So, you think there was no western influence in the decision of the Ukraine to attempt to join the EU?
As for hanging on to old territories, let's not forget that much of eastern Europe was Russian in our lifetime, I don't see western Europe renouncing a lot of territory either.
In the sense you're using the term, of people who are actually important trying to get Ukraine into the EU?
No. There has been absolutely no western attempt to get Ukraine into the EU since we gave up in adding them to NATO in the 90s. They add nothing of use to either the military alliance, or the economic union and bring a lot of baggage that they are unable to deal with on their own. The current EU can't handle 10 million Greeks, it couldn't handle the 50-million strong, significantly poorer, ethno-political puzzle that is Ukraine without significant powers going to Brussels (real powers: as in the kind that David Cameron can't interfere with at all).
In the sense that ordinary Ukrainians preferred the EU to being part of the Eurasian Union, and ordinary Europeans were unwilling to allow their governments to sit by while Putin couped Yanukovych and had the replacement massacre the activists in the Maiden prior to creating a new Iron curtain on the Dnieper?
The Fourth doesn't have restrictions on looking for evidence of a crime. The police can't come up to me and say, "Since you're innocent, we're seizing your car." They do have to have some evidence of wrongdoing first (far too little evidence in current jurisprudence, in my opinion). An unreasonable search by a government agent is an unreasonable search, and if an Army private conducted an illegal search and found pot on me any evidence proceeding from that would be "fruit of the poison tree" and hence inadmissible in court.
You ever heard the story about the hang-glider hobbyist, the boater, and the civil engineer who were walking in the woods and got to a river? They all had a different idea of how to cross, and somebody had to be wrong. People iwll use their personal experience to interpret reality, and it does not always apply.
In this case you're pretty clearly either a lawyer or someone who has spent a lot of time in criminal law, so you can't conceive of a world where the government searches someone for a purpose that is not law enforcement. Thus your first response to this world is to talk about how the search would be used in Court. But the Army does generally not search people for info that it intends to use in a Jury Trial in Federal District Court. When it does it uses the President's Law Enforcement powers, which makes it a Fourth Amendment search.
The Military generally searches people pursuant to some military mission authorized by Congress, approved by the President, and in compliance with military law. And if that required a warrant as per the Fourth Amendment then the entire Civil War was a massive violation of that Amendment, because the Union Army was trying to capture ("Seize") the Confederate Army, and they didn't bring District Judges along with them to write out warrants. In some ways that's more powerful then law enforcement (PoWs are PoWs for the duration, and they have virtually no legal options; whereas criminal defendants have all kinds of options to not give the Prosecutor everything he wants), in other ways it's less powerful ("the duration" could be a few weeks if the guy gets captured in April of '45). The commander-in-chief powers are simply a fundamentally different beast then the law enforcement powers, which means that using the law enforcement amendments to police them simply does not work.
Which is why the opponents of NSA surveillance have had less legal success fighting it in civilian courts then the supporters of secession did in 1861.
The reason the Army has certain powers of search and seizure in wartime is that exactly what is "reasonable" changes with context. It's also arguable that it's a normal part of waging war, and although the Constitution clearly recognizes war it doesn't define it much.
With the Articles the Founders made the mistake of giving the central government too few powers to prosecute wars and bully recalcitrant states into not acting like idiots (it took years to convince Connecticut to give up it's claim to Chicago). They went the other way with the Constitution, but limited a lot of this to the Commander-in-Chief powers, because they figured Commander-in-Chief powers would be much harder to abuse for political gain, and if you were abusing them for non-political gain people would get pissed and vote for the other guy.
And, of course, spent the whole time implying they were doing no such thing, because they were really good politicians.
Kidnapping a US citizen by mistake has civil law implications. The kidnappers, if they acted more or less in good faith, probably are immune from criminal charges, but the government can get sued that way.
If it's an arrest then there's no grounds for a lawsuit if the arrest is ok under the "good faith" exception to the Fourth Amendment. The guy's in jail and he's gonna stay there.
If it's not,there's wrongful arrest issues, the Civil Rights Violation statute comes into play, etc.
I didn't say we were better, I said we didn't do it with their style. The style-points are what makes this orders of magnitude more fucked up then the shit we pull. We're trying to be get away with bad shit, they OTOH are doing bad shit on international TV.
And the bad shit is just amazing. The only clear-cut case of genocide since WW2 was Rwanda (alternatives tend to be ethnic cleansing, or lethal policy fuck-ups like the Great Leap Forward) happened on international TV. Let me repeat: they decided to ignore the evidence in front of their eyes and protect the folks murdering at a better clip then Hitler. You could probably find something you could spin as "as bad as Rwanda" we protected in the UN, but you ain't gonna find something internationally televised. And that's not all they did. They also sent troops to protect the murderers. They were quite literally willing to die to keep the genocidaires in power.
BTW, both Deby and Mobutu were French clients. They have retained control of Francophone Africa via frequently replaced semi-legitimate Presidents. These aren't necessarily our allies -- the smaller Congo, for example, was Communist-aligned and a de facto French vassal up until the Angolans intervened as part of the last Congo War. Deby is in this category. Most of his Air Force, for example, is Russian-made.
I'm always wary of anyone who thinks the road to freedom is paved with state's rights.
In the US the system (checks and balances, staggered elections, almost every official art the state level is elected in his own name, virtually impossible to change Constitution that everyone argues about constantly, etc.) mean the most likely tyranny is that of the majority. It's unheard of for the Feds to get taken over by an oppressive majority before states do, and generally the state is much crueler. The Feds have nearly unlimited resources, a vast bureaucracy, etc. which tends to lead to a cold and powerful, but extremely impersonal, evil that doesn't actually do much violence; whereas states tend to rely on Entrepreneurial Evil like the KKK.
Then when the majority comes it's damn senses the state can;t even pay the oppressed minority back because a) EvilEntrepeneurs do not keep the great records the Feds keep, so you have no idea who to pay, and b) the state wouldn't have the money anyway.
The reason for the Constitution was not to give us the glories of limited government, or protect our rights from DC
What the Constitution was intended to do was to limit the power of the federal government, as an inducement for states to form the union. That is, it was primarily intended to tell states: you can mostly keep doing whatever it is you're doing and the federal government won't interfere. The extension of many Constitutional limits on state governments happened later.
Under the articles of Confederation who collected taxes? The states. Who had the only army? The states. Who could beg for money and troops? The central government. Under the Articles of Confederation said US Government's biggest triumphs were a) convincing Connecticut to give up it's claim to Chicago (and, incidentally, a Pacific coastline), and b) naming a box on the map the "Northwest Territories."
The argument you're making was, indeed, made by the Founders. But even at the time it was clearly propaganda, meant more to convince stubborn states that the new federal government was designed to leave them be as much as possible. Except for the taxes, conscription powers, etc..
it is the reason the union Army could search suspected confederate spies and gun-runners without being accompanied by a District Court Judge, etc.... After all, opposing us militarily isn't necessarily wrong, so detaining Laura Secords of the world does not imply we have a legal case against them.
