"Everyone mocks the Maginot Line -- it’s an easy target: bloated defense spending, the folly of centralized planning, and the arrogance of the Generals, all wrapped up into one classical tragedy. Despite carefully designed preparation, the Maginot Line fell to the Germans...and somewhere, vaguely, there’s a moral about being the fastest predator on the field, or something."
"However: the architects of the Blitzkreig proceeded to make exactly the same mistake. The Atlantic Wall was more expensive, more elaborate, and proceeded to fail more decisively, yet it’s the Maginot Line that’s still getting slandered in 2012. Either way, firewall strategy hasn't evolved an inch since those dark days. A militarized border is a strange waste of investment for one of the primary conduits of global trade, and it's hard not to note the resonance with previous walls."
North Korea Cracks Down on "Knowledge Smugglers" - Tim Sullivan
How China is Sealing Holes in the Great Firewall - Bloomberg
EU Crisis has Pushed Millions into Poverty - AFP
Sweden Pays Jobless Youths to Move to Norway - Telegraph
The US-Mexico Border: A Desert Monument to Failure - Mark Pitzke
Afghanistan Opium Cultivation Continued to Rise in 2012 - NYT
How the FBI Infiltrated White Supremacist Cells (or Vice Versa) - FP
No Evidence that Tamiflu Actually...Stops the Flu - NY Daily News
Gerard Blanchard Can Destroy Your Security System No Matter Who You Are - Joshuah Bearman
Dark Side of the Shortwave Band - Jason Walsh. A look at Cartel number stations. c/f Markovian Parallax Denigrate & Russian Shortwave Radio Enigma
The 1% number given by Rebecca MacKinnon in the Bloomberg article on China's firewall is way off, I would peg it at a minimum of 10%+:
ReplyDeletehttp://globalwebindex.net/thinking/china-the-home-to-facebook-and-twitter/
Nearly every statistic coming from the Chinese government is cooked in some form. Economic data, environmental data, you name it and it's doctored. Officially there are no Facebook users in China. Unofficially, you can look up people who list their name and location and they are obviously Chinese.
Michael Anti: Behind the Great Firewall of China
http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_anti_behind_the_great_firewall_of_china.html
On twitter the chinese version of Xinhua has around 1,500 followers, compared to Ai Weiwei's 191,000 and Michael Anti's 65,000.
More delicious walls:
Robo-Snipers, “Auto Kill Zones” to Protect Israeli Borders
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2007/06/for_years_and_y/
Side jobs, black markets flourish in North Korea
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/asia/korean_peninsula/AJ201112260001
“North Korean citizens, unable to count on a stable income or rationing, are moonlighting as security guards or coal haulers to make ends meet, eroding their allegiance to state authorities.
A South Korean research institute estimates that unauthorized economic activities, such as side businesses, account for 40-70 percent of citizens’ daily lives