131–140 of 215 posts
FBI's "Suicide Letter" to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Dangers of Unchecked Surveillance
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/11/fbis-suicide-letter-dr...
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That's actually the best hope for America, the expectation that we should do good, do the best we can.
I don't see how perpetuating the myth helps with achieving that.
As GauntletWizard gets into, it helps when individuals asked (by individuals or circumstance) to be bad feel like they'd be doing something wrong and unusual, which people are less likely to do than things they just feel are wrong.
It hurts when people who have already decided to do bad things exploit it.
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Any system as large and complicated as this one will have failures. Our job is to learn from the past and try to prevent it from happening again in the future.
Yeah, failures that cost hundreds of thousands lives. We're talking about the most weaponized country in the world, and one of the least shy to use its weapons. We are not talking about a movie maker delivering a boring scene who will try to do better in the next movie. We're talking about toppling foreign governments, invading countries, backing or installing dictatures, assassinating people, droning teenagers, deal…
The New York Times actually broke the story. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/magazine/what-an-uncensore...
Yes. We changed the url to that from https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/11/fbis-suicide-letter-dr... as the "original" source.
This was in the 1960s. Imagine the projects being conceived now for targeting individuals and population subsets to change opinion, mood, etc. using things like social media, targeted communications, etc. The US then and now was totalitarian and authoritarian. Some of you, especially here on hn, may not fall into those mind-sets but it doesn't matter - you've lost - you're barely scraping by, working 60 to 80 hours a…
It's interesting when someone from Switzerland claims the moral high ground about a country's past wrongs. Switzerland has a colorful history of Nazi collaboration and laundering of stolen treasure by the 3rd Reich.
Is that an unfair characterization of you as a modern Swiss person? Yes.
Just like comparing 1960s America to the present day. The U.S. may not live up to the ideals that are plastered over it's monuments, but it's certainly not contributing to your demise (whatever that means).
> Just leave. Go to ...
Spoken like a true Swiss. No, we all don't have the spare funds or network of employers to travel to a different country at will. Not to mention, SV is the epicenter of venture capital in software, not Zurich. Who are the VCs who would fund a startup's relocation to Zurich?
> contributing to a government
You can be forgiven for this, but U.S. citizens are perpetually bound to pay taxes even when residing abroad. The first $90k is forgiven, but the next must be taxed. Oh, and the state (e.g. California) doesn't play by these rules; it takes the full amount.
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You're inventing all of that. 1) American workers don't work 60+ hours to earn 50% less than what people in Switzerland do. 2) The median income in the US is barely below that of Switzerland. 3) The average American worker does not work more than 45 hours per week for the median income. 4) If you compare people of a similar qualification + education + demographic, Americans earn more than people in Switzerland per ho…
I'm talking about IT workers. Average wages are 2x-3x of the u.s. Taxes are 11% to 21% depending in the canton vs the u.s which can be up to 40% in CA. Expenses are 2x in Switzerland but if you live in s.f. probably comparable. I don't want this to get sidetracked to be a conversation about Switzerland though. In general life is better in Europe than the u.s. - less desperate. At least you have obamacare now.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're inventing all of that. 1) American workers don't work 60+ hours to earn 50% less than what people in Switzerland do. 2) The median income in the US is barely below that of Switzerland. 3) The average American worker does not work more than 45 hours per week for the median income. 4) If you compare people of a similar qualification + education + demographic, Americans earn more than people in Switzerland per ho…
I'm talking about IT workers. Average wages are 2x-3x of the u.s. Taxes are 11% to 21% depending in the canton vs the u.s which can be up to 40% in CA. Expenses are 2x in Switzerland but if you live in s.f. probably comparable. I don't want this to get sidetracked to be a conversation about Switzerland though. In general life is better in Europe than the u.s. - less desperate. At least you have obamacare now.
Spain has 30% real unemployment. France's economy hasn't grown in ten years in inflation adjusted terms, and is suffering hyper stagnation; it has averaged sub 1% nominal GDP growth for that time. Italy is on its third recession in seven years. Portugal is so relatively poor their middle class would barely qualify as poor in the US. Greece is a total economic disaster still.
The Netherlands, Ireland, and Denmark are the three most indebted countries on earth per capita compared to income. Lavish spending today to fake prosperity, to be paid for tomorrow with lowered standards of living. The US has done plenty of that too, but it can more easily manage its debts than European nations can.
The total GDP of Europe is still below 2007 levels, and looks set to remain below that level for another ten years inflation adjusted. Pegging the European economy in effectively a 20 year depression.
Moldova, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, Russia, Romania, Ukraine, Macedonia, Kosovo, Bulgaria, Albania, Bosnia, Croatia, Czech, Slovakia - you're telling me life is more desperate in the US, than in these countries? That's blatantly false.
It continually amazes me that Americans can perpetuate the myth that their government is a democratic, moral force in the world given everything they have done, and are still doing...
"Many forms of government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried from time to time." - Winston Churchill
What you have in the US is a system where politicians are all either elites in society, or vetted by elites. Where they manage to convince or coerce a 'big enough' group of people to vote for them (ie. half or just over half of voters that actually turn out, which is a subset of the population). Once they're in power, they don't rule on behalf of the people, they rule on behalf of the elites that funded their campaigns. They toe the party line, and within each party is a group of elite 'thinkers' - none of whom are elected, but nevertheless direct the party.
Democracies are also supposed to represent minorities and the 'common folk'. 'Rule of the people' implies a need to either involve the people directly, or rule on their behalf, yet in the US there is a decided animosity towards the people.
In your most recent elections, 36.6% of voters turned out. Once you tally the possible margins of victory, this means that it's possible that you are now ruled by politicians that less than 20% of eligible voters actually voted for. And I wonder what percentage of the population takes part in party primaries? How representative is the US' democracy?
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It's stronger than the government would do that. It's that the government did that. This incident of the government trashing one of the world's great civil rights heroes is a mark of shame that all of us Americans have to bear.
In J. Edgar Hoover's mind Civil Rights Movement -> Destabilizing Effect on American Culture -> Probably a Communist Plot -> Civil Rights Movement is the Enemy
I do consider myself patriotic, but we have to fess up when we get things so wrong.
This was in the 1960s. Imagine the projects being conceived now for targeting individuals and population subsets to change opinion, mood, etc. using things like social media, targeted communications, etc. The US then and now was totalitarian and authoritarian. Some of you, especially here on hn, may not fall into those mind-sets but it doesn't matter - you've lost - you're barely scraping by, working 60 to 80 hours a…
I'll bite. From one troll account to another. It's interesting when someone from Switzerland claims the moral high ground about a country's past wrongs. Switzerland has a colorful history of Nazi collaboration and laundering of stolen treasure by the 3rd Reich. Is that an unfair characterization of you as a modern Swiss person? Yes. Just like comparing 1960s America to the present day. The U.S. may not live up to the…
California is crazy in how they handle overseas expats.