Note to Americans: The "City of London" is about a square mile. It's the most downtowney square mile anywhere, and is home to London's finance industry. What you think about when you think about London is called the "Greater London Authority." So this guy is talking about a British government initiative to create a Silicon Valley type space near the most expensive Real Estate on the continent.
There're actually places in the Greater London Area where rent is reasonable. They're not near the Square Mile.
There isn't a large theater scene in Silicon Valley. And it's geographically huge, with very little public transit, so getting places from the place you can afford to live is impossible unless you also have a car. It's not a major convention center, either. So in cultural terms it is comparable to Akron with hippies and gay culture. The Valley's also got less interesting politics (question time in a Westminster-System country is roughly 500 bajillion times more interesting then anything you can see in a US State Capital, or even DC).
London isn't that expensive if you're talking about living in the suburban bits, and then you can take the train to the Urban bits and see the rest quite easily. If it was it wouldn't be home to 1/6 of the UK population. And since 1/6 of the UK's population lives there, anything that the Brits do that interests you is likely to have a London scene; which you can easily access via the Tube. Pretty much the only advantages the Valley has on it are uniquely American things like this-side-of-the-Atlantic sports.
That's a mighty high-risk strategy. OTOH, if Putin actually invaded Finland after a split between the EU and the US it's likely the EU would swallow it's pride and beg the US to come back.
If it worked it'd be great. But the problems are two-fold:
1) The people of Europe are extreme cheap-skates militarily. The Germans are probably the worst, apparently they are too cheap to let their troops fire off multiple rounds because it has an extreme overheating problem they didn't notice for 17 years. In case you're not a gun-owner, every time you fire a weapon the barrel heats up a lot, so they can't have been doing very much target practice. When I ask a German why his life would suck if his country spent 2 cents per Euro on defense instead of 1.3 he responds that that would be insane US-level-spending and he likes Germany. We spend 4 cents per dollar. It actually reminds me of a passage from Mannerheim's Memoirs -- he asked a pol for an actual military budget prior to the Winter War, and the guy looked him straight in the eye and said "Why would we do that when there will be no more wars?"
2. Europeans really do not think of themselves as one nation. They elect a bunch of EU Politicians who make decisions, and then complain that the decisions aren't Democratic because the guy elected at the level below (generally a Prime Minister, but frequently a President) didn't have a say. They totally freak out at the idea of spending money on other EU states (note: in the US everyone in New York pays a significant amount of taxes to support Mississippi, and the only people who bitch about it are Mississippians).
But good luck. As it is with the rise of Indonesia/Brazil/etc. EU states are simply too small to have much influence. Even Tony Blair, whose military was arguably the best in Europe (France would be the only competition) was punching above weight when he became Dubya's poodle.
On East Timor specifically I don't have much knowledge. But I've been researching the Portuguese decolonization process in Africa off-and-on for a something like 17 years, East Timor's initial independence was part of that process, and what you're saying you were told just does not jive with the rest of what I know.
I'll grant that the activists you talked to certainly had a plan for a form of government
Will you at least admit that I am more likely to be aware of the situation than your knee jerk insult of "communists"?
You're more likely to be aware of what they told you in 1990. But a) they were trying to convince you to like them, which means it's virtually certain they were leaving something out, b) everyone always remembers their past with rose-tinted glasses, and c) resistance movements of the era always thought they were setting up near-utopias of freedom and in hindsight almost all of them (on both sides) were totally full of shit. Which leads to d) it is not surprising that the veterans of one such movement, that failed to control it's territory and thus has no provable track record of being anti-freedom; would remain absolutely convinced they'd be the only ones to allow multi-party democracy. I suspect you were probably talking to some highly-educated intellectuals who thought they could guide their country down the path of democracy, but would in fact have been quickly out-manuevered and replaced by Communists if Indonesia hadn't gotten involved.
I'm particularly skeptical of these guys because what happened was a right-wing Portuguese government fell to a left-wing coup d'tat. The "Carnation Revolution" was intended to end some deeply unpopular colonial wars by turning the countries in question (mostly Mozambique and Angola) over to the guerrillas who were costing the Portuguese people so much money and so many lives. All the guerrilla movements were left-wing, and all proceeded to adopt the Soviet model of a one-party state with a command economy.
In East Timor specifically the first President ruled for 10 days in late November and Early December of '75, then the Indonesians invaded, and the resistance movement had arrested him for being insufficiently Marxist by the end of '77. The guy who replaced him as guerrilla leader was apparently more Marxist.
Which is kinda what you expect when you read about a 1970s anti-colonial movement. By that point the non-Communist movements had almost all won, so they tended to be a combination of a) what Lenin called "fellow travelers" who would eventually be purged for caring about human rights, and b) Marxists who were way better at playing hardball.
I didn't say Ford was perfect. I said he was better then Nixon. And Nixon actually sent White House staff to the other party's campaign headquarters in an attempt to illegally sabotage their campaign. The "plumbers" were paid for with secret "campaign donations" gathered by actual bagmen who flew around the country gathering cash.
As for Timor's Constitution, you'll note that the country most similar to it that came independent in that batch (the island state of Cape Verde) did not have a Constitution until 1980 despite independence several months earlier then East Timor. I'll grant that the activists you talked to certainly had a plan for a form of government, and it's certain that they had some sort of document to run the country until the real thing was signed, but that's a bit different then having an established system of Checks and Balances and Seperation of Powers.
The typical process is that you get independence under a somewhat provisional document (both Kenya and Malawi, for example, spent a year as Dominions similar to Canada), and then you flesh it out afterwards. Some countries (like Angola, also independent in Timor's batch of ex-Portuguese states), and the Israelis govern under this document for years.
