Well one of the problems the Roman Empire suffered from at its end, was a reliance on hired foreign mercenaries rather than a strong army of primarily Romans. They hired a lot of those barbarian types to defend the border - then those barbarians had their cousins show up in town... The US still has the strongest armed forces in the world, and the Romans didn't have a superweapon equivalent to nuclear arms so the analogy is kinda weak of course, but if the US ever starts relying on hired military contractors you might be in trouble somewhere down the road. Oh wait.:(
Because of the US Govt's abuse of the polio vaccination service, every NGO representative worldwide is going to be viewed as a spy for the US by anyone with half a brain. This is going to severely limit their ability to try to help people in the third world.
It doesn't make any difference that the Islamist groups out there were already suspicious of NGO reps - the US went and confirmed their suspicions completely. This will only serve to make some people think the Islamists are right in other things they say. We should not be doing things to make them look more credible:(
Except that as a number of people have pointed out above you, its a considerable question as to whether or not what he is accused of doing was in fact a crime in the UK. It doesn't matter though, the Media Moguls and their henchmen have enough power to shape the US legal code, and in effect decree foreign policy on issues like this. Legality doesn't apply when the US Empire flexes its might. Apparently if you do anything, anywhere, that the US Government doesn't like, you *will* be extradited to the US. This is just another example.
Well I have T2 diabetes, and I developed it while I was in the army, running 5mi a day and out on exercise 6mo or so out of the year. It can be genetic as well. I gained weight when I got out and have lost 50+ lbs so far, with another 30 or so to go. I do think diet is the main reason people are becoming diabetic, but I think its most likely its due to the way cheaper foods are manufactured and consumed. I have *never* been much of a junk food eater ever in my life. I don't drink either. I was eating a rather carb heavy diet and have worked to change that of course.
Its not before my time by any stretch but I have spent a lot of my life without cable generally and I don't recall being a Rogers customer - although I lived in Vancouver in the 90's so you would think I might have been. However, if you are not allowed to offer competing cable services in areas like Victoria, how is Telus allowed to participate - I can't say they compete because their prices are pretty much identical to Shaw's, and if you get Internet/Cable TV/Phone through either one you are looking at $80+, but if you choose to get just Internet its $60+. Both of them offer the same system of additional services at a discount but the base service at max price at about the same rate. I haven't had cable TV more than a month or two in the past few years (Olympics, World Cup, that sort of thing). There is nothing worth paying that much for. All the good TV is produced elsewhere and not available here unless you want to pay extortionate rates. If there was any competition to speak of, the rates and deals would be more reasonable.
Ah, maybe its changed, but Shaw and Rogers agreed to split the market here in Canada and as far as I know that is still the case. So where you can get Shaw, you can't get Rogers, and vice versa. Has that changed? Here in Victoria, its Shaw or Telus for your internet connection, no other options available that I know of for a residential connection. Since they both have similar price schemes (Pay $60/mo for a decent internet connection, and less only if you pay for other services (phone, tv) and increase the overall bill, it doesn't really matter which you pick, they are more or less the same - both essentially okay providers charging way too fucking much because they have no competition.
So we need a detailed list of patents, a means to allow people to review those patents and a way to crowdsource prior art listings. Then the average joe can help break the chokehold the patent trolls and their lawyer thralls have on creativity and innovation. Perhaps even get companies to pony up a reward for successful breaking of patents?
Not to mention that the Flying Tigers were the employees of CAMCO - an American company formed for the purpose of fighting in China, and that permission to resign from US military service to go to work for CAMCO was granted and some individuals later returned to US military service, retaining their rank etc. CAMCO was a mercenary force effectively, approved by the US president of the time, employing US service personnel to fly aircraft sold by the US government to CAMCO, and apparently paid a bounty for each successful kill. It couldn't have been much more transparent or artificial as an arrangement really.
Stop buying all entertainment. Don't use it at all and don't download it illegally either. Just do without entirely. Support local musicians playing live if you must get a fix. Get everyone and anyone you know to also boycott big entertainment entirely. After a few years they will either institute a police state to ensure they can suck money from the peasants no matter what (already in progress in most democracies it seems) or they will fail completely. The resulting media scene will hopefully be a bit smarter and realize they need a willing audience.
