Tag Archives: concept

John Oliver Explains Why It’s So Crucial Apple Is Refusing the FBI’s Encryption Demands

by ClariceBlair51 Posted on March 14, 2016

Mother Jones

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On Sunday, John Oliver took on the FBI’s continuing demands for Apple to unlock a cellphone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters. Speaking largely on Apple’s side of the debate, the Last Week Tonight host explained the importance of encryption and broke down what’s at stake in the high-profile battle:

“There is no easy side to be on in this debate,” Oliver said. “Strong encryption has its costs, from protecting terrorists to drug dealers to child pornographers. But I happen to feel that the risks of weakening encryption, even a little bit, even just for the government, are potentially much worse.”

Even Sen. Lindsey Graham, who first came out strongly against Apple for refusing to comply with the FBI’s orders, recently admitted that upon further research, he’s realized the government’s orders could pose an enormous risk to Americans’ security.

“It’s just not so simple,” Graham told Attorney General Loretta Lynch during a hearing on the subject last week. “I thought it was that simple—I was all with you until I actually started getting briefed by people in the intel community and I will say that I’m a person who’s been moved by the arguments that the precedent we set and the damage we may be doing to our own national security.”

As Oliver notes, it’s a “miracle” Graham has finally grasped the concept of nuance.

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John Oliver Explains Why It’s So Crucial Apple Is Refusing the FBI’s Encryption Demands

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ISIS Fighters Lose Kobani In Win For Obama’s Iraq Strategy

by KaliWallwork Posted on January 27, 2015

Mother Jones

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From the LA Times:

Kurdish fighters in the Syrian border town of Kobani appeared poised Monday to deal a decisive defeat to Islamic State militants after months of street clashes and U.S. aerial bombardment, signaling a major setback for the extremist group.

….The apparent breakthrough shows how U.S. air power, combined with a determined allied force on the ground, can successfully confront Islamic State. The military watched with surprise as Islamic State continued sending hundreds of fighters, vehicles and weapons to Kobani, which was of no critical strategic importance to the overall fight but had become something of a public relations fight.

“Essentially, they said, ‘This is where we are going to make a stand’ and flooded the region with fighters,” said Col. Edward Sholtis, a spokesman for U.S. Air Force Central Command, in charge of air operations in the battle against the Islamic State.

My expert in all things Kurdish emailed me this comment today: “This is a big deal, and it proves the viability of Obama’s strategy of working with proxies in Iraq and Syria to defeat ISIS. My prediction is we won’t hear much boasting about it from Obama though. These aren’t the politically chosen proxies.”

I’ve been one of the skeptics of Obama’s strategy, and I’ll remain so until the Iraqi military demonstrates the same fighting ability as the Kurdish peshmerga. Kobani, after all, is more a symbolic victory than anything else, and ISIS continues to control large swathes of Iraq. Nonetheless, at a minimum this shows that ISIS is hardly unbeatable, something that Iraqi forces probably needed to see.

Bottom line: this is a proof of concept. When we can do the same thing in Mosul with Iraqi forces in the lead, then I’ll be a real believer.

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ISIS Fighters Lose Kobani In Win For Obama’s Iraq Strategy

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Torture Is Not a Hard Concept

by MarylouCiantar Posted on December 12, 2014

Mother Jones

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Like all of us, I’ve had to spend the past several days listening to a procession of stony-faced men—some of them defiant, others obviously nervous—grimly trying to defend the indefensible, and I’m not sure how much more I can take. How hard is this, after all? Following 9/11, we created an extensive and cold-blooded program designed to inflict severe pain on prisoners in order to break them and get them to talk. That’s torture. It always has been, and even a ten-year-old recognizes that legalistic rationalizations about enemy combatants, “serious” physical injury, and organ failure are transparent sophistry. Of course we inflicted severe pain. Moderate pain would hardly induce anyone to talk, would it? And taking care not to leave permanent marks doesn’t mean it’s not torture, it just means you’re trying to make sure you don’t get caught.

Christ almighty. Either you think that state-sanctioned torture of prisoners is beyond the pale for a civilized country or you don’t. No cavils. No resorts to textual parsing. And no exceptions for “we were scared.” This isn’t a gray area. You can choose to stand with history’s torturers or you can choose to stand with human decency. Pick a side.

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Torture Is Not a Hard Concept

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Joni Ernst Wants to Make English the Official Language

by GarryLandale Posted on October 24, 2014

Mother Jones

Joni Ernst has latched onto pretty much every idea favored by the tea party. On Thursday afternoon, while campaigning in western Iowa, Ernst endorsed another concept favored by the grassroots right: officially declaring the United States an English language country. “I think it’s great when we can all communicate together,” Ernst said when a would-be voter at a meet and greet in Guthrie Center, Iowa, asked if she’d back a bill making English the official national language. “I think that’s a good idea, is to make sure everybody has a common language and is able to communicate with each other.”

