Take it to the death thread
Tim Tebow lost his job and the first gay athlete from a major sport has come out as gay. Great start to the week.
is colorado notable for its highly-educated liberal demographic?
take it to the nba and nfl threadsMacbeth wrote:
Tim Tebow lost his job and the first gay athlete from a major sport has come out as gay. Great start to the week.
Take it to the photography thread
Watching the debates for the BC Provincial Elections. Why does it always seem to be that you are picking the lesser of the evils...
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia/2013 … 51225.htmlAfghan President Hamid Karzai has said his national security team has been receiving payments from the US government for the past 10 years.
Karzai confirmed the payments on Monday when he was asked about a story published in The New York Times saying the CIA had given the Afghan National Security Council tens of millions of dollars in monthly payments delivered in suitcases, backpacks and plastic shopping bags.
During a news conference in Helsinki, Finland, where he was on an official visit, Karzai said the welcome monthly payments were not a "big amount" but were a "small amount," although he did not disclose the sums.
He said they were used to give assistance to the wounded and sick, to pay rent for housing and for other "operational" purposes.
He said the aid had been "very useful, and we are grateful for it."
The newspaper quotes Khalil Roman, who served as Mr. Karzai's deputy chief of staff from 2002 until 2005, as calling the vast CIA payments "ghost money" that "came in secret, and it left in secret."
It also quotes unidentified American officials as saying that "the cash has fueled corruption and empowered warlords, undermining Washington's exit strategy from Afghanistan."
No comment from Washington
In Washington, White House spokesman Jay Carney declined to comment on the report, referring questions to the CIA, which also declined comment.
In 2010, Iran acknowledged that it had been sending funds to neighbouring Afghanistan for years, but said the money was intended to aid reconstruction, not to buy influence in Karzai's office.
The Afghan president confirmed he was receiving millions of dollars in cash from Iran and that Washington was giving him "bags of money," too, because his office lacked funds.
At the time, President Barack Obama's press secretary, Robert Gibbs, denied that the US government was in "the big bags of cash business," but former US State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley had said earlier that some of the American aid to Afghanistan was in cash.
US officials also asserted then that the money flowing from Tehran was proof that Iran was playing a double game in Afghanistan - wooing the government while helping Taliban fighting US and NATO forces. Iran denied that.
Afghanistan is rated by Transparency International as one of the most corrupt countries in the world.
Over reaction by an Apple employee or a legitimate concern? I'm surprised she told them that she was from Iran. The Iranians I have met tell me they're Persian to avoid being stereotyped.An Iranian-American woman says employees at a Georgia Apple store refused to sell her an iPad after they heard her speaking Farsi, the language of Iran.
Her report is shining light on Apple’s export policy, which human rights groups say is being misinterpreted, leading to instances of racial profiling.
Sahar Sabet, a 19-year-old U.S. citizen and student at the University of Georgia was shopping, with her uncle visiting from Iran, at the North Pointe Mall in Alpharetta, Ga. A store clerk heard them talking and asked language they were speaking, she told local TV station WSBTV.
When she answered Farsi and said they were from Iran, the clerk said, "I just can't sell this to you. Our countries have bad relations," Sabet told the station. "It was very hurtful. Very embarrassing," she said. “I actually walked out in tears."
Sabet said the store’s action was was an example of racial profiling and discrimination.
When Sabet returned the North Pointe store later, the store manager showed her Apple’s export policy to explain why she was denied the sale, she said.
The policy lists Iran as one of five 'prohibited destinations' that the U.S. holds complete embargoes against. Exporting, selling or supplying Apple products to Iran is strictly prohibited without prior permission from the federal government, it states.
Exports to Cuba, North Korea, Sudan and Syria are also prohibited.
The National Iranian American Council and Council of American-Islamic Relations called on Apple Tuesday to clarify the policy to assure it’s not used to discriminate against Iranians.
