Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela

thetimes.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 297 posts

Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela

#231

Post by brudgers »

proksoup wrote: post #227
nxzero wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "I'm aware of my own hypocrisy on this point" Given I commented, calling you out to explicitly state why you feel that my comments on this page somehow show that I don't know what I'm talking about.

I am also curious to hear why c2the3rd is so confident about the ignorance displayed here and why silence instead of noise is the solution. Hacker news seems to do a pretty good job of at least up voting the majority thoughts, and perhaps with some effort by all of us we can respond intelligently to those popular thoughts and also get up voted. Even if ignorant, isn't it worth discussing and responding to if that's w…

Perhaps the ratio of listening and researching to a priori opining that correlates to discussion quality.

Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela

#232

Post by IsaacL »

dijit wrote: post #81

Given the serious effort CIA puts into destabilising regions (Lets not forget the large amounts of sources who said people were being ferried and paid to go to Kiev when the Ukrainian uprising was occuring) it would not surprise me very much if they were also behind the Britain "exit" from Europe, since that would cause an economic collapse of the EU and would remove a super-power from play. I feel like a conspiracy…

I'm British and pro-Brexit - an opinion I formed after reading arguments for both sides.(Essentially, I think leaving the EU will be painful, but staying in will be even more painful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_debt_crisis#Proposed_...).

Implying my opinions are manipulated by shadowy forces is a very low form of trolling.

Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela

#233

Post by april1stislame »

proksoup wrote: post #227
nxzero wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "I'm aware of my own hypocrisy on this point" Given I commented, calling you out to explicitly state why you feel that my comments on this page somehow show that I don't know what I'm talking about.

I am also curious to hear why c2the3rd is so confident about the ignorance displayed here and why silence instead of noise is the solution. Hacker news seems to do a pretty good job of at least up voting the majority thoughts, and perhaps with some effort by all of us we can respond intelligently to those popular thoughts and also get up voted. Even if ignorant, isn't it worth discussing and responding to if that's w…

>>> Hacker news seems to do a pretty good job of at least up voting the majority thoughts...

And therein lies the problem. Echo chambers are only good at making you wish to be deaf, if even...

Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela

#234

Post by brudgers »

beeboop wrote: post #228
c2the3rd wrote: post #207

I would like to thank all the people who had a comment on this article, but did not post it. Truly, you improve the community with your silence. I'm aware of my own hypocrisy on this point, but logical consistency would prevent this sentiment from ever being expressed. As it is, perhaps 5% of these comments know anything about what they are talking about. One of the biggest intellectual failings of the sort that freq…

I comment when knowingly being uninformed because the resulting discussion is what helps me understand the topic better. The result of this, looking back on my comment history, is that I can come across as a bit of an asshole who's often wrong. That is why anonymity is important to me online, because my posting here is not really indicative of my real world behavior. It's a safe place to challenge ideas and opinions,…

Commenting to learn is orthogonal to doing so in a way that "can come across as a bit of an asshole". The first tends to make Hacker News better. The second more than negates any benefit.

Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela

#235

Post by Udik »

meowface wrote: post #224
Udik wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Terrorism is sometimes the only weapon of those who fight against a much more powerful enemy. This doesn't mean that all terrorism is justifiable, but arresting your thought at words such as "terrorist" or "dictatorship" or "democracy" is silly. These are just arbitrary labels.

Ruthless, arbitrary slaughter of innocent civilians en masse is never justified, even if you are being oppressed.

No? Ruthless and arbitrary slaughter of civilians is instead justified by the presence of a military objective spatially located in the vicinity? The result is always the same: in order to obtain some result, you knowingly sacrifice civilians. Be the result destroying infrastructure, forcing a reaction, or producing a deterrence. Some armies have the means to hit the best military objectives directly, others have to rely on indirect effects. Would you qualify the Dresden bombings as military acts or terrorism? Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Somebody said "a language is a dialect with an army and a navy". The relation between war and terrorism is approximately the same.

Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela

#236

Post by toyg »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #196
toyg wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those people were not forced to sign up to the military You should read up a bit on the US military. A lot of those people came from disadvantaged backgrounds where army careers are the only ticket out of poverty. The US political and military establishment literally preys on the poor for their cannon fodder. It's the post-Vietnam equilibrium: they won't draft, so (white) sons and daughters of the middle-classes wi…

> "A lot of those people came from disadvantaged backgrounds where army careers are the only ticket out of poverty." They are not the only ticket out of poverty, speaking broadly these people have choices. What is happening is that the military provides, for some people, an attractive way to get out of poverty, because it comes along with a certain level of prestige. Change the level of prestige and you change the in…

> Change the level of prestige and you change the influx of new recruits.

