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That Summer: our series of escapes to long ago and far away

What we did on our holidays, and what our holidays did to us




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The freight escape: Simon Calder left for his skiing holiday as an airline passenger but came home as cargo

The luckiest traveller in Europe in the past nine days? Andrew Gardner, an engineer from Milton Keynes. On Thursday morning, 15 April, he flew from Stansted to Oslo. About 10 minutes after he landed, the air-traffic control shutters came down over northern Europe, and remained closed for the next six days.




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Liverpool ready to offer Tanguy Ndombele surprise escape from Tottenham nightmare



Liverpool tried to sign Tanguy Ndombele last summer from Lyon and now French reports claim they will return for the Tottenham midfielder.




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Turkey charges pilots, others, over ex-Nissan chief's escape

Turkish prosecutors have charged four pilots, an airline company official and two flight attendants for their alleged roles in former Nissan chairman Carlos Ghosn's escape from Japan to Turkey and from there to Beirut, Turkey's state-run news agency reported Thursday.




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Butler 2010 rewind: Bulldogs escape challenge by Murray State, 54-52

The Indianapolis Star is re-posting game stories from the 10-year anniversary of Butler's run to the 2010 NCAA championship game.

      




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Ex-Butler guard Rotnei Clarke makes dramatic escape from Italy's coronavirus pandemic

Rotnei Clarke and his wife packed for her and their three small children in less than three hours.

      




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The Great Escape: Month 95 + 96 + 97 Roundup

Where we’re at: I’ve wrapped up blogging the second quarter of 2019, of which this is a huge roundup. I realize for some this is a difficult time to read about travel. I am writing often about our current global crisis — the impact it’s having on me personally, on the world of travel, and on the […]
 




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Family safely escapes house fire that causes $200K in damage

A family of four was able to safely get out of their house after a fire caused $200,000 of damage.




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He Spent 45 Years in Prison for Crime He Didn’t Commit, Turned to Art as His Escape

In 1971, a man named Gregory Harris was murdered. Richard Phillips, an autoworker, was convicted of the crime and spent the next 45 years in prison. The problem? Phillips was innocent. Instead, it was the star witness during the trial who framed Phillips, and it took his alleged partner-in-crime, Richard Polombo, decades to admit that…

The post He Spent 45 Years in Prison for Crime He Didn’t Commit, Turned to Art as His Escape appeared first on The Western Journal.




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Local Pathways Towards De-escalation of Libya's Conflict

Invitation Only Research Event

28 January 2020 - 3:00pm to 4:30pm

Chatham House | 10 St James's Square | London | SW1Y 4LE

Event participants

Usama Otman Essed, Libya Center for Strategic & Future Studies
Chair: Tim Eaton, Middle East and North Africa Programme, Chatham House

A shaky truce remains broadly in place among rival Libyan forces fighting for control of Tripoli. However, a durable ceasefire to bring an end to the current bout of conflict, which was initiated by Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan Arab Armed Forces’ (LAAF) offensive on the capital in April 2019, has not been reached. In recent weeks attention has focused on talks hosted in Moscow and Berlin, with the former aimed at agreeing a ceasefire and the latter seeking to reach agreement among international actors to bring an end to external military support for Libyan warring actors, and to craft a way forward for future intra-Libyan talks. Yet, there has been little emphasis on Libyan actors – beyond Haftar and prime minister Fayez al-Serraj – in this process.
 
This roundtable will bring together experts and policymakers to discuss means of de-escalating the conflict and seeking a lasting resolution through the development of interconnected intra-Libyan social and security negotiation tracks. Mr Usama Otman Essed of the Libya Center for Strategic and Future Studies (LCSFS) will present his research group’s ideas on these issues and discuss their ongoing efforts to promote dialogue among social and security actors.

Attendance at this event is by invitation only. 

Event attributes

Chatham House Rule

Reni Zhelyazkova

Programme Coordinator, Middle East and North Africa Programme
+44 (0)20 7314 3624




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NATO Could Play a De-escalating Role in the Russia-Turkey Confrontation

27 November 2015

Dr Beyza Unal

Senior Research Fellow, International Security Programme
The Alliance must explore its options for negotiating small-scale incidents between member states and partner nations, if it ever hopes to build a coherent coalition to fight ISIS.