"Nowhere in the sanctions laws does it say you can't buy an iPad because you speak Persian," said NIAC Policy Director Jamal Abdi in the release. "What does preventing an Iranian-American teenager from buying an iPad have to do with preventing the Iranian government from getting a nuclear weapon?"
Apple spokesman Steve Dowling told the Daily News "Our retail stores are proud to serve customers from around the world, of every ethnicity. Our store teams are multilingual and diversity is an important part of our culture. We don't discriminate against anyone."
Apple could risk legal liability if it sold a product knowing it would be sent to Iran, reported the BBC.
“But the issue we see is that employees are profiling people … singling them out for questioning about how they're using the product,” David Elliott, assistant policy director at NIAC told the Daily News. “Which is very odd and very disturbing.”
Sabet told WSBTV that the iPad was intended as a gift to her cousin in Iran, but said she didn't mention that to the clerk.
"It's a slippery slope," he said. "If someone is speaking Arabic are employees going to stop them and say 'are you from Syria?' and deny them service? Or if they're speaking Spanish, are they gonna say are you from Cuba?"
Sabet said when she called Apple’s corporate customer relations an employee apologized told her she could buy an iPad online.
A State Department representative told WSBTV it's illegal to travel with the electronics to Iran without federal permission, but that he was not aware Apple was enforcing the law, reported WSBTV.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa … z2RubcVPSB
- globefish23
- sophisticated slacker
- +334|6543|Graz, Austria
Racial profiling indeed.13/f/taiwan wrote:
Over reaction by an Apple employee or a legitimate concern?
And enforcing federal law that only applies when you try to enter Iran.
Done by store clerks.
What's next?
Front porch surveillance by the milkman?
DNA sampling by the hairdresser?
Water-boarding by a masseur?
And FFS, she is a US citizen. She can buy whatever she wants.
And even give it to her Iranian uncle.
The latter could face problems at the border when he tries to leave to the Iran.
What does a silly store clerk have to do with that?
just read about how the syrian electronic army hacking AP's twitter-feed, and then tweeting that post-boston misinformation about barack obama being bombed, ended up (temporarily) wiping $140bill off the DOW. pretty insane how hacking and internet security can affect the market - all automated as well. 1 billion dollars per character in a tweet... not bad going for sabotage directed from a middle-eastern dustbowl.
Last edited by Uzique The Lesser (2013-04-30 03:33:06)
hey that apple employee is just doing his patriotic duty and enforcing US sanctions!globefish23 wrote:
Racial profiling indeed.13/f/taiwan wrote:
Over reaction by an Apple employee or a legitimate concern?
And enforcing federal law that only applies when you try to enter Iran.
Done by store clerks.
What's next?
Front porch surveillance by the milkman?
DNA sampling by the hairdresser?
Water-boarding by a masseur?
And FFS, she is a US citizen. She can buy whatever she wants.
And even give it to her Iranian uncle.
The latter could face problems at the border when he tries to leave to the Iran.
What does a silly store clerk have to do with that?
oh boy better cut benefits for Muslims and legal immigrants. They might build bombs /sThe Tsarnaev family, including the suspected terrorists and their parents, benefited from more than $100,000 in taxpayer-funded assistance — a bonanza ranging from cash and food stamps to Section 8 housing from 2002 to 2012, the Herald has learned.
“The breadth of the benefits the family was receiving was stunning,” said a person with knowledge of documents handed over to a legislative committee today.
The state has handed over more than 500 documents to the 11-member House Post Audit and Oversight Committee, which today met for the first time and plans to call in officials from the Department of Transitional Assistance to testify.
“I can assure members of the public that this committee will actively review every single piece of information we can find because clearly the public has a substantial right to know what benefits, if any, this family or individuals accused of some horrific crimes were receiving,” said state Rep. David Linsky (D-Natick), the committee’s chairman.
Linsky’s committee has requested documents from the DTA, the state’s Medicaid director and Health and Human Services Secretary John Polanowicz. But so far the committee has not released the records publicly, citing a privilege the DTA is asserting under state law.
