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No free trade agreement if charges of espionage are true, warns EU Commissioner

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Re: No free trade agreement if charges of espionage are true, warns EU Commissioner

#51

Post by powertower »

It's political and economic theater.

1. Either the EU members did not want this trade agreement from the start, or they will use this as leverage to get a better deal, or something extra.

2. The various EU member countries knew full well what was going on. And have their own spying operations and networks in place.

3. The various EU member countries would do the same type of spying as the U.S. does - if they could.

The idea that the U.S. should just "play fair" is so naive that it's self-destructive. Because no one "play's fair" in this world-wide, complicated, and high-risk/high-reward game. This is how the economical and geo-political game is.

And this is why these leaks are so damaging to the U.S. and its citizens. It exposes the truth, for the sake of the truth, and does nothing else. Because for that something else to happen, whatever it is, it has to happen on a global scale, and since countries are in a natural state of competition for resources and benefits, it can't, and the game remains the same...

That is, we can stop the spying, but no one else will. We can stop the exploitation, but no one else will. Doing so will just cause us to drop down to the lowest rank in this game, while everyone else runs to grab what's left on the table.

Re: No free trade agreement if charges of espionage are true, warns EU Commissioner

#52

Post by lukifer »

oleganza wrote: post #7

Actual translation: because of the behavior of U.S. government, E.U. government(s) will make it hard for E.U. citizens to trade with U.S. citizens. So normal people get spied on and bullied by one government, then because of that their life is made even more complicated by some other government. Great outcome! When people will realize that the problem is always in the governments themselves as a concept, not in any p…

> When people will realize that the problem is always in the governments themselves

Though I agree with your broader thrust, I'm deeply suspicious of any use of "never" or "always" in the context of complex systems.

> While belief in a magical all-powerful and caring government is no different than a belief in deity.

Belief, for better or worse, is a fundamental component of human social behavior. For instance, I challenge you to construct a monetary system that does not at least partially involve belief. (See also: http://www.meltingasphalt.com/religion-is-not-about-beliefs/ )

Rather than tilting at the windmill of belief, I'd rather we started believing in better things: naturalism over spiritualism, human rights over state power, decentralized currencies over fiat currencies, etc.

Re: No free trade agreement if charges of espionage are true, warns EU Commissioner

#53

Post by thangalin »

oellegaard wrote: post #20
oleganza wrote: post #7

Actual translation: because of the behavior of U.S. government, E.U. government(s) will make it hard for E.U. citizens to trade with U.S. citizens. So normal people get spied on and bullied by one government, then because of that their life is made even more complicated by some other government. Great outcome! When people will realize that the problem is always in the governments themselves as a concept, not in any p…

This is more a implementation issue of democracy in some countries. Look at the Danish democracy, we have many parties and both currently and historically we rarely have one party governments. It is not uncommon that three or more parties are forming governments. This helps make sure that there is never one entity that decides or hides things from the public.

Duverger's law states that first-past-the-post electoral systems result in two-party governance. I am fairly certain Denmark uses either a double ballot majority system or proportional representation, which is why Danish democracy both excels and has multi-party governments.

Re: No free trade agreement if charges of espionage are true, warns EU Commissioner

#54

Post by pvnick »

jussij wrote: post #46
pvnick wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't normally downvote comments I read here, but c'mon man. First of all, your comment was off-topic. Second of all, at least with the GM food, yours is a knee-jerk reaction unsupported by science. GM food has the potential to save billions (with a B) of lives, starting with Golden Rice.

The biggest problem with GM is it puts the world's food production into the hands of a select few multinational companies. Companies like Monsanto have already shown they are prepared to fight hard to keep control their GM monopolies: http://www.dailyfinance.com/on/monsanto-gmo-roundup-ready-se...

So? That's not a good reason to restrict life-saving technologies.

Re: No free trade agreement if charges of espionage are true, warns EU Commissioner

#55

Post by mortehu »

jussij wrote: post #46
pvnick wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't normally downvote comments I read here, but c'mon man. First of all, your comment was off-topic. Second of all, at least with the GM food, yours is a knee-jerk reaction unsupported by science. GM food has the potential to save billions (with a B) of lives, starting with Golden Rice.

The biggest problem with GM is it puts the world's food production into the hands of a select few multinational companies. Companies like Monsanto have already shown they are prepared to fight hard to keep control their GM monopolies: http://www.dailyfinance.com/on/monsanto-gmo-roundup-ready-se...

> Companies like Monsanto have already shown they are prepared to fight hard to keep control their GM monopolies:

An analogy: If Microsoft sues someone for selling unlicensed copies of MS PowerPoint, can they be construed to be fighting hard to keep control of their presentation software monopoly?

