No problem - the propaganda writing machines will continue to provide you with all the pablum you want. Plus you get important insider information, such as whether Obama puts on his left shoe or his right shoe first. Think about the obviously important political metaphor.
The US has gone to war a number of times (it is claimed) to prevent countries trading oil in currencies other than the Dollar. Some of those claims might border on conspiracy theories, but it remains that the tactics to keep oil trading based on the U.S. Dollar look remarkably like 'force'.
I don't buy that we've gone to war over it (or at least that wasn't the primary reason), but there has been a lot of arm twisting and back channel deals by the US to keep it that way. Check out what Henry the War Criminal was doing in '73.
The USD as the world's reserve currency started in 1944 though w/ the Bretton Woods conference, at a time when the US could call the shots.
Silly dead metals. If you think a gold standard magically keeps things running well, you should read up on the Great Depression (and a number of similar events in the 19th and early 20th centuries).
or Bitcoin
Bitcoin is the ultimate fiat currency. It's also subject to being rendered completely worthless by decryption improvements, but it is cool, trendy, and doesn't involve a government.
The US is teetering on the brink of loosing its right to be a Reserve currency.
Let's hope so. The USD as the world's reserve currency was nice for some time after WWII, but in the last 30 years it's been a golden chain.
If that happens we're all likely to be trading in Renminbi,
The Renminbi doesn't even float. Even if it did, nobody in their right mind would trust the opaqueness of China's monetary policy and actions. The USD might be in trouble, but at least the Fed is fairly transparent about the numbers that make it go to hell.
The Chinese have long (about a hunderd years) been wary of the US
Really? Then why were we allies in WWII?
and it's cronies
When did Vietnam become a US crony?
raping and pillaging in the guise of religeous wisdom
That assertion is hard to understand, considering that we've been allied with countries that were predominantly Christian, Jewish, Muslin and Buddhist.
China and many other nations would love to see another currency supplant the U.S dollar
No they wouldn't. China has been talking about this for years (that part of the "news" isn't new at all), but have never done anything serious. China benefit from an overvalued currency (as do many other countries) because they can export a lot to the US, which keeps their economy running. They know this perfectly well, and they bought all those treasuries to keep their economy going, not as an investment.
The Chinese renminbi is not free floating
Too true that, and they shouldn't have been given PNTR or WTO membership until it was.
Even if they floated it, nobody would trust it. Chinese monetary policy and control is, to put it very kindly, not transparent.
the truth is that currently there is no currency that could [serve as an international reserve]
There are several alternatives to a specific currency - probably all of them better than a specific country. chill below already mentioned SDR's. There are several other possibilities. One is a basket of major currencies. Another is backed by a basket of useful commodities (not some silly useless thing like gold). Keynes suggested that in his Bancor idea at Bretton Woods. Damn shame it wasn't adopted, but it was us Yanks who nixed it. The world economy was very different in 1944.
The Euro was a brilliant, clever strategy by those in favour of a Federal Europe.
The Euro was a terrible idea - a triumph of politics over economics. Politically it represented European unity, but it's a fake - a currency union without a fiscal union is a recipe for disaster, and there is no way in hell Europe would go for the sort of fiscal union we have amongst the states (a/k/a the federal government).
The big gusher you speak of is more like a small fountain compared to what happens in the US and other countries with a federal system. The countries in serious debt would be better off without the Euro, since the exchange rate of their currency would go down and they could export more. Germany wouldn't be able to play its export happy games though. That's why you see the high debt countries possibly wanting to get out of the Euro.
it shouldn't condemn the deliberate torture and slaughter by terrorists of 67 innocent civilians
Read my posts - I never said that. What I did say was that the US emphasis on this one incident, while ignoring another that resulted in 80,000 times more deaths, is, to put it mildly, a strange sense of proportion. I can think of no other explanation than a political agenda. Can you?
Emphasis on the mall shooting, versus the Second Congo War (not to mention numerous other wars in Africa), is like focusing on one murder, while ignoring the annihilation of a medium size city.
That they found a way to put Al Capone in prison? Can't say I'm terribly upset about that. Unlike the NSA, they managed to do it without violating the Bill of Rights.
It's sanctimonious and hypocritical to pretend it's a matter of great concern, when you've spent decades ignoring the deaths of millions. It fits a political agenda, because it suits the US to declare the perpetrators terrorists. Many times that many people were tortured, killed and dismembered every single day of the Congo Wars.
