Sabtu, 25 Februari 2012
In response to my article on Monday, Dec 19 2011, I received a reply from a distinguished gentleman from Denmark, now residing and working in Cyprus, that I would like to share. The following is the reply in its entirety, unedited, other than to facilitate the sentence structures... Food for thought!Yes, that is all true what you write about Vaclav Havel. And I still have due to read his “Power of the Powerless.”BUT there is something strange about the whole thing, because everything Havel was standing up for during the times of his struggle somehow EVAPORATED INTO… NOTHING…I was first time in Czechoslovakia in 1967. I was medical student and supposed to study anatomy by dissection. Corpses where hard to come by in my home country Denmark but more easily available in Czechoslovakia. I did NOT study much because I crisscrossed the country hiking, totally fascinated to witness the harsh realities of this very Stalinist country. In West Europe most young people were socialist or even communists and I was at home living as a lonely person in my rejection of that. And NOW could witness that all I had been able to deduct about communist dictatorship was TRUE. But as I recall it also, very beautiful… and UNSPOILED by greedy materialism. I did not realize that then, but by now I KNOW such was the case.The country side was like going back in time in my own country – yes materialwise there was a huge gap to what had been achieved in West Europe – but somehow it was beautiful. There were less things to be had in shops and of poorer quality, but what was available was often shared. People were either Opressed or Opressors and there was true solidarity. There was an enemy, there was danger, there were heros and villains… in short, LIFE had true qualities where the chaff was easily distinguishable from the Wheat.Prague was exceedingly BEAUTIFULL – a historic pearl – not out of intention but BECAUSE there was no money to build. And therefore everything was a bit falling apart... but unspoiled and genuine.I returned to the country next year, 1968, with all my family, because I wanted them to see WHAT was going on. And we had an unforgettable tour through Czechoslovakia, this time for my part a bit more affluent because my father footed the bill. We slipped out of the country in the night when the Russians overran the country with tanks. And the country went into Stalinist Rigor for the next 10 years. Since then my Mother kept a small mini Czech Flag on her desk.I returned to the now Czech Republic last year, 2010, for the first time and had 12 hours in Prague. The beauty of Prague had… disappeared. Mac Donalds and otherUgly symbols of Western – mainly US – materialism had inched their way into this Middle Age city and are now lying interspersed between ancient buildings. This UGLY AMERICAN BUY BUY BUY athmosphere now pervaded the air. Everything was MONEY. I do not have much desire to return! ...As there is little to see anymore.But what I mainly reflect upon is… WHERE did it go WRONG?I think I have some answers to that... not sure... but fairly accurat... I think.One should never blame others for shortcomings of one self, but as I see it, a HUGE DECEPTION out of the USA has all the time been ongoing. You can find some of the explanation in an article by Brezhinsky in Foreign Affairs some year after the Fallof the Communist System. (look it up ! It is truly Machiavellian.) And there may be a TRUTH in the Ayatollas description of the US as THE BIG SATAN. I, who have been so adamantly US friendly in my youth and for the majority of my life, say now, Where previous VEILS of DECEPTION have been lifted, for those who can see… and THINK.And what about Havel? Well in my opinion – and I am sad to say so – in my opinion, he let himself be BOUGHT OFF. What a shame. But may be that’s how life is.TRUE HEROS of TODAY in the WESTERN WORLD are persons like JULIAN ASSANGE. But look and witness how OUR WESTERN TOTALITARIAN CAPITALIST DICTATORS have CONTROL. The Soviets never succeeded that absolutely. And HOW such persons who are a Danger to the POWERS are SILENCED.It is despicable! And here Mr Havel – all his greatness apart – and all similars have FAILED and BETRAYED what they once fought for. They let themselves be BOUGHT OFF. It was too pleasant with all the free goodies!It is IRONIC that RUSSIA, as of today, probably is a more FREE COUNTRY than can be said about the USA… don’t You think so? And that the SURVEILLANCE of CITICENS NOW is a US PHENOMENA rather than a Russian… I truly HOPE this will not end even WORSE for Your Country. But do NOT have big hopes. Surely there is a NEED for some HAVELS in the USA RIGHT NOW! But do they stand a chance? …Hmmmm!As I said, food for thought in these unsettles times. It is one view of what that unbridled capitalist greed without a conscience has been brought to us.If you liked this article please click the +1 button and let others know where to find our great content
We would love to hear your comments on this article email us at editor@expatdailynews.com
If you like what you see here on Expat Daily News, we ask you to donate whatever you feel like, to help us to continue producing interesting articles for you. You can also support us at no extra cost to you by launching your online shopping from our Amazon button, below. Thank you!
