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Ecuador offers WikiLeak's founder Assange residency, no questions asked

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Re: Ecuador offers WikiLeak's founder Assange residency, no questions asked

#41

Post by davidcuddeback »

igravious wrote: post #33
chadp wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sarah Palin said today that he should be hunted down like Osama bin laden.

Really? You mean with a complete and utter lack of success? Zing! edit: you know, when someone who is cited as a possible presidential candidate reflexively reaches for an extra-judicial solution to resolve the releasing of state information by a foreign whistleblower then ... what? i don't know, but it's very telling. the road back towards the rule of law is going to be long and difficult one.

Last night, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a press meeting that Wikileaks should be labeled a terrorist organization. I find it frightening that the government has reached a point that they will label anyone they don't like as a terrorist so that they can bypass the legal system. I didn't realize that exposing information could be an act of terror, but Clinton would like to have you believe so.

Edit: I did a quick Google search to find a news piece about this. The first one I found was this:

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/gop-rep-wikileaks-deemed-...

That article tells us who lobbied Clinton to label Wikileaks as terrorists, but it also references the Pentagon Papers case, which I cited from in a comment in another discussion about Wikileaks (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1948911).

Re: Ecuador offers WikiLeak's founder Assange residency, no questions asked

#42

Post by compay »

redthrowaway wrote: post #14
fabiandesimone wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I understand most of the northern Latin America may harbor strong negative feelings towards the US That is what Chavez wants you to think. I agree there is some part of the population in Venezuela that does not like the US but I think is mainly because they are being told not to like them. I believe that most of Venezuelans have always looked up to the US and are pro-yankee. Given the choice (specially Chavez suppor…

Sorry, what? Was this intended to be satire? The US has done a great many things to make itself very hated in Latin America, and that is far from limited to, or even primarily in, Venezuela.

Just curious, what's your experience living or traveling in Latin America? Have you seen or experienced this widespread hatred first hand?

I obviously don't deny that the USA committed terrible abuses in Latin America, but I have yet to see the widespread resentment you speak of; not everybody walks around with a copy of The Open Veins in their pocket down here. Latin Americans can be as ignorant or apathetic of history as anybody in the USA.

I am not a Chavez supporter, but the claim that he or many Venezuelans "hate the USA" lacks nuance to say the least. If that were the case, Johann Santana would be reviled as a traitor for playing baseball in the USA, rather then being received by Chavez as a hero.

Re: Ecuador offers WikiLeak's founder Assange residency, no questions asked

#43

Post by redthrowaway »

rbanffy wrote: post #24
masklinn wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As for being childish, the US has done a whole lot to earn that enmity. That's quite an understatement.

Some people have done a lot, sometimes with government support, but those are a tiny minority when compared to the people they represented. You shouldn't judge a people by the actions of their leaders.

"Some people have done a lot?"

-CIA backs military coup in Chile to overthrow democratically elected president. Cue almost 20 years of brutal military dictatorship. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilean_coup_of_1973

-Funding and arming right-wing paramilitary militias in Nicaragua to overthrow another democratically elected government http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaragua#Sandinistas_and_the_C...

-Hell, blanketting the entire damned continent in brutal military dictatorships. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_America_%E2%80%93_United_...

-Overseeing said brutal dictators' plans to assassinate political dissidents http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor

-Training the armies of said dictatorships in the methods that made them notorious http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_the_Americas#Human_ri...

And that's just before the "War on Drugs" era. The US has earned the enmity of Latin Americans the honest way.

Re: Ecuador offers WikiLeak's founder Assange residency, no questions asked

#44

Post by rbanffy »

alex_c wrote: post #28
rbanffy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people have done a lot, sometimes with government support, but those are a tiny minority when compared to the people they represented. You shouldn't judge a people by the actions of their leaders.

> You shouldn't judge a people by the actions of their leaders. That becomes a difficult argument beyond a certain point. Especially if the leaders are (in theory, at least) representing the people.

The point is that "in theory" a democracy represents the ideals of all its people. Usually, a democracy represents a fraction of the will of a people. Plus, the fraction that agrees with everything the leader does is even smaller.

Re: Ecuador offers WikiLeak's founder Assange residency, no questions asked

#45

Post by KaeseEs »

redthrowaway wrote: post #7
rbanffy wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In fact, the one constant in South America is how much they hate the US I am not sure where you have been or what you have experienced, but I wouldn't call it a constant. I never noticed this widespread hatred towards the US you mention in Brazil, Argentina or Chile. I understand most of the northern Latin America may harbor strong negative feelings towards the US, but I can tell you Brazilians really don't care th…

Sorry, you're correct. I was inaccurate with my claim. The antipathy towards the US is much stronger in Central America and the Andean regions (Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, etc) As for being childish, the US has done a whole lot to earn that enmity. I'd recommend reading Open veins of Latin America , by Eduardo Galeano. It's a difficult read, due in no small part to the author's support of the Cuban Revolution and Castro'…

It was clear quite a long time before 1971 that Castro's regime 'had humanitarian costs', as you euphemize'; note that Che did all his torturing and murdering before he died in 1967.

