In Sweden it is not only illegal to physically punish a child, it is a more grave offence then assaulting a adult. It is also a crime for day-care-workers, teachers and any other in professional contact with the child not to report if they have any suspicion that a child is being physically beaten.
More than one brittish family that has gotten into trouble with the law because of this.
.... Unless you live in a democracy, where the state answers to the people and not the other way around.
Not that Sweden was ever the model of democracy or freedom it pretended to be, but what we have now is the decaying remains of freedoms. Up to a certain point they were gradually extended (we had no decisive shift to democracy here, having no democratic revolution; rights were granted at a pace decided on by the state and originally also the king) now they are steadily being terminated or turned into legal window-dressing.
Everyone seems to be equating democracy with the right to vote. But the right to vote is pointless without the freedom to associate. The freedom to associate is pointless without the freedom of speach and press - freedoms who are in turn pointless if the publishers or speakers are constantly supervised and subject to arbitrary justice (as in terrorist laws) of the state they would be in opposition to.
Bewteen 1936 and 1978 we had the IB (information bureau, it held a few other names through it's existence but IB is the one most used to refer to them), a vast network of informers in every major workplace in Sweden. When they were exposed to the world in the seventies, a law was made saying that the state cannot register the political opinions of the citizens. This was obviously just window dressing, and the SÄPO (Security police) essentially continued the work of the disbanded IB (as you can read in the annual report of the security police at their website), if without their extensive network of informers.
The pirate bay is of very little political importance and of no risk to "national security" (as opposed to political opposition) and therefore the Swedish state does not care very much about them.
IKEA is an abbrevation for Ingvar Kamprad Eltmaryd Agunnarryd (the first two are the names of the founder and the two second are the name of the farm he grew up at and the parish of said farm). IKEA is not a word in Swedish.
Now, I am not an american and i don't know the exact details about the laws passed there, but are they really banning you from eating trans-fats? How, then, are they planning on enforcing that? Will you be pulled over by an officer demanding to search your trunk for trans-fats when you have been to the mall or will the customs seize packages suspected of containg trans-fat?
My guess is that won't be the case. My impression (which is as informed as the guess of any european watching the news) is that they are banning resturants from serving trans-fats. That means they are not banning you from hurting your health and cause yourself a premature death - they are banning others (the resturant owners) from exploiting you in way which shortens your life. They are protecting you from the greed of scroupulus bussinessmen. Doing so does not enchroach any civil liberties.
Wikipedia is not a video game where you need to gain exp-points to level. It is an encyclopedia. People spending their days correcting punctuation are also contributing and if ranking higher in the statistics is their motivation, that is fine by me.
Those who make great contributions in the form of content are recognized in another way then statistics: their articles become featured, and that is a far greater honor then beeing the top contributor by means of spellchecking.
Re:Well, that is not exactly true...
on
Sweden's Watergate
·
· Score: 3, Informative
The reason why you cannot compare the parties in Sweden with the Democrats and the Republicans is that the social democrats is a party of the workers movement (their name is actually "the workers party social democrats"). The basis of the social democratic party is in the peoples movements (tennants associations, tradeunions, cooperative enterprises, temperance movement, student unions, the peoples education movement, etc.), which consists of millions of people and are controlled by the social democrats (the social democrats themselves has 150 000 members, which is much compared to the other parties but small compared to what they used to be).
For this reason, the division in Sweden is not between the liberal and the conservative but between the bourgeois and the workers parties. Bourgeios (Swedish "borgerlig") is a strange word in English, but in Swedish it what the right-wing parties call themselves.
In the US there are only bourgeios parties, with very limited base in mass movements and very limited activities outside of the parliamentary context.
If the pay is "dismal" even by China's standards, as one of the articles asserts, then why is anyone even working there?
No one has to work at a Foxconn plant making iPods. No one. And if it's viewed as the best alternative by individual workers who choose to work there, then it's probably, well, the best alternative.
How can you even reason like that? The fact that YOU have a choice does not mean that everyone else do. A choice between starvation and wage slavery, is not really a choice. Apple and its subcontractor are well aware that the workers in China have not better alternative, that is why they have choosen to exploit them and not workers somwhere else. The only ones having a choice here is apple, but do even they have a choice.
You imply that corporations are not inheretly evil. But what would happen to Apple without the sweatshops? Well, their costs would increase - reducing their profit and raising the price of their products. It would make them much less competitive. That is how capitalism today works. In capitalism of yesterday the way to increase your competitiveness was to invest in bigger and better factories and labour costs were secondary, but that race has been run so far that the only way to get an edge is to reduce labour costs - and this is precisely why countries like china becones the "world factory" of today whereas countries like Germany were the "world factories" of yesterday.