I was always under the impression that the reason the US is always at war was at least in part so that it always had military personnel who were experienced in combat and thus better prepared to defend the country. Purely peacetime armies that have no combat veterans are usually pretty ineffective when they meet folks who are experienced. In a way this makes sense, sadly for the rest of the world it means someone is always going to get their ass invaded and if there is no justification for it, one will be provided. The US is without any doubt the most violent country in the world in this regard.
The other factor is of course that many many US corporations rely on military funds to survive and a lot of that money undoubtedly rubs off on the lobbyists and politicians who ensure it gets spent on the latest and greatest thing. So what if a few thousand loyal and trusting soldiers lose their lives for the corporate bottom line?:(
On the basis of document retention, if the company decides to retain documents (in this case log files) for only 2 weeks, prepares a document retention plan that specifies it and ensures it is adhered to, I doubt there is any legal requirement to retain more than that. You offered a number of reasons why they might want to limit the volume of the log files they retain, to which I can add the cost of proper backup and offsite storage etc. The expense adds up quickly.
Yeah I better make sure to tell the guy I work with that since he speaks Farsi I know he's a terrorist. Despite being someone who walked for 2 weeks to get out of Iran and escape to Canada so he and his wife and son could have a better life here. Despite the fact that he is one of the nicest people I have ever met etc. Racism is Racism. This was someone condemning another individual because of the language they spoke and possibly because of what they said (since the reports differ). It might have been the job of the clerk to inform them that it was illegal to import the iPad to Iran and suggest they reconsider it if that was their intent, but it seems a bit much to refuse to sell it to them on the suspicion they might do so.
But the US is gearing up for a war against Iran now that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are winding down or done, so I guess its important to maintain the fearmongering, build up the hatred and irrational demonization of not only Iranians but anyone who speaks a language thats spoken there - even if you are just a clerk in an Apple store.
Where I am living (Victoria BC), the price of gas fluctuated continuously apparently based on whenever something bad happened. My theory was they would adjust the price up on bad news because we would be more worried about the news than the price of the gas. It essentially fluctuated between about $1.05.9/Litre and $1.39.9/Litre on a daily or weekly basis with no apparent correlation with the actual price of oil at the time. By bad news I mean anything: the death of Michael Jackson drove the price up for instance. This ended recently for about 2 weeks - coincidentally right after some gas stations in Ontario were found guilty of colluding on prices at the pump, but ended this last week when the price plummeted as low as $1.02.9 at a station a few miles away from me and caused massive lineups. One of the local stations is usually at $1.47.9 and still does business because its the only station in a few mile radius. Basically, the local gas companies have been either colluding or engaging in a wild gas war for the past few years - at any rate the price is *well* over what would be an acceptable profit in any other industry I am sure.
We use essentially the same system here in Canada. The key value to the paper ballots in my opinion is that it is much harder to throw the election by ballot tampering. A large scale effect requires a large conspiracy. With electronic voting a bit of well placed code can make a huge difference - as we probably saw in Florida when GW Bush stole the election...
Yeah, every move they make in this industry just seems to point out that a bittorrented version of whatever it is you are watching is preferable to the commercial product. When the industry gets it right - say with Netflix (or the new BBC app my wife is using on her iPad), people are perfectly willing to pay for the service. When they get it wrong with crap like this, people will not be willing to just bend over and take it.
There is no way to find this out but it would be interesting to see how many people who participated in the Occupy movement ended up with FBI files on them, versus how many people participating in the Tea Party who ended up with similar FBI files. I am betting the Occupy movement got examined very carefully (it is anti-capitalism in many ways) and the Tea Party people were mostly left alone (they generally seem to support capitalism and big business etc from what I can see).
Yeah I will also admit I am wrong if he emerges from Sweden unkidnapped by the US. I think Assange sounds like he's an egotistical douchebag personally, but that doesn't change my opinion on Wikileaks and that I think its doing the people of the world a true service by exposing government lies and corporate deceptions. I don't trust the US Government and I see it generally as the servant of US Multinational Corporations. I expect to see him snatched by the US, but if I am wrong I will be pleasantly surprised.
