oh, yes, I'm sure they had the same concerns regarding the disposal of the MSC Napoli and its proximity to Lyme Bay. ::rolleyes::.

Why all this effort to refloat her? As has been pointed out, she's been partially and asymmetrically submerged for the better part of two years, surely it'd be easier to just send in the divers with cutting torches or shaped charges, split the hull, and float her off in sections on barges (as they ended up doing with MSC Napoli)?

Is this a dress rehearsal for RMS Titanic? If so, I've got news: she's been under for 101 years, is in far worse condition and is apparently split into at least two sections.

Is there something aboard Costa Concordia that we shouldn't know about? (yes, I'm thinking of a certain book)

Either way, I personally think the only decent thing to do here is to leave her be, apart from draining off any remaining fuel oil, as a marine grave marker, and let the seas reclaim her. What's happening right now is a desecration.

I can't believe there's been no xkcd reference yet... something about shooting a wad of electrons all over your amour's back...

I've built workstations intended for connection to library systems, and one of the airgap security measures I've employed was to cut the data conductors behind the USB port*. OK, it's permanent unless you're really handy with a soldering iron, but you'd have to get around the keybolts holding the case together first...

*Recent innovations in workstation motherboard design have done away with PS/2 ports for keyboard/mouse, the way around that is to use a quality keyboard/mouse and hardwire those suckers.

And trust that the user isn't about to alligator the data lines on one of those...

yeah, saw that. Hope you got your water wings. Or a nice boat.

Wobbly bridges, nonexistent highways, and GPS coordinate usage that looks like the clocks were off by about forty yards.

Think I'll pass.

Magna Carta was sealed by the King nearly three hundred years prior to the discovery of the Americas by European explorers.
The Colonies were founded, for the most part, by people emigrating from England, for the New World in search of a better life.
Those people were, until the Declaration of Independence, wholly governed by the Laws and Customs of England.

Do you get it yet?

By the way, Magna Carta is not a "British" document. It is the very foundation and basis of every Constitutional Republic on the fucking planet. INCLUDING THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

Assad didn't brutalise the opposition, the simple fact of the matter is that he has overwhelming majority support. The people that are fucking his country up are demonstrably foreign mercenaries in the pay of Britain, the United States, France, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar.

sources: plenty of contacts on the ground who are living it, not the BBC, Fox, CNN or Reuters. What they aren't showing is buzzcut ex-army regulars using CIA terminology and training to great effect while passing instructions to each other in English, French, and Turkish. Why? Because it not only doesn't suit the agenda (whatever that might be) of those with plausible interests in the region, it would in fact further damage already salted international relations.

However, I will absolutely and unreservedly agree that in a perfect world a peaceful solution to any crisis results in a better outcome for all concerned. Unfortunately, this is far from being a perfect world, and as a result of corporate interests and to a lesser but still significant extent, ever more demanding tribal competition for the biggest portion of a finite supply of everything, people can and do die in the most horrible ways imaginable; the truth belongs to those who shout the loudest (the facts will never be known beyond the fact that people have died as a result of the deployment of some very nasty weapons), and if history records that Assad deployed those weapons even if he didn't, tomorrow we'll have as much a distorted view of today's events as we have today of events of a mere seventy years ago in Eastern Europe.

two words:

Arab Spring.

Star Chambers were abolished in 1641 - in the United States as well, since at that time the United States was but a colony.

Ergo, any secret courts are unlawful and that unlawfulness predates the Constitution.

your country didn't betray you, *your Government did*.

Love your country. Fight tyranny. In all its forms.

Defend your Constitution against all enemies, *foreign and domestic*.

Try 6,627 years. But, point taken.

(from what I remember in school, the oldest writings are in Mandarin and date back to what is essentially the dawn of recorded history, specific dating using current calendar system gives us a start date of January 1 4613BCE).

Failure to act on an awareness of a treasonous act is an offence, it is known as misprision.
Failure to comply with an unlawful order, instruction or request is not treason. It shows the highest respect for the Law.
Refusal to comply with an order from a Government agency which has time and again showed itself to be self-appointed superjudicial is entirely in keeping with one of the oldest Constitutional documents in existence, one which like it or not, citizens and Government of the United States are still subject to: Magna Carta. Specifically, clause 61, which in a small nutshell obligates any individual or group who are aware of the unlawfulness of a Law or Statute to disobey that Law or Statute and to seek redress.

Isn't the very fact of recent disclosures by the US Government (to whit; that they are giving aid and comfort to the Enemy - by their own definition, elements of al Qaeda "known" to be working alongside Syrian rebels), an overt admission of treason?

Or is that a vexation, to be ignored by the Judicial branch?

hate to tell you this, but lack of a piece of paper is no physical barrier to sitting behind a steering wheel, putting pressure on the clutch and turning the key.