The entire Gulf War was only six weeks long.

It's difficult to compare; but Iran today is not Iraq then. F-15s are now based on a design that's 30 years older. Shoulder launched SAMs have moved on.

I'm not sure what happened here, but in the Gulf War, there was a move to medium altitudes after a dodgy first night and I've seen some footage that, if accurate and if I'm not getting it wrong, suggests there are different tactics going on here.

It's always been internet access control, there is no child protection.

I don't know why this is being downvoted.

It's depressingly true; it seems the UK really heading quickly towards a Great Firewall, they've been looking to control VPN use [1] and the top most read article on BBC News right now is yet another public sector cover up of children being sexually abused. [2]

[1] https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/uk-govern...

[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyzy0y20qlo

> the UK really heading quickly towards a Great Firewall

> top most read article on BBC News right now is yet another public sector cover up

Do you not see a tiny little bit of contradiction here (regardless of your mis-characterisation of the second link)

No, I think it is you who is confused. The GP's point is that the BBC article isn't accurate or honest. You seem to have assumed the information in the link was accurate when the proof the GP implied was that the link isn't accurate.

I admire the attempt to make a logical argument against these laws taken at face value, but I can't help think that's giving them too much credit.

These laws have spread like wildfire around the world with many countries and regions rolling out similar legislation within months of each other, despite the stereotypical lethargy of any and every legislature. That's not the work of some popular uprising of parents clamouring for age verification.

I fear debating the merits of the argument is missing the point; they don't care. They don't care about children, they don't care about the argument, they just want the control.

The very concept they've been trying to sell is wrong headed.

Kids are trying to access XYZ which isn't safe (where XYZ may as well be "the internet") -> verify the ages of all adults, because we can't verify the age of a kid.

Meanwhile kids, like adults, can just find another route to access what they want. So some subset of adults hands over their identity information to an untrustworthy third party of dubious security.

I can't see how that does anything other than make the situation worse.

I'm not, just rolling with it.

At the same age I was using the school's phone bill to phone beer companies and request they send me beer mats, so I could swap them with other kids in the playground. And they did, which seems a little off these days.

Reading this I wish I'd set my sights higher, figuratively and literally!

Survivor bias again - these are the few that made it while many others did not.

The travel forms to visit the US ask if people have ever been involved in espionage, at least they did, I'm not aware that it's changed.

You can guarantee the many people who work for intelligence agencies of US allies aren't admitting to that when they travel to the US.

It's all a bit of a game.

The reasoning for some of these questions is that if you are caught, it’s sometimes easier to charge you with fraud (lying on the form) than the actual thing (such as espionage).

Wouldn't they need the be able to prove that you are a spy in order to argue that you lied ? In which case who cares about the form ?

Thats why I presume its asking about previous engagements, if they catch someone they suspect of espionage, dig into their background and find proof of previous activity they have a clear fraud charge without having to prove their suspicions about current activities.

There's often also some arbitrage on standard of proof or statutes of limitation or jurisdiction.

Maybe to deport you for espionage requires a jury trial, but to revoke status for misleading answers on an immigration form is administrative and so is deportation for lack of status.

I seem to recall some extraordinary cases where untruthful answers on immigration forms were used to justify denaturalization.

Proving you worked for a spy agency is far easier than proving you did spying in actuality. Assuming you didn't get caught in the act.

The fact you worked for an intelligence agency doesn’t mean you were an intelligence officer. You could’ve been a cleaner, or an executive assistant, or maybe you were working as a software developer on the payroll system.

But they're required by laws of their own country to lie, presumably. There are certainly game-like aspects.

"Do you seek to engage in or have you ever engaged in terrorist activities, espionage, sabotage, or genocide?"

Quite.

Every statement in the above comment is wrong:

People born in the 90s wouldn’t have a chance to be old enough to belong to any group other than a preschool before the collapse of the Soviet and Soviet aligned regimes.

For those who were adults before 1990, while they may have been party members for reasons unrelated to political ideology, it wasn’t as common: in the late 80s, only ~10% of adults in Warsaw pact countries were communist party members. Far from “everyone”.

And even if you check that in the DS-160 visa application form, you are allowed to add an explanation. Consular visa officers are very well familiar with the political situation at the countries they are stationed in, and can grant visa even if the box is checked.

Do you mean everyone who was 18 by 1989, or 55 today?

Yes, my sense of the passage of time is a little off. I've met folks who were members of the FDJ in East Germany as young teens, but as you say, they are 50-ish now.

6. It turns out they do all look the same, to me.