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I mean look at the critism that most Europeans have over the U.S. ... it is too easy to get guns, there aren't enough laws to restrict buisnesses, taxes are too low, "hate speech" is not punished, health care should be nationalized and controlled by a central authority, etc., etc. They are not complaining for the most part that the U.S. restricts freedoms, they are complaining that the U.S. is too free and a "cowboy culture"

No.

Europe is complaining how freedom of press is killed. Europe is complaining how freedom of life is restricted by people being imprisoned for years without trial.

Europe is laughing when a chick flashing some nipple causes a national scandal, and frightened when secret mass surveillance projects and torture facilities do not.

Europe is complaining that corruption and ridiculous massive secrecy restricts freedom. Europe wants things to be managed transparently, so at least abuses can be exposed.

Oh, and Europe is complaining that America's freedom to become better is restricted by automatic labeling of any not-in-Fox-News observations or suggestions as "anti-american".

He may have a valid point, however, about the government playing a large and not necessarily fair role. Capitalism to a large degree depends on even-handed enforcement of certain rules, such as prohibitions on outright fraud and sanctions for breaches of contract. In addition, the greater the government is directly involved as a buyer or seller and the more unified it is, the less you might trust its ability to objectively investigate possible malfeasances when you consider conflicts of interest and assorted entanglements.

Beijing tacitly acknowledges this through the occasional high-profile crackdown, and the occasional extreme severity such as sentencing a former governor to death.

http://www.transparency.org/cpi/2004/cpi2004.en.ht ml#cpi2004
http://www.abc.net.au/ra/news/stories/s1471412.htm
http://english.people.com.cn/200509/09/eng20050909 _207609.html
http://www.carnegieendowment.org/events/index.cfm? fa=eventDetail&id=284

It's a reasonable concern if you're thinking about a large capital investment that you can't simply take with you if local officials decide to squeeze you after you're committed -- perhaps demanding direct bribes, or using governmental powers against you if you don't throw business to somebody, or so forth. Granted, it's probably not nearly as foolhardy as trying to run a high-profile independent media network in Putin's Russia...

I believe sooner or later someone comes up with a claim like "you can't get rid of corruption". That's just bullshit. Enforcement of transparency would make corruption impossible to practise. Right now the trend in US appears to be going to opposite direction - those in chief are given even more tools to decrease their accountability to the public. In Nordic countries, particularly in Finland, the corruption is practically unexistant comparing to U.S or rest of the Europe. According to Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index, also New Zealand has adopted very effective policies. From my Nordic point of view, U.S. or France are not too far from China or Nigeria in the context of bribery, or whatever names you have from political donations, gifts to strategic deals. People here were worried how effectively their Katrina donations reached/will reach the projects and people in need in U.S. and how much was lost in biased decisions.

Some ./tters are certainly from U.S., so: When you Americans feel your country is screwed enough by 'flexible' politicians and other public servants who were supposed to make the best decisions, you should put up a mass movement with slongans like "if you want to serve the America, you have to publish what you're doing&lose your privacy in finances (so we have tools to keep eye on whether you are serving this country's interests at all)", to turn the ship 180 degrees to the direction of accountable governance and corporate culture. It would be good for the economy, too. Internet petitions, anyone?

Holding companies accountable, as suggested in the article, might be a slightly better solution, but again it's somewhat complicated when you start trying to hold an overseas company accountable. (It's more doable than holding an overseas individual accountable, but still not a simple task).

That is especially true in places like India and the PRC where justice is to a large extent dependent on who you know or manage to pay off as opposed to the USA and the older EU member states (the newer EU states still have alot of work to do) where justice may cost alot of money but at least corruption levels are a lot lower. Even Italy gets a higher rating in that survey than India and the PRC.

> The US is by no means perfect! But no other country has a proven track record of supporting other people's freedoms over the past 100 yrs.

What about the Japanese internment in WWII? What about women's right to vote? The 19th amendment was only ratified in 1920. Look at America running several South American countries through the United Fruit Corporation for decades, including backing it militarily. America has bombed tens of countries since WWII, sometimes on very questionable grounds. Look at Guantanamo bay (which the USA took from Cuba in the first place). America has a history of suppressing and monitoring political and human rights activists; it's not the worst country in the world for that, by far, but it's not the best either.

