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anonymous

Speed Up Windows 7 - Ultimate Tweaks For a Blazing Fast Windows 7 - 0 views

  • Disabling the Search Indexing Feature in Windows 7
  • Right Click the “Computer” Icon in the desktop and select “Manage”. Click “Services and Applications” in the “Computer Management” window. Click on “Services”. You’d see a lot of services being listed inside the window. Find “Windows Search” from the list. Right Click on “Windows Search” from the list and choose “Properties”. The “Windows Search Properties Window” will open up. From “Startup type” click on the drop down menu and choose “Disabled”.
  • Click “Apply” then “OK” and that’s it. The Windows 7 Search Indexing Feature is now disabled.
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  • Disable the Aero Theme on Windows 7
  • You may also Apply a Standard or Basic theme from the previous window. The Standard Windows 7 theme is more preferred as its gives a neutral look than the classy windows old theme.
  • Disabling the Unwanted Visual Effects in Windows 7 to Speed Up more
  • Right click on ” Computer” and select “Properties” from the right click menu. Click on ” Advanced System Settings ” from the left pane to open up the ” System Properties ” window. Select the “Advanced” tab from it. Then Under ” Performance ” click ” Settings “. Choose ” Custom: ” Options From it. Now un tick all the options (Choose “Adjust for best performance“) and select only the last four options (actually three are preferable  you may un- tick the second option out of the last four). Take a look at the screen shot below.
  • List of services in Windows 7 that can be safely set to manual / disabled
  • Turn off Unused Windows 7 Features
  • Open up ” Programs and Features ” from Control Panel. Click the ” Turn Windows features on or off ” from the left pane. Now uncheck all the Feature that you don’t use in Windows 7 and restart the system for the changes to take effect.
  • Speeding Up, Tweaking and Optimizing Your SSD
  • If you’ve got a new ssd for your system, then you’d definitely consider checking out this guide which explains 9 tweaks to properly speed up, optimize your ssd and prolong the life of your ssd, while getting the best performance from it.
  • Disable the Windows 7 Sidebar (The Gadgets)
  • Right click on the sidebar and choose ” Properties “. On the properties windows untick the check box showing ” Start sidebar when Windows Starts “ From now on windows sidebar won’t start when windows 7 start up.
  • Disable the Aero Peek and Aero Snap features in Windows 7
  • Aero Snap will help you to maximize, minimize and resize the windows just by dragging and dropping it into the screen corners. I dont advice to turn it off as the Aero Snap feature really helps to speed up working with windows by arranging them side by side. But, if you are not a regular user of the same, you may proceed by turning of aero snap in windows 7. Open the Windows 7 ” Control Panel ” and double-click on ” Ease of Access Center ” icon. Now click on the ” Make it easier to focus on tasks ” seen at the bottom in there Now untick the check box saying ” Prevent windows from being automatically arranged when moved to the edge of the screen ” . Right click on the Windows 7 taskbar and select ” Properties “. Now untick the ” Use Aero Peek to preview the desktop ” option from there. That will now disable the Aero Snap in Windows 7.
  • Now To Disable the Aero Peek feature in Windows 7
  • The Aero Peek feature in Windows 7 helps you to peek through all open windows by hiding all other windows and showing only the outlines of all windows. Aero Peek is similar to the ” Show Desktop ” Feature in XP and Vista. If you have followed step 3 then Aero Peek will be automatically disabled. If not, Right Click the Taskbar and choose Properties. Un-select the ”Use Aero Peek to preview the desktop” option. The aero peek feature will now be disabled in windows 7.
  • Change the Power Plan To Maximum Performance
  • Double click the ” Power Options ” in the Control panel. Click the down arrow showing ” Show Additional Plans ” to see the ” High Performance ” power plan.
  • Now just activate the ” High Performance ” plan and that’s it. You may go for the advanced settings for further tweaking if you want.
  • Disable the Thumbnail Preview Feature to speed up File browsing in Windows 7
  • For disabling thumbnails in Windows 7, Double Click on ” Computer ” >click on the “Organize” drop-down menu and select the “Folder and Search options” Under ‘Files and Folders’ section, go to the “View” tab and tick the check box showing “Always show icons, never thumbnails” checkbox.
  • Turn OFF Windows 7 Screen Saver and Wallpaper
  • To Disable The Screen Saver and Wallpaper in Windows 7, Right click on desktop and choose “Personalize”. Click the Screen Saver link ” From the Screen Saver drop down menu, Set it to “None” and click “Apply” and then “OK”. Now click on “Desktop Background” link. From the “Location” drop down menu select “Solid Colors” and pick one color and click “OK”.
  • Disable Unwanted Start Up Items and Speed Up Windows 7 Start Up
  • Type ” msconfig ” in the “RUN” option from start menu press [Enter] to open up the System Configuration Utility. Now navigate to the “StartUp” tab. Untick the Entries which are not needed
  • Disable Unwanted System Sounds in Windows 7
  • To disable the system sounds in Windows 7, Type mmsys.cpl in RUN From the Windows 7 Startmenu search box and press [Enter]. Navigate to the “Sounds” tab. Now from under “Sound Scheme:” select “No Sounds” > Click “Apply” > “OK”.
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    "Windows 7 is Engineered for speed. Special attention has been given by the Windows team for making Windows 7 faster than the previous operating systems. Windows 7 is much faster than Windows Vista, but even then most of us don't get satisfied with it. There are many who still have their old PC. Installing Windows 7 on them wont be as soothing as they would work with XP and Even with latest hardware's installed some users are still avaricious  for more performance. We could optimize Windows 7 to the maximum possible extent to squeeze out extra performance from it. So, for all the extra performance lovers, here is the Ultimate Guide To Speed Up Windows 7."
anonymous

