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Russian whistleblower was assassinated after uncovering $200B scandal (2018)

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Re: Russian whistleblower was assassinated after uncovering $200B scandal (2018)

#81
post #41

All tax money in Russia and elsewhere is stolen and therefore dirty and corrupt to begin with anyway. Try not paying taxes and you'll get jailed -- and if you refuse this you'll get gunned down. I think doing anything you can to avoid paying taxes without getting yourself into trouble is a moral obligation.

Ha. I've been thinking about these sorts of problems and I'm leaning towards the idea that while governments are legitimate (groups of people pooling resources to achieve communal goals with some degree of compromise) most citizens are not legitimate (for lack of a better word). I was born in the US so I get all these rights, benefits, and obligations with no choice. From that viewpoint are immigrants the only "true"…

> From that viewpoint are immigrants the only "true" citizens of a nation because they actively choose to be a part of it?

The criteria for citizenship have varied a lot over time, and usually have to do with the economic or identity system of the country.

For example , when the US was an agrarian society, African slaves could not be citizens, because doing so would undermine the economic system underpinned by slavery.

Today, some middle eastern countries have religious requirements for immigrants to become citizens.

The modern concept of a citizen (vs a subject) is itself only a few hundred years old.

So I'm not sure if there is a "true" definition of a citizen, in any morally defensible way.

Re: Russian whistleblower was assassinated after uncovering $200B scandal (2018)

#82
post #18
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why humanity invented the Hero. We recognize that irrational selflessness can be extremely beneficial for society. The more heroes we have, the less corrupt the system, the stakes of corruption would be lower and the price of heroism should decrease, thus society at large and these selfless heros will probably benefit together.

There is significant and maybe a majority of people who have flexible morality. CA-50 re-elected a congressmen who was under indicted for corruption and theft of campaign funds. A CIA whistleblower is in hiding and career military officer in under protection for reporting or testifying about corruption at the white house. Hero only exists if a significant majority of society has capability to distinguish right from w…

>CIA whistleblower

So we're giving the benefit of the doubt to members of the most notoriously cut throat agency in the American government now?

Re: Russian whistleblower was assassinated after uncovering $200B scandal (2018)

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Jeff Bezos was to commit murder tomorrow and be caught I suspect the police would chase him, catch him, throw him in jail, he'd make bail and it would turn into a scene like OJ. I don't expect he'd be able to raise an army to break him out or defend is home. He might be able to flee the country but even that might be hard even with all his money. If he had covertly planned ahead and already had his mercenary army…

Recently a Mexican cartel outgunned the Mexican police and forced the release of El Chapo's son. It's hard to imagine something like that happening in a wealthy country, but it's not unheard of in the real world. https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/31/americas/el-chapo-son-operati...

It has happened (and still happens) in the US when white nationalist militias have a lot of guns. The cops don't want another Ruby Ridge or Waco; see also Cliven Bundy.

Re: Russian whistleblower was assassinated after uncovering $200B scandal (2018)

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heroes are characterized by extreme competence at something. Some people dedicate that to doing good because they believe it to be valuable for it's own sake. Selflessness just gets you walked over. Being good is both an individual positive for the hero and a collective gain for the people.

I think the main attribute of a hero is courage.

It is part of it too, but the courageous hero without competence ends up dead. Roman legionaries used to joke heroes are the people they kill. The minimizing of vulnerability in an extreme situation combined with ability to overcome it and the courage to do so defines a heroic struggle. The caregiver is the foil, the maximizing of vulnerability around others and the social integration of such is the classic back and forth.

A scene in a A Bridge Too Far (ww2) shows an implementation of it. A soldier has a near-dead friend in his arms that he knows is alive, he dodged live rounds to keep his friend from a group of Germans in a forest clearing. He arrives at a MASH style base camp and seeks treatment from a doctor. The doctor is overworked and prejudges the friend to be dead, indicating that he should be left with the row of dead soldiers he was unable to save. The soldier demands treatment and when it is repeatedly rejected he pulls a gun on the doctor, threatening to kill him. The doctor eventually relents, treats the friend finding him alive. The soldier puts away his gun and capitulates to the punishment incoming to him for breaking the rules, the doctor reports him to the MP and manufactures a slap-on-the-wrist for the soldier. The doctor after having been exposed to near death and allowed the soldier to remain apart of the social system asks him "would you have shot me?". The soldier pauses and silently salutes.

That story would never have happened if it were not for the hero's ability to survive in a hostile environment and achieve his goal of returning alive with his friend, courage or not. The friend would never have lived if the doctor had not risked being vulnerable to having another death on his hands because of an arrogant soldier.

They both gave that friend a chance at creating something of enduring value from successful missions in the future and an everyday life for the friend himself.

Re: Russian whistleblower was assassinated after uncovering $200B scandal (2018)

#85
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recently a Mexican cartel outgunned the Mexican police and forced the release of El Chapo's son. It's hard to imagine something like that happening in a wealthy country, but it's not unheard of in the real world. https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/31/americas/el-chapo-son-operati...

Mexican cartels are much closer to terrorists, rebel groups, or rival states than they are to businesses operating in a functioning country. The difference in what's basically a warlord who already has loyal troops to command, controls territory, and assets that can't be easily seized and Jeff Bezos is too much to make a comparison remotely useful.

