There is quite a bit of evidence that the port deal has to do with money interests of friends of GWB, otherwise the White House would not have push for it.
There is also "evidence" of Bush being behind 9/11 and, likely, the last December's tragic tsunami...
White House pushes for it, because they don't want America to appear as xenophobic, as it, sadly, is... From September 12th, 2001 Bush kept saying, that we are not at war with neither Islam nor Arabs. The 99% of the opposition to the "ports deal" is rooted in the fact, that UAE is both Islamic and Arabic...
No, it's pointing out a double standard that seems to have its root in cronyism and personal financial interests.
Khmm, I was almost convinced, the US government (the crusaders) is owned by the Israelis:-) Suddenly, it opposition to a deal, that would benefit an Israeli company draws fire...
There is no "double standard" neccessarily — government ownership of a weapon (such as encryption) is a legitimate concern. Operating ports are not — despite all of the politicians' hysterics — a "key to our national security". That is and will be in the hands of US Coast Guard.
the same U.S. committee that approved the Dubai ports deal
What the heck?
Whether or not the committees's qualms about Snort are justified, bringing up the "ports deal" is a useless flamebait... We all know perfectly well, that it was not the fact of the government ownership of the Dubai company, that is the real problem with that deal...
Ah, man: never encumbered by second thoughts about exploiting animals for warfare.
Why, what's wrong with that? Humans have, throughout history, used dogs, horses, elephants, camels in overt warfare. Poisonous snakes were also sometimes used covertly. Pigeons were (and are) used for communication... Even bacteria and viruses were weapons.
I'm trying to figure out why you feel that is a compelling argument. I have no trouble whatsoever drawing that parallel.
For you then China's and US' efforts are, indeed, the same. I'd wager a bet, however, that you are in a dire minority.
Children are citizens too
They are not equal citizens. They are forced to attend school, they can not vote, work, buy alcohol, tobacco, etc. Again, you may disagree with these limitations, but they are imposed by a virtually universal agreement in this and most other countries.
and I don't see politically subversive blogs being any more or less deserving of free speech than porn.
Is China blocking only some of its citizens (children) from accessing and participating in subservive blogs? It does not. That's reason 1.
Difference 2 is that limitations on political speech are self-perpetuating — your airing of your disagreement with limiting access to porn is not in itself porn and is thus legally uninhibited. Objecting to limits on political speech, on the other hand, is itself political speech and can be subject to the same limits...
This is why political speech ought to have the most protection in any society — without it, no other freedom is safe:
Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.
This is not about child pornography. It is about children accessing pornography.
Thank you for your correction, but it does not really change my point, does it?
To credibly accuse US government of hypocrisy one still has to equate US government's attempts to prevent American children from seeing porn with Chinese government's attempts to prevent Chinese citizens from seeing unapproved content.
It is illegal in US to sell body parts — they can only be donated, which, of course, is too much trouble for most people to consider.
People wait for transplants for years, and many die without receiving one. If it were possible for people to receive money for their or their (recently deceased) relatives' organs, these tradings wouldn't need to endanger the recipients with stuff of questionable quality.
Too bad, the electorate is so irrational on this issue, and spooked by urban myths of kidney thieves, etc...
Can the government really go after Google for aiding Chinese censorship and for NOT aiding US censorship AT THE SAME TIME?
Incomparable. What US wants from Google are sample anonymous records to use in law-making.
What China requested (and received) from Yahoo! (not Google) was personally identifying information, which lead to several people being jailed. What China wanted (and got) from Google was censorship of its search results.
The only was you can equate the two censorships (so as to be able to sustain your charge of "hypocrisy" against the US government) is to equate exchanging child pornography with discussing alternative forms of government.
But you already knew that. Sorry to get in the way of your US-bashing...
the soviet army was the only thing that stood between the us military and the rest of the world.
USSR was actively trying to "export the revolution". USA was protecting the world.
If you wish to look at it "objectively", you'll have to say: "USA is trying to export democracy. USSR was preventing that".
To equate the two, you must equate the Soviet regime with ours. I have seen fools (most of them never exposed to one or the other) trying to do that, so I'll just point you at the objective facts: forget the evil oppressiveness of all Communist rulers and simply look at the results. However much you may hate "corporations", examples like
Finland vs. Estonia
South vs. North Korea
Chile vs. Argentina
West vs. East Germany
Thailand vs. Cambodia
speak one tune: what USSR tried spread was far worse, than what America was protecting.
It really is black-and-white, and there are no "shades of grey" about it: USSR — bad; USA — good.
ussr was invited by the afghan administration to help them against amin who has murdered the prime minister, declared himself ruler of afghanistan and started a reign of terror.
The regime changes in Afghanistan were with the Soviet help. The new puppet-ruler then "invited" USSR. If you believe, that was legitimate, imagine your favorite President "inviting" foreign paratroopers to protect himself from impeachment...
Your ridiculous attempt at history revision surprises me — I thought, this Soviet lie fooled no one at all.
You may argue, that our methods of setting up preferred governments weren't much different, but our results speak for themselves. Places like Puerto Rico, South Korea, or even Chile (boo-Pinochet-boo!) are the regional champions and the envy of those of their neighbors, where the Commie rhethorics prevailed.
