Serious enough to throw the idea out there and see if anyone has any good reasons why it wouldn't work, at least in the short-term.
I can't think of any immediate reasons why it couldn't possibly work, and I have worked as an avionics tech for many years in General Aviation, including working at an FBO that handled avionic maintenance/certification for a couple of charter services as part of their customer base. I'm no expert, but I'm probably a little more knowledgeable than most average people, for what it's worth.
Like I said, I was interested in seeing if anyone could come up with an immediate "show-stopper" reason for the idea to be a non-starter.
The government could mandate that charter flight passengers must pass TSA screening like airline passengers which would pretty well decimate the US air-charter business except possibly for one or two of the largest, or try to forbid people from jointly scheduling a charter flight together, which would be almost as bad, maybe worse.
Can the Feds now use mental instability as a excuse to lock up anyone they want?
Although the practice gained infamy by it's use in the USSR and Warsaw Pact countries against dissidents, it's nothing new in the US either, though not nearly so widespread, blatant, or partisan. There have been recent efforts in the US to hugely broaden the definition of what constitutes a "mental illness or disorder" that prohibits ownership/possession of firearms by opponents of individual gun rights, particularly since the recent shootings.
It would not surprise me in the least to learn that such tactics are increasingly being used by the US government to suppress dissent in recent years. History teaches us that abuses like this always happen when a government becomes too powerful.
It might work for a year or two then it would flip around and the charter companies would become the airlines.
They'd get bigger jets to accommodate all the new demand. Then to maintain profit margins they'd have to cut down service, etc etc.
Unlike the situation with a handful of airlines, there would be hundreds of charter services all fiercely competing for the passenger's dollars. If some of the services started down the path you describe, the competing services will eat their lunch, as passengers will bypass signing on to those flights in favor of the competition.
Besides bypassing the TSA, the entire point is to use competition among the various charter services to ensure the highest quality service for the lowest possible price.
Wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to choose a flight that suits you individually, like say "smoking" or "non-smoking" flights, cigar aficionado flights, wine/whiskey/scotch aficionado flights, even topless/nude female exotic dancer flight attendant flights for bachelors.
The single largest unpredictable future problem would be government jumping into the middle and screwing things up with regulation and legislation like government usually does, or even outlawing the practice entirely to protect the airlines/unions and make certain that no US air passengers miss out on being irradiated/groped by a minimum-wage TSA goon.
How about we use this wonderful network of tubes to set up a method and system for organizing and grouping people who want to fly from point A to point B and combine their travel money to schedule/hire chartered flights?
A project for Kickstarter, maybe? Crowd-sourced?
I'm not sure precisely how it would work, but I see this system where you can use your phone or computer to post proposed charter flights and/or browse existing proposed charter flights by origin/destination/schedule/price looking for one that fits your travel plans that has openings.
Handle the airlines (and the TSA) like how the internet was originally designed to handle damage...route around them.
The difference is that Assange encourages the behavior, while news papers do not.
Yes, of course. Reporters, especially investigative reporters, have never sought to expose juicy/scandalous/shocking/criminal government behavior. They especially never cultivated sources that contacted them first, as is the case with Bradley and Wikileaks/Assange, and strangely enough, those NYT reporters and their source as well.
That's why you never saw any embarrassing and/or secret government information exposed in/by US newspapers./sarc
Assange is doing exactly what the NYT did e.g. the Pentagon Papers. To try to characterize it otherwise is simply attempting to find some flimsy justification for the witch-hunt the US is engaged in.
Just remember, if they can do this to someone like Assange, they can and will do this to anyone they wish...that includes you, if you happen to come to their attention.
The government isn't making "green" energy cheaper, it's forcing other forms of energy to become more expensive and scarce through regulation and taxation.
You express anger at the US exporting externalities, yet come down on the externalities of fracking. Don't like fracking? Then there's nuclear, oil, and coal. "Green" energy cannot replace anywhere near enough of the nation's energy needs at this point in time to make up the differences. The energy has to come from somewhere, and we don't have zero-point modules yet.
