COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Holocaust Remembrance? Every Day is a Holocaust Day



Why do we ignore the civilians killed in American wars?

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WAPO

Why do we ignore the civilians killed in American wars?

As the United States officially ended the war in Iraq last month, President Obama spoke eloquently at Fort Bragg, N.C., lauding troops for “your patriotism, your commitment to fulfill your mission, your abiding commitment to one another,” and offering words of grief for the nearly 4,500 members of the U.S. armed forces who died in Iraq. He did not, however, mention the sacrifices of the Iraqi people.
This inattention to civilian deaths in America’s wars isn’t unique to Iraq. There’s little evidence that the American public gives much thought to the people who live in the nations where our military interventions take place. Think about the memorials on the Mall honoring American sacrifices in Korea and Vietnam. These are powerful, sacred spots, but neither mentions the people of those countries who perished in the conflicts.

The major wars the United States has fought since the surrender of Japan in 1945 — in Korea, Indochina, Iraq and Afghanistan — have produced colossal carnage. For most of them, we do not have an accurate sense of how many people died, but a conservative estimate is at least 6 million civilians and soldiers.

Our lack of acknowledgment is less oversight than habit, a self-reflective reaction to the horrors of war and an American tradition that goes back decades. We consider ourselves a generous and compassionate nation, and often we are. From the Asian tsunami in 2004 to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the Haiti earthquake in 2010, Americans have been quick to open their pocketbooks and their hearts.
However, when it comes to our wars overseas, concern for the victims is limited to U.S. troops. When concern for the native populations is expressed, it tends to be more strategic than empathetic, as with Gen. David H. Petraeus’s acknowledgment in late 2006 that harsh U.S. tactics were alienating Iraqi civilians and undermining Operation Iraqi Freedom. The switch to counterinsurgency, which involves more restraint by the military, was billed as a change that would save the U.S. mission, not primarily as a strategy to reduce civilian deaths.

The wars in Korea and Indochina were extremely deadly. While estimates of Korean War deaths are mainly guesswork, the three-year conflict is widely believed to have taken 3 million lives, about half of them civilians. The sizable civilian toll was partly due to the fact that the country’s population is among the world’s densest and the war’s front lines were often moving.

The war in Vietnam and the spillover conflicts in Laos and Cambodia were even more lethal. These numbers are also hard to pin down, although by several scholarly estimates, Vietnamese military and civilian deaths ranged from 1.5 million to 3.8 million, with the U.S.-led campaign in Cambodia resulting in 600,000 to 800,000 deaths, and Laotian war mortality estimated at about 1 million.

Despite the fact that contemporary weapons are vastly more precise, Iraq war casualties, which are also hard to quantify, have reached several hundred thousand. In mid-2006, two household surveys — the most scientific means of calculating — found 400,000 to 650,000 deaths, and there has been a lot of killing since then. (The oft-cited Iraq Body Count Web site mainly uses news accounts, which miss much of the violence.)

The war in Afghanistan has been far less violent than the others, with civilian and military deaths estimated at about 100,000.

The numbers can be confusing because some estimates include only those people killed by direct violence; others include deaths from “structural” violence — such as those resulting from a destroyed health-care system. That we do not have an official way of accounting for the dead is one sign of the uncaring attitudes that have accompanied our wars.

It is difficult to obtain accurate mortality figures during wartime, but the best way might be to commission a consortium of public health schools — the most qualified institutions that study violence — to conduct household surveys every year.

The lack of concern about those who die in U.S. wars is also shown by these civilians’ absence, in large part, from our films, novels and documentaries. The entertainment industry portrays these wars rarely and almost always with a focus on Americans.

A few nonprofit organizations have sprung up to deal with the wars’ victims — notably the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, a Washington-based group founded by Marla Ruzicka, an aid worker who was killed in Iraq in 2005. Such efforts rarely register with the American public, however.

Pollsters, meanwhile, have asked virtually no questions of the public about foreign casualties. But on the rare occasions when they do, the results have been striking. A 1968 Harris poll found 4 percent favored an end to the Vietnam war because of harm to civilians. A University of Michigan pollster concluded: “More and more Americans now think our intervention was a military mistake, and want to forget the whole thing.”

On Iraq, when an Associated Press survey asked Americans in early 2007how many Iraqis had died in the war, the average of all answers was 9,890, when the actual number was probably well into the hundreds of thousands. In several polls in 2007 and 2008, Americans were asked whether we should withdraw troops even if it put Iraqis at risk of more civil unrest; a clear majority said yes.

Today there is virtually no support for helping rebuild Iraq or Afghanistan — no campaigns by large charities, no open doors for Iraqi refugees. Even Iraqis who worked with the American military are having trouble getting political asylum in the United States and face a risk of retribution at home. The U.S. response to so many dead, 5 million displaced and a devastated country is woefully dismissive.
Even civilian atrocities tend to fade quickly from view, or else become rallying points for the accused troops. My Lai, where about 400 Vietnamese were murdered by a U.S. Army unit in 1968, at first shocked the nation, but Americans quickly came to support Lt. William L. Calley Jr. — who was later found guilty of killing 22villagers — and the others involved. More recently, eight Marines were charged in the 2005 Haditha massacre in Iraq, and none has been convicted. (The last defendant’s trial started this past week.) Indeed, each atrocity that fails to alter public opinion piles on to further prove American indifference.

Why the American silence on our wars’ main victims? Our self-image, based on what cultural historian Richard Slotkin calls “the frontier myth” — in which righteous violence is used to subdue or annihilate the savages of whatever land we’re trying to conquer — plays a large role. For hundreds of years, the frontier myth has been one of America’s sturdiest national narratives.

When the challenges from communism in Korea and Vietnam appeared, we called on these cultural tropes to understand the U.S. mission overseas. The same was true for Iraq and Afghanistan, with the news media and politicians frequently portraying Islamic terrorists as frontier savages. By framing each of these wars as a battle to civilize a lawless culture, we essentially typecast the local populations as theIndians of our North American conquest. As the foreign policy maven Robert D. Kaplanwrote on the Wall Street Journal op-ed page in 2004, “The red Indian metaphor is one with which a liberal policy nomenklatura may be uncomfortable, but Army and Marine field officers have embraced it because it captures perfectly the combat challenge of the early 21st century.”

Politicians tend to speak in broader terms, such as defending Western values, or simply refer to resistance fighters as terrorists, the 21st-century word for savages. Remember the military’s code name for the raid of Osama bin Laden’s compound? It was Geronimo.

The frontier myth is also steeped in racism, which is deeply embedded in American culture’s derogatory depictions of the enemy. Such belittling makes it all the easier to put these foreigners at risk of violence. President George W. Bush, to his credit, disavowed these wars as being against Islam, as has President Obama.

Perhaps the most compelling explanation for indifference, though, taps into our beliefs about right and wrong. More than 30 years ago, social psychologists developed the “just world” theory, which argues that humans naturally assume that the world should be orderly and rational. When that “just world” is disrupted, we tend to explain away the event as an aberration. For example, when encountering a beggar on the street, a common reaction is indifference or even anger, in the belief that no one should go hungry in America.

This explains much of our response to the violence in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. When the wars went badly and violence escalated, Americans tended to ignore or even blame the victims. The public dismissed the civilians because their high mortality rates, displacement and demolished cities were discordant with our understandings of the missions and the U.S. role in the world.

These attitudes have consequences. Perhaps the most important one — apart from the tensions created with the host governments, which have been quite vocal in protesting civilian casualties — is that indifference provides permission to our military and political leaders to pursue more interventions.

There are costs to our global reputation as well: The United States, which should be regarded as a principal advocate of human rights, undermines its credibility when it is so dismissive of civilian casualties in its wars. Appealing for international action on Sudan, Syria and other countries may sound hypocritical when our own attitudes about civilians are so cold. Korean War historian Bruce Cumings calls this neglect the “hegemony of forgetting, in which almost everything to do with the war is buried history.”