From its beginning USSR was unabashed about "exporting revolution". Fortunately for the rest of the world, the US was there to contain it.
Then what's going to happen to the catering companies that supply the CIA caffeteria?!
CIA's cafeteria is located in the US and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act will not apply to its suppliers.
That dealt with the letter of your follow-up.
As for its spirit — your stupid "America is the worst" innuendo — see my earlier post. You are comparing the incomparable — a meme common among young Lefties...
Pull the broomstick out slowly, when you are done counting to 100.
If you pass something like that, many companies will just reject all orders from any countries listed on the bad list, or just ignore the law and claim ignorance later.
I'm hoping, they'll do something similar to Google — offer limited services. Unlike Yahoo! Google is not even offering e-mail in China, for fear of being forced to divulge their user's secrets to the state.
are you really going to do the extensive research to prove the ordering company isn't somehow affiliated with the government?
It (a China-based vendor), likely, would be "somehow affiliated", but that is irrelevant. For my law to apply, it would need to be actively contributing to (or involved in) the suppression of US-recognized human rights.
What else can we claim to be "just the same"? What else have "the West" done recently, that is "no better", than those it hypocritically criticizes? Let's see, in no particular order:
"Gitmo" vs. GULAG
Denying Holocaust vs. picturing the Prophet
Republicans vs. Fascists.
"Hungry homeless" in New York vs. the starving in Africa and other truly poor places.
Israel's defensive wall vs. the one in Berlin.
War crime of degrading POWs vs. that of murdering them (then using their burned bodies for propaganda).
Savagery of beating suspected criminals up vs. that of slowly sawing off a reporter's head.
Gays' right to marry vs. minorities' right to vote.
Unintented deaths as a result of an act of war vs. intended victims of an act of terror.
No, because the mailer could omit any return address.
Anonymous remailers for e-mail exist too, some are free and easy enough to use.
Even if mail was opened and examined, proving that a particular letter was from a particular person _could_ be difficult/impossible.
Such proofs are only harder with e-mail — no handwriting experts would help, etc. But the prosecutors are not even asking for the Subject-header, according to TFA. Much less for the body.
May be you should learn to write. What you are saying:
No ammount of enforcement will stop someone who is determined, therefore it doesn't make sense to give up rights to attempt to, since the attempt will ultimately fail.
means just what I said it does — no rights-limiting enforcement of any law makes sense to you. And most law-enforcement is, in some way, rights-limiting.
Try to work on your rhetorics a little more. Practice on the example of (legal) wiretapping of suspected criminals, which is what TFA is about anyway.
As a matter of fact, the suspects were caught in a foreign country by a foreign government.
There are good reasons to believe, the "foreign government" was alerted to them by the US, which used the questionable eavesdropping to identify the terrorists. We can only speculate, of course.
But then, nobody knew for sure, whether residents of Bletchley Park were doing anything useful, or whether it was just a country hideout for "rich kids" during a war. The truth was only declassified decades later.
An invasion of privacy by any body is bad, whether private or governmental.
It is. But that occasional loss of such privacy by suspected criminals (a whopping 1800 of them in 2004 in US), warranted by the state and federal judges is not a loss of essential liberty. Even if you add the NSA's surveilance, that was not warranted by the judiciary. It still is not.
First of all, the quote in your original post was by Ben Franklin, and thus clearly applies to the US, and also is not directly referring to the article in any way.
Ben Franklin never limited his musings to US alone, a worldy man he, of course, referred to all people. The frost poster on this board invoked his name and misquoted him. My corrective follow-up was, of course, related to the article. Are you saying, I am off-topic?
No person or group of people can think of every possibility, and some channels have undoubtedly been left open. Given sufficient motivation, they will be found and exploited.
You are trying to convince me, all wiretapping is useless. Sorry, that's just laughable.
Ad hominem attacks never help to advance a rational argument.
You made yourself part of an argument, not me. (Once you did, my countering was perfectly rational. Comparision of your complexes was intended for reader's amusement — to ridicule of your grandstanding. I'm glad, you took the hint, and aren't doing it again.)
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The number of telephone wiretaps from 2000 to 2004 authorized by state and federal judges [emphasys mine -mi] increased by 44% to 1,710, according to the latest annual report from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.
Looks like reasonable and formally warranted searches to me. Ooopsie...
We are selling our country out while there is absolutely nothing you can do to prevent a motivated suicide bomber.
Continuing from TFA:
The vast bulk of the wiretaps related to drug and racketeering investigations, according to the report. But terrorism and other national-security investigations also helped drive the increase, according to security experts and service providers.
Another oopsie. The bulk of it is against drug-trafficing and racketeering, not "motivated suicide bombers". Not that those "motivated suicide bombers" are quite so unstoppable either — Israel, for example, has reduced her enemies from suicide bombers to much less effective Qassam rockets. But I'm not going for a debate with someone, who uses cliches like "selling out country":-)
Remember to logout. And next time — read the entire thread before inserting your own two kopeeks worth of already used and defeated arguments.