To quote myself:
(as you point out, your nuclear deal is dependent entirely on not joining NATO, which implies that if NATO was significantly weakened the Russians would have no reason to offer you a good price)
So I'm perfectly aware you're not in NATO. I'm aware that during the 60s and 70s you were so anti-NATO that most US policy-makers thought you were de facto Russian puppets. Thus the assumption that if the Soviets vaporized 100 million+ Americans with nukes we'd need to take out Helsinki same as Warsaw or Bucharest.
And I know that the big change since then isn't in Finland's foreign policy stance, but in the international strength of the Russians. And I also know this situation has not resulted in any problems for your country since WW2.
My argument is that a big part of the reason for no problems is that the Russians knew if they caused problems Finland could join NATO. Your grand strategy is playing NATO (and thus the US) off the Russians. You actually confirmed that Finland uses this strategy when you said: "Last news is that Rosatom is making an extremely good offer on third Loviisa reactor if we don't get any closer to joining NATO."
As for your comment on moving NATO troops destabilizing the region, you do realize that by contesting the minor point of which NATO country would be the best place for Finland after Germany you've conceded the main one? Getting US Troops out of Germany makes Europe as a whole significantly less stable, which hurts Finland. It also makes Finland's Grand Strategy of playing the Russians and NATO against each-other much more dangerous.
Therefore Finnish policy-makers response to a German proposal to throw the Americans out is not gonna be positive.
You're really confused here. That';s not surprising. This is a confusing area of law, and unlike every other area of law I have ever studied there are literally no hard and fast rules. There are no tests. there are testish principles, which re frequently combined with common sense, but if you think that there's actually some way to prove 100% beyond a doubt whether anyone anywhere in this country is definitively a contractor or an employee you're wrong.
I strongly suspect, for example, that if you hired a contractor to put in a roof and you specified not only the kind of roof you wanted him to build, but the methods used to build it, he'd be able to sue you and get employee status. He'd certainly have a better shot at winning then a lot of people who everyone thinks "of course they're not contractors," like say a star Doctor on a medical team who gets to write his own schedule and break all the damn rules because he's the only heart specialist willing to work in Akron.
In determining whether the person providing service is an employee or an independent contractor, all information that provides evidence of the degree of control and independence must be considered.
Common Law Rules
Facts that provide evidence of the degree of control and independence fall into three categories: 1. Behavioral: Does the company control or have the right to control what the worker does and how the worker does his or her job?
2. Financial: Are the business aspects of the worker’s job controlled by the payer? (these include things like how worker is paid, whether expenses are reimbursed, who provides tools/supplies, etc.)
3. Type of Relationship: Are there written contracts or employee type benefits (i.e. pension plan, insurance, vacation pay, etc.)? Will the relationship continue and is the work performed a key aspect of the business?
Note that eBay sellers are not controlled in HOW they do their jobs. eBay has no control over their financial lives -- they probably use Paypal, but they could easily set up their own credit card contract, so eBay doesn't actually force them to use it's system. And there are no written provisions involving benefits or future work. It does force them to use a computer with somewhat modern software*, so it does somewhat fulfill the first testish thingamabob.
Also note that WHAT is done in the job is totally irrelevant. If you tell your contractor to fix your roof in a way that can only be done by one method; you have not actually told him to use that method. You did not order him to use a torch down, physics did. In theory he could create a new method to do the same thing and get paid for fulfilling the contract. Since he probably provides his own tools, has his own bank account, etc. then you also do not control his finances, so the second testish thing is also not filled. Since he only works for the duration of the contract the third is also not filled.
OTOH an Uber driver is penalized if he doesn't take a certain number of rides, and he has to accept most of the ones that come on his screen or his future work is jeopardized. This means he fulfills testish thing-a-thing more then either the contractor or the eBay seller, but not as much as most employees. Since Uber handles all the business stuff, Including leasing lots of them their cars, and insisting that they register the cars as personal vehicles (rather then commercial as the law seems to require), Uber is gonna get it's ass kicked on testish thingamabob 2 for a lot of these guys, but not others (ie: the guy who bought his car with a business loan, works for three companies, is using a registered corporation for all his Uber dealings, etc.).
The third test gets interesting. Since further work for Uber is expected there's a continuing relationship. But there's no pension or health benefits.
*I suspect XP, or a LINUX distro, with the most recent possible browser on a high-end Pentium would actually work, but it would probably suck ass, and I don't have such a machine to test with.
Will Uber penalize you for choosing hours where nobody needs a ride, rejecting too many offered rides, etc.?
Yup.
Sounds like a boss. And if Uber's the boss then the drivers an employee. This is not one of those situations where the Judge applies a sixteen part test, it;'s one where he eyeballs who has more control over the work environment, and Uber's basically designed their system to have as much control as possible without being an official employer.
They have a specialty of going to just the line of the law and seeing how close they can get without being fined into oblivion. And if they're actually firing people who register their cars commercially it is quite hard to argue they don't have boss-level control over the workplace.
The difference between a contractor and an employee is that more of an employee's decisions are made by his boss. Uber controls the vehicles it's drivers use, including specific banning specific makes, insisting of specific models, not allowing older model years, and colors. They have to use a smartphone with a supported app.
OTOH, a contractor could show up at your house with hand tools he'd borrowed from his Amish buddy, a brand-new consumer-grade drill, or a 25-year-old commercial grade Dewalt. Since he's a contractor, and you're smart enough to have put time limits in the written contract, you don't give a shit which of the three options he chose, you just give a shit whether he can finish the damn job. n many cases you're out of the house, so he could work a 24-hour shift and then take two days off if he wanted. He controls how he works, therefore he's a contractor and an independent businessman.