20151127RussiaTurkey.jpg

Paper planes are seen among debris outside the Turkish embassy in Moscow on 25 November 2015 after an anti-Turkey picket. Photo by Getty Images.

In the wake of the Paris attacks and the destruction of a Russian plane by a bomb in Sinai, Russia had been once more calling for a new level of engagement with Western partners over operations in Syria. Even an ‘anti-terrorism coalition’ appeared to gain traction after the terrorist attacks in Paris. But Russian attacks on Western-backed opposition groups in Syria and continuing violation of Turkish airspace narrowed the window of opportunity for engagement between NATO member states and Russia in Syria, and Tuesday’s incident – where Turkey shot down a Russian bomber − fundamentally challenged this option. NATO allies and Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg were quick to call for ‘calm and de-escalation’ of the situation. But they face a problem: in the absence of a strategy, NATO lacks a mechanism—a form of transparent process for crisis resolution—between member states and partner nations when and if a dispute or disagreement arises.

NATO has three essential core tasks—collective defence (Article 5), crisis management and cooperative security; it does not prioritize one task over the other. Whereas collective defence applies to member states like Turkey, cooperative security involves engagement with partner nations, such as Russia, to assure Euro-Atlantic security. NATO’s role, in this sense, goes beyond protecting a member’s state’s sovereignty. This aspiration to provide enduring cooperation and cooperative security beyond members lies behind the now-obsolete NATO-Russia Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security, signed in 1997.

NATO’s balance between these tasks and its role vis-à-vis partner states is ill-defined, and among the core issues the Alliance must consider at or before its next summit in Warsaw in July 2016. These discussions must include prioritizing and grouping partner nations—Russia and Sweden, for instance, are clearly not partners in equal terms – and clarifying the role of the NATO-Russia Council (NRC). The NRC is a venue for political dialogue that includes consultation, cooperation and joint action, but does not have a crisis resolution mechanism. From 2014 onwards, the NRC has not functioned, yet it is the only venue where NATO and Russia could have discussions regarding the future of Syria, focusing on ISIS as a major threat both to the Alliance and to the partner nations. Neither Russia nor the Alliance will benefit from escalation; thus, both sides should bear in mind that a troubling partnership is better than an adversarial relationship.

This is even more important because NATO member states do not have a cohesive strategy regarding Syria’s future. For some countries, like Germany, the efforts lie on refugee relief policies, while for others, such as France, the focus is the military fight against ISIS. Russia is clearly testing NATO’s response mechanisms through hybrid warfare techniques. Yet, NATO also does not have a coherent policy regarding Russia’s assertiveness in Ukraine, involvement in Syria and its annexation of Crimea.  NATO officials are in general agreement that there can be ‘no grand bargain with Russia’ as long as it continues to violate international treaties and norms. Russian aggression and assertiveness is a long-term problem for the Alliance to tackle. So far, though, NATO benefits from ‘avoid[ing] that situations, incidents and accidents spiral out of control’, as the NATO secretary general noted in his speech after the extraordinary North Atlantic Council meeting. Solidarity among allies and protecting Turkish territorial integrity is a clear role for NATO, but the Alliance’s response mechanism in crisis situations should not be exhausted and undermined with small-scale, bilateral disagreements and disputes.

NATO could move to incorporate a crisis resolution mechanism, in specified non-escalatory terms and processes, between member states and partner states, where NATO member states and Russia meet together as equals in case of a crisis. This could re-establish a communication channel between NATO and Russia in particular, especially when the NRC is not functioning. If such a mechanism were in existence today, Turkey could have taken the issue to NATO’s crisis management system and pointed out its concerns over airspace violations, rather than shooting down the Russian bomber. This could have enabled the Alliance and Russia to participate in a dialogue that has been silent for more than a year. Instead, this incident demonstrates the delicate strategy of balancing deterrence policies with engagement between a member state and a rather troubling partner nation.

