Category: Internet

The First Uber Death


30 Miles, 40 Min, over the Bay Bridge, a toll road.
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Yesterday, I posted about the Libertarian delusional dream that is Uber.

Today, I read about an Uber driver hitting 3 pedestrians, killing a 6-year old girl
:

Update, 11:35 a.m.: Uber confirmed that Muzzafar was, indeed a contractor with the company. It’s since deactivated his account. An Uber spokesman stressed, again, that Muzzafar was not “providing services through the Uber system” at the time he struck and killed a 6 year-old girl at Polk and Ellis Streets.

Update, 9:46 a.m.: Police release name and photo of the self-identified Uber driver (See bottom).

It’s been a rough year for Uber thus far. Just four hours before the car-hire startup planned to ring in 2014 — ideally with an onslaught of high-priced trips through San Francisco’s bustling downtown corridor — one of its contracted drivers allegedly hit a family in a Tenderloin crosswalk, killing a 6-year-old girl and critically injuring her mother and brother.

“There are no words to express the deep sadness and grief felt for young San Francisco resident, Sophia Liu,” Supervisor Jane Kim wrote in a statement issued shortly after the young girl’s death.

Kim added that the accident would have been “100 percent avoidable” had the driver followed basic traffic laws. She considered the incident a harbinger for app-based car-hire startups, indicating that it raises questions about driver training and compliance.

Notice the non denial denial?

In their blog, they said that, “This tragedy did not involve a vehicle or provider doing a trip on the Uber system.

Notice what they did not say?  They did not say that he wasn’t logged in, and that he wasn’t waiting for some of those lucrative,  “Onslaughts of high-priced trips.”

Why else would he be driving around San Francisco on New Years Eve?

Driving?  In San Francisco?  On New Years Eve?  That is nucking futs!  ……… Unless, of course, you are there to make some bank by getting dispatches from a certain Techno-Randian transportation company.

Then, it makes lots of sense.

It is telling that Uber has deliberately chosen a model which is structured largely to evade any responsibility, or liability, for the misdeeds of its drivers.

H/t Crooks & Liars.

It is Called Price Gouging, You Moronic Free Market Mousketeer!

The latest poster boys for techno-Libertarians is the taxi service Uber, which is a smartphone based car hire service.

At the core of their business model is the idea that there is no need for any pesky regulations, because ……… Internet.

Ignoring for the moment supply restrictions like New York City’s Medallion* system, there is a reason that cabs, and cabbies, are regulated.

There is a need to ensure that the cars are safe, that the cabbies are properly trained, and that pricing is consistent and transparent, so, for example, we do not see price gouging, on New Year’s eve, or during a rain storm.

So, what does Uber do?  It triples rates for New Year’s Eve, and Randroid morons like Rob Leathern, the Chief Product Officer of Brand Networks, has this is not like price gouging at all, because ……… Internet:

Uber’s pricing isn’t price gouging. It’s just in an area we are deeply conflicted about, and missing some transparency that would increase consumer trust. They could certainly give all or some more of their excess surge profits to the drivers, or show us more of the extensive data their Math Team produces but doesn’t yet share– if their algorithms are as sophisticated as they claim then the benefit they get from sharing information with customers will outweigh any competitive concerns.

Bullsh%$.

This is price gouging, and it has been defined as such throughout the developed world for something over 80 years.

One of the reasons that we as a society make laws against this is because it is unethical, and dishonest.

I really hope that if he ever has a heart attack, that Mr. Leathern does not find an ambulance driver who jacks up the rate to take him to the hospital.

*Apart from that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play? The medallion system sucks.
Uber has already had at least 1 rape allegation attached to its service so far, and it turns out that rape by gypsy cab drivers is endemic.

2014 is Coming, and US Broadband Still Sucks Wet Farts From Dead Pigeons

Yes, our, “market based solution,” continues to overprice and under perform:

San Antonio is the seventh-largest city in the United States, a progressive and economically vibrant metropolis of 1.4 million people sprawled across south-central Texas. But the speed of its Internet service is no match for the Latvian capital, Riga, a city of 700,000 on the Baltic Sea.