Speed Up SSD & Optimize For Performance with 9 Quality Tweaks - 0 views

  • 1) Enable Write Caching in Windows 7
  • This tweak would enable the write caching on your SSD which helps to speed up SSD by a small margin. This tweak would force windows to cache the write commands sent to the SSD, to be stored in the memory which is many times faster and thus would result in a much faster operation.
  • To do this navigate to, Computer > Properties > Device Manager >Disk Drive Now, right click and select Properties of your SSD and click on policies tab and just select the Enable write caching in Windows option, Click Apply > OK and you’re done.
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  • 2) Speed Up SSD by Using RAM Cache
  • Begin the process by downloading Fancy Cache (~2MB) software. After installation and starting up the program, the software interface would list out the storage mediums connected to your pc. Select your SSD from the list and configure a cache size for it (Refer the image). The cache size may be set to suit your needs. We’ve allocated currently 3192 MB of RAM as the cache and the defer caching has been also set to enabled. After setting the cache size for your SSD and related options on fancy cache, click Start Caching and you’re ready with the caching setup for your SSD.
  • Optimizing and Maintaining Your SSD
  • The TRIM Command The very first step after setting up an SSD is to enable the TRIM Command in Windows. Windows 8 has the TRIM command already enabled if you are using an SSD. It is important to have the TRIM command enabled on your system as it helps to maintain the SSD’s life by optimizing the garbage collection in windows.
  • 3) Enabling TRIM Command to Optimize SSD From the Start Menu, type CMD in the search box. Right click the command prompt icon and choose Run as Administrator. Now type fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify and press Enter. If its shows you disabledeletenotify = 0, the TRIM command is enabled in windows and you don’t have to make any modifications. If not, it would display, disabledeletenotify = 1. If TRIM is not enabled, type fsutil behavior set disabledeletenotify 0 The TRIM Command would now be set to enabled.
  • 4) Should You enable hibernation while using an SSD in Windows ?
  • Drive Defragmentation in Windows 7
  • Drive defragmentation helps in organizing the fragmented data and helps in improving the performance of a hard disk. But drive defragmentation doesn’t speed up SSD, as these drives doesn’t contain any rotating parts and defragmenting a drive would involve the transfer of data i.e. more read/write cycles which actually shortens the life span of the SSD. So, its always good to disable drive defragmentation in windows.
  • 6) Turn Off Super fetch, Prefetch in Windows
  • So its better to disable them if you have 4GB or less memory. If you have plenty of RAM installed, enabling them might give an iota of boost and would speed up SSD performance.
  • Bring up the Registry Editor in Windows by Typing regedit on RUN Window (WIN + R) and pressing Enter. Now navigate to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlSessionManagerMemory ManagementPrefetchParameters“ You’ll see Enable Prefetcher and Enable Superfetch options being list out on the right window pane. Double click each and set the value from 3 to 0. Now restart your system for the changes to be enabled.
  • SSDs are speedier than hard drives and have an access time of 0.1 milli second. Drive indexing results in increasing the number of file write operations doesn’t really speed up SSD and its better to have it turned off. Open My Computer and just right Click Your SSD and choose properties. Just untick the Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties option. You’ll be prompted with warnings just after clicking Apply. Proceed by pressing Ignore All and it would show you a processing window and would take a few minutes for the changes to be applied.
  • 9) Disabling Drive Indexing to Optimize SSD
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    "Users who crave for more performance out of their system would definitely consider investing a pretty decent ssd to speed up their PC. Unlike hard drives SSD's work in an different manner. Users who upgrade from hard drives to SSD's often get confounded with doubts whether they need to do the required maintenance which they might have been doing with the hard drives, to speed up ssd and optimize its performance."
anonymous

Services in Windows 7 that can be Safely set to Disabled or Manual and Speed up Windows 7 - 0 views

  • Application Experience Computer Browser (If your PC does not connect to any network) Desktop Window Manager Session Manager (If you don’t want the aero effects) Diagnostic Policy Service Distributed Link Tracking Client IP Helper Offline Files Portable Device Enumerator Service Print Spooler (If you do not use Printer) Protected Storage Remote Registry (You can safely disable it for more Security) Secondary Logon Security Center Server (If your computer do not connect with any network) Tablet PC Input Service TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper Themes ( If you want any aero and good visual appearence (classic theme will be applied)) Windows Error Reporting Service Windows Media Center Service Launcher Windows Search (If you rarely use Windows Search feature ) Windows Time (If you do not want to synchronize system time with internet time automatically)
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    "In Windows 7 there are many system run services that we often don't require for our work. So Disabling or not running this service unnecessarily we can save the boot time as well as speedup Windows 7. Here are a list of Windows 7 system services that can be safely set to Manual or Disabled."
anonymous

Change The Windows 7 Start Orb the Easy Way - 0 views

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    "Want to make your Windows 7 PC even more unique and personalized?  Then check out this easy guide on how to change your start orb in Windows 7."
anonymous

How to Add and Include Network Location or Mapped Folders in Windows 7 Library - 0 views

  • However, a network location, accessible as a mapped folder or UNC path address of, for example, NAS, shared folders, drives connected from other computer, or other remote mass storage media, cannot be included into Library. When you browse to such network folders or mapped drives, there is no Include in Library in the Command Bar, which allows user to assign the particular folder to an existing or new Library.
  • The easiest way to allow a network folder to be included and added to a Library is by making the drive or folder available offline, where it gets automatically indexed by Windows.
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    "Windows 7 includes a Libraries feature which allows multiple folders or drives to be grouped together for combined viewing and searching. With Libraries, users can separated different categories of files and folders including those out of user directory such as Desktop into few virtual library folders, or grouped files and folders in different physical locations such as different hard drives, external USB or FireWire mass storage device, or file server and NAS (Network Attached Storage) into a single virtual library folder."
anonymous

How to Customize Your Windows 7 Taskbar Icons for Any App - 0 views

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    "Would you like to change out the icons on your taskbar with a beautiful set of icons that all go together?  Here's how you can change out the random candy-colored icons for a stylish icon set of your choice."
anonymous

Why Office 365 and Office 2013 may not be right for you - 1 views

  • Unlike Office 2010, Office 2013 does not work with Windows XP or Windows Vista. Yet the latest data from NetApplications shows that roughly 45 percent of all Internet users still rock those two aging operating systems.
  • One of the big draws of an Office 365 subscription is Office on Demand, a full-fledged, Internet-streamed version of the productivity suite that Microsoft calls "Your Office away from home."
  • And it really, truly is—if the host computer meets the suite's fairly stringent requirements.
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  • Sync is Google's implementation of Microsoft's Exchange ActiveSync protocol. Without it, you can't natively sync your Google Calendar or Contacts to the Outlook 2013 mail client
  • Office 365 Home Premium sounds like a killer deal for SMBs.
  • The licenses for Office 365 Home Premium and Office 2013 Home & Student prohibit using the software for commercial purposes.
  • Don't despair, though: Microsoft plans to launch Office 365 Small Business Premium on February 27, at a cost of $150 per user per year.
  • between Skype, Office on Demand, and SkyDrive storage enabled by default, Office 365 definitely has its head in the cloud—but its feet are firmly planted on the desktop.
  •  
    "The next generation of Office is here, and while it's not necessarily an essential upgrade for Office 2010 users, it's easily the best Office suite to date. Editing complicated financial spreadsheets has never been so semi-seamless! That said, with this particular $100-plus investment, you'll want to look before you leap. Whether you're opting for a straightforward Office 2013 installation or the multi-PC, cloud-connected ubiquity of an Office 365 subscription, there are four potentially crippling gotchas to consider before you plunk down your hard-earned cash. I've also identified a supposed gotcha that you can actually ignore entirely."
anonymous

Ned Hall and L. A. Paul - 0 views

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    "Suzy throws a rock which causes a window to break. That is token causation: a particular event c causes another particular event e. According to a simple counterfactual account of token causation, c is a cause of e exactly if e wouldn't have occurred if c hadn't occurred. In this episode, Hall and Paul discuss why the pursuit of a counterfactual account is attractive, and consider problems for such an account raised by preemptive causes, preventive causes, the transitivity of causation, and overdetermination."
anonymous

Upper Toronto - 0 views

  • This is especially useful in the context of an administration that seems bent on stalling or preventing change at all. The current mayor is hard at work trying to undo an already-funded plan to develop a network of light rail. He characterizes that plan as part of a “war on the car”, a war he’s declared “over”. The cars won, apparently. In the mayor’s defence, he is proposing a new subway line, itself a project of massive cost and scale.
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    "It's kind of late as I write this. I'm trying to get it done quickly because through my window I can see the dormant construction machinery that's going to be startling me awake in a few hours. Annoying? Yes, but a daily reminder that cities change. All the time."
anonymous