When Syria’s future is discussed, as it will be, at the Warsaw summit, Russia will be an unavoidable part of the discussion. But until there is a way to de-escalate these small-scale incidents, it will be increasingly difficult for Russia and NATO to determine whether they do in fact have any scope for cooperation, or at the least collaboration, on shared challenges and threats.

To comment on this article, please contact Chatham House Feedback





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CBD News: The guidance addresses a major pathway for introduction and spread of invasive alien species, as a significant percentage of global invasive introductions result from pets, aquarium and terrarium species that escape from confined conditions and




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Local Pathways Towards De-escalation of Libya's Conflict

Invitation Only Research Event

28 January 2020 - 3:00pm to 4:30pm

Chatham House | 10 St James's Square | London | SW1Y 4LE

Event participants

Usama Otman Essed, Libya Center for Strategic & Future Studies
Chair: Tim Eaton, Middle East and North Africa Programme, Chatham House

A shaky truce remains broadly in place among rival Libyan forces fighting for control of Tripoli. However, a durable ceasefire to bring an end to the current bout of conflict, which was initiated by Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan Arab Armed Forces’ (LAAF) offensive on the capital in April 2019, has not been reached. In recent weeks attention has focused on talks hosted in Moscow and Berlin, with the former aimed at agreeing a ceasefire and the latter seeking to reach agreement among international actors to bring an end to external military support for Libyan warring actors, and to craft a way forward for future intra-Libyan talks. Yet, there has been little emphasis on Libyan actors – beyond Haftar and prime minister Fayez al-Serraj – in this process.
 
This roundtable will bring together experts and policymakers to discuss means of de-escalating the conflict and seeking a lasting resolution through the development of interconnected intra-Libyan social and security negotiation tracks. Mr Usama Otman Essed of the Libya Center for Strategic and Future Studies (LCSFS) will present his research group’s ideas on these issues and discuss their ongoing efforts to promote dialogue among social and security actors.

Attendance at this event is by invitation only. 

Event attributes

Chatham House Rule

Reni Zhelyazkova

Programme Coordinator, Middle East and North Africa Programme
+44 (0)20 7314 3624




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177Lu-EB-PSMA radioligand therapy with escalating doses in patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer

Purpose: This study is designed to assess the safety and therapeutic response to 177Lu-EB-PSMA treatment with escalating doses in patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC). Methods: With institutional review board approval and informed consent, patients were randomly divided into three groups: Group A (n = 10) were treated with 1.18 ± 0.09 GBq/dose of 177Lu-EB-PSMA. Group B (n = 10) were treated with 2.12 ± 0.19 GBq/dose of 177Lu-EB-PSMA. Group C (n = 8) were treated with 3.52 ± 0.58 GBq/dose of 177Lu-EB-PSMA. Eligible patients received up to three cycles of 177Lu-EB-PSMA therapy, at eight-week intervals. Results: Due to disease progression or bone marrow suppression, 4 out of 10, 5 out of 10, and 5 out of 10 patients completed three cycles therapy as planned in Groups A, B, and C, respectively. The prostate-specific antigen (PSA) response was correlated with treatment dose, with PSA disease control rates in Group B (70%) and C (75%) being higher than that in Group A (10%) (P = 0.007), but no correlation between Group B and Group C was found. 68Ga-PSMA PET/CT showed response in all the treatment groups, however, there was no significant difference between the three groups. Hematologic toxicity study found that platelets in Group B and Group C decreased more than those in Group A, and that Grade 4 thrombocytopenia occurred in 2 (25.0%) patients in Group C. No serious nephritic or hepatic side effects were observed. Conclusion: This study demonstrates that 2.12 GBq/dose of 177Lu-EB-PSMA seems to be safe and adequate in tumor treatment. Further investigations with increased number of patients are warranted.




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Watch: Escaped bull goes wandering on Massachusetts highway

A young bull went wandering on a Massachusetts highway after escaping from a trailer and was captured without causing any incidents, police said.




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Escaped emu found playing in sprinkler one day later

A Michigan family said their 6-foot-tall emu was found playing in another resident's sprinkler about a mile from home one day after escaping.




