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U.S. arrests former Green Beret, son, in connection with Ghosn escape from Japan

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Re: U.S. arrests former Green Beret, son, in connection with Ghosn escape from Japan

#281

Post by unhomedcoder »

XMPPwocky wrote: post #235
unhomedcoder wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/abcnews.go.com/amp/Internationa... . the State Dept would be the last entity on Earth who i would approach for help in a foreign hostage situation. just ask Kayla Mueller's parents. after CIA gave ISIS over $1 BILLION worth of weapons, the Obama State Dept threatened to charge Kayla's parents with Material Support of Terrorism if they paid the ransom to ISIS to free their daughter. ISIS w…

While there's hardly a shortage of things to criticize the State Department for, it's hard to argue that making exceptions to the "don't give money to ISIS" policy for ransoms is a good idea. That just encourages more kidnappings.

that contradiction was my point. the US govt already covertly gave ISIS over a billion dollars--the splashiest way to provide Material Support of ISIS. meanwhile, giving ISIS $100,000 in ransom for a hostage is just too much.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2017/08/02/worl...

if you doubt my claim that CIA gave ISIS over a billion dollars, that link proves it--they admit it themselves.

honk honk is a meme that means "irony." as in the noise of a clown's nose being squeezed while someone tells you something that is clearly self-contradictory and requires you to ignore the evidence you see in front of you.

i don't know what these quick-to-politicize-speech downvoters mean when they unpack a rather innocuous meme. memes are the Lingua Franca of the Internet. it doesnt matter where they originated, or who may have used them because after they are recycled a billion times all over forums, they lose whatever original meaning they had and become common slang.

i don't care about being down voted and i don't care about pleasing tattletale censor Karen's.

Re: U.S. arrests former Green Beret, son, in connection with Ghosn escape from Japan

#282

Post by chihuahua »

ilamont wrote: post #36

Can't read the article, but IIRC the elder Taylor's wife is from Lebanon and he spent a lot of time there, even though he is from the Boston area and has a home here. Can't believe his lawyers didn't recommend he go to Lebanon sooner, considering the amount of information made public about this case. Japan and U.S. have extradition treaties, and they must have been aware of the risk.

What I find very strange about Ghosn's escape is how much information about it was made public. It seems that none of the people involved should have been interested in giving any information to the press. Everyone would have been much better off if Ghosn disappears in Japan, resurfaces in Lebanon, and no one says how it happened. Instead there were newspaper articles with abundant detail about every step along the way. How did that happen?

Re: U.S. arrests former Green Beret, son, in connection with Ghosn escape from Japan

#283

Post by ekianjo »

freeopinion wrote: post #37
ekianjo wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you judge it's good if you can't read more than 5 lines?

Do you make the same argument for movies? books? cars?

Yeah I dont judge movies by their trailers nor books by their back cover. Who does that?

Re: U.S. arrests former Green Beret, son, in connection with Ghosn escape from Japan

#284

Post by ac29 »

vkou wrote: post #241
hhs wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was a neat piece, wow, especially considering it was published more than 20 years ago. Quite prescient when the author writes: “If Jeff Bezos's vision comes true, here's how you'll shop in 2020: The vast bulk of store-bought goods - food staples, paper products, cleaning supplies, and the like - you will order electronically. Some physical storefronts will survive, but they'll have to offer at least one of two t…

Prior to COVID-19, 86% of retail in 2020 was still brick and mortar.

Don't underestimate the power of immediate convenience.

And for that matter, there are a number of people who effectively live paycheck to paycheck - "If I buy it online, it wont show up until next week, so I'll wait until I need it and buy it locally" (I understand how credit works, but many people dont, or dont have credit for some other reason). Additionally, there are a sizeable number of people who cant, or wont buy anything online.

Re: U.S. arrests former Green Beret, son, in connection with Ghosn escape from Japan

#285

Post by ac29 »

psychometry wrote: post #73
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all you need are high-level State Department contacts That's a terrible strategy for getting out of the clutch's of a foreign country's law enforcement. Let alone an ally's.

Why? Who do you think negotiates things like prisoner exchanges?

State Departments are powerful, but politically complicated and slow. Cash in the right hands goes a long way in many places, and is much quicker - valuable when time isn't your ally.