Klip.me - Google Reader to Kindle - 6 views

shared by anonymous on 13 Oct 12 - No Cached
Erik Hanson liked it
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    "It allows you to send subscriptions that in specific folder of Google Reader Periodical format, include article index"
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    Blowing my mind here. I'll have to check up on this.
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    I'm going nuts trying to figure out how to make a Kindle Paperwhite happen. It gets so much right and it's focuse - like a laser - on what I want: reading and writing and notetaking. I spent (wasted) most of this past weekend trying to get my netbook to become somewhat useful in this regard. What junk. I actually have deep regrets about a seven-hour hole of failure yesterday as I tried all these linux builds that are so desperate for the cloud that you cant' make use of them offline. So that leaves me with... Windows: which is the whole thing I left because it was too slow on the netbook. But it's the best option given how much offline stuff I need to do. Now, the KINDLE, on the other hand... the thing is perfect. Sooo many ways to get data onto it now.
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    A lot of the stuff you shared won't work for me, since I'm on the Kindle App mostly (and a Kindle 1). The app on iOS is good, but I don't have a point of comparison against more recent Kindles.
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    Totally. The app version (I have it on Android) doesn't begin to cut it. Which is funny, to me, because you'd think the straight-up software version of something would be eaiser... but I'm clueless. In the communications department, we have a very strong need to have a "book" that contains all the relevant information about X right at hand. The scientists could benefit from this, as well, since they're printing 20 reams of paper's worth of stuff they barely read, probably weekly (and that's conservative). I just see the thing on the cusp of becoming a ubiquitous tool. I know that tablets are awesome, but I'm coming at this from a single (or few) purpose device. All that happens when we roll out tablets for people is they start playing Angry Birds.
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    I vote for online knowledge sites with dynamic interfaces.
anonymous

Jaron Lanier's Ignorance Of History, Basic Economics And Efficiency Is Getting Ridiculous - 1 views

  • The Kodak/Instagram comparison comes up over and over again, and it's moronic. It makes no sense. To demonstrate, let's take something else that's old and something else that's modern that sorta-kinda seems similar, and compare the two: Very, very, very few people make money "auctioning" goods via Christie's. Yet, a few years ago, eBay noted that 724,000 Americans made their primary or secondary incomes from eBay sales, with another 1.5 million supplementing their income. In the simplistic world of Jaron Lanier, this should be proof that eBay is good, and Christie's is bad, right? But, of course that's silly.
  • The fact that Instagram only employed a few people and Kodak employed a lot says nothing about the impact of technology on modern society or the economic status of the middle class.
  • First off, it didn't involve toxic chemicals that create massive amounts of waste and pollution. Second, because people don't have to buy expensive rolls of film to take pictures any more, they get to save money and put it to better use. Third, because we no longer have to worry about the expense of each photo, people are free to take many more photos and capture more memories and generally enjoy photography more. Fourth, because instagram makes the sharing of photos much easier, it enables much greater communication among family and friends, building stronger community bonds. I mean, you could go on and on and on.
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  • “At the height of its power, agriculture employed 90 percent of the population and produced output worth vastly more than half of U.S. GDP. It even invented countless plant hybrids and animal breeds. But today nearly all farms of the past have gone bankrupt (or, seeing the economic writing on the wall, were transformed to other uses). Agriculture today employs only about one percent of the workforce. Where did all those jobs disappear? And what happened to the wealth that all those good agricultural jobs created?”
  • Economic efficiency often shifts jobs around, but creates a much larger pie, which leads to new job creation. We can reasonably question whether the there are people who get left behind, or what kinds of skills are favored as industries become obsolete, but the idea that it destroys a middle class is just silly.
  • We kind of made a bargain, a social contract, in the 20th century that even if jobs were pleasant people could still get paid for them. Because otherwise we would have had a massive unemployment. And so to my mind, the right question to ask is, why are we abandoning that bargain that worked so well? When did "we" make this "bargain" and, honestly, what is he talking about? There was no such bargain made. Jobs have nothing to do with whether they are "pleasant." And we didn't create jobs to avoid unemployment. We created jobs because there was demand for work, meaning there was demand for products and services, just as there still is today.
  • New jobs were created because of demand, and because new technologies create efficiencies which create and enable new jobs. It has nothing to do with "decisions" being made or "social contracts." It has to do with efficiency and new things being enabled through innovation.
  • This is the broken window fallacy exploded exponentially for a digital era. It seems to assume that the only "payment" is monetary. That is, if you do something for free online -- share a video or a photo, like a link, listen to a song -- that you're somehow getting screwed because some company gets that info and you're not getting paid.
  • But that's ridiculous. The people are getting "paid" in the form of the benefit they get: free hosting and software for hosting/streaming videos and pictures, free ability to communicate easily with friends, access to music, etc. The list goes on and on, but Lanier seems to not understand the idea that there are non-monetary benefits, which is why various online services which he seems to hate are so popular.
    • anonymous
       
      Whuffie!
  • A token few will find success on Kickstarter or YouTube, while overall wealth is ever more concentrated and social mobility rots. Social media sharers can make all the noise they want, but they forfeit the real wealth and clout needed to be politically powerful. Real wealth and clout instead concentrate ever more on the shrinking island occupied by elites who run the most powerful computers.
  • This is bullshit, plain and simple. Under the "old" system, you had a smaller "token few" who found success via getting a major label contract or having a publisher accept them into the club of published authors.
  • It's as if Lanier is talking about a mythical past that never existed to make some point about the future. But all of the evidence suggests that more people are now able to make use of these tools to create new incomes and new opportunities to make money, while in the past you had to wait for some gatekeeper.
  • Lanier, a beneficiary of the old gatekeepers, may like the old system, but he's confused about history, facts, reality and economics in making this ridiculous argument -- and it's a shame that those interviewing him or publishing his ridiculously misinformed screeds don't seem to ever challenge him on his claims.
    • anonymous
       
      Given the Gladwellian attention he's getting, this would seem prudent. If there *is* something of value in there, let's use that wacky, radical tool: science - to figure it out. :)
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    "So... we'd already taken a stab at debunking Jaron Lanier's "gobbledygook economics" a few weeks back when it started appearing, but since then there's been more Lanier everywhere (obviously, in coordination with his book release), and each time it seems more ridiculous than the last. Each time, the focus is on the following economically ridiculous concepts: (1) there should be micropayments for anyone doing anything free online because someone benefits somewhere (2) modern efficiency via technology has destroyed the middle class. Both of these claims make no sense at all. "
anonymous

