You're not overestimating the enemy's impact, you're accusing your ideological opponents of being stooges. I'm certain you're not nearly as concerned by the propaganda put out by those who agree with you.

Because:
a) People expect a lot more of the US than Russia
b) The US sets international standards, and by invading Iraq it helps legitimize things like Ukraine
c) The US is a Western country, it makes a lot of sense for Westerners to protest it because they have a chance of influencing the politicians. What the hell does Russia care if a bunch of Americans or Canadians come out in protest? And what should Canadians and Americans even protest for, we don't have a lot of leverage.

It didn't do squat. Yes there's a few fringe folks who are influenced, but they're pretty insubstantial.

In the EU it might be different, Greece in particular might have a legitimate problem, but in the English speaking West Russian propaganda is a joke.

You're talking about the public perception of the war, UN approval forms part of that public perception.

UN's approval or lack thereof, by all appearances, was used to justify the opposition to war later, when the questions like mine here started popping up. I could find no references to UN's decision (or absence of it) as a factor. Could you?

I'm not mining quotes from 60 years ago but it certainly would have affected the perception. Korean was very much a multinational mission, Vietnam was not.

It's possible, but a far more likely factor is the fact they were very different wars at very different times.

Well, I explained, how they were similar — only a few years apart and both in far lands without evident immediate threat to the US.

The Korean war was over in 3 years. In Vietnam the US stepped into a long running conflict which ran a lot longer.

I fail to see, how the length of a conflict affects the justification of it.

Wars become more unpopular the longer they go, that's fairly basic. The public wasn't particularly anti-War at the start of the war, it became that way later on (similar to Iraq).

You've also got media actually showing the home front what the battlefield actually looks like, that's a pretty profound change from previously where media pieces were basically clips from war movies.

Yes. And the fact that media at home chose to concentrate on the negative, instead of praising the troops in general and heralding acts of valor in particular is, in my opinion, explained by (at least, in part) by the enemy's propaganda efforts.

That would be a pretty small part. The moment the media came to the conclusion they could be actual reporters instead of propagandists the friendly propaganda effort was done.

Finally you had a completely different culture in the 60's that was largely based on a rejection of authority

And where, one wonders, did that come from?

From stuff that didn't have much to do with the USSR (though many were undoubtedly interested in leftist ideas).

And where is it now, when questioning authority is not only not patriotic, but racist?

It's only racist when the complainers start blowing dog whistles. As it happens referring to Obama as a community organizer, a job he held for 3 years in his mid-twenties before going onto far more impressive things. That could be just partisan bias, but there's a definite dog whistle quality to it.

You don't need Soviet propaganda to explain the Vietnam peace movement

Well, we know for a fact (an inconvenient one), that USSR and other Communists were behind at least some of the "peace" organizations, such as the venerable World Peace Council.

The practice is still ongoing — an establishment calling itself "anti-war", for example, is calling for international approval of Russia's invasion into and annexation of Crimea — do you think, they would've approved of Kosovo or Kurdistan voting to become a United States' 51st state? Is it really over-the-board to wonder, if, perhaps, this Justin Raimondo is manipulated by Kremlin — whether he even knows it or not?

So just because the USSR tried to manipulate the peace movement therefore delegitimizes the entire peace movement? And an 'anti-war' organization that virtually no one on the left listens to or agrees with is evidence of that fact?

Israel is certainly trying to sway US public opinion, does that make you a puppet of some Jewish lobby? (for the record I say no)

No airline takeover/sabotage attempt that passengers could reach has succeeded since 911 (the most recent just a week or two ago when some idiot ran down the isles towards the cockpit door screaming - was tackled and pressed).

Stop locking the door altogether. If there's a problem, you'll have a line of people waiting to destroy whoever tries to take over a cockpit now. Threaten to hurt someone with a box cutter? Whatever damage you can do to one person is outweighed by every other person on that plane wanting to live.

Locking the cockpit doors has, to date, only brought disaster. You have to think that had the airplane that vanished had open cockpit access passengers could have got in there over the many hours the thing was off course (there are a lot of people that monitor aircraft position during flight).

No, I think the ISP's will only keep it for two years - but that is gauranteed.

