ubikwit comments

Posted in: Wikipedia losing editors, study says See in context

Wikipedia has lots of problems, especially on controversial topics like the Middle East.

Check this article by the NY TIMES: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/06/opinion/06iht-edbeam.1.12610693.html?_r=1&

And this interview with the founder by Al Jazeera regarding the status of Jerusalem as described on Wikipedia--in a manner that contradicts the official stance of the international community vis-a-vis the UN: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-12-06/In_the_news

And here is a piece that discusses Apple in relation to the issue: http://www.thejewishweek.com/blogs/jewish-techs/apples-jerusalem-problem

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Posted in: Wikipedia losing editors, study says See in context

Too many people are using that site for advocacy over and against objectivity, and it is populated by editors forming affinity groups that make it more like a social networking site than an encyclopedia.

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Posted in: Fatah rally in Gaza looks toward unity with Hamas See in context

Good thing. In light of the recognition, if Hamas will come to its senses and simply recognize Israel's right to exist in accordance with UN resolutions, maybe it will be easier for the international community to force Israel to follow other UN resolutions relating to the Palestinians.

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Posted in: China resumes construction of biggest nuclear plant See in context

Is this a thorium plant?

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Posted in: Japan stocks rally as yen continues to weaken See in context

Dog

You have to admit that the currency markets are skewed, reflecting only some abstracted formula that undermines the real economy by enable speculators to engage in transactions that simply feed off of the discrepancies in the finance system.

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Posted in: Ex-banker arrested in U.S. over Olympus fraud See in context

At least the narrative has finally traced out a thread to the Caymans, and this is the first I've heard of Chan, with two more banks and two more countries mentioned.

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Posted in: S Korea elects first woman president See in context

Nepotism rules in ROK!

The Chaebols are enjoying this, no doubt...

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Posted in: BOJ, under pressure from Abe, eases monetary policy See in context

Central banks that do not serve the interest of the people of the country are serving the interests of one financial cabal or another.

Abe is someone who has yet to demonstrate that he, too, is not more intent on serving the interests of the propertied class with respect to the "inflation target", but it remains to be seen what course he follows.

The crux of the matter is bringing down the ridiculous exchange rate, which has benefited only speculators and Korean electronics manufacturers.

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Posted in: S Korea elects first woman president See in context

Moon, 59, has been more aggressive than Park in his proposals for reining in the power of the giant family-run conglomerates, or “chaebol”, that dominate the economy.

He sounds like the man for the job, I sure hope the Koreans put him in office.

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Posted in: U.S. judge denies Apple injunction bid vs. Samsung See in context

Koh's pro-Apple pandering

Nonsense. Her decisions are nuanced and sound fair.

Samsung is still a parasite, but all they have to do is pay for what they have taken without paying licensing fees. Koh simply deemed that those features don't approximate aspects of the iphone that drive its market appeal, thus no need to ban the Samsung junk.

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Posted in: U.S. says Syrian gov't forces fired Scud missiles at rebels See in context

possible outcomes. One is where Assad keeps killing and stays in power. The second is where the rebels take over the country and install some kind of Islamic state. And a third is some kind of solution where neither Assad or Islam are in power and some kind of movement towards democracy is established.

I'd say that there is also a possibility that he might opt to try and split Syria up, if he has the military force to enforce such an option. I don't think that the Alewites or other minorities want to live under a Sunni dominated government.

The people that ignored the sectarian divide in the country before deciding to support one side over the other made a strategic miscalculation, as that divide has been exacerbated, to say the least. Of course, it remains to see what will develop. The coalition supported by the West is not seen as viable by the majority of Syrians, not matter what Obama says about it being inclusive, etc.

Assad is being beset by car bomb attacks, which are difficult to counter, as they are terrorist attacks. Personally, using scuds is not as reprehensible as the car bombs--nor as effective. But those are small, short-range scuds, not much more powerful than conventional artillery, I should imagine. though I'm not very knowledgeable about such weapons.