How people read online: Why you won't finish this article. - 1 views

  • For every 161 people who landed on this page, about 61 of you—38 percent—are already gone.
  • We’re at the point in the page where you have to scroll to see more. Of the 100 of you who didn’t bounce, five are never going to scroll.
  • You’re tweeting a link to this article already? You haven’t even read it yet! What if I go on to advocate something truly awful, like a constitutional amendment requiring that we all type two spaces after a period?
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  • Only a small number of you are reading all the way through articles on the Web.
  • Schwartz’s data shows that readers can’t stay focused. The more I type, the more of you tune out. And it’s not just me. It’s not just Slate. It’s everywhere online. When people land on a story, they very rarely make it all the way down the page. A lot of people don’t even make it halfway.
  • Even more dispiriting is the relationship between scrolling and sharing. Schwartz’s data suggest that lots of people are tweeting out links to articles they haven’t fully read. If you see someone recommending a story online, you shouldn’t assume that he has read the thing he’s sharing.
  • OK, we’re a few hundred words into the story now. According to the data, for every 100 readers who didn’t bounce up at the top, there are about 50 who’ve stuck around. Only one-half!
  • Take a look at the following graph created by Schwartz, a histogram showing where people stopped scrolling in Slate articles.
  • A typical Web article is about 2000 pixels long.
  • There’s a spike at 0 percent—i.e., the very top pixel on the page—because 5 percent of readers never scrolled deeper than that spot.
  • Finally, the spike near the end is an anomaly caused by pages containing photos and videos—on those pages, people scroll through the whole page.)
  • Or look at John Dickerson’s fantastic article about the IRS scandal or something. If you only scrolled halfway through that amazing piece, you would have read just the first four paragraphs. Now, trust me when I say that beyond those four paragraphs, John made some really good points about whatever it is his article is about, some strong points that—without spoiling it for you—you really have to read to believe. But of course you didn’t read it because you got that IM and then you had to look at a video and then the phone rang …
  • do you know what you get on a typical Slate page if you never scroll? Bupkis.
  • Schwarz’s histogram for articles across lots of sites is in some ways more encouraging than the Slate data, but in other ways even sadder:
  • On these sites, the median scroll depth is slightly greater—most people get to 60 percent of the article rather than the 50 percent they reach on Slate pages. On the other hand, on these pages a higher share of people—10 percent—never scroll. In general, though, the story across the Web is similar to the story at Slate: Few people are making it to the end, and a surprisingly large number aren’t giving articles any chance at all.
  • Chartbeat can’t directly track when individual readers tweet out links, so it can’t definitively say that people are sharing stories before they’ve read the whole thing. But Chartbeat can look at the overall tweets to an article, and then compare that number to how many people scrolled through the article.
  • Here’s Schwartz’s analysis of the relationship between scrolling and sharing on Slate pages:
  • Courtesy of Chartbeat And here’s a similar look at the relationship between scrolling and sharing across sites monitored by Chartbeat: Courtesy of Chartbeat
  • There’s a very weak relationship between scroll depth and sharing. Both at Slate and across the Web, articles that get a lot of tweets don’t necessarily get read very deeply.
  • Articles that get read deeply aren’t necessarily generating a lot of tweets.  
  • Schwartz tells me that on a typical Slate page, only 25 percent of readers make it past the 1,600th pixel of the page, and we’re way beyond that now.
  • Sure, like every other writer on the Web, I want my articles to be widely read, which means I want you to Like and Tweet and email this piece to everyone you know. But if you had any inkling of doing that, you’d have done it already. You’d probably have done it just after reading the headline and seeing the picture at the top. Nothing I say at this point matters at all.
  • So, what the hey, here are a couple more graphs, after which I promise I’ll wrap things up for the handful of folks who are still left around here. (What losers you are! Don’t you have anything else to do?) This heatmap shows where readers spend most of their time on Slate pages:
  • Schwartz told me I should be very pleased with Slate’s map, which shows that a lot of people are moved to spend a significant amount of their time below the initial scroll window of an article page.
  • Since you usually have to scroll below the fold to see just about any part of an article, Slate’s below-the-fold engagement looks really great. But if articles started higher up on the page, it might not look as good. In other words: Ugh.
  • Maybe this is just our cultural lot: We live in the age of skimming. I want to finish the whole thing, I really do. I wish you would, too. Really—stop quitting! But who am I kidding. I’m busy. You’re busy. There’s always something else to read, watch, play, or eat. OK, this is where I’d come up with some clever ending. But who cares? You certainly don’t. Let’s just go with this: Kicker TK.
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    "Schwartz's data shows that readers can't stay focused. The more I type, the more of you tune out. And it's not just me. It's not just Slate. It's everywhere online. When people land on a story, they very rarely make it all the way down the page. A lot of people don't even make it halfway. Even more dispiriting is the relationship between scrolling and sharing. Schwartz's data suggest that lots of people are tweeting out links to articles they haven't fully read. If you see someone recommending a story online, you shouldn't assume that he has read the thing he's sharing."
anonymous

