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Henry Kissinger Has Died

nytimes.com

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Re: Henry Kissinger Has Died

#651

Post by phatskat »

nicbou wrote: post #499
klik99 wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haven't listened to the podcast (yet) and don't know much about kissinger but the description "the Forest Gump of war crimes" made me laugh out loud, whether or not it's accurate.

It’s a light entertainment show. The host is an ex Cracked writer. It’s mean-spirited but very funny.

And very well-researched - I think this part is important especially for people skeptical of the show’s name.

Also “light entertainment” really depends on the particular episode’s subject imo

Re: Henry Kissinger Has Died

#652

Post by phatskat »

rendall wrote: post #416
seanhunter wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're expecting a podcast titled "Behind the Bastards" to be an objective source?

Funny! But your question did get me thinking. I don't know anything about this podcast nor much about Kissenger, but a podcast dedicated to bad people could be objective, I think, if they were to pick their subjects based on objective criteria.

Their criteria is definitely “was this person/organization a bastard?” That said, the host does a lot of research and does attempt to provide as full a picture as possible about his subjects. There is some editorializing, and also there’s a healthy amount of “this is the best information that I could find”. A number of times I’ve heard him say things like “we don’t have a direct source for Thing X, so take this with a grain of salt”.

Well worth a listen imo, I ended up binging every episode over the course of a year or two.

Re: Henry Kissinger Has Died

#653

Post by octokatt »

stormking wrote: post #586
nojvek wrote: post #569

Guy was a crook and had no remorse for killing millions of civilians and cozying up with dictators. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/henry-kissinger-dies_n_637693... The world needs less people like him. No one should ever be complicit in carpet bombing. It's inhumane. We in the US ought to hold the govt accountable everytime they drop bombs from the sky on civilians. We're currently helping Israel do that in Gaza with…

Hospitals and schools that are used by Hamas.

Couldn’t find the original link, but here’s news coverage for a game called September 12th.

> In this Serious Game you need to kill terrorists shooting missiles. The action uses first person perspective in order to enhance immersion. The problem is that terrorists are surrounded by civilians and it is almost impossible to attack terrorists without killing civilians too. The dead are mourned and the rage of the survivors turns them into terrorists. You just have to play for a couple of minutes to realize that the only way to avoid ‘collateral damage’ is not to play.

This nicely completes the loop back to Kissinger’s choices in life.

https://www.onseriousgames.com/september-12th-a-toy-world-ne...

Re: Henry Kissinger Has Died

#654

Post by futureamish »

onecommentman wrote: post #408

How can an obit about a 100 year old man garner 328 comments in 5 hours on HN? This is Nixon era stuff. I would have assumed most HN reader’s parents weren’t born when Kissinger was actually relevant. The HN demographic is way older than I imagined.

It's because we'll never stop feeling the effects of trade normalization with China that placed the final nail in the coffin of unionized labor in the US, resulting in the poor quality of life we feel daily here.

Re: Henry Kissinger Has Died

#655

Post by Dylan16807 »

kurthr wrote: post #184
jofer wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The crazy thing about this is that the folks calling Kissinger out for war crimes and the folks like you pointing out the good things he enabled both have a valid point. I'm not saying his legacy is positive or negative overall, but folks need to look at both sides of it. He's a great example of someone who had a major hand in a lot of major decisions and has a very very mixed legacy because of it. Things are much bl…

People are complicated. I'd be more tempted to see the good, if he had ever shown remorse or admitted to mistakes. The Nobel prize is based on explosives. Most scientists 100 years ago were eugenicists. It's difficult to judge people's beliefs and decisions outside of their era. That doesn't mean that you can't build a moral or ethical system outside of it, but they're all based on assumptions of what is good. It's n…

I don't think your examples are very convincing. To the extent that Nobel enabled bad things with explosives, the prizes were there to compensate and not celebrate them. And even though the word is very taboo today, eugenics are not inherently evil. They don't compete with Kissinger.

Re: Henry Kissinger Has Died

#656

Post by bmulcahy »

lobocinza wrote: post #623
93po wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm relying on Amnesty International's evaluation of the situation and not taking Netanyahu's propaganda at face value, since he is a known liar and is disingenuous in virtually everything he says.

Relying on AI evaluation is also dangerous. That NGO isn't trustworthy.

Why not?

Re: Henry Kissinger Has Died

#657

Post by jjeaff »

AYBABTME wrote: post #307
mostly_lurks wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe every so often a conversation within a podcast episode contains some extraordinary analytical insight not found elsewhere Much like comments written on the internet. > That being said, it is probably correct to ignore most of them. See above.

Podcasts, like live news, radio talk shows, and other scheduled throughput based media, have to fill time with content. If there's nothing intelligent to say, they say stuff anyways.

The huge advantage of podcasts over most other forms of media is that they don't have to cut things down into tiny bite sized pieces. Many podcasts will get down into the nitty gritty details of things that the news never will. I think it's much closer to long form journalism than television news. Although, obviously, podcasts can take any form and some are geared toward that latter rather than former. But the ones I am most drawn to are those where actual experts pour over the data in great detail.

This Week in Virology was my go to during the pandemic, hosted by a virologist, and immunologist, and an infectious disease doctor.

You'll notice that many if not most of the loudest "expert" voices during the pandemic were speaking outside their area of expertise. With the exception of Fauci, of course.

Re: Henry Kissinger Has Died

#658

Post by wahnfrieden »

Always_Anon wrote: post #609
93po wrote: post #594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It be cool if military and geopolitical leaders got together to define some of these things. Israel is blatantly violating international laws

>Israel is blatantly violating international laws Bombing military targets is allowed. Hospitals, mosques, etc. lose their protected status if they are being used for military operations, which they are.

with white phosphorus?

Re: Henry Kissinger Has Died

#659

Post by dbsmith83 »

burnerburnito wrote: post #629
Always_Anon wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>While I agree to an extent, this begs an obvious question: How far do we take this line of thinking? It be cool if military and geopolitical leaders got together to define some of these things. They could get together and have a convention of sorts, maybe in a central, neutral place, like Geneva. >Is an attack like 9/11 justified since even the twin towers were used by the US government indirectly, owing to nearly e…

What I'm actually describing is how each citizen of a country can be described as supporting any ongoing war efforts, terrorism, etc. -- something which many geneva convention signing nations and their militaries believed in and acted upon not just in ww2 but even in Vietnam and the Iraq war. Thus I'm suggesting that it can be justifiable to bomb a hospital or school in which enemy combatants are launching attacks fr…

> Thus I'm suggesting that it can be justifiable to bomb a hospital or school in which enemy combatants are launching attacks from, yet also justifiable to do an act of violence on enemy taxpayers + potential conscripts in general.

Sorry, but no. Justified by who? Do you think it is justifiable to attack civilians?

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