Mike Meredith

They Died For Our Freedom …

General, History, Politics No Responses »

Nov 112018

Horseshit.

Normally on Remembrance Sunday, we remember the dead of all wars, but this one is a bit special – it’s exactly 100 years since the armistice that brought the killing phase of World War 1 to an end.

Around this time of year, there are often those who make grand pronouncements about the sacrifices those who fought made for some sort of noble goal – our freedom, the freedom of others, to defeat a really nasty enemy.

None of that applies to those who died in WW1; some of them may have felt they were fighting for their freedom (and our freedom). But they really fought because of the 19th century equivalent of mutually assured destruction.

Austria-Hungary and Serbia fought because of the assassination of a single man. Russia fought to support Serbia; France fought to support Russia; Britain fought to support France. And Germany fought because Austria-Hungary fought. This gross over-simplification happened remarkably quickly – all of the declarations of war occurred within about 1½ weeks.

So no great debate on the aims and goals of what the war was for then.

So whilst those who fought (and in some cases died) in wars are not to blame, not all wars were fought for good reasons – certainly you’ll find it hard to find a good reason for WWI.

Terrorism: The Alt-Right’s Hypocrisy

Politics No Responses »

Nov 062018

There are plenty of arguments to be had with the alt-right, beginning and ending with their repulsive policies. But this post isn’t about that …

I’ve encountered the alt-right’s asinine attitude to political violence before, but I was reminded about it again this morning (obviously some time ago now) with the news that someone had sent George Soros, Hilary Clinton, John Brennan, and Barack Obama a letter bomb.

Yet the alt-right would have us believe that it is the left who are more violent than the right. And both less violent than the Islamic extremists. Turns out that is not the case.

It is not even close. The overwhelming majority of terrorist attacks in the US are perpetrated by the right-wing.

The bête noire of the far right – Antifa? Never murdered anyone; in fact if you add together all of the political murders of the far left in the US over the last 10 years it adds up to 7-8 people (2-3%) whereas the far right are responsible for over 70% of the murders.

Antifa may well be more violent than you are happy with; their purpose after all is to tackle the fascists, which isn’t done without breaking heads. But they don’t intentionally go out to murder people – so don’t be taken in by the main stream media’s portrayal of them when they are busy denying that the far right (and “alt right”) are far more violent.

Even more than those evil islamic terrorists (who are pretty much the same as the far right).

Denying your own side’s violent actions and pretending it is the other side who are really the violent ones is classic gaslighting.

Southsea

Photography No Responses »

Oct 212018

The Khashoggi Killing

Politics No Responses »

Oct 202018

So an important journalist for the Washington Post is dead; he goes into a Saudi consulate and is never seen again alive.

So how was he killed?

Rogue Killers.

So we are expected to believe that a bunch of “rogue killers” happened to be wandering around a Saudi consulate? And decided to kill Khashoggi?

I don’t think so.

It is possible that the “rogue killers” were Saudi intelligence operatives who killed Khashoggi. But that doesn’t qualify as “rogue killers” in the conventional sense of the term – if Saudi intelligence operatives killed Khashoggi then the Saudi government is responsible for his killing even if they specifically prohibited the killing.

Interrogation Accident

Really?

That’s one rough interrogation; or did they mean torture? My instinctive first thought is “lie”; it smacks of an after the fact excuse.

Of course you could have an accidental death during an interrogation, but it is a very low probability and ultimately it is still the same Saudi Arabia killed Khashoggi.

Fight during a rendition

The latest “excuse” is that Khashoggi was killed during a fight; possibly during a botched attempt at rendition (what a government calls kidnapping). Which would seem to be balderdash.

If there was a room full of Saudi intelligence operatives waiting for Khashdoggi when he arrived at the embassy, then his death is what they intended. There may well have been a fight – who wouldn’t fight if they suspected they were about to be killed? But with overwhelming force available, if death occurred, that is what was originally intended.

So, we know that Saudi Arabia murdered a prominent journalist presumably because he was an embarrassment. After all not only was Khashdoggi an important journalist but also a member of the Saudi establishment. And it is one thing for an outsider to criticise Saudi policy, but an insider to do so is far more embarrassing,

Of course Trump is going to believe anything the Saudis say because to believe that Khashdoggi was murdered by the Saudis would require the sort of action that would put some very big business contracts at risk. To be fair to the funky-haired orange goblin, this doesn’t make him any different to most of the world’s leaders.

Does Nobody Read RFC1918?

Computing No Responses »

Oct 092018

And yes that includes me.

For those who don’t know, RFC1918 is the Internet standard that allocates the addresses used for private networks – 10/8, 192.168/16, or 172.16/12.

And in reference, specifically :-

To minimize the risk it is strongly recommended that an organization using private IP addresses choose randomly from the reserved pool of private addresses

(Apologies for the incorrect spelling above; it’s a quote from an American source)

This was reinforced to me yesterday whilst I was working from home, and I had trouble with a site-to-site VPN joining my network to work’s. As it happens there was no addressing conflict, but I had to install many routes more than should be necessary.

And I keep seeing this sort of thing; joining multiple networks when everybody is using 10/8 is a continual game of chicken – when are we going to find ourselves in conflict?

Of course there is a “fix” for this – NAT. The real fix of course is to use global IPv6 addresses even for devices and networks that will never be on the global Internet.

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