Same with eBay or Amazon. All they require is internet access with a newish web browser. Other then that you can do whatever the fuck you want. Their sellers could work at 3 AM naked. They could work 9-5 in business suits. They could work 4 AM to 5:30 AM in the uniform of the Royal Hussars. They have 100% control of their actual work conditions, thus they are also independent businessmen and contractors.
OTOH, driving at any level for Uber requires a relatively recent (post-2000) car, bans a specific model (the Crown Victoria), and higher levels specify shit like the color of the car and what the seats are made of. Uber will yell at you if you get the more expensive commercial vehicle registration.
So Uber drivers have some pretty significant control over their jobs (for example: there's dress code), but a lot less control then actual contractors or the folks who sell on eBay.
The problem with that argument is that Uber has a lot of control over how it's drivers look/act, and work. And the way you determine whether somebody is a part-time employee or a contractor is how much control the person paying them has over how, precisely, the job is done. Given that Uber is insisting that it has the right to tell it's drivers how their vehicles are registered, it's very hard for me to see how they can seriously argue they don't have boss-like control. Independent contractors would be responsible for getting the proper paperwork on their own, which means that if the state ruled they had been wrong they would be on the hook for whatever penalties were on offer.
Working for more then one company at once is irrelevant to this. I work for Home Depot and H and R Block. That doesn't mean they get to treat me as a contractor and force me pay the boss portion of Social Security/Medicare taxes myself.
You got a source that says they had a Constitution in '75? It not hard to find copies of other countries historical Constitutions, sometimes even in translation to English, and it doesn't seem to be on the internet.
Moreover they had only a few months of independence. Constitution-writing tends to take awhile.
I got the idea that you guys are not entirely cool with Russia from Finnish history. Last time I checked Karelia and Petsamo were ex-Finnish territory.
And none of the things you mention change the strategic calculation: Finland is peaceful with Russia today partly because it can play the US off of Russia (as you point out, your nuclear deal is dependent entirely on not joining NATO, which implies that if NATO was significantly weakened the Russians would have no reason to offer you a good price). It has historically been the Russian-leaning neutral in the Northern Baltic (whereas the Swedes are US-leaning), but if the Germans screw up their relationship with the US and the US Military pulls out then Finland has a capital-P Problem.
This is especially true if the US is forced to go to Northern Italy, because it's much harder to play NATO and Putin off of each-other if Putin knows that to protect you NATO's actual combat troops (ie: not the Germans) have to cross two countries, one neutral Austria and the other an angry-at-America Germany, and the Baltic. At a minimum Putin would have no reason to keep playing nice in terms of energy prices, or nuclear reactors. Since Finnish policy-makers do not want to find out Putin's stretch goals in that scenario they're likely to humor their Baltic neighbors (which, BTW, includes quite a few countries that are not Poland) and oppose any EU action against the US.
OTOH, if the US can just move it's bases to Warsaw that helps the Finnish position because Putin really needs that northern flank to be secure. Which is one reason the US is laking that it doesn't want to upgrade the infrastructure around Warsaw.
I didn't say you were allied with anybody. I said you had a strategic interest in appeasing the Poles (or at least in ensuring the Poles remain appeased). And you do. Whether it's filtered down to the level of the populace at large or not, your government and military knows that it's much better off if there's a strong US Security presence in Europe to counter-balance Putin and is therefore unlikely to support anything that reduces that presence. Moreover you've also got a pretty strong interest in placating the Poles, because if they come to the conclusion the Western alliance won't keep Putin out, then their least stupid move is to ally with Putin, which kinda fucks over the other states you actually consider yourselves allied with in the Baltic region.
Plenty of countries in the world have such interests without being considered "allied" in any real sense of the word. The Iranians, and Saudis, for example are all aligned against ISIS while simultaneously being sworn enemies in almost every other respect. The whole Mideast is a morass of such tactical, short-term "alliances."
Don't get me wrong. If the Germans went after the US on NSA snooping on individuals it's possible the Finnish electorate would decide their personal interest in not being spied upon would super-cede the national interest in having a strategic counter-balance to the Russian; but OTOH I have no fucking clue what Finnish popular opinion is on the issue. My impression is that the Germans are near-apoplectic, and the rest of the continent is like "I don't like it, but they're America, what the fuck you expect?" but I haven't even talked to the Göteborg cousins in years so I don't actually know this.
As for US military facilities in Germany, these aren't as hard to set up as you'd think. We spend a half-trillion Euros on defense every year, so even a $100 Billion bill would sail through Congress on wings of anti-German rage. And (as you mentioned) the Poles would be over-joyed to have every facility we've got in Germany moved to Warsaw.
Gee, I thought I made a long response to this. I guess I forgot that Slashdot requires you preview and then submit.
But the gist was that Germany doesn't have the power to do that effectively They're not a finance hub, so there aren';t a lot of assets to freeze, and if you tried it's likely Obama would just Congress to authorize buying different assets in Belgium. The entire EU does have the authority to make that kind of strategy work, but much of the EU is not gonna antagonize the US Security state while Putin is acting aggressive, particularly the Poles, Balts, and Finns and those countries natural allies in Scandinavia. And Germany probably can't get something through the entire EU over the opposition of all those countries.
