Monday, March 31, 2014

thought provoking. if valid, there's some boots on the ground...

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/374553/putin-ukraine-europe-and-right-andrew-stuttaford
http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2014_03_31/Le-Pens-National-Front-to-run-at-least-11-French-towns-1659/
this might be the most awesome thing ever. i am not speaking lightly.

it's like 1% of the cost of the tools that recovery rip-offs use. it's actually cheaper to buy this little thing than it would be to hack together a homemade solution, and it's actually multipurpose - not only is it 1% of a pro device, it actually even pays for itself. it's even cheaper than a recovery evaluation would be...

but the assembled nature of it cuts out all the uncertainty of stringing together cannibalized cables to power sources. things get fried that way, but it's a last resort. not any more. it cuts out the need to use legacy hardware. should work direct from a laptop.

it's going to come with a learning curve, sure. but it could put the fucking vampires out of business. given what this could sell for, to manufacturer it like this and sell it for $30 is just shockingly decent.

http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/Bus-Pirate-v36-universal-serial-interface-p-609.html
The Obama administration is underestimating Putin's ambitions

washington post, mar 31, 2014.

"this file was inadvertently published"

yeah. thanks, bezos.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/editors-note/2013/06/25/f45b75b4-d2fb-11e2-8cbe-1bcbee06f8f8_story.html
then again, the russians may be able to work with this guy.

http://en.interfax.com.ua/news/general/198414.html
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/ukraine/poroshenko.htm
mmhmm.

well, that's the value of democracy in a bourgeois state - it sets up a fall guy. when the situation gets out of hand, the fall guy takes the fall and a new one is put in the old place. then, people are told their will was upheld and much nonsense is blathered about how democracy was victorious. egypt? sure. how about every four years in the united states?

the russians have been planning around these pipelines through ukraine for a while. it was a huge issue a few years ago. now, not so much. the question is how much can be rerouted to the pipes that surround ukraine and how fast. but, obviously that's not the ideal from the russian standpoint.

i need to reiterate that a russian-backed candidate could very well win the next election - if it is a free election. let us not fool ourselves into thinking that ukraine is suddenly a bastion of free and fair elections, after an illegal seizure of power. the ukrainian media is mostly state owned. this a former soviet state. there's been talk of faked elections in the past.

i haven't seen any polling that attempts to measure the reaction of the conservatives palling around with extremists, but i still think it's highly unlikely to be positive. timoshenko is not a popular candidate and does not have a serious chance in a free election. that would be a clear sign the vote is rigged. rather, this klitschko character seems to be taking the vote *away* from timoshenko's party - or at least he was before he pulled out, as i see he just did. recent polling has poroshenko out in front, but none of it takes into account the most updated field, or the recently announced party of regions candidate (who is under house arrest for his role in pro-russia protests. yeah. free and fair, huh?). it doesn't seem to me like he would need to pick up an overwhelming amount of momentum in order to split the field of pro-eu candidates. if timoshenko doesn't pull out, that could actually be the difference.

that has to be the preferred russian action. at the least, i wouldn't expect to see them do anything rash until after the election.

more concerning to the russians has to be that missile shield, which they have made their displeasure of abundantly clear. i think it's more likely to see russian-instigated instability in poland or latvia than an actually invasion of kharkov...

how much effort would it take to organize a resistance to ICE?

has google figured out that truth != consensus? i admit i kind of miss my silly + number, but i would get over it quickly if they got rid of the whole idea of upvoting altogether.