View the original article here
This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.
All expats, all over the world, regardless of where they are from and where they are at, have to deal with financial institutions. Those of us who have internet access at home or in public places have always been assured that our transactions were secured by something called SSL Encryption, a method, we have been assured by “experts,” was inviolable. Or so we were told.Now, in the same month that the CIA has been hacked, researchers, those of the mathematical type as well as super smart cryptographers, have discovered an apparent series of flaws that allow malicious users of the internet to break the code, which when used properly make it theoretically impossible to intercept the flow of information between two encoded correspondents. Yet it is being intercepted and used to generate random numbers.The chances of your being affected are very small – 2 in 1000. That, taking into account the hundreds of millions of online transactions taking place daily, opens up a giant window of opportunity for the hackers in Eastern Europe, Israel, and China. Our entire faith in the SSL system rests on the assumption that it is inviolable. For expats or anyone else conducting financial transactions over the internet, there is nothing you can do. The ball lands squarely in the court of the big site operators, sites like Amazon.com, all large financial institutions, the IRS, and other nations’ equivalent thereof. Every individual is a potential victim of this weakness in the system, without having the slightest ability to protect themselves, other than cessation of use of the modern world that brings us online banking and shopping.These discoveries were originally slated to be published at a cryptographer conference this coming August in Santa Barbara, California; however the urgency of the discovery raised such serious issues that a decision was made to release the findings immediately. The researchers, including the highly respected Dutch mathematician Arjen K. Lenstra, the renowned professor at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédéral de Lausanne in Switzerland, used the Euclidian algorithm to examine the public key numbers, and they were able to prove that a small amount of those randomly generated numbers were not so random after all.In their publicly released findings, they stated that there are almost 27,000 keys that offer no security. “Their secret keys are accessible to anyone who takes the trouble to redo our work” The original work was enabled by the fact that there were databases of the publicly available keys, which were kept at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as well as the Electronic Frontier Foundation.Another of the researchers, James P. Hughes, a cryptanalyst who worked with the group insisted: “…we were very careful: we did not intercept any traffic and we did not sniff any networks. We went to databases that contained public information and downloaded the public keys.”They point out that their lack of sophisticated methods make it that much more likely that some malicious hackers have discovered the flaws in the random number generators some time before they did. “The quagmire of vulnerabilities that we waded into makes it infeasible to properly inform everyone involved, though we made the best effort to inform the larger parties and contacted all email addresses recommended or specified in still valid certificates. The fact that most certificates do not contain adequate contact information limited our options. Our decision to make our finding public at this time, despite our inability to directly notify everyone, was a judgment call.”And a very good one I might add. With the publicity surrounding this issue, it is highly unlikely that any corporate IT security department will ignore this, and I am sure that a lot of midnight oil will be burnt from Berlin to Bangalore until this problem will be patched.And what can you do to protect yourself? Tell your in-house IT guy or gal to make sure that all the algorithms are in a randomly disarranged row.With this, I have done my job to disseminate this information to you. Please pass it on.[image: 3D Torus Knot - Euclidean algorithm can be applied in knot theory, via Wikipedia]I encourage you to write to me, jamie@expatdailynews.com with any questions or suggestions you may have. Disclaimer: I am not in any travel related business. My advice is based on my own experiences, and is free of charge. (Donations accepted). It is always my pleasure to act as a beneficial counselor to those who are seekers of the next adventure.To read more of Jamie’s opinion articles, see Voices From Exile. You can also contact Jamie at jamie.douglas [at] yahoo.com