Riga’s average Internet speed is at least two-and-a-half times that of San Antonio’s, according to Ookla, a research firm that measures broadband speeds around the globe. In other words, downloading a two-hour high-definition movie takes, on average, 35 minutes in San Antonio — and 13 in Riga.

And the cost of Riga’s service is about one-fourth that of San Antonio.

The United States, the country that invented the Internet, is falling dangerously behind in offering high-speed, affordable broadband service to businesses and consumers, according to technology experts and an array of recent studies.

In terms of Internet speed and cost, “ours seems completely out of whack with what we see in the rest of the world,” said Susan Crawford, a law professor at Yeshiva University in Manhattan, a former Obama administration technology adviser and a leading critic of American broadband.

The problem is the market based solutions.  It’s more profitable to create and extract monopoly rants than it is to provide better and cheaper service, so they do that.

It’s economics 101.

The free market mousketeers screw us again.

Why Government Internet Filters are a Really Bad Idea, Part XXXIX

In the UK David Cameron’s “child protection” internet filters do more than filter porn. They also filter political and advocacy:

Through secretive negotiations with ISPs, the coalition has divided the internet into ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’ categories and cut people off from huge swathes of it at the stroke of a key.

There is no porn filter, and blocking Childline [a confidential service for children and teens] is not an accident

The idea of an internet porn filter has always been a political fiction, a conveniently inaccurate sound bite used to conjure images of hardcore fisting and anal rape in the feverishly overactive imaginations of middle Britain. What activists actually called for – and ISPs were forced to provide – is an ‘objectionable content’ filter, and there is a vast, damp and aching chasm between the two.

The language of the mythical ‘porn filter’ is so insidious, so pervasive, that even those of us opposed to it have been sucked into its slippery embrace. And so even when it turns out that O2 are blocking the Childline and Refuge websites, or that BT are blocking gay and lesbian content, we tend to regard them as collateral damage – accidental victims of a well-meaning (if misguided) attempt to protect out children from the evils of cock.

But this was never the case. As Wired reported back in July, Cameron’s ambitions extended far beyond porn. Working through secretive negotiations with ISPs, the coalition has put in place a set of filters and restrictions as ambitious as anything this side of China, dividing the internet into ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’ categories, and cutting people off from huge swathes of it at the stroke of a key.

“As well as pornography, users may automatically be opted in to blocks on “violent material”, “extremist related content”, “anorexia and eating disorder websites” and “suicide related websites”, “alcohol” and “smoking”. But the list doesn’t stop there. It even extends to blocking “web forums” and “esoteric material”, whatever that is. “Web blocking circumvention tools” is also included, of course.”

And the restrictions go further still. Over the weekend, people were appalled to discover that BT filters supported homophobia, with a category blocking, “sites where the main purpose is to provide information on subjects such as respect for a partner, abortion, gay and lesbian lifestyle, contraceptive, sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy.”

………

O2, the Slough-based BT spin-off, do allow people to check which websites are blocked [5], and although their filter has been around for a few years now, the results are terrifying. Their ‘parental control’ settings can be blocked from accessing Childline, Refuge, Stonewall or the Samaritans – which is even more frightening when you realise that they could just as easily be switched on by an abusive partner. The most vulnerable people in society are the most likely to be cut off from the help they need. As Adrian Short argues, some websites simply shouldn’t be blocked.

FWIW, Peter Hansteen, a self admitted tech geek checked some web sites, and found the following blocked:

This is why we really want to avoid having moralists prats filter our internet.

Because, It’s Always a Good Time to Lampoon Tom Friedman

First, we have the always amusing Charlie Pierce:

Back a few years, David Halberstam was supposed to speak at my son’s graduation from Brandeis, but Halberstam died a car wreck shortly before the ceremony so, scrambling, Brandeis went to the alumni bullpen and called in…Tom Friedman. This was the worst strategic move since Darrell Johnson brought in Burton for Willoughby in Game 7 of the 1975 Series. I don’t remember what Friedman said, but it was pretty damned banal. I have considered asking for all four years tuition back ever since.

While Pierce is good, Billmon wins the Internet today:

Friedman: “Reinventing the consignment shop on the web will save the U.S. economy. Also, PR pitches work with me.” http://t.co/9Nq06LLVhs
— billmon (@billmon1) December 22, 2013

One of these days, I hope to be able to write well enough to lampoon Tom Friedman on my own ……… Then again, if I were to lambaste what he writes, I would actually have to READ what he writes.