Will we ever stop burying memories of war’s destruction? More attention to the human costs may jolt the American public into a more compassionate understanding. When we build the memorial for Operation Iraqi Freedom, let’s mention that Iraqi civilians were part of the carnage. Count them, and maybe we can start to recognize and remember the larger tolls of the wars we wage.

John Tirman, executive director and principal research scientist at the MIT Center for International Studies, is the author of “The Deaths of Others: The Fate of Civilians in America’s Wars.”

94 comments:

  1. More Americans have been killed in gun deaths since 1963 than have died in All of America's Wars.

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    1. How's That for a "holocaust?"

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    3. The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.

      Np mention is made of the other ethnic minorities the NAZI targeted.
      The masters of propaganda want us to forget those victims.

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    4. A special word for special people

      Like calling Europeans "Semites"

      http://www.livescience.com/40247-ashkenazi-jews-have-european-genes.html

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  2. Why pretend that we should reflect on or give a crap about what happened to civilians being slaughtered en masse by the Germans and then completely ignore the wholesale ongoing slaughter of foreign civilians by our own armed forces?

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  3. The War-Crimes Cover-Up In El Salvador

    By Jeff Cohen, Norman Solomon
    Saturday, April 17, 1993 - Page updated at 12:00 AM

    WHEN IT COMES to the actions of foes like Saddam Hussein, or the savage war in the former Yugoslavia, the phrase "war crimes" is frequently invoked by the U.S. mass media.

    By contrast, a gruesome war was waged for more than a decade in El Salvador by a regime that the U.S. government steadily armed and financed - yet the "war crimes" tag has been missing in action.

    The war ended in 1991 after the United Nations helped negotiate a truce between the government and El Salvador's FMLN revolutionary movement. With the findings by the U.N. Truth Commission on El Salvador, the Salvador regime's murder of nearly 70,000 civilians has recently received the intense, blunt coverage in U.S. media that was rare in the past.

    Here's a tiny bit of the ugly history:

    -- In March 1980, Archbishop Oscar Romero was assassinated on orders of Roberto D'Aubuisson, a U.S.-trained military officer who founded the ARENA party that still rules El Salvador.

    -- In December 1980, four U.S. church women working with the poor in El Salvador were abducted, sexually abused and murdered by Salvadoran national guardsmen. The abduction was ordered by military superiors. United States officials such as then-Secretary of State Alexander Haig and U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick offered fraudulent excuses for the murders.

    -- Throughout the decade, the Salvadoran government assassinated students, clergy, peasants and union organizers. Most military commanders were involved in atrocities, and most were trained by the United States.

    Parallel to the bloody history of sustained war crimes was a history of cowardice and cover-up on the part of various U.S. media: News coverage of El Salvador was often shaped to conform more with Washington lies than with reports from human-rights experts and journalists in the field.

    Indeed, had powerful media outlets fought for the truth instead of succumbing to official fiction, many of these war crimes - paid for by U.S. taxpayers - could have been averted.

    -- In January 1982, New York Times journalist Ray Bonner reported on a massacre of hundreds of children, women and men in El Mozote carried out by the U.S.-trained Atlacatl Battalion. After Washington denied there had been a massacre and the Reagan administration launched a smear campaign against Bonner, The Times pulled him out of El Salvador.

    (A 1982 Wall Street Journal editorial slurring Bonner complained: "Communist sources were given greater credence than either the U.S. government or the government it was supporting.")

    Bonner's reporting has been totally vindicated by the U.N. Truth Commission, which excavated the mass graves. But the cowardly removal of Bonner by Times executives in 1982 sent a powerful message to mainstream U.S. journalists who stayed behind in El Salvador: Reporting the facts - when they conflict with Washington - can cost you your job.

    {...}

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    1. {...}

      - In February 1988, New York Times correspondent James LeMoyne (who had taken over Bonner's old beat) wrote a vivid account of an El Salvador atrocity - the public execution of two peasants by FMLN guerrillas. But the event never occurred. It had been invented by a Salvadoran army propaganda officer and placed in a right-wing San Salvador newspaper - which LeMoyne read and reported as fact. It took six months of petitioning before The Times would even acknowledge the error.

      -- Throughout the 1980s, news reports in national media regularly used euphemisms to describe El Salvador. The government was referred to as a "democracy" or a "fledgling democracy." Military leaders who assassinated priests were termed "moderates." In deference to Washington, news accounts referred to "human-rights abuses on both sides" - when evidence showed they were running about 30 to 1 toward the government.

      -- One of the most important places to debate U.S. policy is The Washington Post op-ed page. During the 1980s, there was no room on that page for the respected Americas Watch organization, which scrutinized human-rights abuses in El Salvador and other U.S.-backed countries. Post editors deemed Americas Watch too "biased" - but published several articles by Helsinki Watch, its sister group that scrutinized abuses in Soviet-backed countries. The only time Americas Watch appeared prominently on The Washington Post op-ed page during the decade was when Jeane Kirkpatrick, a regular Post columnist, savaged the group.

      Members of Congress are now calling for a truth commission to investigate what White House officials knew about atrocities committed by their Salvadoran allies.

      What is also needed is a commission of journalists to probe the reasons why national media outlets in the United States failed to blow the whistle on a terrorist regime financed by U.S. taxpayers.

      Media Beat: The Times invites critiques of the performance of local and national media. Commentary and opinion on the media should be addressed to the Op-Ed Editor, The Seattle Times, P.O. Box 70, Seattle, WA 98111. Phone: 464-2323. (Copyright, 1993, Creators Syndicate Inc.)

      Copyright (c) 1993 Seattle Times Company, All Rights Reserved.

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  4. Here is something to ponder. A tiny poor country like Salvador actually arrested and tried and convicted their political leaders that were the architects of the murder. Imagine that happening to members of any number of past US politicians, let alone some ex-presidents.

    Imagine that?

    Of course you can’t.

    Happy Holocaust.

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  5. Have we had enough yet?

    Obviously not:

    The US is “closely monitoring” the situation in Libya, and it is “too soon to say exactly where things will evolve,” Defense Department spokesman Peter Cook told reporters Wednesday, acknowledging for the first time that US military personnel were recently present in the north African country.

    “There have been some US forces in Libya, trying to establish contact with forces on the ground” to get a clear idea of what the situation, and evaluate who might be “worthy of US support” in the impending struggle against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) extremists, Cook said.

    Earlier this week, General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the US wanted to “take decisive military action” against IS in Libya, in order to “put a fire wall” between them and other terror groups operating in Africa. The decision on the plan, which would involve NATO allies like the UK, France and Italy, will be made in “weeks,” Dunford said, according to the official military newspaper Stars and Stripes.

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  6. WE CARE

    The Israeli defense minister’s accusation that ISIS is being funded with Turkish money might make more noise than the same accusation by Moscow, since Israel is listened to in the US and Europe, says Catherine Shakdam, a political commentator on the Middle East.

    RT: What international reaction do you expect to the allegations by Israel and Greece?

    Catherine Shakdam: I think it is going to carry very far and very quickly. And only because Israel is listened to, especially in the US and Europe, I would expect that this statement would make a lot more noise than the same statement that came, e.g. from Moscow in November and December when people were alleging that this was politically motivated and that it didn’t have much weight following the downing of the Russian jet over Syria. And so I think that this time it would really carry and have a lot of weight when it comes to political and diplomatic repercussions against Turkey. And I think that now we will see something actually happen against Ankara where President Erdogan will be asked to respond to those accusations in a more pronounced manner. It is not just going to be brushed under the rug this time. I think it is going to be spoken about and talked about and really looked at carefully. This is not the first time that those allegations are surfacing. And they have been proven already. I think it is time today for the internationally community to really take a good hard look to what it is doing. And I think what is happening today in the terms of the refugee crisis and all the horror surfacing from the Middle East people are starting to realize that aiding and abating Wahhabi terrorists is actually not working for them anymore.

    https://www.rt.com/op-edge/330304-isis-turkey-israel-greece/

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  7. In a Huge Breakthrough, Google’s AI Beats a Top Player at the Game of Go

    IN A MAJOR breakthrough for artificial intelligence, a computing system developed by Google researchers in Great Britain has beaten a top human player at the game of Go, the ancient Eastern contest of strategy and intuition that has bedeviled AI experts for decades.

