From it I learned one of our members refused to eat halal certified products.
That's me. I said that and I am not ashamed to admit it. I refuse to knowly eat them. Sometimes it's tough when there is no, not halal certified alternative. But I do the best I can under the circumstances.
There's more than just the cruel aminal slaughter processes. Any food product can be halal certified, not just meat. The producer pays a fee to be halal certified which is often passed down to the customer. Much of the funds raised through this halal certification process does fund terrorism internationally. Also the halal certification boards (there are many of them) are pushing for all food to be halal certified so we consumers will have no choice but eat halal certified or go without. Baby food in Australia already faces this issue in Australia. All packaged baby food in Australia is halal certified. To avoid this, you have to make your own.
Also we had to fight to get halal certified products to even show their certification logos on the packaging. They didn't want to show it, so we could not spot which foods are halal certified. However a victory was achieved and passed the senate. Soon it will be an offence avoid putting a halal certification logo on halal certified food products.
Kosher food differs from this in one very important way. The kosher boards do not push everyone to eat kosher. They are ok if you don't eat kosher. They respect both sides. Also the funds generated from this do not fund terrorism or other nasty things.
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I also try to avoid using anything Google for the obvious reasons of I don't feel safe using their services. Will the data about me that Google track when we use their apps and services be sold for profit? Is there search engine payment process (to decide what appears at the top of seaches) fair? Is how google track tata fair and legal? Many questions and the answers to them and others are not always in favour of google. To this end, I do not trust google at all with my data so I avoid using their products and services as much as possible.
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Apple, everything they make is so proprietary and expensive. A mac with the same specs as a pc is usually several hundred dollars more expensive. Not a huge fan of them.
I am not criticising your choice. I am ok with people who hate Apple. I would just like to point out that for equivelant (over the life of the puoducts) specs, Non Apple PCs and Apple Macs are for the most part roughly equal. Sure at times one or the other costs more, but it's not that common.
The proprietary issue for the most part is a thing of the past. Things like FireWire ports are dead. Anyone can use Thunderbolt. I think the biggest proprietary port still in existance from Apple is Lightning. Apple really do need to licence out Lightning though so everyone can use it. As long as the cables are all properly certified so less people are shocked by cheap knock off cables.
I actually don't like Tim Cook. He is abusing his position as CEO to ram democrat polity down his Apple employee throats. The other big fish at Apple are fine. Tim Cook is the toxic one there that needs to go. Tim needs to learn that lobbying as Tim Cook on his own time is fine, but lobbying as Apple CEO is wrong. He should be putting Apple first, not his own political agendas.
Do I like Apple? Only partially. Parts of Apple are terrible, but parts are alright.