Who can change the level of prestige? Upper and middle classes. Why would they do that, when the system works just fine for them? Nobody is legally coerced, and still cannon fodder is overwhelmingly provided by the "right" people.

From a certain perspective, it's a beautiful system.

Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela

#237

Post by WayneBro »

467568985476 wrote: post #152
arca_vorago wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are completely wrong about this. There is plenty of evidence to indicate that "shadow groups" of varied interests that sometimes align and sometimes dont, are often pulling the strings of "public puppets". Your view, while common, (especially in the academic world where conspiracy is avoided like the plague) doesnt seem to reflect reality. The conspiratorial view of history is the correct one. Would you l…

Please go into more detail. Start with the evidence.

Could we start with asking you what kind of evidence would actually satisfy you? How much effort are you prepared to expend in questioning this?

Honestly. What do you need to just to consider the small possibility that your view of things is the incorrect one?

Do you want macro/micro/historical/current evidence and do you expect such evidence to be easily disseminated here or are you just asking without any of these things in mind?

I guess we could start with the fact that it's proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that very few people control the economy in modern times - https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354-500-revealed...

We could also prove that for historical times.

The evidence is there. It just takes a little work to dig through and a lot of reading. So, I suggest trying to look around on your own first. Read about the United Fruit Company. 1950's Iran. Rand Corporation. There's just so much out there already that I think anybody who hasn't read about this stuff by now must not really care.

Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela

#238

Post by Retra »

viraptor wrote: post #51
benevol wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we extrapolate, humans will sooner or later create "true AI". Such an AI system can break free from our control (it will end up manipulating us in the physical space), it should become wiser than humanity as a collective (because it will evolve much faster then us). And in this case, we'd end up having such "an intelligence group that only did good". The problem lies in how we manage to bridge the period between n…

You're assuming that a "true AI" if it existed would care about the continued existence of humanity? Past the point of ability to self-repair and self-fuel, what would be the reason to even care about humanity then beyond self-defence?

You're assuming that if "true AI" existed, it would be in total control of all the infrastructure needed to maintain it's own existence.

Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela

#239

Post by ZenoArrow »

april1stislame wrote: post #233
proksoup wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am also curious to hear why c2the3rd is so confident about the ignorance displayed here and why silence instead of noise is the solution. Hacker news seems to do a pretty good job of at least up voting the majority thoughts, and perhaps with some effort by all of us we can respond intelligently to those popular thoughts and also get up voted. Even if ignorant, isn't it worth discussing and responding to if that's w…

>>> Hacker news seems to do a pretty good job of at least up voting the majority thoughts... And therein lies the problem. Echo chambers are only good at making you wish to be deaf, if even...

Only if you treat downvotes as bad. My own comments on this thread have received a fair number of both upvotes and downvotes. I consider when that happens (assuming I haven't been overly antagonistic, which I don't think I have been) that I've hit a raw nerve. I could be wrong, but alternatively I could've said something someone isn't willing to hear. That can be useful feedback in its own right (though I prefer the clarity of comments over votes).

Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela

#240

Post by rubberstamp »

c2the3rd wrote: post #207

I would like to thank all the people who had a comment on this article, but did not post it. Truly, you improve the community with your silence. I'm aware of my own hypocrisy on this point, but logical consistency would prevent this sentiment from ever being expressed. As it is, perhaps 5% of these comments know anything about what they are talking about. One of the biggest intellectual failings of the sort that freq…

well cia and nsa has managed to create so many terrorists and destroy national reputation. that along with the direction fbi and local police is going now a days, i dont have much hope. i used to think USA was a good country. But the more I see how US grossly violates human rights, supports Israel destabilizing the middle east, massive surveillance even on its own citizens I wonder if its even a democracy. Everything is im secrecy now a days and wondering if US is still a democracy, as democracy is supposed to be of the people by the people for the people. sadly people are less aware of the situation they are in, like a frog in slowly boiling water. Too much power with far less accounting.
Post reply on HN