Also, look at sites like Amnesty International. America has more human rights abuses than many other countries, such as Canada, Switzerland, and many northern European ones (which also tend to rank better on international transparency in government comparisons - see http://www.transparency.org/cpi/2004/cpi2004.en.ht ml for instance, where the USA ties for 17th). America certainly isn't on the (low) level of many countries, such as China, Uzbekistan, Iran, etc, on human rights, but it's not the shining beacon that many people would hold it to be either.

Much, much worse is possible than America at present. Much, much better is also possible. It does a disservice to America to ignore its flaws, especially if one is an American (I am); we're the ones with the most power to improve it. America's track record of supporting people's freedoms over the last 100 years is not unrivaled, and in many ways bettered, by other countries.

Yep, in Sweden (and in Finland, probably also other socialist Scandinavian countries) accountability to anyone is considered much more important aspect of democracy and freedom than here in US.

In Scandinavia people except wide rights to review government and other public institutions in action and this is provided by legislation, so yes, you are free to access practically everything but truly sensitive documents such details of military bases (the list of things government is allowed to classify is limited).

Not surprisingly, these countries top as the least corrupted societies in the world, while US ranks behind many developed nations.
http://www.transparency.org/cpi/2004/cpi2004.en.ht ml#cpi2004

Also Central European countries such France implement strong constitutional Freedom of Information rights (comparing to US), but Scandinavian countries have always shown the way to world.

Erhm, btw, what the heck is this... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13233

India is listed at place 90. This indicates a perception of large-scale corruption throughout for business and political practices.

For whatever reason, be it cultural or economic, there is apparently an embedded culture of corruption in India, and it has worsened since a similar poll (comparative to other countries) in 2002.

This suggests that there is reason to be wary, as more corruption appears to occur in India compared to wealthier/western countries, and in an environment like this one should expect more occurrences of this nature to happen.

The original poster is quite correct - one can expect more crime of this type to happen in India than in the US simply because we have unbiased indicators of the level of crime and corruption in those countries.

In future, this should change, as increasing wealth remove the economic pressure to commit such acts, and as cultural mores become more strongly anti-corruption as India becomes a developed nation. However, to suggest otherwise at present appears to be wilfully ignoring the evidence.

Nice assumption, but not even close. Transparency International sticks the U.S. around position 17.

http://www.transparency.org/pressreleases_archive/ 2004/2004.10.20.cpi.en.html

I am really annoyed by the inability of people to think logically and by irrationality of their beliefs (which obviously includes libertarians). Sorry for calling you a moron. But the points you were making didn't make ANY sense. You called the USA socialist, which it isn't. You claimed that socialist countries have high corruption (according to some moron), while they don't (not sure we can trust this particular survey, but on this topic most surveys agree).

As for your last question, the reason why we need socialism is that markets do not work (obviously, being a libertarian, you are no more able to comprehend this than a scientologist can realise that Xenu is a load of claptrap). Capitalist free market systems bring suffering to people. Socialist systems increase net happiness. Yes, they deprive the richest 1% of the ability to accumulate unlimited wealth unobstructed, but this is compensated by a great increase in quality of life for the remaining 99%. Socialism makes a more just, fair and happy society possible, which is why people there generally accept higher taxation.

Market system is not the natural way of things. Money is a socio-economic construct. Your money are not yours in the way that your eye and your hand are yours. Your money is a right to take some things from other people, and this right is given to you by the society according to the rules that society sees fit to implement. Your complaints are no more valid than if you were saying "Why can't everyone give me money for free - I believe this would be fair and logical".

Sigh, I'm getting tired of Canadians saying how much corruption there is in Canada. There is a huge difference between public perception of corruption http://www.legermarketing.com/documents/spclm/0204 22eng.pdf and more legitimate methods of measuring corruption http://www.transparency.org/cpi/2004/cpi2004_faq.e n.html Canada isn't ranked that bad in this second index - #12 (for reference, USA is #17 and the UK is #11) and this is after the Sponsorship scandal broke.

