text:
Afraid to return to Afghanistan, boxers seek refuge in Serbia
BELGRADE, Serbia: They practiced in secret and struggled to compete in an international tournament in Europe, but members of the Afghan national boxing team, currently in Serbia, are seeking refuge in the West, hoping to continue their careers and their lives following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.
The Afghan boxers, their coach and a top boxing federation official remained in Serbia after the AIBA World Boxing Championships finished in early November, stressing they could face retribution from the Taliban if they returned home.
"When the Taliban regime came to Afghanistan, everything changed," said Waheedullah Hameedi, secretary-general of Afghanistan's boxing federation, as reported by the Associated Press.
The team's members contacted several foreign embassies about securing humanitarian visas and asylum protection, though some EU countries have turned them down.
Many thousands of Afghans, including athletes, fled their country after the Taliban took over following the withdrawal of troops from the U.S. and other foreign nations in August.
The Taliban do not approve of boxing, and team members stand little chance of pursuing their careers freely in Afghanistan, Hameedi added, stating in English, "As you know, the situation in Afghanistan is very tough, very bad."
Hameedi's father, a previous secretary-general of the Afghan Boxing Federation, was killed in 2019 by unknown gunmen.
Boxing was banned in Afghanistan during the Taliban's previous rule in 1996-2001, and Hameedi claimed officials and boxers have faced threats and feared for their safety.
"Boxing is 'haram' for them (the Taliban,) something in Islam that is illegal for them," he said.
Ahead of the trip to Serbia, the boxers trained at hidden locations and stayed under the radar, hiding their plan to compete in the international tournament, he added, noting they received visas to go to Iran, and once in Tehran they applied for visas at the Serbian Embassy, before rushing to Belgrade.
Sponsored by the International Boxing Association, the 11 Afghan boxers competed in Serbia as part of a 14-member "fair chance" team, said Hameedi.
The group's Serbian visas have since expired, but Hameedi said friends and relatives warned them not to return to Afghanistan, explaining, "We hope we will receive visas as soon as possible so there is no problem in Serbia."
Hameedi said he, the coach and the nine boxers in Serbia do not want to illegally cross into Western Europe, but they have also not yet applied for local asylum.
Attorney Marko Stambuk, who works with the Belgrade Center for Human Rights, said the Afghan boxers contacted the organization and have been informed about their options for seeking asylum in Serbia.
9th December 2021, 20:52 GMT+11


text:
blog-stained wretches Oct. 23, 2012
Arianna Huffington Is Still Not the Boss of Michael Arrington
By Joe Coscarelli
Photo: Bloomberg/2010 Bloomberg
The Arianna Huffington Era at AOL was pretty short-lived. For a time after the $315 million merger, Huffington was in charge of all editorial properties, from the one bearing her name to once-independent heavyweights like TechCrunch, and even Moviefone and MapQuest, but it just didn't last. And if there were any doubt remaining that Huffington's reign across the AOL kingdom is over, today's news should do it: Michael Arrington is coming back to TechCrunch.
Arrington, remember, was unceremoniously fired last year from the tech blog he founded in 2005. Although he sold to AOL the year prior with the promise that he'd retain full editorial control of his baby, the endless conflicts of interest between Arrington the Blogger and Arrington the Investor became too massive an elephant for Huffington to ignore when he created CrunchFund, a venture capital firm, with a $10 million investment from none other than AOL.
After some ugly and public back-and-forth, including an ultimatum to AOL, published on TechCrunch, that he be given "autonomy from Huffington Post, unfettered editorial independence and a blanket right to editorial self determination," Arrington was out. (He went on to write his conflicted heart out as a self-proclaimed "unpaid blogger" at his protest site Uncrunched.)
But this afternoon, Arrington announced his return as a "paid blogger," albeit with some caveats. "Before everyone starts freaking the fuck out, just hold on a second and hear me out," he announced. It's only as an occasional columnist, he'll disclose each and every business conflict, and AOL can nix his ideas, Arrington wrote — and already has. "So that was new," he added. "Being told 'no,' that is."
Even if he is on a leash, though, it won't be Arianna holding the other end. And good riddance: According to HuffPo spokesperson Rhoades Alderson, "TechCrunch is no longer part of the The Huffington Post Media Group and therefore does not need to abide by HuffPost's journalistic guidelines."
Michael Arrington Officially Out at TechCrunch As AOL Names New Editor [Updated]
Arianna Huffington Keeping Her Distance From AOL
TechCrunch TechCrunch
blog-stained wretches
michael arrington
the aolington post
Michael Arrington Returns to TechCrunch

