We cannot cave in just because one country points at nukes, and Russia hasn’t made a direct threat either. This shit and all the Russian tv-shows with bedlamites talking about nuking Britain are made purely to spread fear. Just change side and go back to sleep.
The solution is to find a diplomatic solution that works for both sides. Anybody who can’t get that through their skull is actively driving us towards extinction.
But Putin isn’t interested to find a diplomatic solution, he have his own plans. He will maybe interested in a diplomatic solution if he got more under pressure .But from the past he learned he can do what he want no buddy try stop him. So someone have show his limits like a little child have to learn it. How you can make politic with a guy you can’t trust ? You need some security. Everybody want to find diplomatic solution but you say now to the Ukraines hey common what is wrong with you just find a diplomatic solution with super power there not interested in diplomatic solution and there just reaped and killed you wife and children. Now is time to show unity and strength and i hope Russia is than interested in a diplomatic solution. My way was i tried to inform people on Russia Social Networks that the west are not Nazi peoples. But was also very scary to see if you now playing video games like Insurgency what also a lot of Russia people, there using now west people as a insult.
This is a false statement. Putin has tried to find a diplomatic solution for over 8 years. The west refused to do diplomacy during this whole time. NATO has expanded for the past 30 years despite promises not to move east. NATO has continuously destroyed countries and continued to surround Russia. Countless western experts warned that this will ultimately lead to a conflict. Politics isn’t about trust. It’s about understanding your interests and the interests of others. It’s about recognizing red lines, and creating conditions where conflict can be avoided.
Russia never threatened Ukraine until the west ran a coup there, and put in a regime there with ambitions to absorb it into NATO. Finland and Sweden have never been threatened by Russia, until they expressed ambitions to join NATO. It’s as if NATO expansion has been the key destabilizing factor here all along as everyone who has a modicum of understanding of the subject has been saying.
The escalation created the current crisis and now you’re claiming that the solution is more escalation. You’re absolutely insane and people like you will be the end of us all.
I believe they threw their president out because he stopped the EU progress they had made and had nothing to do with NATO. NATO came formally in to the picture in 2019 once the threat from Russia had mounted.
US officials, unhappy with the scuttled EU deal, saw a similar chance in the Maidan protests.
,
It’s an overstatement to say, as some critics have charged, that Washington orchestrated the Maidan uprising. But there’s no doubt US officials backed and exploited it for their own ends.
Your source states very clearly that the US did not orchestrate the Maidan protests, and that its involvement was due to the aborted EU-deal.
Nothing in there about the Maidan government wanting to join NATO, aside from one reference to Putin's paranoia about it :
After Putin moved to secure the Crimean naval base from NATO control
Indeed, the article referenced in this sentence says:
“Our decision on Crimea was partly due to ... considerations that if we do nothing, then at some point, guided by the same principles, NATO will drag Ukraine in and they will say: ‘It doesn’t have anything to do with you.’”
So, according to your source, Crimea was not annexed in reaction to Ukraine giving up its neutrality, but in prevision of it.
US orchestrated this coup, and I’ve linked you tons of documents supporting this in our previous discussion. I recall you whining that it was too much reading.
You did link a ton of documents, and I have not found yet the ones supporting that claim (does not help that you did not single them out). In fact, the article that we are discussing here, who as I highlighted explicitly states the opposite, was part of that ton of documents.
It is the second time that you use this document to support what it denies.
Please, help me understanding what I poorly comprehend in
US officials, unhappy with the scuttled EU deal, saw a similar chance in the Maidan protests.It’s an overstatement to say, as some critics have charged, that Washington orchestrated the Maidan uprising. But there’s no doubt US officials backed and exploited it for their own ends.
I’ve already spent a lot of time explaining this in the past thread. It’s pretty clear there’s no point for me to continue wasting energy here. If you don’t want to understand that Maidan coup was orchestrated by US, then there’s nothing I can say that will change that.
The sources I provided you with clearly demonstrate that US was directly involved in the coup, and hand picked the members of the puppet regime that it installed after. If you don’t understand why US wanted to install this regime in Ukraine then you really need to read up on US geopolitical goals and history.
Here’s an article from the Guardian from 2004 for you, that talks about US starting to meddle in Ukraine:
When the Ukrainian president was replaced by a US-selected administration, in an entirely unconstitutional takeover, politicians such as William Hague brazenly misled parliament about the legality of what had taken place: the imposition of a pro-western government on Russia’s most neuralgic and politically divided neighbour.