That's interesting reasoning. But sure, I could see how you might think Latvia is a model of honesty, considering it only spends 2% of its annual revenue on bribes.

http://www.allaboutlatvia.com/article/24/corrupt-g overnment
"Political corruption is one of the aspects of the Latvian politics most criticized in different researches and surveys."

http://www.transparency.org/pressreleases_archive/ 2001/2001.12.03.eu.html
In Latvia, the perception of corruption remains high, and corruption poses a serious obstacle to the proper and efficient functioning of the public administration.

http://www.eumap.org/pressinfo/ipc/timesofchange
Experts feel, however, that the best candidate countries are less corrupt than the worst member countries. As the study shows, Latvia is not among the best.

Here in Finland we've had these kind of id cards since 2000 or so. The novel idea is that that the authorities issue one for you and then you can use it when you need to prove who you are when doing business with the authorities from home. Great in theory since you can use web service from your home's comfort while previously you'd had to go there and have some other official identity with you, eg. passport. Well this thing pretty much flopped. Very rare service support it (though my company offers a service that supports it) and even fewer have card readers at home. It's a chicken and egg problem, really, combined with unfamiliar for the common people technology and concepts. Nowadays, when you need secure e-identification, many use the identification services offered by banks. Finnish banks are pioneers in e-banking and their systems are very established and generally trusted. So they've found a new business opportunity in offering their authentication and identification technology to 3rd parties who need their customers identified and are willing to out-source the operation. And this is something about everyone can use since on-line banking is so so 1996 that everyone does it by now. And to authenticate you don't need any extra computer stuff or passwords, just the code sheet your bank sent you. I believe electronic ID card is much more popular in Estonia. I don't know why, but they've been using it almost as long as Finland.

And to all American who are wondering the privacy effects. It's difficult for us to see your point. For us national id cards are no privacy threat at all. This is because the ids are mainly used when dealing with authorities, banks, etc. who one can trust (authorities) or whose interest is that their customer's privacy isn't compromised so they do their best to ensure that (banks, etc.). And why do we trust the authorities? Well our rulers don't have the habit to piss off the people by doing really things to us. And if something happened either intentionally or accidentally, they'd get caught very soon. According to Transparency International, Finland has been the least corrupted country on the planet for five consecutive years now. But it wasn't worse before, but the mutual trust and respect between governance and the people have been there since the 1917 independence.

• http://www.icgg.org/
  
• http://www.globalcorruptionreport.org/
  
• http://www.transparency.org/
  

Nokia's a Finnish company, and I'd like to think it reflects on their corporate culture. Finland's known for the relative lack of gravy. Transparency.org seems to think so anyway.
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Nokia's a Finnish company, and I'd like to think it reflects on their corporate culture. Finland's known for the relative lack of gravy. Transparency.org seems to think so anyway.
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000

Nokia's a Finnish company, and I'd like to think it reflects on their corporate culture. Finland's known for the relative lack of gravy. Transparency.org seems to think so anyway.
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000

Nokia's a Finnish company, and I'd like to think it reflects on their corporate culture. Finland's known for the relative lack of gravy. Transparency.org seems to think so anyway.
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000

Nokia's a Finnish company, and I'd like to think it reflects on their corporate culture. Finland's known for the relative lack of gravy. Transparency.org seems to think so anyway.
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000

You are damn right! They would be doing jailtime! In fact Finland has Zero percent corruption. In Finland there is less corruption than in any other country in world. Here's the recent study about that:

Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index 2004

...would be an organization known as Transparency International http://www.transparency.org/; another would be Junior Chamber International http://www.jci.cc/ (for the 18-40 crowd). The two organizations recently signed an agreement to collaborate their efforts.

India is among the quite corrupt contries, like number 90 of 146 in the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index 2004 http://www.transparency.org/cpi/2004/cpi2004.en.ht ml#cpi2004

So corruption it itself does not seem to be able to stop tech-business, though Ukraine is way lower at #122.

It's true that the Danish penal code has parts regarding libel, slander, threats, etc. just as many other countries (penal code - "Straffeloven" - 266). This paragraph also contains a note regarding the above issues aimed at groups because of their race, color, ethnicity, faith or sexual orientation. Personally I don't think it's that different from targeting individuals (but hey, I'm a Dane :). The paragraph has been discussed now and then in the public, but the borders are actually quite wide. It's nothing like Germany or France (.. I pressume)

Besides, this has nothing to do with press freedom. A Danish nazi party is actually allowed to run their own radio station at the ordinary FM-band.

