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Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

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Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> It's important to remember that they invaded Ukraine for no reason, That's extremely reductive. The situation is a bit more complex than that. I don't think they were right to invade -- not remotely -- I think it's abhorrent. But there is a little more historical context with the US and other regional tensions than Putin rolling a 1D6 and deciding that meant "hey, I'm bored, let's invade".

If it's more complex, why not add details of that complexity to the discussion instead your vague comments? You know, add know depth, knowledge, or detail instead of just saying 'but it's more complex'? Perhaps because they details don't justify a war of aggression? Because the details paint the aggressor in a starker light than your incredibly lacking 'a bit more complex'?

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guantanamo Bay is thousands of times smaller in magnitude than putting millions of your own citizens in concentration camps. It's also reprehensible and should be closed, no one disagrees on that

There are NOT millions of people in “camps” in China, that’s a bizarre claim made by some so called researchers like Adrian Zenz. 1000s or 10,000s at most. And do you even know what the rationale for these so called “camps” are for?

Do you have any citations for that dismissal? Multiple researchers have the Uyghurs on the order of a million people, plus something like half that number of children separated from their families into boarding schools, and the primary reason for the decline in camp population being the preferential switch to forced labor programs rather than giving up on the genocide.

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#203
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was flying to Ecuador and his passport was revoked when he was in Russia. If you speak out against the war in Ukraine in Russia you get shot, and he has a wife and kids now. He's done his part imo

This is false. His passport had been revoked before he got on the plane. He got on the plane to "Ecuador" on a temporary travel document from Ecuador, knowing he was never getting off anywhere but Moscow. https://apnews.com/article/587786e6e63b4dc2b70c471606d7f584

from your own article:

"If a senior official in another country or with an airline orders it, a country could overlook the withdrawn passport, the official said."

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> It's important to remember that they invaded Ukraine for no reason This is not true. Real people have motives, „being evil“ is a child's explanation for things it doesn’t understand.

I mean, "no reason" is understood to mean no good reason.

Say you walk next door and shoot your neighbour dead. Many people, even when they know it's because he made friends with his other next-door neighbour when you demanded he only be your friend, will say that you killed your neighbour for no reason.

> "being evil“ is a child's explanation

Fair enough. It was because Putin is a good person who was lonely and wanted to be loved and appreciated by his closest neighbour. That neighbour made him sad by befriending other people, and Putin had no choice but to slaughter thousands in an attempt to regain the exclusive friendship of his closest neighbour.

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#205
In the last ten years technology has increased substantially. In the last five years AI has advanced significantly.

That is worth really letting sink in.

I try my best to avoid every kind of online discussion on these topics that I reasonably can avoid. Some might even see it as paranoia. But I assume that every single thing I post online (or say on the phone, send in text, or write in emails) is traceable back to me directly, that it is being captured and stored by multiple agencies and countries and that it is all fed into AIs that are at least as capable as GPT-4.

Imagine a Gov-GPT where you can ask it: "Tell me everything I need to know about John Smith" and the AI can related his job history, credit score, recent emails at home and work, his phone calls, his purchases, his political opinions, his spiritual beliefs, his likely weaknesses ... all smartly formatted in a succinct essay that we know and love from ChatGPT.

My question is, if we aren't there already, how long until we are?

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia commits countless war crimes on a daily basis (there is tons of documentation) and China has concentration camps. America is not perfect but they are legitimately much worse

The Ukraine used illegally cluster bombs on ethnic Russians for years. This is actually documentation. https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/10/20/ukraine-widespread-use-c...

This makes no sense. The conflict started in 2014, you point to an article from 2014, how does that show years of bombs? In addition Russia no longer keeps up the lie that the 'little green men' that invaded Ukraine were just ethnic Russian Ukrainians already in Ukraine. They admit that they invaded with Russian troops. Soldiers will often have their service in 2014 hyped in online obituaries when they are eliminated now. Ukraine was responding to an unannounced invasion by it's much larger neighbor with the weapons is has at hand (weapon's that Russia also has and uses). What a non-point made with non-evidence trying to place blame on a country that was invaded. Do you also use 'how she was dressed was asking for it' as an arguement?

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> It's important to remember that they invaded Ukraine for no reason This is not true. Real people have motives, „being evil“ is a child's explanation for things it doesn’t understand.

His motive is that he wants to reestablish the Russian Empire and he views the Euromaidan as the US taking Ukraine from him

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#208

In the last ten years technology has increased substantially. In the last five years AI has advanced significantly. That is worth really letting sink in. I try my best to avoid every kind of online discussion on these topics that I reasonably can avoid. Some might even see it as paranoia. But I assume that every single thing I post online (or say on the phone, send in text, or write in emails) is traceable back to me…

That's the chilling effect in action and the reason why mass surveillance policies are so undemocratic.

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#209
post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Saddam Hussein was one of the worst leaders in history and the neocons legitimately thought they could create a free market utopia in Iraq (lmao), check out Imperial Life in the Emerald City. They fucked up horribly and made Iraq worse because they were incompetent morons who fired the entire army and didn't bother to make sure people actually had basic services. Putin wants to reestablish the Russian Empire and…

So Iraq was a war done out of charity?

It was a war done because Cheney and Rumsfeld hated Hussein and justified it with bullshit aspirational nonsense that didn't work. It was out of charity in the same way communist revolutions are, and in practice it was an atrocity.

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it, the Wikileaks DNC email dump was just a front for Russia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Democratic_National_Commi...

Why wasn't there a discussion of the contents of the leaks, that the DNC did everything in their power to coronate Hillary, and only a discussion of the leak's provenance?

There was plenty of discussion of the DNC crowning Hillary. I'm pissed about it to this day. What's your point?
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