this particular group is not signatory to any treaty at all. in fact, much of british columbia never signed any kind of treaty with any kind of european power. this puts them in a very different legal category that is presented here in a way that is somewhat confusing. the government cannot break a treaty that was never signed in the first place. further, it logically stands to reason that if no treaty was ever signed then the federal government ought to have no rights over the land at all. of course, this doesn't align with the logic of colonialism. however, the supreme court has ruled that areas that never signed a treaty have full aboriginal title, which is legally a type of land ownership that falls down somewhere higher than fee simple but still exists under crown control. this is a sort of legal compromise that aims to allow for a sort of "virtual sovereignty" in day-to-day matters without reversing the colonial land grab. that is to say that the supreme court has fabricated this legal fiction of the crown granting aboriginal title as a special fief that grants the owner more rights than fee simple but not full sovereignty.

what that means is that the harper government has a mechanism where it can legally appropriate land for specific purposes, so long as it "consults" with the inhabitants (which legally means "provide sufficient warning", rather than "carry out a significant conversation"). all of this stems from supreme court decisions designed to make the colonial appropriation process seem more liberal and friendly on the surface, while actually helping it along under the surface. none of it is by treaty. that is to say that none of it is consensual.

i would rather think there is a strong argument under international law that canada is carrying out a sort of colonization, accompanied by a military occupation of the region. except by the use of sheer force, it is difficult to ascertain how canada ought to have any rights over the area at all.

to put it simply, by what logic does the canadian government claim it has a right to build a pipeline through an area that never ceded it's sovereignty to it except the logic of sheer force overpowering legal and democratic legitimacy?

deathtokoalas
listen, it's not hard to see where ostrovsky's sympathies lie, but who else is sending back images from the ground? what i've seen from vice is neither in line with the russian media nor the western media. it's just reporting what is happening. the russians aren't talking, and that's what they get for not co-operating with media. what's shocking is that there isn't a single "normal" news outlet doing anything remotely resembling this kind of coverage.

what he's showing here is that the russians are storming a ukrainian base. because that's what they're doing. now, if you want to talk about what that means, how justified it is, how brutal it is in actuality (casualties seem to be virtually nil) etc, then these are more subtle questions - and the analysis is needed, certainly. but, first we have to establish the facts on the ground, and the conventional media on both sides has been utterly useless in doing this.

he should win an award. not due to any kind of above the standard journalism, but in contrast to the horrible journalism seen everywhere else.

Vlad K
"the russians aren't talking, and that's what they get for not co-operating with media." It is a laughable statement. Hundreds of journalists work in Crimea, and none of them was injured, as opposite to Kiev. Russian media have tons of interview with locals, Ukrainian officers, including those few of them who chose to serve junta. This propaganda is only for people who don't speak Russian.

deathtokoalas
i obviously meant that they're not speaking to the western media. i apologize, but my russian is currently a bit rusty.

regardless, i've been watching rt and they've been highly coy about the whole thing. the initial line from the russians was that crimea was part of ukraine and they would uphold the international boundaries. now, i happen to actually think that the russians handled this extremely well. i'm not interested in a discussion about saving russian speakers from nazis. people speak of the russians interchangeably with the soviets, while forgetting that the americans are the lineal descendant of the british empire (perhaps future historians will understand the american revolution as a civil war within the british empire that transferred control from london to washington. the roman empire spent more than half it's history centered in modern day istanbul. the real center of islam was baghdad. there are other parallels.). forget about the cold war. remember the crimean war? the english have been trying to cut off russian access to the mediterranean for centuries. the larger context of events over the last fifteen years has seen russia lose deep sea ports in yugoslavia, libya and possibly syria. to lose the black sea fleet would be inconceivable. THEN we would see a fullscale invasion of ukraine.

so, to take the base without any discernible casualties is actually quite impressive. i would not expect the americans to be as restrained, should a "revolution" in canada threaten their control of norad, or something.

but the communications - at least in english - have been incredibly controlled. not that i would expect otherwise. it's just as bad from cnn.

but there are lots of other media sources with budgets and audiences that could be out there reporting - in english, for an english audience.