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Q: dpdk mbuf ref count check after detach I use mbuf from the intel dpdk library
I had a check in code for mbuf double release
I used to check if the reference count <= 0
Since the following change i can't check anymore this way since the reference count is 1 even after it is release to the pool http://mails.dpdk.org/archives/dev/2017-January/056188.html
I there a way to check if the mbuf is detached(in the pool or out of the pool)?

A: When we free and refcnt is 1 it's either the first or the second (double) free. So just use another mbuf field to distinct, i.e.:
if (refcnt == 1) {
    if (port != UINT16_MAX - 1) {
        // mark the mbuf
        port = UINT16_MAX - 1;
    } else {
        // already marked
        RTE_LOG(ERROR, USER1, "Double free!");
    }
}

Update:
I just realized that you might not aware about the standard double free check in DPDK. Normally you just enable RTE_LIBRTE_MEMPOOL_DEBUG to check for double free and memory corruptions.
Another safe place to store the marker would be to allocate a private 8 byte area for each mbuf. See the priv_size argument in the rte_pktmbuf_pool_create() for more details.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Q: How can i execute code for a specific amount of time in java? I'd like to execute some code for, let's say 5 seconds, inside of a method that listens for events.
I've tried to use Threads but wasn't able to make it work properly.
This is my code for now, it's just a listener that triggers when a message with the string in the if statement is detected:
if (message != null){
            if (message.equalsIgnoreCase("w")){

            }
        }

this check is ran every second so i don't know if "while" statements could work

A: Just an idea not for deployment but should give you an starting point
//record start time
long start=System.currentTimeMillis();

//keep running until 5000ms[5s] have
//elapsed since the start
while(System.currentTimeMillis()-start<=5000)
{
 //Do some stuff here
}

If your event handler is executed in the same thread as your system then this will block your system for 5 seconds and stop it from handling other events during that duration.
So its better to dispatch your events to seperate threads or execute the above logic in a seperate thread

A: A trivial approach would be to simply execute your code in a loop and check in each iteration whether your timing-threshold was reached, such as:
// necessary imports for using classes Instant and Duration.
import java.time.Instant;
import java.time.Duration;

// ...

// start time point of your code execution.
Instant start = Instant.now();

// targeted duration of your code execution (e.g. 5 sec.).
Duration duration = Duration.ofSeconds(5);

// loop your code execution and test in each iteration whether you reached your duration threshold.
while (Duration.between(start, Instant.now()).toMillis() <= duration.toMillis())
{
    // execute your code here ...
}