Maybe  I’m lucky just to quote people trashing him.

This is Just Nasty

As you may be aware, Senator John Cornyn has gotten himself a Teabagger challenger in the primary, US Representative Steve Stockman (R-WTF).
Well, Harry Reid’s communications director just Tweeted this:

.@woodruffbets Senator Reid has always felt that Senator Cornyn is someone he can work with on a range of issues.
— Adam Jentleson (@AJentleson) December 10, 2013

Well played, Mr. Jentleson, well played.

It sounds nice, but it is read meat to the ‘Baggers who will vote in the primary.

Your Tax Dollars at Work


Yeah, whoever wrote proposal this is still laughing

It has been disclosed that the NSA and the CIA were aggressively monitoring:

Not limiting their activities to the earthly realm, American and British spies have infiltrated the fantasy worlds of World of Warcraft and Second Life, conducting surveillance and scooping up data in the online games played by millions of people across the globe, according to newly disclosed classified documents.

Fearing that terrorist or criminal networks could use the games to communicate secretly, move money or plot attacks, the documents show, intelligence operatives have entered terrain populated by digital avatars that include elves, gnomes and supermodels.

The spies have created make-believe characters to snoop and to try to recruit informers, while also collecting data and contents of communications between players, according to the documents, disclosed by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden. Because militants often rely on features common to video games — fake identities, voice and text chats, a way to conduct financial transactions — American and British intelligence agencies worried that they might be operating there, according to the papers.

Online games might seem innocuous, a top-secret 2008 NSA document warned, but they had the potential to be a “target-rich communication network” allowing intelligence suspects “a way to hide in plain sight.” Virtual games “are an opportunity!,” another 2008 NSA document declared.

But for all their enthusiasm — so many CIA, FBI and Pentagon spies were hunting around in Second Life, the document noted, that a “deconfliction” group was needed to avoid collisions — the intelligence agencies may have inflated the threat.

I kind of think that the pitch for the program went like this:

Even if you do not have privacy issues with NSA spying, the fact that they were paying people to play video games indicates that they have way too big a budget.

I Guess that the Whole, “Don’t Be Evil” Thing is Inoperative

Yes, the boys from Mountain View are funding the usual list of right wing rat f%$#ers:

Google, the tech giant supposedly guided by its “don’t be evil” motto, has been funding a growing list of groups advancing the agenda of the Koch brothers.

Organizations that received “substantial” funding from Google for the first time over the past year include Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, the Federalist Society, the American Conservative Union (best known for its CPAC conference), and the political arm of the Heritage Foundation that led the charge to shut down the government over the Affordable Care Act: Heritage Action.

In 2013, Google also funded the corporate lobby group, the American Legislative Exchange Council, although that group is not listed as receiving “substantial” funding in the list published by Google.

BTW, I am well of the irony that I am blogging this on a Google platform, and that my ads are served by the company as well.

Koch suckers.

A Victory for Copyright Sanity

Google wins an federal court ruling for Google Books:

Google’s idea to scan millions of books and make them searchable online seemed audacious when it was announced in 2004. But fast-forward to today, when people expect to find almost anything they want online, and the plan seems like an unsurprising and unavoidable part of today’s Internet.

So when a judge on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit that authors had filed against Google after countless delays, it had the whiff of inevitability. Even the judge, Denny Chin of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, said during a September hearing on the case that his law clerks used Google Books for research.

“It advances the progress of the arts and sciences, while maintaining respectful consideration for the rights of authors and other creative individuals, and without adversely impacting the rights of copyright holders,” Judge Chin wrote in his ruling. “Indeed, all society benefits.” (Judge Chin handled the case in district court because he was a judge there when it began.)

The Authors Guild said it disagreed with the decision and planned to appeal. Google said it was “delighted” with the outcome.

I’m delighted too.

Generally the courts look at any technological advance as an excuse to expand IP holder privileges, and in this case, the judge actually looked at societal benefit, which is the purpose of our IP regime under the Constitution.

This is an astonishingly useful research tool, and copyright does not mean that the holder can extract every possible dollar for every use.

There is an increasing realization in society that expansive IP privilege is a hindrance to the well being of the society, when it should be an asset.