If the US doesn't use those domestic resources to keep it's energy costs relatively low, the US will not be able to compete on the world market nor provide for and feed it's people, it will lose it's national strength, and eventually other nations that don't cripple themselves will take those resources from us and they will be used anyways.
I'd be all for keeping more of the externalities here in the US by drilling/refining here instead of exporting our externalities to Canada, Mexico, the ME, etc, and removing all government special tax breaks (what you call "subsidies") for all energy companies/industries and let them pay the same taxes and benefit from only the same legal tax deductions/offsets/etc all other businesses get. Also, the process for designing and building modern nuclear power plants must be streamlined and expedited, and environmental regulations currently curtailing their construction re-thought.
If what Assange did was "espionage", then there are some US newspapers that are just as guilty. Remember the "Pentagon papers"?
The US government wanted to come down on the NYT and the reporters involved, but the courts said that simply publishing what someone else obtained by whatever means is not a criminal act.
The US is no longer a nation of laws. It doesn't even follow it's own laws if it's not convenient. It's gotten to where it doesn't even pretend otherwise anymore. The Bill of Rights gets lip-service, at best, these days.
You want to know why there are all these beatings in fast-food restaurants, on school buses, shootings like Giffords and Aurora, etc, popping up over the past couple of decades? People behave as their environment dictates, and the US government has turned the nation into a giant prison, so naturally, people behave like prison inmates...gangs, random violence, drugs, etc. It's also a large reason behind police brutality and the like. Police are no longer peace officers, they are prison guards. Screws. Enforcers. Government thugs.
The only way it will get better is if we the people rise up and force the government to obey the restrictions on their powers set forth in the Constitution. Yeah I know, "good luck with that", but still, that's the only way it gets better. It may take a few generations, however.
There's a lot of room between roman_mir's free market worship and Marxist economics.
Precisely.
They are polar opposites, as Maxists do not believe in a free market. Roman_mir's experiences living under the oppression of a Marxist government and in an "economy" ("We pretend to work, they pretend to pay us.") planned and run by Marxists has illustrated to him, like nothing else can, how horrible such societies are to live in and what happens when there is *not* a free market. Note: "free" in this context does not mean lawless.
"I strongly disagree" and "I hate seeing those facts being pointed out" != "Troll"
"Y'all are some nerve rackin' sonsabitches, it's like I'm playing cards with my sisters kids!!" - Billy-Bob Thornton as "Johnny Tyler" in the movie "Tombstone"
I was about to post a comment about how this would get turned into a free market circle jerk, but I was beaten to the punch with this inarticulate drivel.
Well, I guess we just need to wait for roman_mir to come forth and spew his garbage about the Free Market Deities.
Yeah, damn that roman_mir and his proven facts, accurate history, and logic!
How's a Marxist/Statist supposed to sell his claptrap failed ideology with guys like that around?
Marxism isn't pining for the fjords, and it wouldn't "voom" if you put 50,000 volts through it. Bereft of life, it rests in peace. It has shuffled off it's mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. It is an ex-ideology. It is dead.
Some people, however, insist on repeatedly nailing it to it's perch and trying to resell it.
"There's a very clear lesson here. What it shows is that if you make a cleaner energy source cheaper, you will displace dirtier sources"
Sure, that's what everyone's been saying. The disagreement is over how to get there. Should we offer insurance guarantees for nuclear power plants? Should we mandate feed-in tariffs for household solar? Should we loosen restrictions on fracking? Should we increase science funding for alternative energy R&D? Should we institute a carbon tax?
So far, the strategy has been to cause all energy costs except those from "green" energy sources to, as Obama is famously quoted as saying; "necessarily skyrocket".
That's where I have a problem. Making "green" energy cheaper and more practical is a win and something I'd applaud, trying to force it by instead making everything else too expensive is stupid and hurts people, especially the poor, and the economy in general.
Terrorism and terrorists are whatever and whoever those controlling the discussion decide they are at any given time
For instance, according to the DHS, US military vets are definite domestic terrorist threats but members of the Muslim Brotherhood get invited to the White House and are given positions in the federal government and access to sensitive information.
