Exactly
My company transferred to the US, and I went over for a year on a company transfer visa.
I was paid competitively and paid taxes in the US.
After a year the company started green card applications for those who wanted it.
If they hadn't then in a few years, the staff with the most experience and knowledge of the software would have had to leave the company to return home, and the company would have been in considerable trouble - generating less tax and with less chance of hiring more US workers.
I assume they had to advertise the jobs as part of the green card process. They certainly didn't want to replace us, not because they were getting cheap labour, but because they had a set of trained staff who were the core of the company.
A few hundred thousand people randomly clicking on their adlinks for a few months should do the trick. Advertisers pull out to avoid paying for false hits. Then see their share price fall.
With both China and India gearing up their economies nothing we do in the West is going to have a measurable impact
We woke these sleeping tigers with our insatiable appetite for cheap consumer crap.
Personally I hope you are right and there is nothing we can do, at least then I have something to say when my grandchildren when ask "But why didn't you do something?"
Shame it has to be normal people who get hurt, but the guys who deserve a little terror in their lives are locked away behind miles of steel fencing in a castle in Scotland. I'm hoping they get that twunt Blair next time.
Sod it, we deserved this. We had this coming. None of the individuals who were hurt or killed deserved it, but as a nation we did.
Besides it could be worse, some poor sods have to put up with this sort of thing day in day out. We could be living in Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Chechnia, Burundi, Uzbekistan or a thousand other places that we never feel much sympathy for. Maybe today's events will generate a bit of empathy, probably it will generate a load of rubbish rhetoric about fighting the evil-doers and some draconian crack downs on our freedom.
I'd love to see how the US would recruit many suicide bombers. Yes, it's not civilized. Is far more civilized to develop the hardware and drop bombs on people from 1000s of feet up in the air, so it's all like a computer game and nobody has to get upset.
Where do you get your news from?
The current regime stinks, this is well documented. Both the US and UK are complicit in propping up a rotten regime for influence, access to Afghanistan and I'm sure this is just a coincidence, but Uzbekistan has oil.
Calling Uzbek citizens who oppose the government 'islamofascist rebels' is rather too convenient for the current dictator. Seems like you are swallowing his propaganda hook line and sinker.
It seems like some news outlet decide either to call people Islamic rebels, or democratic freedom fighters and the world falls into line behind them.
What incite do you have into the country that make you think it would turn out differently to Georgia or Ukrane if the west withdrew it's support and allowed the rotten regime to crumble?
elevating the third world to be like us is causing the problem in the first place
I would suggest regressing some first world ideas and replace them with sustainable subsistence living rather than this never ending quest for the devouring of resources and pursuit of wealth
It's not small subsistence farmers that are chopping up the Amazon, it's loggers or cattle farms that will be shipping their produce half way around the world in order to feed our insatiable appetite.
how do you know this was anything to do with zarqawi? I thought it was only speculation that such a person had been positively identified as being in Iraq and being involved in some of these decapitations of hostages.
This whole 'zarqaei' thing stinks of another 'most wanted, most evil man' simplistic labelling in order to distract attention away from the real issues. I've seen enough of these beacons of evil figures conveniently created over the past few years e.g.:
(spelling not considered)
Mulla Ohma
Al-Sada
Al-Zarqaei
I even saw that idiot Abu Hamza being talked of as the next Saten at some point!!! FFS he'd be the most useless terrorist on the planet.
"Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship....voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
Hermann Göring at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials 1946
He must be cursing himself for taking on that train franchise, most if not all of the problems with the train network are outside his hands yet the bad publicity is going to reflect upon all his businesses.
Many of the Branson announcements are just exercises in cheap (although clever) PR (Concorde and this space thing spring to mind). However aside from this, he has a wonderful business system set up that I envy him for no end. He probably has a few seriously profitable businesses that he uses the profits from as a sort of venture capital pool to fund all his crazy whims and ideas. Who knows how profitable most of these things are (probably not very), but many of them are ideas we all may dream up down the pub and would never have the means or funding to set them up.
As other responders to this post discussed, true free speech is not often seen in Europe; the point of view appears to be that everyone agrees there are some things (like nazism and anti-semitism) that you should not be allowed to say, period.
We (UK) have such a law against "inciting racial hatred", which would cap freedom of speech under certain circumstances. I'm no expert on how this works.
I am certainly allowed to make racist comments as long as my speech isn't intended to incite others to violence against the intended group.
I believe there is talk of bringing in a similar law against "inciting religious hatred", whether the motive is to protect non christian religious groups from hatred, or to attempt to persecute extremist preachers within those religions, I can't say.