We did have an interesting case though regarding a radio documentary in 1985, where an interviewer talked with a bunch of young, declared racists ("Greenjackets"), spreading their racism. At first the interviewer was convicted of spreading racism at a lower court, but after appealing through the system (and even losing at Danish supreme court), he tried his case in front of the European Court of Human Rights which concluded that even though some of the statements made by the Greenjackets would be racist, the broadcast itself wasn't. You can read the entire case online.

It's actually a bit surprising when documentaries like Fahrenheit 9/11 (or, on a more serious level, Control Room), show how news are presented in the US. I think that many Danes weren't that surprised viewing these documentaries, because the Danish press already used several sources, meaning that a lot of the "surprising stories" in these documentaries weren't that surprising at all, since a lot of the footage had already been shown in public media.

I am pretty worried of US citizens believing that each and every single thing about US is the best in the world. We have a more free press, less corruption, a head of government elected by popular vote, but since we live in a world where people appearently get their "entire facts" based on one or two incidents (which is pretty usual at Slashdot - think of all the posts regarding any topic, where one would find a random incident about a webserver, a company, a product and continuously beat that argument in a manner like "How can you say this product is good, since (link to some old event)?"), nothing of this matters. It only matters if people are able to use Google to find that little piece of information, they care about and judge the rest of the world by that.

Besides, you also show your absolute lack of understanding of British history - Charles I, Oliver Cromwell, Roundheads and Cavaliers, civil war? Mean anything to you?

I am not being trite when I say read the US Bill of Rights.

Why? It's not like it's being respected by lawmakers.

the USA has substantial advantages in the Ownership of Property

Except that the police can just confiscate your property and you have to sue (if you still have enough money left to do so) to get it back. In the majority of seizures, the people whose property gets taken do not even get charged with a crime. Here is a good essay on this issue. Some cases where money was taken without good grounds. And no, they can't do this where I live.

rights to political dissent

A US kid got suspended for wearing a T-shirt with "Anarchy." The government actively tries to prevent people from advertising messages that go against government policy. An anti-war community organization was infiltrated by the police.

These involve a vast improvement in the rights to relief from problems with the government via a court system that despite all its flaws is orders of magnitude more likely to answer to the interests of ordinary people when they dispute with the strong and powerful than in EU or elsewhere.

The US legal system has incarcerated an extremely large part of its population. Many of those are victim of the war on drugs. However, while drug use is no lower among caucasians, three quarter of the people convicted for these crimes are black or latino. The same goes for the death penalty. Black & latino see the needle far more than caucasians. In short, your legal system certainly seems to take it out on the lower class.

As for Europe trodding on the ordinary man, do you have any evidence to back that up? Because I don't see too much of that happening here.

In the USA most people take for granted that the Police and Courts actually will deal with problems and redress without bribery.

I never had to bribe the police or the courts. What parts of the EU are you talking about? Nigeria?

EU types have been raised under a system where they delt with a thousand years of entrenched bureaucracy with its systematic and embedded corruption at a level beyond any American Imagination.

In my country (The Netherlands), 10% of the workers are government employees. In the US, it is 14%. 'Nough said.

As for corruption and bribery: according to the 2003 Corruption Perceptions Index, my EU country is ranked 7th (with a 8.9/10). The US is ranked 18 (with a 7.5/10). The Bribe Payers Index 2002 ranked The Netherlands 6th (with a 7.8/10), while the US was ranked 13th (with a 5.3/10).

Much of the current Economic troubles in the USA and Social Discord are the result of this trend towards EU solutions and methods.

An important reason for social discord in the US seems to be that a small part of the population is screwing the rest. The only reason why many people have to work two jobs, while others have more money than they can spend in two lives, is because they believe the bullshit of "what is good for business is good for you."

In synopsis, the EU is a Bureacratic Super State where Citizens have no particular rights except those granted by PERMIT.

Do you know that the Union has a really low number of bureaucrats (~30.000) and that the nations have very strong control over what the Union does? NO, of COURSE you DIDN'T know, did you? Shouting hard is much easier than providing proof, isn't it?

The Brussels system will further dominate the area by an Oligarchy and the delivery of individual freedom in

societal repression through loss of personal respect and dignity at the hands of intransparent authority is not new either. novelty plays only a very small part in deciding the merit (or demerit as the case may be) of the situation. of course, everyone must decide for themselves, and some people choose to weight novelty heavily in their process. perhaps it is those people you are trying to influence.