Oh, and saying that corporations own the US government is like saying favored shop keepers own their local mafia. It is completely backwards and utterly ridiculous. This economic fascism(corporatism to use a newer definition describing the nominal private ownership of the means of production directed by the state) is a function of our government, the ones with all the guns, not those that pay off our government to point them somewhere else. Just imagine the power disparity between one institution and the other. Saying these insignificant corporations own the government is an obvious distortion of the truth to shift blame away from the violent actor(the state) to the one benefiting from the violence(the corporation). They are certainly not blameless, not because they own this vast state, but rather because they actively participate with it. That is a far more accurate description of events.
Thanks for that.
Good to see at least one other person commenting that grasps the reality. Government has the exclusive power to use violence and imprisonment, and writes the laws and determines who is breaking them. The government has the power to do a "Darth Vader" - "I have altered the deal. Pray I do not alter it further." and has done so in the past.
As has been famously said, it is the nature of government to grow. A government "grows" by increasing the amount of wealth, capital, and property it controls, and it's power and control over the population.
Corporations/businesses/industries sitting on all this wealth, property, and capital that the government wants ultimately to control (along with individual wealth/property/capital) are effectively forced to make "deals with the devil" because their competitors are attempting to do so, in order to gain regulatory/legislative advantage to force them out of business.
This in no way excuses the behavior, but one can clearly understand the reasons for it without condoning it. It's sort of like trying to be "the last one killed" by helping the murderer(s) tie the other soon-to-be victim(s).
It's predictable and one of the biggest reasons to keep the central government relatively small, domestically weak, and spending only a fraction of the total GDP is does currently. And a pox on both major US political parties. Both are equally guilty of expanding government, particularly after the '50s.
I can just picture the look on the Queen's face when she is told that the loud noise just down the street was the Ecuadorian embassy being BOMBED by her own military in an attempt to extradite Juliane Assange...
And to top it off, doing so at the behest of a US President that hates Britain so much because of their colonial past that he had the bust of Winston Churchill that was given by Britain as a State gift and that sat in the Oval Office, crated-up and shipped back to the Brits. And lied about doing it, then got publicly caught in the lie.
I don't understand why in the world Britain and Brits themselves don't make more of a fuss about their shabby treatment by the US, and why they continue to lick US boot as they do after being repeatedly and consistently treated like shit for all their trouble.
US TLAs must be hanging on to some powerful blackmail material, is all I can figure.
The US has nothing to worry about. We have plenty of CIA operatives in south America that we can take care of about anything coming our way. Not to mention the Marine guards stationed at our embassies have access to quite a bit of weaponry.
Even US Marines with buttloads of weapons, if holed up in an isolated foreign embassy, can only slightly delay the inevitable, and most likely insure nobody inside is left alive. The CIA isn't exactly batting a thousand these days. Chavez' rise to power is only one example in S.A. alone, never mind the miscalls in the Middle East, particularly in regard to the "democracies" and "enlightened governance" that were to emerge from the so-called "Arab Spring".
Remember, this would be a foreign government with access to military hardware, not angry college students. Even if one grants the embassy defenders with the ability to repel an armored assault by tanks, unless the embassy also has extensive air defense capabilities and is deep underground, a couple of dumb 1,000-lb bombs or barrages of artillery/mortars and/or unguided HE/AP cluster-rockets commonly found on small military attack helos would pretty much end things.
As for South American countries allying with our enemies, I doubt that would happen over something like this.
Granted, taken alone it wouldn't be that big a deal. But, it's not taken alone, but in addition and in contrast with past treatment and behaviors. A number of S. American nations are already moving towards closer military and political cooperation with enemies of US/UK/Western interests.
The arrest warrant has "rape" checked as the reason.
Ah, so repressive regimes would never fabricate/embellish such charges in order to facilitate getting their hands on someone. I'm also sure that nobody given political asylum by the UK/US has ever been accused of non-political criminal acts by (or at the behest of) the country they were fleeing.
It would be a huge breach of commonly-accepted foreign diplomatic/embassy policy by the UK and the US by extension.
But, like most any agreements/treaties/etc "international" in nature, the likelihood of the other guys sticking to the agreement when it's inconvenient depends on how much trouble and money you can cost them against how important/valuable said breach is to them.
