
My point is that it doesn't take that much manpower to build a working system, so it should be well within North Koreas reach. That their system is less polished matters little, as would-be competitors don't have access. And building their own system from scratch has a killer feature: None of the data will be slurped up by the US or its megacorps.
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But what if they hadn't? Japan was invading most of Asia with mass killings along the lines of ISIS and the Nazis. Are you saying ISIS should also be left alone and America not try to stop them? Japanese civilians at the time weren't really innocent. The whole country was working for the war effort, mainly to kill other Asian people.
> Are you saying ISIS should also be left alone and America not try to stop them? As someone who isn't from America (and actually was born in a country which was subsequently bombed by America during peace time) I've never understood this idea that America is somehow justified in the belief that they are the moral arbiters of the world. Who put you in charge? If the answer involves "we have a big military" it's inter…
How do you propose we win a war against people like that?
It took not one, but TWO atomic bombs to force a surrender. Tokyo was prepared to fight to the last person. The only way to win that war was to bomb them into oblivion. That was a choice the Japanese made. The Japanese military engaged in unimaginable atrocities and despite being nearly annihilated militarily, they continued to fight. How do you stop an empire with absolute zero regard for humanity? The Japanese has plenty of opportunities to surrender but they kept fighting and fighting and fighting.
As far as America's military budget, the raw numbers are irrelevant, what is relevant is percentage of GDP. The US ranks 11th in the world at 3.3% with 18 countries at 2% or higher. So the "half a trillion" hyperbole is silly. The US also spends a half trillion on government-funded R&D spending and spends a higher percentage (and raw amount) than the entire EU. The US also is ranked number 2 in spending on renewable energy. The US also spends more on swimming pools, airports, and education than any other country. They spend more in health care than anyone else as well.
My point, citing half a trillion as some kind of outrageous amount is ridiculous given the US GDP is $18 TRILLION per year. The US also ranks 18th in the world on per capita GDP behind such countries such as Luxembourg, Ireland, Monaco and Brunei.
The US military is highly visible and obviously subject to a lot of criticism, but how many people talk about the French Army's frequent and continual adventures in Africa? France has forward deployed troops all across sub-Saharan Africa. How about the British Army in the Baltics and Poland? The British Army in Kenya and Sierra Leon?
It's fair enough to debate military tactics, however acting like the United States is some kind of military outlier just isn't supported by the facts. On a per capita basis and as a percentage of GDP, the US military isn't all that remarkable in terms of expenditures.
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We have a company that has liquidity that is measured in multiples of this country's GDP.
Great, will they have you and your immediate family killed for speaking out?
In North Korea, browser history deletes you!
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But this way, employee can't even open private documents! Which makes transgression impossible. Any document that can be opened is a company document, which can be watched.
It would mean that any document sent by a client or a peer would need pre-approval which would make you very, very improductive. In NK, you can get away with it because you have basically no competition. In our countries, the company doing so, unless everybody is doing the same (or only if secrecy/security is part of the value of it's business) would make it completly uncompetitive.
They have all kinds of embedded Windows and Linux there, but they have more holes than Swiss cheese.
For white-collar workers you can integrate this with e-mail and workflow solutions, needs additional work but will make that company worth $10B.
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Are you joking? We couldn't even have this conversation on North Korean devices. As bad as the NSA might be, this is on a completely different level.
Its only a different level because of the amount of control the NSA has over the technological infrastructure, and the degree of force that can be brought to bear - through multiple independent factions of the US military-industrial infrastructure - upon those whom the establishment deem, through surveillance, to be un-savoury. You probably haven't been paying attention, but the US Gov't make dissidents disappear all…
This could be a story about Hilter and people would find a way to engage in moral relativism.