Just because the military or government does something and gets away with it doesn't mean it's constitutional. Probably the vast majority of constitutional violates are never prosecuted, so producing an endless litany of cases where people got away with such violations is evidence of nothing.
So you're arguing every military campaign the US has ever waged, that has involved capturing prisoners ("seizure") or reading people's papers ("search") is unconstitutional and nobody noticed? You're implying that in 1942 they had the right to shoot a guy in fieldgrau on sight, but didn't have the right go through his pockets.
What's more likely: That I'm right, and the Courts will not work to fix this problem, or that you're right and the Courts are going to ban half the career-paths in the Armed Services tomorrow?
Bullshit. If the Army has a commander-in-chief justification for going through your papers it can do so.
Bullshit to that no he can't. You can tell how much they though that the army should be able to dictate stuff outside a time of war by some of the other provisions in the constitution.
Who said jack-squat about war-time? That word does not appear in the Constitution at all.
The Army has orders given by the Executive branch, and approved by Congress. Thus whatever it does in furtherance of those orders is a use of the President's Commander-in-Chief power, and not subject to the Fourth Amendment.
looking for evidence of wrongdoing Wrongdoing implies criminal behavior.
I don't understand. Are you arguing that according to the law it's OK to detain someone if you're not looking for criminal evidence?
This is why they can read your papers at the border, it is the reason the union Army could search suspected confederate spies and gun-runners without being accompanied by a District Court Judge, etc. Those don't use the Search and Seizure power, so they are not affected by the Fourth.
Oh that's the border law where the border mooks have arbitrarily declared 80% of Americans to be under their jurisiction because they're "close" to the border, even if they've never been across it. Are you arguing that's reasonable, because I'm pretty sure it's not. And remember the whole "during war" thing?
The word "war" appears in the Constitution four times. It's part of the definition of treason, once is Congress's power to Declare War, and twice in the clause that explicitly stops states from certain actions "in time of peace".
There's no actual clause saying the President's power increase in time of war, or even definition of war-time. It's something that happens when Congress decides that letting the President have his way is more important then arguing whatever they were arguing on September 10th.
A clue: you're not at war right now. And you're intentionally misreading the document. There is no legal definition of search and seizure that was not concocted after the 4th. Trying to use one concocted after is using weasel wording to intentionally misread a document which is the model of clarity.
Americans.
I'm not American. I'm English and that means I am a fluent, native speaker in my own language. It also means I can read and understand the document. The meaning is quite clear. If you don't like it, you ought to change it, not blatently torture language until it means any damn thing you want, because that's frankly dishonest.
If you do that, why bother having a constitution at all? If you can weasel-word your way out of the clearest of provisions then there's no point in having it.
Apparently you haven't done any reading whatsoever if you think that that "wartime" has any meaningful effect on the powers of the Army.
And, again, this isn't me making shit up. Bill Sherman actually marched an army of 70,000 troops from Atlanta to the sea "living off the land," which was a euphemism for stealing anything edible that wasn't nailed down (altho technically they left receipts, usually). This involved going into people's houses, ripping everything up to find hiding places, etc. And he had no warrants because he was an officer of the US Army, given a commission by Congress, and lawful orders from the President; and he wasn't looking to arrest people.
It's not my fault that you feel betrayed when the US Constitution uses US Legal English, and not British English.
The USSR had a huge and thorough constitution, but since they chose to ignore it, you can see how much good it did them.
I love us, but frequently our delusion that the Founders were definitely only interested in defending personal freedom, and would have preferred the British over-running DC to even the most trivial violations
Bullshit. If the Army has a commander-in-chief justification for going through your papers it can do so.
The Army oath of enlistment has you swearing to defend the Constitution. Obeying the President's orders is secondary. The Army makes a pretty big deal about this when you're enlisting since it's a common question among potential recruits. You are only obligated to obey Constitutional orders. If a conflict arises between the Constitution and the President's (or your superior's) orders, the Constitution wins.
Re-check your logic.
I was saying an Army order is not a Search under the Fourth Amendment unless it is intended to turn up evidence of a crime. Which means that if your Captain orders you to search somebody's car, and he's got a valid justification under the Commander-in-Chief clause, that's a Constitutional order.
So a Presidential order for you to go through someone's papers doesn't have to be obeyed (and in fact shouldn't be obeyed) if there's good reason to believe it's an unconstitutional order.
This is why they can read your papers at the border
They can read your papers at the border because the Constitution only applies to U.S. soil (which incidentally is why Bush chose Guantanamo Bay to hold terrorists - it's not U.S. soil, it's Cuban). The definition of U.S. soil got stretched a bit to account for air travel - people who've landed on planes in the U.S. but haven't yet been processed by Customs and Immigration are not considered to be on U.S. soil yet. That exclusion was famously abused by three letter agencies claiming anyone living within a hundred miles of an international airport no longer had Constitutional protection.
The US Constitution binds the government everywhere. Otherwise there would be no such thing as a Constitutional order to the guys at Ramstein. The President's p[ower to order them around, and thus their officer's power to order them around, stems from the US Constitution.
Overseas they don't have to bother with the Fourth (as much) because they don't have to assume a random dude in Dublin is American. They kidnap him, it's a seizure, but it didn't need a warrant because he's not American. If he turns out to be American they have an interesting legal case because there's a "good faith exception" to the warrant requirement.
The official explanation for the exception is that it's reasonable to search travelers for contraband (remember: the Fourth only applies to searches the Courts deem "unreasonable"). But if it got thrown out the President could easily accomplish much the same effect simply by having the Army do the searches, and then not arrest the dude with the weed until a District Court Judge could be found to sign the warrant.
I wish I was Michael Hayden. He's got a really nice pension.
It's interesting that rather then respond to my argument, or deal with my point that there's a reason every single fucking attempt to rein in the NSA via the Courts has failed spectacularly, you resort to name-calling.
That was when the Soviet alliance had borders with both Bavaria and Austria.
I didn't say the Swiss were perfect, I said they were better then the alternatives. Today they're probably the only European state that isn't two of a) a committed member of NATO (which militarily dominated by the US because the Euros refuse to spend money of defense), b) a committed member of the EU (which is militarily dependent on NATO), and c) threatened by the Russians in an immediate and very personal manner.
It's just not easy to find a good place to hide from the US Defense establishment when everybody is dependent on it.
The French convinced the UN to intervene. After the victims were dead. The intervention was spun as a way to stop the violence. Since the Génocidaires were in full retreat it was de facto a UN operation to protect the people who'd just hacked 10% of their country to death. The Prime Minister who planned this later got promoted to President. The reason for this ridiculous defense of the indefensible was that the rebels were Ugandan-trained, and Ugandans speak English; whereas the mass-murderers had all gone to college at the same elite schools people like Jacques Chirac attended.