Although not a military giant, Ecuador could still stir up a lot of foreign-relations trouble and also cost the UK and US a metric buttload of money. No doubt Venezuela and possibly Brazil will side with Ecuador against the US internationally, maybe others, like Cuba, will join as well.
The UK and US had better evacuate their embassies in Ecuador (and possibly elsewhere too) before they decide to storm that embassy.
I could see this as providing another big push to S. American nations to ally with US/UK enemies. It may likely also have the effect of making US/UK embassies elsewhere less safe, as other nations/regimes see that the UK/US no longer even pretends to honor common diplomatic and embassy protocol. They may see an uptick in US/UK foreign embassies attacked/stormed and officials killed/imprisoned.
I'm sorry, but both the US and UK governments are far, far overdue for a good bitch-slapping by the citizens and all of OUR money taken away from them, except for tiny amounts for essential functions and services that WE (citizens in each respective nation) decide on.
They've been doing little but ever-increasingly mucking things up and robbing the people blind for going on a century or more now. Time for the shit to stop, wouldn't you say?
I think he's commenting on the fact that the second he tries to make use of his asylum (i.e. by leaving the embassy to make his way to the airport) he will be arrested -- quite legally -- by British police.
Then the Ecuadorians arrest British & American embassy officials in Ecuador...maybe even including the official ambassadors themselves. It's even possible other countries might join Ecuador is arresting British/US embassy officials to protest British/US violations of accepted international protocol regarding ambassadorial sovereignty.
I don't think either Britain or the US wants to go down that road. There's just too little gain for far too much risk and negative influence on general international relations for both countries.
So, when people get stopped by the police for taking pictures in public, everyone rages against the police. When the police take pictures in public, everyone rages against the police.
YOU CAN'T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS. Either it's okay to take these pictures and do what you like with them, or it's not. Stop looking at everything the police do as bad and evil and inherently abusive, and treat all instances of an issue the same.
ORLY?
Just try setting up surveillance of a police station and log/publish license plate data on comings and goings.
Helpful Tip: Make sure you've made prior arrangements for legal counsel and for posting bail.
That's accepting that the people squatting in the West Bank & Gaza are actually anything other than random people (and now their descendants) that just happened to be squatting in the area in 1948.
There are no "Palestinians" and there's never been a nation called "Palestine". These poor bastards are nothing but cat's paws being used by the Arab nations as another way to attack Israel. The Arab nations could have and could still offer them refuge, but they didn't and won't, as the "Palestinians" are far too useful a tool to attack Israel and the West with.
Palestinians have been offered their own state on generous terms on multiple occasions and have flatly rejected it each time, as their true goal is not a state, but the total elimination of Israel and genocide for the Jews, completing what they and the Nazis embarked upon in the 1940s as allies.
That same old ethnic/religious hatred that powered the Nazi concentration camps, from the same people, is what is causing the problems in the Middle East regarding Israel.
Actually, the coal plants that are going out were scheduled to be gone (they were built in the 30's-50's). They are quickly being replaced by NG plants as well as wind/solar (more wind, rather than solar). Our actual electricity capacity is RISING, not shrinking.
Many if not most power plants in the US of any design/technology are overdue for shutdown/replacement.The NG plants won't be coming online in time to replace the losses at the current rate/schedule of coal plant closings.
Many of the NG plants are still only blueprints, and the government is not exactly expediting the licensing/permitting process through the various regulatory and environmental agencies. Solar and wind cannot replace the baseline load generation capability being lost.
Slashdot Mirror
not sure if serious...
Serious enough to throw the idea out there and see if anyone has any good reasons why it wouldn't work, at least in the short-term.
I can't think of any immediate reasons why it couldn't possibly work, and I have worked as an avionics tech for many years in General Aviation, including working at an FBO that handled avionic maintenance/certification for a couple of charter services as part of their customer base. I'm no expert, but I'm probably a little more knowledgeable than most average people, for what it's worth.
Like I said, I was interested in seeing if anyone could come up with an immediate "show-stopper" reason for the idea to be a non-starter.