How much longer can people keep cutting down trees, without replacing them, until the price of lumber gets so high that only a small amount of people will be able to afford it.
I believe most of the wood we use here in Europe comes from sustainable sources. We are even being encouraged to use more wood as it's claimed that there is a net growth in forests due to replanting. So the more we use, the more they plant. I hope that there is some limit though, as I assume managed forests are dense and are basically dead as far as an ego systems go.
I think the real problem humanity will face is over population. The world is staying the same size, but there are more people.
Not here in Europe. We are going to need to increase population either by immigration or birth rate, else we are going to be stuck in our old age with nobody of working age to look after us.
Looking at disparate use of resources would be a good start. US has 5% of world's population, but uses 25% of oil resources. If the entire world woke up and started claiming the same proportion of world resources that we in the west use, we'd need 6 other earth planets to fulfil this demand!
Trouble is that large countries (China, India) are beginning to wake up (thanks in part to us poking them with the globalisation stick as we think we can make money off them). We probably don't know what monster we've awoken.
What scares me is the fear that 90% of the population will be pushed into slave like conditions, while the richest 10% live relatively well, even in the worst of conditions.
This is just an effect of capitalism isn't it? The 10% have to be doing well so that it gives the 90% some incentive to work harder. We're not going to be solving that one in the near future.
Fair point, but we do see that voter turnout in the US is horribly low, and that most of the arguments seem to be taking place about what someone did or didn't do 30 years ago.
That's why I get the impression that many either don't care, care about trivial things, or are just totally disenfranchised by both 'choices'.
That's why it looks like a bit like the vote is sort of wasted on just the US voters.
What media source would you suggest for a genuinely interested non-US, so that they can become more informed about the real issues and not see a crazy texan and the dullest man in the world slag each other off?
I watched much of the Newsnight (BBC) coverage from both party congresses, and really enjoyed reports from genuine republican, democrat heartlands which seemed to address real history, background and issues. Also candid interviews with delegates, to see how their beliefs differ from the 'party line'. I feel,hope I understand some of the republican cause slightly more now as a result of this and some in depth articles in the papers.
I quit a job which involved quite a lot of traveling (asia and europe) on behalf of a US company - mainly due to the hassle experienced when traveling to the US for meetings. I quit before the manditory fingerprinting / phototaking / pin a star to your sleeve (US-VISIT), of british citizens came into practice.
It hardly likely that the company is going to go bankrupt as a result of loosing my services, but their clients still need visiting and I know they are going to struggle to find a suitable US citizen who is happy to travel worldwide for extended periods.
We should be following Brazil's example and apply equivalent procedures for US passports visiting Europe.
I would probably go along with your maths and say that there has been a net PRESERVATION of lives in Iraq long term.
Do you fancy carrying that calculation further and work out the 'cost per preserved life?'
You could take cost in terms of :
$ for the war
$ for the reconstruction
number of US/UK lives lost
cost of any future terrorist attack that may be carried out by someone recruited since Iraq war
current price of oil
the fact the large coalition of 100+ countries against terrorism has been destroyed by unilateral action
undermining UN
giving justification to the doctrine of preemption to other countries
probably many others
Anyway, if you come up with a figure then let me know.
Even just taking the $ amount, I could probably give you a list of 100 'projects' that US could have undertaken instead of Iraq that would have had better cost benefit.. ie 'more lives saved per buck'
for example:
treating TB (1000s dead per day)
AIDS
3 million people dead in war in D.R.Congo over last 5 years or so
canceling some 3rd world debt
Middle east peace process
If you really want to do good in the world why pick on probably the most costly option?
The news talks about the "insurgency" in Iraq as if it's some kind of general uprising against the oppressive occupiers. Wrong: it's tribal groups with very different ideologies, ones who were crushed under Saddam, thirsting for power.
Depends what you read, watch, talk to doesn't it. Shame you don't have access to watch programmes like this. Most of the 'ordinary' people filmed here seemed pretty pissed off to me. Many wanted the 'Israelis' (sic) out of their country, others looked like they 'may' have been genuinely supportive of the US in the distant past, inproportionate tactics did not seem to be winning hearts and minds "some guy takes a pot shot at them and in return they just open fire indiscriminantly into a crowd of people". Some Iraqi police officer seemed a bit pissed off that the US had killed some of his family. They did however seem pretty pleased with the shooting down of a US helicopter though. These people were not part of the orginised resistance or religious nuts, just ordinary people off the street.
I would suggest you use some of Robert Frisk's articles from the Independent http://www.independent.co.uk, or something like http://www.aljazeera.com/ to balance out the information you are getting from CNN/ FOX.