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Wallaby found wandering British countryside after zoo escape

Police in Britain said a surprised jogger tipped officers off to the location of a wallaby that escaped from a zoo and went hopping through the countryside.




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Look: Police investigating loose camel report find escaped emu instead

Police in the Netherlands said officers responding to reports of a loose camel ended up capturing an emu running wild through the city of Rotterdam.




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Las puertas abiertas para los migrantes venezolanos y nicaragüenses en América Latina y el Caribe se cierran un poco a medida que aumenta la escala de los flujos y la presión en los servicios públicos

WASHINGTON – A pesar de que los gobiernos de América Latina y el Caribe han tomado medidas generosas e innovadoras para lidiar con el desplazamiento forzado desde Venezuela y más recientemente desde Nicaragua, la cálida bienvenida se ha enfriado en algunos lugares a medida que el número de entradas, la presión sobre los servicios públicos y la preocupación del público aumenta.




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Puttanesca pasta

8 garlic cloves, peeled 1 red chilli, deseeded and roughly chopped 1 teaspoon sea salt 8 anchovies 1/3 cup olive oil 2 punnets cherry tomatoes, cut in quarters 4 tablespoons kalamata olives, chopped 2 tablespoons baby capers, rinsed 1 cup flat leaf parsley, chopped 30g butter 500g spaghetti pasta Shaved parmesan to serve




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Picante de pescado sauce

Alejandro Saravia from Pastuso, shared this recipe on Foodie Tuesday, a weekly segment on ABC Radio Melbourne's Drive program at 3.30pm.




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Riots, escapes and pepper spray: Virus hits juvenile centers




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Riots, escapes and pepper spray: Virus hits juvenile centers




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Des thrombo-phlébites des sinus de la dure-mère / par Prosper Descazals.

Paris : Steinheil, 1898.




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Du choix de l'intervention dans les affections des annexes de l'uterus / par Pierre Camescasse.

Paris : G. Steinheil, 1893.




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A lion that has escaped from a circus in Florence picks up a baby in its teeth, but when the baby's mother shouts at it, the lion gives the baby back to the mother unharmed. Watercolour by M. Díez de Bulnes, 1817, after N.A. Monsiau.

[Spain?], An. 1817.




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A castle (the Castello Odescalchi di Bracciano?), with a flock of sheep attended by a shepherd. Etching and mezzotint by L. Marvy after Claude Lorraine.

[Paris] : Calcographie du Louvre, Musées Imperiaux, [1849?]




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Escape




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Escalator

Escalator




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The Michael Jordan Bulls documentary is a great escape

There are better sports documentaries than The Last Dance, but the entertaining series on the Michael Jordan-led Bulls dynasty might be a better fit for this particular time.



  • Sports/Basketball/NBA

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Peace yes, but quiet? Rosemary Goring's Escape to the Borders

On the potholed drive home from the pub the other night, a creature ran into the beam of our lights. Long, low and lean, for a moment it looked like an otter. One has occasionally been sighted in our village, though like Loch Ness’s fabled monster this is a source of some dispute. But in another second it was clear that this beast was not from the riverbank but the woods.




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Escaping the Conflict Trap: Promoting Good Governance in the Congo




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Chad: Escaping from the Oil Trap




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Elections au Burundi : Prévenir toute escalade de violence




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Fin24.com | Dis-Chem hiked mask prices before costs escalated, says Commission

The pharmaceutical retailer says it was forced to increase prices of surgical masks because of suppliers' inflated quotes and to match competitors, while the commission says retailers could have been following Dis-Chem's lead.




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Drone Finds Fugitive 17 Years After He Escaped From Prison

The 63-year-old was found living in a remote cave on the side of a steep cliff.




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Privilege escalation attacks, their impact on enterprises and mitigation




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USA: New Merit-based Immigration Plan May Escalate Highly-Skilled Workers

A merit-based immigration plan being put together by Jared Kushner, White House senior adviser it could lead to an escalation in US visas for extremely skilled workers, sources revealed on 24 Apr 2019.Merit-based Immigration ProposalKushner is assumed…




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U.S. Escalates Media War With New Restrictions on Chinese Journalists

New 90-day limits on work visas for Chinese journalists followed Beijing’s expulsion of American journalists and raised the threat of further retaliation by the Chinese government.