The Cuban Spy Network in the U.S. Government - 0 views

  • Velazquez, a former attorney adviser at the U.S. Department of Transportation and a legal officer at the U.S. Agency for International Development, fled the United States for Sweden in 2002 and was indicted in 2004.
  • Velazquez apparently selected Sweden because the country considers espionage to be a political offense, therefore it is not covered under its extradition treaty with the United States.
  • Though the Velazquez indictment is several years old, it provides a detailed and fascinating account of Cuban espionage activity inside the United States. It also raises some significant implications about the daunting challenges facing American counterintelligence agencies.
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  • The U.S. government alleges that Velazquez was first recruited by the Cuban intelligence service in 1983 while a student at Johns Hopkins. She reportedly traveled from Washington to Mexico City where she met with a Cuban intelligence officer and was formally recruited as an agent. During her studies at Johns Hopkins, the government claims that Velazquez served as a spotter agent who helped the Cuban intelligence service identify, assess and recruit people who occupied sensitive national security positions or who had the potential to move into such positions in the future.
  • During the early 1980s, a left-wing movement developed in many American universities. The movement opposed Reagan's Central American policies, such as opposition to the Sandinistas, support for the Contra rebels and support of the regimes in El Salvador and Guatemala.
  • The indictment alleges that in the fall of 1984, while Montes was working as a clerk at the Department of Justice, Velazquez took her to New York to meet a friend who Velazquez said could provide Montes an opportunity to help the Nicaraguan people.
  • The friend was an intelligence officer assigned to the Cuban mission to the United Nations. The women again traveled to New York together in early 1985 and met the Cuban intelligence officer a second time. He arranged for the two women to secretly travel together to Cuba via Spain.
  • In March of 1985, Velazquez and Montes traveled to Madrid, Spain, where they were met by a Cuban intelligence officer, who provided them with false passports and other documents. They then used these documents to travel to Prague in what was then Czechoslovakia. Once in Prague they were met by another Cuban intelligence officer who provided them with yet another set of false documents, as well as new sets of clothing. The Cuban officer they met in Prague then traveled with the women to Havana.
  • Upon returning to Washington, Montes applied for a job at the Defense Intelligence Agency using Velazquez as a character reference. She was hired by the Defense Intelligence Agency as an analyst in September 1985. Montes would excel at the agency and eventually became the Defense Intelligence Agency's most senior Cuba analyst. She served at that agency until the FBI arrested her in September 2001.
  • Montes pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit espionage charges in March 2002 and is currently serving a 25-year sentence.
  • The Velazquez case, when studied in conjunction with those of Montes and Walter and Gwendolyn Myers, provides a fascinating window into the scope and nature of Cuban intelligence efforts inside the United States.
  • With Velazquez at the U.S. Agency for International Development, Montes at the Defense Intelligence Agency and Myers in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, the Cubans had incredible coverage of the American government's foreign policy and intelligence community. Even after Montes was arrested and Velazquez fled to Sweden, Myers remained at the State Department until his retirement in 2007.
  • The fact that there were three high-profile Cuban agents who penetrated the U.S. government and who were all associated with the School of Advanced International Studies would seem to be an incredible coincidence.
  • The FBI is probably still looking for potential agents who Myers could have spotted for recruitment when they studied there from 2007 to 2009.
  • MICE stands for money, ideology, compromise and ego.
  • Traditionally, money has proved to be the top motivation for Americans arrested for espionage, but as seen in the Velazquez, Montes and Myers cases, the Cubans were very successful in recruiting American agents using ideology.
  • In addition to the Cuban preference for ideologically motivated agents, this case also shows that the Cuban intelligence service is very patient and is willing to wait years for the agents it recruits to move into sensitive positions within the U.S. government rather than just focus on immediate results.
  • It is also clear that Cuban espionage efforts against the United States did not end with the Cold War and continue to this day.   
  • Perhaps the most disturbing revelation from the Velazquez case for American counterintelligence officials, though, is the fact that Velazquez was not caught due to some operational mistake or intelligence coup.
  • The only reason she was discovered is because of Montes' arrest and confession, which uncovered her activities.
  • This means that her espionage tradecraft was solid for the nearly 18 years that she worked as a Cuban agent within the U.S. government. Furthermore, the background investigations conducted for the security clearances she held with the Department of Transportation and the Agency for International Development did not pick up on her anti-American sentiments -- even the "full field" investigation that would have been conducted prior to her being granted a Top Secret clearance.  
  • It is not surprising that the background investigations failed to uncover Velazquez's espionage activities. Background investigations often are seen as mundane tasks, and thus are not given high priority -- especially when there are so many other "real" cases to investigate.
  • these investigations are most often done by contract investigators whose bureaucratic bosses emphasize speed over substance, meaning important leads are often ignored because of a case deadline.
  • In fact, contractors who do attempt to dig deep are sometimes accused of trying to milk the system in an effort to acquire more points (the basis upon which contract investigators are paid) by running additional leads and interviewing additional people.
  • Quite frankly, when it comes to background investigations, the prevalent attitude is to do the minimum work necessary to check off the prerequisite boxes and get the investigation over as quickly -- and as superficially -- as possible.
  • Background investigations have become perfunctory bureaucratic processes that lack the ability to uncover the type of information required to catch a spy who does not want to be caught.  
  • the polygraph that Velazquez and Montes received during their first trip to Cuba underscores the limitation of polygraph examinations -– they only work really well on honest people.
  • If a small, poor nation like Cuba can successfully recruit so many agents and place them in critical positions within the U.S. government for so long, what does this portend about the efforts and successes of larger or richer countries with aggressive intelligence agencies like China, Russia, Israel and India?
  •  
    "On April 25, the U.S. government announced that it was unsealing an indictment charging Marta Rita Velazquez with conspiracy to commit espionage on behalf of the Cuban government. Velazquez, a former attorney adviser at the U.S. Department of Transportation and a legal officer at the U.S. Agency for International Development, fled the United States for Sweden in 2002 and was indicted in 2004. Velazquez apparently selected Sweden because the country considers espionage to be a political offense, therefore it is not covered under its extradition treaty with the United States. She and her husband also lived in Sweden from 1998 to 2000, so the country was familiar to them."
anonymous

In Dispute Over Islands, a Chance for Beijing | Stratfor - 0 views

  • . Chinese pilots are more actively shadowing U.S. military aircraft flying through the airspace between China and Japan. Chinese aircraft have also reportedly violated Japanese airspace near the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islands several times since mid-December, prompting Japan to send its aircraft, including F-15Js, to monitor Chinese actions. 

  • Tokyo has identified several gaps in its ability to address Chinese actions. Japan will depend on the United States to fill these gaps as its military purchases new systems, shifts its existing forces and adjusts its rules of engagement.
  • Until 2012, the dispute over the islands was only an occasional source of tension between China and Japan. The two sides had operated under a tacit agreement: China would not push its claims if Japan did not develop the islands. In April 2012, then-Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara, in a speech at the Heritage Foundation, announced the city's plans to purchase the Senkaku Islands from their Japanese private owner. This action forced the Japanese central government to purchase the islands outright rather than continue to rent them from the private owners or allow Ishihara to buy the islands and possibly begin to build facilities on them.

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  • What took place was effectively a change in the deeds to the islands, which in reality were already under Japanese control.
  • Beijing, however, exploited the move to set in motion a nationalist campaign against Japanese businesses and products and to justify the new pace of Chinese maritime and air activity around the islands.
  • In the first case, Japan does not acknowledge China's claim to the islands, and thus it does not recognize a dispute, instead characterizing Beijing's moves as Chinese aggression.
  • In the second instance, China sees its increased presence as a way to either cow the other claimant or to help China build a stronger case should the dispute ever go to international arbitration.
  • Japan has already recognized several shortcomings in its own defense capabilities
  • But most Japanese plans are slated for implementation no sooner than 2015. This leaves Tokyo unable to effectively counter Chinese activity for two more years.
  • Washington has said it does not recognize any sovereignty over the islands, but it does recognize Japanese administrative control, meaning that by default, Washington supports Japan. But the United States does not want a violent clash between Japan and China. By increasing its direct involvement, Washington can reassure Tokyo of its support, softening the pressure for Japan to take more aggressive action, and it can serve notice to China that more aggressive action would involve not only Japan but also the United States. 

  • But this approach assumes China is willing to step back. In China's view, the United States is trying to contain Beijing and encroach on its sphere of influence. Beijing sees the evidence of this in Washington's pivot to Asia, in the expansion of its political and defense relations with Southeast Asian states and in its strengthened military posture throughout the region, particularly in Australia and the Philippines.
  • The involvement of the United States, then, may not suffice to alter China's actions around the disputed islands.
  • In 2001, after a collision between a Chinese Jian-8 and a U.S. EP-3E, China held the plane on Hainan Island and demanded a U.S. apology. But more than just seeking an apology or trying to pry secrets from the plane's airframe, China used the opportunity to try to show other Asian states that the United States and its military could be countered in Asia.
  • Beijing's ability to resist U.S. demands and Washington's unwillingness to intervene militarily were, for China, a victory. The 9/11 attacks on the United States shifted U.S. attention and the stresses of U.S.-China relations were quickly deprioritized. But those tensions are rising once again, and at a time when more military flights and ships are moving near the disputed area, Beijing may be on the lookout for another opportunity to reshape regional perceptions of Washington's military commitment to Asia. And with the United States engaged for more than a decade in a war in Afghanistan, Beijing is calculating that Washington will continue to seek to avoid new conflict in Asia, giving China a short window of opportunity to make its point.
  •  
    "As Japan and China increase naval and air activity around the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea, the United States is steadily increasing its active involvement to reassure Tokyo and send a warning to Beijing. But Beijing may seek an opportunity to challenge U.S. primacy in what China considers its territorial waters."
anonymous