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Posted in: U.S. says Syrian gov't forces fired Scud missiles at rebels See in context

I f he uses WMD it won't be on the rebels, but on their backers.

The forces that Assad is fighting include a large percentage of a pan-Islamist movement across the ME and beyond, it is not clear that Syrians even account for a majority. And even if they do, the history of conflict between Assad's Alewites and the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria was well known. Furthermore, the so-called marshal law in Syria was no worse than that in Bahrain or a number of other counties that are US allies, such as Ethiopia.

The way I see it, Westerners that are aware of the overall state of affairs that are calling Assad a dictator are duplicitous hypocrites with ulterior motives.

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Posted in: Ex-Thai PM charged with murder over protest death See in context

Talk about political theater, this is simply a ridicules waste of people's time and public resources in a brazen attempt to malign a political opponent.

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Posted in: U.S. says Syrian gov't forces fired Scud missiles at rebels See in context

It would appear that firing missiles on your own people makes some kind of sense to you.

I don't necessarily agree with the statement that they are "his own people". The majority are Sunni Islamists, and a good number are Sunni militants that have infiltrated from other countries with funding from other Sunni countries.

You and all of the other cheerleaders for the rebels have been consistently trying to dumb down this discussion with your repeated cliches from the start of this conflict.

Grow up.

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Posted in: Feisty 94-year-old runs for office using money saved for funeral See in context

Maybe his dogged determination to take a stand at his age will inspire others to get more involved.

If his action raises the level of the public dialog and debate, then he will have accomplished something worthwhile.

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Posted in: U.S. says Syrian gov't forces fired Scud missiles at rebels See in context

“The idea that the Syrian regime would launch missiles, within its borders, at its own people, is stunning, desperate and a completely disproportionate military escalation,” Carney said.

The notion expressed by Carney's statement would seem to imply that the regime shouldn't try to survive and win the conflict. That is rather unfathomable logic, not to mention a bit insipid.

What he skirts mentioning is the real danger of scuds loaded with chemical payloads being launched at neighboring countries that have been arming and otherwise supporting the Sunni rebels.

But the media doesn't want people to be concerned about that, they might call for a more moderate approach than regime change.

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Posted in: New laws will make Michigan 24th 'right-to-work' state See in context

...or was that collective memory rights on selective bargaining?

or maybe selective memory on multifront bargaining?

this is all so confusing!

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Posted in: New laws will make Michigan 24th 'right-to-work' state See in context

Herve

Freedom of association is based on freedom of choice.

You seem to have short-term memory loss regarding the multifront assault on collective bargaining rights in general.

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Posted in: Miyoko Sumida See in context

She was a somewhat rare individual embodying the combination of both psychopath and sociopath in a lethal package.

Good riddance.

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Posted in: In long-awaited move, Obama recognizes Syrian rebels See in context

We're not your mama. We don't live solely for the purpose of cleaning up your messes.

Unless we can sell arms to you after we put you in power...

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Posted in: Egyptian army seeks national unity as crisis mounts See in context

Herve

The US needs Morsi to bolster the military industrial complex, which accounts for an increasing share of the GDP with each passing year.

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Posted in: In long-awaited move, Obama recognizes Syrian rebels See in context

I don't know, this doesn't bode well as far as I can tell. Annan's plan should have been implemented from the start.

Russia’s foreign minister is criticizing President Barack Obama’s decision to recognize the Syrian opposition, saying “the U.S. apparently has decided to bet solely on the armed victory of this national coalition.”

Sergey Lavrov said Wednesday that Moscow was “somewhat surprised” by Obama’s statement that the U.S. recognizes the Syrian opposition coalition as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people, in opposition to the Assad regime.

http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/12/12/russia-criticizes-obamas-decision-to-recognize-syrian-opposition/

There are many different paths this conflict could follow now, and the US decision probably will result in a further escalation of violence, now that the diplomatic avenue has effectively been cutoff.

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Posted in: In long-awaited move, Obama recognizes Syrian rebels See in context

Obama's move would appear to indicate that the quest for a negotiated political settlement has been relinquished.