    Machines have topped the best humans at most games held up as measures of human intellect, including chess, Scrabble, Othello, even Jeopardy!. But with Go—a 2,500-year-old game that’s exponentially more complex than chess—human grandmasters have maintained an edge over even the most agile computing systems. Earlier this month, top AI experts outside of Google questioned whether a breakthrough could occur anytime soon, and as recently as last year, many believed another decade would pass before a machine could beat the top humans.

    But Google has done just that. “It happened faster than I thought,” says Rémi Coulom, the French researcher behind what was previously the world’s top artificially intelligent Go player.

    Researchers at DeepMind—a self-professed “Apollo program for AI” that Google acquired in 2014—staged this machine-versus-man contest in October, at the company’s offices in London. The DeepMind system, dubbed AlphaGo, matched its artificial wits against Fan Hui, Europe’s reigning Go champion, and the AI system went undefeated in five games witnessed by an editor from the journal Nature and an arbiter representing the British Go Federation. “It was one of the most exciting moments in my career, both as a researcher and as an editor,” the Nature editor, Dr. Tanguy Chouard, said during a conference call with reporters on Tuesday.

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  8. This morning, Nature published a paper describing DeepMind’s system, which makes clever use of, among other techniques, an increasingly important AI technology called deep learning. Using a vast collection of Go moves from expert players—about 30 million moves in total—DeepMind researchers trained their system to play Go on its own. But this was merely a first step. In theory, such training only produces a system as good as the best humans. To beat the best, the researchers then matched their system against itself. This allowed them to generate a new collection of moves they could then use to train a new AI player that could top a grandmaster.

    “The most significant aspect of all this…is that AlphaGo isn’t just an expert system, built with handcrafted rules,” says Demis Hassabis, who oversees DeepMind. “Instead, it uses general machine-learning techniques how to win at Go.”

    The win is more than a novelty. Online services like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft, already use deep learning to identify images, recognize spoken words, and understand natural language. DeepMind’s techniques, which combine deep learning with a technology called reinforcement learning and other methods, point the way to a future where real-world robots can learn to perform physical tasks and respond to their environment. “It’s a natural fit for robotics,” Hassabis says.

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    1. He also believes these methods can accelerate scientific research. He envisions scientists working alongside artificially intelligent systems that can home in on areas of research likely to be fruitful. “The system could process much larger volumes of data and surface the structural insight to the human expert in a way that is much more efficient—or maybe not possible for the human expert,” Hassabis explains. “The system could even suggest a way forward that might point the human expert to a breakthrough.”

      But at the moment, Go remains his primary concern. After beating a grandmaster behind closed doors, Hassabis and his team aim to beat one of the world’s top players in a public forum. In mid-March, in South Korea, AlphaGo will challenge Lee Sedol, who holds more international titles than all but one player and has won the most over the past decade. Hassabis sees him as “the Roger Federer of the Go world.”

      Judging by Appearances

      In early 2014, Coulom’s Go-playing program, Crazystone, challenged grandmaster Norimoto Yoda at a tournament in Japan. And it won. But the win came with caveat: the machine had a four-move head start, a significant advantage. At the time, Coulom predicted that it would be another 10 years before machines beat the best players without a head start.

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    2. The challenge lies in the nature of the game. Even the most powerful supercomputers lack the processing power to analyze the results of every possible move in any reasonable amount of time. When Deep Blue topped world chess champion Gary Kasparov in 1997, it did so with what’s called brute force. In essence, IBM’s supercomputer analyzed the outcome of every possible move, looking further ahead than any human possibly could. That’s simply not possible with Go. In chess, at any given turn, there are an average 35 possible moves. With Go—in which two players compete with polished stones on 19-by-19 grid—there are 250. And each of those 250 has another 250, and so on. As Hassabis points out, there are more possible positions on a Go board than atoms in the universe.

      Using a technique called a Monte Carlo tree search, systems like Crazystone can look pretty far ahead. And in conjunction with other techniques, they can pare down the field of possibilities they must analyze. In the end, they can beat some talented players—but not the best. Among grandmasters, moves are rather intuitive. Players will tell you to make moves based on the general appearance of the board, not by closely analyzing how each move might play out. “Good positions look good,” says Hassabis, himself a Go player. “It seems to follow some kind of aesthetic. That’s why it has been such a fascinating game for thousands of years.”

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    3. But as 2014 gave way to 2015, several AI experts, including researchers at the University of Edinburgh and Facebook as well as the team at DeepMind, started applying deep learning to the Go problem. The idea was the technology could mimic the human intuition that Go requires. “Go is implicit. It’s all pattern matching,” says Hassabis. “But that’s what deep learning does very well.”

      Self-Reinforcing
      Deep learning relies on what are called neural networks—networks of hardware and software that approximate the web of neurons in the human brain. These networks don’t operate by brute force or handcrafted rules. They analyze large amounts of data in an effort to “learn” a particular task. Feed enough photos of a wombat into a neural net, and it can learn to identify a wombat. Feed it enough spoken words, and it can learn to recognize what you say. Feed it enough Go moves, and it can learn to play Go.

      At DeepMind and Edinburgh and Facebook, researchers hoped neural networks could master Go by “looking” at board positions, much like a human plays. As Facebook showed in a recent research paper, the technique works quite well. By pairing deep learning and the Monte Carlo Tree method, Facebook beat some human players—though not Crazystone and other top creations.

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    4. But DeepMind pushes this idea much further. After training on 30 million human moves, a DeepMind neural net could predict the next human move about 57 percent of the time—an impressive number (the previous record was 44 percent). Then Hassabis and team matched this neural net against slightly different versions of itself through what’s called reinforcement learning. Essentially, as the neural nets play each other, the system tracks which move brings the most reward—the most territory on the board. Over time, it gets better and better at recognizing which moves will work and which won’t.

      “AlphaGo learned to discover new strategies for itself, by playing millions of games between its neural networks, against themselves, and gradually improving,” says DeepMind researcher David Silver.

      According to Silver, this allowed AlphaGo to top other Go-playing AI systems, including Crazystone. Then the researchers fed the results into a second neural network. Grabbing the moves suggested by the first, it uses many of the same techniques to look ahead to the result of each move. This is similar to what older systems like Deep Blue would do with chess, except that the system is learning as it goes along, as it analyzes more data—not exploring every possible outcome through brute force. In this way, AlphaGo learned to beat not only existing AI programs but a top human as well.

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    5. Dedicated Silicon
      Like most state-of-the-art neural networks, DeepMind’s system runs atop machines equipped with graphics processing units, or GPUs. These chips were originally designed to render images for games and other graphics-intensive applications. But as it turns out, they’re also well suited to deep learning. Hassabis says DeepMind’s system works pretty well on a single computer equipped with a decent number of GPU chips, but for the match against Fan Hui, the researchers used a larger network of computers that spanned about 170 GPU cards and 1,200 standard processors, or CPUs. This larger computer network both trained the system and played the actual game, drawing on the results of the training.

      When AlphaGo plays the world champion in South Korea, Hassabiss team will use the same setup, though they’re constantly working to improve it. That means they’ll need an Internet connection to play Lee Sedol. “We’re laying down our own fiber,” Hassabis says.

