Not replying to anyone in particular, but regarding Assange, Snowden, and Putin (and by extension his /patron/ Xi): has it ever occured to any of you that our corruption has turned into a weapon in the hands of our enemies, and that we can't deal with the situation if we never address the corruption to begin with?
America’s Open Wound
111–120 of 349 posts
Re: America’s Open Wound
#112Has everyone on Hacker News lost their minds? I come here to read and sometimes participate in rational discussions. These comments are some of the lowest effort, least rigorous, paranoid bullshit I’ve ever seen on this site. We’re a step above Facebook comments on NPR articles, here. Partisanship, viciousness and lazy conspiracy theories are not a good look for this site.
Yes, the amount of hate for Snowden and Assange is dismaying. These men sacrificed their lives to expose the crimes of one of - if not the most -powerful organizations on Earth. And people nitpick that they’re not criticizing the other most powerful entities too. Basically they’re criticizing them for not committing suicide in the name of a people which were impotent of unwilling to do anything with the revelations p…
I love HN, but at the end of the day, it's a reddit-clone for a silicon valley VC fund. No one is here to start a revolution, and in fact, a lot of users probably make a living doing things that snowden sympathizers (I don't mean that as a slight, I am one) would claim are ruining the world.
Re: America’s Open Wound
#113Did any American read this without alarm? If so, why not?
'Alarm' is not really the right word; the CIA and its lack of accountability is a problem, but it's not a new problem or a particularly recently-worsening problem. It's one of the bad things about America that needs to be fixed, but Snowden does not provide any new information here.
And honestly, while I agree with the gist of what he's saying here, I tend to view his more recent stuff with a bit of a suspicious eye; he has made a pretty big deal about the oaths he swore that he believed required him to reveal the extent of the illegal NSA spying at great personal cost. But now, he's a citizen of the Russian Federation, which is basically a rogue intelligence agency with a kleptocracy attached to it. Which means he's sworn an oath (as all naturalized citizens must) to protect and serve the interests of that nation, to uphold its laws, etc. Does he take that oath seriously? If not, why do they tolerate him?
I appreciate what he did back in 2013. But now that he's under the defacto control of the Russian FSB, I will take what he says with a grain of salt. Especially something like this, which is an opinion piece with no new information attached.
Re: America’s Open Wound
#114> Flanked by the uniformed icons of his military and standing atop a Leni Riefenstahl stage, the leader clenched his fists to illustrate seizing the future from the forces of “fear, division, and darkness.”
I stopped reading once Godwin's Law applied. This was the first paragraph.
Re: America’s Open Wound
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I’d be surprised to hear that these people even contradict their boss Has Snowden talked about Putin's war on Ukraine yet?
Why should he? He’s not Jesus or the world police.
Because he denied it was going to happen and expressed skepticism at Western intel reports about the invasion. Then he was silent after the invasion.
Re: America’s Open Wound
#116Did any American read this without alarm? If so, why not?
Well I think this article does a good job of saying CIA has done some crazy stuff. But then it goes from there to -> so let's get rid of it, which to me seems like potentially a much scarier proposition. It's not clear to me exactly how real the threat of foreign countries trying to tamper with our elections is, but if this is what the CIA does, I think it's probably naive to think no other nation would try things li…
>Maybe this article isn't saying to eradicate the whole intelligence apparatus, but it's not clear to me what incremental practical step it is proposing.
Proper adversarial (a la GAO) oversight is hinted at when he points out the failure to inform Congress about multiple activities. A commission appointed by Congress to inspect CIA activities could go a long way.
Re: America’s Open Wound
#117A bit hypocritical of Snowden to criticize the USA while holed up in Russia. But maybe I'm a bit partial considering the USSR destroyed every semblance of culture and national identity in my home country, causing generations of corruption and trauma, and ultimately emboldening my family to move to the States--abandoning lifelong friends and family--where a much better life was possible. But please, keep lecturing us…
He's holed up in Russia because the United States stranded him there. He was in Hong Kong for the original reporting. When his identity was revealed the United States charged him under the Espionage Act, & revoked his passport. He was flying to Argentina through countries that didn't have extradition agreements with the United States. When he got off in Russia, his passport was confiscated as it was no-longer valid &…
Ecuador, not Argentina.
Re: America’s Open Wound
#118We say: Hey, the police are killing us, could you please stop that. No, we need to be tough on crime. It's just too bad that some people die, but I need to feel secure. We say: Hey, the police are still killing us, could you please stop that. It looks like we need to reboot the justice system. No, we need to be tough on crime. Why do you want the crime rate to go up? We say: Hey, the police are still killing us, we n…
The solution isn't "throw more police at crime".
It's multi-faceted. It's not just make work/life more worthwhile either because there are places with relatively high unemployment but also low crime.
It's about civics and what society sets as acceptable boundaries and enforcing those boundaries and punishing those that stray too far.
Looks at the USA's wild west. It went from rampant violent crime to acceptable social order. The impetus often was locals wanting to transform from territory to union member state. The country required certain control over crime and usually the solution was to bring in sheriffs to control crime, bring in schools to teach civics and bring civilization (law and order) to a lawless place.
Re: America’s Open Wound
#119We say: Hey, the police are killing us, could you please stop that. No, we need to be tough on crime. It's just too bad that some people die, but I need to feel secure. We say: Hey, the police are still killing us, could you please stop that. It looks like we need to reboot the justice system. No, we need to be tough on crime. Why do you want the crime rate to go up? We say: Hey, the police are still killing us, we n…
The issue in the US at this point in time is that as soon as something becomes a partisan issue, people filter into their groups, and nothing can get accomplished.
The right should want to reduce police spending as part of fiscal conservatism. The left should want to reduce police spending for social issues (and reallocate money towards social services, maybe).
But noooo, it's now a political problem.
Re: America’s Open Wound
#120We have known for many years the CIA is awful. Get rid of it. We can achieve national security goals via alternate means. It's probably going to get me banned, but we know they interfere in foreign elections. Why is it such a long shot to believe they don't interfere locally?
It isn't immediately clear to me that you could run a modern state without some sort of intelligence apparatus. If anything, Israel is a case study of intelligence being a great equalizer for smaller states. That doesn't excuse abuses or allow for their overreaches, which very much need to be addressed.
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