I'm sure in the long history of the US fucking people over there's something that fucked-up; but I can't think of it off the top of my head.
The Fourth Amendment only applies to "unreasonable search and seizure." Reasonable search and seizure, or uses of governmental information-gathering capabilities that are not "search and seizure", do not require a warrant.
Depends what you mean by "require". It is completely, blindingly obvious that both the spirit and letter of the 4th amendment is to stop the government digging through your private papers without a warrant.
Bullshit. If the Army has a commander-in-chief justification for going through your papers it can do so.
This is why they can read your papers at the border, it is the reason the union Army could search suspected confederate spies and gun-runners without being accompanied by a District Court Judge, etc. Those don't use the Search and Seizure power, so they are not affected by the Fourth.
And, BTW, if you're arguing the spirit of an Amendment is violated by doing precisely what the Amendment says (ie: not using this info in Court), then you're never gonna do very well in Court. Particularly since we have five Textualists in the Supremes.
The commander-in-chief justification doesn't actually have to be terribly strong. The Army's Japanese detention program detained hundreds of thousands, and technically the Court ruling against the program only meant that ex-Californian Japanese could live in any US state but the three on the Pacific Coast, not that the Feds did not have the power to throw them out of Cali.
Just because the government decided to do it anyway and has trapped people in a kafkaesque situation where you can't stop them unless you can prove they're doing it and can't prove they're doing it unless you can get a court to make them stop, doesn't mean it's allowed.
Black's Law Dictionary defines Search and Seizure as "These are the methods used to detect an punish crime that includes searching and taking property and data that can be used by the prosecution of the criminal."
Which came first, the 4th amendment or Black's law dictionary. The 4th was created because the King of England had his minions digging around in dissidents papers looking for evidence of wrongdoing. So they made a law which said "no digging without a warrant".
looking for evidence of wrongdoing Wrongdoing implies criminal behavior. After all, opposing us militarily isn't necessarily wrong, so detaining Laura Secords of the world does not imply we have a legal case against them.
Now you have a bunch of liars and fools pretending the meaning and intent is not clear by redefining what various words mean in order to justify it.
The history and language of those who wrote the 4th make the meaning entirely clear.
Americans.
I love us, but frequently our delusion that the Founders were definitely only interested in defending personal freedom, and would have preferred the British over-running DC to even the most trivial violations of said freedom forces us to say things that are simply ridiculous.
The reason for the Constitution was not to give us the glories of limited government, or protect our rights from DC; it was to eliminate limits that made the Articles of Confederation unworkable. The Fourth is actually an excellent example of this, applying itself only to law enforcement powers (because arresting people like the aforementioned Laura Secord without a warrant was both necessary to the survival of the Republic and impossible if the military's seizure power was dependent on a Judge having the paperwork), explicitly allowing searches and seizures when they were not "unreasonable," also allowing unwarranted searches when the suspect agrees (because then it's not a use of the Search Power), etc.
The major point of the Fourth was actually to prevent Obama from rigging the election in Hillary's favor by shenanigans involving the Feds.
Yes, Germany could defend Germany because Germany defending Germany does not require the ability to send German troops outside of Germany.
The problem is that Putin probably wouldn't be eating Germany. He'd be eating the Balts and Ukraine, and Germany could not respond because when you spend 1.2% of your GDP on defense* you simply can't afford the large strategic transport aircraft that are required to carry a 60 ton tank.
Since the three Balts are Eurozone and NATO they can't let that happen, thus they are totally dependent on the US.
The French and Brits spend more, but they tend to get flashy stuff (like aircraft carriers), rather then the 15 or 20 strategic transport aircraft they'd need to defend Vilnius in a timely manner. And the UK's currently aircraft-carrier-less because they figure that if they actually need a carrier they can borrow one of ours, and they;re using this year's operating costs to build the Queen Elizabeth class (which will be a bit more then flashy).
*Stateside we spend almost that much on benefits for former troops -- the VA is 0.9% of GDP.
"but have strong legal protections from mass surveillance"
Both the US and the EU have strong legal protections from mass surveillance. The problem is those protections get ignored or subverted.
What US protection?
The Fourth Amendment only applies to "unreasonable search and seizure." Reasonable search and seizure, or uses of governmental information-gathering capabilities that are not "search and seizure", do not require a warrant. Black's Law Dictionary defines Search and Seizure as "These are the methods used to detect an punish crime that includes searching and taking property and data that can be used by the prosecution of the criminal." The NSA is not gathering data to arrest criminals and charge them in the civilian Court System. To be sure some of the data gets used that way, but if the military finds something out in the course of operations that are not intended to arrest your ass, there is a long history of the Court's saying "ok, Srg. Jennings says this guy had weed, we now grant a warrant to you Mr. DEA man to search this guy."
That doesn't mean there isn't a Check on the NSA's surveillance power, it just means that anybody trying to use the Courts and the Fourth Amendment to stop this shit is likely to find that particular API call does not work. They can't get to a hearing, because to get a hearing you have to prove you have a right to sue, which is called standing, and the plain language of the law is that the Fourth Amendment does not cover NSA Surveillance, mass or otherwise. Which is extremely frustrating to people who are convinced that the Constitution must ban this shit, because it's evil so of course the Constitution bans it, and of course this will be enforced by the Courts.
The actual Check on NSA Surveillance power is Congress, which could simply add a line to the budget saying "none of this money shall be used for PRISM," start hearings about the programs, or start impeaching people. Or any number of things that could actually work. But we can't try that. The EFF's lawyers have a legal casebook in their toolbox, but no lobbyists, so clearly the only tool for the job is the legal casebook.
The French state is notorious for extreme hypocrisy. If the French State decides that violating it's rules will protect it from future terror attacks the rules will be violated.
Most of Europe is actually entirely dependent on the US Defense-Industrial complex for protection from Putin, that's the reason the Germans insist on creating investigations of NSA surveillance and then six months later announcing "gee, it's kinda hard to charge US Government employees, who live and work in Virginia, in a Court system in a different country on a different continent." No shit, it did not take you six months to figure that out; you're just stalling and hoping the issue will go away because there's bugger-all you can do to fix the problem. Until countries like Germany start spending their money on expensive materiel like aircraft capable of transporting tanks, they are de facto vassals of the US in all matters relating to the military, and therefore totally reliant on the NSA regardless of what their local laws say.
Try Switzerland. "Neutrals" closer to Putin's Russia are actually worse bets then non-nuetrals, because the Greek capital isn't a day's boat ride from the Russian capital. Also avoid countries near active political conflicts. Ireland not only has extremely close historical links with both the US and UK, it also has a strong interest in creating it's own database of it's own people because of that little conflict in Northern Ireland; which is heating up after Robinson resigned in a dispute over IRA weapons decommissioning.