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To Escalate or Not? This Is Modi’s Zugzwang Moment

This is the 17th installment of The Rationalist, my column for the Times of India.

One of my favourite English words comes from chess. If it is your turn to move, but any move you make makes your position worse, you are in ‘Zugzwang’. Narendra Modi was in zugzwang after the Pulwama attacks a few days ago—as any Indian prime minister in his place would have been.

An Indian PM, after an attack for which Pakistan is held responsible, has only unsavoury choices in front of him. He is pulled in two opposite directions. One, strategy dictates that he must not escalate. Two, politics dictates that he must.

Let’s unpack that. First, consider the strategic imperatives. Ever since both India and Pakistan became nuclear powers, a conventional war has become next to impossible because of the threat of a nuclear war. If India escalates beyond a point, Pakistan might bring their nuclear weapons into play. Even a limited nuclear war could cause millions of casualties and devastate our economy. Thus, no matter what the provocation, India needs to calibrate its response so that the Pakistan doesn’t take it all the way.

It’s impossible to predict what actions Pakistan might view as sufficient provocation, so India has tended to play it safe. Don’t capture territory, don’t attack military assets, don’t kill civilians. In other words, surgical strikes on alleged terrorist camps is the most we can do.

Given that Pakistan knows that it is irrational for India to react, and our leaders tend to be rational, they can ‘bleed us with a thousand cuts’, as their doctrine states, with impunity. Both in 2001, when our parliament was attacked and the BJP’s Atal Bihari Vajpayee was PM, and in 2008, when Mumbai was attacked and the Congress’s Manmohan Singh was PM, our leaders considered all the options on the table—but were forced to do nothing.

But is doing nothing an option in an election year?

Leave strategy aside and turn to politics. India has been attacked. Forty soldiers have been killed, and the nation is traumatised and baying for blood. It is now politically impossible to not retaliate—especially for a PM who has criticized his predecessor for being weak, and portrayed himself as a 56-inch-chested man of action.

I have no doubt that Modi is a rational man, and knows the possible consequences of escalation. But he also knows the possible consequences of not escalating—he could dilute his brand and lose the elections. Thus, he is forced to act. And after he acts, his Pakistan counterpart will face the same domestic pressure to retaliate, and will have to attack back. And so on till my home in Versova is swallowed up by a nuclear crater, right?

Well, not exactly. There is a way to resolve this paradox. India and Pakistan can both escalate, not via military actions, but via optics.

Modi and Imran Khan, who you’d expect to feel like the loneliest men on earth right now, can find sweet company in each other. Their incentives are aligned. Neither man wants this to turn into a full-fledged war. Both men want to appear macho in front of their domestic constituencies. Both men are masters at building narratives, and have a pliant media that will help them.

Thus, India can carry out a surgical strike and claim it destroyed a camp, killed terrorists, and forced Pakistan to return a braveheart prisoner of war. Pakistan can say India merely destroyed two trees plus a rock, and claim the high moral ground by returning the prisoner after giving him good masala tea. A benign military equilibrium is maintained, and both men come out looking like strong leaders: a win-win game for the PMs that avoids a lose-lose game for their nations. They can give themselves a high-five in private when they meet next, and Imran can whisper to Modi, “You’re a good spinner, bro.”

There is one problem here, though: what if the optics don’t work?

If Modi feels that his public is too sceptical and he needs to do more, he might feel forced to resort to actual military escalation. The fog of politics might obscure the possible consequences. If the resultant Indian military action causes serious damage, Pakistan will have to respond in kind. In the chain of events that then begins, with body bags piling up, neither man may be able to back down. They could end up as prisoners of circumstance—and so could we.