Why Does Richard Cohen, and His Editor, Still Have a F%$#ing Job?

As if Richard Cohen had not jumped the shark before, he is now claiming that people are nauseated by the sight of an interracial couple: (No link to the original article, ever)

Today’s GOP is not racist, as Harry Belafonte alleged about the tea party, but it is deeply troubled — about the expansion of government, about immigration, about secularism, about the mainstreaming of what used to be the avant-garde. People with conventional views must repress a gag reflex when considering the mayor-elect of New York — a white man married to a black woman and with two biracial children. (Should I mention that Bill de Blasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, used to be a lesbian?) This family represents the cultural changes that have enveloped parts — but not all — of America. To cultural conservatives, this doesn’t look like their country at all.

And Fred Hiatt, his editor?  The guy who let this through?  The guy who apparrently thinks that racism is OK at the Post?  His response is, “Oops!”

Editorial page editor Fred Hiatt took the blame for outrage, telling TheWrap: “Anyone reading Richard’s entire column will see he is just saying that some Americans still have a hard time dealing with interracial marriage. I erred in not editing that one sentence more carefully to make sure it could not be misinterpreted.”

Dude, this guy is the Racist Uncle who you have to tiptoe around every holiday season!

If you want him at the table, you need to figure out how to keeping him from sh%$#ing in the f%$#ing punch bowl?

And by the way, Richard Cohen has a sad about being called a racist bigot:

“The word racist is truly hurtful,” he added. “It’s not who I am. It’s not who I ever was. It’s just not fair. It’s just not right.”

Dude, you said that it was OK for merchants to lock blacks out of their stores. You said that Trayvon Martin to be shot for wearing a hoodie!

You are a f%$#ing bigot, even if your publisher, Katherine Weymouth, calls your column genius.

Jeff Bezos, I have three people you could fire and improve the paper.

Ezra Klein, who also works for the Post, and always gives me the sense that he is walking on egg shells, felt compelled to call Cohen’s bigotry out, noting that 87% of the population approves of interracial marriage.

BTW, a quick examination of how this exploded across the Twitterverse is rather amusing and informative.

This one is my favorite:

Imagine how much Jeff Bezos would have had to pay for the Washington Post if Richard Cohen didn’t work there.
— Matt O’Brien (@ObsoleteDogma) November 12, 2013

Crap. Comcast Wins in Seattle

Comcast, the evil empire of cable companies (scary thought), decided to dump a huge chunk of change on the Seattle Mayoral election to sabotage Mayor Mike McGinn’s gigabit fiber initiative:

One of Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn’s big policy initiatives has been expanding the quality and quantity of high-speed Internet access throughout the city. A public-private partnership plans to offer higher speeds at lower prices than most broadband providers currently offer. And incumbent providers, particularly Comcast, have invested heavily in defeating McGinn in Tuesday’s mayoral election. While Comcast denies there is any connection between McGinn’s broadband policies and their donations, the company has given thousands of dollars to PACs that have, in turn, given heavily to anti-McGinn groups.

McGinn’s major opponent, state Sen. Ed Murray (D-Seattle), has committed to honoring the city’s existing contracts for a 14-neighborhood pilot project, but has shown limited enthusiasm about McGinn’s plans to expand the network in the future. So the election could determine whether Seattle residents have new options for high-speed broadband service, or will have to make do with the slower services already offered by incumbents like Comcast.

McGinn’s broadband initiative

According to Robert Cruickshank, a senior communications adviser for McGinn, one of McGinn’s core promises in the 2009 campaign was to “develop a city-wide broadband system.” The mayor considered creating a citywide broadband system as a public utility, like water or electricity. But aides say that would have been too expensive, so the mayor settled on public-private partnerships using city-owned dark fiber. This dark fiber was laid down starting in 1995, and the mayor’s office now says there are some 535 miles of it, only a fraction of which is being used.

In a partnership with the University of Washington, the city put out a request for proposals in late 2012. “The RFP process is not intended to pick one provider,” says Cruickshank, but one company — Ohio-based Gigabit Squared — is currently farthest along. The company is still wrapping up its funding and finalizing plans with the city. They expect to begin offering gigabit-speed service to households with a combined population of 50,000 in early 2014, according to Mark Ansboury, co-founder of Gigabit Squared.