The government could mandate that charter flight passengers must pass TSA screening like airline passengers which would pretty well decimate the US air-charter business except possibly for one or two of the largest, or try to forbid people from jointly scheduling a charter flight together, which would be almost as bad, maybe worse.
Strat
Can the Feds now use mental instability as a excuse to lock up anyone they want?
Although the practice gained infamy by it's use in the USSR and Warsaw Pact countries against dissidents, it's nothing new in the US either, though not nearly so widespread, blatant, or partisan. There have been recent efforts in the US to hugely broaden the definition of what constitutes a "mental illness or disorder" that prohibits ownership/possession of firearms by opponents of individual gun rights, particularly since the recent shootings.
It would not surprise me in the least to learn that such tactics are increasingly being used by the US government to suppress dissent in recent years. History teaches us that abuses like this always happen when a government becomes too powerful.
Strat
It might work for a year or two then it would flip around and the charter companies would become the airlines.
They'd get bigger jets to accommodate all the new demand. Then to maintain profit margins they'd have to cut down service, etc etc.
Unlike the situation with a handful of airlines, there would be hundreds of charter services all fiercely competing for the passenger's dollars. If some of the services started down the path you describe, the competing services will eat their lunch, as passengers will bypass signing on to those flights in favor of the competition.
Besides bypassing the TSA, the entire point is to use competition among the various charter services to ensure the highest quality service for the lowest possible price.
Wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to choose a flight that suits you individually, like say "smoking" or "non-smoking" flights, cigar aficionado flights, wine/whiskey/scotch aficionado flights, even topless/nude female exotic dancer flight attendant flights for bachelors.
The single largest unpredictable future problem would be government jumping into the middle and screwing things up with regulation and legislation like government usually does, or even outlawing the practice entirely to protect the airlines/unions and make certain that no US air passengers miss out on being irradiated/groped by a minimum-wage TSA goon.
Strat
How about we use this wonderful network of tubes to set up a method and system for organizing and grouping people who want to fly from point A to point B and combine their travel money to schedule/hire chartered flights?
A project for Kickstarter, maybe? Crowd-sourced?
I'm not sure precisely how it would work, but I see this system where you can use your phone or computer to post proposed charter flights and/or browse existing proposed charter flights by origin/destination/schedule/price looking for one that fits your travel plans that has openings.
Handle the airlines (and the TSA) like how the internet was originally designed to handle damage...route around them.
Strat
The difference is that Assange encourages the behavior, while news papers do not.
Yes, of course. Reporters, especially investigative reporters, have never sought to expose juicy/scandalous/shocking/criminal government behavior. They especially never cultivated sources that contacted them first, as is the case with Bradley and Wikileaks/Assange, and strangely enough, those NYT reporters and their source as well.
That's why you never saw any embarrassing and/or secret government information exposed in/by US newspapers. /sarc
Assange is doing exactly what the NYT did e.g. the Pentagon Papers. To try to characterize it otherwise is simply attempting to find some flimsy justification for the witch-hunt the US is engaged in.
Just remember, if they can do this to someone like Assange, they can and will do this to anyone they wish...that includes you, if you happen to come to their attention.
Strat
the whole point of making green energy cheaper
The government isn't making "green" energy cheaper, it's forcing other forms of energy to become more expensive and scarce through regulation and taxation.
You express anger at the US exporting externalities, yet come down on the externalities of fracking. Don't like fracking? Then there's nuclear, oil, and coal. "Green" energy cannot replace anywhere near enough of the nation's energy needs at this point in time to make up the differences. The energy has to come from somewhere, and we don't have zero-point modules yet.
If the US doesn't use those domestic resources to keep it's energy costs relatively low, the US will not be able to compete on the world market nor provide for and feed it's people, it will lose it's national strength, and eventually other nations that don't cripple themselves will take those resources from us and they will be used anyways.
I'd be all for keeping more of the externalities here in the US by drilling/refining here instead of exporting our externalities to Canada, Mexico, the ME, etc, and removing all government special tax breaks (what you call "subsidies") for all energy companies/industries and let them pay the same taxes and benefit from only the same legal tax deductions/offsets/etc all other businesses get. Also, the process for designing and building modern nuclear power plants must be streamlined and expedited, and environmental regulations currently curtailing their construction re-thought.
