Just a note: the resignation of the prime-minister had nothing to do with ACTA.
Romanian Prime Minister Admits He Has No Idea Why Romania Signed ACTA
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Re: Romanian Prime Minister Admits He Has No Idea Why Romania Signed ACTA
#52I am really glad that eastern European people are so vigilant about censorship and government control. It should still be known, that a lot of bad stuff has crept into EU law. But people are starting to gain awareness on these issues. And East EU people have no enthusiasm about reliving the Iron Curtain days.
> I am really glad that eastern European people are so vigilant about censorship and government control. And for good reasons. I'm Romanian myself, but I think I speak for a lot of other East-Europeans when I'm saying that all this censorship non-sense brings back awful things from the past. I was only 9 when the Communist regime fell, but I can still remember about how my parents or any other adults could have gone…
Yes, I think Eastern European populations are very vigilant about a return to dictatorship, mass surveillance and stuff like that. Plus, they remember how to do mass-protests since the fall of communism wasn't so long ago (~20 years).
I think Thomas Jefferson was spot on when he said that we need some kind of mass rebellion every 20 years just to keep the Governments in check, and remind them that they are there to serve us, not to control us:
"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty.
And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."
Maybe the reason Americans have so blindly fallen for the politicians' lies over the past 10 years and accepted to let them remove their Constitutional rights (or simply ignore them), is because Americans don't really know what it means to lose your liberty, so they don't act as they fade away, until it's really obvious that they have no more liberties (and too late).
Re: Romanian Prime Minister Admits He Has No Idea Why Romania Signed ACTA
#53It happens when a treaty is drafted in secret and the leading countries behind it don't have open debate on it before signing it.
Re: Romanian Prime Minister Admits He Has No Idea Why Romania Signed ACTA
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't downvote stuff on HN (I think you're just my third or fourth downvote), but I had to do it because you're factually wrong, and spreading misconceptions. I'll just give you my country's example, Romania. Our biggest company, Petrom (it's an oil company) has been privatized just before our entry into the EU. Its new owner? The Austrians from OMV, which has the Austrian Government as its main shareholder. Also,…
The poster wrote "huge chunks", not "all". I can give an example very close to home about gov't influence here in Hungary, and that is the tech/IT sector. A huge chunk of tech/IT SMBs are directly or indirectly living off government contracts, grants, gov't companies or companies that have been privatized but retain close ties to the gov't (and are dumb). A new thing here in Hungary is EU grants, which is the same, d…
government influence != influencing the government to throw shit-loads of money at you
Re: Romanian Prime Minister Admits He Has No Idea Why Romania Signed ACTA
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ireland. With hints of either half baked copies of UK law, or just implementing EU law
To give (an utterly ridiculous) example, the irish government copied a model of university funding from the UK. Now there is one major difference between the two systems. In the UK, the government controls the number of university places, while in Ireland, the universities do. The department of education rammed through this new funding system that divided up money based on the number of students per discipline (arts,…
And the proposed post code system (which they occasionally talk about introducing) was going to just be a copy of the UK system instead of learning from the mistakes.
Re: Romanian Prime Minister Admits He Has No Idea Why Romania Signed ACTA
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
For the majority of European countries? Can you give some examples?
Czech republic sometimes does things its own way and it's even worse...
Staying out of the Euro (for now) hasn't been so bad. They're on track to be admitted eventually, but their euro-skeptic government probably slows that down...
Re: Romanian Prime Minister Admits He Has No Idea Why Romania Signed ACTA
#57This is so absurd that it sounds like a headline from The Onion. Truth is stranger than fiction, I guess.
Absurd, but not unusual today. Members of the US congress have admitted freely that they have voted for bills without having read them. Indeed, our speaker of the house even once said that it was necessary to "pass the bill to find out what's in it", because apparently reading it was out of the question: http://youtube.com/watch?v=KoE1R-xH5To
Re: Romanian Prime Minister Admits He Has No Idea Why Romania Signed ACTA
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I am really glad that eastern European people are so vigilant about censorship and government control. Ironic that they are "worried" about "government control" given how often their governments control huge chunks of the economy, private sector and the general distrust and vilification of capitalism (you think the OWS is bad, wait till you hear the ex-commies and philosophy professors talking about social justice t…
I don't downvote stuff on HN (I think you're just my third or fourth downvote), but I had to do it because you're factually wrong, and spreading misconceptions. I'll just give you my country's example, Romania. Our biggest company, Petrom (it's an oil company) has been privatized just before our entry into the EU. Its new owner? The Austrians from OMV, which has the Austrian Government as its main shareholder. Also,…
Government control and government ownership are two distinct concepts, with the latter not being a necessary condition for the former. That being said, it is more an issue of the same groups controlling most of both the political and economic landscape. However, as a Romanian I thought you'd pick on the irony of the situation: a politician finally admitting they have no clue about what they're doing - another thing that Romanians have not invented, but "optimized" :)
Re: Romanian Prime Minister Admits He Has No Idea Why Romania Signed ACTA
#59I'm not surprised at all at Boc. I'm glad he resigned, but I don't think there will be a big improvement any time soon. For the rest of HN: there were mass demonstrations lately requesting his resignation; even the President asked him and he kept refusing. In the end it looks like he left.
1. People still don't realize that the Boc administration was the best thing that could happen to us. Our national debt is less than 40% of the GDP in a time of a global economic crisis. Of course it grew since 2009 from 25% so the trend is a little worrying, which is why the government implemented austerity measures, because 3 million people (the employees of private companies that pay taxes) cannot pay the bills fo…
->2. I sympathize with the couple of hundred people that went to the streets. I would have gone myself, but instead of bitching about it I just work my ass off and make my own money, instead of begging for it.
This. I know there are people who believe they have no opportunities, but most of the times they're wrong. There's ALWAYS an opportunity to make money and take care of yourself. Blaming the government and demanding that they take better care of you is just irresponsible.
Re: Romanian Prime Minister Admits He Has No Idea Why Romania Signed ACTA
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I am really glad that eastern European people are so vigilant about censorship and government control. And for good reasons. I'm Romanian myself, but I think I speak for a lot of other East-Europeans when I'm saying that all this censorship non-sense brings back awful things from the past. I was only 9 when the Communist regime fell, but I can still remember about how my parents or any other adults could have gone…
Exactly. I am Polish and I have no desire to go back to a totalitarian regime, media control or censorship. I think people from the former Soviet group are more attuned to abuses of power and attempts at censorship or rights abuse. As an example, I know my detectors went off full-scale when I saw the media coverage of the last Iraqi war on US television. Tightly cropped shots, showing only soldiers and their equipmen…
Spot on. The former sov-block states and satellites are much more vigilant than the rest of Europe, to the point that they are now the European conscience when it comes to privacy.
The attitude in most of the other countries is one where people can't seem to give away their hard won right to privacy fast enough.
Dziekuje Bardzo to you. & Multumesc to gp.