      According to Coulom and others, topping the world champion will be more challenging than topping Fan Hui. But Coulom is betting on DeepMind. He has spent the past decade trying to build a system capable of beating the world’s best players, and now, he believes that system is here. “I’m busy buying some GPUs,” he says.

      Go Forth

      The importance of AlphaGo is enormous. The same techniques could be applied not only to robotics and scientific research, but so many other tasks, from . . . . . . . .

      Go Figure

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  9. In Berlin, the German Parliament gathered to remember the victims of the Holocaust and heard Ruth Klueger, an Austrian-born writer who survived Auschwitz and other camps, tell of her experience as a camp inmate and slave laborer.

    ...

    Klueger, who now lives in the United States, said it was precisely Merkel’s approach toward those fleeing war and misery that had moved her to accept the German parliament’s invitation to speak on the 71st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz death camp.

    Klueger is one of the youngest survivors of the Holocaust, and was first deported to Auschwitz before being sent to the forced labor camp Christianstadt.

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  10. The machines are beating man at forecasting the Bank of Japan.

    As analysts try to decide if the BOJ will follow the European Central Bank in pursuing even more monetary stimulus, those at Credit Suisse Group AG and Nomura Securities Co. are turning to artificial intelligence for assistance.

    Both banks introduced computer algorithms at the end of last year to analyze the mountains of text produced by the central bank in the hope of gleaning insights into the direction of policy.

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  11. The Microsoft machine that called the "Scottish Independence" Election when so many pollsters got it wrong is predicting Hillary to win the Iowa Caucus by 4.

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  12. Jeez, Deuce, it's only one day out of the year.

    Surely you should be able to handle that.

    Chill.

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    1. One Palestinian child killed every 3 days by Israel for 13 years

      "The International Day for the Protection of Children is on June 1,"

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    2. "... Palestinian children are still subject to attacks by the Israelis and Jewish settlers on an almost daily basis."


      https://www.mecaforpeace.org/news/one-palestinian-child-killed-every-3-days-israel-13-years-statistics

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    4. Interesting, there is no denial of the Israeli atrocities ...

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    6. Of course the Israeli have and are continuing to commit an atrocity upon the Palestinians.

      The actions the Germans took towards their victims were "legal", too.
      The Germans were sure of it.

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    7. “To me the Zionists, who want to go back to the Jewish state of A.D. 70 (destruction of Jerusalem by Titus) are just as offensive as the Nazis.

      With their nosing after blood, their ancient "cultural roots," ...
      their partly canting, partly obtuse winding back of the world they are altogether a match for the National Socialists.

      That is the fantastic thing about the National Socialists,...
      that they simultaneously share in a community of ideas with Soviet Russia and with Zion.”


      ― Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933-1941

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  13. Sorry to have disturbed your holiday spirit. I hope your Holocaust Day went well.

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    1. Mine went fine, cleaned my guns so that when your friends show up to attack? I can double tap them...

      :)

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  14. Why don't we worry about those thousands of Americans that are dying because of the Republican Governors that are refusing the Free Federal Money to expand Medicaid?

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    1. OR, we could worry about the thousands of children in Flint, Michigan, that will have permanent brain damage due to the Republican Governor attempt to save a few bucks on their water supply (while giving Hundreds of Millions in tax breaks to the state's Millionaires and Billionaires.

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    2. Not to worry. It went well. It was your equanimity about which I was concerned.

      IIRC we both supported the overall American effort in Central America which was to stop the communists, build up the political middle, and allow for some meaningful elections.

      Despite some errors it worked in a way.

      Neither of us would have supported death squads.
      ******




      January 28, 2016

      Hillary's email scandal now potentially a matter of high treason

      By John Smith


      Memories of the Walker family spy ring and British double agent Kim Philby could be resurrected if a new angle of the FBI investigation works towards its logical conclusion. Catherine Herridge of Fox News reports that the FBI is going directly to the intelligence agencies that generated the assessments to determine the original classification level. The investigators,


      "...will go directly to depose specific individuals in agencies who generated the highly classified materials."







      This is the prudent and smart thing to do in order to get specifics on the classification authority and to compare original documents with those that were stripped of classification markings. But there is potentially something deeper and more sinister going on.

      Recently, Col. Mike Ford told AT readers and scooped the rest of the media, explaining how US classified computer systems work, and how material stored on the systems cannot electronically "spill" or "jump" between systems. In other words, it takes a conscious act to print, copy, scan, etc. classified documents and then put them on an unclassified system.

      That the investigators are going to the source of the documents is actually just scratching the surface of what could be a major scandal encompassing the agencies themselves. Just because the State Department has JWICS (Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System) and connectivity to the IC (Intelligence Community), doesn´t mean Hillary, Cheryl Mills, Huma Abedin, or even most people at State INR (Bureau of Intelligence and Research) would have access to SAP (Special Access Program) material. There are only certain people who read on to specific programs. Bosses would not necessarily have access to programs their own analyst(s) are working on and vice versa; that´s why they´re called compartmented. In fact, Fox News confirmed that at least one email had an "HCS-0" marking which is extremely sensitive HUMINT information.

      Delete
    3. Why don't you worry about the 73,000,000 abortions that have occurred in America since Roe v Wade?

      Delete
  15. Israel's preference for al-Qeada gaining power in Syria may come to fruition ...

    ‘Waiting in the wings’: Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda is greater threat than ISIS, report claims

    The Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nusra, is a greater threat to Syria and the West than Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), according to a joint think-tank report that criticizes the Obama administration for focusing solely on IS.

    The report, which was jointly published by the Institute for the Study of War and the American Enterprise Institute, states that Jabhat al-Nusra poses “one of the most significant long-term threats” of any jihadist group.

    “This Al-Qaeda affiliate has established an expansive network of partnerships with local opposition groups that have grown either dependent on or fiercely loyal to the organization,” the report says.

    “Its defeat and destruction must be one of the highest priorities of any strategy to defend the United States and Europe from Al-Qaeda attacks,” it states, adding that the group has “weakened the moderate opposition and penetrated other Sunni opposition groups in Syria” and is therefore “poised to benefit” from the destruction of IS and the fall or transition of the Assad government.

    The report states that Jabhat al-Nusra doesn’t suffer from the same “vulnerabilities” as IS because it attempts to befriend people instead of forcing them under its rule.


    https://www.rt.com/news/330377-nusra-isis-terror-report/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. .

      I rarely trust anything coming out of the American Enterprise Institute but in this case they may be right especially when talking long term.

      ISIS has few allies among the Arab states or any state for that matter. And their insistence on a strict word for word interpretation of Sharia law has only limited appeal among Muslims. Add to that their persecution of other Muslims for apostasy is its own form of apostasy.

      Al Queda on the other hand is a political more so than a religious movement. Instead of killing other Arabs on religious grounds they tend to form partnership with other groups. Also, al Queda's focus is on non-Muslim enemies.

      .

      Delete
  16. Believe it when you see it file -


    January 28, 2016

    Sweden announces it may expel up to 80,000 ‘asylum seekers’

    By Thomas Lifson


    Strained to the breaking point by the largest per capita influx of Muslims claiming to be “refugees,” Sweden’s government is finally planning to vet, and even expel those invaders who are not legitimately escaping the threat of death. If, that is, they can find them (which is a big if). The UK Guardian reports:


    Sweden is gearing up to reject up to 80,000 people who applied for asylum in the country last year, as many as half of whom will be forced to leave against their will, according to official estimates.






    The interior ministry has called on police and migration authorities to prepare for a sharp increase in deportations, and to arrange charter flights to expel failed asylum seekers to their country of origin. Sweden is also approaching other EU countries, including Germany, to discuss cooperation to increase efficiency and make sure flights are filled to capacity, it said.

    The country received more than 160,000 asylum applications last year – by far the biggest influx in the EU as a proportion of the population. Between 60,000 and 80,000 of them will be rejected, the interior minister, Anders Ygeman, told Swedish media on Thursday.