The reality is that, after two decades of eastward Nato expansion, this crisis was triggered by the west’s attempt to pull Ukraine decisively into its orbit and defence structure, via an explicitly anti-Moscow EU association agreement. Its rejection led to the Maidan protests and the installation of an anti-Russian administration – rejected by half the country – that went on to sign the EU and International Monetary Fund agreements regardless.
US played a direct role in both funding and orchestrating the coup
Imagine arguing with a straight face that the regime had no intentions of joining NATO given that US openly stated desires to integrate Ukraine into NATO, and handpicked the regime in Ukraine after the coup.
Only relevant sources and no insults, thanks I guess?
US played a direct role in both funding and orchestrating the coup
It did play a role, we agree on that; my point is that it is very speculative to assume that it single-handedly had the whole decisive power. Whether they truly led the revolution is a disputed fact, even among your sources. Same for choosing the new government, the phone call shows they had a say in that, but to my knowledge nothing shows that they single-handedly picked the whole government, as there were other parties involved, including Ukrainian pro-EU and Ukrainian nazis.
That they were going to join NATO is a pure speculation based on the opinions that
US held all the decisive power over that government
The fact that they were going to join NATO is the only reasonable explanation for why US wanted to do a regime change in Ukraine in the first place. Everything this regime has done while it was in power is in line with this explanation.
The diplomacy amounted to Russia wanting to reclaim the soviet sphere of influence or Ukraine gets it. You know full well there wasn’t any actual diplomatic solution for Putin.
Yes, Russia has a sphere of influence just like US has and every other major power. I know full well that if Ukraine stayed neutral then Russia would not have invaded it. Every single person who knows anything on the subject agrees regarding this. Finland throwing away its neutrality was the height of idiocy.
Implementing Minsk agreements that Ukraine and the west agreed to and Ukraine staying neutral would’ve been pretty easy. But Ukraine regime and its western sponsors refused to. As the saying goes, it takes two to tango.
Russia invaded them, that’s all it takes for it to be 100% Russia’s fault. Ukraine never invaded Russia. NATO never invaded Russia. The EU never invaded Russia. Even Japan is staying out of Russia, despite openly contesting lands.
As much as I dislike Meta, the idea that you’d have to pay to present a link to a news article is idiocy. Let the news sites see how their traffic goes without those links.
This is a topic I could see having enough ammo to debate either side. It’s interesting, to say the least. To suggest the current model is helping news companies sustain & grow their business would be hard to argue so I welcome Canada’s efforts to change the game.
Meta captures everything from the information you give it when you sign up for accounts, to what you click on or like, who you befriend online and what kind of phone, computer or tablet you use to access its products
I mean, yeah? None of that is unique to threads nor meta and half of that is information required to run the service
You should have read on that it also captures Health and Fitness information. The only reason it would get that is to sell it to insurance companies, or worse, law enforcement if you're in a region that outlaws certain medical procedures.
I mean, yeah, but this is also true compared to writing your thoughts down in a paper journal or a self-hosted WordPress blog. Comparing it to Mastodon is only meaningful if you're specifically evangelizing for Mastodon. You're preaching to the choir here.
Your source touches on this, but a more meaningful comparison would be the social networks that are already being used by the same demographic. Is Threads use of data excessive or unusual compared the existing apps from Meta or its direct peers? How does it compare to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tiktok, Snapchat, etc.? How does it compare to ubiquitous Google apps like YouTube, Gmail, Chrome, etc?
Yeah, excessive tracking is Not Good, but it's nowhere near unique to Threads.
The cybersecurity startup the parent article is built around, Protexxa, have their own Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. as does its founder and CEO.
So what's the point of the article? Why Threads? Why now?
Personally, I think it says a lot that they can’t release it in the EU yet because it gathers so much data. Plus, we know Meta can’t be trusted with people’s data. It’s gathering more than other Meta apps and need to be aware of it.
As far as I know, they didn't want to rush it out in the EU because they didn't know if they'd fall foul of rules or not and they couldn't wait weeks or months just to find out. Not because they can't. Though, ironically, I think federation would cause the biggest problems. (How do you support the right to be forgotten when it's not technically possible?)
