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What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals

nytimes.com

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Re: What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals

#181

Post by higherpurpose »

declan wrote: post #79

Much of this was known before, including the FBI's anonymous letter attempting to provoke a suicide. As others said elsewhere in this thread, documents came out during the Church Committee. I wrote this 15 years ago when I worked at Time: The FBI's campaign to destroy Dr. Martin Luther King began in December 1963, soon after the famous civil rights March on Washington. It started with an extensive -- and illegal -- e…

Shame we never had any Church committee after the Snowden revelations. Where are all the NSA "reforms" now? They even have the nerve to say that the "pendulum has swung too far" in favor of privacy, when absolutely nothing has changed in the form of law since then.

Re: What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals

#182

Post by none_for_me_thx »

dragonwriter wrote: post #128
none_for_me_thx wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anarchy => no rulers not Anarchy => no rules

Rules come from somewhere. That somewhere is rulers. Therefore, no rulers => no rules. Therefore, (Anarchy => no rulers) => (Anarchy => no rules).

Rulers can certainly provide rules and conventions. But that is not the only, or best, place they can come from. Rules are usually emergent, and these kinds of rules are better suited to the communities they arise in, since they are tailor-made for the circumstances and preferences of the people from which they emerge. Contrast this with Federal rules and regulations which have little or nothing to do with the way life is lived in rural Alaska. But this is the same old argument about the failures of central planning that has been ignored by progressives and conservatives for more than a century.

See: English common law prior to being co-opted by the state.

Also see: David Graeber, anarchist, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVDkkOAOtV0

People who think like this suffer from a lack of imagination, in my opinion. They are people who cannot imagine that others can negotiate or have negative experiences of being ruled over, thus must be dictated to.

Re: What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals

#183

Post by m_mueller »

refurb wrote: post #174
crdoconnor wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Show me a list of democratic countries and I have no doubt I could dig up some really evil stuff on every single one of them. If I were to pick some (e.g. Switzerland/New Zealand), what you'd dig up on the US would still be far, far, far, far worse. There's really no morally relativistic comparison between Switzerland's aiding and abetting money laundering and the US starting two wars in the last 15 years or Obama's…

If I were to pick some (e.g. Switzerland/New Zealand) Let me give it a go! Switzerland basically bankrolled the Nazi war machine. Without Switzerland, Germany would have been unable to stash away all of the treasures it stole and likely wouldn't have been able to carry out the Holocaust with the efficiency it did.[1] Pretty bad huh? New Zealand has a dismal record on aboriginal rights. The Maori make up 4% of the pop…

About [1]: IMO [2] is a much better source for what went wrong in WW2 in Switzerland. Lots of work has gone into this, and it isn't biased for the Swiss side at all, even though the Swiss government has sponsored it. IMO the gold trade was defendable, given the geopolitical situation for Switzerland during the height of the the Third Reich - it was completely surrounded. What's most despicable about that time is how Jewish refugees have been turned back (even though I have to add that this was not the case for everyone, Switzerland harboured ~115k Jewish refugees at the end of WW2 [3], while 15-25k were refused).

IMO it's commendable though that the Swiss government was not defensive at all when the gold issue came up again in 1996. Legally they could have defended themselves using the treaty signed with Washington post WW2 (~250M CHF) - instead it caused a majority of Swiss parliament to spawn quite a large program [4], which resulted in extensive documentation, a 295M CHF victim fund as early 1997 and a $1.25 billion settlement later on.

I don't know how much better you could expect any government to handle this situation after the fact.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergier_commission

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland_during_the_World_Wa...

[4] http://www.swissbankclaims.com/chronology.aspx

Re: What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals

#184

Post by aaronbrethorst »

stfu wrote: post #107
[deleted] wrote: post #62

[deleted]

If there were HN "elections", my guess would be it came somewhat close to 40% Democrats, 30% Libertarians, 20% Republican, 10% Greens. I would say Democrats would have a tough struggle to win a majority.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States'_presidential_plu...

Re: What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals

#185

Post by NeverEnough »

encoderer wrote: post #167
Mikeb85 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the myth is that the US is actually democratic. A democracy is supposed to be 'rule of the people', as opposed to aristocracy, 'rule of the elite'. 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…

> How representative is the US' democracy? As representative as the people as a whole choose it to be. Which is criteria enough for a democracy.

Is it really that easy to draw a distinction between the various ways of compelling people to vote a certain way?

Re: What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals

#186

Post by pmoriarty »

higherpurpose wrote: post #181
declan wrote: post #79

Much of this was known before, including the FBI's anonymous letter attempting to provoke a suicide. As others said elsewhere in this thread, documents came out during the Church Committee. I wrote this 15 years ago when I worked at Time: The FBI's campaign to destroy Dr. Martin Luther King began in December 1963, soon after the famous civil rights March on Washington. It started with an extensive -- and illegal -- e…

Shame we never had any Church committee after the Snowden revelations. Where are all the NSA "reforms" now? They even have the nerve to say that the "pendulum has swung too far" in favor of privacy, when absolutely nothing has changed in the form of law since then.

What's changed is that a lot of this surveillance is perfectly legal now.

The surveillance state has written itself a blank check.

Re: What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals

#187

Post by krrrh »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #49
rooster8 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's engineering for you. Examine the failure modes, and try to design the next system so it can't fail in any of the known ways. In fact, that's what the authors of the Constitution were trying to do...

And they did an incredible job all things considered. It's worth noticing that even quite advanced countries like France unironically put numbers before the word "Republic" to keep track of which edition they are on. The longevity of the U.S. Constitution is simply unprecedented.

Re: What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals

#189

Post by PhasmaFelis »

comrade1 wrote: post #142
internet_arguer wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm not Swiss, I'm American. The Swiss provided a service to the Jews in Germany and helped hide their money from the nazis. Unfortunately most of their customers were killed... If I lived in a country with a corrupt or evil government I would try to move my money to Switzerland too, but the u.s. Is making it increasingly difficult to conduct finance anonymously. Based on your other comments... I'm not sure if you're…

> The Swiss provided a service to the Jews in Germany and helped hide their money from the nazis.

Why, they even cunningly tricked the Nazis into taking the Jews' money and delivering it to the Swiss for them!

Re: What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals

#190

Post by ableal »

declan wrote: post #79

Much of this was known before, including the FBI's anonymous letter attempting to provoke a suicide. As others said elsewhere in this thread, documents came out during the Church Committee. I wrote this 15 years ago when I worked at Time: The FBI's campaign to destroy Dr. Martin Luther King began in December 1963, soon after the famous civil rights March on Washington. It started with an extensive -- and illegal -- e…

> Much of this was known before

For a time-capsule view of the mood on the issue, there's this 1965 novel by Rex Stout: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doorbell_Rang

It's part of the series about sedentary detective Nero Wolfe, one of my literary guilty pleasures. While being all for law and order, Stout was not too keen on unbridled authority, and his characters would often tweak a policeman's metaphorical nose.

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