The manufacturer assures you that putting any new ink into one of their cartridges is likely to kill you, your children, your parents, probably a few of your neighbours, every single puppy in town, and your printer.
Are you SURE about the puppies?
Because I have tried so many other things to get rid of those smelly nasty dogs...
As a long-term Detroit resident who happened to be white I'd be more concerned about a white neighborhood. Black criminals in a black area will mug you, steal from you, and occasionally threaten your life if you're white; but they will almost never actually physically hurt you.
They aren't stupid. They don't want to actually hurt anybody (Homicide is a lot harder to evade then the burglary unit, or some patrolman investigating a mugging), except possibly other criminals, and it's not hard to tell you ain't Little D from two streets over whose on their shit list.
People like you are the reason it's a good idea to live in a bad area.
I grew up in such a neighborhood in Detroit. Nobody died. Nobody got physically hurt. Break-ins were a problem, and there was an armed robbery spree; but in general the local criminals would go out of their way not to physically hurt us because doing so would bring the cops in like avenging angels. The House went from under $10k when my parents bought it in 1980 or so to $80k when they sold it, whereas every house my stepmom owns, who insists on living in totally safe neighborhoods with huge McMansion-style houses, has been sold at a loss.
The issues with high-crime areas aren't the crime itself, it's the insurance costs (especially auto insurance in Michigan), and the property taxes (property tax in Detroit is always higher then your mortgage payment).
If the Swedish Justice System was so bad why did he go to Sweden instead of some other country?
Because he hadn't committed any crimes in Sweden before he went there????
You can read whatever agenda into my posts you feel like, by admitting he didn't know what the Swedish system was like you're agreeing with every damn thing I just said.
Willfully obtuse? He wasn't accused of any crimes before traveling to Sweden, aside from the purely political ones whined about by the United States. So the "why did he go to Sweden instead of some other country" is the first of many non-sequiturs..
This man claims he went to Sweden to flee a biased US Justice System.
Why the fuck would he do that without at least learning Swedish rules?
Answer: because he's an arrogant fuck who thinks everyplace works exactly like the Australia of his paranoid dreams, and he really does not fucking understand it when somebody tries to arrest him simply because he did something that is an arrestable offense under their law.
If the Swedes wanted to turn him over to the US they could do so simply by lying
And Obama could order the USAF to launch drone strikes on both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump tomorrow, but that's not going to happen either. There is no way the Swedish government survives if they've spent years crying rape only to say "just kidding, guys! It was really just a pretext to hand Assange over to the U.S. the whole time!"
Obama couldn't do that. There's a process. And the result of the process is never going to be "middle-aged, wealthy, white guy MUST DIE."
You're contradicting yourself.
If Sweden can't turn him over because they've said it's about rape too many times, then one more press release saying "yes this really is about rape," followed a month later by "but we didn't realize the US was going to tie his leaks to the death of this Swede in Afghanistan" is not gonna be less embarrassing then getting their hands on him without the first press release and immediately writing the second.
And I really think you're delusional if you think the US Cares where Assange is locked up. Locked up in Sweden on rape charges discredits him as a political opponent, and makes it impossible for him to get new leaks. Locked up in the US awaiting trial in civilian court is actually worse, because if he gets off whatever ridiculous charge they try to bring against an Australian for betraying a country that's not Australia then he's not only a stronger political opponent, he's also free to do what he will.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Julian Assange is right where the security state wants him, doing precisely what the security state wants him to do.
OTOH, if you have ever actually dealt with Swedes, you know their obsession with proper rules and procedure borders on OCD (their shock when someone is so gauche as to cut in line has to be seen to be believed), and it's quite credible for them to claim they can't sign such an agreement since it would not be valid under Swedish law.
Even the top paid hack on this subject, Rei, admits that Swedish laws don't allow deportation for "intelligence crimes". Sweden, like most civilized countries, could vow not to deport a suspect to a regime that's fond of executing and torturing people they don't like. Regimes like the United States.
Contradicting yourself again.
Either the Swedes have promised they won't turn him over for intelligence crimes, or they haven't.
What's actually going on is they've given Assange precisely the assurance he asked for, but he's fucking paranoid so that's not enough, and he's asking them to guarantee that any crime he's ever accused of by the US will not result in extradition. Given that they think he committed a rape a day while
And how much are Hampton Creek paying you to shill?
Your own quote of the statute indicates everything that AEB is accused of perfectly fine. Anyone who understands simple logic understands that for the AEB to have broken the rule it would have to mention Hampton Creek in an ad. In the entire Guardian article no blog posts, google ads, etc. mentioning them were quoted.
I don't oppose Hampton Creek on principle. I don't dislike veganism or animal substitution products in principle. I'd probably vote for a law in Ohio that improved the lives of egg-laying hens. I think 99% of chicken farmers would be better off if they quit the field completely.
But I absolutely cannot fucking stand it when some rich-ass white guy, whose sum total experience in being oppressed by the government is jack-squat; deludes himself into thinking that a perfectly legal (and perfectly understandable) reaction to his get-rich-quick schemes* from people who are largely not a) rich, b) particularly white, or c) asses; is in fact Evil Governmental Oppression.
Hampton Creek people: you have the right to make your product. You have the right to sell the product. You can't name it deceptively, but you can sell it. You can use the profits, or Peter Thiel's billions, to disparage chicken farmers all you want. Since chicken farmers aren't wealthy enough to think of Teslas as affordable, they do not actually have the right to outright say bad things about your product. But they do have the right to say good things about their product, pay people to repeat those good things, pay to ensure their talking points come up when someone is clearly googling your talking points, etc. And if you Hampton Creek people can;t deal with this I will personally write the ballot initiative banning fake eggs from Ohio forever. Because if you can't win with more speech rights then the other side, more money then the other side, and wealthier customers (Vegan ain;t a poor man's demographic), then fuck you.
*A start-up is by definition a get-rich-quick scheme.
The tax is only paid by producers of eggs. The difference between these guys and the RIAA isn't that are supposed to act different, it's that instead of voluntary dues assessed by the association the funding is a mandatory tax paid by egg farmers vie the government.
So your tax dollars are only relevant if you;re an egg-farmer.
The emails are internal. Internally they're allowed to hate you.
The external stuff is all paying people to say nice things about eggs, and they are allowed to do that, even in places wqhere people don;t normally say niced things about eggs (such as google searches for vegan egg substitutes).
Learn some shit about how the farm industry works before discrediting your entire movement.
All, as in every single one, American Farm Industry lobbying organizations are funded by a checkoff tax. A farmer moves x units of food y, he sends the government x*checkoff, and they send it to YforAmerica. Your tazx dollars only go to Y to the extent you pay for their products, so you VeganCyclist have never given a dime to the Egg Board.