Strat
Assange participated in espionage.
If what Assange did was "espionage", then there are some US newspapers that are just as guilty. Remember the "Pentagon papers"?
The US government wanted to come down on the NYT and the reporters involved, but the courts said that simply publishing what someone else obtained by whatever means is not a criminal act.
The US is no longer a nation of laws. It doesn't even follow it's own laws if it's not convenient. It's gotten to where it doesn't even pretend otherwise anymore. The Bill of Rights gets lip-service, at best, these days.
You want to know why there are all these beatings in fast-food restaurants, on school buses, shootings like Giffords and Aurora, etc, popping up over the past couple of decades? People behave as their environment dictates, and the US government has turned the nation into a giant prison, so naturally, people behave like prison inmates...gangs, random violence, drugs, etc. It's also a large reason behind police brutality and the like. Police are no longer peace officers, they are prison guards. Screws. Enforcers. Government thugs.
The only way it will get better is if we the people rise up and force the government to obey the restrictions on their powers set forth in the Constitution. Yeah I know, "good luck with that", but still, that's the only way it gets better. It may take a few generations, however.
Strat
There's a lot of room between roman_mir's free market worship and Marxist economics.
Precisely.
They are polar opposites, as Maxists do not believe in a free market. Roman_mir's experiences living under the oppression of a Marxist government and in an "economy" ("We pretend to work, they pretend to pay us.") planned and run by Marxists has illustrated to him, like nothing else can, how horrible such societies are to live in and what happens when there is *not* a free market. Note: "free" in this context does not mean lawless.
What was your point?
Strat
How in the world is the above a "Troll" comment?
"I strongly disagree" and "I hate seeing those facts being pointed out" != "Troll"
"Y'all are some nerve rackin' sonsabitches, it's like I'm playing cards with my sisters kids!!" - Billy-Bob Thornton as "Johnny Tyler" in the movie "Tombstone"
I was about to post a comment about how this would get turned into a free market circle jerk, but I was beaten to the punch with this inarticulate drivel.
Well, I guess we just need to wait for roman_mir to come forth and spew his garbage about the Free Market Deities.
Yeah, damn that roman_mir and his proven facts, accurate history, and logic!
How's a Marxist/Statist supposed to sell his claptrap failed ideology with guys like that around?
Marxism isn't pining for the fjords, and it wouldn't "voom" if you put 50,000 volts through it. Bereft of life, it rests in peace. It has shuffled off it's mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. It is an ex-ideology. It is dead.
Some people, however, insist on repeatedly nailing it to it's perch and trying to resell it.
Strat
So far, the strategy has been to cause all energy costs except those from "green" energy sources to, as Obama is famously quoted as saying; "necessarily skyrocket".
That's where I have a problem. Making "green" energy cheaper and more practical is a win and something I'd applaud, trying to force it by instead making everything else too expensive is stupid and hurts people, especially the poor, and the economy in general.
Strat
Define terrorism.
Terrorism and terrorists are whatever and whoever those controlling the discussion decide they are at any given time
For instance, according to the DHS, US military vets are definite domestic terrorist threats but members of the Muslim Brotherhood get invited to the White House and are given positions in the federal government and access to sensitive information.
Ain't it funny how that works?
Strat
Oh, and saying that corporations own the US government is like saying favored shop keepers own their local mafia. It is completely backwards and utterly ridiculous. This economic fascism(corporatism to use a newer definition describing the nominal private ownership of the means of production directed by the state) is a function of our government, the ones with all the guns, not those that pay off our government to point them somewhere else. Just imagine the power disparity between one institution and the other. Saying these insignificant corporations own the government is an obvious distortion of the truth to shift blame away from the violent actor(the state) to the one benefiting from the violence(the corporation). They are certainly not blameless, not because they own this vast state, but rather because they actively participate with it. That is a far more accurate description of events.
Thanks for that.