In June, Gigabit Squared announced pricing for its Seattle service: $45 dollars a month for 100 Mbps service or $80 a month for 1 Gbps service plus a one-time installation cost of $350 that will be waived for customers signing a one-year contract. For comparison, Comcast, one of the primary Internet providers in the area, offers 105 Mbps service in the area for $114.99 a month according to their website. (It’s unclear if there is an installation charge.)

So the solution to the problem is to toss the mayor out at reelection time, so that you can continue to maintain you extortionate rates.

The bummer is that it worked:

Mike McGinn, who was elected mayor in 2009, was denied a second term on Tuesday as voters turned instead to Ed Murray, a longtime state senator and leader of last year’s successful drive for same-sex marriage in the state. It was the third time in just over a decade that an incumbent mayor had lost his job.

With two days of ballots counted in the all mail-in election, Mr. Murray led with more than 55 percent of the vote, enough to give him a victory over Mr. McGinn, according to The Associated Press. Mr. McGinn, 53, who had a reputation for bluster, faced widespread voter disapproval over public safety and transportation even as Seattle’s economy gained strength and created thousands of jobs as it emerged from the recession.

Mr. Murray, 58, who will take office as the city’s first openly gay mayor, pledged to start his administration with a new police commissioner and a more collaborative tone at City Hall.

“Collaboration is not a code word, for, you know, a fluffy approach to administering,” Mr. Murray said in a news conference. In the state Legislature, he said, he was able to build coalitions around gay rights and other issues by including opponents in the discussion. “You make them part of the process, and almost every time I’ve used that method I’ve been pretty successful in moving controversial issues,” he said.

Mr. McGinn seemed in some ways like a mayor from central casting when he took office in 2010: a bike-commuting, slightly scruffy, bearded social liberal and former leader of a Sierra Club chapter.

But he finished second in the primary election in August behind Mr. Murray, which advanced both men to the general election. Mr. Murray then pulled ahead in fund-raising. His prominent role in the battle to win same-sex marriage rights for Washingtonians last year — hugely popular in Seattle — helped him in many city neighborhoods.

And all that Comcast money did not hurt either.

You know, if Osama bin Laden had targeted the cable companies, instead of the World Trade Center, he’d be president of the United States today.

Mark Zuckerberg is Making Larry Ellison Look Like a Mindful Human Being

Because only a few percent of users are availing themselves of the feature, Facebook has dropped a feature that allowed users to exempt themselves from search, because, I guess, they need to sell ads to stalkers:

Facebook is getting rid of a privacy feature that let users limit who can find them on the social network.

Facebook Inc. said Thursday that it is removing a setting that controls whether users could be found when people type their name into the website’s search bar.

Yes, I do Facebook, because, there is no viable alternative.

Google Plus?  Surely you jest?

The NSA’s War on Privacy Continues

It looks the NSA and its British poodles are going after the TOR network:

The National Security Agency has made repeated attempts to develop attacks against people using Tor, a popular tool designed to protect online anonymity, despite the fact the software is primarily funded and promoted by the US government itself.

Top-secret NSA documents, disclosed by whistleblower Edward Snowden, reveal that the agency’s current successes against Tor rely on identifying users and then attacking vulnerable software on their computers. One technique developed by the agency targeted the Firefox web browser used with Tor, giving the agency full control over targets’ computers, including access to files, all keystrokes and all online activity.

But the documents suggest that the fundamental security of the Tor service remains intact. One top-secret presentation, titled ‘Tor Stinks’, states: “We will never be able to de-anonymize all Tor users all the time.” It continues: “With manual analysis we can de-anonymize a very small fraction of Tor users,” and says the agency has had “no success de-anonymizing a user in response” to a specific request.

Another top-secret presentation calls Tor “the king of high-secure, low-latency internet anonymity”.

Tor – which stands for The Onion Router – is an open-source public project that bounces its users’ internet traffic through several other computers, which it calls “relays” or “nodes”, to keep it anonymous and avoid online censorship tools.

It is relied upon by journalists, activists and campaigners in the US and Europe as well as in China, Iran and Syria, to maintain the privacy of their communications and avoid reprisals from government. To this end, it receives around 60% of its funding from the US government, primarily the State Department and the Department of Defense – which houses the NSA.