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text:
Western leaders often declare that the world changed forever on 9/11. The terrorist attacks in New York and Washington caused incredible shock and killed around 3000 people. But what 9/11 represented more than anything was the violence the US had inflicted worldwide for decades coming home.
The US response was to launch further conflicts as part of a "war on terror". Alongside this came a frenzy about the supposed threat from "Islamic terrorism" that created a new wave of racism against Muslims and Arabs.
Twenty years on, the lead-up to the anniversary was marked by a further humiliation for US imperialism. As it retreated from Afghanistan, the government it had installed disintegrated.
This symbolised the failure, as well as the bloody cost, of the wars the US launched after 9/11. The Australian government was an enthusiastic backer as the only country apart from the UK to send troops as part of the invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq.
As the dominant global military power after 1945 the US took upon itself the right to rain destruction on any country that stood in its way. In Vietnam it killed three million people, including through indiscriminate "carpet bombing". In 1991, when it invaded Iraq for the first time, it killed over 100,000 civilians and military conscripts. Then it bombed the country virtually every day for the next 12 years. US sanctions on basic medicines killed more than half a million children.
The US fuelled other wars through funding armed groups to destabilise governments it disliked, including the death squads unleashed on central America like the Nicaraguan Contras.
Academic Chalmers Johnson described the 9/11 attacks as "blowback" from the history of US intervention globally. Osama Bin Laden, who staged the attacks, had begun his career with the Afghan mujahideen fighting the Russians—another operation the US funded.
In 2001, Al Qaeda struck at symbols of American power, in New York's financial centre and the Pentagon building. The US wanted revenge.
Its first target was Afghanistan, where it accused the Taliban of harbouring Bin Laden and his network. The Taliban were toppled after 72 days. Around 1000 civilians were killed by US bombs and up to 20,000 died from displacement and starvation.
US President George W Bush moved quickly to launch another war against Iraq. His officials had discussed invading Iraq in the days following 9/11, debating how to link Iraq's President Saddam Hussein to the terrorist attacks. Millions saw through the lies that Iraq possessed "weapons of mass destruction", with an enormous worldwide anti-war movement.
A new American century?
The Bush administration saw 9/11 as an opportunity to cement US global dominance for decades to come. Key figures including Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were part of a gang of Republican Party figures associated with the think-tank Project for a New American Century. They argued that the US needed to use its military power more aggressively to ensure it could never be rivalled by a potential competitor.
This was echoed in the Bush administration's National Security Strategy document which endorsed unilateral US military action in order to "dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in the hopes of surpassing, or equalling, the power of the United States".
It was a response to growing US weaknesses. After the Second World War the US economically dominated the world, with half of global manufacturing. Today it has declined in relative terms, commanding about a quarter of global production and rapidly losing ground to China.
But the US gamble on using its military strength to bolster its position has backfired disastrously.
The US strategy showed the continuation of imperialism in the 21st century.
The classical Marxist theory of imperialism, produced to explain the First World War by Nikolai Bukharin, showed how the major powers divided the world between themselves, to advance the interests of the large capitalist firms within each state. It was an outgrowth of capitalist competition for control of markets and raw materials.
Imperialism is not simply a system where the largest states dominate weaker states, but one of competition between the major powers. This remains true today, with the US focused on maintaining its dominant position against China and Russia, as well as attempting to push allied powers in Europe and Asia to work alongside it.
The US has written the rules of the global economic order since 1945 and wants to maintain this framework, allowing it to dominate the global economy.
US imperialism's defeat
Invading Iraq was meant to give it control of the country's vast oil reserves. It was to be the first of a series of military adventures. In early 2002 George Bush listed an "axis of evil" in the US's sights, including Iran and North Korea.
Toppling Iraq's Saddam Hussein proved easy. But disastrous mismanagement combined with a popular resistance movement eventually humbled the superpower.
Almost immediately, there was armed resistance to the US occupation. The city of Fallujah was one of the first to rise up, after US troops shot 13 people at a protest in April 2003. The US laid siege to the city, sealing at least 30,000 civilians inside as they bombed medical clinics and unleashed illegal white phosphorus explosives.
The US regained control of the country only through encouraging vicious sectarian divisions between Sunnis, Shias and Kurds. Up to a million Iraqis died in the violence that resulted.
But it failed to secure the pliant puppet regime it wanted. The result strengthened Iran, a long-term US adversary, which gained significant influence over the new Iraqi government.