And who gets to decide what is an "appropriate share"? Taxpayers? Nope!

That decision is in the hands of a government beaurcrat whose only job, it seems, is to pander to enough special interest groups to secure their next term in office.

Then how come the majority of scientific and medical breakthroughs these days come out of the United States?

IMO one can't measure the quality of a society only in scientific and economic development anyway. If one look at life quality measured on several areas I don't think these countries are behind USA.

Actually Russia has improved in the corruption perceptions index (scroll down for the table) in the last few years. It is still pretty far down the list, though...

As for the grandparent, it definitely sounded like either a troll or personal bias. "All the problems" coming from Russia? Russia has lots of internal problems, it exports some of them to some places, but it can hardly be blamed for all of the worlds problems.

Consider the fact that VDSL is just rolling out in Sweden and that it is quite affordable. Imagine 26 mbits/sec for $40 euros a month. In fact, it's a much better deal than almost anywhere else. Especially Greece, where broadband will run you approximately 850 times as much.

Now what can someone legally do with that bandwidth under the new law? You guessed it. They can watch government-okayed programming channels and view government-okayed content. These are the websites that will have gone through some sort of copyright review and approval process.

With these new laws, the powers that be will have successfully turned the European internet into something resembling interactive television. The existing media lords are of course quite happy with the new laws as their sphere of control has been strengthened. And the existing governments are of course quite happy with the new laws as it gives them even more control over their respective populaces.

It's hard to say how the Swedish populace and the rest of Europe will react to these new laws. Most likely nothing significant will happen beyond a few protests. But as someone pointed out, sooner or later the government will put one too many chains of laws and taxes on the people and the people will start to exhibit some very interesting non-linear behaviors. As history has taught us, there is only one way to take liberties back from an oppressive government.

However, for the time being, we do know one thing for sure. Sweden's rank ranking on the "most corrupt governments list" is going to take a hit. And it's about time -- Sweden is the only country on record for filing criminal charges against a news company for second guessing URL's.

Hey, Europe's a big place. France is more corrupt than the USA, let alone Finland.

Ok, I've been annoyed for years at the disparity between corporations and customers in who knows what about who. I think its time someone came up with a P2p, open source, reputation system in which we can turn the lens of datamining back on them. Technologies like Cuejack combined with the efforts of groups like Transparency International, can help bring about Participitory Capitalism.

Power to the people!

Planet P Blog - Liberty with Technology.

That's completely the responsibility of the college - if they don't like it or it's not legal they can't sign the contract.

The Bribery Index says otherwise.

And look at how other countries rank in that respect, as well. The US is 16th, pretty much in line with the press freedom.

Unfortunately, even the good record of Finland doesn't mean that there is no corruption.

Indeed, according to the latest survey, USA can be seen as a second-class country when it comes to corruption. Yet another good reason to live in Finland :-)

Seriously, though, what are you going to do to change the situation? That is, do you have any plans to overhaul the rotten, corrupted establishment which has tailored the system to the effect that it is next to impossible to get them out of power. Sure, individuals change but the fat, power-hungry parties will go on with their stampede. In a situation where two parties have developed a symbiotic relationship they are as bad as just one.

• Commercial speech (copyright law);
  
• Personal speech about "innocent" topics ("my kid likes dogs");
  
• Personal criticism on controversial topics (e.g., "I hate people that..." ;-) )
  
• Personal criticism of people ("Joe stinks!");
  
• Personal libelous speech of people ("Joe beats his wife");
  
• Personal libelous speech of public figures ("Senator Joe beats his wife");
  
• Personal speech criticizing government actions ("the Army kidnapped my grandmother");
  
• Asking the government questions ("Hey, Senator, where is my Grandmother?");
  
• Challenging religious thought ("God looks like Bella Abzug!");
  
• Hate speech ("I hate everyone who thinks God looks like Bella Abzug!");
  
• Incitement to Riot speech ("Let's Kill everyone who thinks god looks like Bella Abzug!");
  

I quote from an unnamed source in Uzbekistan, a US citizen working for a US owned joint venture.

Sure we pay bribes, the (US) govt should get real and exert real pressure at the diplomatic, not the business level.