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from the LRB archives. good re-read with all the recent media. this is from 2010.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n22/bernard-po … r-traitors

Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, gathers secret intelligence electronically rather than through spies: ‘sigint’ as opposed to ‘humint’. (There is also ‘comint’, ‘elint’, ‘comsec’, ‘sinews’ and ‘sigmod’.) It was the last of Britain’s three (that we know of) national secret services to be founded, and has the lowest public profile. (How many spy novels can you think of that feature ‘sigint’, aside from Robert Harris’s Enigma?) Yet today it is probably the most important, and certainly the most expensive. It is housed in Cheltenham in ‘the largest building ever initiated by the British government’. The building is shaped like a doughnut, which is the nickname given to it by its occupants; but it’s also reminiscent of Jeremy Bentham’s all-seeing ‘panopticon’. That seems apt: it allows the government to read and hear almost every message that passes between us. In his new history of GCHQ Richard Aldrich claims that this surveillance capability constitutes potentially ‘the most insidious threat to personal liberty’ we face today.

very nice egypt.

What the heck is the point of banning qat anyway if you're going to let alcohol and tobacco remain legal.

13/f/taiwan wrote:

very nice egypt.

You can almost see the laser pointers!

Uzique The Lesser wrote:

are you optimistic about that?

not at all. it's nice to see that the people of egypt are engaged with their government but the direction the military and certain groups are headed towards is absolutely insane. if they want morsi gone, that is completely fine. however, staging a military coup to overthrow a democratically elected leader does not end well and is totally antithetical to the whole democratic process. at the very least, a referendum should be held.

egypt's military is probably the most powerful and corrupt institution in that country. they're using this as an opportunity to expand their power/hold on to it for as long as they can.  it's foolish to believe that the same military once loyal to hosni mubarak and responsible for attempting to trample the initial revolution 2 years ago, now cherishes the rights and interest of it's population.

i still have hope for the arab world, especially egypt, birth place to one of the only true contemporary arab leaders:

Last edited by 13/f/taiwan (2013-07-03 15:18:50)

Christians Angry That Tonto Is Pagan In 'Lone Ranger' Film

God hates Johnny Depp?

so a bank should give a loan at 3% regardless how much they borrowed for university fees? sounds like pretty high risk to me.

Student loan rates should not be tied to any market but the student loan market. The interest charged should reflect the rate of default just like it does in every other market. Tying it to wall street, or creating an artificial rate, is stupid.

Considering the loan default rate is something like 21% right now the rates should be sky high, which would cause less people to go to college until tuition came down.

Macbeth wrote:

You really don't have any credibility to talk about students loans and financing.

But beyond that, like I said the loans can not be discharged in a bankruptcy. Those people who default are still going to pay off their loans. The government is just going to garnish their wages and rape their credit to do it. So penalizing everyone is stupid.

It's how credit markets work. Would you rather they use credit scores?

Insurance markets base their premiums on risk based on similar criteria. Banks base their loan rates on peoples credit history. Why should college loans be different? Loans ultimately should have many things tied to them, including likelihood of payback. Should an art history major be allowed to take out $150k in loans at 3%? Fuck no.

Uzique The Lesser wrote:

oh ya let's redesign the loan system so it induces everyone to take engineering

gotta love the military vet lecturing art history majors on their financial decisions.

That's not what I want though. I want more realistic tuition that isn't constantly driven up by government intervention.

I really wish you had a modicum of math skills so you could actually attempt to understand the situation. Alas, you're as dumb and emotional as ever.

Macbeth wrote:

So you don't have a single answer to any of my points do you?

What points? The fact that you think you have a right to publicly backed loans in order to pay for school? No, I don't think you do have any point. Taking over the student loan racket was one of the first things the Obama administration did and they've done absolutely nothing to address the real issue they claimed to be taking on: tuition costs.

It's absolutely pointless to argue with you because you have zero understanding of economics or math. Every argument I make is easily backed by absolutely simple, trivial math, but it gets in the way of your emotion-based arguments so you ignore it and attack me on a personal level instead.

Subsidies drive up tuition costs.
Easy student loan money drives up tuition costs.
Acting as a marketing mouthpiece for the college industry and telling everyone at every opportunity that everyone absolutely needs a college education drives up tuition costs.
Allowing universities access to eminent domain so they can go on vanity building sprees drives up tuition costs.