One of the first rules they teach you in international relations 101 is that power isn't fungible. Power in one domain simply does not transfer to another. Germany's wealth can't make up for the fact that it's air force is comparable or worse to the much smaller and poorer Italy (89 German Eurofighters and 87 tornadoes vs. Italy's 64 and 70 plus 43 ground attack aircraft and 60 F-35s on order), that 80 million Germans have a Navy with 11 frigates and 5 million Norwegians have 5, that Germany's extremely good tanks (price tank $1-2 million) are useless to anyone else because the Germans refuse to buy an aircraft that could transport them (price tag: $250 millionish), etc.
Which is probably the reason that they didn't do anything until the people complained to high heaven, and then what they did was mostly designed to shut the people up until said people got bored and moved onto some other issue.
Dude, I checked their government website. It says their Constitution was written in '02. It doesn't have a second version.
Of course by '92 they weren't what any US Policy-maker would define as Communist. In '75 a) the definition of Communist was a lot broader, and b) the number of people who were closely aligned with the Russians was a lot higher because the Soviet system looked like it was more better at economic development then us.
The country that approved South African participation in wars against the Angolans and Mozambicans on the basis those countries were Communist was never gonna play nice with East Timor.
That little question is the problem I have with all these investigations. They know it happened. Everybody knows it happened. If they want to respond using their sovereign rights, the whole point of sovereign rights is that you don't have to prove your case beyond a reasonable doubt before you use the damn things. You're sovereign, you're pissed off, that's enough. They can't really respond with their Court system because the actual NSA is nowhere near their jurisdiction. They don't have the military power to kidnap NSA Agents from the streets of DC and make it stick. The only possible result of this investigation is to use up time.
The fact that they apparently could have gotten some evidence, and didn't bother, just confirms my original impression.
Pre Obama cuba policy was not a failure. Obama's cuba policy is incoherent too. It is as if he just decided to reward some rich donors by opening trade to exploit a new poor country. The only redeeming quality about it is that Fidel is not running the show.
If he wanted to maximize donations he'd keep the embargo in place. There's a lot of wealthy Cubans in Miami.
I suspect that once the deals with Cuba are finalized his policy towards them will look a lot more coherent.
As for China, are you speaking about the smog created from the US and Europe off shoring their manufacturing in order to skirt their own labor and environmental laws ?
Before that it was smog created in the countryside by Mao's disasterous attempt to turn every farm into a steel mill.
You don't get people who can afford to care about the environment until you get a certain level of economic development, and you don't get that amount of development without a lot of international trade.
I'm not sure if your point says what you think it does. I don't even think it's applicable either. The alternative to free trade is not no trade.
But it is less trade, and you do have a lot less influence with countries you have no free trade agreement with.
They didn't get a chance to write a Constitution when the Indonesians invaded. The current Constitution was adopted in '02.
I tried googling the bribe to Ford and failed. I suspect you may be thinking of Nixon. His '72 campaign was one of the reasons Campaign Finance Reform was strengthened in '74. In '76 Ford was a) a lot more ethical then Nixon, and b) under a pretty strong microscope.
Do you really want a free trade agreement with a country that pollutes the environment , uses slave labor, and doesn't have freedom of religion or free speech? I'm not sure it's in the interests of any free nation to strike such a deal.
Engagement works better then isolation. That's why the pre-Obama Cuba policy was a total failure. Why is China worried about smog, and starting to pay it's workers better? because their trade with the US makes those viable economic options.
You got a source that says he received a bribe? I have sources saying he was there selling guns, and approving the invasion, but none say anything about a bribe.
As for the political orientation of the FReTiLIn, they are left-wing nationalists and members of the Socialist International. To the US government at the time that was code for "Communist," so of course when Indonesia decided to get rid of them for us we said yes.
Free trade means you can't discriminate against products due to their country of origin, if you have some other reason for discriminating then that's still free trade. Thus none of the Congressional roles you mentioned have anything to do with a trade agreement.
An Amendment specifying that the Malays have to comply with their obligations today, but don't get to be in the free trade zone until some Congressman's pet interest group gets a concession from Malaysia could be considered free trade; but if I was Malaysia I'd make damn well sure any deal was extremely favorable to me before signing it without fast track authority. Otherwise I'd risk spending months on the deal only to be informed that it won't be legally binding on the US until I've allowed Christians to proselytize more freely, upped my minimum wage, and tripled environmental regulation.
I think you'll find that every single one of those had unusual circumstances. Two nations, at peace, who recognize each-other's sovereignty, will almost never charge official (and open) agents of each-other with any crime for their official actions, and if they try it's likely to not to work very well (as the Italians have found out in their so-far fruitless attempts to try a CIA guy for an extraordinary rendition).
There are a few exceptions, but in general when V finds out a registered Agent of S has been spying on it the worst it can do is throw that guy out of the country by declaring him persona non grata.
Germany is an important country. It will be spied upon. Period. End of story. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. Spying on Germany means spying on their Head of Government. Period. they can complain about it, and as a sovereign state even respond, but even military action wouldn't stop the spying it would only make the spies much more careful.
She knows this, she's pretty sure she's convinced Obama to stop spying on her personally, all things considered she'd actually rather be spied upon by the US then Russia (remember: she grew up in Communist East Germany); so there was an investigation to shut people up. Now she'll move on.
I never understood the point of the investigation. Germany does not have jurisdiction over the spy agencies of foreign countries, which means that they can't charge the NSA with a crime. That's how sovereignty works. In terms of non-criminal penalties they don't need an investigation to say "we think you did a bad thing to us, therefore we are retaliating by banning travel from this dude, withdrawing from this agreement you really wanted, and freezing negotiations on this other agreement you really want." That is also how sovereignty works.
It seemed mostly a way for Merkel to tell people she was doing something about the NSA so they'd shut up and stop arguing for effective action.
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Your PM?
Which of Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, and John Major has moved to Australia?