Which means if you try to get all of industry Y fired (that's what "disrupt" actually means), YforAmerica's entire fucking job is to disrupt your ass. And if you start implying that the actual government (as in Congress) is oppressing you because YforAmerica is doing it's fucking job you have just pissed off the 20-30% of the country that lives in places where they know how the farm industry operates, and guess who controls Congress?
Slashdot Mirror
So, you think there was no western influence in the decision of the Ukraine to attempt to join the EU?
As for hanging on to old territories, let's not forget that much of eastern Europe was Russian in our lifetime, I don't see western Europe renouncing a lot of territory either.
In the sense you're using the term, of people who are actually important trying to get Ukraine into the EU?
No. There has been absolutely no western attempt to get Ukraine into the EU since we gave up in adding them to NATO in the 90s. They add nothing of use to either the military alliance, or the economic union and bring a lot of baggage that they are unable to deal with on their own. The current EU can't handle 10 million Greeks, it couldn't handle the 50-million strong, significantly poorer, ethno-political puzzle that is Ukraine without significant powers going to Brussels (real powers: as in the kind that David Cameron can't interfere with at all).
In the sense that ordinary Ukrainians preferred the EU to being part of the Eurasian Union, and ordinary Europeans were unwilling to allow their governments to sit by while Putin couped Yanukovych and had the replacement massacre the activists in the Maiden prior to creating a new Iron curtain on the Dnieper?
Yes, that happened.
The Fourth doesn't have restrictions on looking for evidence of a crime. The police can't come up to me and say, "Since you're innocent, we're seizing your car." They do have to have some evidence of wrongdoing first (far too little evidence in current jurisprudence, in my opinion). An unreasonable search by a government agent is an unreasonable search, and if an Army private conducted an illegal search and found pot on me any evidence proceeding from that would be "fruit of the poison tree" and hence inadmissible in court.
You ever heard the story about the hang-glider hobbyist, the boater, and the civil engineer who were walking in the woods and got to a river? They all had a different idea of how to cross, and somebody had to be wrong. People iwll use their personal experience to interpret reality, and it does not always apply.
In this case you're pretty clearly either a lawyer or someone who has spent a lot of time in criminal law, so you can't conceive of a world where the government searches someone for a purpose that is not law enforcement. Thus your first response to this world is to talk about how the search would be used in Court. But the Army does generally not search people for info that it intends to use in a Jury Trial in Federal District Court. When it does it uses the President's Law Enforcement powers, which makes it a Fourth Amendment search.
The Military generally searches people pursuant to some military mission authorized by Congress, approved by the President, and in compliance with military law. And if that required a warrant as per the Fourth Amendment then the entire Civil War was a massive violation of that Amendment, because the Union Army was trying to capture ("Seize") the Confederate Army, and they didn't bring District Judges along with them to write out warrants. In some ways that's more powerful then law enforcement (PoWs are PoWs for the duration, and they have virtually no legal options; whereas criminal defendants have all kinds of options to not give the Prosecutor everything he wants), in other ways it's less powerful ("the duration" could be a few weeks if the guy gets captured in April of '45). The commander-in-chief powers are simply a fundamentally different beast then the law enforcement powers, which means that using the law enforcement amendments to police them simply does not work.
Which is why the opponents of NSA surveillance have had less legal success fighting it in civilian courts then the supporters of secession did in 1861.
The reason the Army has certain powers of search and seizure in wartime is that exactly what is "reasonable" changes with context. It's also arguable that it's a normal part of waging war, and although the Constitution clearly recognizes war it doesn't define it much.
With the Articles the Founders made the mistake of giving the central government too few powers to prosecute wars and bully recalcitrant states into not acting like idiots (it took years to convince Connecticut to give up it's claim to Chicago). They went the other way with the Constitution, but limited a lot of this to the Commander-in-Chief powers, because they figured Commander-in-Chief powers would be much harder to abuse for political gain, and if you were abusing them for non-political gain people would get pissed and vote for the other guy.
And, of course, spent the whole time implying they were doing no such thing, because they were really good politicians.
Kidnapping a US citizen by mistake has civil law implications. The kidnappers, if they acted more or less in good faith, probably are immune from criminal charges, but the government can get sued that way.
If it's an arrest then there's no grounds for a lawsuit if the arrest is ok under the "good faith" exception to the Fourth Amendment. The guy's in jail and he's gonna stay there.
If it's not,there's wrongful arrest issues, the Civil Rights Violation statute comes into play, etc.
I didn't say we were better, I said we didn't do it with their style. The style-points are what makes this orders of magnitude more fucked up then the shit we pull. We're trying to be get away with bad shit, they OTOH are doing bad shit on international TV.
And the bad shit is just amazing. The only clear-cut case of genocide since WW2 was Rwanda (alternatives tend to be ethnic cleansing, or lethal policy fuck-ups like the Great Leap Forward) happened on international TV. Let me repeat: they decided to ignore the evidence in front of their eyes and protect the folks murdering at a better clip then Hitler. You could probably find something you could spin as "as bad as Rwanda" we protected in the UN, but you ain't gonna find something internationally televised. And that's not all they did. They also sent troops to protect the murderers. They were quite literally willing to die to keep the genocidaires in power.
BTW, both Deby and Mobutu were French clients. They have retained control of Francophone Africa via frequently replaced semi-legitimate Presidents. These aren't necessarily our allies -- the smaller Congo, for example, was Communist-aligned and a de facto French vassal up until the Angolans intervened as part of the last Congo War. Deby is in this category. Most of his Air Force, for example, is Russian-made.
I'm always wary of anyone who thinks the road to freedom is paved with state's rights.
In the US the system (checks and balances, staggered elections, almost every official art the state level is elected in his own name, virtually impossible to change Constitution that everyone argues about constantly, etc.) mean the most likely tyranny is that of the majority. It's unheard of for the Feds to get taken over by an oppressive majority before states do, and generally the state is much crueler. The Feds have nearly unlimited resources, a vast bureaucracy, etc. which tends to lead to a cold and powerful, but extremely impersonal, evil that doesn't actually do much violence; whereas states tend to rely on Entrepreneurial Evil like the KKK.
Then when the majority comes it's damn senses the state can;t even pay the oppressed minority back because a) EvilEntrepeneurs do not keep the great records the Feds keep, so you have no idea who to pay, and b) the state wouldn't have the money anyway.
What the Constitution was intended to do was to limit the power of the federal government, as an inducement for states to form the union. That is, it was primarily intended to tell states: you can mostly keep doing whatever it is you're doing and the federal government won't interfere. The extension of many Constitutional limits on state governments happened later.
Under the articles of Confederation who collected taxes? The states. Who had the only army? The states. Who could beg for money and troops? The central government. Under the Articles of Confederation said US Government's biggest triumphs were a) convincing Connecticut to give up it's claim to Chicago (and, incidentally, a Pacific coastline), and b) naming a box on the map the "Northwest Territories."