Want me to continue? I can go on for a while.

Is the American public smarter, better informed, or more engaged now than they were fifty years ago when less people went to college? No. We're actually less engaged and we now have a surplus of college educated baristas.

And do you not think that carrying the weight of student loans around ones neck doesn't act like a millstone dragging down people in their thirties, making it nearly impossible for them to get out from under them? I have news for you, there are a lot of depressed people in their late 20s and 30s with a shit ton of student debt absolutely destroying their lives. They can't find work that is commensurate with their education level, they have no chance of ever saving a penny or getting ahead even a little because they have to pay back those loans every month. No chance of owning a home for them, and it gets in the way of long term relationships as well. The college racket is absolutely destroying tens of thousands (if not more) of lives every year.

I mean seriously, what have you gained from four years at Rutgers? You're going to make 1/3 to 1/2 of what a union plumber makes. You're going to be in debt. You're going to waste even more money going to grad school. You're going to retard your growth as an adult by getting stuck paying off debt you could've avoided. Did you really need to study poli sci at Rutgers? Did you? Why not take that $50k and go take a trip to Europe? Buy a library, attend lectures, read news articles. All this can be done on your own time. Are you a better, more well rounded person now? Everyone on this forum will tell you that no, you are not, you just got creepier and dumber. What a fucking waste of time.

Jay wrote:

Macbeth wrote:

So you don't have a single answer to any of my points do you?

What points? The fact that you think you have a right to publicly backed loans in order to pay for school? No, I don't think you do have any point. Taking over the student loan racket was one of the first things the Obama administration did and they've done absolutely nothing to address the real issue they claimed to be taking on: tuition costs.

It's absolutely pointless to argue with you because you have zero understanding of economics or math. Every argument I make is easily backed by absolutely simple, trivial math, but it gets in the way of your emotion-based arguments so you ignore it and attack me on a personal level instead.

Subsidies drive up tuition costs.
Easy student loan money drives up tuition costs.
Acting as a marketing mouthpiece for the college industry and telling everyone at every opportunity that everyone absolutely needs a college education drives up tuition costs.
Allowing universities access to eminent domain so they can go on vanity building sprees drives up tuition costs.

Want me to continue? I can go on for a while.

Is the American public smarter, better informed, or more engaged now than they were fifty years ago when less people went to college? No. We're actually less engaged and we now have a surplus of college educated baristas.

And do you not think that carrying the weight of student loans around ones neck doesn't act like a millstone dragging down people in their thirties, making it nearly impossible for them to get out from under them? I have news for you, there are a lot of depressed people in their late 20s and 30s with a shit ton of student debt absolutely destroying their lives. They can't find work that is commensurate with their education level, they have no chance of ever saving a penny or getting ahead even a little because they have to pay back those loans every month. No chance of owning a home for them, and it gets in the way of long term relationships as well. The college racket is absolutely destroying tens of thousands (if not more) of lives every year.

I mean seriously, what have you gained from four years at Rutgers? You're going to make 1/3 to 1/2 of what a union plumber makes. You're going to be in debt. You're going to waste even more money going to grad school. You're going to retard your growth as an adult by getting stuck paying off debt you could've avoided. Did you really need to study poli sci at Rutgers? Did you? Why not take that $50k and go take a trip to Europe? Buy a library, attend lectures, read news articles. All this can be done on your own time. Are you a better, more well rounded person now? Everyone on this forum will tell you that no, you are not, you just got creepier and dumber. What a fucking waste of time.

I'm not complaining about tuition cost. I even said before that I had zero problem with the way college is paid for in this country. My only issue is raising the rates and tying it to the market in an attempt to profit off of and fuck over students for no good reason.

Tuition isn't unreasonable and I don't think it is a big deal. The average student comes out with $25,000 in student loans. That isn't a lot of money. That is basically a car. My gripe is that Republicans want to tie it to the market for no other reason than to look good among the uneducated future millionaire yacht club wannabe crowd. People like you.

You keep whining that my arguments are unbacked and unsubstantiated. I posted a link already that showed that the government makes $50,000,000,000 a year on student loan debt. You just ignored and started going on about the worth of college education and other bitterness caused gripes. So since I'm not arguing the worth of education nor am I complaining about the cost, can you please address why we should mess with the rates if the government is already profiting off of it?