United States v. Miller (1976) was a 2nd Amendment case. Smith v. Maryland (1979) is the relevant case (I'm no legal scholar, but it was linked to in the article).
You are confusing private contracts with government charters
No, I'm not.
The Constitution does not ban your ISP from tattling on you to the government as long as you agree to allow them by accepting their ToS.
Correction: SCOTUS does not ban it - the Constitution is another matter. Let us not forget that SCOTUS is the same institution that, amongst many other abominations, held for almost 100 years that "separate but equal" was Constitutional.
BTW, ToS has no bearing in such a matter. That's a matter of civil law. If their ToS doesn't allow that, it doesn't prevent the government from using it as evidence. It means you can sue your ISP from a prison cell.
Corporations and other non-governmental third parties can willingly give the government any information they want and the Constitution has no bearing.
Because SCOTUS conveniently decided there was no reasonable expectation of privacy in phone records, where only 10 years before they'd ruled that there was. SCOTUS has spent much of the last forty years discovering clever loopholes in the Bill of Rights. There is no particular logic, consistency or common sense to these decisions, but who cares? Nobody can overrule SCOTUS.
It's very possible that this is another Al Capone situation: they couldn't get Capone for the major crimes they knew he had committed, so they got him for tax evasion.
And they did it without violating the 4th Amendment. Perhaps in those days school kids actually paid attention when they learned about the Constitution.
You may recall al Shabaab as the group behind the recent slaughter at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi.
As terrible as that was, I wish I could say that qualified as a major slaughter in Africa. Are you aware of what's happened in, for example, the Congo in recent years? The Second Congo War was the bloodiest war since WWII, and most Americans have never even heard of it. I don't know if the US should have gotten involved to stop it, but it didn't. Now we're sanctimonious about a mall shooting? That's called a political agenda, not a concern for human life.
This guy knew straight-up he was funding terrorist activities
I don't give a damn. I could care less if he's as guilty as sin. The Constitution is more important than catching some two-bit financial contributor to an organization the US government has labelled terrorist. You want the terrorists to win? Just keep wiping your ass with the Constitution. Then the terrorists win by getting us to abandon what's been the organic law of this country for over two centuries, and which every school child in this country is taught the importance of (apparently many people didn't pay attention in class).
As insulting as it is that we have to entertain this "appeal"
We won't know if it's being seriously entertained until he's granted a new trial, and the court takes his case seriously.
And what's insulting about it? I'll posit that he's guilty. It's still a defense attorney's obligation to try to get his client off. It wouldn't be the first time that evidence was tossed out because of a Constitutional violation. It's more important to defend the Constitution than it is to not let one or two criminals off.
Read up on the case, it's enlightening
What better source to get unbiased information than the FBI. Even believing everything the FBI says, this case is penny ante. Why not give them the same strict punishment that HSBC got for knowingly laundering billions of dollars over a period of years for terrorist organizations? I'd worry a lot more about that than a contribution that most people could put on their credit card.
Forgot to add, it's a shame that lawyers and judges specialize in rationalizing inconsistency. There's a reason the phrase "legal reasoning" is used ironically.
The provider almost certainly has a clause in their ToS/Contract specifying that they may turn over records for law enforcement purposes.
So what? ToS don't trump the Constitution, and "may turn over records for law enforcement purposes" can mean records that are subpoenaed.
We need more companies that actually fight gag orders and warrantless data requests.
That would be nice, but I don't think we should rely on the XYZ Communications Corp. to enforce the Constitution. That's the job of the courts, and it'll be interesting to see how this appeal goes.
The argument makes sense to me. AFAIK a defendant has the right to know specifically how the evidence against him was collected, and to be given any potentially exculpatory evidence. If you want to claim "national security", then you can't prosecute.
Slashdot Mirror
No problem - the propaganda writing machines will continue to provide you with all the pablum you want. Plus you get important insider information, such as whether Obama puts on his left shoe or his right shoe first. Think about the obviously important political metaphor.
Didn't you get the latest TPM? You're supposed to tone it down a little.
Wishful thinking on the part of China. U.S economy is based on military industry well-being. What they suppose to do with warehouses full of weapons?