The problem is that the US does want him, and given the way they have treated people they considered "terrorists" in the past ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition ) I am not surprised that Assange is unwilling to bet his life on the good will of the Swedish prosecutor's office. The CIA rendered a few people from Sweden in the past, apparently in complete contradiction of Swedish law ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/20/AR2005052001605.html ), why couldn't they do it again? Inside the USA under the watchful eyes of its citizens, the US Government does generally try to follow the rules of your constitution - although that is being chipped away at on a steady basis these days, but outside the USA, the US Government acts more like an Empire and often does whatever the fuck it wants to, to whomever it wants to, if it can get away with it. Most of the big issues faced by the US with regards to the rest of the world seem to find their roots in the heavy handed nature of most US foreign policy decisions it seems to me at least. I will be highly surprised if Assange gets to Sweden and is not immediately whisked away under US Govt control after the specious "questioning" in Sweden is dropped upon his arrival. Hell hath no fury like a government scorned...
The problem with that is that while true Nazism is pretty rare in modern society, Orwellian actions by the governments of the world are in the least, quite common. Its not so funny when its actually happening I suppose.
US "Morality" is buried under half a million dead in Iraq for a war started by GW Bush having a dream that God told him to invade Iraq and finish what his dad started, and based on lies that there were WMDs, while the true purpose of the war was to enrich companies like Haliburton. Whats thousands of US dead just to prop up corporate profits in the long run? You had some moral high ground during WWII, The Korean War, and the Cold War but lost it starting with Vietnam (and the Phoenix project), and completely during the Iraq war II.
I do not believe that the Conservative party has any interest in maintaining the privacy of Canadians. In fact I think they are actively working to weaken/eliminate privacy here, in the same way they are actively working to destroy the environmentalist movement and scientific research into GCC. Steven Harper has only the interests of Steven Harper in mind, no one else. His focus is to stay in power long enough to change Canada in the way he wants to. Whatever gets in the way will be swept aside (latest victim: our national archives and libraries).
Our current Canadian government (Harper's Regime) would quite likely be willing to hand over all Canadian internet traffic to the US free of charge, even before they request it. Harper seems to worship the Republican party sadly:(
I suspect we order more online generally because if you look at our population distribution the bulk of the Canadian population is in a ribbon 100 mi wide and 3000+ miles long, all located next to the US border. Getting stuff shipped after ordering it online is probably just more efficient in the end. We have a long history of adopting new communications tools rather early up here after all.
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Well one of the problems the Roman Empire suffered from at its end, was a reliance on hired foreign mercenaries rather than a strong army of primarily Romans. They hired a lot of those barbarian types to defend the border - then those barbarians had their cousins show up in town... :(
The US still has the strongest armed forces in the world, and the Romans didn't have a superweapon equivalent to nuclear arms so the analogy is kinda weak of course, but if the US ever starts relying on hired military contractors you might be in trouble somewhere down the road. Oh wait.
Because of the US Govt's abuse of the polio vaccination service, every NGO representative worldwide is going to be viewed as a spy for the US by anyone with half a brain. This is going to severely limit their ability to try to help people in the third world.
It doesn't make any difference that the Islamist groups out there were already suspicious of NGO reps - the US went and confirmed their suspicions completely. This will only serve to make some people think the Islamists are right in other things they say. We should not be doing things to make them look more credible :(
Except that as a number of people have pointed out above you, its a considerable question as to whether or not what he is accused of doing was in fact a crime in the UK.
It doesn't matter though, the Media Moguls and their henchmen have enough power to shape the US legal code, and in effect decree foreign policy on issues like this. Legality doesn't apply when the US Empire flexes its might.
Apparently if you do anything, anywhere, that the US Government doesn't like, you *will* be extradited to the US. This is just another example.
Well I have T2 diabetes, and I developed it while I was in the army, running 5mi a day and out on exercise 6mo or so out of the year. It can be genetic as well. I gained weight when I got out and have lost 50+ lbs so far, with another 30 or so to go.
I do think diet is the main reason people are becoming diabetic, but I think its most likely its due to the way cheaper foods are manufactured and consumed. I have *never* been much of a junk food eater ever in my life. I don't drink either. I was eating a rather carb heavy diet and have worked to change that of course.
Its not before my time by any stretch but I have spent a lot of my life without cable generally and I don't recall being a Rogers customer - although I lived in Vancouver in the 90's so you would think I might have been.
However, if you are not allowed to offer competing cable services in areas like Victoria, how is Telus allowed to participate - I can't say they compete because their prices are pretty much identical to Shaw's, and if you get Internet/Cable TV/Phone through either one you are looking at $80+, but if you choose to get just Internet its $60+. Both of them offer the same system of additional services at a discount but the base service at max price at about the same rate.