Well we may soon see how much support Muqtada Al-Sadr actually has amongst the population, assuming he decides to stand down and join the politician process (as he seems to have decided to do).
From what I remember Al-Sadr was pretty small fry and seen as a bit of an extremist joke, only having notoriety due to the status of his father. Then the US decided to make him their number one enemy, closed down his newspaper, and the rest is history.
Actually, from what I've seen in Isreal, blowing up Hamas and Islamic Jihad leadership seems to be pretty effective at shrinking (though, no eliminating) the violence.
I doubt this. Violence and humiliation from Is-real is hardly going to make the other side give up.
You're right if your point is that we can't just blow up the terrorists and hope they go away. That's why we didn't just carpet bomb Iraq and most of the middle east.
Well a little less carpet bombing in Afghanistan and Iraq would have been appreciated.
Yes, it would have meant a few more 'un-acceptable' American casualties if you'd sent in ground troops to investigate or fight most incidents rather than resorting to the cowards way of planes, bombs, helicopters and missiles as a first option.
Maybe you'd have doubled the dead Americans, but you'd probably have saved many, many civilians and done alot more to win the peace, and less to create 'terrorists'. You seem to want to have your cake and eat it. War is a messy thing not a computer game, and if you are going to instigate it then you are going to have to prepare for heavy casualties.
Instead, we're trying to eliminate terrorists where we can AS WELL as set up a free state in the middle of the region to act as a beacon to bring liberty and peace to the rest of the region.
Is there anyone from the US who understands just how ridiculous and distasteful and sickening such sentiments sound to the rest of the world?
Keep such nonsense to yourselves, it may mean something to you in your navel-gazing, penis-measuring, flag waving , patriotic fever. Don't let the rest of the world hear because you just sound stupid.
You can try and bring whatever you want to the region. How anyone in their right mind could believe that the region is going to let the footsoldiers and greedy, stupid politicians from a culture they have little in common with (at best) or see as the sworn enemy [Christians and Israelis] - invade and occupy their country, and then tell them how to run their country in a way that will be most palatable to US corporations and western Christian economics is beyond me!
Even if I admired the US culture, wished for a fully developed capitalist market economy and global investment, and some illusion of democracy - I'd hardly take kindly to being invaded by them to tell me that they know best for my future. And that's assuming things went smoothly.
US / UK etc are an occupying force. If someone invaded UK and occupied my country.. I'd be the first one picking up a gun to go shoot them and anyone working for them (Sadam loyalists, foreign fighters, my arse). I'd imagine that most 'patriotic' Americans would be doing the same - even if the stated aim of the invading army was to 'free' you from Bush. I may think that I personally could do a better job of running the US than any of your current lot. I'd save you from obesity, cure your addiction to oil, make the rest of the world like you again, make you interested in other things than fad diets, M Jakson and the Peterson case. You'd be a beacon for social justice and economic fare ness and equality for all.
Every man woman and child would work according to their means and be provided for according to their needs. That is why I am going to invade you and free you from these capitalist pigs.
Sorry, that last bit sounds a bit ridiculous and distasteful.
"...there really are people who believe one true Islamic state should exist in the middle east, and have the seat of leadership in the world, and they'll do anything to achieve it. This isn't even necessarily about US gluttony, or oil, or naked women. It's about their own fundamental religious quest. And if you want to live under the threat of a mushroom cloud over a European city the next time a terrorist doesn't like someone's policies, then, by all means, do nothing about the mideast..."
Iraq is far closer to becoming an Islamic state thanks to the actions of the US. It appeared to be fairly secular before. Even had a Christian as deputy president
Many of us want the US to do something about the mideast. Namely to focus on the Israel Palestine issue, and not stop until this problem is solved once and for all. Satisfactory outcome of what many see as the great injustice would have far greater outcome on world stability, and esp hostility towards the US.
You can't solve all your problems by blowing people up.
These can work well for business trips to multiple cities. For example I can leave central London at 7pm and be in a station in the middle of Berlin at 8am the next morning, having showered and had breakfast.
The alternatives require paying for a hotel in one of the cities and painful trips to and from the airports.
You can potentialy cover a lot of ground in 10 hours (1500 miles or more).
Even better if the cities are slightly closer together as you have time to go out for food and some drinks, before making your way to the station and going straight to bed to sleep it off.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly My company transferred to the US, and I went over for a year on a company transfer visa. I was paid competitively and paid taxes in the US. After a year the company started green card applications for those who wanted it. If they hadn't then in a few years, the staff with the most experience and knowledge of the software would have had to leave the company to return home, and the company would have been in considerable trouble - generating less tax and with less chance of hiring more US workers. I assume they had to advertise the jobs as part of the green card process. They certainly didn't want to replace us, not because they were getting cheap labour, but because they had a set of trained staff who were the core of the company.