Sure, it seems out of character for someone like Bezos to raise an army of armed thugs like you might expect from the Sinaloa cartel. But history is full of wealthy people getting away with obvious crimes. A more likely response from someone with Bezos' personality to some situation like this is taking a private plane to a no extradition country, bankrupt a state with lawsuits from an army of lawyers, or bribing/blackmailing low level officials. Bezos isn't an Epstein, and we did eventually put Epstein in prison, but we knew that guy was raping kids ages ago and the state of FL let him go free under very sketchy circumstances.

Re: Russian whistleblower was assassinated after uncovering $200B scandal (2018)

#86
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Found murdered with gunshot wound to the back. Police claimed it was robbery yet his wallet, cellphone, creditcards, and laptop weren't taken. > The only evidence that he was involved in something, that I'm aware of, is a cryptic comment from Asange. Well, that and basic commonsense. If it wasn't Seth Rich who leaked the e-mails, who was it? It's far more plausible that it was Seth Rich than the russia boogeyman thro…

> If it wasn't Seth Rich who leaked the e-mails, who was it? can't explain something, picks favorite conspiracy theory to explain it. makes sense.

What if chemtrails are really the leaked emails?!

Re: Russian whistleblower was assassinated after uncovering $200B scandal (2018)

#87
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I think I would have stopped digging as soon as I got a hint of how deep this rabbit hole actually was" Or maybe find a way of making the news public under anonimity, which brings us to the importance of being able/allowed to do so when necessary.

Maybe. The problem with a lot of stuff like that is that it's really hard to release information anonymously. The nature of the information is such that not many people would have had access to it, so for the assassins, the number of suspects is very low, and it's not that hard for them to figure out who did it.

This is also true. In such a scenario probably an effective torture proof dead man switch (the one the whistleblower can't turn off once they kidnap him) could have helped. Something on the lines of "here's 500 pages of sensitive data in the wild about your crimes, if I or anyone of my family members disappear or die a thousand more pages will be published, and nobody can turn off this feature, including me".

I know I'm making this a lot easier than it really is...

Re: Russian whistleblower was assassinated after uncovering $200B scandal (2018)

#88

Oh Wikileaks, why would you publish more material that harms the leaders of the Russian state? It's as if you don't even care that you're contradicting the constant media accounts of your pro-Russian bias. Corporate-media stenographers have families to feed!

> According to a telegram that remained buried until now in the cache of 250,000 diplomatic cables leaked by WikiLeaks in 2010 care to try that argument again, taking into account how time works?

That's the point; WL have never had any bias. They just publish genuine documents. They don't care whose ox is gored. The ridiculous conspiracy theorizing on display for the last three years says nothing about WL and everything about USA.

Re: Russian whistleblower was assassinated after uncovering $200B scandal (2018)

#89
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But with this mentality corruption will just go unchallenged. Its a huge risk, but the rewards for removing such a big chunk of corruption is huge. So I guess you're right, it is more of a mindset thing.

It's no different than a peasant (or even a lesser lord) challenging a king in the feudal era. You spoke out against the king, you lost your head. Billionaires are our kings. Jeff Bezos' wealth is 3 times the GDP of North Kora, which has a standing army of over a million people. They are more wealthy than a number of independent states. Do you think he couldn't fund and equip 100,000 mercenaries if his monopoly were…

> [...] Do you think he couldn't fund and equip 100,000 mercenaries if his monopoly were threatened? [...]

In abstract, from the numbers sense (dollars), sure, your argument stands that test.

However, it does not stand the common sense test: what are said contractors going to do once the gig is over? Part of mil contracting is keeping yourself in the good graces of the sugar-daddy government to keep the funds rolling into the future when needs arise. Oh yeah, and also avoid going to prison (for reference, see Blackwater / US Contractor indemnification in Iraq).

Re: Russian whistleblower was assassinated after uncovering $200B scandal (2018)

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[ NOTE: It takes hours and days to communicate here because people do not like my opinions -- so "Hacker News" (lol) throttles me so I cannot really respond to you or anyone in reasonable time. ] Lol. No you do not like paying taxes; that's your Stockholm syndrome or sunk cost fallacy (variant of it) talking. It's not free; it's crazy expensive and goes to a lot of crazy and/or evil b.s. you have no interest in or co…

IDK why this got downvoted. State spending and economic growth are inversely proportional. The bigger the government, the less economic growth there is.

Citation / data requested.

This is a bald assertion and there are a tremendous amount of confounding factors.

Globally, the fastest growing GDPs are associated with some of the weakest economies (Lybia, in 2018, for what it's worth).

GDP growth is highly dependent on present GDP/capita (e.g., average income) levels. If you're starting high, you'll have little growth.

Within a given country, given fiscal stimulus during recessions, you'll see increased government spending as a share of GDP precisely when GDP is lowest. Not because high government spending as a share of GDP causes reduced growth, but because it is a direct response to that growth.

If you'd want to make a supportable claim, you'd have to account for at least these, and quite probably other factors.

The countries with stable, high per-capita, and generally growing GDP have not only a large share of government spending as a share of GDP, but numerous other factors: stable institutions, low corruption, generally a membership within the NATO or a similar alliance (ASEAN, ANZAC), which translates to protected trade routes and access to global oil shipments (a huge factor in GDP), and more.

Which may account for some of the reception shown to answers to complex problems which are clear, simple, and wrong.

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