Good to see at least one other person commenting that grasps the reality. Government has the exclusive power to use violence and imprisonment, and writes the laws and determines who is breaking them. The government has the power to do a "Darth Vader" - "I have altered the deal. Pray I do not alter it further." and has done so in the past.
As has been famously said, it is the nature of government to grow. A government "grows" by increasing the amount of wealth, capital, and property it controls, and it's power and control over the population.
Corporations/businesses/industries sitting on all this wealth, property, and capital that the government wants ultimately to control (along with individual wealth/property/capital) are effectively forced to make "deals with the devil" because their competitors are attempting to do so, in order to gain regulatory/legislative advantage to force them out of business.
This in no way excuses the behavior, but one can clearly understand the reasons for it without condoning it. It's sort of like trying to be "the last one killed" by helping the murderer(s) tie the other soon-to-be victim(s).
It's predictable and one of the biggest reasons to keep the central government relatively small, domestically weak, and spending only a fraction of the total GDP is does currently. And a pox on both major US political parties. Both are equally guilty of expanding government, particularly after the '50s.
Strat
I can just picture the look on the Queen's face when she is told that the loud noise just down the street was the Ecuadorian embassy being BOMBED by her own military in an attempt to extradite Juliane Assange...
And to top it off, doing so at the behest of a US President that hates Britain so much because of their colonial past that he had the bust of Winston Churchill that was given by Britain as a State gift and that sat in the Oval Office, crated-up and shipped back to the Brits. And lied about doing it, then got publicly caught in the lie.
I don't understand why in the world Britain and Brits themselves don't make more of a fuss about their shabby treatment by the US, and why they continue to lick US boot as they do after being repeatedly and consistently treated like shit for all their trouble.
US TLAs must be hanging on to some powerful blackmail material, is all I can figure.
Strat
The US has nothing to worry about. We have plenty of CIA operatives in south America that we can take care of about anything coming our way. Not to mention the Marine guards stationed at our embassies have access to quite a bit of weaponry.
Even US Marines with buttloads of weapons, if holed up in an isolated foreign embassy, can only slightly delay the inevitable, and most likely insure nobody inside is left alive. The CIA isn't exactly batting a thousand these days. Chavez' rise to power is
only one example in S.A. alone, never mind the miscalls in the Middle East, particularly in regard to the "democracies" and "enlightened governance" that were to emerge from the so-called "Arab Spring".
Remember, this would be a foreign government with access to military hardware, not angry college students. Even if one grants the embassy defenders with the ability to repel an armored assault by tanks, unless the embassy also has extensive air defense capabilities and is deep underground, a couple of dumb 1,000-lb bombs or barrages of artillery/mortars and/or unguided HE/AP cluster-rockets commonly found on small military attack helos would pretty much end things.
As for South American countries allying with our enemies, I doubt that would happen over something like this.
Granted, taken alone it wouldn't be that big a deal. But, it's not taken alone, but in addition and in contrast with past treatment and behaviors. A number of S. American nations are already moving towards closer military and political cooperation with enemies of US/UK/Western interests.
Strat
The arrest warrant has "rape" checked as the reason.
Ah, so repressive regimes would never fabricate/embellish such charges in order to facilitate getting their hands on someone. I'm also sure that nobody given political asylum by the UK/US has ever been accused of non-political criminal acts by (or at the behest of) the country they were fleeing.
It would be a huge breach of commonly-accepted foreign diplomatic/embassy policy by the UK and the US by extension.
But, like most any agreements/treaties/etc "international" in nature, the likelihood of the other guys sticking to the agreement when it's inconvenient depends on how much trouble and money you can cost them against how important/valuable said breach is to them.
Although not a military giant, Ecuador could still stir up a lot of foreign-relations trouble and also cost the UK and US a metric buttload of money. No doubt Venezuela and possibly Brazil will side with Ecuador against the US internationally, maybe others, like Cuba, will join as well.
The UK and US had better evacuate their embassies in Ecuador (and possibly elsewhere too) before they decide to storm that embassy.