Note to Americans:
The "City of London" is about a square mile. It's the most downtowney square mile anywhere, and is home to London's finance industry. What you think about when you think about London is called the "Greater London Authority." So this guy is talking about a British government initiative to create a Silicon Valley type space near the most expensive Real Estate on the continent.
There're actually places in the Greater London Area where rent is reasonable. They're not near the Square Mile.
There isn't a large theater scene in Silicon Valley. And it's geographically huge, with very little public transit, so getting places from the place you can afford to live is impossible unless you also have a car. It's not a major convention center, either. So in cultural terms it is comparable to Akron with hippies and gay culture. The Valley's also got less interesting politics (question time in a Westminster-System country is roughly 500 bajillion times more interesting then anything you can see in a US State Capital, or even DC).
London isn't that expensive if you're talking about living in the suburban bits, and then you can take the train to the Urban bits and see the rest quite easily. If it was it wouldn't be home to 1/6 of the UK population. And since 1/6 of the UK's population lives there, anything that the Brits do that interests you is likely to have a London scene; which you can easily access via the Tube. Pretty much the only advantages the Valley has on it are uniquely American things like this-side-of-the-Atlantic sports.
That's a mighty high-risk strategy. OTOH, if Putin actually invaded Finland after a split between the EU and the US it's likely the EU would swallow it's pride and beg the US to come back.
If it worked it'd be great. But the problems are two-fold:
1) The people of Europe are extreme cheap-skates militarily. The Germans are probably the worst, apparently they are too cheap to let their troops fire off multiple rounds because it has an extreme overheating problem they didn't notice for 17 years. In case you're not a gun-owner, every time you fire a weapon the barrel heats up a lot, so they can't have been doing very much target practice. When I ask a German why his life would suck if his country spent 2 cents per Euro on defense instead of 1.3 he responds that that would be insane US-level-spending and he likes Germany. We spend 4 cents per dollar. It actually reminds me of a passage from Mannerheim's Memoirs -- he asked a pol for an actual military budget prior to the Winter War, and the guy looked him straight in the eye and said "Why would we do that when there will be no more wars?"
2. Europeans really do not think of themselves as one nation. They elect a bunch of EU Politicians who make decisions, and then complain that the decisions aren't Democratic because the guy elected at the level below (generally a Prime Minister, but frequently a President) didn't have a say. They totally freak out at the idea of spending money on other EU states (note: in the US everyone in New York pays a significant amount of taxes to support Mississippi, and the only people who bitch about it are Mississippians).
But good luck. As it is with the rise of Indonesia/Brazil/etc. EU states are simply too small to have much influence. Even Tony Blair, whose military was arguably the best in Europe (France would be the only competition) was punching above weight when he became Dubya's poodle.
On East Timor specifically I don't have much knowledge. But I've been researching the Portuguese decolonization process in Africa off-and-on for a something like 17 years, East Timor's initial independence was part of that process, and what you're saying you were told just does not jive with the rest of what I know.
Will you at least admit that I am more likely to be aware of the situation than your knee jerk insult of "communists"?
You're more likely to be aware of what they told you in 1990. But a) they were trying to convince you to like them, which means it's virtually certain they were leaving something out, b) everyone always remembers their past with rose-tinted glasses, and c) resistance movements of the era always thought they were setting up near-utopias of freedom and in hindsight almost all of them (on both sides) were totally full of shit. Which leads to d) it is not surprising that the veterans of one such movement, that failed to control it's territory and thus has no provable track record of being anti-freedom; would remain absolutely convinced they'd be the only ones to allow multi-party democracy. I suspect you were probably talking to some highly-educated intellectuals who thought they could guide their country down the path of democracy, but would in fact have been quickly out-manuevered and replaced by Communists if Indonesia hadn't gotten involved.
I'm particularly skeptical of these guys because what happened was a right-wing Portuguese government fell to a left-wing coup d'tat. The "Carnation Revolution" was intended to end some deeply unpopular colonial wars by turning the countries in question (mostly Mozambique and Angola) over to the guerrillas who were costing the Portuguese people so much money and so many lives. All the guerrilla movements were left-wing, and all proceeded to adopt the Soviet model of a one-party state with a command economy.
In East Timor specifically the first President ruled for 10 days in late November and Early December of '75, then the Indonesians invaded, and the resistance movement had arrested him for being insufficiently Marxist by the end of '77. The guy who replaced him as guerrilla leader was apparently more Marxist.
Which is kinda what you expect when you read about a 1970s anti-colonial movement. By that point the non-Communist movements had almost all won, so they tended to be a combination of a) what Lenin called "fellow travelers" who would eventually be purged for caring about human rights, and b) Marxists who were way better at playing hardball.
I didn't say Ford was perfect. I said he was better then Nixon. And Nixon actually sent White House staff to the other party's campaign headquarters in an attempt to illegally sabotage their campaign. The "plumbers" were paid for with secret "campaign donations" gathered by actual bagmen who flew around the country gathering cash.
As for Timor's Constitution, you'll note that the country most similar to it that came independent in that batch (the island state of Cape Verde) did not have a Constitution until 1980 despite independence several months earlier then East Timor. I'll grant that the activists you talked to certainly had a plan for a form of government, and it's certain that they had some sort of document to run the country until the real thing was signed, but that's a bit different then having an established system of Checks and Balances and Seperation of Powers.
The typical process is that you get independence under a somewhat provisional document (both Kenya and Malawi, for example, spent a year as Dominions similar to Canada), and then you flesh it out afterwards. Some countries (like Angola, also independent in Timor's batch of ex-Portuguese states), and the Israelis govern under this document for years.