***

Also check out:

Why Modi Must Learn to Play the Game of Chicken With Pakistan—Amit Varma
The Two Pakistans—Episode 79 of The Seen and the Unseen
India in the Nuclear Age—Episode 80 of The Seen and the Unseen



© 2007 IndiaUncut.com. All rights reserved.
India Uncut * The IU Blog * Rave Out * Extrowords * Workoutable * Linkastic




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Freescale Success Stepping Up to Low-Power Verification - Video

Freescale was a successful Incisive® simulation CPF low-power user when they decided to step up their game. In November 2013, at CDNLive India, they presented a paper explaining how they improved their ability to find power-related bugs using a more sophisticated verification flow.  We were able to catch up with Abhinav Nawal just after his presentation to capture this video explaining the key points in his paper.

Abhinav had already established a low-power simulation process using directed tests for a design with power intent captured in CPF. While that is a sound approach, it tends to focus on the states associated with each power control module and at least some of the critical power mode changes.  Since the full system can potentially exercise unforeseen combinations of power states, the directed test approach may be insufficient. Abhinav built a more complete low-power verification approach rooted in a low-power verification plan captured in Cadence® Incisive Enterprise Manager.  He still used Incisive Enterprise Simulator and the SimVision debugger to execute and debug his design, but he also added Incisive Metric Center to analyze coverage from his low-power tests and connect that data back to the low-power verification plan.  As a result, he was able to find many critical system-level corner case issues, which, left undetected, would have been catastrophic for his SoC.  In the paper, Abhinav presents some of the key problems this approach was able to find.

You can achieve results similar to Abhinav. Incisive Enterprise Simulator can generate a low-power verification plan from the power format, power-aware assertions, and it can collect power-aware knowledge.  To get started, you can use the Incisive Low-Power Simulation Rapid Adoption Kit (RAK) for CPF available on Cadence Online Support.

Just another happy Cadence low-power verification user!

Regards,

Adam "The Jouler" Sherer  

 

 




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To Escalate or Not? This Is Modi’s Zugzwang Moment

This is the 17th installment of The Rationalist, my column for the Times of India.

One of my favourite English words comes from chess. If it is your turn to move, but any move you make makes your position worse, you are in ‘Zugzwang’. Narendra Modi was in zugzwang after the Pulwama attacks a few days ago—as any Indian prime minister in his place would have been.

An Indian PM, after an attack for which Pakistan is held responsible, has only unsavoury choices in front of him. He is pulled in two opposite directions. One, strategy dictates that he must not escalate. Two, politics dictates that he must.

Let’s unpack that. First, consider the strategic imperatives. Ever since both India and Pakistan became nuclear powers, a conventional war has become next to impossible because of the threat of a nuclear war. If India escalates beyond a point, Pakistan might bring their nuclear weapons into play. Even a limited nuclear war could cause millions of casualties and devastate our economy. Thus, no matter what the provocation, India needs to calibrate its response so that the Pakistan doesn’t take it all the way.

It’s impossible to predict what actions Pakistan might view as sufficient provocation, so India has tended to play it safe. Don’t capture territory, don’t attack military assets, don’t kill civilians. In other words, surgical strikes on alleged terrorist camps is the most we can do.

Given that Pakistan knows that it is irrational for India to react, and our leaders tend to be rational, they can ‘bleed us with a thousand cuts’, as their doctrine states, with impunity. Both in 2001, when our parliament was attacked and the BJP’s Atal Bihari Vajpayee was PM, and in 2008, when Mumbai was attacked and the Congress’s Manmohan Singh was PM, our leaders considered all the options on the table—but were forced to do nothing.

But is doing nothing an option in an election year?

Leave strategy aside and turn to politics. India has been attacked. Forty soldiers have been killed, and the nation is traumatised and baying for blood. It is now politically impossible to not retaliate—especially for a PM who has criticized his predecessor for being weak, and portrayed himself as a 56-inch-chested man of action.

I have no doubt that Modi is a rational man, and knows the possible consequences of escalation. But he also knows the possible consequences of not escalating—he could dilute his brand and lose the elections. Thus, he is forced to act. And after he acts, his Pakistan counterpart will face the same domestic pressure to retaliate, and will have to attack back. And so on till my home in Versova is swallowed up by a nuclear crater, right?