The sectarian system the US left led to the rise of Islamic State, which briefly overran large areas of the country.
US imperialism has been left far weaker. Its failures in Iraq and Afghanistan have exposed the limits of its military power. The wars cost it $6.4 trillion with little to show for it.
Meanwhile the Chinese economy continued to grow through the global economic crisis after 2008 while the US hit the skids. China has also handled the COVID crisis far better than the US, where 650,000 have died.
Yet a weakened US, increasingly desperate to maintain its position, is only more dangerous. Its military power still outpaces that of any other country.
US President Joe Biden has continued Donald Trump's confrontational approach towards China, declaring, "We are in a competition to win the 21st century, and the starting gun has gone off." He has moved to strengthen military alliances with its neighbours, including Japan, India and South Korea. Naval patrols around the disputed areas of the South China Sea are increasing.
The US military is repositioning its forces to face China. Biden explicitly defended the decision to quit Afghanistan as necessary "to focus on the challenges that are in front of us" with an "increasingly assertive China".
As it did over the past 20 years, the Australian government is urging on the conflict, talking up the prospect of war and pursuing its own arms build-up. It wants an expanded alliance with the US to lock the superpower into aggressive military action in our region.
This is only increasing the prospect of a major conflict between two nuclear-armed states. Just as the left did over Afghanistan and Iraq, we need to oppose this new drive to war and the racism and xenophobia that comes with it.
Twenty years of Islamophobia and the "war on terror"
In the aftermath of 9/11, world leaders were quick to blame "Islamic terrorism". Islam as a whole was depicted as a "backward" or "violent" religion and all Muslims treated as suspect.
This served to justify the wars in the Middle East. Instead of recognising terrorism as a result of US policies that had devastated the region, Western leaders claimed they were the result of an evil ideology opposed to "Western values".
Then Prime Minister John Howard accused the Muslim community in Australia of failing to "integrate" and claimed that "extremism" among Muslims was "not a problem that we have ever faced with other immigrant communities". The Liberals claimed refugees arriving by boat, mostly from the Middle East, could be terrorists, using this to justify racism and anti-refugee policies.
Howard admitted that most Muslims had nothing to do with terrorism. But he continued to tar them all by claiming terrorism was a product of Islam and demanding that Muslim leaders do more to prevent it.
In late 2005 this led to the shocking racist riot at Cronulla beach, where Lebanese Australians were physically attacked by a racist mob. John Howard's responded by claiming there was no "underlying racism" in Australia.
The Islamophobia has never stopped. After the emergence of Islamic State in 2014, Tony Abbott launched another scare campaign about terrorism and youth "radicalisation". Scott Morrison has done the same, declaring after a mentally ill man stabbed one person to death in 2018 that, "The greatest threat to our way of life is radical, violent, extremist Islam." There have been continual anti-terror raids, sometimes involving hundreds of police.
All this has been accompanied by a tidal wave of media reporting designed to terrify people.
Individual racist attacks have become common. A study in 2004 showed two-thirds of Muslims had experienced abuse or violence on the street since 9/11. Surveys have consistently fond that around 40 per cent of people admit to negative feelings about Muslims.
Islamophobia will be a lasting legacy of our rulers' response to 9/11. We need to keep fighting the racism and insist that working class people unite against the government and bosses who pose the real threat to our living standards and lives.
By James Supple
ImperialismInternationalIslamophobia2021Issue 152 - Sep
Voice to parliament won't stop racist injustice—grassroots movement needed to win change
Racist native title system approves Santos' destruction of Gomeroi land
Labor's price caps won't stop further power bill shock or mining profits
Labor's announces details of sham offsets scheme for companies
Jose Maria Sison: a flawed revolutionary
Sison dedicated his life to fighting colonialism and imperialism. But his devotion to a version of Stalinist politics means that, ultimately, his was a deeply flawed revolutionary project that has left a deep scar on Filipino politics.
Australian subimperialism—Submarines, sovereignty and class
Clinton Fernandes' new book explains how Australia works as a subimperial power alongside the US, but still argues for a nationalist policy, says Robert Stainsby.
Weapons of death—Australia's growing arms industry
Australia is pushing to develop a much bigger local military manufacturing and arms industry as part of its effort to confront China writes Feiyi Zhang.
Roberto Suares 13 September 2021 At 9:24 am
Great article. I do have a couple of points:
1. American economic domination continues with around 45% of the world's economy. Sure manufacturing is down from what it was. It has a lot of world dominating software companies. So this power is undiminished.
2. America militarily is totally dominant. Only Russia, with an equal amount of nuclear heads/missiles, has any possibility to do it some damage and Russia will eventually lose (if there is anything left in the world). China is decades away from being a serious military threat to America – the military capability gap widens every year in America's favour.
All very depressing.