To quote myself:
(as you point out, your nuclear deal is dependent entirely on not joining NATO, which implies that if NATO was significantly weakened the Russians would have no reason to offer you a good price)
So I'm perfectly aware you're not in NATO. I'm aware that during the 60s and 70s you were so anti-NATO that most US policy-makers thought you were de facto Russian puppets. Thus the assumption that if the Soviets vaporized 100 million+ Americans with nukes we'd need to take out Helsinki same as Warsaw or Bucharest.
And I know that the big change since then isn't in Finland's foreign policy stance, but in the international strength of the Russians. And I also know this situation has not resulted in any problems for your country since WW2.
My argument is that a big part of the reason for no problems is that the Russians knew if they caused problems Finland could join NATO. Your grand strategy is playing NATO (and thus the US) off the Russians. You actually confirmed that Finland uses this strategy when you said:
"Last news is that Rosatom is making an extremely good offer on third Loviisa reactor if we don't get any closer to joining NATO."
As for your comment on moving NATO troops destabilizing the region, you do realize that by contesting the minor point of which NATO country would be the best place for Finland after Germany you've conceded the main one? Getting US Troops out of Germany makes Europe as a whole significantly less stable, which hurts Finland. It also makes Finland's Grand Strategy of playing the Russians and NATO against each-other much more dangerous.
Therefore Finnish policy-makers response to a German proposal to throw the Americans out is not gonna be positive.
You're really confused here. That';s not surprising. This is a confusing area of law, and unlike every other area of law I have ever studied there are literally no hard and fast rules. There are no tests. there are testish principles, which re frequently combined with common sense, but if you think that there's actually some way to prove 100% beyond a doubt whether anyone anywhere in this country is definitively a contractor or an employee you're wrong.
I strongly suspect, for example, that if you hired a contractor to put in a roof and you specified not only the kind of roof you wanted him to build, but the methods used to build it, he'd be able to sue you and get employee status. He'd certainly have a better shot at winning then a lot of people who everyone thinks "of course they're not contractors," like say a star Doctor on a medical team who gets to write his own schedule and break all the damn rules because he's the only heart specialist willing to work in Akron.
To quote the IRS:
In determining whether the person providing service is an employee or an independent contractor, all information that provides evidence of the degree of control and independence must be considered.
Common Law Rules
Facts that provide evidence of the degree of control and independence fall into three categories:
1. Behavioral: Does the company control or have the right to control what the worker does and how the worker does his or her job?
2. Financial: Are the business aspects of the worker’s job controlled by the payer? (these include things like how worker is paid, whether expenses are reimbursed, who provides tools/supplies, etc.)
3. Type of Relationship: Are there written contracts or employee type benefits (i.e. pension plan, insurance, vacation pay, etc.)? Will the relationship continue and is the work performed a key aspect of the business?
Note that eBay sellers are not controlled in HOW they do their jobs. eBay has no control over their financial lives -- they probably use Paypal, but they could easily set up their own credit card contract, so eBay doesn't actually force them to use it's system. And there are no written provisions involving benefits or future work. It does force them to use a computer with somewhat modern software*, so it does somewhat fulfill the first testish thingamabob.
Also note that WHAT is done in the job is totally irrelevant. If you tell your contractor to fix your roof in a way that can only be done by one method; you have not actually told him to use that method. You did not order him to use a torch down, physics did. In theory he could create a new method to do the same thing and get paid for fulfilling the contract. Since he probably provides his own tools, has his own bank account, etc. then you also do not control his finances, so the second testish thing is also not filled. Since he only works for the duration of the contract the third is also not filled.
OTOH an Uber driver is penalized if he doesn't take a certain number of rides, and he has to accept most of the ones that come on his screen or his future work is jeopardized. This means he fulfills testish thing-a-thing more then either the contractor or the eBay seller, but not as much as most employees. Since Uber handles all the business stuff, Including leasing lots of them their cars, and insisting that they register the cars as personal vehicles (rather then commercial as the law seems to require), Uber is gonna get it's ass kicked on testish thingamabob 2 for a lot of these guys, but not others (ie: the guy who bought his car with a business loan, works for three companies, is using a registered corporation for all his Uber dealings, etc.).
The third test gets interesting. Since further work for Uber is expected there's a continuing relationship. But there's no pension or health benefits.
*I suspect XP, or a LINUX distro, with the most recent possible browser on a high-end Pentium would actually work, but it would probably suck ass, and I don't have such a machine to test with.
Will Uber penalize you for choosing hours where nobody needs a ride, rejecting too many offered rides, etc.?
Yup.
Sounds like a boss. And if Uber's the boss then the drivers an employee. This is not one of those situations where the Judge applies a sixteen part test, it;'s one where he eyeballs who has more control over the work environment, and Uber's basically designed their system to have as much control as possible without being an official employer.
They have a specialty of going to just the line of the law and seeing how close they can get without being fined into oblivion. And if they're actually firing people who register their cars commercially it is quite hard to argue they don't have boss-level control over the workplace.
Yup.
You;re confusing yourself with details.
The difference between a contractor and an employee is that more of an employee's decisions are made by his boss. Uber controls the vehicles it's drivers use, including specific banning specific makes, insisting of specific models, not allowing older model years, and colors. They have to use a smartphone with a supported app.
OTOH, a contractor could show up at your house with hand tools he'd borrowed from his Amish buddy, a brand-new consumer-grade drill, or a 25-year-old commercial grade Dewalt. Since he's a contractor, and you're smart enough to have put time limits in the written contract, you don't give a shit which of the three options he chose, you just give a shit whether he can finish the damn job. n many cases you're out of the house, so he could work a 24-hour shift and then take two days off if he wanted. He controls how he works, therefore he's a contractor and an independent businessman.