The strike on Alawites came in bomb attacks in the village of Aqrab in the central province of Hama and killed or wounded at least 125 civilians, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

“We cannot know whether the rebels were behind this attack, but if they were, this would be the largest-scale revenge attack against Alawites,” members of a Shiite sect in Sunni-majority Syria, said Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman.

The West failed miserably in diplomacy before this situation got out of hand. I wouldn't be surprised if the situation deteriorates and becomes an even more horrific region-wide conflagration from this point.

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Posted in: Obama meets with Boehner to discuss fiscal cliff See in context

This is part of investing and is not 'superfluous'. All investors attempt to use the market to make money. They are not doing anything illegal. Your idea of a transaction tax would not hurt large investors very much, probably not at all.

From your response, it would seem that you must be employed by one of these entities.

The first problem is in characterizing these overblown finance sector leviathans brought into existence by deregulation simply as "investors". The vague term "institutional investors" is also misleading.

As far as I'm concerned, they are not investing in anything but a rigged system that they can exploit to siphon marginal profits.

I noted that it was in Europe that the transaction tax was being promoted, with British opposition, because London is the Wall St over there. The article you cite is from a British paper that is obviously miming the line of the finance sector. The jargonistic use of the term "markets" in the sentence

high-frequency trading, when the assets are held for as little as a few seconds, may have modestly improved the functioning of markets

is indicative of the spin being used to support a regulatory regime that not only tolerates but promotes such activity. They have hijacked the term market in order to associate themselves with upholders of the free market system, when what they actually are referring to are so-called "capital markets" that wouldn't exist in the same form if the regulatory regime were sound.

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Posted in: Obama meets with Boehner to discuss fiscal cliff See in context

What is this supposed to mean exactly?

Speculating or computer based transactions aimed at exploiting very minuscule margins.

Basically targeting hedge funds and other institutional investors that aren't investing in actual economy related activity, but finance sector-based systemic flaws they attempt to exploit.

You know, that would be the equivalent of the transaction tax they have been trying to introduce in Europe, but facing opposition from London.

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Posted in: Obama meets with Boehner to discuss fiscal cliff See in context

How about time for the President to make some serious, serious spending cuts!

Yeah, like ending corporate welfare to the oil industry, implementing a transaction tax on superfluous finance transactions aimed at gaming the system, etc.

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Posted in: Syria's civil war spills into Lebanon; 4 dead See in context

Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani urged Assad to step down. With the rebels at the president’s doorstep in Damascus, he said, Assad knows the regime will fall.

“But how much killing and destruction does he want before this inevitable outcome?” Hamad said after an Arab League meeting in the Qatari capital, Doha.

That seems like a pretty brazen statement from a representative of the government of a Sunni emirate that has been funding and arming the various Sunni rebel groups seeking to depose Assad.

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Posted in: Syrian rebels get new leadership in bid to unite See in context

I'm not trying to blame everything on foreigners, but you have to admit that for such a disorganized bunch of poorly armed groups, they sure are meeting with fairly respectable results against a well-armed modern army.

I would like to see the people of Syria that are more interested in leading normal lives in a modern society in the spotlight, not people that are promoting themselves as having a cause for which to fight against society at large. But the West, in supporting the position that Assad has to go, as per the Sunni extremists, have perpetuated this scenario. They were only interested in a geopolitical outcome, not the human rights of Syrians.

Excuse me for becoming a bit cynical.

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Posted in: Syrian rebels get new leadership in bid to unite See in context

The fact that the so-called opposition is comprised of such a fractious agglomeration of disparate entities is indicative of the fact that they are not all of indigenous origin, and are therefore not representative of the Syrians.

Covert foreign intervention in the name of regime change is more likely what caused this calamity in the first place.

All of this "blame everything on Assad" type of stuff would not seem to be productive in bringing about the conditions necessary to resolve this conflict before it becomes potentially much worse.

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Posted in: Egypt's Morsi annuls controversial decree See in context

At least the protest was successful.

ElBaradei should maintain a higher public profile in light of this and in the runup to the next election.

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