Are you kidding? China would love to buy our weapons. They've even said so, and have suggested it as a way to reduce the trade imbalance.
Remember the part in Catch-22 where we had a contract with the Germans to bomb our own base?
They're tossing around chump change. Until they float it, the Renminbi won't be a real international currency.
The US has gone to war a number of times (it is claimed) to prevent countries trading oil in currencies other than the Dollar. Some of those claims might border on conspiracy theories, but it remains that the tactics to keep oil trading based on the U.S. Dollar look remarkably like 'force'.
I don't buy that we've gone to war over it (or at least that wasn't the primary reason), but there has been a lot of arm twisting and back channel deals by the US to keep it that way. Check out what Henry the War Criminal was doing in '73.
The USD as the world's reserve currency started in 1944 though w/ the Bretton Woods conference, at a time when the US could call the shots.
Not our fault you people can't spell.
either gold, silver
Silly dead metals. If you think a gold standard magically keeps things running well, you should read up on the Great Depression (and a number of similar events in the 19th and early 20th centuries).
or Bitcoin
Bitcoin is the ultimate fiat currency. It's also subject to being rendered completely worthless by decryption improvements, but it is cool, trendy, and doesn't involve a government.
The US is teetering on the brink of loosing its right to be a Reserve currency.
Let's hope so. The USD as the world's reserve currency was nice for some time after WWII, but in the last 30 years it's been a golden chain.
If that happens we're all likely to be trading in Renminbi,
The Renminbi doesn't even float. Even if it did, nobody in their right mind would trust the opaqueness of China's monetary policy and actions. The USD might be in trouble, but at least the Fed is fairly transparent about the numbers that make it go to hell.
No, its crawling its way out of a mess caused by leftist interferance in commercila activities
What color is the sky in your world?
P.S. We'll send a dictionary to your planet if you want to learn how to spell English correctly.
The Chinese have long (about a hunderd years) been wary of the US
Really? Then why were we allies in WWII?
and it's cronies
When did Vietnam become a US crony?
raping and pillaging in the guise of religeous wisdom
That assertion is hard to understand, considering that we've been allied with countries that were predominantly Christian, Jewish, Muslin and Buddhist.
China and many other nations would love to see another currency supplant the U.S dollar
No they wouldn't. China has been talking about this for years (that part of the "news" isn't new at all), but have never done anything serious. China benefit from an overvalued currency (as do many other countries) because they can export a lot to the US, which keeps their economy running. They know this perfectly well, and they bought all those treasuries to keep their economy going, not as an investment.
The Chinese renminbi is not free floating
Too true that, and they shouldn't have been given PNTR or WTO membership until it was.
Even if they floated it, nobody would trust it. Chinese monetary policy and control is, to put it very kindly, not transparent.
the truth is that currently there is no currency that could [serve as an international reserve]
There are several alternatives to a specific currency - probably all of them better than a specific country. chill below already mentioned SDR's. There are several other possibilities. One is a basket of major currencies. Another is backed by a basket of useful commodities (not some silly useless thing like gold). Keynes suggested that in his Bancor idea at Bretton Woods. Damn shame it wasn't adopted, but it was us Yanks who nixed it. The world economy was very different in 1944.
The Euro was a brilliant, clever strategy by those in favour of a Federal Europe.
The Euro was a terrible idea - a triumph of politics over economics. Politically it represented European unity, but it's a fake - a currency union without a fiscal union is a recipe for disaster, and there is no way in hell Europe would go for the sort of fiscal union we have amongst the states (a/k/a the federal government).
The big gusher you speak of is more like a small fountain compared to what happens in the US and other countries with a federal system. The countries in serious debt would be better off without the Euro, since the exchange rate of their currency would go down and they could export more. Germany wouldn't be able to play its export happy games though. That's why you see the high debt countries possibly wanting to get out of the Euro.
it shouldn't condemn the deliberate torture and slaughter by terrorists of 67 innocent civilians
Read my posts - I never said that. What I did say was that the US emphasis on this one incident, while ignoring another that resulted in 80,000 times more deaths, is, to put it mildly, a strange sense of proportion. I can think of no other explanation than a political agenda. Can you?
Emphasis on the mall shooting, versus the Second Congo War (not to mention numerous other wars in Africa), is like focusing on one murder, while ignoring the annihilation of a medium size city.
Yeah, but it's still rather terrifying.