Live in obedient fear, citizen.

I Want Those Motherf%$#ing Bigots off the Motherf%$#ing Internet

Particularly when it requires me to mention the antediluvian and almost completely useless Miss America Pageant:

Miss New York, Nina Davuluri, was crowned Miss America on Sunday evening in Atlantic City.

The 24-year-old Syracuse resident is the first ever winner of Indian heritage.

While Davuluri is proud of her heritage — even performing a Bollywood dance during Sunday’s show and competing on a theme of “Celebrating Diversity through Cultural Competency” — many weren’t pleased.

What should have been a happy occasion turned sour.

Following Davuluri’s win, racist trolls took to Twitter to complain about the decision.

Seriously, could the racists shut up, so I can ignore Miss America again?

This is Weird

It appears that someone hacked the New York Times.

Someone did some sort of a DNS hack, and it turned up a website in Arabic.

Here is a screen cap.  (click for full size)

If Google translate is accurate, it had something to do with Syria.

Google translate below:

AR | EN

Volunteer
Media
Leaks
Recent breakthroughs
Latest News

Home

Latest News
Recent breakthroughs
Media
Leaks
Phalange
Martyrs
About the organization

Latest News

Our page on FB No. 220

Every time we return to teach the world lessons steadfastness, and each will return to us we light Badr and shines a thousand sun, because we Syrian people that deficit world تفتيته and Arkall, We have made our screens weapon is our words bullets, فترقبوا Aasarna to crush all your dreams Nile from Sorretna. Page 220 army soldiers .. More …
New page to Syria Tube on Facebook

Recent breakthroughs

Penetrate newspaper sites Time magazine and the Washington Post and CNN

The leadership of the Syrian army-mail announces its success in penetrating the site of the U.S. newspaper TIME and the American channel CNN and the Washington Post, the U.S. came after the break Outbrain service used by millions of websites around the world recording links hack: http://www.zone-h.org/mirror/ the id/20533795 htt .. More …
Penetrate the pages of the New York Post on Facebook and Twitter

Media

What was published about the penetration site and databases Tango

Under the title of “hundreds of millions of data سيسلمها the Syrian authorities’ e-Syrian army» penetrates Tango “Syrian Al-Watan wrote: announced« Syrian army-mail »success in penetrating the database program correspondence famous’ Tango Tango ‘, acquisitions .. More …
What was published about the penetration databases True Caller

Leaks

Office Supplier banana forcing service “Aorédo” to block Syrian army web site

A team ÇáÇí T in the Office of banana (the mother of the Emir of Qatar current) sending an email to service provider Internet in Qatar “Aorédo,” which was “QTel” former students the prohibition site leaks private army Syrian-mail from a Google search and DNS in Qatar copy of the email Sender: .. More …
Dissemination of emails and passwords for the Turkish Ministry of the Interior

Phalange

Victor battalion

Victor battalion
Battalion shadow
Professional battalion

Martyrs

Shaheed Mohamed Ahmed Qabbani

Shaheed Mohamed Ahmed Qabbani
Lawrence Martyr Fawaz Barakat

About the organization

Spark tee

A Syrian army-mail in the year 2011 when I started the Arab media and Western bias in favor of terrorist groups that have killed civilians and the Syrian Arab Army and the destruction of private and public property, was the Arab media and Western constitute a cover for the continuation of these groups, their actions through the blackout on terrorism in Syria and paste all charges Army Syrian Arab and charged with murder and sabotage, what was a group of Syrian youth is belonging to any government entity to form an arm electronic media take on the initiative of protecting the homeland and supporting the reforms of President Bashar al-Assad, who see the option right one for our aspirations as young people in the prime of life, was the crisis and those options spark Syrian army fire-mail.
The mechanism of action
Funding
Vision

Most read

Special Operations Unit expose Al Jazeera ..
Breakthrough application databases Tango ..
Exclusive interview with Syrian journalist worked for the channel Jizzi ..

Friendly links

Parliament
TV minimum
Syrian TV

Important Links

Contact Us
Leaks
Direct broadcast

Important pages

Page major, Mr. President
Syrian Arab Army
Page battalion Victor