The conclusion of this, in my opinion, is that corporations are inheretly "evil" (to use a somewhat malplaced moral term). They have to exploit the workers more and more.
To be precise. It costs 86 euro or 110 us$ in todays exchange rate, yesterday it was 108 us$. In Sweden we dont have euro but SEK, and these prices are converted from SEK, so it should be noted that the dollar is very low compared to the SEK right now (very nice for ordering things from the US, favourable exchange rates often pays the shipping).
Now, now. The gamecube launched at 25 000 yen in Japan (205$, again give or take 10% for exchange rates) in 2001. I don't know what it costs now, but it is unlikely for it to have increased.
In Sweden (one of the most expensive places in Europe, at least in terms of general consumer prices - I guess that would be the case for electronics as well) a new gamecube is 100$ (give or take 10% for the exchange rate) today.
I am using OO.org 2.0.2 and it features bookmarks and I have not installed any macros at all. In the.pdf export dialogue there is an option to make the pdf tagged.
I get 10 mbps at 30$/mo and I live in a house owned by the state housing company, Svenska bostäder, which is the biggest landlord in Sweden. These numbers sound rather inflated though, because of the decreased value of us$ as compared to swedish SEK. 100 mbps would be about twice that sum and 30 mbps somewhere in between, but 10 mbps is enough for me.
Swedish police has more leeway in Sweden then in the US because we don't have any institution to audit them. In american police (at least judging from police movies, correct me if I am wrong) it is considered improper for somebody to investigate themselves and therefore there are special police units that investigates on the actions of policemen. Here in Sweden it is the same polices doing internal investigation as all other investigation.
Also when it comes to courts. In the US you have a right to be judged by your peers (in theory, atleast). In Sweden you have the right to be judged by your politicians - remember, those same people who apparently ordered the bust (which they had no right to do, as so many others have pointed out).
The Swedish legal system is a catch 22 when it comes to govermental responsibility. The police carries out the orders from the politicians, the police investigates itself if anyone complains that their actions were illegal and if that investigation shows something was not right the politicians get to judge whether it was right or not of the police to carry out their orders.
The Swedish system of policemen investigating themselves is highly dubious. In the US, I have been told, they have special groups for internal investigation to avoid precisely this thing.
Anyways, the swedish state television made an excellent documentary about this whole affair where they showed that the video used in court as evidence was "cut" so to make the attack on the police look more violent. The uncut edition showed the other protestors pulling back and this person advancing alone, whereas the police edition conviniently left out the part where the other protestors pulled back. They also applied a sountrack of shouting people that made it sound as if thousands of people where chanting slogans whereas noone was actually shouting anything.
This was considered correct procedure by the swedish legal system. But what is to expect when the juries are elected politicans - are they supposed to rule that the police acting on their orders is wrong? That would not be in their best interest at all.
Well, to arrest somebody and check their DNA, as they did with the regal representative of the pirate bay, is not allowed by Swedish law unless there is a very high degree of suspicion (in Swedish law stthere are different degrees of suspicion. They are often used in an arbitrary way, but their purpose is to regulate how much force the police uses in relation to how likely is it that the person is guilty) AND the crime they are suspected of is punishable by prison. Copyright violation is not punishable by prison and therefore it would technically be illegal to check their DNA.
It is important to note, though, that the swedish legal system is not politically independent as it is in the US. The people on the "juries" are politicians and the number of jury members a party gets is determined by the amount of votes they get in elections. So, as the majority of the swedish parties are against the pirate bay, this will probably pass in a Swedish court.
Their legal counsel is a law-school student and not a certified lawyer. I don't know if that makes any legal difference though.
I am a bit curious as to how they are going to use those DNA samples? I can't think of much use for DNA besides proving that they have actually touched the servers, which they have been filmed doing on several occasions by swedish television.
I am not saying there is not stolen technology in China. All I am contesting is that they build their economy on it. Allthough China probably does export military technology, it is hardly what their economy is based on. The main (only?) thing causing economic growth in China for the past 20 years has been the foreign corporations comming in as a result of economic liberalisation.
In Swedish the word 'mot' (pronounced like english moot) means both towards and against. Therefore our government never has to lie when they send soldiers to other countries. However criminal, their actions is always 'mot' peace.
