CIA malware and hacking tools

1) Wikileaks revealing the CIA has undermined consumer goods with malware. (this looks like a bigger deal than the Snowden revelations on the NSA side).

2) Russian opposition leader Navalny revealing that former Russian President Medvedev has been accused of amassing a billion-dollar plus property empire, based largely on bribes and subterfuge.

I can only hope this extreme transparency, despite the biases of its torchbearers, lights its way into every hall of power from the White House to the Great Hall of the People.

That is specifically why I don't permit an executive. This isn't one army, it's an alliance of armies. They were (in my original proposal, not in the comment above) controlled by a council of heads of government who had to take (arrest) suggestions from the chief prosecutor of the international court, but were forbidden to take other actions collectively.

In fact, I recall suggesting that such a group of allies would promise to use force only to defend direct attack on their own borders, and to execute arrests.

> We're organized as nation-states in the first place so we can protect (generally) and pursue interests based on some sort of shared goal or value.

I'm not sure I was ever offered a choice of whether or which nation to join, nor given any arguments for it. The reason(s) for their formation are certainly not rational - they are an emergent phenomenon!

> the UN

The UN is a diplomatic mission, which aims to give nations who come into conflict a neutral space in which to talk to one another like grown ups (or, often, not like grown ups.) It is a fundamentally different goal to an organisation which aims to use the traditional enforcement of rule of law to coerce those with political power to act within at least some behavioural boundaries.

> Coming to an understanding between 8 Billion on who should be able to arrest them is extremely difficult.

Actually, again, this hypothetical force only has arrest power over international crimes - specifically, crimes which are committed by people wielding state power. This includes members of governments, civil services, uncivil services (police, army), and so on, but most definitely not civilians.

(An interested edge case I considered was the idea of an impromptu Texan militia who attempted to invade Mexico. I can't remember whether I decided they had designated themselves a pseudo-state or not by doing it. The same reasoning about whether jurisdiction should apply also works for most terrorists, anyway.)

Michael Hastings was a recovering alcoholic and meth-abuser whose brother, Jonathan, had flown into town the day before because he suspected that Michael was having a manic breakdown similar to the ones he had in the past. Jonathan had been called to LA since several of Michael's coworkers had reached out about his mental state.

After spending the day with Michael, Jonathan called their third brother to come help get Michael back into rehab. That brother arranged to fly out the next day but that night, at 4:30am, Michael snuck out of his apartment and crashed his car into a tree at very high speed.

Here's what Jonathan Hastings thinks about his brother's death:

I really rule out foul play entirely. I might have been suspicious if I hadn’t been with him the day before he died. After all, he definitely was investigating and writing about a lot of sensitive subjects. But based on being with him and talking to people who were worried about him in the weeks leading up to his death, and being around him when he had had similar problems when he was younger, I was pretty much convinced that he wasn’t in danger from any outside agency.

https://www.salon.com/2013/11/05/michael_hastings_life_and_d...