I haven't had cable TV more than a month or two in the past few years (Olympics, World Cup, that sort of thing). There is nothing worth paying that much for. All the good TV is produced elsewhere and not available here unless you want to pay extortionate rates. If there was any competition to speak of, the rates and deals would be more reasonable.
Ah, maybe its changed, but Shaw and Rogers agreed to split the market here in Canada and as far as I know that is still the case. So where you can get Shaw, you can't get Rogers, and vice versa. Has that changed?
Here in Victoria, its Shaw or Telus for your internet connection, no other options available that I know of for a residential connection.
Since they both have similar price schemes (Pay $60/mo for a decent internet connection, and less only if you pay for other services (phone, tv) and increase the overall bill, it doesn't really matter which you pick, they are more or less the same - both essentially okay providers charging way too fucking much because they have no competition.
So we need a detailed list of patents, a means to allow people to review those patents and a way to crowdsource prior art listings. Then the average joe can help break the chokehold the patent trolls and their lawyer thralls have on creativity and innovation. Perhaps even get companies to pony up a reward for successful breaking of patents?
Not to mention that the Flying Tigers were the employees of CAMCO - an American company formed for the purpose of fighting in China, and that permission to resign from US military service to go to work for CAMCO was granted and some individuals later returned to US military service, retaining their rank etc.
CAMCO was a mercenary force effectively, approved by the US president of the time, employing US service personnel to fly aircraft sold by the US government to CAMCO, and apparently paid a bounty for each successful kill.
It couldn't have been much more transparent or artificial as an arrangement really.
Stop buying all entertainment. Don't use it at all and don't download it illegally either. Just do without entirely. Support local musicians playing live if you must get a fix. Get everyone and anyone you know to also boycott big entertainment entirely. After a few years they will either institute a police state to ensure they can suck money from the peasants no matter what (already in progress in most democracies it seems) or they will fail completely.
The resulting media scene will hopefully be a bit smarter and realize they need a willing audience.
I was always under the impression that the reason the US is always at war was at least in part so that it always had military personnel who were experienced in combat and thus better prepared to defend the country. Purely peacetime armies that have no combat veterans are usually pretty ineffective when they meet folks who are experienced. In a way this makes sense, sadly for the rest of the world it means someone is always going to get their ass invaded and if there is no justification for it, one will be provided. The US is without any doubt the most violent country in the world in this regard.
The other factor is of course that many many US corporations rely on military funds to survive and a lot of that money undoubtedly rubs off on the lobbyists and politicians who ensure it gets spent on the latest and greatest thing. So what if a few thousand loyal and trusting soldiers lose their lives for the corporate bottom line? :(
On the basis of document retention, if the company decides to retain documents (in this case log files) for only 2 weeks, prepares a document retention plan that specifies it and ensures it is adhered to, I doubt there is any legal requirement to retain more than that. You offered a number of reasons why they might want to limit the volume of the log files they retain, to which I can add the cost of proper backup and offsite storage etc. The expense adds up quickly.
And your old ISP Can't Stand Losing You, but It's Alright For You, On Any Other Day :P
Yeah I better make sure to tell the guy I work with that since he speaks Farsi I know he's a terrorist. Despite being someone who walked for 2 weeks to get out of Iran and escape to Canada so he and his wife and son could have a better life here. Despite the fact that he is one of the nicest people I have ever met etc.
Racism is Racism. This was someone condemning another individual because of the language they spoke and possibly because of what they said (since the reports differ). It might have been the job of the clerk to inform them that it was illegal to import the iPad to Iran and suggest they reconsider it if that was their intent, but it seems a bit much to refuse to sell it to them on the suspicion they might do so.
But the US is gearing up for a war against Iran now that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are winding down or done, so I guess its important to maintain the fearmongering, build up the hatred and irrational demonization of not only Iranians but anyone who speaks a language thats spoken there - even if you are just a clerk in an Apple store.
Where I am living (Victoria BC), the price of gas fluctuated continuously apparently based on whenever something bad happened. My theory was they would adjust the price up on bad news because we would be more worried about the news than the price of the gas. It essentially fluctuated between about $1.05.9/Litre and $1.39.9/Litre on a daily or weekly basis with no apparent correlation with the actual price of oil at the time. By bad news I mean anything: the death of Michael Jackson drove the price up for instance.