Re: No free trade agreement if charges of espionage are true, warns EU Commissioner

#56

Post by ChrisNorstrom »

bogger wrote: post #22
kintamanimatt wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with any of those things? None of those things are harmful.

Expecting downvotes for this: I strongly suspect that hormones in meat make Americans bigger. I am from Europe. I have met many Americans both of whose parents were born in my country. They don't look like us. My perception is that on average they are significantly bigger, and are both taller and broader than is normal in my country. I don't know if this has health implications, but I would rather not eat meat which…

You're probably right, American teenagers are hitting puberty earlier too and growth hormones in milk and beef were the main suspects.

But also: When women have a large pool of potential mates to chose from they usually select the healthier larger males. In the USA we all speak the same language, use the same currency, can move to whatever city we want and that gives women a much larger selection of big males to mate with. While in European countries, there are language barriers, cultural barriers, and smaller populations per country. Although the population of europe is 700+ million, the population tends to stay in it's home country and intermarry with it's own kind to an extent. Meaning once all the big males in a country are married and taken, the women there start mating with medium & smaller men. That's my theory at least. American culture is also very extreme-masculine, homophobic, scared of looking weak, and obsessed with dominant macho males. It might have to do with white men's fear of strong dominating black men which are the majority in many physical sports and are over-represented in violent crimes and present in high-crime neighborhoods. So maybe it's a security thing.

http://metro.co.uk/2007/02/01/dutch-are-the-worlds-tallest-i...

Re: No free trade agreement if charges of espionage are true, warns EU Commissioner

#57

Post by consonants »

oleganza wrote: post #7

Actual translation: because of the behavior of U.S. government, E.U. government(s) will make it hard for E.U. citizens to trade with U.S. citizens. So normal people get spied on and bullied by one government, then because of that their life is made even more complicated by some other government. Great outcome! When people will realize that the problem is always in the governments themselves as a concept, not in any p…

Government is the one institution that pays lip service to and can be influenced directly by the populace it's supposed to be accountable to. Obviously, in practice it serves the will of those already in power.

As someone who doesn't want to jump ship from the system we have now to anarchy immediately, I believe that even more corrupt power structures would take governments place without first eradicating the existing power structures and influence of the accumulation of capital has on global society.

To transition now, where the power and resources are in the hands of a slim margin of people, would usher in an era of neo-feudalism. Some would argue we are already at that point, so why destabilise the only organisation with power that exists, in theory, for the people?

Re: No free trade agreement if charges of espionage are true, warns EU Commissioner

#58

Post by andrewljohnson »

pvnick wrote: post #54
jussij wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest problem with GM is it puts the world's food production into the hands of a select few multinational companies. Companies like Monsanto have already shown they are prepared to fight hard to keep control their GM monopolies: http://www.dailyfinance.com/on/monsanto-gmo-roundup-ready-se...

So? That's not a good reason to restrict life-saving technologies.

The number one thing GMOing is used for is to make seeds resistant to pesticide. So now what Roundup/Monsanto farmers do is spread pesticide over the land, far and wide.

The myth is that GMO technology lets us produce high yield crops and mix a caterpillars with bananas to get Butterbananas. But the truth is GMO just lets us engineer soybeans to survive Roundup, and then spray, baby, spray.

The end effect of GMO is a stimulus for the pesticide industry, and negative externalities on the environment. That needs to be balanced with whatever crop yields GMO achieves, and it should be understood the crop yields are higher primarily because the bugs are dead, not because we have new super-plants that produce more food per plant.

Re: No free trade agreement if charges of espionage are true, warns EU Commissioner

#59

Post by mortehu »

jussij wrote: post #48
kintamanimatt wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All cows that aren't slaughtered end up dying from disease or old age. Antibiotics prevent the spread of disease and aren't harmful in and of themselves, but their overuse can lead to resistant bacteria. And I'm not sure why you'd have a problem with genetically modified rice if it would increase the food supply safely. ll of these things have been relatively well studied and there appears to be no evidence to suppor…

> no evidence to support any indication that this these practices are harmful to human You haven't heard of BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, or Mad Cow Disease)? http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/bse/ The likely cause of that disease was farmers feeding cows other cows (in the form of meal). Lots of strange stuff happens in the name of making a profit.

It's well known why you shouldn't feed a species to itself; they will be susceptible to the same pathogens, and the pathogens will accumulate from one generation to the next.

Why are you making the leap from this to unrelated practices?

Re: No free trade agreement if charges of espionage are true, warns EU Commissioner

#60

Post by IgorPartola »

I have a theory. I think that posts like this get upvoted because some people now use HN as their only news source and think that if world news does not make the front page, they will miss something vital. I promis, this is the last time this year I am going to complain about political posts being on the front page. I also promise to spend more time flagging this crap in the New section. At this point I would rather see a discussion of whether glass flows.
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