Ernst spent the day campaigning with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of the main architects of the comprehensive immigration reform bill that passed the Democratic-run Senate, but not the GOP-run House, in 2013. Ernst has opposed Graham’s bill to put some undocumented workers on a path to citizenship, and regularly attacks President Barack Obama’s possible use of executive authority to allow immigrants to remain in the country as “amnesty.”

Making English the official language is a longtime cause of Ernst’s fellow Iowa Republican, Rep. Steve King (Guthrie Center is just outside King’s congressional district). As a state senator in 2002, King pushed a law that made Iowa an English-only state. In 2007, King and Ernst, then a county auditor, sued Iowa’s then-secretary of state, Democrat Mike Mauro, for offering voter forms in languages other than English.

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Joni Ernst Wants to Make English the Official Language

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Hillary Clinton in 1993: Individual Mandate Is a "Much Harder Sell"

by lqr8rg5rr Posted on February 28, 2014

Mother Jones

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The individual mandate has been one of the most controversial aspects of Obamacare since Congress passed the law in 2009. Conservatives have railed against the requirement that everyone purchase health insurance or face tax penalties. And the 2012 Supreme Court case that decided the fate of Obamacare centered around Republicans’ objections to the mandate.

But the individual mandate originated as a conservative goal—first proposed by the Heritage Foundation, later adopted by Senate Republicans as an alternative approach to President Bill Clinton’s efforts to reform in the health care system during his first term.

New documents unsealed Friday by the Bill Clinton’s presidential library show that then-First Lady Hillary Clinton wasn’t a fan of the individual mandate back when it was a Republican idea. In September 1993, Hillary traveled to Capitol Hill and explained White House’s health care plan to a gathering of Democratic leaders from the House and Senate. During Clinton’s remarks, which spelled out the details of the proposal before they were released to the public, she dismissed the concept of the mandate with a prescient knowledge of how tricky it would be to sell to the public:

But if the Republican alternative, as it appears now to be shaping up, at least among the moderate Republicans in the Senate, is an individual mandate, we have looked at that in every way we know to to (inaudible). That is politically and substantively a much harder sell than the one we’ve got—a much harder sell.

Because not only will you be saying that the individual bears the full responsibility; you will be sending shock waves through the currently insured population that if there is no requirement that employers continue to insure, then they, too, may bear the individual responsibility.

Unfortunately for Clinton, if she runs for president in 2016 (as widely predicted) she’ll likely have to defend Obama’s implementation of that mandate.

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Hillary Clinton in 1993: Individual Mandate Is a "Much Harder Sell"

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Wishes Fulfilled – Wayne W. Dyer

by Myrna Posted on July 8, 2013

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

Wishes Fulfilled

Mastering the Art of Manifesting

Wayne W. Dyer

Genre: Self-Improvement

Price: $11.99

Publish Date: February 28, 2012

Publisher: Hay House

Seller: Hay House, Inc.


This book is dedicated to your mastery of the art of realizing all your desires. The greatest gift you have been given is the gift of your imagination. Everything that now exists was once imagined. And everything that will ever exist must first be imagined. Wishes Fulfilled is designed to take you on a voyage of discovery, wherein you can begin to tap into the amazing manifesting powers that you possess within you and create a life in which all that you imagine for yourself becomes a present fact. Dr. Wayne W. Dyer explores, for the first time, the region of your highest self; and definitively shows you how you can truly change your concept of yourself, embark upon a God-realized way of living, and fulfill the spiritual truth that with God all things are possible-and &quot;all things&quot; means that nothing is left out. By practicing the specific technique for retraining your subconscious mind, you are encouraged to not only place into your imagination what you would like to manifest for yourself, but you are given the specifics for realigning your life so you can live out your highest calling and stay connected to your Source of being. From the lofty perspective of your highest self, you will learn how to train your imagination in a new way. Your wishes-all of them-can indeed be fulfilled. By using your imagination and practicing the art of assuming the feeling of your wishes being fulfilled, and steadfastly refusing to allow any evidence of the outer world to distract you from your intentions, you will discover that you, by virtue of your spiritual awareness, possess the ability to become the person you were destined to be. This book will help you See-with a capital S-that you are divine, and that you already possess an inner, invisible higher self that can and will guide you toward a mastery of the art of manifestation. You can attain this mastery through deliberate conscious control of your imagination!

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Wishes Fulfilled – Wayne W. Dyer

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