That they found a way to put Al Capone in prison? Can't say I'm terribly upset about that. Unlike the NSA, they managed to do it without violating the Bill of Rights.
It's not sanctimony to be upset about it
It's sanctimonious and hypocritical to pretend it's a matter of great concern, when you've spent decades ignoring the deaths of millions. It fits a political agenda, because it suits the US to declare the perpetrators terrorists. Many times that many people were tortured, killed and dismembered every single day of the Congo Wars.
United States v. Miller (1976) was a 2nd Amendment case. Smith v. Maryland (1979) is the relevant case (I'm no legal scholar, but it was linked to in the article).
You are confusing private contracts with government charters
No, I'm not.
The Constitution does not ban your ISP from tattling on you to the government as long as you agree to allow them by accepting their ToS.
Correction: SCOTUS does not ban it - the Constitution is another matter. Let us not forget that SCOTUS is the same institution that, amongst many other abominations, held for almost 100 years that "separate but equal" was Constitutional.
BTW, ToS has no bearing in such a matter. That's a matter of civil law. If their ToS doesn't allow that, it doesn't prevent the government from using it as evidence. It means you can sue your ISP from a prison cell.
Corporations and other non-governmental third parties can willingly give the government any information they want and the Constitution has no bearing.
Because SCOTUS conveniently decided there was no reasonable expectation of privacy in phone records, where only 10 years before they'd ruled that there was. SCOTUS has spent much of the last forty years discovering clever loopholes in the Bill of Rights. There is no particular logic, consistency or common sense to these decisions, but who cares? Nobody can overrule SCOTUS.
It's very possible that this is another Al Capone situation: they couldn't get Capone for the major crimes they knew he had committed, so they got him for tax evasion.
And they did it without violating the 4th Amendment. Perhaps in those days school kids actually paid attention when they learned about the Constitution.
You may recall al Shabaab as the group behind the recent slaughter at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi.
As terrible as that was, I wish I could say that qualified as a major slaughter in Africa. Are you aware of what's happened in, for example, the Congo in recent years? The Second Congo War was the bloodiest war since WWII, and most Americans have never even heard of it. I don't know if the US should have gotten involved to stop it, but it didn't. Now we're sanctimonious about a mall shooting? That's called a political agenda, not a concern for human life.
This guy knew straight-up he was funding terrorist activities
I don't give a damn. I could care less if he's as guilty as sin. The Constitution is more important than catching some two-bit financial contributor to an organization the US government has labelled terrorist. You want the terrorists to win? Just keep wiping your ass with the Constitution. Then the terrorists win by getting us to abandon what's been the organic law of this country for over two centuries, and which every school child in this country is taught the importance of (apparently many people didn't pay attention in class).
As insulting as it is that we have to entertain this "appeal"
We won't know if it's being seriously entertained until he's granted a new trial, and the court takes his case seriously.
And what's insulting about it? I'll posit that he's guilty. It's still a defense attorney's obligation to try to get his client off. It wouldn't be the first time that evidence was tossed out because of a Constitutional violation. It's more important to defend the Constitution than it is to not let one or two criminals off.
Read up on the case, it's enlightening
What better source to get unbiased information than the FBI. Even believing everything the FBI says, this case is penny ante. Why not give them the same strict punishment that HSBC got for knowingly laundering billions of dollars over a period of years for terrorist organizations? I'd worry a lot more about that than a contribution that most people could put on their credit card.
Forgot to add, it's a shame that lawyers and judges specialize in rationalizing inconsistency. There's a reason the phrase "legal reasoning" is used ironically.
If money is speech as is precedent in the U.S, why is his donation to a terrorist group not protected under the first amendment?
Touché.
The provider almost certainly has a clause in their ToS/Contract specifying that they may turn over records for law enforcement purposes.
So what? ToS don't trump the Constitution, and "may turn over records for law enforcement purposes" can mean records that are subpoenaed.
We need more companies that actually fight gag orders and warrantless data requests.
That would be nice, but I don't think we should rely on the XYZ Communications Corp. to enforce the Constitution. That's the job of the courts, and it'll be interesting to see how this appeal goes.
The argument makes sense to me. AFAIK a defendant has the right to know specifically how the evidence against him was collected, and to be given any potentially exculpatory evidence. If you want to claim "national security", then you can't prosecute.