Slashdot Mirror
Making Sense of ACTA
Hodejo1 writes "This past week Guadalajara, Mexico hosted the 7th secret meeting of ACTA proponents who continue to ignore demands worldwide to open the debate to the public. Piecing together official and leaked documents from various global sources, Michael Geist has coalesced it all into a five part ACTA Guide that offers structured insight into what these talks might foist upon the populace at large. 'Questions about ACTA typically follow a familiar pattern — what is it (Part One of the ACTA Guide listing the timeline of talks), do you have evidence (Part Two), why is this secret (Part Three), followed by what would ACTA do to my country's laws (Part Four)? Countering the momentum behind ACTA will require many to speak out" (Part Five).'"
That must be why all our neighbors are illegally immigrating to Cuba instead of the US.
It also explains why more people apply for Cuban citizenship rather than US citizenship.
To the GP
At least China and India have strong nationalistic streaks
Unfortunetly, any sense of nationalism in the US immeidetly gets shot down as arrogance and ignorance
Exactly why do Europeans care that we do not have national healthcare? They care because they see it as the US rejecting their ideals. I see the same people posting that they will be happy when the US collapses and it's people talk about how we should all have national healthcare.
Nothing these people say make me think that they give a damn about us.
Not all Europeans are like this. In fact, I imagine that the majority of Europe either likes the US or is apathetic to us. But there is a strong and loud anti-US online sentiment that drowns out the rational ones.
Seriously? I don't like people dying. I really don't like people dying of easily preventable causes. I hate people dying in hospitals of easily preventable causes because they aren't millionaires. I couldn't care less about what you want to do with your life, if you're doing ok, but if you use "I'm alright" as an answer to "Why are you letting all these people die?" then you are morally reprehensible. If you are just happy to have people die through lack of money in the richest country in the world when much poorer countries do much better, then that's fine.
Sorry for the demise of your strawman, but there aren't masses of people dying because they don't have money. You can even be an illegal alien with zero money and no identification and still walk into any ER in any US hospital and receive world-class healthcare.
Your country and its citizens dare to lecture China on human rights when you don't recognise the International Criminal Courts
I'm sorry your country is so bad that you need an extra-national court to prosecute your own citizens. The ICC is nothing but a modern version of The Spanish Inquisition. It's purely political.
you hold unnamed suspects with no evidence and no charges against them for unlimited amounts of time with no access to legal representation
European countries do the same to combatants captured on the battlefield, as I don't recall German soldiers captured by European allies in WW1 or WW2 being tried & prosecuted by civilian courts.
The Geneva Convention even specifies the status of non-uniformed combatants; they have no rights and may be executed on the spot. I'd say in light of that, Guantanamo detainees have been treated with far more compassion than they legally deserve. After a thorough no-holds-barred interrogation, when I was certain they were of no more intelligence value, all I'd give them is a blindfold and a cigarette.
You invade sovereign nations in the name of regime change. You defend these invasions with the words freedom and liberty, and yet have no care for the millions dying in far worse regimes throughout Africa and Asia.
Well, even the USA has limits on how much we spread our military at any one time. We'll get around to those others soon enough. We have to prioritize our actions to do the most good for ourselves and our survival first, the other stuff comes second just as it does to every single other nation. We at least do tend to actually leave the countries we invade, and leave them only after spending much of our resources rebuilding them. Unlike the history of Europe where conquest has been the way for centuries.
Our school systems get more and more like yours, even though our schools have always turned out smarter kids. Nationalised public services start being seen as some left-wing ideal, rather than centrist and part-of-the-basic-ideals-of-the-free-market.
This is a problem that faces both the EU and the USA; the Progressive movement. The EU is firmly in the hands of Progressives, and they are currently attempting to co-op the US Democrat party. Notice how so many leaders and politicians these days hold to Progressive ideals, Hillary and Barack stating so proudly and publicly? They aren't Democrats, they are Progressives, an ideology that can be described as "Socialism-Lite" or "Conservative Socialism". This is a bad thing, as it *always* fails and devolves into a Socialist or Communist totalitarian state.
The truth is that the venting you get on the interwebs is actually pretty mild compared with the venting you get at dinner parties, in pubs - basically wherever there aren't Americans, because you bastards are all so fscking nice.
No, you don't vent when Americans are around at dinner parties or pubs because the American(s) in question would punch you in the mouth and you'd have to wait too long for your national health system to give you dentures. And as long as we Americans can keep the radical-left Progressives on a short leash, we will conti
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.