The argument you're making was, indeed, made by the Founders. But even at the time it was clearly propaganda, meant more to convince stubborn states that the new federal government was designed to leave them be as much as possible. Except for the taxes, conscription powers, etc..
Just because the military or government does something and gets away with it doesn't mean it's constitutional. Probably the vast majority of constitutional violates are never prosecuted, so producing an endless litany of cases where people got away with such violations is evidence of nothing.
So you're arguing every military campaign the US has ever waged, that has involved capturing prisoners ("seizure") or reading people's papers ("search") is unconstitutional and nobody noticed? You're implying that in 1942 they had the right to shoot a guy in fieldgrau on sight, but didn't have the right go through his pockets.
What's more likely:
That I'm right, and the Courts will not work to fix this problem, or that you're right and the Courts are going to ban half the career-paths in the Armed Services tomorrow?
Bullshit. If the Army has a commander-in-chief justification for going through your papers it can do so.
Bullshit to that no he can't. You can tell how much they though that the army should be able to dictate stuff outside a time of war by some of the other provisions in the constitution.
Who said jack-squat about war-time? That word does not appear in the Constitution at all.
The Army has orders given by the Executive branch, and approved by Congress. Thus whatever it does in furtherance of those orders is a use of the President's Commander-in-Chief power, and not subject to the Fourth Amendment.
looking for evidence of wrongdoing Wrongdoing implies criminal behavior.
I don't understand. Are you arguing that according to the law it's OK to detain someone if you're not looking for criminal evidence?
This is why they can read your papers at the border, it is the reason the union Army could search suspected confederate spies and gun-runners without being accompanied by a District Court Judge, etc. Those don't use the Search and Seizure power, so they are not affected by the Fourth.
Oh that's the border law where the border mooks have arbitrarily declared 80% of Americans to be under their jurisiction because they're "close" to the border, even if they've never been across it. Are you arguing that's reasonable, because I'm pretty sure it's not. And remember the whole "during war" thing?
The word "war" appears in the Constitution four times. It's part of the definition of treason, once is Congress's power to Declare War, and twice in the clause that explicitly stops states from certain actions "in time of peace".
There's no actual clause saying the President's power increase in time of war, or even definition of war-time. It's something that happens when Congress decides that letting the President have his way is more important then arguing whatever they were arguing on September 10th.
A clue: you're not at war right now. And you're intentionally misreading the document. There is no legal definition of search and seizure that was not concocted after the 4th. Trying to use one concocted after is using weasel wording to intentionally misread a document which is the model of clarity.
Americans.
I'm not American. I'm English and that means I am a fluent, native speaker in my own language. It also means I can read and understand the document. The meaning is quite clear. If you don't like it, you ought to change it, not blatently torture language until it means any damn thing you want, because that's frankly dishonest.
If you do that, why bother having a constitution at all? If you can weasel-word your way out of the clearest of provisions then there's no point in having it.
Apparently you haven't done any reading whatsoever if you think that that "wartime" has any meaningful effect on the powers of the Army.
And, again, this isn't me making shit up. Bill Sherman actually marched an army of 70,000 troops from Atlanta to the sea "living off the land," which was a euphemism for stealing anything edible that wasn't nailed down (altho technically they left receipts, usually). This involved going into people's houses, ripping everything up to find hiding places, etc. And he had no warrants because he was an officer of the US Army, given a commission by Congress, and lawful orders from the President; and he wasn't looking to arrest people.
It's not my fault that you feel betrayed when the US Constitution uses US Legal English, and not British English.
The USSR had a huge and thorough constitution, but since they chose to ignore it, you can see how much good it did them.
I love us, but frequently our delusion that the Founders were definitely only interested in defending personal freedom, and would have preferred the British over-running DC to even the most trivial violations
The Army oath of enlistment has you swearing to defend the Constitution. Obeying the President's orders is secondary. The Army makes a pretty big deal about this when you're enlisting since it's a common question among potential recruits. You are only obligated to obey Constitutional orders. If a conflict arises between the Constitution and the President's (or your superior's) orders, the Constitution wins.
Re-check your logic.
I was saying an Army order is not a Search under the Fourth Amendment unless it is intended to turn up evidence of a crime. Which means that if your Captain orders you to search somebody's car, and he's got a valid justification under the Commander-in-Chief clause, that's a Constitutional order.
So a Presidential order for you to go through someone's papers doesn't have to be obeyed (and in fact shouldn't be obeyed) if there's good reason to believe it's an unconstitutional order.
They can read your papers at the border because the Constitution only applies to U.S. soil (which incidentally is why Bush chose Guantanamo Bay to hold terrorists - it's not U.S. soil, it's Cuban). The definition of U.S. soil got stretched a bit to account for air travel - people who've landed on planes in the U.S. but haven't yet been processed by Customs and Immigration are not considered to be on U.S. soil yet. That exclusion was famously abused by three letter agencies claiming anyone living within a hundred miles of an international airport no longer had Constitutional protection.
The US Constitution binds the government everywhere. Otherwise there would be no such thing as a Constitutional order to the guys at Ramstein. The President's p[ower to order them around, and thus their officer's power to order them around, stems from the US Constitution.
Overseas they don't have to bother with the Fourth (as much) because they don't have to assume a random dude in Dublin is American. They kidnap him, it's a seizure, but it didn't need a warrant because he's not American. If he turns out to be American they have an interesting legal case because there's a "good faith exception" to the warrant requirement.
The official explanation for the exception is that it's reasonable to search travelers for contraband (remember: the Fourth only applies to searches the Courts deem "unreasonable"). But if it got thrown out the President could easily accomplish much the same effect simply by having the Army do the searches, and then not arrest the dude with the weed until a District Court Judge could be found to sign the warrant.
I wish I was Michael Hayden. He's got a really nice pension.
It's interesting that rather then respond to my argument, or deal with my point that there's a reason every single fucking attempt to rein in the NSA via the Courts has failed spectacularly, you resort to name-calling.
That was when the Soviet alliance had borders with both Bavaria and Austria.
I didn't say the Swiss were perfect, I said they were better then the alternatives. Today they're probably the only European state that isn't two of a) a committed member of NATO (which militarily dominated by the US because the Euros refuse to spend money of defense), b) a committed member of the EU (which is militarily dependent on NATO), and c) threatened by the Russians in an immediate and very personal manner.
It's just not easy to find a good place to hide from the US Defense establishment when everybody is dependent on it.
The French do it with such style.
Remember that Rwandan genocide?
The French convinced the UN to intervene. After the victims were dead. The intervention was spun as a way to stop the violence. Since the Génocidaires were in full retreat it was de facto a UN operation to protect the people who'd just hacked 10% of their country to death. The Prime Minister who planned this later got promoted to President. The reason for this ridiculous defense of the indefensible was that the rebels were Ugandan-trained, and Ugandans speak English; whereas the mass-murderers had all gone to college at the same elite schools people like Jacques Chirac attended.