Slashdot Mirror
In Sweden it is not only illegal to physically punish a child, it is a more grave offence then assaulting a adult. It is also a crime for day-care-workers, teachers and any other in professional contact with the child not to report if they have any suspicion that a child is being physically beaten.
More than one brittish family that has gotten into trouble with the law because of this.
As is it in the UK, Italy, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, Japan and probably many other countries. It's short for cooperative, in this case.
.... Unless you live in a democracy, where the state answers to the people and not the other way around.
Not that Sweden was ever the model of democracy or freedom it pretended to be, but what we have now is the decaying remains of freedoms. Up to a certain point they were gradually extended (we had no decisive shift to democracy here, having no democratic revolution; rights were granted at a pace decided on by the state and originally also the king) now they are steadily being terminated or turned into legal window-dressing.
Everyone seems to be equating democracy with the right to vote. But the right to vote is pointless without the freedom to associate. The freedom to associate is pointless without the freedom of speach and press - freedoms who are in turn pointless if the publishers or speakers are constantly supervised and subject to arbitrary justice (as in terrorist laws) of the state they would be in opposition to.
Sweden has a "proud" tradition of big-brotherism.
Bewteen 1936 and 1978 we had the IB (information bureau, it held a few other names through it's existence but IB is the one most used to refer to them), a vast network of informers in every major workplace in Sweden. When they were exposed to the world in the seventies, a law was made saying that the state cannot register the political opinions of the citizens. This was obviously just window dressing, and the SÄPO (Security police) essentially continued the work of the disbanded IB (as you can read in the annual report of the security police at their website), if without their extensive network of informers.
The pirate bay is of very little political importance and of no risk to "national security" (as opposed to political opposition) and therefore the Swedish state does not care very much about them.
Correction: It is an acronym, not an abbrevation.
IKEA is an abbrevation for Ingvar Kamprad Eltmaryd Agunnarryd (the first two are the names of the founder and the two second are the name of the farm he grew up at and the parish of said farm). IKEA is not a word in Swedish.
The headline actually says "Sweden is an infamous pirate-nest".
Now, I am not an american and i don't know the exact details about the laws passed there, but are they really banning you from eating trans-fats? How, then, are they planning on enforcing that? Will you be pulled over by an officer demanding to search your trunk for trans-fats when you have been to the mall or will the customs seize packages suspected of containg trans-fat?
My guess is that won't be the case. My impression (which is as informed as the guess of any european watching the news) is that they are banning resturants from serving trans-fats. That means they are not banning you from hurting your health and cause yourself a premature death - they are banning others (the resturant owners) from exploiting you in way which shortens your life. They are protecting you from the greed of scroupulus bussinessmen. Doing so does not enchroach any civil liberties.
Absolutely hilarious!
And this is a problem, how?
Wikipedia is not a video game where you need to gain exp-points to level. It is an encyclopedia. People spending their days correcting punctuation are also contributing and if ranking higher in the statistics is their motivation, that is fine by me.
Those who make great contributions in the form of content are recognized in another way then statistics: their articles become featured, and that is a far greater honor then beeing the top contributor by means of spellchecking.
The reason why you cannot compare the parties in Sweden with the Democrats and the Republicans is that the social democrats is a party of the workers movement (their name is actually "the workers party social democrats"). The basis of the social democratic party is in the peoples movements (tennants associations, tradeunions, cooperative enterprises, temperance movement, student unions, the peoples education movement, etc.), which consists of millions of people and are controlled by the social democrats (the social democrats themselves has 150 000 members, which is much compared to the other parties but small compared to what they used to be). For this reason, the division in Sweden is not between the liberal and the conservative but between the bourgeois and the workers parties. Bourgeios (Swedish "borgerlig") is a strange word in English, but in Swedish it what the right-wing parties call themselves. In the US there are only bourgeios parties, with very limited base in mass movements and very limited activities outside of the parliamentary context.
How can you even reason like that? The fact that YOU have a choice does not mean that everyone else do. A choice between starvation and wage slavery, is not really a choice. Apple and its subcontractor are well aware that the workers in China have not better alternative, that is why they have choosen to exploit them and not workers somwhere else. The only ones having a choice here is apple, but do even they have a choice.
You imply that corporations are not inheretly evil. But what would happen to Apple without the sweatshops? Well, their costs would increase - reducing their profit and raising the price of their products. It would make them much less competitive. That is how capitalism today works. In capitalism of yesterday the way to increase your competitiveness was to invest in bigger and better factories and labour costs were secondary, but that race has been run so far that the only way to get an edge is to reduce labour costs - and this is precisely why countries like china becones the "world factory" of today whereas countries like Germany were the "world factories" of yesterday.