Hellfire, Morality and Strategy - 2 views

  • On one side of this dispute are those who regard them simply as another weapon of war whose virtue is the precision with which they strike targets.
  • On the other side are those who argue that in general, unmanned aerial vehicles are used to kill specific individuals, frequently civilians, thus denying the targeted individuals their basic right to some form of legal due process.
  • Let's begin with the weapons systems, the MQ-1 Predator and the MQ-9 Reaper. The media call them drones, but they are actually remotely piloted aircraft. Rather than being in the cockpit, the pilot is at a ground station, receiving flight data and visual images from the aircraft and sending command signals back to it via a satellite data link.
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  • Most airstrikes from these aircraft use Hellfire missiles, which cause less collateral damage.
  • Unlike a manned aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles can remain in the air for an extended period of time -- an important capability for engaging targets that may only present a very narrow target window. This ability to loiter, and then strike quickly when a target presents itself, is what has made these weapons systems preferable to fixed wing aircraft and cruise missiles.
  • The Argument Against Airstrikes
  • The modern battlefield -- and the ancient as well -- has been marked by anonymity. The enemy was not a distinct individual but an army, and the killing of soldiers in an enemy army did not carry with it any sense of personal culpability. In general, no individual soldier was selected for special attention, and his death was not an act of punishment. He was killed because of his membership in an army and not because of any specific action he might have carried out.
  • This distinguishes unmanned aerial vehicles from most weapons that have been used since the age of explosives began.
  • There are those who object to all war and all killing; we are not addressing those issues here. We are addressing the arguments of those who object to this particular sort of killing. The reasoning is that when you are targeting a particular individual based on his relationships, you are introducing the idea of culpability, and that that culpability makes the decision-maker -- whoever he is -- both judge and executioner, without due process.
  • Again excluding absolute pacifists from this discussion, the objection is that the use of unmanned aerial vehicles is not so much an act of war as an act of judgment and, as such, violates international law that requires due process for a soldier being judged and executed. To put it simply, the critics regard what they call drone strikes as summary executions, not acts of war.
  • The Argument for Airstrikes
  • The counterargument is that the United States is engaged in a unique sort of war.
  • The primary unit is the individual, and the individuals -- particularly the commanders -- isolate themselves and make themselves as difficult to find as possible. Given their political intentions and resources, sparse forces dispersed without regard to national boundaries use their isolation as the equivalent of technological stealth to make them survivable and able to carefully mount military operations against the enemy at unpredictable times and in unpredictable ways.
  • The argument for using strikes from unmanned aerial vehicles is that it is not an attack on an individual any more than an artillery barrage that kills a hundred is an attack on each individual. Rather, the jihadist movement presents a unique case in which the individual jihadist is the military unit.
  • The argument in favor of using unmanned aerial vehicle strikes is, therefore, that the act of killing the individual is a military necessity dictated by the enemy's strategy and that it is carried out with the understanding that both intelligence and precision might fail, no matter how much care is taken.
  • It would seem to me that these strikes do not violate the rules of war and that they require no more legal overview than was given in thousands of bomber raids in World War II.
  • Ignoring the question of whether jihadist operations are in accordance with the rules and customs of war, their failure to carry a "fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance" is a violation of both the Hague and Geneva conventions. This means that considerations given to soldiers under the rules of war do not apply to those waging war without insignia.
  • Open insignia is fundamental to the rules of war. It was instituted after the Franco-Prussian war, when French snipers dressed as civilians fired on Germans. It was viewed that the snipers had endangered civilians because it was a soldier's right to defend himself and that since they were dressed as civilians, the French snipers -- not the Germans -- were responsible for the civilian deaths.
  • the onus on ascertaining the nature of the target rests with the United States, but if there is error, the responsibility for that error rests with jihadists for not distinguishing themselves from civilians.
  • There is of course a greater complexity to this: attacking targets in countries that are not in a state of war with the United States and that have not consented to these attacks. For better or worse, the declaration of war has not been in fashion since World War II. But the jihadist movement has complicated this problem substantially.
  • In a method of war where the individual is the prime unit and where lack of identification is a primary defensive method, the conduct of intelligence operations wherever the enemy might be, regardless of borders, follows. So do operations to destroy enemy units -- individuals. If a country harbors such individuals knowingly, it is an enemy. If it is incapable of destroying the enemy units, it forfeits its right to claim sovereignty since part of sovereignty is a responsibility to prevent attacks on other countries.
  • If we simply follow the logic we laid out here, then the critics of unmanned aerial vehicle strikes have a weak case. It is not illegitimate to target individuals in a military force like the jihadist movement, and international law holds them responsible for collateral damage, not the United States.
  • since al Qaeda tried in the past to operate in the United States itself, and its operatives might be in the United States, it logically follows that the United States could use unmanned aerial vehicles domestically as well. Citizenship is likewise no protection from attacks against a force hostile to the United States.
  • There are two points I have been driving toward.
  • The first is that the outrage at targeted killing is not, in my view, justified on moral or legal grounds.
  • The second is that in using these techniques, the United States is on a slippery slope because of the basis on which it has chosen to wage war.
  • The enemy strategy is to draw the United States into an extended conflict that validates its narrative that the United States is permanently at war with Islam. It wants to force the United States to engage in as many countries as possible. From the U.S. point of view, unmanned aerial vehicles are the perfect weapon because they can attack the jihadist command structure without risk to ground forces. From the jihadist point of view as well, unmanned aerial vehicles are the perfect weapon because their efficiency allows the jihadists to lure the United States into other countries and, with sufficient manipulation, can increase the number of innocents who are killed.
  • In this sort of war, the problem of killing innocents is practical. It undermines the strategic effort. The argument that it is illegal is dubious, and to my mind, so is the argument that it is immoral. The argument that it is ineffective in achieving U.S. strategic goals of eliminating the threat of terrorist actions by jihadists is my point.
  • The broader the engagement, the greater the perception of U.S. hostility to Islam, the easier the recruitment until the jihadist forces reach a size that can't be dealt with by isolated airstrikes.
  • In warfare, enemies will try to get you to strike at what they least mind losing. The case against strikes by unmanned aerial vehicles is not that they are ineffective against specific targets but that the targets are not as vital as the United States thinks. The United States believes that the destruction of the leadership is the most efficient way to destroy the threat of the jihadist movement. In fact it only mitigates the threat while new leadership emerges. The strength of the jihadist movement is that it is global, sparse and dispersed. It does not provide a target whose destruction weakens the movement. However, the jihadist movement's weakness derives from its strength: It is limited in what it can do and where.     
  • In the long run, it is not clear that the cost is so little. A military strategy to defeat the jihadists is impossible. At its root, the real struggle against the jihadists is ideological, and that struggle simply cannot be won with Hellfire missiles.
  •  
    "Airstrikes by unmanned aerial vehicles have become a matter of serious dispute lately. The controversy focuses on the United States, which has the biggest fleet of these weapons and which employs them more frequently than any other country. On one side of this dispute are those who regard them simply as another weapon of war whose virtue is the precision with which they strike targets. On the other side are those who argue that in general, unmanned aerial vehicles are used to kill specific individuals, frequently civilians, thus denying the targeted individuals their basic right to some form of legal due process."
  •  
    I'm starting to come around to the objections of expeditionary troops trying to put down the American colonial revolt. There's something to having to look someone in the face when you kill them.
anonymous