Right now in the U.S. everyone blindly assumes the data is kept for NO years, and we aren't even given an imaginary date when it might be deleted.

The Australians are at least all aware for sure the data is being kept, in the U.S. it's still possible to imagine it is not... That's my point.

So what? You're talking about the public perception of the war, UN approval forms part of that public perception.

It's possible, but a far more likely factor is the fact they were very different wars at very different times.

The Korean war was over in 3 years. In Vietnam the US stepped into a long running conflict which ran a lot longer.

The US was also coming straight out of WWII, so the idea that you should deal with belligerent countries pro-actively sounded like a really good idea and provided a great narrative, the communist threat would have also seemed less intractable since you didn't have to deal with Nuclear arms race.

You've also got media actually showing the home front what the battlefield actually looks like, that's a pretty profound change from previously where media pieces were basically clips from war movies.

Finally you had a completely different culture in the 60's that was largely based on a rejection of authority, do you think that was going to mix well with the military?

You don't need Soviet propaganda to explain the Vietnam peace movement, the known facts are explained by the known facts.

Voting for the other corporate-controlled, militaristic party doesn't seem like a viable plan for getting out of this mess.

We already tried that a few times; voting in Democrats does not help.

Republicans are only into conflicts they can win and stop fighting; Democrats are the ones who like to cause endless conflicts they can pour money and people into. Under Bush we helped turn Iraq into democracy; under Obama we abandoned them to be consumed by ISIS, at least to the point we get to go over and fight for the same land all over again.

Isn't it better for people in Australia to know their network data will be retained for two years, than for the people in the U.S. to be unaware data is being retained, but then in actuality have it retained forever by the NSA?

That's too bad, I've never been in person but had been wanting to go for a while... sounds like I missed the best run.

So you have no philosophical objection the the NSA acting completely outside the law

Everyone else is acting completely outside the law these days, and the law has been built up over time to give too many protections to guilty people, so I've pretty much stopped caring.

My objections are on the level of "well, I wouldn't do it personally, but whatever".

Especially for the guys that encrypt other people's data and ransom that. Who cares what happens to those jerks.

How so? Good looking people can still sell from a booth

Good looking people can of course be in any role.

However at least some former booth babes are models that really can't do things other than look good. Since they would not be good in an informational role, they would not be hired.

Like I said, better for attendees in some ways as at least you can talk to someone more about the product. But not as good for the women (and men) now out of work.

The exceptions at PAX are from people cosplaying representations of game characters. I don't see anything wrong with that. I also don't think it's reasonable to ban people who want to show up in cosplay outfits that may be sexy.

Some people like expressing sexuality, to deny them the ability to do so is just as repressive as any other kind of censorship.

The summary doesn't really explain why that dilemma is harder for German companies to solve than American companies.

For Americans, the answer is: always hit the pedestrian(s). What the hell was anyone doing outside of a car?

How is this a first? The most recent PAX banned booth babes. Also MacWorld did a while ago... I'm pretty sure there are other examples, including lots of smaller technical conferences.

The surprise to me is that an RSA conference even HAD booth babes.

I have mixed feeling about this, it seems discriminatory against the good looking... however it always was kind of pointless, and annoying to have people at a booth that didn't know much about whatever the booth was promoting.

The funny(?) thing is that as this movement ratchets down into conferences everywhere, it will probably mean a rise in the number of women turning to literal, instead of figurative, prostitution to make a living.

It could also be that they he it would get reported anyway and wanted to get his version in first, he may have even thought they were in the right.

When I heard of this my thought was of Jion Ghomeshi, a CBC radio host who is being charged with multiple sexual assaults for a long pattern of behaviour. Before things broke the thing that got him fired was him showing a video to management with the belief that it would clear him, instead management realized the stuff on the video was sexual assault and fired him.

I can't understand in a case like this why they can't restore the system from some earlier backup (well, I can, but it seems absurd they are not able to).

If nothing else just whip the system and re-install software. It seems like they could recover email addresses from servers the emails went through before... perhaps they would be without some records but you can't go on like this. Even if you pay the demands and unlock everything you'd have to reinstall everything from scratch anyway.