A few hundred thousand people randomly clicking on their adlinks for a few months should do the trick.
Advertisers pull out to avoid paying for false hits. Then see their share price fall.
Personally I hope you are right and there is nothing we can do, at least then I have something to say when my grandchildren when ask "But why didn't you do something?"
Shame it has to be normal people who get hurt, but the guys who deserve a little terror in their lives are locked away behind miles of steel fencing in a castle in Scotland. I'm hoping they get that twunt Blair next time.
Sod it, we deserved this. We had this coming. None of the individuals who were hurt or killed deserved it, but as a nation we did.
Besides it could be worse, some poor sods have to put up with this sort of thing day in day out. We could be living in Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Chechnia, Burundi, Uzbekistan or a thousand other places that we never feel much sympathy for. Maybe today's events will generate a bit of empathy, probably it will generate a load of rubbish rhetoric about fighting the evil-doers and some draconian crack downs on our freedom.
I'd love to see how the US would recruit many suicide bombers. Yes, it's not civilized. Is far more civilized to develop the hardware and drop bombs on people from 1000s of feet up in the air, so it's all like a computer game and nobody has to get upset.
Where do you get your news from? The current regime stinks, this is well documented. Both the US and UK are complicit in propping up a rotten regime for influence, access to Afghanistan and I'm sure this is just a coincidence, but Uzbekistan has oil. Calling Uzbek citizens who oppose the government 'islamofascist rebels' is rather too convenient for the current dictator. Seems like you are swallowing his propaganda hook line and sinker. It seems like some news outlet decide either to call people Islamic rebels, or democratic freedom fighters and the world falls into line behind them. What incite do you have into the country that make you think it would turn out differently to Georgia or Ukrane if the west withdrew it's support and allowed the rotten regime to crumble?
...it keeps happening. I give you Uzbekistan.
I don't remember him being run over. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_man
I would suggest regressing some first world ideas and replace them with sustainable subsistence living rather than this never ending quest for the devouring of resources and pursuit of wealth
It's not small subsistence farmers that are chopping up the Amazon, it's loggers or cattle farms that will be shipping their produce half way around the world in order to feed our insatiable appetite.
This whole 'zarqaei' thing stinks of another 'most wanted, most evil man' simplistic labelling in order to distract attention away from the real issues. I've seen enough of these beacons of evil figures conveniently created over the past few years e.g.: (spelling not considered)
Mulla Ohma
Al-Sada
Al-Zarqaei
I even saw that idiot Abu Hamza being talked of as the next Saten at some point!!! FFS he'd be the most useless terrorist on the planet.
Hermann Göring at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials 1946
Many of the Branson announcements are just exercises in cheap (although clever) PR (Concorde and this space thing spring to mind). However aside from this, he has a wonderful business system set up that I envy him for no end. He probably has a few seriously profitable businesses that he uses the profits from as a sort of venture capital pool to fund all his crazy whims and ideas. Who knows how profitable most of these things are (probably not very), but many of them are ideas we all may dream up down the pub and would never have the means or funding to set them up.
We (UK) have such a law against "inciting racial hatred", which would cap freedom of speech under certain circumstances. I'm no expert on how this works.
I am certainly allowed to make racist comments as long as my speech isn't intended to incite others to violence against the intended group.
I believe there is talk of bringing in a similar law against "inciting religious hatred", whether the motive is to protect non christian religious groups from hatred, or to attempt to persecute extremist preachers within those religions, I can't say.
As I read it read it:
American Libertarianism == European Libertarian Capitalism
I believe most of the wood we use here in Europe comes from sustainable sources. We are even being encouraged to use more wood as it's claimed that there is a net growth in forests due to replanting. So the more we use, the more they plant. I hope that there is some limit though, as I assume managed forests are dense and are basically dead as far as an ego systems go.
Not here in Europe. We are going to need to increase population either by immigration or birth rate, else we are going to be stuck in our old age with nobody of working age to look after us.
Looking at disparate use of resources would be a good start. US has 5% of world's population, but uses 25% of oil resources. If the entire world woke up and started claiming the same proportion of world resources that we in the west use, we'd need 6 other earth planets to fulfil this demand!
Trouble is that large countries (China, India) are beginning to wake up (thanks in part to us poking them with the globalisation stick as we think we can make money off them). We probably don't know what monster we've awoken.