I kept a blog for ten years, I didn't write down my health info, my contact info, and my financial info on it.
And attention is being paid to Threads because yes, the access to health info is unusal. Other social media apps haven't asked for that unless they were specifically fitness apps.
It's bad that other ones track stuff, but it's not just stuff anyone puts on the internet just by being there, and they ARE taking an unprecedented step here.
I kept a blog for ten years, I didn't write down my health info, my contact info, and my financial info on it.
That was my point. It isn't that Mastodon is the alternative to Threads, it's just an alternative. The are plenty of systems of sharing short status updates with people that won't involve as many privacy threats.
And attention is being paid to Threads because yes, the access to health info is unusal. Other social media apps haven't asked for that unless they were specifically fitness apps.
Instagram also collects health info, which it has no intrinsic need for. This is important to note because, fundamentally, Threads is Instagram. That's why it collects the same data.
No I read the article and I’ve seen the rest of the posts here containing the list you mentioned. I was commenting specifically on that line from the article hence why I quoted it
But the article doesn’t downplay it, it just uses bad examples. You’d have to be technically adept enough to know that the examples were bad whilst also not knowing what meta actually collects
Anyone who thinks that any meta subsidiary is not trying to gain every piece of information on you and everyone around you is delusional. They want every detail. Do you masterbate? How often? To what? Partners? Cis/trans/nb, het/gay/bi/poly? Where do you do it? How often? Then meta asks, how can we make money off this knowledge and extract every penny. But one of their board members gets outed and it’s all out war, metaphorically speaking.
Not that I'm ever going to use the app, but I'd like to point out as to why the collection of this specific dataset is particularly dangerous.
Threads scrapes Health and Fitness information. Why is this a problem? Because Meta is already illegally scraping hospital websites for your records. Speaking as a data analyst, it doesn't take much (like one line of code in some cases) to match your Threads account to your hospital records in a database. To assume Meta isn't attempting to do so as we speak is naive - there's simply too much money to be made.
In an age where we've had to start underground railroads to help women across state lines to keep the right to choose, combined with the push from the far right to criminalize helping them, this sets up a frightening scenario:
Meta finds that you've scheduled an abortion through the hospital across state lines. With Threads on your phone, they can now track you as you travel to that appointment. It only takes one more step, or a law like this one tailored towards abortion, to notify law enforcement to pick you up enroute.
Combined with Meta's overall right-leaning politics, it just doesn't make sense to make yourself vulnerable to them, especially if you're a member of a minority population or have any sort of health condition. There's simply too much potential for abuse, and Meta has shown itself more than willing to abuse its users.
Because Meta is already illegally scraping hospital websites for your records.
Sorry, but this is just bad web design from the hospitals. This pixel tool doesn't magically appear on websites without being put there deliberately. Literally any tracking tool can capture this stuff on any page that a developer puts it on. This is 100% the fault of the programmer at the hospital (or the admin that made them do it) that decided to put tracking cookies on sensitive pages.
The hospital administrators decided it was more important to get their precious reports on usage from Meta's portal than protecting their patients.
I'm pissed that I've had to defend Meta here, but this one isn't on them.
If I leave my door unlocked while I'm gone, and you come in and steal my laptop, it's still theft. Yes, I'm an idiot, but you're still a criminal.
That being said, I fully agree with you that the hospitals should bear equal fault - the lack of protections around patient records is criminal, and I'd really like to see those whose records were exposed sue both the hospitals at fault and Meta, or better yet, a criminal case from the FTC and the Department of Health.
Not trying to be a hater, but that analogy isn't quite right. The web designers didn't leave their door unlocked. They invited Meta in, put their laptop in Meta's hands, and then said "Please take this. Enjoy." They weren't idiots. They chose to give Meta that data deliberately.
Medical institutions need to be held to account as much as Meta does for everything they do. I agree with that completely.
So now you got me digging into this because I take an absurd amount of pride in my analogies, and it looks like the Meta Pixel tech they embedded was basically like the standard Google Analytics tracking tag on most websites. The hospitals were stupid to install it on their password protected pages, but they were also misled in the fact that Meta's Pixel took far more data than a standard tracking tag, claimed they weren't tracking sensitive data when they were, then claimed to filter the data even though their engineers admitted they couldn't:
The Markup was unable to confirm whether any of the data referenced in this story was in fact removed before being stored by Meta. However, a recent joint investigation with Reveal found that Meta’s sensitive health information filtering system didn’t block information about appointments a reporter requested with crisis pregnancy centers.
