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The Drone Papers

theintercept.com

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Re: The Drone Papers

#171

Post by wilg »

dang wrote: post #8

We changed the URL from https://theintercept.com/drone-papers to the first article on the list, which begins by introducing the series.

I actually think this is a confusing change. Before I read this comment, I read the first article as linked, which ends abruptly and I was left a bit unsatisfied. (I ignored everything after the article, which I always do on news articles, like a regular person.) The page layout doesn't really make it clear that there is a higher level until you get to the end and scroll past the comments.

Plus, the article linked is titled "The Assassination Complex" not "The Drone Papers", like the original link and the current title of the HN Story.

Plus, the initial image of Obama and Bush hugging in scary black and white makes me think that this is more of a hit piece on Obama, which is not exactly accurate.

Also, the first article does not really introduce the series very well.

Re: The Drone Papers

#172

Post by robertfw »

sangnoir wrote: post #163
anigbrowl wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leaking supposedly confidential information to the press is hardly a novel technique in espionage, or in any social context for that matter, eg feeding a juicy tale to the village gossip to embarrass a rival. Machiavelli made a systematic study of such techniques centuries ago. What do you find so insane about it?

What is insane to me, is the reasoning behind suggesting "X is beneficial to Russia. Therefore Russia is doing X" without producing a shred of evidence. I am inclined to at least consider the possibility that you are a NSA/GCHQ agent[1] attempting to discredit and diminish the reputation of Snowden and Greenwald. See what I did there? 1. https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/

What I see is you putting words into anigbrowl's mouth (letters onto his keyboard?)

Re: The Drone Papers

#173

Post by anigbrowl »

sangnoir wrote: post #163
anigbrowl wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leaking supposedly confidential information to the press is hardly a novel technique in espionage, or in any social context for that matter, eg feeding a juicy tale to the village gossip to embarrass a rival. Machiavelli made a systematic study of such techniques centuries ago. What do you find so insane about it?

What is insane to me, is the reasoning behind suggesting "X is beneficial to Russia. Therefore Russia is doing X" without producing a shred of evidence. I am inclined to at least consider the possibility that you are a NSA/GCHQ agent[1] attempting to discredit and diminish the reputation of Snowden and Greenwald. See what I did there? 1. https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/

So you're criticizing me for a suggestion I never made, about a country I never mentioned, and then you suggest my reasoning is insane? I think you need to work harder at this. If you can't countenance the possibility that your political hero figures could themselves be subject to manipulation then you're essentially adopting a religious attitude towards them.

Unfortunately I am too marginal a person to be hired as a disinformation agent; I'm just your friendly neighborhood sociopath reminding you that it's helpful to look both ways before crossing the street.

Re: The Drone Papers

#174

Post by abecedarius »

koube wrote: post #159
pdeuchler wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for explaining that, who are we at war against then?

Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists[1]: "IN GENERAL- That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism…

That's interesting: surely almost none of the state violence still being committed under this law is aimed at persons who had anything to do with 9/11, right? As for organizations, isn't Al Qaeda just a brand now?

Re: The Drone Papers

#175

Post by Satchelmouth »

kushti wrote: post #119

I don't see this in CNN top yet, BBC is also silent(though UK citizen was killed by an US drone). However, RT and other media independent of western governments already have this on main page. Let's think why dear HNers.

You have a point however I just wanted to point out that RT is a very poor example to use.

Re: The Drone Papers

#177

Post by NN88 »

grandalf wrote: post #170
NN88 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you do to stop the war crimes committed by these very targets?

could you explain what your question means? Who do you mean by targets?

Why should I have a problem with taking out this guy? https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/the-life-and-death-of-...

Re: The Drone Papers

#178

Post by NN88 »

snake_plissken wrote: post #55

For me the most grave offense of our current president was taking out Anwar al-Awlaki in 2011. I understand he was not a good individual, by any means, but he was an American citizen which entitled him to all of the protections afforded under The Constitution. Programs like these are what undermines any legitimacy our country has left.

1. He renounced his citizenship

2. Yemen tried him in absentia

Re: The Drone Papers

#179

Post by smokeyj »

anigbrowl wrote: post #161
smokeyj wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there are other actors with geopolitical interests of their own who would cheerfully move in to fill the resulting vacuum So the argument for perpetual and unwinnable warfare is - if we don't someone else will? You think that's worth the live's of US service members and the inevitable collateral damage inflicted in war zones? I feel like I'm missing part of the picture. Personally, a better way of combating radical…

There are degrees of warfare, and the sort we are conducting at the moment is pretty mild compared to things like carpet-bombing Viet Nam ~50 years ago. I do favor a soft power strategy involving education and opportunity but civic societies are not things that come into being overnight, they can require decades or even centuries to take root. It would help, of course, if we didn't maintain alliances with semi-totali…

As hands off as the war is it still costs more than it's worth. The benefit is not only zero, at the end of the day we have more enemies than we started with - along with all the human collateral. Obama could literally have taken that entire operations budget, spent it on hookers and coke, and we'd still be better off.

I'm not sure what the natural state of mankind is, but the increasing flow of information is forcing us to act rationally and remember we have a public reputation that may follow us forever. Accountability is quickly becoming forced on us by the internet and smartphones so it'll be interested to see how this all turns out.

Re: The Drone Papers

#180

Post by PavlovsCat »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #32
DasIch wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument that democracy doesn't work because Nazis is a really bad one. The only thing that argument shows is that you have a embarrassingly superficial knowledge of German history.

Democracy doesn't work because it's obvious that it doesn't work. It takes like five minutes of concentrated thinking to figure out its basic problems. The best thing you can say about democracy is that it's the system with least bloody failure modes out of the systems we know. Belief that it "works" is just a propaganda all of us are constantly exposed to since primary school.

The best thing you can't say about Winston "I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes" Churchill is that he wasn't Hitler or Stalin or the more freedom-loving but less talented people. I think his cute quote about democracy is similar, it sounds insightful until you compare it with anything more serious.

Democracy relates to various implementations of it like "blogging" does to "Wordpress version X.Y", and to various modes of control like an email from a friend does to spam containing a virus. There is a grey area, too, plenty of emails from real friends with viruses attached by intermediate servers.

I'd say the best thing you can say about democracy is that it scares power shitless, even when it's hardly effective and comes from the guts of people more than adult and focused thought and organizing. Once we ever being implemented without anyone who doesn't want it to work being involved, we can talk benchmarks. As it is, it's like writing a program in C, then letting a bunch of cats walk over the keyboard, then compiling, and saying C sucks.

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