Poet

The whole problem here is that Apple are not seeking any "special favors" from governments, just as they have never compromised their designs to curry favor with corporate buyers. From day one, Apple have focused relentlessly on improving the end-user experience, trusting that profits would follow. Their compact is with you, the person who buys their product, and they do not undermine that with secret deals. They insist that government agencies present specific warrants before they will surrender any user's information. To the extent that they are legally able, Apple are defending your rights and attempting to establish a red line that will prevent governments all over the world from demanding a backdoor of their own. This underlines the extent to which this case has nothing to do with any information that might be on the phone. The FBI already has, from the telecom provider, all the meta information about who the shooter sent messages to and when. They have access to the messages themselves on the phones of those contacts. They already know that any sensitive information would have been on the throwaway phones that the shooters set fire to before the attack, not a work-supplied phone. The FBI were waiting for an incident that would be emotionally charged enough for them to create a precedent - as we saw in the aftermath of 9/11, the government's credo is "Never waste a good crisis". San Bernardino was the perfect opportunity to take on Apple before their "secure enclave" technology becomes a standard feature in all their phones. The phone in question, the iPhone 5c, was the last model sold in America to not include a CPU with a secure enclave, so, it allows them to demand a software, rather than hardware, backdoor at this stage, but after establishing the legal precedent it will be relatively easy for them to escalate that to a hardware backdoor in all secure enclave models. The only flaw in this perfect opportunity was that they already had access to all of the phone's backups and, therefore, there was nothing to ask Apple for, no reason to take a case, no chance to create a legal precedent that would render real encryption (without backdoors) illegal. So, they simply reset the password.

I don't know how you did it, but the conclusion you managed to draw from that article is exactly the opposite of what the article actually says. The FBI issued a court order precisely because Apple would not comply in secret. As a producer of mainstream products, there is zero publicity benefit to Apple in taking this stand, as the vast majority of people do not understand the issue. This ignorance factor has been aggravated by the fact that the FBI deliberately chose an incident surrounded by intense public anger, the San Bernadino shooting, as their opportunity to get a precedent-establishing case passed that would force all encrytion-using devices sold in the United States to have a backdoor, thus rendering the encryption pretty much useless. This is probably the most important legal case of this decade, it has huge implications for where humans all over the world will stand in relation to their governments for centuries to come. Again, there is ZERO publicity gain in this for Apple. Yes, it is in their long-term self-interest to increase the utility of their devices to their customers, and having encryption without a back-door is going to be widely understood to be a crucial feature in the future but, today, Apple are standing on principle and we should be standing right beside them, not lazily mis-interpreting articles to suit our existing trendy anti-Apple prejudices.

It would be fascinating to hear Stef's take on this fascinating article. Many people are aware that this happened but the sheer scale of it is eye-opening and places an important question mark over the mainstream "American slavery" narrative: Irish: The Forgotten White Slaves

Ferssitar, I would politely request that you find ways to deal with your frustrations that do not involve provocative attacks upon others. I do not mean to belittle you, I sincerely hope that you manage to find peace of mind, but, in any discussion, it is important to respect the opinions and contributions of others. I posted this news item because it is directly pertinent to two of the main threads of discussion within our community: 1. The consequences of massive, uncontrolled immigration from a hostile culture - please note that this was a murder, not a rape, and that the victim was someone who chose to work with recent migrants, suggesting that she had probably bought into the narrative that was being pushed by the government and media before the reality set in. 2. The collusion of the media in hiding information that undermines the dominant narrative - this news was not widely reported. Only you can answer your question about why you do not care about the long-term effects that current events will have upon Europe but, as a European with family and friends living in Europe, I do care. The gravity of the situation is such that it is almost comical for you to question the "personal motivation" of anyone who dares to discuss the situation. It is also hypocritical to criticize those who "delve into these threads" when you, yourself, have not only delved but, also, posted five times in this thread.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/sweden/12121070/Migrant-fatally-stabs-female-refugee-centre-worker-in-Sweden-say-police.html

As a European living in Thailand, I spend a lot of time thinking about how much potential is squandered by the ubiquitous corruption in Asian cultures. Many Westerners make the mistake of thinking it is something that can be addressed directly by "crack-downs" on bent officials, that you can remove a layer of grime and undercover a modern society, but the roots of this problem run so much deeper that I have serious doubts about whether it can ever be overcome. Readers of this forum will be well-aware that the self-replicating life-blood of twisted societal structures - such as abusive policing, permanent wars, parasitic politicians, ignorant populaces - is child abuse, in its many forms ranging from early exposure to aggression to years of educational incarceration. When we intellectualize this fact, however, it is all too easy to lose touch with the visceral reality of this situation for hundreds of millions of children. Today, a highly disturbing video is blowing up on Thai social media. It shows a father "educating" his four-year-old son. It was secretly filmed using a smartphone by the man's wife, the child's mother, herself the victim of years of violence, because she could think of no other way to save him - towards the end, we hear her desperately pleading "Stop, you'll kill him". Her release of the video onto Facebook quite probably saved the child's life and the widespread attention meant that he was not able to simply pay the normal bribe of a few dollars that usually resolves such matters, the police had to actually arrest him. Tragically, however, the seeds of damage have almost certainly now been passed along to his son. As a reminder of the sheer brutality which parents are capable of inflicting upon their own children, and of the importance of fighting this evil, I would like to share the video here. This is a link to YouTube. Please be aware that this is extremely upsetting, think about whether you really need this reminder, but for me it was an important insight into a primal instinct that flows beneath life here, resulting in an apathetic acceptance of corruption in daily life, the eradication of intellectual curiosity in children and the resigned acceptance of shoddy standards in everything. https://youtu.be/UmpWWEcO7HU