Re: Ecuador offers WikiLeak's founder Assange residency, no questions asked

#46

Post by rbanffy »

huherto wrote: post #40
rdtsc wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You were probably watching "The history of the U.S. made in U.S." and there is the difference between that and the real history of the U.S.

Sorry for the sloppy reference. I think it was in "The History Channel". They described the American invasion to mexico in about five seconds just showing how the U.S. suddenly grew. The show was very entertaining but skipped on one of the main passages of history.

"one of the main passages of history."

A small correction of perspective: it's the history of two countries, and it's only a major passage for one of them.

This asymmetry is one of the main reasons of international disputes.

Re: Ecuador offers WikiLeak's founder Assange residency, no questions asked

#47

Post by redthrowaway »

compay wrote: post #42
redthrowaway wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, what? Was this intended to be satire? The US has done a great many things to make itself very hated in Latin America, and that is far from limited to, or even primarily in, Venezuela.

Just curious, what's your experience living or traveling in Latin America? Have you seen or experienced this widespread hatred first hand? I obviously don't deny that the USA committed terrible abuses in Latin America, but I have yet to see the widespread resentment you speak of; not everybody walks around with a copy of The Open Veins in their pocket down here. Latin Americans can be as ignorant or apathetic of hist…

I wouldn't call it widespread hatred. I certainly didn't see any evidence of hatred towards individual Americans. It's more a widespread opinion that the United States is at best questionably moral. There are certainly many who think it is evil, and if you ask the average person on the street they'd probably have mostly negative feelings towards the US.

I haven't been to the Middle East, but I imagine the sentiment to be very similar. People have an odd way of resenting you when you back brutal dictators that kill thousands of civilians.

Re: Ecuador offers WikiLeak's founder Assange residency, no questions asked

#48

Post by jerf »

tybris wrote: post #30

Joke all you want, it appears the tables of what constitutes a free country have turned dramatically.

Uh, a country does not become "free" by symbolically offering one person the privilege of freely attacking an entity it is at best ambivalent about. That's just falling for the propaganda move hook line and sinker.

Re: Ecuador offers WikiLeak's founder Assange residency, no questions asked

#49

Post by compay »

redthrowaway wrote: post #47
compay wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious, what's your experience living or traveling in Latin America? Have you seen or experienced this widespread hatred first hand? I obviously don't deny that the USA committed terrible abuses in Latin America, but I have yet to see the widespread resentment you speak of; not everybody walks around with a copy of The Open Veins in their pocket down here. Latin Americans can be as ignorant or apathetic of hist…

I wouldn't call it widespread hatred. I certainly didn't see any evidence of hatred towards individual Americans. It's more a widespread opinion that the United States is at best questionably moral. There are certainly many who think it is evil, and if you ask the average person on the street they'd probably have mostly negative feelings towards the US. I haven't been to the Middle East, but I imagine the sentiment t…

I asked if you have lived in or traveled in Latin America, but you didn't answer me. Does that mean you have not actually been here?

I ask you because I do, in fact, live in Latin America and my experience has not been what you describe.

> People have an odd way of resenting you when you back brutal dictators

Actually people tend to first resent the brutal dictators themselves. The person paying the hit man isn't usually as hated as the guy who actually stuck a gun in your face.

Re: Ecuador offers WikiLeak's founder Assange residency, no questions asked

#50

Post by potatolicious »

rbanffy wrote: post #44
alex_c wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You shouldn't judge a people by the actions of their leaders. That becomes a difficult argument beyond a certain point. Especially if the leaders are (in theory, at least) representing the people.

The point is that "in theory" a democracy represents the ideals of all its people. Usually, a democracy represents a fraction of the will of a people. Plus, the fraction that agrees with everything the leader does is even smaller.

The problem that line of argument runs into is that the American people has also failed to hold its democratically elected government responsible for the shadier things its done (I'll stop just short of calling them atrocities, though some of it crosses that line).

Hell, the sorry state that much of Latin America is in right now is largely directly attributable to the direct intervention of the USA (see redthrowaway's post re: coups and installation of brutal military dictatorships friendly to US interests). These crimes have essentially gone unpunished, or hell, unanswered entirely back at home.

When the government purports to represent the people, the people rightly bear responsibility for its actions. While it is unrealistic to expect said government to do no wrong and always abide by the democratic principles on which it is founded, at the very least its abuses, once known, need to be reigned in by the very people who put them in charge. This is largely not happening.

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