Egypt: The Dangers and Limits of Intensifying Violence - 0 views

  • It is not entirely clear what led to the shooting, with the military reporting that pro-Morsi "terrorists" sought to climb the walls of the Republican Guards headquarters where Morsi is being held and the Brotherhood claiming that the attack was unprovoked. The Muslim Brotherhood's political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, called for a general uprising in Egypt and called on the international community to intervene to prevent further "massacres." The military also closed the Brotherhood's Cairo headquarters, claiming that stockpiled weapons were found inside.
  • The Brotherhood understands that it is unlikely to be able to restore the Morsi presidency and is thus trying to create a situation in which the military cannot impose a new political order.
  • Such a strategy involves weeks, if not months, of civil unrest, which entails considerable risks. Though the Brotherhood is a well-disciplined organization, some of its elements could be radicalized by the Morsi ouster and the clashes that have been taking place since.
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  • Indeed, al Qaeda-style jihadists who have long condemned democracy as un-Islamic are seizing upon Morsi's ouster to reiterate that the Muslim Brotherhood's participation in mainstream politics cannot succeed, and change can only be brought about through armed struggle, as in Syria.
  • This is a problem for both the Brotherhood and its opponents, as neither wants jihadists to exploit their enmity.
  • it is unlikely that transnational jihadists will be able to steer Egypt toward a civil war like Algeria's during the 1990s or post-Arab Spring Syria's. That said, Egypt is likely to see its share of violence (in many cases in the form of militant attacks) as a result of many other factors.
  • With the Brotherhood's senior leadership in jail, the mainstream Islamist movement may not be able to control the unrest it is currently fomenting. Jihadist forces, realizing that the window of opportunity for them is narrow, would like to prevent any compromise between the military and the Brotherhood in the short term. Therefore, the duration and intensity of the crisis in Egypt will depend upon the Brotherhood and the military's ability (or lack thereof) to reach a political compromise.
  •  
    "The latest deadly clashes in Cairo are likely to undermine the Egyptian military's plans for the country and push it toward greater violence. The political unrest in Egypt sparked by the ouster of President Mohammed Morsi worsened when at least 42 supporters of Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood were killed and another 300 were wounded in a confrontation with security forces outside the Republican Guards officers' club July 8."
anonymous

Charles Murray on the New American Divide - 0 views

  • When Americans used to brag about "the American way of life"—a phrase still in common use in 1960—they were talking about a civic culture that swept an extremely large proportion of Americans of all classes into its embrace.
    • anonymous
       
      Like during, say, the postwar high period. It's that horrid time that Republicans idealize and which Democrats appear to want. Among other things, the high taxes, strong safety net, and unparalleled economic position that seems pretty unlikely. 
  • a new upper class with advanced educations
  • a new lower class, characterized not by poverty but by withdrawal from America's core cultural institutions
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  • And the isolation is only going to get worse. Increasingly, the people who run the country were born into that world. Unlike the typical member of the elite in 1960, they have never known anything but the new upper-class culture. We are now seeing more and more third-generation members of the elite. Not even their grandparents have been able to give them a window into life in the rest of America.
  • Meanwhile, the formation of the new upper class has been driven by forces that are nobody's fault and resist manipulation. The economic value of brains in the marketplace will continue to increase no matter what, and the most successful of each generation will tend to marry each other no matter what.
    • anonymous
       
      Ha ha ha
  • The only thing that can make a difference is the recognition among Americans of all classes that a problem of cultural inequality exists and that something has to be done about it. That "something" has nothing to do with new government programs or regulations.
    • anonymous
       
      Please 'splain better than you did. K thanx.
  • There remains a core of civic virtue and involvement in working-class America that could make headway against its problems if the people who are trying to do the right things get the reinforcement they need—not in the form of government assistance, but in validation of the values and standards they continue to uphold. The best thing that the new upper class can do to provide that reinforcement is to drop its condescending "nonjudgmentalism."
  •  
    People are starting to notice the great divide. The tea party sees the aloofness in a political elite that thinks it knows best and orders the rest of America to fall in line. The Occupy movement sees it in an economic elite that lives in mansions and flies on private jets. Each is right about an aspect of the problem, but that problem is more pervasive than either political or economic inequality. What we now face is a problem of cultural inequality.
anonymous