@Cobra2411- No matter what the result is, the monkey wrench has already been well and truly tossed. In a complete panic after the weekend polls showed the Yes campaign pulling ahead, the Westminster parties have now agreed to give Scotland what is essentially home rule within the Union, if they just vote no. That concession has already led to demands that the English should get their own parliament too, and the fairness of that is so fundamentally obvious that it will have to happen.If, on the other hand, the vote is Yes, the UK's remaining time as a nuclear power will be limited to a few years, because Scotland will not keep Europe's largest arsenal of nuclear weaponry just 20 miles from its most populated city, and there is no constituency in England that would be willing to house them instead. That means that the UK will not be able to go ahead with the £25bn Trident replacement, raising serious questions over whether it should continue to see itself as a major world player.Either way, the United Kingdom as we know it is over. I would not be at all surprised, in the aftermath of all this, to see England shed yet more of its imperial legacy and become a more streamlined country over the coming years, far more focused on business and competitive taxes. @LovePrevails, I know exactly what you mean but my theory, as an Irish guy who has been living here for over a decade, is that an awful lot of the benefits culture and, indeed, the mental illness, alcohol abuse and drug idiocy stem from a deep-seated despair and feeling among Scots that the game is stacked against them from the start.There is also the belief, which I've heard expressed many times, that they may as well wring some benefit money out of the system, given the fact that the UK gets the oil, and given that so much money is blown on wars and trident. Successive Westminster governments have seen it that way, paying off generations of Scots with the dole, so that the English can get on with the lucrative business of building financial services on the credibility of one of the world's few petrocurrencies.I am not saying that multi-generational welfare dependency can be reversed overnight, but I think it will be interesting to see what happens when Scottish society, as a whole, suddenly has a more straightforward and much clearer sense of where their taxes and national resources are going. I would not rule out the possibility that a Scottish government can come up with somewhat better solutions to Scottish problems, and there is a lot of untapped potential in this nation of people who have more or less given up on themselves.Somewhere, deep down, the Scots are still a fiercely independent and innovative people, they just need the chance to lose the chip on their collective shoulder and discover who they really are.

At least he's voting in the right direction, plenty of time, later, for him to discover that governments aren't there to protect you from the predators, they are the predators

@EndTheUsurpation, it is important to stress that the first comment you quote was not mine. It is better forum etiquette to create an individual response post for each of the posts you are responding to. I believe he was expressing the confusion many English people feel, having had their identity subsumed into the constructs of empire. I have heard Russians friends expressing similar sentiments after the fall of the USSR, their self-identity as Russians had become inextricably linked to the larger construct. As for your objection to my bewilderment that any FDR listener would not vote for independence, you may well be missing the point that Stef was making in that video. His point was that most elections are a sham designed to get you to participate in a state without any real possibility of changing anything. The independence referendum, on the other hand, is an extremely and almost accidental opportunity to completely reject and get rid of the current state. This referendum only came about as a means to put to bed an argument that had been dragging on since the last rigged referendum in 1979, and was only allowed to go forward because the London government was absolutely confident, based on the polls at the time, that there was no way the Scots would vote to break away. They underestimated the extent to which the illegal wars of the past 13 years and other poor decisions have highlighted the divide between mainstream Scottish opinion and the English political elite, both left and right. If the Scots vote for independence, they will still be subject to a state, but it is almost impossible that it could be as contemptuous and dangerous as the state they boot out. I am saying that any FDR listener should welcome a situation in which decisions and control of resources are brought back to a more local level, and in which a major body-blow is delivered to a state that has aided and abetted in some of the worst international crimes of recent years. This will be good for Scottish people and good for English people, because it will shine an uncomfortably bright light upon the state. I cannot think of any vote in recent history that is less like the smoke-screen elections that Stefs rails against, this is an unexpected glitch in the system that, incredibly, gives us the opportunity to unplug the system itself. With the decision on a knife-edge, and with the No campaign, back by the entire London media, ratcheting up the fear-based propaganda, the idea that any FDR listener would think it moral, in these circumstances, to stay at home and not vote is utterly bizarre.

I find it mind-boggling that any FDR listener would consider anything other than voting yes.

Has someone at The Onion discovered FDR? Humanity Surprised It Still Hasn’t Figured Out Better Alternative To Letting Power-Hungry Assholes Decide Everything

Hello everyone!I'm a longtime listener from Edinburgh who has meaning to get involved here at the forum for quite a while but have been struggling to find the time.I work fulltime on a (very) early-stage Bitcoin-related startup which I hope will open up a certain form of trade and allow people all over the world to conduct business while routing around the red tape and money demands of their state mafias.Although I am already immersed (possibly even marinated) in Stefan's philosophy, my hope is that the community here may be willing to offer me their insights on how to more effectively shape and spread my idea.