Vlad K
The military role of Black Sea is not as important as it was before. Moreover, many Russians question the necessity of Black Sea fleet itself. After all, Black Sea is a puddle, and it can be covered by air forces in defense actions. it will be useless in any serious confrontations with NATO because it can be blocked easily at Bosporus. So, It is really hard to believe for the West that two millions Russians and their wellbeing is a serious issue for Russians in Russian Federation?  Why it is so difficult for western mass media to show social surveys related to Crimean crisis and give Russian point of view among others on this crisis. I always hear "Putin" "Pro-Putin" and never "Russians" in western media. The answer is you don't give a shit what people really think until they resist your politics.

deathtokoalas
i don't agree that the crimean fleet is less important than it was. it's not really about direct conflict, it's more about the ability to project power - what was once called "shipping interests" and is now more about controlling resources and networking bases together. ships remain much larger than planes; they can even carry planes. and it's not a coincidence that nato (and aligned forces) has targeted countries with russian naval bases. this is all explained in the project for the new american century document. a better question is why it took russia 15 years and the near loss of it's prized possession to actually react.

the whole bosporus thing is an aspect of it. the london straits convention did succeed in cutting off the russians for a long time, but this led to quite a bit of fighting (including both russian and western interference in the greek civil war) that carried on even after the montreux convention. trying to modify the terms of that convention would indeed be an act of war and would no doubt result in further russian aggression. nato wouldn't dare do this. well, not so long as the russians have access to the black sea, anyways.

i don't think that any government in the world cares about self-determination. i'm not interested in the propaganda from any source. but, the russians don't have a good track record in being trustworthy when it comes to polling or surveying. they probably didn't have to bullshit it in the first place, but 97%? c'mon. you couldn't get 97% of people in a given area to agree with docile statements about kittens. you'd might as well be telling me to trust colin powell...

ian setzer
Don't listen to him, he is a propagandist sent by the russian federation, here is a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_brigades

deathtokoalas
it's not hard to believe. but i feel compelled to point out that it has been recently disclosed by the snowden leaks that the americans do exactly the same thing.

i remember first reading about this in relation to chinese attempts to control dissidents, although they take it to much further extremes. that model seems to have been adopted by other intelligence agencies.

sergei the bad
Not 97%. 83 percent came to a referendum. Those who were against just stayed home.

Антон Березин
83% choose theire future in Crimea. In Kiev only 1% choose future fore everyone in Ukraine...

Efrim Begotten
Based on the guys videos and what he likes, it's hard to say. For me the saddest part about  the Crimean affair is that the western world basically won't risk intervening. After all, we've let Syria burn for years now.

deathtokoalas
the western world is intervening in syria, it's just doing so in a way that most westerners would not approve of. the question a few months ago was not about intervention, it was about escalation. did the west want to escalate it's support for saudi fighters from weapons smuggling to air bombardment and possible invasion? if it weren't for western intervention, there would not be a conflict in the region.

thousands and thousands and thousands of people in syria have died in a fight between russia and america over a naval base. foreign-backed religious extremists roam the countryside, bombing towns to pillage the population while carrying out a genocide against shia and other non-sunnis they consider "polytheists". crimea switched from one authoritarian state to another, with no casualties, and with the majority support of it's citizenry (97% or not). this is the difference between a very controlled russian invasion designed to create order and an off-the-wall american one designed to preserve disorder. it's not a comparable situation, and suggestions that it is should make people angry.

was looking at a blu-ray writer for better storage. the price of media is still ridiculous. but finding one for under $30 is no longer infeasible (if still requiring a little luck). not a priority, though...

there may be a new format out in the next two years. that should help bring the blu-ray prices way down.

the flash made it give up faster, which is actually an improvement. cleaning the drive turned the fan noise down but didn't fix the read issues. it just spins. windows. dos. no os at all. same thing. so, i'm concluding that the drive is broken.

which means i haven't ruled out the ide on the board.

today, i need to get an external sata/ide-->usb thing and some other things. i'll be taking a run for old parts (ram for my secondary board is like $2/stick, might as well fill it up. it's also time to upgrade to usb 2.0, lol, given that usb 3.0 cards have pushed the price down. it's useless from a store's perspective. like, $5. and if i can find one for cheap enough ($10) i might even upgrade the chip from a pIII 500, although the max the board can take is pIII 950.) tomorrow and will grab an old ide then.

i mean, that board has maximum specs that are dirt cheap to attain. might as well...

alright, yamaha...