I'm sure in the long history of the US fucking people over there's something that fucked-up; but I can't think of it off the top of my head.
The Fourth Amendment only applies to "unreasonable search and seizure." Reasonable search and seizure, or uses of governmental information-gathering capabilities that are not "search and seizure", do not require a warrant.
Depends what you mean by "require". It is completely, blindingly obvious that both the spirit and letter of the 4th amendment is to stop the government digging through your private papers without a warrant.
Bullshit. If the Army has a commander-in-chief justification for going through your papers it can do so.
This is why they can read your papers at the border, it is the reason the union Army could search suspected confederate spies and gun-runners without being accompanied by a District Court Judge, etc. Those don't use the Search and Seizure power, so they are not affected by the Fourth.
And, BTW, if you're arguing the spirit of an Amendment is violated by doing precisely what the Amendment says (ie: not using this info in Court), then you're never gonna do very well in Court. Particularly since we have five Textualists in the Supremes.
The commander-in-chief justification doesn't actually have to be terribly strong. The Army's Japanese detention program detained hundreds of thousands, and technically the Court ruling against the program only meant that ex-Californian Japanese could live in any US state but the three on the Pacific Coast, not that the Feds did not have the power to throw them out of Cali.
Just because the government decided to do it anyway and has trapped people in a kafkaesque situation where you can't stop them unless you can prove they're doing it and can't prove they're doing it unless you can get a court to make them stop, doesn't mean it's allowed.
Black's Law Dictionary defines Search and Seizure as "These are the methods used to detect an punish crime that includes searching and taking property and data that can be used by the prosecution of the criminal."
Which came first, the 4th amendment or Black's law dictionary. The 4th was created because the King of England had his minions digging around in dissidents papers looking for evidence of wrongdoing. So they made a law which said "no digging without a warrant".
looking for evidence of wrongdoing Wrongdoing implies criminal behavior. After all, opposing us militarily isn't necessarily wrong, so detaining Laura Secords of the world does not imply we have a legal case against them.
Now you have a bunch of liars and fools pretending the meaning and intent is not clear by redefining what various words mean in order to justify it.
The history and language of those who wrote the 4th make the meaning entirely clear.
Americans.
I love us, but frequently our delusion that the Founders were definitely only interested in defending personal freedom, and would have preferred the British over-running DC to even the most trivial violations of said freedom forces us to say things that are simply ridiculous.
The reason for the Constitution was not to give us the glories of limited government, or protect our rights from DC; it was to eliminate limits that made the Articles of Confederation unworkable. The Fourth is actually an excellent example of this, applying itself only to law enforcement powers (because arresting people like the aforementioned Laura Secord without a warrant was both necessary to the survival of the Republic and impossible if the military's seizure power was dependent on a Judge having the paperwork), explicitly allowing searches and seizures when they were not "unreasonable," also allowing unwarranted searches when the suspect agrees (because then it's not a use of the Search Power), etc.
The major point of the Fourth was actually to prevent Obama from rigging the election in Hillary's favor by shenanigans involving the Feds.
Yes, Germany could defend Germany because Germany defending Germany does not require the ability to send German troops outside of Germany.
The problem is that Putin probably wouldn't be eating Germany. He'd be eating the Balts and Ukraine, and Germany could not respond because when you spend 1.2% of your GDP on defense* you simply can't afford the large strategic transport aircraft that are required to carry a 60 ton tank.
Since the three Balts are Eurozone and NATO they can't let that happen, thus they are totally dependent on the US.
The French and Brits spend more, but they tend to get flashy stuff (like aircraft carriers), rather then the 15 or 20 strategic transport aircraft they'd need to defend Vilnius in a timely manner. And the UK's currently aircraft-carrier-less because they figure that if they actually need a carrier they can borrow one of ours, and they;re using this year's operating costs to build the Queen Elizabeth class (which will be a bit more then flashy).
*Stateside we spend almost that much on benefits for former troops -- the VA is 0.9% of GDP.
"but have strong legal protections from mass surveillance"
Both the US and the EU have strong legal protections from mass surveillance. The problem is those protections get ignored or subverted.
What US protection?
The Fourth Amendment only applies to "unreasonable search and seizure." Reasonable search and seizure, or uses of governmental information-gathering capabilities that are not "search and seizure", do not require a warrant. Black's Law Dictionary defines Search and Seizure as "These are the methods used to detect an punish crime that includes searching and taking property and data that can be used by the prosecution of the criminal." The NSA is not gathering data to arrest criminals and charge them in the civilian Court System. To be sure some of the data gets used that way, but if the military finds something out in the course of operations that are not intended to arrest your ass, there is a long history of the Court's saying "ok, Srg. Jennings says this guy had weed, we now grant a warrant to you Mr. DEA man to search this guy."
That doesn't mean there isn't a Check on the NSA's surveillance power, it just means that anybody trying to use the Courts and the Fourth Amendment to stop this shit is likely to find that particular API call does not work. They can't get to a hearing, because to get a hearing you have to prove you have a right to sue, which is called standing, and the plain language of the law is that the Fourth Amendment does not cover NSA Surveillance, mass or otherwise. Which is extremely frustrating to people who are convinced that the Constitution must ban this shit, because it's evil so of course the Constitution bans it, and of course this will be enforced by the Courts.
The actual Check on NSA Surveillance power is Congress, which could simply add a line to the budget saying "none of this money shall be used for PRISM," start hearings about the programs, or start impeaching people. Or any number of things that could actually work. But we can't try that. The EFF's lawyers have a legal casebook in their toolbox, but no lobbyists, so clearly the only tool for the job is the legal casebook.
Whose internet connection goes through the UK...
The French state is notorious for extreme hypocrisy. If the French State decides that violating it's rules will protect it from future terror attacks the rules will be violated.
Most of Europe is actually entirely dependent on the US Defense-Industrial complex for protection from Putin, that's the reason the Germans insist on creating investigations of NSA surveillance and then six months later announcing "gee, it's kinda hard to charge US Government employees, who live and work in Virginia, in a Court system in a different country on a different continent." No shit, it did not take you six months to figure that out; you're just stalling and hoping the issue will go away because there's bugger-all you can do to fix the problem. Until countries like Germany start spending their money on expensive materiel like aircraft capable of transporting tanks, they are de facto vassals of the US in all matters relating to the military, and therefore totally reliant on the NSA regardless of what their local laws say.
Try Switzerland. "Neutrals" closer to Putin's Russia are actually worse bets then non-nuetrals, because the Greek capital isn't a day's boat ride from the Russian capital. Also avoid countries near active political conflicts. Ireland not only has extremely close historical links with both the US and UK, it also has a strong interest in creating it's own database of it's own people because of that little conflict in Northern Ireland; which is heating up after Robinson resigned in a dispute over IRA weapons decommissioning.