Thirty More Years of Hell - 1 views

  • A Pew poll from a few weeks back asked Americans how they felt about capitalism versus socialism. The results said all you need to know about how much longer we’re going to have to wade through this misery. You guessed it: until the Boomers finally croak.
  • For maybe the first time in modern history, we now have a generation that actually has warmer feelings about socialism than it does capitalism: 49% to 46%.
  • And a few days later, amid a multi-billion dollar war on public sector workers, another poll was released demonstrating that a whopping 69% of Millennials think teachers are underpaid (compared to 56% for Americans of all ages).
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  • I first heard the “s”-word from by my sixth grade history teacher—this was in the early days of Yeltsin. She said socialism is when you have to wait in line for hours just for a Happy Meal.
  • Read the fine print: it’s 5% of wages, income from “investments” is excluded. Tax the poor wage-slave, spare the wealthy rentier. Americans still can’t see the play even with Buffett rubbing his secretary’s tax return in our faces.
  • And it’s a servitude from which we can never escape. Forget bankruptcy. Default on a student loan and the government will garnish your wages until they get it all back, plus interest. They can even go after your social security money, off limits for all other debts.
  • Mike Konczal sees this as just another sign of a “submerged state”—the unholy fertilizer that keeps the American libertarian discourse in full bloom. None of the “welfare,” but all of the “state.”
  • “After the Great Society program in the 1960s,” says Leo Panitch, “left-wing Democrats, rather than calling for more public housing to rebuild America’s cities instead called for the banks to lend money to poor black communities…one of the effects of winning those demands was a channeling of those communities more deeply into the structures of finance, the most dynamic sector of neoliberal capitalism.”
  • While a liberal looks upon the New Deal and Great Society generation as a pantheon of benevolent patriarchs, I see a bunch of technocrats who slapped together a crude simulacrum of social democracy and called it “free-enterprise.”
  • Unlike the nations of Western Europe, American workers failed to get a good deal of the social democratic compact written into law, which means it was all the easier to dismantle over here.
  • There are the wars, of course—now pretty much the only way for a good many of us to get a debt-free education.
  • Then there’s the ever-popular Drug War, always trolling for some fresh blood. The Millennials are, after all, the least white generation in U.S. history, making us perfect fodder for the country’s ongoing race war.
  • As The Wire’s David Simon has pointed out, it was Clinton—the first Boomer president—that passed some of the most draconian “anti-crime” laws. Even business in the for-profit juvenile prisons sector is a-boomin’. Same goes for our expanding network of privatized immigration detention centers—a direct beneficiary of the Tea Party campaign for a brutal crackdown on “illegals.”
  • Much of the Patriot Act itself was comprised of legislation creeping around the halls of powers well before 9/11, much of it written with the burgeoning “anti-globalization” movement
  • The fact is that being arrested is pretty much a rite of passage today—or the end-of-the-line for your hopes and dreams if you happen to be a darker shade of pale.
  • Which is why I love the Tea Party so much. They don’t dick around about any of this. It’s a full-scale generational war they’re after.
  • The Ryan Budget—and the GOP campaign around it—divides the American populace into “those who are 55 or older now, and those who are younger.” Meaning Boomers will receive Medicare and Social Security checks unchanged, whereas Millennials get the axe—despite the fact that many of us have been paying into these programs for the past 15 years. Let the record show that it was they who fired the first shot.
  • All of the hippies who skulked off into the world of children’s programming to ride out the counterrevolution have cursed us with both our potential salvation (respect for the commons) and our ultimate weakness (pacifist nonsense).
  • But mostly our decency stems from the fact that we’ve all been muzzled and defanged by student debt, slave wages and mass unemployment. Unlike our parents, we’ll never even get the chance to gobble up our own children and leave them with the tab.
  • Which is why, psychologically, this Great Depression of ours can never hurt us like it hurts them. I see it all the time: the unemployed Boomer thinks himself a loser. He’s spent his life watching his peers accumulate wealth and power. Now he feels like the rug has been pulled from under him. Something has gone terribly wrong. When he files for food-stamps, he feels exactly what the Ruling Class wants him to feel: shame and personal failing.
  • Whereas a Millennial shrugs and swipes the SNAP card at the farmer’s market for a quart of fresh cider and a pomegranate muffin. Why should she feel guilty?
  • We Millennials have all the same ludicrous delusions of grandeur as our parents, but now, we’re ready to shuck capitalist gospel out the window. The Boomers call us spoiled, and ask us to do more with less, telling us to tamper our dreams. But the best thing we Americans have going for us is our entitlement, sans the free-market faith.
  • Way back in 1892, Friedrich Engels knew that success was the real curse of the USA. And that a powerful, anti-capitalist left could never take off in this country until the game stopped paying out: “Only when there is a generation of native-born workers that cannot expect anything from speculation any more will we have a solid foothold in America.” Sound familiar? That’s what Occupy is for most of us—a guttural roar that capitalism will not do.
  • The Boomers are right that it all smacks of entitlement. We are entitled. The world, and this country in particular, is awash in capital. With the billions floating in and out of this city every day, it’s amazing that you can walk around Manhattan and not end up with at least a grand worth of cash sifting around in your shoes like beach sand. The big lie is that the coffers are empty and budgets must be balanced. What a fucking joke. American workers have spent hundreds of years building this country and amassing this wealth, and it’s about time we claimed the vast majority of it.
  • Conservative apostate David Frum recently characterized the contemporary GOP’s platform as “a going-out-of-business sale for the Baby Boomer generation.” Which is pretty much the Democrats’ platform too. They just have better table manners.
  • Boomers know what they’ve wrought. Climate change? Don’t believe the polls. They know it’s happening. Yeah, if you confront one of them, he might put up a denialist front for a couple of minutes. But keep pelting him and it all crumbles, giving way to “well, it’s too late.” Translated: “I’ll be on, or near, my deathbed when the shit really hits the fan. You, youngster, will be hauling your family across the country George Romero style, scavenging for orphans to sell off as catamites to the warlord chieftains.”
  • Documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis has spent the past few years chronicling this ghastly mutation step-by-step—unraveling the seemingly incongruous strands and the hideous parentage of Boomer ideology. Their embrace of American libertarianism—with all of its absurdities, vulgarities and utopianism—was the final cry for help.
  •  
    "Generational analysis is bullshit. Or so I'm told. Fit for netroots liberals and horoscope clippers, maybe. And to be fair, it's mostly thinktank types who've been profiting off that whole Millennials Rising genre. One of the authors of that book is a former writing partner of Pete G. Peterson's, the octogenarian billionaire who has spent the last couple of decades trying to kick over the Social Security ladder before us young'ns can scamper up and collect. Most of it reads like a debriefing after a recon mission-you can feel them sizing us up, drawing up blueprints for the generational counterrevolution that we're living through right now."
anonymous

In Telangana Decision, a Microcosm of India's Geopolitical Challenge - 0 views

  • Some Congress Party officials, eager to seize political momentum and in hopes that the move will translate into votes in the 2014 general elections, claim the process can be completed in as little as four to five months, but that is probably too optimistic an estimate.
  • The Indian government has deployed an additional 1,500 paramilitary personnel to the state in anticipation of riots, fearing that clashes will ensue between celebrating pro-Telangana activists and opponents protesting the split of Andhra Pradesh.
  • The soon-to-be-altered boundaries of Andhra Pradesh currently encompass three geographically distinct areas:
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  • Telangana, the Andhra coastal plain and the interior Rayalaseema region.
  • The area that will become Telangana is sandwiched between the Godavari and Krishna rivers and sits on the Deccan plateau, west of the Eastern Ghats mountain range. Though the mostly barren north suffers from acute power shortages, has a high rate of poverty and is a hotbed for Naxalism -- India's Maoist militant movement -- its geographic boundaries include Hyderabad, one of India's most vibrant economic regions.
  • The new plan to divide Andhra Pradesh would have the residual non-Telangana parts -- coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema -- form the state of Seemandhra.
  • Further, the most controversial element of the Congress Party's current proposal entitles Telangana to the economic prize of Hyderabad, which would serve as a joint capital for 10 years during which Seemandhra is tasked with appointing or building its own capital.
  • Telangana is poised to join a long list of states that have been created since India's independence in 1947. Before Telangana, the states of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Uttaranchal were carved out of Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, respectively, in 2000. Goa defined its state boundaries in 1987, while Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram in the country’s far-flung northeast grew out of Assam in the same year. Manipur and Tripura earned their statehood in 1972, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh were carved out of Punjab state in 1966 and Bombay state in 1960 was divided along linguistic lines into Maharashtra and Gujarat.
  • India's constantly shifting map is no accident. Nation-building can be a messy process, and politicians, activists and militants of various stripes are still grappling with a score of unsettled issues left by India's chaotic transition from the British Raj to an Indian republic in the mid-20th century.
  • Like a cracked window pane, India's multiple river systems cut across the subcontinent and give shape to hundreds of distinct geographic, ethnic, religious and linguistic identities.
  • Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister and the father of the Indian republic, quickly realized that the three-tier division the British Raj used to divide and administer India's governorships and princely states was ill-suited to the new country. In 1953, he launched a commission to figure out how to reorganize the country. Controversial political questions naturally emerged -- whether to redraw states along lines of linguistic and cultural unity, as well as how to preserve geographic continuity and financial viability. Leaders worried about the precedents any action could set in a country that speaks hundreds of languages and dialects and is beset by overlapping boundaries and economic interests.
  • The decided course of action -- as often happens when government commissions confront politically explosive tasks -- was to maintain ambiguity.
  • The creation of a new state that affects Hyderabad, a major economic hub home to a number of multinational corporations, is going to be a messy affair. And the statehood question is being addressed at a time when the government is desperately trying to attract and retain long-term foreign direct investment to help it cope with the global economic crisis.
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    "India is set to inaugurate its 29th state: Telangana will be carved out of the existing southern state of Andhra Pradesh after the highest working body of India's ruling Congress Party decided late July 30 to find the legal means to create the new entity. The success of the Telangana movement for statehood encapsulates the deep-rooted struggles New Delhi faces in trying to preserve and manage a nation riven with internal complexities."
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"Don't tease the panther": An exclusive look at Glenn Beck's The Overton Window - 0 views

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    By Ben Dimiero and Simon Maloy at Media Matters for America on June 11, 2010. This is some of the funniest stuff I've read in some time.
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