Same with eBay or Amazon. All they require is internet access with a newish web browser. Other then that you can do whatever the fuck you want. Their sellers could work at 3 AM naked. They could work 9-5 in business suits. They could work 4 AM to 5:30 AM in the uniform of the Royal Hussars. They have 100% control of their actual work conditions, thus they are also independent businessmen and contractors.
OTOH, driving at any level for Uber requires a relatively recent (post-2000) car, bans a specific model (the Crown Victoria), and higher levels specify shit like the color of the car and what the seats are made of. Uber will yell at you if you get the more expensive commercial vehicle registration.
So Uber drivers have some pretty significant control over their jobs (for example: there's dress code), but a lot less control then actual contractors or the folks who sell on eBay.
The problem with that argument is that Uber has a lot of control over how it's drivers look/act, and work. And the way you determine whether somebody is a part-time employee or a contractor is how much control the person paying them has over how, precisely, the job is done. Given that Uber is insisting that it has the right to tell it's drivers how their vehicles are registered, it's very hard for me to see how they can seriously argue they don't have boss-like control. Independent contractors would be responsible for getting the proper paperwork on their own, which means that if the state ruled they had been wrong they would be on the hook for whatever penalties were on offer.
Working for more then one company at once is irrelevant to this. I work for Home Depot and H and R Block. That doesn't mean they get to treat me as a contractor and force me pay the boss portion of Social Security/Medicare taxes myself.
You got a source that says they had a Constitution in '75? It not hard to find copies of other countries historical Constitutions, sometimes even in translation to English, and it doesn't seem to be on the internet.
Moreover they had only a few months of independence. Constitution-writing tends to take awhile.
I got the idea that you guys are not entirely cool with Russia from Finnish history. Last time I checked Karelia and Petsamo were ex-Finnish territory.
And none of the things you mention change the strategic calculation: Finland is peaceful with Russia today partly because it can play the US off of Russia (as you point out, your nuclear deal is dependent entirely on not joining NATO, which implies that if NATO was significantly weakened the Russians would have no reason to offer you a good price). It has historically been the Russian-leaning neutral in the Northern Baltic (whereas the Swedes are US-leaning), but if the Germans screw up their relationship with the US and the US Military pulls out then Finland has a capital-P Problem.
This is especially true if the US is forced to go to Northern Italy, because it's much harder to play NATO and Putin off of each-other if Putin knows that to protect you NATO's actual combat troops (ie: not the Germans) have to cross two countries, one neutral Austria and the other an angry-at-America Germany, and the Baltic. At a minimum Putin would have no reason to keep playing nice in terms of energy prices, or nuclear reactors. Since Finnish policy-makers do not want to find out Putin's stretch goals in that scenario they're likely to humor their Baltic neighbors (which, BTW, includes quite a few countries that are not Poland) and oppose any EU action against the US.
OTOH, if the US can just move it's bases to Warsaw that helps the Finnish position because Putin really needs that northern flank to be secure. Which is one reason the US is laking that it doesn't want to upgrade the infrastructure around Warsaw.
I didn't say you were allied with anybody. I said you had a strategic interest in appeasing the Poles (or at least in ensuring the Poles remain appeased). And you do. Whether it's filtered down to the level of the populace at large or not, your government and military knows that it's much better off if there's a strong US Security presence in Europe to counter-balance Putin and is therefore unlikely to support anything that reduces that presence. Moreover you've also got a pretty strong interest in placating the Poles, because if they come to the conclusion the Western alliance won't keep Putin out, then their least stupid move is to ally with Putin, which kinda fucks over the other states you actually consider yourselves allied with in the Baltic region.
Plenty of countries in the world have such interests without being considered "allied" in any real sense of the word. The Iranians, and Saudis, for example are all aligned against ISIS while simultaneously being sworn enemies in almost every other respect. The whole Mideast is a morass of such tactical, short-term "alliances."
Don't get me wrong. If the Germans went after the US on NSA snooping on individuals it's possible the Finnish electorate would decide their personal interest in not being spied upon would super-cede the national interest in having a strategic counter-balance to the Russian; but OTOH I have no fucking clue what Finnish popular opinion is on the issue. My impression is that the Germans are near-apoplectic, and the rest of the continent is like "I don't like it, but they're America, what the fuck you expect?" but I haven't even talked to the Göteborg cousins in years so I don't actually know this.
As for US military facilities in Germany, these aren't as hard to set up as you'd think. We spend a half-trillion Euros on defense every year, so even a $100 Billion bill would sail through Congress on wings of anti-German rage. And (as you mentioned) the Poles would be over-joyed to have every facility we've got in Germany moved to Warsaw.
Gee, I thought I made a long response to this. I guess I forgot that Slashdot requires you preview and then submit.
But the gist was that Germany doesn't have the power to do that effectively They're not a finance hub, so there aren';t a lot of assets to freeze, and if you tried it's likely Obama would just Congress to authorize buying different assets in Belgium. The entire EU does have the authority to make that kind of strategy work, but much of the EU is not gonna antagonize the US Security state while Putin is acting aggressive, particularly the Poles, Balts, and Finns and those countries natural allies in Scandinavia. And Germany probably can't get something through the entire EU over the opposition of all those countries.