This is just an effect of capitalism isn't it? The 10% have to be doing well so that it gives the 90% some incentive to work harder. We're not going to be solving that one in the near future.Yes, and that most capatilist of notions: "I am my brother's keeper"
That's why it looks like a bit like the vote is sort of wasted on just the US voters.
What media source would you suggest for a genuinely interested non-US, so that they can become more informed about the real issues and not see a crazy texan and the dullest man in the world slag each other off?
I watched much of the Newsnight (BBC) coverage from both party congresses, and really enjoyed reports from genuine republican, democrat heartlands which seemed to address real history, background and issues. Also candid interviews with delegates, to see how their beliefs differ from the 'party line'. I feel,hope I understand some of the republican cause slightly more now as a result of this and some in depth articles in the papers.
It hardly likely that the company is going to go bankrupt as a result of loosing my services, but their clients still need visiting and I know they are going to struggle to find a suitable US citizen who is happy to travel worldwide for extended periods.
We should be following Brazil's example and apply equivalent procedures for US passports visiting Europe.
The BBC is publicly funded but independent.
We don't have advert breaks unlike your dumb American networks. Meaning that an episode of '24' lasts 45 minutes.
The currency acronym for the British pound is UKP not GBP.
We pay three times more for our gas than Americans.
What else have I missed?
$ for the war
$ for the reconstruction
number of US/UK lives lost
cost of any future terrorist attack that may be carried out by someone recruited since Iraq war
current price of oil
the fact the large coalition of 100+ countries against terrorism has been destroyed by unilateral action
undermining UN
giving justification to the doctrine of preemption to other countries
probably many others
Anyway, if you come up with a figure then let me know.
Even just taking the $ amount, I could probably give you a list of 100 'projects' that US could have undertaken instead of Iraq that would have had better cost benefit.. ie 'more lives saved per buck'
for example:
treating TB (1000s dead per day)
AIDS
3 million people dead in war in D.R.Congo over last 5 years or so
canceling some 3rd world debt
Middle east peace process
If you really want to do good in the world why pick on probably the most costly option?
I would suggest you use some of Robert Frisk's articles from the Independent http://www.independent.co.uk, or something like http://www.aljazeera.com/ to balance out the information you are getting from CNN/ FOX.
From what I remember Al-Sadr was pretty small fry and seen as a bit of an extremist joke, only having notoriety due to the status of his father. Then the US decided to make him their number one enemy, closed down his newspaper, and the rest is history.
I to can use a search engine to find some random statistics. Here we have references to survey (under the Popularity heading) with 32% "strongly support", 36% "somewhat support" him
You can try and bring whatever you want to the region. How anyone in their right mind could believe that the region is going to let the footsoldiers and greedy, stupid politicians from a culture they have little in common with (at best) or see as the sworn enemy [Christians and Israelis] - invade and occupy their country, and then tell them how to run their country in a way that will be most palatable to US corporations and western Christian economics is beyond me!
Even if I admired the US culture, wished for a fully developed capitalist market economy and global investment, and some illusion of democracy - I'd hardly take kindly to being invaded by them to tell me that they know best for my future. And that's assuming things went smoothly.
US / UK etc are an occupying force. If someone invaded UK and occupied my country.. I'd be the first one picking up a gun to go shoot them and anyone working for them (Sadam loyalists, foreign fighters, my arse). I'd imagine that most 'patriotic' Americans would be doing the same - even if the stated aim of the invading army was to 'free' you from Bush. I may think that I personally could do a better job of running the US than any of your current lot. I'd save you from obesity, cure your addiction to oil, make the rest of the world like you again, make you interested in other things than fad diets, M Jakson and the Peterson case. You'd be a beacon for social justice and economic fare ness and equality for all. Every man woman and child would work according to their means and be provided for according to their needs. That is why I am going to invade you and free you from these capitalist pigs.
Sorry, that last bit sounds a bit ridiculous and distasteful.
Iraq is far closer to becoming an Islamic state thanks to the actions of the US. It appeared to be fairly secular before. Even had a Christian as deputy president
Many of us want the US to do something about the mideast. Namely to focus on the Israel Palestine issue, and not stop until this problem is solved once and for all. Satisfactory outcome of what many see as the great injustice would have far greater outcome on world stability, and esp hostility towards the US. You can't solve all your problems by blowing people up.
These can work well for business trips to multiple cities. For example I can leave central London at 7pm and be in a station in the middle of Berlin at 8am the next morning, having showered and had breakfast. The alternatives require paying for a hotel in one of the cities and painful trips to and from the airports. You can potentialy cover a lot of ground in 10 hours (1500 miles or more). Even better if the cities are slightly closer together as you have time to go out for food and some drinks, before making your way to the station and going straight to bed to sleep it off.