Well, not exactly. There is a way to resolve this paradox. India and Pakistan can both escalate, not via military actions, but via optics.

Modi and Imran Khan, who you’d expect to feel like the loneliest men on earth right now, can find sweet company in each other. Their incentives are aligned. Neither man wants this to turn into a full-fledged war. Both men want to appear macho in front of their domestic constituencies. Both men are masters at building narratives, and have a pliant media that will help them.

Thus, India can carry out a surgical strike and claim it destroyed a camp, killed terrorists, and forced Pakistan to return a braveheart prisoner of war. Pakistan can say India merely destroyed two trees plus a rock, and claim the high moral ground by returning the prisoner after giving him good masala tea. A benign military equilibrium is maintained, and both men come out looking like strong leaders: a win-win game for the PMs that avoids a lose-lose game for their nations. They can give themselves a high-five in private when they meet next, and Imran can whisper to Modi, “You’re a good spinner, bro.”

There is one problem here, though: what if the optics don’t work?

If Modi feels that his public is too sceptical and he needs to do more, he might feel forced to resort to actual military escalation. The fog of politics might obscure the possible consequences. If the resultant Indian military action causes serious damage, Pakistan will have to respond in kind. In the chain of events that then begins, with body bags piling up, neither man may be able to back down. They could end up as prisoners of circumstance—and so could we.

***

Also check out:

Why Modi Must Learn to Play the Game of Chicken With Pakistan—Amit Varma
The Two Pakistans—Episode 79 of The Seen and the Unseen
India in the Nuclear Age—Episode 80 of The Seen and the Unseen

The India Uncut Blog © 2010 Amit Varma. All rights reserved.
Follow me on Twitter.





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Bash 5.0 Patch 11 Privilege Escalation

An issue was discovered in disable_priv_mode in shell.c in GNU Bash through 5.0 patch 11. By default, if Bash is run with its effective UID not equal to its real UID, it will drop privileges by setting its effective UID to its real UID. However, it does so incorrectly. On Linux and other systems that support "saved UID" functionality, the saved UID is not dropped. An attacker with command execution in the shell can use "enable -f" for runtime loading of a new builtin, which can be a shared object that calls setuid() and therefore regains privileges. However, binaries running with an effective UID of 0 are unaffected.




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Linux Kernel Sendpage Local Privilege Escalation

The Linux kernel failed to properly initialize some entries the proto_ops struct for several protocols, leading to NULL being derefenced and used as a function pointer. By using mmap(2) to map page 0, an attacker can execute arbitrary code in the context of the kernel. Several public exploits exist for this vulnerability, including spender's wunderbar_emporium and rcvalle's ppc port, sock_sendpage.c. All Linux 2.4/2.6 versions since May 2001 are believed to be affected: 2.4.4 up to and including 2.4.37.4; 2.6.0 up to and including 2.6.30.4




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Chkrootkit Local Privilege Escalation

Chkrootkit before 0.50 will run any executable file named /tmp/update as root, allowing a trivial privsec. WfsDelay is set to 24h, since this is how often a chkrootkit scan is scheduled by default.




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FreeBSD Intel SYSRET Privilege Escalation

This Metasploit module exploits a vulnerability in the FreeBSD kernel, when running on 64-bit Intel processors. By design, 64-bit processors following the X86-64 specification will trigger a general protection fault (GPF) when executing a SYSRET instruction with a non-canonical address in the RCX register. However, Intel processors check for a non-canonical address prior to dropping privileges, causing a GPF in privileged mode. As a result, the current userland RSP stack pointer is restored and executed, resulting in privileged code execution.




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FreeBSD rtld execl() Privilege Escalation

This Metasploit module exploits a vulnerability in the FreeBSD run-time link-editor (rtld). The rtld unsetenv() function fails to remove LD_* environment variables if __findenv() fails. This can be abused to load arbitrary shared objects using LD_PRELOAD, resulting in privileged code execution.




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VMware Patches Privilege Escalation Vulnerability In Fusion, Horizon