The conclusion of this, in my opinion, is that corporations are inheretly "evil" (to use a somewhat malplaced moral term). They have to exploit the workers more and more.
To be precise. It costs 86 euro or 110 us$ in todays exchange rate, yesterday it was 108 us$. In Sweden we dont have euro but SEK, and these prices are converted from SEK, so it should be noted that the dollar is very low compared to the SEK right now (very nice for ordering things from the US, favourable exchange rates often pays the shipping).
Now, now. The gamecube launched at 25 000 yen in Japan (205$, again give or take 10% for exchange rates) in 2001. I don't know what it costs now, but it is unlikely for it to have increased.
In Sweden (one of the most expensive places in Europe, at least in terms of general consumer prices - I guess that would be the case for electronics as well) a new gamecube is 100$ (give or take 10% for the exchange rate) today.
I am using OO.org 2.0.2 and it features bookmarks and I have not installed any macros at all. In the .pdf export dialogue there is an option to make the pdf tagged.
I get 10 mbps at 30$/mo and I live in a house owned by the state housing company, Svenska bostäder, which is the biggest landlord in Sweden. These numbers sound rather inflated though, because of the decreased value of us$ as compared to swedish SEK. 100 mbps would be about twice that sum and 30 mbps somewhere in between, but 10 mbps is enough for me.
Swedish police has more leeway in Sweden then in the US because we don't have any institution to audit them. In american police (at least judging from police movies, correct me if I am wrong) it is considered improper for somebody to investigate themselves and therefore there are special police units that investigates on the actions of policemen. Here in Sweden it is the same polices doing internal investigation as all other investigation.
Also when it comes to courts. In the US you have a right to be judged by your peers (in theory, atleast). In Sweden you have the right to be judged by your politicians - remember, those same people who apparently ordered the bust (which they had no right to do, as so many others have pointed out).
The Swedish legal system is a catch 22 when it comes to govermental responsibility. The police carries out the orders from the politicians, the police investigates itself if anyone complains that their actions were illegal and if that investigation shows something was not right the politicians get to judge whether it was right or not of the police to carry out their orders.
Just thought i'd mention that as of one hour ago the pirate bay is back online. So are some of the other organisations hit in this raid.
The Swedish system of policemen investigating themselves is highly dubious. In the US, I have been told, they have special groups for internal investigation to avoid precisely this thing.
Anyways, the swedish state television made an excellent documentary about this whole affair where they showed that the video used in court as evidence was "cut" so to make the attack on the police look more violent. The uncut edition showed the other protestors pulling back and this person advancing alone, whereas the police edition conviniently left out the part where the other protestors pulled back. They also applied a sountrack of shouting people that made it sound as if thousands of people where chanting slogans whereas noone was actually shouting anything.
This was considered correct procedure by the swedish legal system. But what is to expect when the juries are elected politicans - are they supposed to rule that the police acting on their orders is wrong? That would not be in their best interest at all.
Well, to arrest somebody and check their DNA, as they did with the regal representative of the pirate bay, is not allowed by Swedish law unless there is a very high degree of suspicion (in Swedish law stthere are different degrees of suspicion. They are often used in an arbitrary way, but their purpose is to regulate how much force the police uses in relation to how likely is it that the person is guilty) AND the crime they are suspected of is punishable by prison. Copyright violation is not punishable by prison and therefore it would technically be illegal to check their DNA. It is important to note, though, that the swedish legal system is not politically independent as it is in the US. The people on the "juries" are politicians and the number of jury members a party gets is determined by the amount of votes they get in elections. So, as the majority of the swedish parties are against the pirate bay, this will probably pass in a Swedish court.
Their legal counsel is a law-school student and not a certified lawyer. I don't know if that makes any legal difference though. I am a bit curious as to how they are going to use those DNA samples? I can't think of much use for DNA besides proving that they have actually touched the servers, which they have been filmed doing on several occasions by swedish television.
nt
I am not saying there is not stolen technology in China. All I am contesting is that they build their economy on it. Allthough China probably does export military technology, it is hardly what their economy is based on. The main (only?) thing causing economic growth in China for the past 20 years has been the foreign corporations comming in as a result of economic liberalisation.
In Swedish the word 'mot' (pronounced like english moot) means both towards and against. Therefore our government never has to lie when they send soldiers to other countries. However criminal, their actions is always 'mot' peace.
You mean the technology that the american corporations and their contractors in the chinese free trade zones brought with them?