i know it's a little odd to go looking for a dos firmware installer for a cd-rom manufactured in 1999, but you really couldn't spare the 200 kb on your website? was it the bandwidth?

jerks.

there's legacy hardware sites, but they don't even support dos anymore, so i have to install windows to flash the drive. ugh...

i don't even think it's going to work, it's just a last chance before i trash it.

worse, people that flash things know it's not always so good to flash things from windows.

i could brick it trying to fix it. right now, i don't know if it's programming is corrupted, if it's physically broken or if it's just ridiculously dirty.

that little 200 kb (if that) file could prevent somebody from having to buy a new....

yeah. great system we've got going, here.

if you're curious, i'm trying to get the boot block on my motherboard to kick in. it's just simply not reading the floppy connector, but i think it's because the pin is damaged on it. the sata drives are spinning, but they're not reading. and i don't think i'm getting power to the usb ports. the ide connector seems to work, and the drive is spinning, but the drive isn't reading in my other pc at all, so i can't really conclude that that isn't working until i can verify that the drive is working. i have an ide dvd but i know it doesn't read cd-rs well. so i need the drive to work to rule out that the boot block isn't kicking in, before i go through the process of trying to serial in.

jessica amber murray
google killer: a search engine that removes stores.

so that when you type in "sata II" looking for information about how sata II works, you don't get 1000 links trying to sell you a sata II drive.

should the user wish to actually a purchase a product, they could use a specialized search engine designed to compare prices.

as we speak, the internet is becoming another entry in a long line of the casualties of religion & capitalism.

tommy d
You can also just add more search terms, like "SATA II reviews" or something along those lines.

jessica amber murray
so, i can read the product reviews at amazon? or the technical details at newegg? there's a few filters that, if you're lucky, might bring what you want to the top, but there's not anything that's going to strike them out altogether besides a blocklist.

tommy d
SATA II details, SATA II information, etc.

jessica amber murray
ok, go ahead and google that and tell me how many white papers and schematics show up.

(in comparison to how many product reviews and online stores)

tommy d
Okay, I see your point now lol

larry king.

on rt.

i'll never get over this...

known known, known unknown, unknown known, unknown unknown.

unknown known is a contradiction in terms. the rest is simple logic. work it out.

try kant for help.

there are things that you know that you know. 2+2 = 4.

there are things that you know you don't know. does pi terminate?

there cannot be things that you don't know you know. well, unless you want to get freudian.

there are thing you don't know you don't know. yet. hindsight is 20/20. newton's laws of motions needed some work.

capeche?

fwiw, it's clear now that the torture was designed to extract false confessions to justify further pre-determined policy. the debate is sort of not grounded.

this particular group is not signatory to any treaty at all. in fact, much of british columbia never signed any kind of treaty with any kind of european power. this puts them in a very different legal category that is presented here in a way that is somewhat confusing. the government cannot break a treaty that was never signed in the first place. further, it logically stands to reason that if no treaty was ever signed then the federal government ought to have no rights over the land at all. of course, this doesn't align with the logic of colonialism. however, the supreme court has ruled that areas that never signed a treaty have full aboriginal title, which is legally a type of land ownership that falls down somewhere higher than fee simple but still exists under crown control. this is a sort of legal compromise that aims to allow for a sort of "virtual sovereignty" in day-to-day matters without reversing the colonial land grab. that is to say that the supreme court has fabricated this legal fiction of the crown granting aboriginal title as a special fief that grants the owner more rights than fee simple but not full sovereignty.

what that means is that the harper government has a mechanism where it can legally appropriate land for specific purposes, so long as it "consults" with the inhabitants (which legally means "provide sufficient warning", rather than "carry out a significant conversation"). all of this stems from supreme court decisions designed to make the colonial appropriation process seem more liberal and friendly on the surface, while actually helping it along under the surface. none of it is by treaty.

i would rather think there is a strong argument under international law that canada is carrying out a sort of colonization, accompanied by a military occupation of the region. except by the use of sheer force, it is difficult to ascertain how canada ought to have any rights over the area at all.

i think everything i've seen suggests that the saudis actually interpret the iranians as a sort of lost, insolent province - as outlandish as that may seem, given that it's been a long time since the caliphs. but that's the mindset, as crazy as it is.

i think this gets it, though.

again, this is refreshing. we've seen footnotes in media that the protests continue against the coalition that took over, but nothing from the ground.