One of the first rules they teach you in international relations 101 is that power isn't fungible. Power in one domain simply does not transfer to another. Germany's wealth can't make up for the fact that it's air force is comparable or worse to the much smaller and poorer Italy (89 German Eurofighters and 87 tornadoes vs. Italy's 64 and 70 plus 43 ground attack aircraft and 60 F-35s on order), that 80 million Germans have a Navy with 11 frigates and 5 million Norwegians have 5, that Germany's extremely good tanks (price tank $1-2 million) are useless to anyone else because the Germans refuse to buy an aircraft that could transport them (price tag: $250 millionish), etc.
Which is probably the reason that they didn't do anything until the people complained to high heaven, and then what they did was mostly designed to shut the people up until said people got bored and moved onto some other issue.
Dude, I checked their government website. It says their Constitution was written in '02. It doesn't have a second version.
Of course by '92 they weren't what any US Policy-maker would define as Communist. In '75 a) the definition of Communist was a lot broader, and b) the number of people who were closely aligned with the Russians was a lot higher because the Soviet system looked like it was more better at economic development then us.
The country that approved South African participation in wars against the Angolans and Mozambicans on the basis those countries were Communist was never gonna play nice with East Timor.
And then what?
That little question is the problem I have with all these investigations. They know it happened. Everybody knows it happened. If they want to respond using their sovereign rights, the whole point of sovereign rights is that you don't have to prove your case beyond a reasonable doubt before you use the damn things. You're sovereign, you're pissed off, that's enough. They can't really respond with their Court system because the actual NSA is nowhere near their jurisdiction. They don't have the military power to kidnap NSA Agents from the streets of DC and make it stick. The only possible result of this investigation is to use up time.
The fact that they apparently could have gotten some evidence, and didn't bother, just confirms my original impression.
Pre Obama cuba policy was not a failure. Obama's cuba policy is incoherent too. It is as if he just decided to reward some rich donors by opening trade to exploit a new poor country. The only redeeming quality about it is that Fidel is not running the show.
If he wanted to maximize donations he'd keep the embargo in place. There's a lot of wealthy Cubans in Miami.
I suspect that once the deals with Cuba are finalized his policy towards them will look a lot more coherent.
As for China, are you speaking about the smog created from the US and Europe off shoring their manufacturing in order to skirt their own labor and environmental laws ?
Before that it was smog created in the countryside by Mao's disasterous attempt to turn every farm into a steel mill.
You don't get people who can afford to care about the environment until you get a certain level of economic development, and you don't get that amount of development without a lot of international trade.
I'm not sure if your point says what you think it does. I don't even think it's applicable either. The alternative to free trade is not no trade.
But it is less trade, and you do have a lot less influence with countries you have no free trade agreement with.
They didn't get a chance to write a Constitution when the Indonesians invaded. The current Constitution was adopted in '02.
I tried googling the bribe to Ford and failed. I suspect you may be thinking of Nixon. His '72 campaign was one of the reasons Campaign Finance Reform was strengthened in '74. In '76 Ford was a) a lot more ethical then Nixon, and b) under a pretty strong microscope.
Do you really want a free trade agreement with a country that pollutes the environment , uses slave labor, and doesn't have freedom of religion or free speech? I'm not sure it's in the interests of any free nation to strike such a deal.
Engagement works better then isolation. That's why the pre-Obama Cuba policy was a total failure. Why is China worried about smog, and starting to pay it's workers better? because their trade with the US makes those viable economic options.
You got a source that says he received a bribe? I have sources saying he was there selling guns, and approving the invasion, but none say anything about a bribe.
As for the political orientation of the FReTiLIn, they are left-wing nationalists and members of the Socialist International. To the US government at the time that was code for "Communist," so of course when Indonesia decided to get rid of them for us we said yes.
Free trade means you can't discriminate against products due to their country of origin, if you have some other reason for discriminating then that's still free trade. Thus none of the Congressional roles you mentioned have anything to do with a trade agreement.
An Amendment specifying that the Malays have to comply with their obligations today, but don't get to be in the free trade zone until some Congressman's pet interest group gets a concession from Malaysia could be considered free trade; but if I was Malaysia I'd make damn well sure any deal was extremely favorable to me before signing it without fast track authority. Otherwise I'd risk spending months on the deal only to be informed that it won't be legally binding on the US until I've allowed Christians to proselytize more freely, upped my minimum wage, and tripled environmental regulation.
I think you'll find that every single one of those had unusual circumstances. Two nations, at peace, who recognize each-other's sovereignty, will almost never charge official (and open) agents of each-other with any crime for their official actions, and if they try it's likely to not to work very well (as the Italians have found out in their so-far fruitless attempts to try a CIA guy for an extraordinary rendition).
There are a few exceptions, but in general when V finds out a registered Agent of S has been spying on it the worst it can do is throw that guy out of the country by declaring him persona non grata.
I think the whole thing was a distraction.
Germany is an important country. It will be spied upon. Period. End of story. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. Spying on Germany means spying on their Head of Government. Period. they can complain about it, and as a sovereign state even respond, but even military action wouldn't stop the spying it would only make the spies much more careful.
She knows this, she's pretty sure she's convinced Obama to stop spying on her personally, all things considered she'd actually rather be spied upon by the US then Russia (remember: she grew up in Communist East Germany); so there was an investigation to shut people up. Now she'll move on.
I never understood the point of the investigation. Germany does not have jurisdiction over the spy agencies of foreign countries, which means that they can't charge the NSA with a crime. That's how sovereignty works. In terms of non-criminal penalties they don't need an investigation to say "we think you did a bad thing to us, therefore we are retaliating by banning travel from this dude, withdrawing from this agreement you really wanted, and freezing negotiations on this other agreement you really want." That is also how sovereignty works.
It seemed mostly a way for Merkel to tell people she was doing something about the NSA so they'd shut up and stop arguing for effective action.