I could see this as providing another big push to S. American nations to ally with US/UK enemies. It may likely also have the effect of making US/UK embassies elsewhere less safe, as other nations/regimes see that the UK/US no longer even pretends to honor common diplomatic and embassy protocol. They may see an uptick in US/UK foreign embassies attacked/stormed and officials killed/imprisoned.
I'm sorry, but both the US and UK governments are far, far overdue for a good bitch-slapping by the citizens and all of OUR money taken away from them, except for tiny amounts for essential functions and services that WE (citizens in each respective nation) decide on.
They've been doing little but ever-increasingly mucking things up and robbing the people blind for going on a century or more now. Time for the shit to stop, wouldn't you say?
Strat
I think he's commenting on the fact that the second he tries to make use of his asylum (i.e. by leaving the embassy to make his way to the airport) he will be arrested -- quite legally -- by British police.
Then the Ecuadorians arrest British & American embassy officials in Ecuador...maybe even including the official ambassadors themselves. It's even possible other countries might join Ecuador is arresting British/US embassy officials to protest British/US violations of accepted international protocol regarding ambassadorial sovereignty.
I don't think either Britain or the US wants to go down that road. There's just too little gain for far too much risk and negative influence on general international relations for both countries.
Strat
RTFA, I'd consider a guy (stranger) reaching between a woman's legs from behind and grabbing her crotch to count as genuine harassment.
Nah.
It was simple hunger.
He was just looking for the sammich dispenser.
Strat
So, when people get stopped by the police for taking pictures in public, everyone rages against the police. When the police take pictures in public, everyone rages against the police.
YOU CAN'T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS. Either it's okay to take these pictures and do what you like with them, or it's not. Stop looking at everything the police do as bad and evil and inherently abusive, and treat all instances of an issue the same.
ORLY?
Just try setting up surveillance of a police station and log/publish license plate data on comings and goings.
Helpful Tip: Make sure you've made prior arrangements for legal counsel and for posting bail.
Strat
Would you accept a two state solution...
That's accepting that the people squatting in the West Bank & Gaza are actually anything other than random people (and now their descendants) that just happened to be squatting in the area in 1948.
There are no "Palestinians" and there's never been a nation called "Palestine". These poor bastards are nothing but cat's paws being used by the Arab nations as another way to attack Israel. The Arab nations could have and could still offer them refuge, but they didn't and won't, as the "Palestinians" are far too useful a tool to attack Israel and the West with.
Palestinians have been offered their own state on generous terms on multiple occasions and have flatly rejected it each time, as their true goal is not a state, but the total elimination of Israel and genocide for the Jews, completing what they and the Nazis embarked upon in the 1940s as allies.
That same old ethnic/religious hatred that powered the Nazi concentration camps, from the same people, is what is causing the problems in the Middle East regarding Israel.
Strat
I'll just leave these here for you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7ByJb7QQ9U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU9CauJP4Pg
Strat
Actually, the coal plants that are going out were scheduled to be gone (they were built in the 30's-50's). They are quickly being replaced by NG plants as well as wind/solar (more wind, rather than solar). Our actual electricity capacity is RISING, not shrinking.
Many if not most power plants in the US of any design/technology are overdue for shutdown/replacement.The NG plants won't be coming online in time to replace the losses at the current rate/schedule of coal plant closings.
Many of the NG plants are still only blueprints, and the government is not exactly expediting the licensing/permitting process through the various regulatory and environmental agencies. Solar and wind cannot replace the baseline load generation capability being lost.
Strat
[And this is why...] We'll continue to burn lots and lots of coal for the foreseeable future.
Actually, coal plants are being shut down to the tune of ~8.5% of total US generation capacity this year alone. Google it.
With nothing planned to replace the lost generation capacity.
I, for one, welcome our skyrocketing-energy-costs-and rolling-blackout/brownout Overlords.
Strat
A pregnant woman is less likely to have fun with an assault rifle
Not necessarily true.
A pregnant woman obviously likes to bang.
Thanks, I'll be here all week.
Please tip the burgers, and try the waitresses.
Strat
The cats that know are all dead.
---
"Now! From the people who brought you 'The Cat Whisperer'...
'The Cat Summoner!!'...
With Host Gilbert Gottfried!"
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You know you'd watch.
Strat