Transitional assistance officials also told the Herald tonight that the agency was conducting its own investigation into whether Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s family ever notified the DTA about his extended trip to Russia, and has since expanded its probe to include a full history of the benefits received by the entire Tsarnaev family.
that's the sort of detail tabloids here would get in an orgiastic frenzy over. silly and irrelevant.
Every time I think about how destructive Fox News is to our political system I suspect that somehow it's some kind of elaborate British/Australian/Commonwealth plot aimed at destroying us from within so you and your queen can take over the world again.Uzique The Lesser wrote:
that's the sort of detail tabloids here would get in an orgiastic frenzy over. silly and irrelevant.
Thanks, Murdoch.
Rational free market, acting completely rational of course. Nothing irrational or unstable at all about a rumor temporarily crashing the stock market. Nope. Not at all.Uzique The Lesser wrote:
just read about how the syrian electronic army hacking AP's twitter-feed, and then tweeting that post-boston misinformation about barack obama being bombed, ended up (temporarily) wiping $140bill off the DOW. pretty insane how hacking and internet security can affect the market - all automated as well. 1 billion dollars per character in a tweet... not bad going for sabotage directed from a middle-eastern dustbowl.
Jesus christ, stop posting you ignorant redneck.
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
-Frederick Bastiat
A redneck with yankee parents from Chicago? My my you know so much about our country.
how is he wrong? automated bots managed to lose $140bn off the stock-market temporarily because the AP news feed made a 140 character tweet alluding to obama "being injured in a bomb blast". no proof, no evidence, and that's from ONE TWEET. that is quite crazy and 'irrational', when you consider how much value was wiped off the stock-market because of malicious misinformation. it also has huge potential for manipulation. none of the changes were even done by humans, either - all machine algorhythms, reading the news and making hundreds of decisions, ahead of time. it is extremely unscientific, and by no means works all the time. they just use these bots because they generally tend to generate more profit than loss over a given time-frame. it is pretty irrational.Jay wrote:
Jesus christ, stop posting you ignorant redneck.
Last edited by Uzique The Lesser (2013-04-30 10:19:46)
The algos actually barely break even. They're used to buy low/sell high on very small incremental price changes and they factor in key words from news sources in order to pick which stocks to target. They're essentially a gigantic waste of money on the part of the banks and hedge funds. When they all came online, every last bit of rationality left the market for short term transactions and only morons day trade anymore. Day trading was always more roulette than investment strategy anyway. Algos just mimic the stupidity of day trading with higher volume and faster speeds. They're harmless to the economy in the long run.Uzique The Lesser wrote:
how is he wrong? automated bots managed to lose $140bn off the stock-market temporarily because the AP news feed made a 140 character tweet alluding to obama "being injured in a bomb blast". no proof, no evidence, and that's from ONE TWEET. that is quite crazy and 'irrational', when you consider how much value was wiped off the stock-market because of malicious misinformation. it also has huge potential for manipulation. none of the changes were even done by humans, either - all machine algorhythms, reading the news and making hundreds of decisions, ahead of time. it is extremely unscientific, and by no means works all the time. they just use these bots because they generally tend to generate more profit than loss over a given time-frame. it is pretty irrational.Jay wrote:
Jesus christ, stop posting you ignorant redneck.
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
-Frederick Bastiat
so he was completely correct in commenting on how irrational that aspect of the trading economy is. not a dumb redneck.
Nah, he's a dumb redneck because he never has any idea what he's talking about and instead likes to use stupid troll buzzwords that he picked up from some leftist news site.Uzique The Lesser wrote:
so he was completely correct in commenting on how irrational that aspect of the trading economy is. not a dumb redneck.
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
-Frederick Bastiat
A temporary crash in the stock market is completely meaningless.
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
-Frederick Bastiat
i never made it out to be anything else. i just said that sort of manipulation/induced effect could be used for a lot of gain.