Internally, Facebook employees have been blunt about how well—or not so well—the company generally protects sensitive data.
“We do not have an adequate level of control and explainability over how our systems use data, and thus we can’t confidently make controlled policy changes or external commitments such as ‘we will not use X data for Y purpose.’ ” Facebook engineers on the ad and business product team wrote in a 2021 privacy overview that was leaked to Vice.
So, to perfect the analogy, this would be like a hotel installing security cameras in their rooms, and then finding out the company that makes the cameras and runs the network is selling porn starring its customers. Not only that, now that the porn is in their system, it can't be adequately filtered or removed.
The hotel is stupid and liable, but the security company is just flat out vile.
Ok, I'm done. Have an upvote for putting up with that ;)
Someone on my Mastodon feed put this best: People who aren't tech saavy STILL deserve privacy, security and safety.
Hospitals are full of people who understand medicine, not tech. Because that's what they are. Administrators don't even know what to ask to hire a good tech person, and when a tech person gets in there any change they make has a danger of disrupting livesaving systems so they can't do anything anyway. It sucks, but HIPAA still says those records are private and you're not supposed to be looking at them without having a good reason to. The hospitals are liable for not protecting them properly, but Meta is still in the wrong and still breaking the law by scarping for them.
Ultimately, this is everyone's fault but the patients and the patients are the people who are wronged by it.
The conflict arose after Ojo-Thompson is alleged to have suggested that Canada was more racist than the U.S., in part because Canada has “never reckoned with its anti-Black history” in the way the U.S. has.
Bilkszto, who previously taught high school in Buffalo, N.Y., disagreed with the statement. He said it would be “an incredible disservice to our learners” to suggest the U.S. is a more just society than Canada.
“We are here to talk about anti-Black racism, but you in your whiteness think that you can tell me what’s really going on for Black people?” she said, according to Bilkszto’s lawsuit.
Bilkszto claims he tried to de-escalate the situation, admitting there was anti-Black racism in Canada but argued that the evidence suggests “we are a far more just society” than the U.S.
At this point, according to Bilkszto’s lawsuit, another KOJO facilitator intervened, saying what Bilkszto was bringing up was not relevant.
The facilitator allegedly said if Bilkszto wanted to be “an apologist” for Canada or the U.S. the session was “not the forum for that.”
Another session was held a week later. At the beginning of the session, according to Bilkszto’s lawsuit, Ojo-Thompson referred to what happened the previous week and described it as a “real-life” example of resistance in support of white supremacy.
Bilkszto claims in his lawsuit that the statement, among others, implicitly referred to him as a racist and white supremacist.
The Star had begun reporting on the lawsuit prior to Bilkszto’s death.
In a July 7 statement, the KOJO Institute said it disputes many of the allegations in Bilkszto’s lawsuit against the TDSB, “including the descriptions of interactions with KOJO Institute staff which paint an inaccurate and incomplete picture” of what happened in the sessions.
They said it would be “inappropriate” to comment further since the matter was before the courts.
YMMV on whether it was whataboutism or not, but regardless, it was pretty clearly not malicious, and it's a shame that the distress over the incident led him to suicide considering his positive record in the schooling system.
Yup. Literally the worst thing that could have happened to her had she taken the vaccine happened to her because she didn’t take the vaccine. Maybe they’ll put a monument to her on top of the hill that she chose to die on.
I was hoping to turn into a magnetic monkey with 5G tracking chips. No such luck.
The best few minutes of the pandemic for me was watching my 15 year old autistic daughter disassemble and completely humiliate a reality-denying mid-50s angry man at a farmers market. It was glorious.
Thanks. She is pretty awesome. Three of the people there to witness it, two labour negotiators and a “consultant” to CSIS, approached me the next week to say how impressed they were. She was clearly angry but she knew the data and presented it effectively. He slunk off after that. It was true awesome.
What a dumnass. In her Pyrrhic victory not to be made into a 5g zombie (or whatever nonsense she might have believed) she stood her ground and died like an idiot. She gets no tears from me.
This is such a paradoxical statement, because if she did get the vaccine willingly, then no one would consider her to be an idiot and thus see no issue with her getting the transplant.
nationalpost.com
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