    The revelation that a large proportion of asylum seekers will be turned down, and as many as half of failed applications will be forcibly ejected, sends another signal to refugees that Sweden is no longer extending the warm welcome it offered to them just a few months ago.

    But as the BBC reports, finding them after th wheels of justice have slowly turned will be a problem:


    Mikael Ribbenvik, head of operations at the Swedish Migration Agency, told the BBC that assessing all the asylum applications would be "an enormous feat to accomplish" and would require more resources from the government.

    "A lot of people leave voluntarily and a lot of people abscond. And then we have a few people that are staying on that are impossible to remove because of identification purposes," he said.

    The Swedish government is taking this move only because the public demands it in the face of murder, mob violence, and shocking disorder:


    Swedish police have resorted to sending undercover officers to Stockholm’s swimming pools amid a rising number of sex assaults on girls by migrants.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Plain clothes police will monitor swimming baths in the Swedish capital after ‘a few dozen’ suspected cases of sexual harassment were reported mainly by parents of teenage girls.

      It comes amid reports that a number of girls said they had been sexually assaulted by young male asylum seekers at the city’s Eriksdalsbadet Olympic baths in the past three weeks.

      Of all the political parties, only the Sweden Democrats are willing to speak openly about the problems associated with Muslim invaders, and for their honesty, are shunned by the other parties and vilified in the media. However, the public is turning toward the SD because of the default of the establishment. This move, thus, represents a real change.

      That is, assuming the authorities actually follow through.


      Strained to the breaking point by the largest per capita influx of Muslims claiming to be “refugees,” Sweden’s government is finally planning to vet, and even expel those invaders who are not legitimately escaping the threat of death. If, that is, they can find them (which is a big if). The UK Guardian reports:


      Sweden is gearing up to reject up to 80,000 people who applied for asylum in the country last year, as many as half of whom will be forced to leave against their will, according to official estimates.

      The interior ministry has called on police and migration authorities to prepare for a sharp increase in deportations, and to arrange charter flights to expel failed asylum seekers to their country of origin. Sweden is also approaching other EU countries, including Germany, to discuss cooperation to increase efficiency and make sure flights are filled to capacity, it said.

      The country received more than 160,000 asylum applications last year – by far the biggest influx in the EU as a proportion of the population. Between 60,000 and 80,000 of them will be rejected, the interior minister, Anders Ygeman, told Swedish media on Thursday.

      The revelation that a large proportion of asylum seekers will be turned down, and as many as half of failed applications will be forcibly ejected, sends another signal to refugees that Sweden is no longer extending the warm welcome it offered to them just a few months ago.

      But as the BBC reports, finding them after the wheels of justice have slowly turned will be a problem:


      Mikael Ribbenvik, head of operations at the Swedish Migration Agency, told the BBC that assessing all the asylum applications would be "an enormous feat to accomplish" and would require more resources from the government.

      "A lot of people leave voluntarily and a lot of people abscond. And then we have a few people that are staying on that are impossible to remove because of identification purposes," he said.

      The Swedish government is taking this move only because the public demands it in the face of murder, mob violence, and shocking disorder:


      Swedish police have resorted to sending undercover officers to Stockholm’s swimming pools amid a rising number of sex assaults on girls by migrants.

      Plain clothes police will monitor swimming baths in the Swedish capital after ‘a few dozen’ suspected cases of sexual harassment were reported mainly by parents of teenage girls.

      It comes amid reports that a number of girls said they had been sexually assaulted by young male asylum seekers at the city’s Eriksdalsbadet Olympic baths in the past three weeks.

      Of all the political parties, only the Sweden Democrats are willing to speak openly about the problems associated with Muslim invaders, and for their honesty, are shunned by the other parties and vilified in the media. However, the public is turning toward the SD because of the default of the establishment. This move, thus, represents a real change.

      That is, assuming the authorities actually follow through.


      http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/01/sweden_announces_it_may_expel_up_to_80000_asylum_seekers.html#ixzz3yY8jvPde

      Delete
    2. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

      Delete
    3. Truth hurts so much that Deuce has to delete my words...

      LOL

      Delete
  17. Iran's Khamenei calls Holocaust a Fake... DRUDGE

    ReplyDelete
  18. The US government has four billion a year to give Israel for military spending, now off budget because the serving class need not be bothered and AIPAC need not explain. US school children in the public schools in Flint do not have school nurses.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Wow 4 WHOLE BILLION!!!!

      The United States federal government has spent or obligated 4.4 trillion dollars on the wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq.

      But let's quibble about 4 billion (mostly spent in America).....

      4,400 billion for the arabs...

      LOL

      Delete
    2. If we were really concerned? Maybe we should cut the hundreds of millions a year we give to the PA and Hamas?

      But you are not concerned.

      Over ten thousand palestinians are dead in syria, over 200,000 are truly living in squalor and what have you actually done?


      NOTHING....

      except bitch about the Jews..

      LOL


      Delete
  19. We all have our private visions of Hell I suppose.

    One of mine would be going to a Democrat Party caucus in Iowa on a cold winter's night and be forced to listen for three hours to some co-ed finger clickers trying to talk me into voting against my conscience and then demand that I club up to have my vote counted publically.

    This is all quaint and grass roots and all but fuck it I'd rather vote over my cell phone.

    These early voting primaries seem to me to be a great way to stimulate the local economy.

    I'm writing my state legislator telling her that we need to put Idaho first in the nation, say, New Year's Day or something.

    That at least would give me the opportunity to see Ben Carson and The Donald in person.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Why Airstrikes Won't Destroy the Islamic State



    By Jacob Siegel

    January 27, 2016


    Last spring, America's unofficial war against the Islamic State seemed to be in crisis. "The fall of Ramadi exposes Obama's weak Islamic State strategy, " read the headline of a Washington Post editorial after the terror group captured the key city less than 100 miles from Baghdad. And that was before the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino set off waves of panic about jihadi attacks in the West.

    More than six months later, the good news is that there has been some obvious progress since Ramadi fell. ISIS has endured significant losses, and despite ongoing clashes, Ramadi itself is mostly back in the hands of Iraqi security forces.

    The bad news is that the biggest battles against ISIS still lie ahead, not only in Iraq and Syria, but in places like Afghanistan and Libya, where the group has spread. The chief question is where the armies to fight those battles will come from. Under President Obama, who was elected on a promise to pull American troops out of Iraq, the US has refused to provide the ground forces to fight ISIS in the Middle East.

    Colonel Steve Warren, a spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve—the military's name for its battle against ISIS—recently told reporters that the Islamic State has lost an estimated 40 percent of its territory in Iraq and 20 percent in Syria in the past year. That's higher than some estimates from outside the Pentagon, but even independent analysis shows ISIS losing turf over the past year.

    According to a former Army Special Forces officer who served in Iraq during the last war and now works as a civilian in the country's Kurdish region, US airstrikes have been instrumental in rolling back advances from ISIS and changing the nature of the battlefield in Iraq.

    "Nobody feels like ISIS is what it was a year and a half ago," the former officer said about the mood among anti-ISIS populations in northern Iraq. "Nobody thinks anymore that they have hundreds of trucks that are going to swarm out of the desert. Those fears are gone. "

    Still, airstrikes alone can't defeat ISIS, particularly in areas like Mosul where the group is mixed with civilian populations. It takes ground soldiers to clear ISIS out and hold ground to prevent its return........

    http://www.vice.com/read/why-airstrikes-wont-destroy-the-islamic-state

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. America just released 150 billion to Iran and removed legal sanctions that will give Iran another 20 billion a year.

      Not to mention the trillions in technology shifting that Obama has accomplished with he help of the IMF..

      Yet, the 4 billion to Israel is special but the 21 TRILLION in quantitative easing is nothing,....

      that 21,000 BILLION... and yet you bitch about 4 billion to Israel spent mostly on American jobs and products.