Re: U.S. arrests former Green Beret, son, in connection with Ghosn escape from Japan

#286

Post by karatestomp »

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #131
eloisius wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I met a guy at NewSpace several years ago and we were talking about the role of the US military in space exploration. I was expressing my wariness of a militarized space force, the possibility of us ending up under a military junta, etc, but he was less worried. He kept making the point that mercenaries were the norm in the past and that the US military actually has an incredible record for never seizing control. He…

The US military has only been around for 250 years and look at how much the country has changed in that time. The idea of the welfare state would be totally incomprehensible to the founders[0]. I think the idea of the military as separate from the rest of the state is contingent on that state operating in the interests of the people. Or at least, not against the interests of the people. And history shows that no soci…

> The US military has only been around for 250 years

And a permanent, standing, large, and fairly dysfunctional (look at descriptions of military leadership and its civilian oversight in WWII and earlier, then look at same in Vietnam, then look at the linked Afghanistan Papers documents in this thread re: same in Iraq and Afghanistan) US military is even newer, only 80ish years. Even more recent if you consider its modern form to have taken shape only after the Vietnam draft ended.

Re: U.S. arrests former Green Beret, son, in connection with Ghosn escape from Japan

#287

Post by goatinaboat »

stonogo wrote: post #142
kthxbye123 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Between their salaries, hazard pay, pensions, government hiring and contracting preferences, free lifetime healthcare, free tuition, free graduate tuition, free job retraining and zero-interest mortgages, U.S. soldiers are amply compensated, and there are plenty of legitimate opportunities available for guys from elite units like the Green Berets. None of the guys writing tell-alls or turning to a life of internation…

"Hazard pay" is $150 per month at most. The "free lifetime healthcare" gets eroded every congressional session (for a while there they took away dental coverage), and the VA health care system has a well-deserved reputation for being a nightmare factory. There is no such thing as a "zero-interest mortgage." The only benefit to a VA loan is the zero-down-payment. The only way to retire on a full-salary pension is to s…

Hazard pay" is $150 per month at most.

Re-enlistment bonuses in the SEALs can be as high as 6 figures...

Re: U.S. arrests former Green Beret, son, in connection with Ghosn escape from Japan

#288

Post by goatinaboat »

hpoe wrote: post #93
ggamecrazy wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe inside the special operations community, Navy Seals, especially Team 6, gets a lot of flak for the amount of insider content that comes out [1]. Perhaps some of the lessons may apply to the tech community as well. I found this quote resonating well even for myself and tech, specifically for the adoration of tech leaders: "It’s easy to fall in love with oneself, but this is not about us...It cannot be about…

I've was told by a friend that Seal Team 6 is kind of just a facade that the govt. puts on any spec ops operation that is successful that they need to publicize. Not that Seal Team 6 isn't full of spec ops guys, but rather that for confidentiality reasons, even if it isn't Seal Team 6 the govt. will say Seal Team 6 for obfuscation. "All warfare is based on deception" - Sun Tzu

Well, when team 6 was founded, there were only teams 1 and 2. The number itself was a ruse.

Re: U.S. arrests former Green Beret, son, in connection with Ghosn escape from Japan

#289

Post by XMPPwocky »

unhomedcoder wrote: post #281
XMPPwocky wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While there's hardly a shortage of things to criticize the State Department for, it's hard to argue that making exceptions to the "don't give money to ISIS" policy for ransoms is a good idea. That just encourages more kidnappings.

that contradiction was my point. the US govt already covertly gave ISIS over a billion dollars--the splashiest way to provide Material Support of ISIS. meanwhile, giving ISIS $100,000 in ransom for a hostage is just too much. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2017/08/02/worl... if you doubt my claim that CIA gave ISIS over a billion dollars, that link proves it--they admit it themselves. honk honk is a mem…

I'm not sure who you're replying to with the clown/meme thing? Might have the wrong comment.

Regardless, I'm sorry if people calling you a clown (?) offended you- that's not too productive and doesn't help anything. They shouldn't do that.

Re: U.S. arrests former Green Beret, son, in connection with Ghosn escape from Japan

#290

Post by dang »

ProAm wrote: post #194
dang wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paywall complaints, which this is a variant of, are off topic here. They're always the same, which means they just add noise. HN is a site for diffs. Diffs are what's interesting. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

That is very fair, but why allow piracy with paywall workarounds? Are those considered off topic or illegal? It is a gray area, but people asking for a paywall workaround also seems OT in comments? I only ask because I think its important to the world to have good journalism because it helps to keep the other side of the fence (business and politics) accountable. And I believe that bypassing paywalls hurts that balan…

Because HN would be much worse off without NYT, Economist, WSJ, and so on.

These publications are well aware of their paywall design and what can or can't be done to work around them. If they wanted hardwalls they would have them. Some publications do, and those are off limits here (edit: unless they're willing to unlock the article for HN readers, which The Information, for example, does occasionally).

The situation is of course a mess, but until the publication business sorts itself out the way the music business eventually did, this is what we're left with. It sucks, but I don't know of any alternative that wouldn't suck worse.

The difference between comments asking for paywall workarounds and comments complaining about paywalls is that the former gives people new things to read (albeit via a layer of indirection) while the latter just repeats something we've all read ad nauseum. It isn't a question of agreeing or disagreeing, but of avoiding repetition. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

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