I think what Mr. Franklin meant by temporary security is that you are more secure from, for instance, the terrorists, but are now open to attack by your government.
And I don't think so.
Your theory is further flawed in implying that the threats are the same.
This makes your overll security temporary.
Actually, this would mean, there is no gain in security at all -- not even temporary. Your theory is not even self-consistent, thus wrong. Sorry.
Slashdot Mirror
White House pushes for it, because they don't want America to appear as xenophobic, as it, sadly, is... From September 12th, 2001 Bush kept saying, that we are not at war with neither Islam nor Arabs. The 99% of the opposition to the "ports deal" is rooted in the fact, that UAE is both Islamic and Arabic...
There is no "double standard" neccessarily — government ownership of a weapon (such as encryption) is a legitimate concern. Operating ports are not — despite all of the politicians' hysterics — a "key to our national security". That is and will be in the hands of US Coast Guard.
Whether or not the committees's qualms about Snort are justified, bringing up the "ports deal" is a useless flamebait... We all know perfectly well, that it was not the fact of the government ownership of the Dubai company, that is the real problem with that deal...
Why should we suddenly have qualms about sharks?
Difference 2 is that limitations on political speech are self-perpetuating — your airing of your disagreement with limiting access to porn is not in itself porn and is thus legally uninhibited. Objecting to limits on political speech, on the other hand, is itself political speech and can be subject to the same limits...
This is why political speech ought to have the most protection in any society — without it, no other freedom is safe:
To credibly accuse US government of hypocrisy one still has to equate US government's attempts to prevent American children from seeing porn with Chinese government's attempts to prevent Chinese citizens from seeing unapproved content.
It is illegal in US to sell body parts — they can only be donated, which, of course, is too much trouble for most people to consider.
People wait for transplants for years, and many die without receiving one. If it were possible for people to receive money for their or their (recently deceased) relatives' organs, these tradings wouldn't need to endanger the recipients with stuff of questionable quality.
Too bad, the electorate is so irrational on this issue, and spooked by urban myths of kidney thieves, etc...
What China requested (and received) from Yahoo! (not Google) was personally identifying information, which lead to several people being jailed. What China wanted (and got) from Google was censorship of its search results.
The only was you can equate the two censorships (so as to be able to sustain your charge of "hypocrisy" against the US government) is to equate exchanging child pornography with discussing alternative forms of government.
But you already knew that. Sorry to get in the way of your US-bashing...
If you wish to look at it "objectively", you'll have to say: "USA is trying to export democracy. USSR was preventing that".
To equate the two, you must equate the Soviet regime with ours. I have seen fools (most of them never exposed to one or the other) trying to do that, so I'll just point you at the objective facts: forget the evil oppressiveness of all Communist rulers and simply look at the results. However much you may hate "corporations", examples like
- Finland vs. Estonia
- South vs. North Korea
- Chile vs. Argentina
- West vs. East Germany
- Thailand vs. Cambodia
speak one tune: what USSR tried spread was far worse, than what America was protecting.It really is black-and-white, and there are no "shades of grey" about it: USSR — bad; USA — good.
Your ridiculous attempt at history revision surprises me — I thought, this Soviet lie fooled no one at all.
You may argue, that our methods of setting up preferred governments weren't much different, but our results speak for themselves. Places like Puerto Rico, South Korea, or even Chile (boo-Pinochet-boo!) are the regional champions and the envy of those of their neighbors, where the Commie rhethorics prevailed.
From its beginning USSR was unabashed about "exporting revolution". Fortunately for the rest of the world, the US was there to contain it.
That dealt with the letter of your follow-up.
As for its spirit — your stupid "America is the worst" innuendo — see my earlier post. You are comparing the incomparable — a meme common among young Lefties...
Pull the broomstick out slowly, when you are done counting to 100.
We need a new edition, that will also make it illegal for US companies to cooperate with civil rights suppression by foreign regimes.
Call your lawmaker...
It is all right here. Revolutionary workers unite!
Have to stop... You got the idea.
How about the phone calls — couldn't they always observe, who is calling a suspect, even if the actual listening requires a judicial warrant?
Try to work on your rhetorics a little more. Practice on the example of (legal) wiretapping of suspected criminals, which is what TFA is about anyway.
But then, nobody knew for sure, whether residents of Bletchley Park were doing anything useful, or whether it was just a country hideout for "rich kids" during a war. The truth was only declassified decades later.
Looks like reasonable and formally warranted searches to me. Ooopsie...
Continuing from TFA: Another oopsie. The bulk of it is against drug-trafficing and racketeering, not "motivated suicide bombers". Not that those "motivated suicide bombers" are quite so unstoppable either — Israel, for example, has reduced her enemies from suicide bombers to much less effective Qassam rockets. But I'm not going for a debate with someone, who uses cliches like "selling out country"Remember to logout. And next time — read the entire thread before inserting your own two kopeeks worth of already used and defeated arguments.
Your theory is further flawed in implying that the threats are the same.
Actually, this would mean, there is no gain in security at all -- not even temporary. Your theory is not even self-consistent, thus wrong. Sorry.