90 Miles From Tyranny

Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Whose Fault Was It Decision Making...

4 Highlights From Obama’s Ridiculous Cyber Agreement With China

Last week, the White House announced that the U.S. and China had agreed to stop cyber economic espionage and work together to stop cybercrime.

Well, that was easy, wasn’t it? Too easy.

The reality is that the president has just made another paper agreement that will do little to change the behavior of bad actors.

While it will certainly make some feel good for having “solved” a problem through only talking, it has deprived us of an opportunity to change China’s behavior through the application of sanctions in the face of their blatant cyber actions.

The White House press release is filled with worrisome conclusions, indicating that this agreement ignores the seriousness of this problem and kicks the can down the road.

Here are some of the highlights:

1. [T]he United States and China…agree to cooperate…with requests to investigate cybercrimes, collect electronic evidence, and mitigate malicious cyber activity emanating from their territory.
Great, but think about the implications. The Chinese will request that the U.S. help it stop all sorts of dissident hackers and activists. The U.S. lives up to its agreements so it will dutifully help the Chinese even as oppressed individuals are jailed for cybercrimes, such as “jeopardizing Internet security” or accessing “illegal and harmful information,”—i.e., anything the Chinese Communist Party doesn’t like.

Then what stops the Chinese from stonewalling to protect their hackers? Will the Chinese help the U.S. investigate the five Chinese military officers that the U.S. charged with cybercrimes last year? Doubtful.

2. The United States and China agree that neither country’s government will conduct or knowingly support cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property, including trade secrets or other confidential business information, with the intent of providing competitive advantages to companies or commercial sectors.
The U.S. does not engage in economic espionage because it goes against U.S. principles of rule of law and property rights. However, while everyone knows that the Chinese engage in ...

Girls With Guns

Obama Puts Positive Spin on Disastrous Foreign Policy in UN Speech

President Obama’s seventh speech to the United Nations was well-received on Monday.

This is hardly surprising, as his policies have been a broad embrace of priorities and tactics that have long been championed by the majority of the world’s governments.

As stated by Peter Wittig, Germany’s ambassador to the United States and formerly Germany’s permanent representative to the United Nations:

The foreign policy of the Obama administration [on issues like renewed Cuba relations and the Iran nuclear deal] is — if I may say so — very European, and therefore we applaud it. We are really singing from the same song sheet… late in the day, in the fourth quarter, turned out to be a real leader on climate change. He brought China along, and that has served as a catalyst for other emerging economies.

Unfortunately, while popular in Europe and elsewhere, those policies are a triumph of image over reality. As admitted by supporters, even if Iran abides by the terms of the deal, it will have billions of dollars in freed funds to support terrorism, and its nuclear program will be legitimized.

Renewed diplomatic relations with Cuba have...

Girls With Guns

Asadullah Khan , 51, said he killed his daughter Lareeb for bringing 'dishonour' on the family with her love for a boy he didn't approve of
Khan and his wife Shazia, originally from Pakistan, are on trial for murder
The couple wed in an arranged marriage and he wanted the same for her
He admits strangling his daughter but his wife claims she couldn't stop him

A Muslim man has confessed to strangling his 19-year-old daughter to death with his bare hands after learning from police she had been caught shoplifting condoms to have sex with her forbidden boyfriend.

Asadullah Khan and his wife Shazia then dressed dead daughter Lareeb, a dental technician, in her clothes.

They then wheeled her in a wheelchair from their high-rise apartment to the family car, drove to a secluded embankment in their home city of Darmstadt in Germany, and tipped the corpse down it.

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