      How blind are those who cannot or will not see...

      Delete
  21. The reality of the world, it is Israel that is selling weapons to Islamic Terrorists, the JPost tells us so.

    Israel arming Syrian rebels

    http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Lebanese-report-Israel-arming-Syrian-rebels-408571

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. And the JPost is not the only source, just the most 'sanatized' version.

      Israel Fuels The Syrian Crisis With Aid To Al-Qaida Rebels

      Instead of taking credit for airstrikes or ground attacks, Israel blames them on Jabhat al-Nusra (the Nusra Front), an al-Qaida-aligned group fighting in Syria. However, claims of “selective non-involvement” ring false in the face of multiple reports of Israel’s direct support of al-Nusra.

      Arab news sources reported in December that Syrian rebels from the group were being treated in Israeli hospitals, and widely circulated video footage shows Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visiting Syrian militants in the hospital.

      The practice of treating wounded Syrian rebels has continued into this year, according to investigative journalist Asa Winstanley.
      Netanyahu looks at Syrian patient IDF field hospital. (photo credit:KOBI GIDEON/GPO)

      Netanyahu looks at Syrian patient IDF field hospital. (photo credit:KOBI GIDEON/GPO)

      Winstanley highlights a little noticed Wall Street Journal report:

      “We don’t ask who they are, we don’t do any screening,’ the unnamed Israeli military official told the paper of the hospital treatment of al-Qaeda fighters. ‘Once the treatment is done, we take them back to the border [sic – ceasefire line] and they go on their way [in Syria],’ he said.

      An unnamed military official also said there is an ‘understanding’ between Israeli forces and al-Qaeda fighters there and that ‘there is a familiarity of the [al-Qaeda] forces on the ground.”


      http://www.mintpressnews.com/israel-fuels-the-syrian-crisis-with-aid-to-al-qaida-rebels/205262/

      Delete

    2. Further, the United Nations observers saw “Israeli soldiers ‘handing over two boxes to armed members of the opposition’ from the Israeli-occupied side to the Syrian-controlled side” on one occasion.

      And Pfeffer admits that “the remnants of bombs with labels in Hebrew were found on the scene” of rebel-involved conflicts in Syria.

      In January, the Telegraph reported that, according to Syria’s President Bashar Assad, the topic has even become a joke in his country.

      “’How can you say that al-Qaeda doesn’t have an air force?
      They have the Israeli air force.’”

      Delete

    3. Winstanley estimates that Israel’s direct aid began two years ago, and goes beyond just medical care to supplying actual weapons. In December, the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force accused Israel of direct collaboration with al-Nusra:

      “UNDOF observed Israeli contact with armed rebels on the Syrian-controlled side of the ceasefire line on 59 occasions ‘particularly during periods of heavy engagement between the Syrian armed forces and members of the armed opposition’ between March and May.”


      Delete
    4. Since 2013, the CIA has been training and equipping various moderate rebel elements in the Syrian civil war in an effort to undermine the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and force him to the negotiating table.

      http://www.businessinsider.com/cia-vetted-syrian-rebels-fighting-assad-2015-10

      So Israel and America are working together again....

      Delete
  22. Israel’s Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren told the Jerusalem Post that Israel so wanted Assad out and his Iranian backers weakened, that Israel would accept al-Qaeda operatives taking power in Syria.

    “We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran.”
    Even if the other “bad guys” were affiliated with al-Qaeda.



    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The United States is not at war with Assad's Syria, it is at war with al-Qeada (13Sept01 AUMF)

      Israel is actively aiding the enemy acknowledged by the Congress of the United States, Israel is no ally of the United States.

      Israel is not with US, it is against US.

      Delete
    2. But Jack, we all KNOW you lie...

      Syria is an acknowledged enemy of the USA.

      And whether you like it or not?

      Israel is an valued ally...

      LOL

      Jack, still on the wrong side of history...

      so pathetic...

      so predicable...

      Delete
  23. The Bern is becoming paranoid, beginning to worry Microsoft is going to steal the Iowa caucus from him....

    SANDERS: MICROSOFT COULD RIG CAUCUS!......Drudge

    Here I thought in the Democrat Party caucus the votes were done in public.....

    Either all I've read is wrong, or The Bern is losing it....like that crazy ass lefty in For Whom The Bell Tolls, whose name I can't recall.

    The Donald is scary ?

    Wild Eyed Bern trumps Trump....

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Wild Eyed Bern trumps Trump....

      That is what the current polls show
      RCP puts Sanders up by 5.3

      http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/2016_presidential_race.html

      Delete
    2. You are stalking again.

      Delete
  24. Bernie Sanders worried top Sanders campaign donor will mess with IA caucus


    posted at 12:41 pm on January 28, 2016 by Taylor Millard

    http://hotair.com/archives/2016/01/28/bernie-sanders-worried-top-sanders-campaign-donor-will-mess-with-ia-caucus/

    Bernie's as crazy as crazy rat, who has been analyzed by many here and found to lack basic sanity.


    ReplyDelete
  25. The difference is the $150 billion belongs to Iran. It is their money. Israel prefers getting US money for nothing and has never done anything for the US. None would actually be an improvement . For example the support for destabilizing ME countries costing the US trillions.

    You can be blind and see that

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Israel gets military aid, which is almost totally spent in the USA on over priced goods and services. Keeps thousands of Americans employed.

      As for nothing?

      I guess you missed the 7,000 posts explaining the value Israel gives to the USA.

      I will not try to educate you as you have no want to be...

      But I will say this, even obama who hates Israel still supports them...

      must piss you off...

      LOL

      Delete
  26. Iran recently committed a war crime against the USA by detaining and mistreating our sailors.

    Also Iranian surrogates recently kidnapped another 3 Americans in Iraq.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Listen up Dippity do dah.What would the US do if ten heavily armed Iranians were picked up in US waters off the coast of Virginia?
      Send them to Disneyland?

      Delete
    2. Dippity do dah ?

      OOOoooooohhhhh that hurts.

      Listen up, Iranian, they were mistreated in a way that amounted to a war crime under the Geneva Convention.

      I'm unclear just whose waters they were in....but I will check it out.

      Go read about it.

      What would the US do ?

      Obama might well invited them to the White House is my best guess.

      *************


      I was just going to post this, which I thought good:

      BuzzFeed Trump campaign manager: He’ll debate Cruz once a judge rules Cruz eligible to run..........Drudge

      I got a kick out of that. Good come back.

      heh

      *********

      RCP Iowa running poll:

      Trump 32.9%

      Cruz 26.1%

      Delete
    3. War crime....riiiiiìght!

      Delete
  27. Meanwhile,

    Son of an immigrant worker scores perfect on AP Calculus exam—1 of 12 perfect scores in world

    Cedrick Argueta is a 17-year-old high school student at Lincoln High School in Lincoln Heights, a part of the Los Angeles Unified school system. Mr. Argueta is the son of an Salvadorian maintenance worker and a Filipina nurse who works two jobs. Cedrick Argueta was one of only 12 students to score perfectly on this year’s AP Calculus exam.

    Since word of his feat has spread, the lanky 17-year-old senior – who described himself as a quiet, humble guy – has become something of a celebrity at Lincoln High, a school of about 1,200 students in the heavily Latino Lincoln Heights neighborhood.

    At a school assembly, students shouted, “Ced-rick! Ced-rick!” when Principal Jose Torres announced his score. Friends started calling him “One of Twelve.”


    He knows he has talent for math but he and his fellow Calculus classmates studied for long hours, and every single kid in the class passed. Cedrick is 17 and thought the hard work was the key to success.

    While I think talent is a big part of doing well, hard work trumps that. Leading up to the exam we spent around 2 hours every day after school. I think it was worth it now that I found I got a perfect score and my whole class knows that it was worth it since we got a full pass rate.