This ended recently for about 2 weeks - coincidentally right after some gas stations in Ontario were found guilty of colluding on prices at the pump, but ended this last week when the price plummeted as low as $1.02.9 at a station a few miles away from me and caused massive lineups. One of the local stations is usually at $1.47.9 and still does business because its the only station in a few mile radius.
Basically, the local gas companies have been either colluding or engaging in a wild gas war for the past few years - at any rate the price is *well* over what would be an acceptable profit in any other industry I am sure.
We use essentially the same system here in Canada. The key value to the paper ballots in my opinion is that it is much harder to throw the election by ballot tampering. A large scale effect requires a large conspiracy.
With electronic voting a bit of well placed code can make a huge difference - as we probably saw in Florida when GW Bush stole the election...
Yeah, every move they make in this industry just seems to point out that a bittorrented version of whatever it is you are watching is preferable to the commercial product.
When the industry gets it right - say with Netflix (or the new BBC app my wife is using on her iPad), people are perfectly willing to pay for the service. When they get it wrong with crap like this, people will not be willing to just bend over and take it.
There is no way to find this out but it would be interesting to see how many people who participated in the Occupy movement ended up with FBI files on them, versus how many people participating in the Tea Party who ended up with similar FBI files. I am betting the Occupy movement got examined very carefully (it is anti-capitalism in many ways) and the Tea Party people were mostly left alone (they generally seem to support capitalism and big business etc from what I can see).
Yeah I will also admit I am wrong if he emerges from Sweden unkidnapped by the US. I think Assange sounds like he's an egotistical douchebag personally, but that doesn't change my opinion on Wikileaks and that I think its doing the people of the world a true service by exposing government lies and corporate deceptions.
I don't trust the US Government and I see it generally as the servant of US Multinational Corporations. I expect to see him snatched by the US, but if I am wrong I will be pleasantly surprised.
The problem is that the US does want him, and given the way they have treated people they considered "terrorists" in the past ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition ) I am not surprised that Assange is unwilling to bet his life on the good will of the Swedish prosecutor's office.
The CIA rendered a few people from Sweden in the past, apparently in complete contradiction of Swedish law ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/20/AR2005052001605.html ), why couldn't they do it again?
Inside the USA under the watchful eyes of its citizens, the US Government does generally try to follow the rules of your constitution - although that is being chipped away at on a steady basis these days, but outside the USA, the US Government acts more like an Empire and often does whatever the fuck it wants to, to whomever it wants to, if it can get away with it. Most of the big issues faced by the US with regards to the rest of the world seem to find their roots in the heavy handed nature of most US foreign policy decisions it seems to me at least.
I will be highly surprised if Assange gets to Sweden and is not immediately whisked away under US Govt control after the specious "questioning" in Sweden is dropped upon his arrival. Hell hath no fury like a government scorned...
But it would also give us a good list of the members of the 1% who own the world, at the same time.
The problem with that is that while true Nazism is pretty rare in modern society, Orwellian actions by the governments of the world are in the least, quite common. Its not so funny when its actually happening I suppose.
US "Morality" is buried under half a million dead in Iraq for a war started by GW Bush having a dream that God told him to invade Iraq and finish what his dad started, and based on lies that there were WMDs, while the true purpose of the war was to enrich companies like Haliburton. Whats thousands of US dead just to prop up corporate profits in the long run?
You had some moral high ground during WWII, The Korean War, and the Cold War but lost it starting with Vietnam (and the Phoenix project), and completely during the Iraq war II.
I do not believe that the Conservative party has any interest in maintaining the privacy of Canadians. In fact I think they are actively working to weaken/eliminate privacy here, in the same way they are actively working to destroy the environmentalist movement and scientific research into GCC. Steven Harper has only the interests of Steven Harper in mind, no one else. His focus is to stay in power long enough to change Canada in the way he wants to. Whatever gets in the way will be swept aside (latest victim: our national archives and libraries).
Our current Canadian government (Harper's Regime) would quite likely be willing to hand over all Canadian internet traffic to the US free of charge, even before they request it. Harper seems to worship the Republican party sadly :(
I suspect we order more online generally because if you look at our population distribution the bulk of the Canadian population is in a ribbon 100 mi wide and 3000+ miles long, all located next to the US border. Getting stuff shipped after ordering it online is probably just more efficient in the end. We have a long history of adopting new communications tools rather early up here after all.