The manufacturer assures you that putting any new ink into one of their cartridges is likely to kill you, your children, your parents, probably a few of your neighbours, every single puppy in town, and your printer.
Are you SURE about the puppies?
Because I have tried so many other things to get rid of those smelly nasty dogs...
I think you mean "be wary."
As a long-term Detroit resident who happened to be white I'd be more concerned about a white neighborhood. Black criminals in a black area will mug you, steal from you, and occasionally threaten your life if you're white; but they will almost never actually physically hurt you.
They aren't stupid. They don't want to actually hurt anybody (Homicide is a lot harder to evade then the burglary unit, or some patrolman investigating a mugging), except possibly other criminals, and it's not hard to tell you ain't Little D from two streets over whose on their shit list.
People like you are the reason it's a good idea to live in a bad area.
I grew up in such a neighborhood in Detroit. Nobody died. Nobody got physically hurt. Break-ins were a problem, and there was an armed robbery spree; but in general the local criminals would go out of their way not to physically hurt us because doing so would bring the cops in like avenging angels. The House went from under $10k when my parents bought it in 1980 or so to $80k when they sold it, whereas every house my stepmom owns, who insists on living in totally safe neighborhoods with huge McMansion-style houses, has been sold at a loss.
The issues with high-crime areas aren't the crime itself, it's the insurance costs (especially auto insurance in Michigan), and the property taxes (property tax in Detroit is always higher then your mortgage payment).
Willfully obtuse? He wasn't accused of any crimes before traveling to Sweden, aside from the purely political ones whined about by the United States. So the "why did he go to Sweden instead of some other country" is the first of many non-sequiturs..
This man claims he went to Sweden to flee a biased US Justice System.
Why the fuck would he do that without at least learning Swedish rules?
Answer: because he's an arrogant fuck who thinks everyplace works exactly like the Australia of his paranoid dreams, and he really does not fucking understand it when somebody tries to arrest him simply because he did something that is an arrestable offense under their law.
And Obama could order the USAF to launch drone strikes on both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump tomorrow, but that's not going to happen either. There is no way the Swedish government survives if they've spent years crying rape only to say "just kidding, guys! It was really just a pretext to hand Assange over to the U.S. the whole time!"
Obama couldn't do that. There's a process. And the result of the process is never going to be "middle-aged, wealthy, white guy MUST DIE."
You're contradicting yourself.
If Sweden can't turn him over because they've said it's about rape too many times, then one more press release saying "yes this really is about rape," followed a month later by "but we didn't realize the US was going to tie his leaks to the death of this Swede in Afghanistan" is not gonna be less embarrassing then getting their hands on him without the first press release and immediately writing the second.
And I really think you're delusional if you think the US Cares where Assange is locked up. Locked up in Sweden on rape charges discredits him as a political opponent, and makes it impossible for him to get new leaks. Locked up in the US awaiting trial in civilian court is actually worse, because if he gets off whatever ridiculous charge they try to bring against an Australian for betraying a country that's not Australia then he's not only a stronger political opponent, he's also free to do what he will.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Julian Assange is right where the security state wants him, doing precisely what the security state wants him to do.
Even the top paid hack on this subject, Rei, admits that Swedish laws don't allow deportation for "intelligence crimes". Sweden, like most civilized countries, could vow not to deport a suspect to a regime that's fond of executing and torturing people they don't like. Regimes like the United States.
Contradicting yourself again.
Either the Swedes have promised they won't turn him over for intelligence crimes, or they haven't.
What's actually going on is they've given Assange precisely the assurance he asked for, but he's fucking paranoid so that's not enough, and he's asking them to guarantee that any crime he's ever accused of by the US will not result in extradition. Given that they think he committed a rape a day while
I have a simple password. I increment. I use the same one at both jobs. They're actually incremented to the exact same digit at the moment.
I doubt it's secure, but it allows me to avoid hassles.
And how much are Hampton Creek paying you to shill?
Your own quote of the statute indicates everything that AEB is accused of perfectly fine. Anyone who understands simple logic understands that for the AEB to have broken the rule it would have to mention Hampton Creek in an ad. In the entire Guardian article no blog posts, google ads, etc. mentioning them were quoted.
I don't oppose Hampton Creek on principle. I don't dislike veganism or animal substitution products in principle. I'd probably vote for a law in Ohio that improved the lives of egg-laying hens. I think 99% of chicken farmers would be better off if they quit the field completely.
But I absolutely cannot fucking stand it when some rich-ass white guy, whose sum total experience in being oppressed by the government is jack-squat; deludes himself into thinking that a perfectly legal (and perfectly understandable) reaction to his get-rich-quick schemes* from people who are largely not a) rich, b) particularly white, or c) asses; is in fact Evil Governmental Oppression.
Hampton Creek people: you have the right to make your product. You have the right to sell the product. You can't name it deceptively, but you can sell it. You can use the profits, or Peter Thiel's billions, to disparage chicken farmers all you want. Since chicken farmers aren't wealthy enough to think of Teslas as affordable, they do not actually have the right to outright say bad things about your product. But they do have the right to say good things about their product, pay people to repeat those good things, pay to ensure their talking points come up when someone is clearly googling your talking points, etc. And if you Hampton Creek people can;t deal with this I will personally write the ballot initiative banning fake eggs from Ohio forever. Because if you can't win with more speech rights then the other side, more money then the other side, and wealthier customers (Vegan ain;t a poor man's demographic), then fuck you.
*A start-up is by definition a get-rich-quick scheme.
Which is, of course, not quite true.
The tax is only paid by producers of eggs. The difference between these guys and the RIAA isn't that are supposed to act different, it's that instead of voluntary dues assessed by the association the funding is a mandatory tax paid by egg farmers vie the government.
So your tax dollars are only relevant if you;re an egg-farmer.
But they didn't smear anyone.
The emails are internal. Internally they're allowed to hate you.
The external stuff is all paying people to say nice things about eggs, and they are allowed to do that, even in places wqhere people don;t normally say niced things about eggs (such as google searches for vegan egg substitutes).
Dude,
Learn some shit about how the farm industry works before discrediting your entire movement.
All, as in every single one, American Farm Industry lobbying organizations are funded by a checkoff tax. A farmer moves x units of food y, he sends the government x*checkoff, and they send it to YforAmerica. Your tazx dollars only go to Y to the extent you pay for their products, so you VeganCyclist have never given a dime to the Egg Board.
Which means if you try to get all of industry Y fired (that's what "disrupt" actually means), YforAmerica's entire fucking job is to disrupt your ass. And if you start implying that the actual government (as in Congress) is oppressing you because YforAmerica is doing it's fucking job you have just pissed off the 20-30% of the country that lives in places where they know how the farm industry operates, and guess who controls Congress?
It's the guardian.
Dissidents=good.
Vegans are dissidents from the standard.