    While Cedrick and his family aren’t as impoverished as Donald Trump was when he first pulled himself up by his bootstraps, they are hopeful that their son can potentially receive scholarship money to get a higher education.

    Cedrick graduates in June and hopes to attend Caltech and become an engineer. For his family, a scholarship would be a godsend.

    Cedrick’s got big plans. He wants to maybe “design something really cool.” He wants to have his name on something that’s known around the world.


    When you hear conservatives shouting about taking our country back and keeping immigrants out, just remember that isolationist policies are based on illusion.

    Watch the KTLA report on Cedrick below the fold.

    Daily Kos

    ReplyDelete
  28. I'll ask Rufus whose waters the USA boats were in when 'detained' by the blessed Iranians.

    He might know.

    Rufus, whose waters were the USA boats in when detained by the Iranians ?

    I am uncertain on this question.

    Do you know ?

    ReplyDelete
  29. Here's the best I can do right now...



    Experts: Iran's arrest of U.S. sailors broke international law


    By David Larter, Navy Times 1:53 a.m. EST January 28, 2016



    Iran’s supreme leader is hailing his hard-line paramilitary forces as heroes for their arrest of 10 American sailors at gunpoint, but an emerging consensus of U.S. legal experts believe the provocative act was a dangerous violation of international law that has so far gone without repercussions.

    The U.S. riverine boats had the right to pass expeditiously through Iran's territorial waters under the right of innocent passage without being boarded and arrested so long as they weren't engaged in a military operation such as spying. Pentagon officials have said the riverine boat crews mistakenly entered Iran's waters in the Persian Gulf due to a "navigation error" while en route to a refueling.

    Their arrests nearly derailed the months of nuclear deal negotiations with Iran and U.S. officials quickly secured the sailors' release. But only hours after their release, Iran's hardliners released propaganda videos of the sailors in custody.

    Iran did not have the legal standing to arrest the sailors at gunpoint and that demands a U.S. response, said one expert.

    “This should be very concerning for the Navy community,” said James Kraska, a maritime law expert at the U.S. Naval War College. “This says that U.S. vessels don’t have innocent passage and that their sovereign immunity is not respected.”..........


    http://www.navytimes.com/story/military/2016/01/27/unclos-iran-law-of-the-sea-obama-administration-sailors-arrested-farsi-island/79398324/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The legal experts referenced the the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, which the U.S. abides by and Iran has signed but not ratified. Under it, a warship has “sovereign immunity” and can transit the territorial waters of another so long as they move “continuously and expeditiously” and do not conduct any military operations, said Craig Allen, a professor of marine and environmental affairs at the University of Washington School of Law.

      Iran had the right to query the U.S. assault boats and if they didn’t like their answer, they had the right to expel them from their waters. But they didn't have the right to arrest them.

      “They can say ‘You are no longer conducting an innocent passage, get out,’” Allen said. “You expel them — you don’t haul them into your port.”



      No need, Rufus.

      I've answered my own question.

      Iran is a rogue state, always making trouble.

      Surrogates of the blessed Iranians recently kidnapped three more Americans in Iraq.

      *****

      "Undercard Debate" on now !

      whoopie

      Delete
  30. The pentagon admitted they were in Iranian waters

    ReplyDelete
  31. From your gown comment:

    “This should be very concerning for the Navy community,” said James Kraska, a maritime law expert at the U.S. Naval War College. “This says that U.S. vessels don’t have innocent passage and that their sovereign immunity is not respected.”..........


    Did you se that boat, weapons and did they look like they were out for a sightseeing cruise?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. And, they weren't "moving continuously and expeditiously", were they? (They claimed to be "broken down," remember?)

      They were heavily armed, and sitting in Iranian waters. Technically, it was an "armed invasion."

      The Iranians were well, well, well within their rights.

      Delete
    2. They were out on a normal patrol, had some engine trouble or something, and Iran captured them, dissed them, bound them, put them on display, and committed war crimes in the process.

      Iran did not have the legal standing to arrest the sailors at gunpoint and that demands a U.S. response, said one expert.

      Since you are completely buffaloed by the Iranians, it's end of subject for me.

      Delete
  32. If The Blessed Iranians, who have made it clear they wish to kill us all, and the Israelis too, and mean it, were to visit Compound Clan Rufus in ol' Miss, would Rufus defer to Iranian sensibilities on boozing ?

    Mollie Hemingway, back in favor here, would hope not :



    When In Rome, Do As The Iranians Do?


    January 28, 2016 By Mollie Hemingway


    As doctor of the church, bishop of Milan, and church father extraordinaire, St. Ambrose dealt with liturgical differences between local churches. He had a teaching, which St. Augustine conveyed in both “Epistle to Januarius” and “Epistle to Casualanus.” Here’s how Bartleby puts it:


    The advice St. Ambrose gave St. Augustine in regard to conformity to local custom. The authority of the see of Milan almost equalled that of Rome, and each Christian society had its particular rule for the observance of rites and customs. “My mother,” said St. Augustine, “having joined me at Milan, found that the church there did not fast on Saturdays, as at Rome, and was at a loss what to do. I consulted St. Ambrose of holy memory, who replied, ‘When I am at Rome, I fast on a Saturday: when I am at Milan I do not. Do the same. Follow the custom of the church where you are.’” — Epistle to Januarius, II. 18.

    In “Epistle to Casualanus,” it’s put the other way:


    When I am here I do not fast on Saturday; but when I am at Rome I do: whatever church you may come to, conform to its custom, if you would avoid either receiving or giving offense.

    Anglican clergyman Jeremy Taylor, in his “Ductor Dubitantium,” turned this into the Latin verse:

    Si fueris Romae, Romano vivito more;
    Si fueris alibi, vivito sicut ibi.

    Translation: If you are at Rome, live in the Roman style; if you are elsewhere, live as they live there.

    We’ve shortened this to “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” Heck, we’re so lazy, we go with “When in Rome.” Speaking of When In Rome, the band by that name had that really good song “The Promise.” The 1980s were super.

    Ambrose’s advice is so common it’s a cliché.

    Except that some people are forgetting this long-held wisdom when it comes to cultural and political engagement. Look at what happened this week … in ROME OF ALL PLACES. Sorry, I’ll stop shouting:


    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Are you kidding me? The Guardian reports at the end of a story about the latest covering of nudes:


      In October, a cordon was placed around a nude statue by the American artist Jeff Koons during a visit to Florence by Renzi and Mohammed bin Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi.

      A local Italian paper reports:


      The decision to cover up nudity was seen as a mark of respect for the traditions of the Muslim country, which has only just had its trade sanctions lifted. Ansa reported that as a further mark of respect, no wine was served at the official dinner during Rouhani’s visit.

      Unbelievable. This photoshopped image of Rouhani meeting with Pope Francis would have been awesome if it or the sentiment behind it were real. Now it would be one thing if Iranians deferred to non-Muslim sentiments when hosting non-Muslims. If they changed their dining practices or served wine while Italians visited. Or even if they suspended public executions of political prisoners, lifted the death penalty for juveniles, temporarily halted the “prevalent” child marriages or abuse of minorities. Or heck, even if they didn’t demand, say, female U.S. sailors they’d arrested to wear head coverings.

      But, in fact, when Europeans visit Iran, they defer completely to Iranian sensibilities and when Iranians visit Europe, Europeans still defer to Iranian mores. Napoleon said that “A man who goes into a country must comply with the ceremonies in use there.” Seeing American and European women in head coverings in Iran and other Muslim countries goes over a lot better when their own civilizations don’t neglect their own cultural norms to please others. Civilizations that don’t respect their own religious and cultural views but cater to the religious views held by political and business interests abroad are both schizophrenic and dying. If our elites can’t even spread the message of tolerance for other cultures through diplomacy and business, we’re doomed. It’s not much but France shows what is to be done when visitors aren’t respectful of local customs:


      That’s one way to handle it.


      http://thefederalist.com/2016/01/28/when-in-rome-do-as-the-iranians-do/

      I do not believe Rufus would buckle on such a non negotiable issue.

      Delete
    2. You poor fucking moronic hick; The Iranians are Shia.

      Shia are alloed to drink alcohol.

      Delete
    3. Why the big deal with the French then ?

      Take it up with Mollie.


      'alloed' indicts you've been drinking again.

      You fucking moronic swamp 'gator.

      Why the covering up of the statues ?

      The point is simple enough. The Europeans are buffaloed, like Deuce.

      I am standing up for you Rufus !

      You are not putting your Bud down for any mother's son, bless ya !

      ;)

      Delete
    4. Alcohol in Iran is prohibited for the majority of its citizens, due to laws against consumption of alcohol by Iranian Muslims who make up the great majority of the country. Following the Iranian Revolution of 1979, strict laws against alcohol were enacted, and alcohol consumption is regulated under the Islamic legal term of hudud, "crimes against God".[1] Despite complete prohibition for Muslim citizens, there is still widespread alcohol use across Iran. Alcohol is the second most popular drug in Iran, after opiates.[1]


      Rufus you are a dumb ass

      Delete
    5. wo Iranians have been sentenced to death for drinking alcohol.

      The ISNA news agency, in a report published in the "Donya-E-Eqtesad" daily, quotes Hassan Shariati, the judiciary chief of northeastern Khorasan-e Razavi Province, as saying the two people -- who are unidentified -- were repeat offenders.

      They had previously been convicted of drinking alcohol twice and lashed 80 times each.

      Shariati said the death penalty for the third conviction had been upheld by Iran's Supreme Court.

      "We will not show mercy in alcoholic beverage offenses," he said, "and we will sentence the offenders to the harshest letter of the law.”

      Executions for violations of Iran's alcohol laws are believed to be rare, however.

      Iran's "Shargh" daily reports that the last time an execution was ordered for a repeat offender of the country's alcohol laws, in 2007, the sentence was overturned after the convict expressed contrition.

      Delete
    6. No, You are a dumb ass. There may be a secular law (statute) in Iran - we have laws regarding alcohol in the U.S. - but, as far as Shia Islam is concerned, alcohol Is Not a prohibited substance.

      Delete
    7. A quick search shows you are most probably full of crap, as usual, you drunken swamp turd -

      Intoxicants[edit]

      Further information: Religion and alcohol

      In Islam, consumption of any intoxicants (specifically, alcoholic beverages) is generally forbidden in the Qur'an through several separate verses revealed at different times over a period of years. At first, it was forbidden for Muslims to attend prayers while intoxicated.


      O you who believe! do not go near prayer when you are Intoxicated until you know (well) what you say, nor when you are under an obligation to perform a bath—unless (you are) travelling on the road—until you have washed yourselves; and if you are sick, or on a journey, or one of you come from the privy or you have touched the women, and you cannot find water, betake yourselves to pure earth, then wipe your faces and your hands; surely Allah is Pardoning, Forgiving.

      — Qurʼan, Sura 4 (al-Nisaʼ), ayah 43[10]

      Then a later verse was revealed which said that alcohol contains some good and some evil, but the evil is greater than the good:


      They ask you about intoxicants and games of chance. Say: In both of them there is a great sin and means of profit for men, and their sin is greater than their profit. And they ask you as to what they should spend. Say: What you can spare. Thus does Allah make clear to you the communications, that you may ponder.

      — Qurʼan, Surah 2 (al-Baqarah), ayah 219[11]

      This was the next step in turning people away from consumption of it. Finally, "intoxicants and games of chance" were called "abominations of Satan's handiwork", intended to turn people away from God and forget about prayer, and Muslims were ordered to avoid.


      O you who believe! Intoxicants, gambling, al-ansāb, and al-azlām (arrows for seeking luck or decision) are an abomination of Shayṭān's (Satan's) handiwork. So avoid that in order that you may be successful.

      — Qurʼan, Surah 5 (al-Maʼidah), ayah 90[12]

      wiki

      I can only find reference to one small sunni group where a Bud is OK.


      If caught by the Shias, drunk as usual, and gaming at Doyle's, they'd probably chop your stupid head off.

      Take that !

      (Actually this is just one minor reason why I don't want Mooslim immigrants of any kind coming to the USA. As in Michigan, sooner or later they will want their way. We know they are coming, in Michigan, "first for the Poles, then everybody else". I wish Rufus to be left alone. He can drink himself to blissful death for all I care)

      Delete
    8. galopn2Thu Jan 28, 07:55:00 PM EST
      No, You are a dumb ass. There may be a secular law (statute) in Iran - we have laws regarding alcohol in the U.S. - but, as far as Shia Islam is concerned, alcohol Is Not a prohibited substance.

      Rufus you are one ignorant moron who refuses to learn.

      Iran's theocracy PROHIBITS booze

      Yes Iranians break the law....

      But it's against the law you retarded moron.

      Delete
    9. It's a SECULAR Law, asshole. Ali Sistani said that, as long as they don't drink their whiskey to excess, it is not Forbidden. Not encouraged, but not forbidden.

      Delete
  33. Ruhollah Khomeini, also spelled Rūḥallāh Khomeynī, original name Ruhollah Musavi, Musavi also spelled Musawi (born Sept. 24, 1902 [see Researcher’s Note], Khomeyn, Iran—died June 3, 1989, Tehrān), Iranian Shīʿite cleric who led the revolution that overthrew Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi in 1979 (see Iranian Revolution) and who was Iran’s ultimate political and religious authority for the next 10 years.

    . First his regime took political vengeance, with hundreds of people who had worked for the shah’s regime reportedly executed. The remaining domestic opposition was then suppressed, its members being systematically imprisoned or killed. Iranian women were required to wear the veil, Western music and alcohol were banned, and the punishments prescribed by Islamic law were reinstated.

    I'd LOVE you to move to Iran...

    You'd last about a week... if that.

    ReplyDelete
  34. Iranian military personnel seized 15 Royal Navy personnel during 2007 and held them for 13 days. On 23 March 2007, 15 British Royal Navy personnel, from HMS Cornwall, searching a merchant vessel were surrounded by the Navy of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and subsequently detained off the Iran-Iraq coast. In the course of events, the British forces claimed that the vessel was in Iraqi waters, but the Iranian side insisted that they were in Iran's territorial waters. The 15 personnel were released on 4 April 2007.[1]

    A year later, a British investigation report[2] was released which stated that the area in which the incident took place was not covered by any formal agreement between Iran and Iraq.[3][4]

    ReplyDelete
  35. I wonder what the chickenhawks on this list would think of me if, as Officer of the Day, I did not disarm, and bring to shore for investigation,two boatloads of heavily armed Iranians, caught parked close to the coast in our sovereign waters.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I don't have to speculate as to what my Commanding Officer would say.

      I could see it being somewhere between 20 years, and life in Leavenworth.

      I doubt that the Iranian Army is less strict.

      Delete
  36. Yup, our court jester "Doofus" Rufus has been proven wrong yet once again....

    Alcohol in Iran


    From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    (Redirected from Alcoholic beverage in Iran)

    Jump to: navigation, search


    Alcohol in Iran is prohibited for the majority of its citizens, due to laws against consumption of alcohol by Iranian Muslims who make up the great majority of the country. Following the Iranian Revolution of 1979, strict laws against alcohol were enacted, and alcohol consumption is regulated under the Islamic legal term of hudud, "crimes against God".[1] Despite complete prohibition for Muslim citizens, there is still widespread alcohol use across Iran. Alcohol is the second most popular drug in Iran, after opiates.[1]


    Rufus, whose brain has been Bud saturated for years, might try the excuse that he was wandering back mentally to the better days of the Shah.

    Back to the debate.

    ReplyDelete